Celebrations and Snow

I keep waiting for the winter doldrums to set in, the respite from a busy summer, the calm before the storm.  However, that doesn't seem to be the case.  We've been flitting off to playgroups for some silliness:

 And the museum for some fishing:

 And one day when preschool was cancelled due to illness we made it to their tours for tots program.  Matthew learned a lot about Big Al the Allosaurus.  His retelling at dinner however, went something like this:
Me: "Matthew, can you tell daddy about what we learned about at the museum"
Matthew: "Allosaurus.  He ate meat."
Me: "What else?"
Matthew: "He had lots and lots of owies"
Me: "How did he get those owies?"
Matthew: "From eating pee"

Boys!  Don't know who or where he was warned about eating pee, but it's the second time it's come up as either a warning or consequence.  They also got to make really cool Allosaurus shrinky-dink necklaces.

 We also had some excitement as we celebrated James' birthday!  The kiddos made him a cake:

And most surprisingly, Matthew kept it a secret for two days!  It was especially exciting because my original plan was to take James out on his birthday, so we were going to have cake for breakfast!  Matthew picked out chocolate cake with chocolate frosting but when it came to decorating he wanted to make a rainbow cake, so this was our compromise:

Which wasn't too bad until we made our own purple sugar which Matthew was not as delicate about sprinkling as I would have liked.

That Saturday James and I not only had his birthday date, but it was also the day for us to see Dr. Noize  crash the Symphony.  He had been pumped about this since we picked up the tickets and it didn't disappoint.  Before hand they have an instrument petting zoo.  Matthew wasn't too keen on testing out the woodwinds and brass but he did give the percussion instruments a shot:

Catherine meanwhile felt the need to put her mouth on all the percussion instruments so mostly she observed this year.  As always the concert was great and the kiddos enjoyed.  Here's Matthew raising his hands to identify the themes of Beethoven's Fifth.  

 Sunday we thought we'd head out and do some cross country skiing.  It's been unseasonably warm for the past week and a half or so, and though I took the kiddos out to the golf course the other week:

it was some pretty crappy skiing and the conditions had only been sunnier and warmer.  Sooooo, I figured we'd head up into the mountains for some snow.  Unfortunately for us and our gear (fortunate for everyone else) the less than 1" of snow we got in town was 1-2 feet just up the unplowed road.   The downside as we started driving was that there was no place to turn around without getting stuck and the turn off to the trails we wanted to take (at the bottom of the canyon) was unplowed.  Once we found a promising turn out packed down with other skiiers we ran off the road.  Unfortunately, as you head further up the mountain not surprisingly the trails get steeper.  After unloading and dressing everyone and rescuing Matthew and his snowshoes from the deep piles in the parking lot, we hit the trail.  On the plus side, the trailer actually tracks decently well in deep powder.  However, since the powder was deeper than the bottom of the trailer I ended up plowing a bit of snow.  At least the surroundings were moody and gorgeous:

Unfortunately, as the trail headed up hill, I couldn't make any progress between the powder, the plowing with the trailer and the 60+ pounds of kiddos behind me.  Womp. Womp.  On a flat trail, we probably would have done fine in deep powder but I definitely don't have the skills (or skis?) to do much uphill yet.  We are still learning a whole heck of a lot about how to best pack/dress the kiddos quickly as well as James and I learning a lot more about how to ski off the groomed trails (and getting in better shape).  

In other news, Catherine has moved to her big girl bed.  It was a smooth transition in the beginning, though last night was rough so who knows how this will all play out.  Thank you to her big brother for teaching her how to climb out of bed.  We thought that we had a few weeks before Catherine would climb down by herself to get used to sleeping in the big bed before we dealt with the behavioral issues that come along with the freedom to get out of bed.  Oops.

Speaking of freedom, some other excitement this week was that both kiddos had dentist appointments.  Matthew did very well and did the whole appointment without me :(  While I was very proud of him it broke my heart a little that he's growing up so fast.  

 Otherwise, we've been out sledding, playing and otherwise having a good time.  Here is where we went snowsuit sledding down the ice hill.  Mr. Adrenaline had a blast and was moving too fast for pictures as always.  Catherine was a bit more contemplative:

 And she preferred as always just to eat the snow:

 Though she was willing to ride on the sled a few times with Matthew:

Though she had even more fun the next day with mommy and her friends while Matthew was in preschool.  Admittedly, hot cocoa always helps!