Lately...

Spying on the neighbors. (This means watching a neighbor using a salt dispensing wagon...very suspicious behavior, they thought).



The quest to find the perfect monocle continues.



Catching snowflakes.



Late night shoveling excursion.



Signs inspired (or, more accurately, directly copied from) Captain Underpants.





Professor Pippy P. Poopypants meets Captain Underpants in a fantastic battle.



Early morning visits to the Advent calendar.



Cleaning the car.



Breakfast with Bionicles.



Reverse snow angels?



Max has been reading the paper, I see.



Using the "Drawn Nintendo Characters" book.



Concoctions.



And, just today, I see that Max has been using Sharpies...in many different places in the house. To start with, he redecorated his pajamas.




The dollhouse.



There were more places touched by that indelible marker, but I think you get the gist.

Not pictured: Max has learned to snap. He snaps every few minutes, and he snaps to emphasize things he says. He has a funny little tilt of his head as he does it, and it's often like a last little punctuation on something he has just said.

Also, Max is learning lots of different songs on the piano, but he doesn't like me to take videos of it, so I cannot post it here. He's been playing a lot of Jingle Bells, with the chords and everything. Right now, he's really trying to figure out "Linus and Lucy" from the Charlie Brown music. And he's still playing "Hedwig's Theme," "Indiana Jones: Raider's March," "Star Wars: Main Theme" and "Darth Vader's Theme." Oh, yeah, and how could I forget? He's been playing Batman for the last month or so. There's a LOT of Batman going on around here, and I am amazed that I have no photographic evidence of it. I'll have to post some of his Batman drawings and other Batman stuff another time.

Ben's Christmas Tree Farm

In what has become an annual holiday tradition for us, we trekked out to Harvard Illinois (about 70 miles) to Ben's Christmas Tree Farm, in order to frolic in the snowy fields and cut down our own tree.

The boys, ready for action.



Horse drawn wagon to take us to the Fraser Firs.



Max and Otto each took a turn at sawing the tree trunk.




We refused the wagon and dragged our tree through the snow (until we got tired of dragging it and stopped for a quick snowball fight).





Our tree was shaken (not stirred) and then readied for transport.





On the car.


A quick stop at the Swiss Made Bakery.




Adornment.

This Just In

Otto: Maybe one day we could write down the recipe for your bread and make copies of it and sell it to other people so they can make it, because your bread is the yummiest bread ever.

Max: But only when it's hot. When it's old, it's terrible!

Note: he did say "old," but I realized when reading this, that it would seem logical that he would say "when it's cold, it's terrible." It would actually make more sense, because even when it's "old" (i.e. more than an hour out of the oven), he does like it toasted. Just never for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. For that, he prefers thinly sliced, store bought whole wheat bread. Otto likes it warm or cold, although he pulls out the inside and wads it up into a big ball which he then shoves in his mouth in its entirety. But I definitely agree that there is nothing quite like hot bread right out of the oven, especially accompanied by butter. I have many fond memories of warm bread from my childhood, and I'm happy that my kids have that too.

The Post I Thought I'd Already Written, or A Case of Too Many Outlets for Expression

I shouldn't complain about all the wonderful places where I can maintain friendships via this lovely world of the web, but perhaps I am stretching myself a bit too thin over too many different places: the blog, Facebook, Ning, Yahoo lists. It is a bit difficult to remember where I wrote what, and it seems that if I am keeping up with one, then the others fall through the cracks. I suppose that fits in with my personality: I am always better focusing on one thing, rather than spreading myself out. I do tend to put the blog (and others' blogs) above all else as my way of keeping a journal of our lives and keeping in touch with our friends. And yet, somehow I thought I had already written about the snow this year. But apparently that was some other time, some other bat channel (yeah, we've been watching old Batman on MeTV, as well as Batman: The Animated Series when it airs on the Toon Channel...which we all love).

Anyway, my point is...we've had snow. We've watched it falling while we sat inside and cut out paper snowflakes. We've crawled out our second floor window onto our porch deck and made snow angels. We've traveled to the backyard and admired all the frozen plants in their blanket of white. We've made a snow box out of our wagon. We've sat inside throughout a perfectly sunny snow day and then gone out long after dark to shovel paths at the park from the dragon slide to the swings. We've warmed ourselves with hot chocolate (and consequently run out of milk, and then spent an entire 24 hours without hot chocolate, which was quite trying). We've tried to build snowmen, but instead we've built a snow cave, which turned out to be the perfect hiding place for our Lego minifigures. We've climbed on and hugged ice sculptures and thrown big blocks of leftover sculpting ice with smashing success. We've scraped the car windows and been careful to park in spots where we will NOT get frozen in again (last year our car got stuck on a sheet of ice for 3 weeks). And yesterday, we bought more sleds to arm ourselves for more snow play, which, perhaps we will do today. It's assuredly a winter wonderland here.

Winter Wonder Fest

We spent the weekend with our friends Pat, Jodie, Eamon and Pierce, who came in from Sterling to have some "city fun." (They've been having so much country fun that the kids weren't even at first interested in a visit to Chicago. Apparently, it was only when Pierce realized that would also mean a visit to our house that he decided he wanted to come. That and a trip to the Lego store were enough incentive to get them in the car.)

They came to our house on Friday, and the boys spent the afternoon playing Legos and on the Wii (Eamon and Pierce don't have any sort of video game player, so this is an exciting thing for them). Max had a hard time sharing it at first (he was hoping they would be more interested in watching him play it, which, of course, was not all that popular an idea). After a some negotiations, they were all able to happily play it together, taking turns, pairing up in different combinations, and I think they all had a good time.

I was busy making dinner in the kitchen for much of the time, and Jodie came and entertained me while I cooked. It's one of my favorite things to do, talking to Jodie, and I wish we could do it more often. She's just one of those friends that I absolutely cannot get enough of, and seeing her is a reminder of how much I miss her in my daily life. But they are so enjoying their lives in Sterling, and that is good.

We all were so busy talking and playing that there was absolutely no documentation of the evening. But we spent the next day with them at Winter Wonderfest at Navy Pier, an excursion that has become an annual tradition for us. They had never been, and Max and Otto were very excited to show them some of their favorite activities.

We even ice skated with them (Eamon is a great skater, which encouraged Max to want to try it again). Otto has been talking about ice skating for a while, and he really liked it. Max had a harder time with it, although he was much more comfortable on the ice than he was the first time he tried it (of course, I think he was only 3 that first time).

Here are some photos of the day.

Dragon ride.



This climbing tower/slide was so colorful and huge and exciting that Otto couldn't wait to get to the top. Unfortunately, he was too small to even qualify to climb up it. The employee with the measuring stick said so. He was devastated, and was so sad that Max was going to climb it anyway, that he cried and cried throughout the entire wait in line (Max really wanted to do it, and the line was very long). It was difficult for all of us, and I imagine the fellow line waiters were really unhappy with it too. Otto refused to be taken away from the site but he also could not accept the idea that Max would climb it and he would not. He begged Max not to go up, and Max was really torn. He got in and out of line a couple of times, but the draw of the giant colored structure was so strong that he ultimately decided to go up it. Otto wailed. Otto asked me to ask the employee one more time if he could go up. I was sure she would say no (she had already refused him a couple of times early on, and after he cried for so long, I was sure she would refuse him as some sort of "punishment," but when I took Otto to her again, I said to her, "He measured too small for the ride already, but it's very important to him to try it. He watched his brother go through, and he really really thinks he can do it. He wants me to ask you if you would let him try it." To my surprise, she leaned toward Otto and looked right in his eyes, gently, and said, "You really think you can do it?" Otto looked down and sort of nodded his head, and she said, "Okay."

We waited in line again (this time Otto was happy, although he was sort of quiet). When it finally came to their turn, Max and Otto entered together, but Otto was not strong or tall enough to pull himself up, and after he struggled to get to the second level (Max actually was trying to help pull him up), he sort of sadly gave up and came back out. But at least he was able to try it himself and realize that it WAS too much for him. He was disappointed, but he was not mad about it.



Big slide.



Ferris wheel.




The view from atop the ferris wheel.



Ferris wheel lights and spinny action.



Pierce was waiting for us at the bottom with cotton candy.


We all followed suit.




Dragon ride revisited.



Horse race.



The view from the carousel.



And to top it off, we went with Eamon and Pierce to Chuck E. Cheese's for yet another room full of rides and other children. It was Max and Otto's first visit, but I am pretty sure it won't be the last.