Happy Hearts' Day 2015

Dan and I are like minded in many ways and probably in all the important ways, but we do have  differing opinions on celebrating cheesy, fake holidays.  Can you guess which ones of us is pro and which one of is con?

We began Valentine's Day by opening a box from Grammy and Granddad (Grammy's on my side of things, clearly).  Finley was THRILLED to see a Lego tow truck in his box!

 Miss Dagny was equally excited to open her dog house complete with five cute puppies.

 She passed out color coordinated "dog food" to each one.

 Finley got right to work assembling his new truck and did a great job figuring most of the instructions out himself.

 We did take a breakfast break but he basically inhaled his pancakes so he could get back to the playroom to finish building and ta-da, here it is!

After naps, the kids and Dan did the gift scavenger that I planned and with their magnifying glasses in tow -- they solved the clues and found all the little trinkets that I hid around the house.  We used to do this on birthdays in my house growing up and it was a fun tradition to bring back!

And no, Dan and I did not make plans for a fancy date night - but that turned out to be a good thing since our latest blizzard began around 4 and we never would have made it to a restaurant or back home! But I did manage to make homemade garlic mashed potatoes (thank you, Mark Bittman cookbook) and was pretty proud of that :)

Happy Hallmark Holiday to all!

Snow Piles Up and Up and Up

Kids finally got back to school this morning, only a one hour delay, and we snapped these photos after pick up.  

Can you believe that we're due for another storm on Thursday night????

Furniture Shopping With and Without Kids

We are in the market to upgrade both our kitchen and dining room tables, but furniture shopping, it turns out, is a real pain.  Dan and I went to the "furniture capital of New England" on MLK Day while the kids were in school and though we saw some nice things, we weren't ready to pull the trigger.  But the freedom of getting in and out of the car, lingering to talk with sales people, not packing seventeen snacks or doing diaper changes made this fruitless adventure really enjoyable!! However, since we still needed to look at other options, we took the kids up to (tax-free) Nashua, NH last weekend.  Not as nice an experience as shopping solo was, but it was surely entertaining!

After a few stores, the kids had done fairly well and it was time to call it quits.  We had dinner before heading back to MA and Dagny enjoyed "making a shopping list for her school meeting" at the table

 while the boys played Tic Tac Toe.

 Dan's smiling because just as he was telling Finley that he should have blocked Daddy from winning, we discovered that Finley had in fact won with his last move!! Ha!! The student has become the master!

GG and Grandpa Visit

On Friday, GG and Grandpa drove up from NY (despite the snowy forecast for the weekend) and met Finley, Dagny, and me at the Discovery Museum in town.  It was a Free(zing) Friday Night and so all five of us got into the museum in exchange for a bag of groceries for the local food pantry!  We had fun exploring the museum and the kids loved showing their grandparents all their favorite spots, especially the diner and the ship on the third floor.

Then, we headed back home so GG could warm up the Shabbat dinner she brought up from NY and when Dan got home, we all sat down at the dining room table.  Why the fancy dining? Well, two reasons: our kitchen table only seats four at the moment and that same table was home to several bowls and towels to catch drips from our ice dam :(

Dinner was delicious and the kids did a great job singing all the prayers.  Finley inhaled more than his fair share of challah and soon enough, it was time for bed.  GG kindly agreed to put Finley to bed and they had a great time reading lots of books, looking at his glow in the dark stars on the ceiling, and just chatting before saying goodnight.

Saturday morning, Dan took the kids and his parents to the gym for gymnastics.  Finley rocked his "gym stars" class and Dagny and Dan had fun in the parent/tot class.  I got some precious alone time and then we all met up for lunch in Concord center.  The Market Cafe was as yummy as usual and the kids managed sitting at a bar height table better than expected!  Afterwards, we went to the bookstore across the street and both kids picked a couple of new books to take home.  Grandparents and kids took naps when we got home and then Dan, GG, and Finley headed off to the winter carnival in town.  All donning their snow gear, packing sleds, and ready for the cold - they were quite a sight!

Dan reported that they had a great time: sledding, watching the snowman building contest, meeting a penguin and watching him ice skate. Last year, this event was canceled due to lack of snow -- what a difference a year makes (we were already at 50" this weekend and more snow is falling as I type)!

Sunday morning we awoke to three more inches of snow so GG entertained Dagny while Dan, Finley, and I shoveled our driveway (did I mention our snowblower died??) and since Finley nicely dug out his grandparents' car, they were able to head back to NY nice and early to beat the storm.

It was sweet of them to come all the way up here for such short, snowy day and since we are home again today for another snow day - we really appreciate them coming to play with us!

THE Blizzard of January 2015

Last week, Acton got nearly 30" of snow in one of the biggest blizzard's in Boston's history.  We had two days off of school and felt like we were living inside an igloo - with snow piling up towards the windows and for as far as the eyes can see in every direction.  We couldn't even go outside the first day (only Dan went out to snowblow midday) since it was so windy and cold, but on the second day (after Dan went off to work) we did go out and what a scene it was!

 

 Soon, the kids tried to climb through Dan's path that he'd used for roof raking, but they couldn't really make it through.

 If one of them climbed out onto the snow, they sank in pretty fast because the snow was so light and fluffy.

 Dagny had to crawl her way back to us at one point since we couldn't reach her.

 Then, we made our way to the front walk and kept sinking in.

And began tunneling into the front yard.

 We also did our civic duty by shoveling out the fire hydrant down by the street.

 Here's the view of our house from the road.

What a storm, huh? I suspect the kids will get a kick out of seeing these photos years from now :) After being outside for about 45 minutes, we were pretty frozen and headed back inside to dry off and warm up. 

Hard as it is to believe, we are home again today (on a Monday) because are getting MORE snow. We haven't gone out to measure yet but we were slated to get up to 14 inches...help!