::wompa cave::

Same awesome day, big snowstorm, church cancelled.  Kris takes the boys down to the sports court and builds a Wampa Cave.   Sandy is thrilled but at one point he tells Kris he's disappointed that the cave is so small--"why can't I stand up in it?"  Kris has to clarify that this is New Mexico, not Hoth and we can only do so much.



I took this picture because it just illustrates our life right now so keenly.  Kris is trying to get Sandy's boot on.  More than half of the life forms in the house are all gathered in the same few square inches there and crowding in so that whatever it is the parent is trying to do is basically impossible.  I mean, did the dog really need to be involved?



She is the cutest thing I've ever seen in this suit.  And she loves it because when it goes on she knows that it's time to go play in the snow.  She's an adventure girl.



Look out Lucy, here comes the dog!  He might bump into you!
"Noooooo!  DAWG!!!!!"



And here of course I tried to make the kids pose.  Our stupid baseboard heaters are always ruining things for me, and this one in the dining room is no exception.  It's a spot where I actually have good light and a plain background, but of course a heater.  And the kids always try to sit on it when I want them to pose.  Not good for the photo or the heater.



And what is going on here?  We'll never know.  Something tasty maybe?



And after all that prep and a photo session out we went.  There was tons of snow and all the steps were really slippery.  Of course I was the only one who actually ended up slipping, but luckily I survived.



I remember how awesome big snowstorms were when we were kids--it just changes the whole landscape and demeanor of your familiar place and makes everything strange and fun to explore again.

Sandy was very proud of the cave, and the plan was to expand it a bit.



Lucy was just so psyched up to run around outside that she could hardly handle herself.



In goes the cave boy.



I had such a hard time getting him to pose for me.  I don't know why he doesn't understand how important my photojournalism is.





Then I tried to get Lucy in there too but she hated it so much.  She couldn't crawl very well because of her boots, and she couldn't really turn around or stand up because of her snow suit, so at one point she was just stuck halfway in and halfway out.
She, for one, was NOT impressed with the wampa cave.



And then the best thing ever happened.  Sandy was able to make his Luke action figure stick into the roof of the cave.  He was so delighted.



The boy has a good imagination.



We'll see how much more snow we get this winter, if the El Nino performs like it's supposed to there might be more caves in our future!

::cancelled::

We had a huge snow overnight and the next morning church was cancelled!  It was still snowing and snowing in the morning.  When it finally quit we were impressed by the volume of snow that we had gotten.
I think maybe church got cancelled once before in the time that we've lived here ,so that was pretty momentous.

"Sandy, put your bike away!!"

Our view from the house is always fun, but I think interesting weather just takes it to the next level.


Lucy spent the morning pretending to be a big girl with my shoes on and a "purse".  She was very proud of herself.



Make sure and notice the "Let it Go" leggings that she's wearing. They're definitely favorites.

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This little girl is a good traveler. She's patient and tries to be good. I appreciate it more than I can say. I lurve her.

::sandys are hard for primary::

First of all, the sweater. I was more than a little thrilled to find this sweater for Sandy at Target, and Sandy was more than a little thrilled to wear it to church. But he was having a hard day today. I teach an older class and so I am in sharing time with Sandy but sitting a few rows behind. All he could do was sit sideways in his chair, slumped and staring at me with big old sad cow eyes. We went out in the hall after a while so I could try to figure out what was going on with him. I didn't figure it out, but I did get some pictures. He came to my class with me after sharing time and it was pretty enjoyable. Hopefully it doesn't ruin him for going to his own class for the rest of his life. But how can a guy with Darth Vader and tie fighter on his church sweater not be in a good mood all the time? Really?

::this is amazing::

Any chance you remember this post from long long ago?

  http://lifekunst.blogspot.com/search?q=sandwich 

Go take a quick look if you don't remember it. You'll want to remember it. We were at Jimmy John's the other day, and Lucy was lucky enough to score half of Sandy's sandwich. She was really hungry, so she dug in. Right into the top of the sandwich, just like her brother before her!
 Sandwich eating skill--her father has it, her brother has it and SHE has it. I've never known anybody but my two small people to eat a hoagie this way.

 I tried for a better picture but she moves way too fast. Just know it was awesome and I was enjoying it to no end.

::christmas tree hunt 2015:::

After Thanksgiving dinner we quickly tidied up, packed up the kids and took off down the road in the direction south. Kris and I had thought a lot about what area we should try to go to, and he had even done a morning scouting trip to a more nearby location to see if it would be good--it wasn't. We headed down towards the town of Pecos, through it and up a canyon. It wasn't an area we'd ever tried before.

 The road was unusually easy to drive on--well, if you don't count the mud. When cutting a tree here in NM you're not allowed to cut anything that's growing within 300 feet of a paved road. So unless you want to hike way in to find a tree and hike it back out, you have to find a dirt road. So of course we found one. But it was so muddy and goopy that we were sliding everywhere--especially around corners. But besides that the road was really driveable, luckily. We went a ways up and found a little grove that looked like it had a lot of potential. I headed out to check out the scene, and we kept the kids in the car. It was super crazy muddy in the road. The little grove was raised up from the road by a few feet. When I climbed up there it wasn't muddy anymore. Yes, this seems like more details than we really need right now, but it goes into the story later.

 There were some good trees, so the guys went to park the cars and get the kids out while Lechelle and I tried to find the perfect tree. Kris went to all this work to try to park in the least muddy spot possible. Uselessly, of course, as you might anticipate a muddy incident coming up soon.

 Kris came up to look at trees with me, and we were making some good progress when suddenly we heard the Sandy death wail coming from somewhere near the car. Kris and I both figured that Max did something. That's what usually leads up to the siren wail. But it just kept going on. And then we could hear Kelly's Boston yelling something about somebody being stuck.

Kris ran down there to check out the scene. There he found a screaming Sandy, soaked to the bone with freezing muddy water. Why you may ask? We'll never know. There are so many different versions of the story that we just can't quite figure out what really happened. In some versions Max is the instigator of the incident through a dare. In others Max is the hero that runs in to save Sandy from the puddle and gets stuck himself in the process. In yet another version the trash compactor monster from Star Wars grabbed Sandy's ankle and dragged him down to the depths.

 Want to see the "puddle"? Want a sense of scale? It's basically a swimming pool. What were those dumb kids thinking? So every bit of Sandy was soaked. Down to the undies. His T-shirt was still ok but that was the only thing. So he had to strip down and sit in the car naked while the rest of us hunted for trees. Lucy stayed out of the mud--only because we pretty much never let her feet touch the ground. So poor Sandy had to stay in the car, and off the grownups went to finally find a tree. Of course, the rest of the kids went and got muddy. Kids are so stinking ridiculous. Is that bigfoot in the background? Oh no, it's just Max. The huge mudballs that are his boots threw me off.
 
Lucy is fun. It's nice that she's still little enough to be carried most of the time.
And she gets selfies. Understands them. That's a big deal. We finally settled on a tree after much debate. Well, we actually found two. No debate on the smaller one--there were lots of good small options--but picking the bigger one was really hard this time. We ended up finding one that was really quite tall and the bottom four feet or so were completely bald. So it worked out pretty well to cut off the boring part and just use the top.

Boys working on the small tree:

 Big tree:   Bigfoot again? I always find bigfoot. Here we are trying to pretend that we remember how life was before we had kids that try to foil every fun thing we ever do.
 
We can't remember. It's impossible. Remember Max falling in the mud puddle at the Notre Dame football game a few years ago? (rolling eyes emoji here)

 Anyway, we found the trees and manly Kris cut them down and dragged them back to the car. Kris was super smart this time and brought a roll of plastic wrap to snug the trees up in. It worked really well, but was a little awkward when the our of us adults tried to roll both of our trees into the same roll! The plunder:


Kids waited in the car while the dads got loaded up. Oh, except Max. He wasn't allowed back in the car yet. He was supposed to walk in circles around the meadow until the mud balls fell off. It ddn't work. All he did was antagonize his siblings through the window. Nakey and Lucy being good sports for now. And there you go. By the time we got home it was dark.  Only one of us was naked though, so that's good.  We were going to have pie afterwards all together but it was basically bedtime, so home we went.
We got the trees up that night and I still need to light them. Pictures will be forthcoming.

::thanksgiving dinner 2015::

We were supposed to drive to Delta to spend Thanksgiving with the whole Hendricks clan and some of the Jeffreys, but the weather foiled our plans. It just seemed like the raods were going to be way too nasty and possibly all iced up. So Lechelle and I had to quickly throw together a little Thanksgiving for our folks. Lechelle made a ham instead of a turkey, and we had mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, rolls, squash, stuffing. All the good stuff. I was proud of how much we were able to ship up on short notice. Of course dinner only lasted about 7 minutes. I think the only things that the kids ate were rolls and shredded cheese. I think Sandy and Lucy had a few bites of ham. Max was the exception though of course. He chowed down and was very happy with his plateful. After dinner we cleaned up and headed out to hunt for Christmas trees with the whole crew. We were trying to stay ahead of the weather. More to come.....

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When I picked up Sandy from school today he was so excited to show me that he had drawn his first little guy ever.  He could hardly believe he'd done it.  It was so adorable.
And so nice that Rebecca wrote the little blurb for me on the side.  I love that she thinks he's as cute as I think he is.

He's learning fast.

::they're both so big::

These two are so funny. When I looked at these ridiculosu pictures I thought how big they're both getting. Maybe I should've thought about how scary it looked for him to be holding her upside down over the tiles, or how he was going to get kicked in the face by a boot. But no, I thought, "Wow, max is so tall that he can hold Lucy like that and her head doesn't graze the floor!" and I thought, "Wow look how high Lucy's legs stretch! She's like half Max's height!" So there you go. Really, Max loves holding his younger siblings upside down, so I'm totally used to it. Not that I still don't say, "CAREFUL!!!" the whole time it's going on. Always.