The kids who stare at goats

Back during the holidays, we went out to a tree farm in our area to cut down our Christmas trees. This tree farm has some fenced animals scattered around the property, and in addition to the usual horses and chickens and whatnot, there are some animals you wouldn't expect to see on a tree farm in Pennsylvania - an ostrich, an emu, a couple of alpacas, and some pygmy goats:



My kids love the goats, and suggested that we get some for our yard. I'm just lazy enough as a mower of grass that I thought about it half-seriously for a moment. But no, sorry, we can't have goats roaming the property.

Renovation update: Those aren't vines

I did some work over the weekend in the girls' room, getting the walls and ceiling ready for painting. A big step in the process is dealing with plaster cracks. Our old house has plaster and lath walls and ceilings, which are great - they're durable as all get out, and fairly soundproof too. However, as the house breathes from season to season, and as it inevitably settles down on its foundation, we get cracks in the wall.

My job this weekend was to make those cracks bigger, so that I can then make them disappear. This is how things looked by Sunday afternoon:





(That hole in the wall is the heating/cooling vent.)

Every member of my family walked into the room at some point and said, "Whoa! Why are you making the cracks bigger!" Nick thought they looked like vines on the wall - not such a stretch, since there's already a rose vine border painted up one corner of the room.

This coming weekend I'll be finishing up the crack work, and doing some repairs to the hardwood floor. No more squeaks!

Guitar hero

I think I mentioned the other day that Nick has been teaching himself how to play the guitar. To help him along, my folks bought him a beautiful acoustic Fender guitar for Christmas. This was apparently a popular gift, because when they ordered it well before Christmas, it was already on back order until late January.

The guitar arrived late last week, and our man was ready to rock:



He can sling it over his shoulder, too:



You can see my keyboard in the background; we sat in my office the night he got the guitar and played the chorus of the "Ode to Joy" together. I look forward to a day when we can play something a little more ambitious. Maria wants in on the action, too - she is learning "Simple Gifts" on her recorder and wants us to play as a trio. If Anna and Chelsea will sing with us, we'll have a full family band going!

Public service announcement

We would like to remind all of you that pitchers and catchers report for the Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday, February 17th. That's only 26 days from now.







Take us out to the ball game! We're ready for baseball again.

Rock climbing!

Because of the holiday on Monday, everybody but me had the day off from school. I took the afternoon off from work, and we went rock climbing. It's one of our favorite winter activities - indoors, physical, and everyone in the family can participate. It's also a lot of fun to watch Maria climb - she is utterly fearless and will scale any wall in the building.

First order of business is to get into harnesses:







We started out with some bouldering - climbing on low walls without the benefit of the belaying rope.







Nick made a beeline to his favorite spot, where he can hang upside down:



Before long it was time to get on the ropes and climb up high:









Your intrepid reporter didn't do any belay climbing, but spent the afternoon scurrying around to hang out with the kids:



Most of what we see of Maria at the rock gym looks like this... a rapidly disappearing speck up high on the wall:





Nick did some impressive work this time, too, climbing all the way to the top of a rope ladder suspended in open space:





Grandma, I assure you this is all very safe - as one of the staff members kept saying to the kids, "This rope could hold a car, and the rope is bolted to the floor. You're not going anywhere."

New Year's Eve

Somehow these pictures escaped me the other week... we spent New Year's Eve with the Killenbecks, who were college friends of our friends Greg and Aly. They live just a few towns away from us, and graciously invited us along to their party. The highlights of the event included Rock Band 2 on the Wii, and my dear friend Greg sporting a fez:



Our host Eric rocked out on the gee-tar:



Aly got in on the action too:



And Chelsea notched her debut as a Rock Band 2 lead singer:



A good time was had by all.

Getting ready to renovate

We have a tradition of working on our house in the new year. With the kids' numerous activities throughout the year, it works out that January and February are relatively quiet months, especially on the weekends. (I say "relatively" because we still have ballet, indoor soccer, school basketball, and so on.)

Two years ago, we renovated Nick's room in the first two months of the year. This year, we're taking on the girls' room.

We got started weekend before last by unloading the room. That turned out to be a bit of an adventure, since the girls own a massive amount of clothing. Massive. We sent six bins of clothes into temporary storage in the attic, gave away several more bins' worth, and kept a small amount accessible for each of them. Knick knacks and other items took up another five bins.

As we were cleaning out, the room looked like this:







The outgoing theme was roughly based on princesses. We had an appropriately frilly light fixture:



And Chelsea had done some beautiful painted designs on the walls:







All of this will go away in the new scheme, which will be Asian themed. We are installing new lighting, re-painting the walls and ceiling, doing some refinishing on the floor, and creating a hair and makeup area for the girls to get ready in the morning. One of the things we're most excited about is that we'll be doing a metallic gold ceiling - an idea we first saw many years ago in a room that Chelsea's stepmother had designed. We've been waiting a while to steal it!

Now that we've got the room nice and empty, our next steps will be to make some repairs to plaster cracks on the walls and ceiling, touch up a few spots on the hardwood floor, and prime the walls and ceiling in preparation for paint. We haven't chosen paint colors yet, but Maria is making a quilt for her bed, and the paint colors will match the fabric.

Magic machines

Either Maria or Anna snapped this picture the other night... Nick and I seem to be completely engrossed with something on the computer, which is a pretty common state for both of us:



Next week: A status update on the girls' room as we start renovating. Happy weekend!

Wayback Machine: Anna gets a bath

Another treasure from the archive... these are some pictures of a very messy Anna getting a bath in the kitchen sink, when she was probably between six and twelve months old. Here's the little monster with leftovers from lunch all over her face:





So it was into the sink with her:











And here she is with Mom after her bath:



Though she's a little big for the sink now, Anna still takes baths now and then, with toys and everything. Even so, she's very near the bath/shower age divide that Nick and Maria have both already crossed. Nick now rolls out of bed every morning and takes a shower before doing anything else. Voluntarily. How are they getting so big so fast?

Drivin' past the pool

We're getting ready to do some renovations around the house, starting with a refresh of the girls' room. Every time I drive over to our friendly neighborhood home improvement store, I drive past our summer swim club. Aside from the Christmas tree sale in the parking lot every year, there's not much going on at the pool from Labor Day until late spring. Still, I sometimes pull into the parking lot, even in the dead of winter, to have a look at the grounds and imagine warmer days:







From last year's blogging I know to look for green grass starting in the middle of February. That's also when the honeybees start coming back to their hives. In fact we learned last winter that the bees always come back around February 15th, regardless of how warm, cold, rainy, or snowy it might be.

One more sign of spring that's soon to come: pitchers and catchers report back for the Phillies on February 18th. That's just five weeks away.

In the meantime, we've had some lovely evenings around the fire at home, and we'll soon get out for some indoor swimming - Nick asked me the other night if we could go swim. Absolutely! In the blink of an eye we'll be out at time trials at the swim club. Best get ready.

Mental health break: Summer on the river

It was gray and dreary when I drove into the office this morning, so I thought we could all use a splash of green:



This is the Nantahala River in North Carolina, one of our favorite spots to visit in the summer.

Tree angels

Sometime on Christmas Day, we realized that we had not put tree toppers on our Christmas trees. We had three Christmas trees in the house this year - the main one in the living room, a secondary one in the dining room that was Chelsea's alone to decorate, and a small "rose tree" in the foyer. Chelsea has accumulated a collection of wax angels over the years, and these are what we use to top the trees.

Each kid gets to work on a tree. Here is Nick putting up the wax angel that I brought home for Chelsea from Germany a couple years ago:



Here Maria puts up one of the original wax angels that Chelsea purchased to start her collection:



Finally, here is Anna topping off the rose tree, which features fresh cut roses (not plastic!) set into the tree:



Our house is really beautiful when we've got all of our Christmas decorations in place! We're slowly taking them down in January, and decorations for Valentine's Day, while fun, are not quite on the same level.

Christmas morning

At last, the big day. Christmas morning in our house starts at the reasonable hour of 9:30 - we have a firm restriction on when the kids can wake us up, and they hold to that restriction incredibly well. The past two years, Nick has had the girls sleep up with him in his loft bed the night before Christmas, so the three of them are together when they wake up Christmas morning. It's incredibly sweet.

Once we trundle downstairs, the kids start with their stockings:





That's Nick discovering an autographed photo of Eagles tight end Brent Celek in his stocking, signed, "To Nick." My sister arranged it through a friend of hers. Thanks again, Kate!



I've noted previously that Maria has a talent for making funny faces when we take her picture, especially when she's opening gifts. She was true to form on Christmas:



Before long my parents and my sister come over, all still in their pajamas, so we can all exchange gifts together:



One of Anna's big gifts this year from my parents was a My Twinn doll:



Nick, meanwhile, came in for about seven soccer jerseys on the day, including this shiny new Ronaldo/Real Madrid jersey. Trust me (and Nick's smile!) when I tell you that it's a big deal:



The way to Maria's heart these days is with lots of clothing from Aeropostale:



The kids also give us thoughtful little gifts that they've found for us. Anna went for Chelsea's fascination with small dishes and got her a very small ceramic pot with lid, which was filled to overflowing with caramels:



Curiously, there don't seem to be any pictures of me from Christmas morning. Perhaps it's for the best - I'm usually working a terrible case of bed head.

Christmas Eve

We had a hectic week leading up to Christmas - we had some last minute shopping, some last minute shipping, and we had also volunteered to host the Spergers for Christmas dinner, so that meant having a halfway clean house to boot.

Fortunately, we had the day off from Nutcracker, so there was no Center City run in the cards. During the day on Christmas Eve, as Chelsea and I were scrambling to get things ready, the kids were making gingerbread houses:



And before long, it was time for Christmas Eve Mass with the family down at my uncle Herb's church in South Philadelphia:



We always snap lots of family pictures after Mass:











After Mass we get together in the rectory for a traditional dinner of Chick-fil-A and hoagies. Before long it's time to head home, coax the kids into falling asleep, and then prepare for the big day.

Sledding on the solstice

We got a phenomenal amount of snow the weekend before Christmas. The official total at the Philly airport was 23.2" (59cm), which put this storm in the all-time Top 10 for the city. It's unusual for us to get that much snow so early in the season, since we're fairly close to the ocean and the water is usually too warm in December to support snow as opposed to rain. Everything broke right, though, and we got properly walloped.

After the usual routine of shoveling and snowblowing, we had a holiday week and a winter wonderland at our disposal. Perfect timing!

And we lucked out in one other respect - the kids and I had gone together and bought Chelsea a toboggan for Christmas. We deliberated a little over whether to give it to her early, and then decided there was no other choice.

So late in the day on the solstice, we set out to try that new toboggan and to sled till we couldn't sled no more. The kids all brought along friends, so we had to take two cars out to the hill:



Including my three, the group came to seven kids in total. Evidently we feel some kind of pressure to win a Coolest Parents Ever award.

Chelsea let me carry the toboggan out to the hill. I was bundled up like an Apollo astronaut, because it was pretty darned chilly out there:



The toboggan was a huge hit. Chelsea, Anna, and a friend went first:



It was all smiles around after the maiden voyage:





My turn came next:



Meanwhile, Nick and his friend were hitting the hill with saucers and perfecting their running starts:





They got a turn on the toboggan soon enough...



...as did Maria and her entourage:



Nick and his wingman looked well pleased with the sledding conditions:



And Maria was happy too:



It's worth mentioning that the toboggan is wicked fast. Chelsea got a nice shot of me and Anna making a run:



You'll notice that we both look a little stunned afterward:



That's how it went all afternoon and into the early evening. The kids took turns, and in between toboggan runs, made "sled trains" with the fleet of saucers and other rides that we had brought with us. Chelsea and I even got a couple chances to ride, just the two of us, and that was great fun.

So far we haven't had another snow to rival that one before Christmas. And the weather warmed up and got rainy for a couple days after Christmas, which was enough to wipe out the snowpack on the ground. Right now it's actually a little too cold for us to get a good snowstorm. But February and (sigh) March are still in front of us, and we expect to get a few more opportunities for whooping, streaking rides on the toboggan made of greased lightning.

Happy new year!

Hello again! We're back for the new year and ready to rumble.

With much ground to cover since our last update, I'll start with The Nutcracker. Maria had a great time performing this year, and we were fortunate to benefit from some very generous carpool coverage, which meant we were down in the city quite a bit less often than 13 performances in 18 days would suggest. Even so, we did have to venture into town a few times to get our girl. Anna and I made the trip one day by train, and that seems like a fine place to start reviewing how we spent our winter vacation.

Anna loves taking the train. Absolutely loves it. On this occasion, we barely made our train because it came in on the wrong side of the tracks; evidently there was some construction nearby and the inbound trains were arriving on the outbound side of the station. We had to run through the tunnel beneath the tracks and clamber aboard with only a moment to spare. Anna and I then passed the time by taking lots of pictures of her making funny faces:











When we arrived in town, we exited the train at Market East and started walking through the underground concourse toward the Academy of Music. Did you know that you can in fact get from 11th and Market to Broad and Locust without going aboveground? The wayfinding signs are a little scattershot, and the tunnels could use a little freshening up, to say the least, but it's an easy way to get around when there is snow and rain up top.





We found Maria in the green room at the Academy and went back underground to return to Market East. Along the way, we stopped in the SEPTA Transit Museum and checked out the restored vintage streetcar trolley they have on display:









We had to wait a while at Market East for a train:



And when we got aboard, we found it was standing room only, though we were able to sneak into a seat:



The girls passed the time by playing a game on my Blackberry. Look at all that blonde hair... and it's not even summertime:



Gentle readers, we have so very many photos to share with you in the days ahead - snowstorm, Christmas, New Year's, and everything in between. I want to thank you again for your continued interest. It's great fun writing and snapping photos for you. Best wishes for a healthy and happy 2010.