Inagural Ride

For Christmas Santa brought these two lucky chicks brand new bikes!  West is a ridin' fool and LOVES to ride!  He even wants to ride uptown in the dead of winter with three feet of snow on the ground and freezing temperatures that makes your nose-hairs to themselves.  Yes, I know!  He is crazy!  However the sidewalk in the front of our house is the only place to ride without me having to get on my bike and ride with him.  Unfortunately it has been covered in a thick sheet of ice all winter, or at least since Christmas.  So this past week before the below freezing temperatures set in it actually warmed up enough here that we were able chip the ice off the sidewalk and the two riders were able to set on their maiden voyage. 

West of course was riding riding riding!  Those puddles were just too much to resist.  Ruby is kind of new in the two (four)-wheeled department and she is a bit afraid of the "tippy" as she puts it. 

So, she caught a ride on the back of the tricycle her cousin Scarlett was riding!

Then West thought maybe it looked like fun so he needed a ride too!

Freezing!

It has been freezing here!  Just like all over the place we have had super super cold temperatures all week.  We haven't had very much snow (knock on wood) but it has been so cold we don't even want to go anywhere.
It is times like this that I am thankful for our fireplace.  If we ran the ancient heater in this house enough to keep the house warm this past week our heating bill would be outrageous!  So we have been burning lots of wood to help warm the main living area of the house.  This of course means hauling wood in off the porch on a regular basis.  I guess it's a good thing I have such willing helpers.

Cousins

This past week was so much fun for my kids!  One of their cousins got to come for the whole week!!!!  Isn't she just a cutie?!  I  just want to gobble her up!

Quote of the Week

"Alright, bossy lady!"  West

Simple Pleasures

(Life can be hard sometimes.  Sometimes what we need is to slow down and realized the Simple Pleasures around us!)

Sitting on top of a heater vent with a blanket over me and tucked in around the vent to trap all that heat under the blanket, making a nice little cocoon of warmth to bask in on a cold winter morning.

posting comments!

It has come to my attention that some of you could not comment.  I have changed that over so that anyone should be able to comment now.  Give it a try and see what happens!!!

Birthdays!

This year West turned 5!  It was so exciting for him.  Such fun things happen when you turn five, he just knows it!  And who am I to discourage that?  All of a sudden he can do things like use a real plate, and cut his own meat, and set the table without any help from his mama.  This is all super exciting for me as well.  I am not one of those mothers that wants to keep them babies, or even young; I want them to grow up and become who they are going to be and go out into the world and see what they can see!  And every once in awhile come home.  But first before all of that can happen we get to do things like learn how to use a sharp knife because it really is so much easier to cut up your piece of meat with a real knife rather than one of the plastic ones he has been using for years now (or so he says).  We also get to celebrate every year of his life once a year with the whole day dedicated to just him!  In fact, this year we got to celebrate it twice!  The Rooster of course was not going to be here for his actual birthday so we discussed it with West (another joy of getting older) and he decided he really wanted to celebrate on his actual birthday but he would miss his Daddy not being there for it.  To remedy this we thought maybe we could all go eat out someone special with Daddy.

So we did some coloring

And a bit of waiting

and some fooling around

and finally some eating (he wanted cake and ice cream but all they had was pie!)

And then he discovered his Daddy really was the best guy out there when he opened his present from him and it was this amazing thing!

And then a few days later he woke up and it was really his birthday and this was the DAY!  He was ready to turn 5 and the day was finally upon him!
He woke early of course as this is his normal routine but then had to wait for brunch.  The wait, however, was worth it!

We had pancakes and bacon (his favorite) and then of course sausage for his mama and Aunt.  (Thanks Uncle Todd for cooking the greasy stuff for us).
Then it was time to get ready for the rest of the party to show up.  This of course involved frosting the cake!

Which he deemed himself old enough to do!  And what kind of a birthday party would it be without a few candles to blow out and a few presents to open?

All-in-all it was a good time had by all and I now a 5 year old boy who points out to everyone he talks to that he is 5 and he might be big enough for that!