Robin wanted to make his own Slinky Dog with his slinky.  He'd been bugging us all day, and I had no idea how.  Poppa to the rescue!

Robin wanted to make it out of wood, but Poppa had a better idea, and made him out of toilet paper tubes.  (This slinky has since died, when Robin decided to stretch it all the way out and bend it all around.  This may be Robin's first experience with a toy that can't be fixed at all.  We'll see how it goes.)

Liam painting!  He loves to get involved in things like this.  The only difficulty is that I have to watch him so closely--that is, if I don't want my entire kitchen to be painted

Meanwhile, Robin drew this picture of the four of us.  (Liam is pretty tiny, you have to look closely.)

Liam loves hats these days.  It's one of the words he says most regularly.  I don't know if he likes hats because he can say the word, or if he was inspired to learn the word because he likes hats, but he's regularly putting them on.  He knows where we keep his winter hats in the closet (and they're down where he can reach now) so he's always trying to get them.  Well, on this day he found Robin's Mickey hat in Robin's dresser, and decided to put it on.

Backwards.  Our little rapper?  He's cute either way.

Every day at Robin's preschool, they have a snack, and it is provided by the students.  They take turns, and with such a large class, their turn only comes up every two months or so.  Except for Robin who, because he joined the class late, wasn't on the snack calendar.  (They created the entire year's snack calendar at the beginning of the year, so we weren't on it.  Mom, who taught preschool for 22 years, thinks that's a strange way to do things, but it is what it is.)  Anyway, two kids wound up leaving the preschool class over the last few months, so back at the end of Christmas break I emailed the Admin person asking if we needed to take over the snack days of one of those kids.  She, probably taking pity on our unemployed status, told me they had it covered and not to worry.

Now, Robin hadn't actually asked when he would get to be Snack Kid, but he'd excitedly told us about the song they sing to thank the Snack Kid each day, and told us all about it when one of his friends brought snack.  So I knew he would love to be Snack Kid himself.  And one snack day in two months wasn't going to break our budget.  So I'd been planning to talk to the Admin person and say "thanks for thinking of us, but Robin would really like a snack day, can he have at least one?"  I hadn't, however, gotten around to doing that yet, so it was a surprise when Robin came home from preschool one day at the end of January with the snack basket!  He was just glowing when he showed it to me, he was so excited.

So Robin got to be Snack Kid after all.

I talked about this with one of the teachers the day we brought his snack, and it looked like it was just a miscommunication between Admin and the teachers.  They assumed the Admin person would have told us that yes, we were taking over for one of the now-absent children.  I have the one other snack day that we'll be covering now, and have it on my calendar.  Because it would have been easier if we'd had advance warning of this--instead we had to make an extra trip to the grocery store.  Oh well, it was worth it for this happy kid.

We went to the Lego store, where Robin spent his Christmas money.  He was happy to pick his own Legos with the Pick-a-Brick option, where he filled a bucket with loose bricks of his own choosing.  The next day, he created this forklift all on his own, with his new bricks.  (All except for Superman, that's Dean's.)

We started potty training Liam on the 7th!!  Look Ma, no pants or diaper!  (He's wearing underwear, but you can't see them in this picture.)

It started off as messily as can be expected.  We went cold turkey (except during sleep time, of course) and so I had to follow him around all day, keep an eye on his behavior, and encourage him to get to the bathroom when it became necessary.  Here are some things we did to keep occupied.  The sensory bin

Drawing at the easel

And painting.  He's making slow progress, and proving that he has a different learning style from his brother.  Of course they wouldn't be the same, that would make things too easy.  But I'm happy with the progress that we're seeing.  Go Liam!

Breckenridge

We headed up to Breckenridge for a day trip to see their snow sculptures.  Pretty neat stuff!

The train was one of only two that we were allowed to climb on.  The rest were works of art.

It was quite hard to get both boys up here safely.  And me, too

Choo choo!

There were some ice sculptures too, though they're not part of the competition

There's some pretty amazing stuff here

This is an international event, with teams coming from all over the world to compete.  

According to Breckenridge's own information "The Breckenridge Ski Resort makes snow recognized to be some of the best in the world.  (They spent years perfecting their 'recipe.')"  So perhaps that's part of why this is such a big deal--they provide really good snow for sculpting.

Typical

Dean's parents have gone up to see the sculptures for the last few years, but this is the first time we've joined them.

It was neat, although I don't know if it was worth the travel time.  (Our travel time was hampered by a longish detour to avoid an accident, and not leaving until nearly an hour after we'd intended.)  Next time we'll have to make sure to leave earlier in order to make it more worthwhile.

Parking was particularly hideous, too--it is ski season, after all.  We were very fortunate that we drove past Grammy and Grandpa while searching for a spot, so we were able to set the boys free with their grandparents, and didn't have to listen to them whine about wanting to get out of the car anymore.  Thanks, Del and Cyndy!

Another possibility would be to get a room and spend one or two nights and make a weekend of it.  Then we'd have time to play around as well.

We did actually think of the overnight idea this year, but the resorts were so full (due to ski season) that Dean's parents weren't able to use their sway as vacation owners in Breck to get a room.  Oh well.

Again.... typical

The uncarved block of snow.  It looks like a Borg cube.  Or maybe that was the Rhoadarmer Gingerbread entry

Our family in front of the happy family Chinese entry

Now Grandpa is holding 60+ pounds of kid

You could climb on these horses too, but Robin didn't want to so we didn't wait in line

Pretty neat!  And we had fun.

January--cold but dry

It was hard to wake up for school the first day back after Christmas vacation.  Too much staying-up-late/getting-up-late.

This little guy loves to smile and say "cheese" for the camera

Uncle Dan brought over an old sled from Dean and Dan's childhood.  Supposedly it's really good, and can steer a bit.  We haven't had a chance to test it yet, but Liam loved getting rides around the house before we put it away in the garage

As of Christmas, everybody in the household now has Batman pajamas.  So we've had a couple of Batman Pajama days!

On the first one, Dean had to take his off to go to the Broncos game (poor Dean.) So we didn't get pictures until the second time we did this.

We have capes, too!

The boys started to go stir crazy around the house during a cold spell.  I didn't really want to play outside, but they needed to run around.  So one day we went out to a nearby mall, which has this indoor play area.

It's full of climb-on Looney Tunes characters.  It used to be giant breakfast foods, but they got sponsorship for a new play area a few years ago.

Tunnels are always a hit

...and not just for the kids

This was a very tight fit, by the way

We decided it was time to move Liam into a booster chair and sit him at the table with the rest of us.

All we'd been waiting for was some chair protectors to keep the upholstery clean, and we purchased those on our trip to the mall.

So now Liam's at the table like a big boy!

Myself and the boys, pressed into the giant pin board thing at the museum

My Uncle John got Robin a Stomp Rocket for Christmas--an air-powered foam rocket that shoots quite far into the air.  Robin kept bugging me to set this up, but we needed a nice day to do so.  I didn't want him doing it in the house--I feared for all our high-up breakables.  Finally, we got a nice day and gave it a whirl.

It really does shoot high.  Robin had a ton of fun.  (I had to take, like, 15 pictures before I finally got a good action sequence like these.  It just moved too fast for pictures.)

We've since brought this to the park to share with some friends on a playdate, and lost one of the rockets.  But it came with four, so we're still in business.  This was fun, thanks, Uncle John and Aunt Nikki!

Baby Big Boy in a diaper box

Aunt Kat gave the boys some really giant marshmallows, so we lit a candle and tried to make indoor s'mores.  And then we gave up and nuked the things for 10 seconds, because a candle just takes too darn long.

Tasty, but messy.  I don't think Liam liked the stickiness much.  For that matter, neither did Robin. He was very eager to get his hands wiped off

Yum!

Life has gone back to normal since the holidays ended, and all the decorations got put away.  Preschool is back in session.  Life got disrupted again by a cold, though, and poor Liam's lungs only just recovered.  I'm sorry that he inherited my shoddy lungs.  At least we have drugs to treat him, although their time-consuming nature (15-30 minutes of sitting still--in front of a TV, that's the only way he'll cooperate--to breathe in a nebulizer treatment) really messes up our day.  But the drugs work, so we're happy.  Not much else has been going on--just normal life.  And I'm almost caught up to the present here, with pictures!  Hurrah!