Audrey's 2nd Birthday Party!

This big girl turns 2 next week!!  She had a Peter Rabbit/bunny birthday party last weekend.  In full disclosure, our library has close to 100 cake pans you can borrow, so a few weeks ago I took her and let her pick out which pan she wanted... I plan to do this for everyone here on out;) This year she loved opening her gifts and preferred hummus and chips to her birthday cake.  She had a wonderful day celebrating with friends and family.  Thank you to everyone who was able to attend!

Audrey's 1st Skiing Adventure

We have had some pretty poor luck skiing at "big mountains" this year with bitter cold temperatures and nasty wind chills. It was going to be sunny on Noah's birthday this year and Gabe had the day off, so we decided to take the kids out of school and have a family day of skiing... hey, it's the middle of March, it can't be that cold...right??  The day before I checked the weather again... it was certainly still going to be sunny, but actual temperature was single digits with a windchill in the high teens below zero... what?!?!?!? To make a long story short, we had already paid for the childcare and couldn't change it,  so we went anyway hoping the weather forecasters were wrong.  Of course the top two chair lifts were closed because of a wind hold, but Gabe, Noah, James and I happily rode the t-bar as high as we could and enjoyed skiing with almost no one else on the mountain... it was mostly fun;)  The good news is that James has gotten to be such a good skier, after his lessons at Titcomb, that we can bring him almost anywhere Noah and I can go.

After a morning of skiing (where the temperature didn't rise at all despite the sun) we picked up Ben and Audrey and warmed up in the lodge for lunch.  After lunch we got Ben and Audrey outfitted and we all skied the bunny slopes for the rest of the afternoon where it was "warmer", but not really warm enough to be pleasant for the younger skiers.  Noah loved Audrey's skis so much that he kept saying, "Aww, aren't these so cute!  Let's just buy them for her, look how much she likes them! She looks so cute wearing them".... it will be interesting to see how that kind of attitude with play out with the rest of Audrey's "lifetime milestones". Ben is getting better and better, so by next year he should be able to ski on his own.  Audrey really loved skiing with me (not so much with Gabe) and seemed to like going fast, especially after we got her some goggles and covered her face completely with her balaclava;)  All in all we had a great day skiing and Audrey is excited to do it again!

Noah Turns 8!

It has been 8 years since we became parents and welcomed this sweet guy into the world!  It has been so much fun in watching him grow into such a kind, thoughtful and helpful little man.  He has been so helpful this past year with chores around the house to keeping his siblings in check. He participated in both soccer and basketball this past year, but his passion seems to be in both skiing and running. He is also hoping to restart his violin lessons this year.  He loves to create and build with legos, read books and is always looking for new and exciting ways to play star wars.

On his birthday this year we let him skip school for a great day of skiing (see the next post).  After returning home we had supper and he was very excited to open his gifts and to get right to work on his AT-AT:) Happy Birthday Buddy!

Noah's Star Wars Birthday!

Star Wars fever is still going strong in our house.  Noah has wanted and has been planning a Star Wars birthday for almost a year now.  Luckily for us, there are lots of other Star Wars fans out there and this theme was one of the easiest to create.  A quick Pintrest/Etsy search gave us all of the ideas we needed.  Noah greeted all of his guests with a blow-up light saber and a jedi training checklist. They ventured to the basement for jedi training to save R2D2 and C3PO from the storm trooper balloons followed by a "find the clone trooper" scavenger hunt.  They had blaster training in the front room, constructing an R2 until and defeating Darth Vader in piñata form. Han Solo was even trapped in the carbonite jello.  The highlight for James was the "yoda soda"... he had been talking about it for weeks, but when the time came he wouldn't drink it because he was too afraid that the juice and soda would give him cavities... he didn't have any trouble eating his weight in piñata candy... Thank you to all of Noah's friends who were able to make it, a fun time was had by all!

More Winter

Winter is still in full swing here, but we did have one day that got above freezing and reminded us that spring may really be coming. It was on this day that James thought it was time to sit outside with no socks (see the picture)... he quickly realized that it wasn't "that warm" just yet;) The top left picture is how we found Audrey the other day when she left the group and wasn't making any noise.  When Gabe went to check on her he found her in her room looking at a book:)  The picture on the right is of Audrey painting at the playgroup (aka school) Ben and Audrey attend.  They love it there and are always captivated by creative crafts, games and play.

James had Dr. Seuss week at his school and each day had a different theme.  This particular day was "Wacky Wednesday" where he dressed backwards and mismatched.  Audrey loves to be in pictures with her brothers and there aren't many pictures she is left out of.  James has also continued to have a knack for building/inventing and created a special plane with yo-yo wings which he was so proud of. The bottom two picture are of James' Student in the Spotlight day at school.  He had to stand in front of the assembly and say something about himself.  He read the people who are in his family... and I mean READ... he read the sheet exactly as it was written and when he came to Noah's name he couldn't pronounce it and had to have help... I am guessing he would have done better without the card;)  AND in true Jim Smith style he amused the audience by putting his sticker over his mouth and nose and then just sat through the entire assembly as if nothing were different...

Audrey has spent most of the last month walking around the house in either of these two outfits- a life jacket and goggles or a ski helmet and boots.  Depending on the outfit she just constantly repeats, "pool, pool, pool" or "ski, ski, ski"... there is a chance she is becoming wise to the fact that she, weekly, gets left behind for both ski and swimming lessons...

Speaking of ski lessons... Both Noah and James are able to participate in the SnoCats learn to ski program put on through the college at our local ski mountain (hill). It runs two days per week after school for 2 hours.  While fantastic for Noah and James, and they are both becoming fantastic skiers, Ben, Audrey and I have spent many long hours waiting in the ski lodge.  These last few pictures are from the last night I brought my camera and Audrey requested pictures of herself... she is quite the ham!

February Vacation 2015

We started our vacation week with a visit from Grampy, Grammy and Aunt Andrea. We took them to Titcomb and while Noah and I had ski lessons, everyone else got to get out and enjoyed the mountain as well!  We had "the blizzard that wasn't" on Sunday which prevented us from visiting friends in Vermont, but did force us to have a really fun family day at home.  On Monday we traveled to Bangor for some high school basketball tournament fun, even though our team lost we enjoyed playing at the children's museum before Nannie flew off to Florida. Ben discovered that he could see movies in the truck much better from his back row seat if he used the binoculars...:) The bottom picture is of the kids wearing their life jackets in the ball pit.  Audrey kept putting on her lifejacket and asking to go in the "pool"... repeatedly.  Since our pool is covered in snow and I was feeling too lazy to take them to the fitness center, this actually passed for a fun activity:) We spent the rest of the week skating, skiing, sledding, snowshoeing and lots and lots of playing!