It's Official - Summer is Finally Here!

The Sun is out and so is school. Summer is here!  That means lots of playing outside, picnics, and riding bikes. And hopefully learning to swim as well. Our new neighborhood has a pool, so that means lots of swimming for us!

They like to wear fun hats and watch cars from the front steps

Snack time at the school playground

Watering the plants

Cheesin' at the water table

Being silly in their new closet

Water table fun

Spiderman sprinkler + Superman undies = a perfect summer day for a 5-year-old boy

Happy 3rd Birthday, Tommy!

Happy birthday to the craziest, most loving boy I know. Can't believe that you're already three years old!  We love you, Goose!! :)

Two Peas in a Pod

Having Tommy only two weeks after Ben turned two years old was a huge challenge.  Thank God that now when I look back I can't really feel those feelings anymore.  I just remember it all as a blur of "OMG, how are we ever going to survive this?  What have we done?!"  As time went on it got easier, of course.  As a teacher, of course for me it's all about the summers.  The summer of newborn and 2 was a blur.  The next summer when they were 1 and 3 was better.  Last year when they turned 2 and 4 was busy but actually kind of fun.  I have to say that this summer, as they turn 3 and 5 next month, I am really looking forward to it.  They can enjoy so much more now than they could before.  I can stretch out Tommy's day so that if we *really* wanted to do something in the afternoon we could think about skipping the nap.  I'm also hopeful that he will be out of diapers by the time school starts in the fall.  (We'll see about that...)  The good news is that through all of the chaos in the last five years, we have begun to raise some good boys.  They are best buddies and would rather play with each other than anyone else at this point.  I'll take it.  : )

Cuties

What a character!

Both my kids love costumes and imaginative play. Ben loves to pretend his is a superhero or a movie character. Tommy just sort of rocks different costumes and then goes about his day normally.  As himself. Here are a few examples...

We should just not have school on Mondays in February

Snow days have swallowed up the East Coast for the last three Mondays in a row.  Next Monday the schools are closed for President's Day.  So, in my opinion, we should just go ahead and call off school on Monday the 23rd and just let it be 3-day weekend February.  : )

We kept busy this Monday with Legos.  LOTS of Legos.  Uncle Jack passed on his extensive Lego collection to the boys.  It took a lot of hot water, soap and bleach, but we cleaned them up and got to playing.  The boys really like the Lego Movie right now, so it's great timing.

We also made brownies, watched the movie Hook (awesome 90's classic....) and saw some deer right outside our window!

Thousands of  Legos!!!

Diving in

Building

T on his highest tippie toes to mix the brownies

"I love chocolate!!!"

Ben is big into writing and rhyming words.  So, house and mouse it is!

Trying to get in a workout on the elliptical while they're entranced by the movie

Our deer neighbors

Snow day

This is the story of the Blizzard of January 2015 that never actually showed up in southwestern CT...

As the news channels predicted epic storms and the state was shut down, we made sure that there was enough milk and bread in the house, batteries in the flashlights and Netflix movies in our queue.

Turned out that it was just a regular old snow day.  But we still made the most of it.  : )

Dinner with superheros

Wake up to snow.  If you can still see the lamp posts then it is NOT a blizzard!

Watching the driveway get plowed

Waaayyyy too much time on the LeapPad 

Playroom got destroyed

We made cookies

Lots of cookies!

Some sort of tracks in the snow before shoveling the walk

Dinner is done before nap is over = score!

Indoor baseball with a 2 1/2 year old - not advised!

"Surfing" on the "Batboard" instead of getting dressed for school the next day