Is winter over yet???

Admittedly, the snow and ice is pretty, but I'm SO ready for spring! Kitty He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named agrees with me.

I did take the kids out this morning for a few runs down the hill on their sled. They had fun, and it's not too bad out today, now that the sun is shining and the wind has stopped blowing!

Obviously, it's still a little slick, with ice under the snow!

This is the first year Timothy has shown any interest in playing in the snow, so Gabe showed him the ropes.

Poor kid wanted to build a snowman! He didn't understand why 1 inch of dry, powdery snow does not a snowman make.

Both kids enjoyed trying to track the stray cats by their prints. But tracking them proved to be hard because they swarmed all over the porch this morning when we put out food, and it was impossible to tell which tracks were coming and which were going.

The whole yard was full of "grasscicles". It's pretty odd to see.

I don't know if it shows in this picture, but there's a glaze of ice on everything.

The ropes holding up our baby tree had little icicles all over them!

Poor little tree! It probably wants spring to hurry up, too!

These are already gone, having falling when snow slid off the roof. I'm sure we'll end up with more this evening, as everything starts to refreeze.

Just in case you don't think I'm strange yet...

There's a slug in my shower. Not a giant, disgusting one, just a teeny one. Normally, this only happens in the summer. And normally, when it does happen, I just let it crawl onto a sheet of paper and take it outside. Not this time. I would very much like the slug NOT to live in my shower, but it's winter, and if I take the poor slug outside, it will freeze.

I've named him. His name is Friar Ted. Yes, I know this is beyond bizarre, even for me. My love of all creatures great and small doesn't usually go quite this far down the food chain. I do relocate non-venomous spiders, because they are useful and eat bugs for us. And the crickets really can't help it that we built buildings in the middle of their prairie land, so I take them outside, too. And yes, I admit that I named the praying mantis on the front porch. And two spiders. Hey, Sergio and Guido were there for so long, I had to name them. A tree frog did once hibernate in my house. But that was an accident. But a slug...it's just so wrong!

Before everything was gray...

Remember color?? It made the world less blah and depressing. I was really debating whether or not to post pictures from months ago, but they were so bright and cheerful, they just demanded to be posted! Here's the yearly shot of the boys outside Gabe's school playground.

This is our fourth year to take this picture. Wow, fourth. I'm getting old. Someday, I'll frame them all in a row and be amazed at how my boys have grown.

OK, I admit it...I was trying to be all artsy and get some cool shots of the leaves. I have neither my sister's skill or her cool equipment, though, so I'll have to be content by how cool and artsy it looked in my head.

I could just stare at these leaves all day. Fall is nature's way of apologizing in advance for what it's about to do to us.

And presenting...a new traditional shot. We got a tree this year. If it wasn't for the fact that I've been traveling backward in time to catch up, you'd have already seen the Scouts planting it. Now we'll take pictures to watch the tree AND the kids grow!

Our tree looks very pretty when it has leaves. Right now it looks like a sad little stick. It's not a bad little tree, Charlie Brown. All it needs is a little love!

I no longer remember why Gabe was posing this way. Oh, well, I suppose it isn't important. Either that or it was followed by something so traumatic I've blocked it from my memory. Knowing my sons, it could be either.

Before everything froze, I harvested what I could from my little garden. We got LOTS of cherry tomatoes!

The flowers were pretty, too!

Ah, color! See, don't you feel better?

Precocious=Obnoxious?

I have often been told that my children are smart. And they are. But they are also little twits. Here are two recent examples of things they've done that have caused me to wish the floor would open up and swallow me.

On Tuesday, I received a call from Gabe's teacher. Apparently, he had spent the first couple of days after Christmas break being a bit of a problem in class. For one thing, he kept falling out of his chair on purpose. For another, he kept shouting out rude replies to the teacher. We had a good discussion, which has resulted in more cleaning and less Nintendo for Gabe. But then the teacher pointed out that she hadn't known any eight-year-olds prior to Gabe who could properly understand, let alone use sarcasm. Oops.

Timothy had to go to the ENT this week (oh, joy, another ear surgery to look forward to!) and his greeting to the doctor left a little to be desired. The doctor came in and asked him how he was today. To which Timothy replied, "I fart a lot. That's why my mom won't let me have raisins." The doctor, luckily, saw the humor in this statement. He must have boys, too.

Visitor

Some weeks ago, I arrived home from knit group to find the house mostly dark and Chris asleep on the couch. I set my bag down and walked into the kitchen, where I saw a spot on the rug. In the low lighting, I thought it was a hairball that someone had kindly horked up on the kitchen rug. I grabbed a paper towel and flipped on the light. This little guy is definitely NOT a hairball. Seriously, I live with six house cats, and not one of them noticed a 12 inch long grass snake! They're fired. Anyway, I caught him and returned him to the front yard, advising him that however welcome he was to hibernate in my flower beds, he was not at all welcome to hibernate in my kitchen. He hasn't returned, so I guess he took the hint.

All you need is BLAH

Timothy really likes music. He has rather eclectic taste in music, for a three year old. For instance, he's been wanting his own copy of "Yellow Submarine" ever since he listened to it in his Popple's car. So Mama T and Popple got him a copy for Christmas. We were listening to it in the car yesterday, and "All You Need is Love" came on. "Mama, Mama, it's my favorite song!" he cried. "Blah, blah, blah! Blah is all you need!"

Another of his current favorites is Paul Simon's "Graceland" dvd. For those of you who have never seen it, it's a concert in South Africa, featuring Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mabazo. He seems to really enjoy the African music, but he has his own take on it. His favorite song on the dvd is one that he refers to as "Bubbashoota". Since we don't really know what they're saying, we've stopped trying to tell him it's not called Bubbashoota.

As long as he doesn't develop a taste for rap, I'm not going to complain too much.

Halloween (Yes, I'm that far behind!)

It's taken me so long to get back to posting pictures, but I couldn't resist putting up some pictures from Halloween. We went with a Pirate theme this year. These first few were from Hallozooeen, which we went to a couple of nights before Halloween.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!

The zoo thing was cool, but VERY crowded. It literally took us an hour to get to the zoo from our house, traffic was so awful. (It usually takes less than 10 minutes!) Timothy was pretty cranky because of the crowds, and we didn't stay long.

Oh, and did I mention that, ditz that I am, I sent my legally blind child out in the dark wearing an eye patch? It never occurred to me what a bad idea that would be until he kept running into things. We decided to lose the patch very early on.

Gabe carved his pumpkin all by himself this time! I think he did a pretty amazing job!

Trick or treat!

That's one cool pirate!

Here we are at Mom and Dad's house. The plan was to take the kids out for some trick or treating, and then they were going to spend the night with Mom and Dad so Chris and I could go out. This plan got altered when I came down with an awful stomach virus. I was already VERY miserable by the time this picture was taken, and this is the only picture of me in my costume. Chris has promised me a rain check for next year.