Snow Day

Well, my 2012-2013 party just got a whole lot more lame: Mike is in brushing his teeth. We have less than 30 minutes to go! Oh well, when the kids wake up at 5 am he can deal with them. In the mean time, I'll do the post I was planning on doing yesterday. 

Sunday was a snow day for us. Church was canceled and Mike went out to start in on the drive way in case we wanted to go somewhere--or needed to. It turned out we didn't. But we got a good workout in!

(THIS JUST IN: MIKE IS STAYING UP WITH ME! I'm still going to do this post.)

After doing the dishes and cleaning up a bit, I put Finnegan down for his name and Madie and I bundled up for some winter play!

Mike really had a job ahead of him. It must have snowed 12 inches over night! And 6 or 8 inches the night before made for a lot of snow! 

The task at hand: dig out the car.

I played in the drive with Madie for a while. I started building a wall then put some turrets on it before Madie told me she wanted it to be a train, so then I started putting a plow on the front and a kind of engine pilot looking thing...I kind of looked like a train. Sorry! No pictures--I had already taken the camera inside. (A shame really; you're really missing a work of art.) After about 30 minutes Madie was ready to go back in, so I took her in, reassured her that her feet would stay intact, wrapped her in a blanket and trudged back out to help Mike shovel for a bit.

The road is plowed, but you can't see it past the snow-pile in the driveway.

I helped shovel for a good 30 minutes, got hot enough to take my jacket off and shovel in my waffle knit. Then I started to chill a little because of the sweat, but my jacket was too cold by now to put back on, so I went inside and had the opportunity to make a nice hot lunch for my family--that has never happened. Not that I can remember anyway, which means maybe it has.

(Another update: Mike didn't make it. Eight minutes to go and the man wimps out on me. Oh my word.) 

One of Madie's responsibilities is setting the table. She looks like she's scowling in this picture, but I swear she's not angry about anything. She's just my daughter.

I made my own hot chocolate for the first time as well. That I know is true and not just a memory thing. It was wicked easy and wicked good, which means it'll be happening more often.

Stirring, stirring...

She's like a Campbell's Soup commercial.

Finn enjoyed his meal of prunes and fingers. (Poor boy had been bound up for daaaays. ... Yep, that one's going in the book to be read by future dates for years to come!)

We played Where's Sock Monkey? over and over and over and over and over.............and over again. Madie squeals and leaps and runs about every time she finds Sock Monkey. Every. Time.

Finn is a big boy now! He sits all by himself! He can even partly pull himself up into a sitting position! He's getting so big and is so much fun. Madie is such a sweet sister to him and she is so excited when he laughs at her antics and "plays" with her.

Watching Dada through the window. The scraping noise of the shovel on the back deck was so distracting.

 Madie went back out and played in the back yard while Mike shoveled off the deck...

then she put some of the snow back onto the deck, just in case he was starting to get bored.

It's 12:00 everyone! Happy New Year! 

Christmas 2012

One of these years I'm going to take a picture of Christmas Eve. Christmas day is a lot of fun with the presents and going to visit friends and family and stuff, but Christmas Eve in our house is really what needs to be remembered in these blog books. But because it's one of those sacred things, it's not something I think of taking pictures of. Next year though, next year...

In the meantime, we will share our Christmas day pictures! 

Our present-opening actually started back in November. Mike's parents send all the grandchildren an ornament every year for Christmas so that when they leave home they will have a whole bunch for their own trees. 

Here's Finnegan opening his very first Christmas ornament!

 You can see Madie is very excited with hers--even if you can't see what it is. It's a simple plaque with a cute lobster on it holding a sign that says, "Maine." It's cute--and indestructible--and those are two good things. Finn's is a little rocking horse. Madie's first is also a rocking horse, so when she saw his she screamed in excitement, "HE HAS A ROCKIN' HORSE JUST LIKE ME!!!" 

Then we celebrated Thanksgiving, then Mike's birthday, then Alexa came (no pictures, sorry, her fault, not mine), then we got a turkey from Mike's work so we had Thanksgiving le Deuxieme, then we had the Christmas program at church, then Christmas Eve basketball on Monday, then we had Christmas Eve night and voila! Here we are Christmas morning!

 It's really cute--maybe everyone did this other than my family--on Christmas Eve "Santa" wrote a letter back to Miss Madeleine so she could read it on Christmas morning. Mike says he got a letter from Santa in his stocking every Christmas morning as a kid. (This was one of many instances that helped to convince Alexa and I of our deprived childhoods.)

Reading Santa's letter. He even drew her a picture!

Santa answered Madie's letter to a T. I don't know if you can see it in the next two pictures but she got pretty much an entire box of candy canes!

Holding her candy canes.

Santa also gave Madie some awesome Barbie BandAids so she can play phlebotomist even more! Oh yay.

 Finn got a neon green pillow pet! We're not entirely sure what animal it is, but it doesn't matter all that much since even if we all knew, Finn would not. 

He is so excited he's drooling. 

Madie opens a pair of sparkly pink Mary Janes. Ooooo! Aaaaa!

 Another Watkins tradition is matchy pajamas, to be opened the night before Christmas--sorry Karen. DIdn't happen. I actually didn't know we had them until the night before Christmas when Mike put them under the tree and said that's what they were. Oh well.

Finn models the front...

and the back.

This year's jams are pretty cute, but I have one BIG complaint:

Where's my trapdoor?

Merry Christmas! We'll see you in 2013!

Jackson's Holiday Party

Okay, this first picture was snapped on my phone (actually, all these were, I guess, my phone or Mike's) because it is so funny. Madie's preschool had these cute little snowmen out in the hallway where the top circle was filled in with the face of the child. All of the faces were either cute smiles or blank stares, except for one of the teachers, who made a silly face that Madie had noticed on our way into the classroom (this was before she had her picture out there). When I went to pick her up, I stood there looking and looking for Madie's picture. Where was it? Where could it be? There aren't that many on the board, so why can't I....Oh...

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I see. I just couldn't recognize my daughter's face. This whole thing is so Madie to me. All the rest of them also had big puffy white cotton balls all over them. I can just picture how this whole thing went down:

Teacher: "Madie, don't you want to take a fun picture for your snowman?" 

Madie: Looks away.

Teacher: "Here, smile!"

Madie: Turns with THE FACE.

~~~~~Later~~~~~

Teacher: "Okay! Let's decorate!"

Madie: "I wanna do the glue."

Teacher: "Okay, go for it! And look, we've got buttons, and cotton and, this is just so cool!"

Madie: Loads on the glue, sticks on a ball. "I'm done."

On Thursday we went to Mike's work for a family Christmas party. It was so fun! Well, there was kind of a lame comic magician, but the music was fun, and Santa came, and there was ice cream and cookies and presents and Christmas mice drawings on the wall--so fun!

Watching the magician...kind of pathetic.

Madie really wanted to sit on Santa's lap, which surprised me. She's so shy about things like this, but I had showed her a picture of a friend's daughter (that's you, Kristen!) at the mall with Santa and she was sure she wanted to do the same thing. But then when her name was called and I took her up she just stared at him and made no move to get on his lap or hug him or anything.

Santa?! He was really friendly.

He did say, "Would you like to sit on my lap?" and she nodded. It was so cute.

Mrs. Clause was handing out the presents. Madie was so happy afterward and just kept talking about her present from Santa!

What's this?!

A Dora doll?! YESSS! 

And she came with a soft fleecy blanket! Oh, and dream come true!

There was also a great clown doing face painting. Madie really wanted to do that--as did every other kid in the place. We stood in line forever and were one of the last, but that was okay. I actually didn't mind waiting, we got to chat with some of the other mother-kid duos there while Mike cared for Finnegan. Then they came and joined us and Mike took picture while Madie sat so still as she painted these pretty flowers on her wrist.

The 24 Hour Boston Adventure

Last weekend we went down to Boston so that Mal could become Zumba certified at an all day course. We decided to make a weekend of it (somewhat). We stayed in Lowell, MA on Friday night at the Courtyard Marriot. You can see Madie about to pound me with a pillow because I was pretending to sleep on her cool pullout bed. She had a lot of fun! It was a bummer that the pool was closed. Who puts in an outdoor pool in a Massachusetts hotel??? Only seasonal =( Very thankful that we all got a good night sleep though.

The next morning we found the "Classical American Diner", prefabricated with steel exterior, almost a railcar look, and Boston accents flying left and right. When we walked in, I felt like we had walked onto a movie set.

Check out these juke boxes...each booth had their own. They didn't work, but I'm sure they did at one time.

After a good greasy breakfast, we dropped off Mal and headed for the train.

Madie was so excited to be on the train, I think she was more excited to be on the train than go to the aquarium to see the fishes.

This is their relationship as of right now. Madie sticking her finger in his ear.

When we first arrived in downtown, we went to the iMax theater to watch a movie. It was a 3d movie, and the opening scene was one of a huge wave breaking right onto us...with the 3d effect...was a little bit too much for Madie (now wearing 3d glasses) and Finn (who just happened to glance over when the wave was crashing). Madie flinched, trying to cover her face with her hands. Finn just screamed! We lasted about 10 more minutes, and then Madie was a little too scared. So we just headed right into the aquarium. These little penguins were fun to watch.

Madie refused to take a picture standing next to Finn with that seal in the background. She just hates pictures!

Finn was in a great mood, all day.

Checking out the seals.

This guy was so close to the window, Madie loved watching him.

Based on our trips to PetCo and the amount of time Madie spent watching the fish in the aquariums, I thought the aquarium would be an all day event! We probably spent only an hour in there....now, how do I kill 6 more hours with two kids in downtown Boston?

We ended walking up to the North End to check out Little Italy. The lunch was pretty good, not as impressive as I thought it would be. I guess when you have a really good friend who has created some of the best Italian dishes in the world...it's hard to compare. It was fun to see all of the little shops though. And people kept giving things to Madie! She got the rose at the restaurant, and the lollipop at an Italian pharmacy. They just couldn't help themselves.

After walking around a bit more and hanging out in the train station, we finally got back on the train.

Madie watched Cinderella so that I could deal with a hungry Finn-man.

After 10 minutes of movie time, she just couldn't keep her eyes open. This was a long but fun day.