Love the way her brain works

In prepping dinner, I took some frozen corn out and poured it into a bowl. I then returned the bag to the freezer and got out a bag of frozen peas. M walked up, looked at both, pointed at the corn and asked, "are those peas so cold that they're a different color?"

Fun at Cooper Spur!

So when there's been all this crazy snow/ice on the road, we've stuffed the whole family into our little Camry because our Mazda's traction sucks. So it's just easier on the nerves, although being packed in so tight does lead to other things that are less easy on the nerves. Here they're still happy, if not a little crazy. We've now done this to-and-from Portland and to-and-from Mt. Hood's Cooper Spur.

What a fantastic find! We've never been there before but it was so cheap and SO completely geared towards beginners and kids. It was great. Dude even warmed up after a bit and thought it was great fun to walk up the hill to the bottom of the lift and laugh his head off at the skiiers coming by.

Aunt Patti and Uncle Jim even came, bringing their two large and very happy dogs to enjoy the snow!

Don't they look ready to ski?!

And Nana and Bopa were the ones to come up with the idea for the day. Sadly I don't have any pictures of the actual skiing because Bopa had one girl, Cooper the other, Nana was in charge of the refueling station, and I was following the little man up and down the hill.

They also had sledding off to the side, with a little rope tow to get you up there.

It wasn't the fastest sledding hill but the girls still cited it as their favorite part of the day ...

Despite how worried M looks here.

And Nana even gave it a try! Although apparently she didn't weigh enough to make it down the hill either. She stopped halfway down and had to push herself the rest of the way. She only did it once.

And before and after the little guy got worn out, this is where we spent our day. Thank heavens for the comfy couch in the little lodge! He even miraculously fell asleep amidst all the tumult. It didn't last long and this pic was snapped shortly after he awoke, from which he took like an hour to recover. He doesn't like his naps interrupted. To show his displeasure, he refused to look at the camera. In fact he sat like this, stroking his blanket for that full hour. After everybody was worn up, and the girls had even gone up the lift a few times (J will be sure to let you know that Bopa made her fall), we headed into Hood River for some yummy pizza.

Thanks so much for all the fun!!

And then it just kept snowing

 So after a few days of dusting, it decided to get serious and really snow. And snow, and snow, and snow. Guess who wasn't complaining?

Little dude thought it looked like loads of fun, although in all honesty, by the time he was all zipped and tucked and covered and tied up, he was less convinced.

 Pretty quickly, his concerns grew. You see he couldn't move.

We solved the problem by finding him the best seat in the house!

Where he could watch all the action. And clearly, he was the only one watching since nobody else had their eyes open. Even J. Why's SHE closing her eyes? She's throwing the snowball!

He thought it was hysterical when they hit each other with the snowballs. Especially daddy. Everybody always loves that. His other favorite thing was to knock snow off of the tree branches and watch them spring back up. For some reason that was hilarious.

And despite it not being the best packing snow, the girls got right to work on building a respectable-sized snowgirl (although in all honesty, daddy did all the heavy work. they just accessorized).

They also built a rather impressive snow-brick wall to keep our snowgirl from running off and doing what snowmen do at night, but sadly, I didn't get a picture of all that hard work.

And that would be because I had to go back in pretty quickly. Little man got cold just sitting still, and I could only carry him so much so we left others to have fun in our winter wonderland. And it's a good thing they did, because the next day is started to drop freezing rain. And it did more the next day. And off and on for a week. So we had nasty snow covered in layers and layers of ice for forever! Not the easiest thing for a 7 month pregnant lady to walk around on, especially while holding a 16-month old! Just sayin. And it wouldn't melt because it wouldn't warm up and even when it did a little it didn't do us any good because our front yard doesn't get a lick of sun in the winter (should've seen all the garbage and recycling cans everybody had put out on the curb but that didn't get picked up for an extra week. Frozen solid. At least they didn't stink)! And you could hardly park your car anywhere because of what the snowplows had built up along the sides of the roads! Just a couple days ago, when it had been 2 weeks since the snow, Coop stood on our sidewalk right below our porch, and without moving at all, slid the whole way down to the street on the remaining ice. Total nightmare, but it is finally gone and we're now enjoying balmy 40 degree weather. Hardly even need a coat for that!

Every little bit counts

So we haven't got the promised dump of snow by any means, but we have woke up to light dustings the last two mornings. And there's really no convincing the kids that they won't be able to make snow angels or a snowman family out of this tiny bit of snow, so here's a ton of pictures from the fun. I'm way too tired to be selective so here are pretty much all the good ones, because the kids are cute whether there's enough snow or not:

Ok, so he might have been wearing his sister's old pink snow boots. But he doesn't mind! And they keep the feet warm! At least he has such a tough, manly hat on!

Daddy wasn't answering her question, distracted by trying to get the best candid shot. She didn't appreciate being ignored. Clearly.

J has gotten rather photogenic lately, hasn't she? This snowball basically took all the snow off of the lawn to make. Gotta admire perseverance.

Yuuummm.

So what's the deal with this fork-thing? You put it in your mouth and then what?

Squint smile!

Haha! This is so much fun!

Forget that silly fork. I think it's just there for show anyway. Bring on the spaghetti!

Who needs a bath?

Our Cindy Lou-Whos

And their Christmas Tap/Jazz recital. Hilarious. Seriously good times.

I put them in this class because it covered both their age groups. Sadly she then split the group up into two based on age, so here's J's performance:

And here's M's (check out the serious facial expression!) with some unfortunate fuzzy problems because we had never used our still camera's video option before:

And the free dance where they let all the dancers come up and do whatever they wanted on the stage. M took them seriously and danced her heart out front and center.