Potter - March citizen of the month

Yesterday during Tiger Time at Potter's school, he received the Citizen of the Month award for his classroom - we are extremely proud of him!!! His teacher, Mr. Henderson (in a black long sleeved shirt) handed out all of the awards to each child, but it was special that he got to give Potter his award as well. Look carefully in the group shots. Potter is in the third row, almost to the complete left. It was hard to get a shot of all the kids and see everyone's faces. Yay Potter!!!!

Caleb's first birthday party

Caleb attended his first birthday party last Saturday for one of his friends at preschool who turned three. This was at Bee Bop N Tots, an hour and a half of singing, music with instruments and sort of a choreographed program. Caleb started off by not even wanting to walk into the building and I had to half drag him up some stairs and into the hallway (I should have known then to have brought my flask with me) and he continued to cry, wail, scream, flail around in the hall, would not take off his shoes to go into the classroom, and so we sat in the hall for a good 15 minutes while he laid on some really nasty looking carpet. Once I could get him into the room, the other kids were well into their singing and the woman who was in charge of the program said in a way too cheery voice 'Oh, don't worry, all kids come around before too long!' Yeah, well she doesn't know my kid! So as it turned out, I sat with Caleb on my lap through almost the entire program, lunch, cake, presents, and it was only the last 10-15 minutes that he would get off of my lap and run around. And this was with two of his best buddies there from preschool!! So the happy pictures that you see were when I was about to bust a gasket with my child. I don't think we'll be going to any other parties soon. Either that or Dave will have to escort him there.

Caleb realizes that I am not within a 12 inch radius of him!!!

Molly's get up

Molly has on the most hilarious outfit. It is the rainbow colored headband, the singing Ariel necklace, the Princess backpack, the Middle Eastern little zip purse, a nice dress, green owl socks, and aqua ballet slippers. Holy cow, you need sunglasses to see this.

Lin and Claire (an event that may never be repeated)

This is me at Wendy's apartment holding her cat Claire. At first glance, this may not seem unusual, but let me assure you it is MOST unusual. Claire used to weigh around 25 pounds, and has now slimmed down to about 17 pounds. (Just for a point of reference, our kitty, Blaise, weighs about 8 1/2 pounds, about what Claire has lost) She has always had a bad disposition and not really been friendly towards anyone except Wendy. The kids have always wanted to pet her, have her sit on their laps, etc, but we can't even really get within a 3 foot radius of her without the hissing starting. When we went down in January for the inauguration, I developed a sort of relationship with Claire where she would come and rub on my leg and then lay by me on the floor. This trip a couple weekends ago, I was determined to make Claire like me and not be afraid of her anymore. SO, one night I decided to brave it and pick her up and she just was content, crossed her paws in front of her, so I screamed at Wendy to get the camera and take a picture of this, it'll never happen again. As it turns out, I think that Claire misses me, because I would play with her mouse laser beam and she would chase it around (well, she would at least move one paw towards it) and I know that was special time she and I had.

Finally, we get to the pancakes!!

You'll be seeing this first, but this is the last thing that we did after waiting in line for quite a while. Most of us had pancakes and sausages which were delicious with their maple syrup, but Caleb had a hot dog (by then, it was very close to lunchtime) and then we decided we needed to hit the road and get home. It was such a great trip, I am glad we did the Maine maple syrup Sunday. Sweet treat!!

The ice house

Although the kids had fun hacking away at giant hunks of ice with picks and other sharp objects, it made me cringe watching all these (0ther) unsupervised kids doing it. They weren't quite sure of why people would have an ice house, even after I explained it to them.

Boiling down the kettles of syrup

It was so cold outside, so when we finally found the huge fire with all the boiling kettles, we stayed there a few minutes longer!! They have huge poles that they stir around in the kettles every few minutes. It was cool to watch.

Moooooooooooooooooooooo

This one had a lot to say.......

A bit of livestock

There was lots of lowing and mooing. Check out the video above this post. I wish I had gotten better, as he was really letting it all out. And the kids loved that there was a Wilbur pig. We didn't see Charlotte, though. Those of you who don't know who I am talking about obviously do not have children.

Maine maple Sunday

The third Sunday in March is Maine maple Sunday, which is an extremely big deal and there are a lot of hard core Mainers that participate in this every year, as well as us tourists. We had a very nice drive out to the farm that we chose (there are hundreds that do this) and we got to go through a covered bridge, which the kids thought was cool. We went to Merrifield farm, which is basically someone's house (the Merrifield's?) and then all of the property where they raise the livestock and, of course, make the maple syrup. There were hundreds of cars parked on this little two lane road and then you had to hike back to the house. There was a long, long, long, line that was for the pancake breakfast. Overall, I think we waited in that line for an hour, but since there were 8 of us (and 4 anxious kids) we took turns holding the spot in line, while we walked around the property to check things out. More later on what we did....

All sorts of snuggling

Some friends of Jeff and Laura, Stuart and Delia (she is in the pictures with Caleb and Alex) came over on Saturday night, had some bbq for dinner and then the kids all watched a movie. Delia is a little younger than Molly, but they had a great time (all five of them from age 2-13) playing with Polly Pockets. It was sweet to watch them all together.

The dogs

Chloe and Birdee (with Dave and Jeff in the background)

Aunt Laura

I think that I caught Aunt Laura off guard while she was making a salad, but I don't have many pictures of her.....

Caleb and Molly team up on Alex

Alex wore a sweatshirt with a drawstring hood and Molly and Caleb decided to trap Alex in there. Lots of giggling ensued.

Jeff and Alex

Alex sledding

Potter sledding

Molly sledding

More snow action

Just to give you an idea of how big the pile of snow was. Now multiply by 4 and that is the norm for when we are there. Cool shot of Potter doing his hang 10 and then the kids in the backyard on the playset with the girl from next door.

Trip to see the Trippes

We made a trip over our three day weekend to Maine to visit Jeff, Laura and Alex. As you can see, they have a lot more snow than we do here (we have none left) and so the kids were able to spend tons of time outside sledding on the snow (and mud) in the sunshine. The mountain of snow is so huge (and this is smaller than normal since we usually are there in February and a lot of it has melted) that everyone has plenty of space to mountain climb, sled and build. Caleb decided to throw ice balls at everyone as they came down the hill.

Caleb's big transition

The day that I came back from Arlington, we turned Caleb's crib into a big boy bed. That entails taking off the front side that comes down for the crib and using a small piece on the side for a bedrail. It may not sound like a big deal, but it is, if only for the mere fact that now the child can get in and out of bed by themselves. That can be both a good and bad thing, but Caleb has adjusted really well to this and did even better on our trip to Maine (see above post) when he was sleeping on a twin mattress!!! Molly helped ease Caleb into things, as you can see, showing him the proper form for getting in and out!!