Whyatt

So I signed James up for a little "Get Moving" class at the Billerica Rec Center. It was a small little thing, once a week for an hour and a half or something. I wanted to see how he'd do in this sort of environment. He knows all of his joy school friends from church, and I thought it might be good to expose him to some different structured situations to see how he'd do. Because James is his own person, and you never quite know how things are going to turn out.

(backstory) A few days before we had checked out a Super Why dvd from the library. And he had wanted to dress up like Whyatt. And I didn't really think anything of it. This is actually pretty normal in our house...watch a show, and pretend to be that person for the next week or two.

Jump ahead to the day of the class. I walk in, tell them that this is James, and leave him there making his bunny ears. I come back later to pick him up and am watching through the window to see how he's doing. And I take the picture below, (which isn't great, because it's through the window.)  And I see them playing red rover. And I watch several other kids go. And then I hear, "Red rover, red rover, Whyatt come over!" And I see James run across the room at full speed with a big smile on his face. And I'm like, Oh my gosh! He has successfully convinced both the class and his teachers that his actual name is Whyatt. And I didn't quite know what to do or how to approach his teachers to explain the situation. It was hilarious. I was just like, yes, this is my child, and I can't believe he did this.  

So I watch the rest of the class, as they call each child up to get stickers, Whyatt included, and give all of the kids their bunny ears, his with a big Whyatt printed across the front it. And then I go in to pick him up, and try to explain the situation. It was pretty funny. One of the teachers then added a Super to his bunny ears once she heard the story. I guess when they had asked him if his name was James, and he told them it was his middle name, but his real name was Whyatt. Yes, this is our James. No one quite like him. :) He was a different person every week he went to the class. And he had a great time.

Randoms

So this is just a random sampling of everyday life from about Jan-March. Of things other than the snow. :)

Apparently this is what they are teaching my son at school. So funny. He came home with stuff like this for a week or two. Made a poster in art class, etc. etc.  Guess it's to be expected...but still. :)

Alan took a couple of kung fu classes during February vacation week. And he absolutely loved it.

Grandma Robertson's birthday

Someone wanted to be photographed during breakfast.

Someone didn't?

Unfortunately I came down with the stomach bug on my birthday. Luckily Scott was home and able to take the kids to church while I recovered. By evening I felt up to eating a piece of toast, and  this is how it came. :) We celebrated a week late. :)

These boys are always busy! One day they decided to be robots and dressed in all gray.

A few days later, Lucy came to greet me like this. She likes to copy EVERYTHING her big brothers do.

Celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday!

Alan decided to try to "trap" the leprechaun this year on St. Patrick's day. This is new for us, but we told him he could do whatever he wanted. It turned out that the leprechaun did visit and left lucky charms instead. 

Which Lucy enjoyed

And James made a pretty good leprechaun himself. :)

A pretty regular scene in this household.

Snow!

This seems so crazy as I'm sitting here writing about this in June. But, we had some snow this past winter. :) And by some snow, I mean we broke the record for snowfall in a winter. It was crazy! And fun. And we'd get a good snow, and then the next week another.  And then another. All within about a month and a half. It never really had any time to melt, and somehow that last storm just put it over the top. After that last storm the snow was unbelievably high. I've never seen it that high before. We thought it might never melt. But as the a/c is running now, I guess it did. :)

Luckily we had been storing our friends snowblower in our shed since last summer. We decided to just buy the snowblower from them right before the first snow storm. It was a good choice. :)

After the first snow storm, Alan thought it would be fun to run all the way to the trees and back. He did it. And I don't think it turned out to be quite as fun as he thought. :)

Since we live at the end of the street, the plow always leaves a nice pile to play in. Thankfully he pushed it farther back than I have ever seen before with the first snow. Which turned out to be a very good thing because by the end of the storms, it came out to the edge of our driveway.

Oh, the ice dams. The roof was a constant battle this winter. I swear I spend most of my time raking the roof or filling nylons with ice melt so that we could melt some of these ice dams. Scott had to get up on the roof here and melt away a dam when we got a little water in our bathroom.

It was kind of fun. And kind of crazy. And got less fun as the winter went on. :) He eventually had to get up there and just shovel all of the snow off before the last storm. It was a very good thing that he did. And we just got a ton more insulation in our attic, so hopefully this will be less of a problem next winter. :)

We figure there is about 4 feet out there at this point. Our garden fence is 4 feet high and you could barely see the top of it. This little play structure is a little over 4 feet as well.

We have these huge holly bushes that were completely covered. This little sprig sticking out is our first sign of spring. :)

Looking back it was crazy. It was really crazy. They were fun storms though, except for constant battle with the roof. That got old. But a lot of people were a lot worse off there than we were. I'm thinking next year, it should be a mild winter. Now that we've gotten the insulation and roofing worked out you know. :)

Althitude

This past year they opened a trampoline park pretty close to our house. Though it is a little pricey, we sometimes get coupons for the toddler time, and have been able to go on a few occasions. It is called Altitude, though James pronounces it Althitude. :) The kids love it. Here are some pics from our first trip there and a few from a birthday party that Alan attended there a little later in the year.