Remember December (And A Few Other Months Too)

Since I previously disclosed that I reserved the right to post about any event in any chronological order at any interval, I have today decided to document various and sundry key non-Christmas Winter events from 2013 (since Christmas really deserves its own post sometime within the next 14 months).

According to the date/time stamps of the photos Picasa is showing me, three life events were significant enough that we documented them with pictures:

• Charlotte Snow
• Ava Levitation / Dance Recital
• Kaitlyn Stampin' / Birthday Party

I know that everyone says that weather in their area is crazy, but these past several months in Charlotte have got to be in the running for most indecisive weather.  In December we had 2 days where the low temperature was over 60 degrees!  Then, in January we had 3 days where it got down to single digits.  In mid-February, we had a snow storm that closed down school and shut down roads for several days (not to mention ruin Valentine's Day).  Also, for good measure Mother Nature went ahead and threw in a 4.1 magnitude earthquake--just to be sure.

Fortunately, the kids were able to enjoy the snow.  Olivia went outside with us to investigate what the white stuff on the ground was, and learned that even with every effort to get bundled up, snow is very cold and concluded that there is no reason any human being should want to go out and play in it.

The rest of us kids, I mean the kids, enjoyed creating a maze in the snow and playing tag and chase in the maze or "Pac Man" as we called it.

(Also, for future reference, if the roads are iced over making driving impossible and you call your local Harris Teeter on Valentine's Day to see if they are open so that you can at least walk to the store to get flowers for your wife, and the recorded message says that they are open, so you walk a mile--probably uphill both ways--to get said flowers, remember it is a lie.  In actuality it will not be open and you will have nothing to show for it, but wet shoes and cold ears.)

The next noteworthy event was Ava's dance instruction, which culminated in a dance recital at the local dancitory (or dancnaseum, or whatever it's called) where they showed off their mad dance skills including such renowned classics as "A Tootie Taw Taw" and some other seasonal dance maneuvers.  Ava, being the gifted child she is, took advantage of the event to show off her super hero skills by levitating for the audience (as shown in the photographic proof below):

She loves it, and has continued taking lessons and has learned some classic ballet moves such as the plee-yay, the arab-esque, first position and third position.

The last event was Kaitlyn's birthday.  While we considered pankration as the main event since we didn't get to it at Max's birthday party, Kaitlyn didn't really think that was appropriate for a girl's party.  Instead, she opted for a party in which she and all of her friends would use her mother's Stampin' Up supplies to create crafty cards and banners of all kinds.

She invited 5 of her best friends over and focused on crafting for the afternoon and eating donut birthday cake.

Kaitlyn and the other girls did their best to get ink in their hair (so that it would match their shirts), but some were more successful at inking their papers and hands than their hair.

Of course, without the expert guidance and demonstration abilities of Megan (not to mention her pre-cutting the supplies and putting them in individual baggies to make the execution of the project as easy as possible), I'm sure the girls would have made S-L-I-M-E banners instead of the "SMILE" ones that they produced.

So, in conclusion, we had some noteworthy events this Winter: snow, dance and birthdays.

Max-lympics of the Birthdapiad in Legos

With the Olympics taking place this week, it reminded me about an event we had with Max and some friends a few months ago.

You know, Max is getting old.  Too old.  To celebrate the completion of yet another year of life, we held a festivity of ancient origin, dating back, in our family, at least a decade--give or take 10 years.  Yes, I'm talking about the renowned...birthday party with games.  And, given Max's penchant for all things Lego-related, we concluded that a Lego-themed party was not only appropriate, but also our moral parental obligation. 

After carefully reviewing the rules and regulations of each of the 400 events in the 33 Olympic sports in detail, we selected the 3 most strenuous, challenging, and age-appropriate for our visitors:

• Lego-relay
• Lego-car construction and racing
• Pankration

We start in the backyard by placing 2 large buckets or bowls on opposite ends of the yard.  The first was filled with Duplo blocks.  The second was empty.  We did the most Olympic thing we could to determine teams and counted off "one" and "two" until every kid had a team.  

Next, each team came up a with a name.  I can't remember the names they came up with, but it was something like the "Donut Heads" and "The Communists".  Probably.

After all that hard work, we started the event.  I begin by posing as that famous statue pointing the way west (as shown in the photo below).

Then, we said "Ready?  Set?  Go!" and the boys ran back and forth, filling the bucket on the other side of the yard with the Duplo blocks, one by one.  One of the teams won.  Probably.

We tried to play this game for as long as we could, until the sun went down and we were as sweaty as possible.

At that point, it was time for the second event: dumping a huge bag of Lego car parts out on the kitchen table and telling each of the boys to use their creativity to create a Lego car of their own (which they could keep) to be used in racing.

Our little Olympians thought that was awesome.  And surprisingly, there were zero fights (not even being sarcastic) and everyone wanted to show us their finished product!

(I took advantage of this time to sit under an overhead light to determine how much of my scalp you could see with light directly shining on my part.)

After constructing our Lego cars, we set up a ramp in the TV room and raced the cars down to the bottom--first in an orderly fashion to see which car was the fastest, and then in a disorderly, chaotic and random fashion to see how many wipeouts and epic wrecks we could create.

At the conclusion of the previous two events, we decided that we were all winners.

Next up was pankration, but just as we were about to begin, it was time for the kids to go home.  Well, there's always next year...