The Salad Days

Sean's birthday party was last weekend. This is the first birthday he's had with his friends, rather than ours. It was a blast. We had it at Party Playland, and they were awesome. They took care of everything, from keeping the kids entertained, to cutting and serving the cake. They even kept a list of who brought what while he opened presents, which helped a ton when it came time to put together thank you cards.

The kids made these little scratch-art dinosaurs the other day, and then - completely on their own - came up with the idea to turn this old cardboard box into a little puppet theater. Mommy cut the window, but they did the decorating themselves. When I got home from work, they put on a little puppet show for me. I love being a dad. :)

Just a fun picture of Sean and Carter running in the kitchen and sliding on the linoleum. Lori snapped it at just the right moment.

Christmas morning went great! Actually, Lori was the first one up, and she woke me up at quarter of five. We woke the kids at 5:30, and they literally leapt out of bed and tore down the stairs. It was just like I remembered as a a kid - they started with stockings, and excitedly showed me every single item they found inside. As soon as Carter found those sunglasses in her stocking, they went on her face and never came off - not even when we all got dressed and went to Grammmie and Grampie's house for dinner!

Played in the snow yesterday. Lots of fun. Over-and-out.

Last weekend, the kids and I joined Grandma King and James and Kathy for a breakfast with Santa at the Ashworth in Hampton. The kids were a bit shy at first, so we ate breakfast before I tried to get them to talk to him. But once they had eaten and warmed up to the situation, they chatted his ear off. They told him what they wanted for Christmas, and Sean also told Santa all about the Sonic the Hedgehog game he plays on his Gameboy. I think Santa was probably lost about two sentences in - Sean gave him all of the details of the game, which would be pretty confusing if you'd never played it.

On Saturday, the kids and I made Christmas cookies. I used too much flour on the countertop while rolling out the dough, and the kids ended up covered with it. They thought it was hilarious that their clothes were all white. Later, while decorating the cookies, they got themselves covered with frosting too. I'm not sure whether more frosting ended up on the cookies, or in their stomachs. They tried to be subtle about it - they were spooning frosting into their mouths when they thought I wasn't looking. But they had fun, and we were headed to Grammie's later - so I didn't care much just how sugared-up they were. Heh.

The kids have been building a lot of puzzles lately. Carter is getting surprisingly good at it - we can sit her down with a 40 piece puzzle, walk away, and 5 minutes later she calls us over to show us that she's finished it. I think we might get her a couple of bigger puzzles for Christmas.