Jack on Picme

We didn't have a VCR or DVD recorder so I had to record it low tech--with our camera's video recorder. Sorry it is so shakey and at a slight angle. Oh, and the phone rings about halfway through the video. Again, sorry 'bout that.

Holiday Pictures

Santa came to the hospital where Jack and Colin were born and we visited him there. Jack was a little hesitant to meet him.


Making a Gingerbread house.


And you may be wondering where is Colin and what has he been up to. Well, he spends a lot of time on Bridget's hip or sleeping or eating. But occasionally he gets a ride in a dump truck. Or he plays with Winnie and Pooh in his bouncy chair. And he is bundled up because it is chilly around here.

Snow...Pictures

The house this morning. It has been pretty windy, gusts over 30 mph, and so none of the snow on the roof survived.

Sledding this morning...


This was just the warm up. We got going much faster and longer later going down the nearby street.

After a bit of this Jack was ready to go out to a street with a bit of a hill to it. We were able to sled about around a 100 yards before coming to a stop. We must have sledded that street for over an hour before the boys just got too cold and wanted to come in. I don't blame them, it was 23 degrees and their little feet were getting cold from the snow getting into their shoes and melting.

I promise, there really are steps under the snow.























This picture was taken back when the first snow fell a week ago.

And this is back when we actually cared to shovel and sweep the snow away. Now, we just did the steps and let the rest lie. This was taken 6 days ago, last Monday.

Snow....serious amounts of snow

For the second week in a row we were told that church has been cancelled. We have gotten about 8 inches of snow in the yard today, with drifts that are quite a bit deeper. The Portland International Airport is shut down, as are other airports in Washington. Highway 84 is closed and they are trying get to people on some sections of it that are stranded. Epic.

We had our own little adventure today. We were having a get together at Ilene's house today with some extended family on Grandpa Leroy's side and for some reason, despite the weather we went on with it. Some were coming about a 100 miles or so from the south which made their trip interesting. Well, mostly slow. But their trip down ought to be worse. We arrived home is safety. Our main problem was the windshield icing up.

Earlier in the day, I was told to stay home from work and as a result I got to go sledding with the boys. And we had a bunch of fun and that was back when there was only about 2 inches of new snow (there was 2 or three inches of old snow/ice from earlier in the week below that). Tomorrow is going to be a blast for sledding. This seems more like a storm that we would have gotten in Utah--and it would be a strong one for there too. But in Portland--this is storm borders on a disaster. We don't have the equipment to handle a storm of this size very well. As a result of the past storms over the last week Ryan will have a 3 week Christmas Vacation instead of the planned 2 week one. He missed all of last week due to weather. I was never so lucky, geesh.

Anyway, I will post some pictures tomorrow or Monday.

Jack is going to be on TV...sort of.

The Sprout television channel as a show called PICME that uses pictures submitted to their website to tell a story. Jack was chosen to star in an episode. Not that we cared, well actually Ryan cared because he wanted to be chosen. I just submitted a picture online so that we could play some of the activities. Jack looks like this at SproutOnline:

The episode will air December 28th between 5 and 6 pm. Jack was initially mad that he was going to be on TV. He didn't want to be on TV. Now he just doesn't care. At least not yet. Ryan may be jealous, it should be interesting.

Note: Ryan handled the news just fine.

Nocturnal Animals, by Ryan Flynn

Ryan gets to make lots of little books while at Kindergarten. Much of the time he is supposed to draw something and then try to write down how he thinks it should be spelled. This leads to some, well, interesting spellings. He has come along way since Kindergarten started. He was not interested in writing letters much at all before school and now he likes to write quite a bit.

Some of the books that he makes have a theme. The book I am posting has such a theme. I will post the book page by page with a description of what he was drawing.


The Title Page


A Firefly


An Owl that eats snakes


A firefly again. Ryan tried to put the first letter of the various body parts. There is a backwards "h" for head, an "A" for antenna, "w" for wings, and even a "w" for light or rather "wight" the way Ryan thought it would be spelled.

This is the first page that made me chuckle. A Skunk. Notice him spraying. Yeah, Ryan thought that was great. Remember he is making this at school. I wonder what the teacher thought. At the bottom he tried to spell two words. I am unsure of the first and the second is skunk.

Then if a regular ol' skunk is funny then what does a boy do to top that? Well you make the skunk have super powers of course. BEHOLD, the FIRESKUNK! Instead of spraying regular stinky stuff, this skunk shots fire out of his rearend. Brilliant! Again Ryan tried to spell "fire" then "skunk".

And that was it. For some reason when I read it I was not expecting anything like this. I belly laughed. Bridget was a little put out that I laughed, "I made sure I didn't laugh when I read it, you're encouraging him," she said. Well, what can I say, I thought it was funny. But then I was always amused by body function related humor. Like father, like son.

Patrick

First, a couple of family pictures from last week.


We had Patrick here for Thanksgiving. He flew out and it was a great week for us. The boys absolutely love him. I think he has nearly superhero status with them. When he left Jack was so sad. He still asks if he is going to come back after he unpacks after flying back to Michigan. We tell him it will probably be a long time until they see him again. Ryan misses him too, but he understood that Patrick has to work.

He played Legos with them (Ryan's favorite thing to do with him), rough-housed with them, played outside with them, and who knows what else. It was like he was on duty all of the time for their benefit while he was here. They just could not get enough of him. All I could do was try and give him a break now and then by getting out of the house for a bit. We hit Five Guys a couple of times and also had a bit of cheap Mexican food. I don't think it was a particularly restful vacation for him. He would go to bed late, as per usual Patrick style, and the boys when they woke up would immediately want to go downstairs and pounce on him to wake him up (this was Jack's favorite thing to do while he was here he said).

He really is a great brother and uncle. But seriously, he needs a woman. A good woman.

Thanks a bunch brother. Seriously. I am so grateful for the way you treat our boys. It shows the sort of person you are.

It's Time For....

Name Those Nostrils!

Any guesses?