Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Vince came home from kindergarten today and showed me his favorite St. Patrick's Day project

It's hard to believe our first born little baby boy is so big, and flying through his kindergarten year.

He's changing and growing so much every day.  Before I know it, days go by and weeks march on before I realize he's not so little anymore.  So when he was excited to show me his leprechaun mask from today, I initially was about to keep rushing around the kitchen frantically getting things done for the next day.  But I stopped, and we snapped this photo, and he shared with me all his stories of the day... And that was so much better then tackling the kitchen duties.. Which could wait.

Happy 80th Birthday Mom!

Wow, my mom turned 80 years old last Tuesday!  Now that is something to celebrate... We surprised her with a big dinner party at a restaurant that we can now say is on our list of local favorites.  Once you see the steak below, you'll understand why it's now my mom's new favorite restaurant.

Look at the size of that steak!! (I'm having chest pains just looking at it)

I started making the guest list, and thought about how fun it would be to get some sort of impersonator to come and surprise her during the dinner.  Imagine an Engelbert Humperdinck look-a-like walking in and serenading my mom with happy birthday!  Or someone who looks like John Wayne strutting in to give my mom a happy birthday kiss.  I started a futile attempt at Google searching impersonators, but quickly gave up when I laid eyes on the actors that resulted, especially when matched with their prices.  What I did find during my search was that the REAL Engelbert Humperdinck (yes folks, he's still alive), was going to play in concert at Foxwoods in April!  The combo of casino plus mom's longtime heart throb pretty much sealed the deal.  We'll be headed downt here next month, just mom and I.  That'll be another blog post...

We missed our friends and family in California, and always wish and wait for visitors... but my mom has always been the type to get along with everyone, and has quickly become very well loved among all my friends, all the kids nannies, and all our neighbors.  I dare say some even like her company better than ours! 

our beloved neighbors wouldn't miss the celebration!

mom's friends from New Hampshire

The McKenna clan representing

Our best sister nanny pair

mixture of nanny and coworkers turned Irma fans

I did the next best thing to a "real" John Wayne.  Amazon prime delivered Johnny in quick time

 It took 80 years, but she's aged to perfection

happy birthday to you mom!

Luca blew out the candles and grabbed the numbers for a quick lick

Out to a free lunch on her actual birthday, Luca and Zoë not wanting to pose for a picture

 

It's hard to believe how much time has flown by with my mom being out here in MA with us.  I can't imagine her not being here every day, and we are so grateful every day to be able to spend time with her.  There's been so many memories created in the time that she's been here, and I hope we still have many more to come.

someone especially loves grandma's cuddles

Where to Put the Snow!

We just went through about 48 hours of yet another snow storm, dropping over 2 feet of snow in Greater Boston, and more landing on the South Shore... where we are of course.   The only thing to do when more snow comes is to strap on skis or a snowboard and get moving down a mountain, or hill even!

Saturday was ski and snowboard lessons for Zoë and Vince. Despite the huge amount of organization and prep time getting them there, and then the hurdles and chaos of the rentals, the kids did have a good time once they got out there.  It was snowing when they got out to their classes, and the snow was fluffy and light... perfect for learning!  I took a few runs myself while they were in their classes.  The conditions out here actually remind me of the powder I used to know and love well out in Colorado.

I got a short video of Vince cruising down on his board, go buddy!

Zoë chose to continue learning how to ski, and was put in the corral of the youngest skiers.  She has since graduated and will be going to the magic carpet next time.  She is used to it already, and was complaining about where it was the whole time. 

pose for the camera! 

Meanwhile, back at the homestead... we've gotten to the point where we don't know where to put all the snow!  The sides of our driveway has a wall of snow a mile high.  We can't add any more to it!  We have so much snow on our roof, and the poor areas of insulation has caused snow melt and ice dams, resulting in roof leaks.  We have two so far.  Don't even get me started on ice dams, I've learned more than I ever wanted to know about f'ing ice dams.  We got some roofers to come to the house today to remove some of the snow from our rooftop.  This was after I saw some houses literally collapse on the news because of the weight of the snow.  At first it was fine, small piles of snow growing around the perimeter of the house.  But it kept going, and going. After 3 hours the snow ended up covering up the better part of our 2nd story dining room!

We've all had a good time playing in it however:

Luca, contemplating his sledding ride

 Zoë and our neighbor sliding down into our driveway

Mike made a trench through the snow, so we could have shelter during our neighborhood snowball fight

 The sweet rewards of coming inside, getting popcorn and hot chocolate
I guess I put a little too many kernals in

I'm In Love with Snowshoeing

I'm trying to keep us all busy with fun winter sports to get us through these repeated snow storms that we've been getting this year!  We must be over our snow fall record by a few feet at least by now.  Having loads of snow everywhere that has no intention of melting anytime soon, had led me to spending way more money than I should be spending through this winter.  But we'll just skip over that fact, and get straight to the pictures of Vince and Zoë snowshoeing with me in our back woods.

Here's Zoë and I exploring our new shoes, getting used to them. I risked getting my new iPhone dropped in the snow to prop it in a tree and use the timer so we could both get in the picture... Not smart, but I got lucky

Making shadow snow monsters

It's  a lot of fun to look around at all the deep snow and be able to literally climb anywhere you want and scale up any hill. The snowshoes made me feel like spider woman!  

Vince got in on the fun as well, after another storm

It's pretty deep for half pints like these two, hard work!

They thought they would pick up some "antlers" to make themselves look like deer:

Ok, now it's off to Vince and Zoë's day of ski and snowboard lessons.... We'll see how Vince does in a snowboard for the first time!

Snowmageddon: Part 2

We made it through the night, and managed to keep power, thank goodness.  I woke up a few times here and there, weather it was from little people crawling into my bed, or the whistling of the wind whipping around snow outside. 

Waking up in the morning, it was snowing sideways.... and didn't look to be slowing down any time soon!  The kids wanted to go outside immediately.  Dressing each kid in their snow gettup takes longer than the time they want to be outside, and by the time I get through all three of them I already want to collapse just from that!  

Zoë had more fun with her snowshoes, excited she was taller than the mailbox!

 Vince enjoyed scaling the snow drifts as well

time to tackle the driveway....thank God for snow blowers, although they are NOT EASY to push around

 

 And.... after literally 9 hours of shoveling and snow blowing, my driveway was functional again

And now I'm physically and mentally exhausted.  And seeing that it's still snowing, and that the driveway is covered again... I'm sobbing!

We did manage to get some warm snuggles while inside the house today.