Keeping Up With The Smiths: February 2007

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

How Can He Be Six?

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This is T's birthday week. He turned six on Monday. Actually, it has been his birthday month. It started while we were visiting my family in California. He got presents from my sister and my folks. He absolutely loves the dog quilt that his Grammie made for him (he's snuggled up in it right now.) He also got a fun airplane that he played with in the park in California.

Then, the next weekend was a trip to visit Gram-on-the-Lake for a whirlwind Saturday. Here's what we did:

We drove late Friday night, put the kids to bed and visited with Gram and Gramp til past midnight.
Woke up bright and early for a tasty breakfast: sausage, eggs, English muffins, and strawberries.
The boys, M, and Gramp went out on the ice (M and Gramp shoveled the ice while the boys skated.) Gramp played goalie while R took him on one-on-one (and loved it!). T had a blast with the freedom of skating all over the frozen lake.

We took off for lunch at a 1950's diner that has a miniature train deliver your food. T loved it until the whole restaurant sang "happy birthday" to him while the train delivered a birthday cupcake. He was mortified! And very angry at me that I told them that it was his birthday.

Luckily, he cheered up when we went slot car racing at a great place that we had discovered the week before when we had two hours to kill before flying to California. It's also a throwback to the 1950's and was tons of fun.

Wait, the fun is not over yet....we also went to an AMAZING Children's Museum where Gram, Gramp and we all had a blast -- climbing, building, exploring, inventing, and playing with water were all on the fun-filled agenda.

Finally, we went to a New Orleans restaurant that had live jazz music. The boys especially loved the trombone and very tall bongo drums.

Then, we drove home....in an snow/ice storm. (That's a long story that I'll save for another day.)

All in all, a pretty darn fun birthday for an amazing SIX year old!

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Cold Front

On monday morning when I woke up it was -12 degrees.
Today when I woke up it was +12 degrees.
I guess we're on a warming trend...

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Cousins and Skiing

I was looking at this picture and it reminded me of a story that I wanted to blog about. This is a picture of all of the Smith cousins. The boy in the middle of the front row (the angelic blonde one) is the youngest. The last time we saw him, he was just a toddler. Evidently T didn't remember him, so he kept forgetting his name. The two didn't get along that well. C (the youngest) had a thing for T's toys and tried to play with him any chance he got. T got exasperated at the situation and told his Aunt, "that new kid of yours is really annoying!." Too funny, huh.

A note about the weather: It's -5 outside right now and we're in the middle of a blizzard. That means that it's really cold and snow is blowing everywhere.

When it was warmer (in the 20's) we took the kids skiing for the first time. My knees are bad, so I just took pictures. They did pretty well (the boys and M, I mean). Here are some highlights: