A tribute to Matthew

A good friend of mine has reached a goal that he set months ago. I've been impressed repeatedly with his perserverence, dedication and committment. In honour of Matthew losing a total of 56 pounds, here are some items that weigh 56 pounds:

A colossal fish (old guy and hat not included):
An old school projector (I saw remember one of these in grade 2):

A whole bird bath (I've lifted one of these and they're not light):

A homemade yakoo (which appears to be both a kayak and canoe):

36 Litres of water!
and my favourite:A titanium frame for a combat robot - how cool is that?
Way to go Matthew.

The tale of the bus

Heather gave each of the boys cash for Christmas. Today she took them out to shop for toys with that cash. First she filled them full of chocolate chip pancakes and hot chocolate, THEN she took them to the toy store.From what I am told, Big C selected this bus pretty early on. Despite being shown numerous other options, his heart was set on it. He even had a little bit extra left over to get a red motorcycle. FANTASTIC!!
After a successful morning of feeding, wrangling and shopping with two young children, Heather handed me the children with their new boxes of toys that needed constructing and then bailed.
I am no fool, and this is not my first rodeo. I flipped on a video to distract the boys and set to work constructing the bus. Every 5 minutes BigC would turn around and ask me if it was done. He wanted that BUS!
Since I am a superstar and have the knack...oh wait...since I had a friend over and got some help, we got it done and he was off. He played with it all day. He watched TV while leaning out of the chair and resting an arm on it. He played with it some more. He brought it to the party that we went to this evening...it went everywhere.

Then for the final test. It wasn't even a question. He pulled that bad boy into the bed with him and went to sleep. A winner!!!

Christmas Time!

The boys had a wonderful Christmas morning. The woke up at a reasonable time (I think that it was 6ish) and then we had a good snuggle. We went down and the boys opened up their stockings. Each of the boys were overjoyed. Monkey loved his recycling truck bin that was in his stocking and Big C was stoked about his playmobil Firetruck from his big brother. Since Monkey has an allowance this was his first Christmas buying gifts for people.
All the gifts certainly hit the mark for our boys:
The Lego table
The K'Nex and the Lightning McQueen sheets:
The Firetruck shirt and the clownface shirt (which he has worn one of each day since Christmas):
The shopping trip with H to be done later this week was super popular:
The games from their cousins:

Our family is certainly blessed.

Some recent sleep poses

I love a good shot of a sleeping child. We put him to bed in his PJs but he has taken to going in to the closet and changing his clothes, or, in this cases, adding accessories.

Twas the night before Christmas...

Daddy read the boys a story....
Mommy snuck in a snuggle...
The boys hung their stockings by the chimney with care...

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa W

The boys LOVE the ornaments that you sent. They were super excited about the mail and opening up the packages that were just for them. They eagerly opened up the envelopes and pulled out their colouring pages and wooden ornament sheets. Here are each of the boys colouring their ornaments, then picking out a spot on the tree for each one to go. These will surely be ornaments that the whole family will treasure for years to come!

Our morning

Just some photos of our morning sillies. The boys are off to thier respective day cares this morning and Dave is heading back to bed for a day of rest and relaxation.

The knack

This is an explanation of BigC's diagnosis. Thank you Dilbert for providing this detailed description. I'm pretty sure that Jeff was the first one to provide the explanation.

Carolling!

Our group decided to go out caroling earlier this week. We thought that it would be a fantastic way to share the Christmas spirit and spread some cheer. Despite a few grinches early on, we had a great time singing to the elderly population who really appreciated it. Here is a photo of the group, minus the snow that one member got thrown into repeatedly on the way home.

I want the car that daddy put up THERE

I come downstairs and see the stool and the bar stool MacGyvered into a remarkably strong structure.
I ask BigC what it is that he is after and he tells me that he wants the car that Dave had taken away and put in the rafters."and I tried with that chair daddy, but it wasn't high enough".
He couldn't reach the car, but he was very proud of himself. I have to admit, I was REALLY impressed at the strength of the stool/bar stool combo. He outdid himself.
If you look at how tall Dave is and how high up big C got, by the time you add the arms extended over his head, he was clearing at least 7 feet. Can I store the medicine cabinet at your house please???