Tent-tastic

Fun time.

Train-tastic

Nils has been intensely fixated on trains for the past several months. This last weekend Grandma A. heard that the local model railway society was giving free rides as a toy drive. We took Nils and he loved it. He almost refused to leave- he ran away and had to be wrestled into the car. Maybe we'll go back another time when he's not quite so tired.

Walter Slides

You can't hear his little giggle after he lands.

The garage

The garage is the most-fun room in our house. Seriously. Friday morning Nils got a box of cereal, and he and Walter snuck out to the garage while we were still asleep. We heard them shouting and Jay found them just sitting in my car munching on cereal.
Saturday Nils and Walter disappeared to the garage, and when I went to get them only a few minutes later this is what I found. Wipers up*? Check. Lights on? Check. Emergency lights on? Check. Garage Door opener in hand? Check. Every button on console pushed at least once? Check.


*Nils has to climb all the way onto the hood to put the wipers up, but it's one of the first things he does when he goes off to the garage.

Walter eats ramen...

...And it's very funny to watch

Best show ever

Can you guess what show my kids are watching?
Here's a bit of actual dialogue that might help you guess:
"Don't tell me you know how to make a bomb out of stick of chewing gum."
"Why do you have one?"

Easy as Pie

Last night I made three pies. One was an apple pie, and as we were peeling the apples a measuring cup got knocked off the counter and shattered.While we were distracted cleaning it up, Walter was up on the chair munching on all of our nicely prepared apples.

As if to say "How was I supposed to know you had plans for these?"

Anyhow the pies turned out wonderfully, and we used different apples than the ones Walter munched on.
And earlier that evening I made these 'stilts' for Nils. He caught on really quick and was marching around the house saying "I a robot!"

Very sleepy

Sundays are a hard day for all of us. Walter came home and fell asleep in the middle of the living room floor. After dinner Nils just could not keep his eyes open, poor kid.

Nils rides again

We had early Thanksgiving at Mormor and Morfar's last weekend. Nils had a great time with his cousins and riding the pony, while Walter had a great time with his cousins and riding the dog. (Walter put up a fight when we put him on the pony, but didn't seem to mind too much being put on the dog.)

Super Mario Bros

You work so hard, and you finally beat a level...
Only to find out that the Princess is in another castle.

Bakers

We made some cookies today. Walter love eating the cookies, And Nils got really into it, and by 'it' I mean, the flour.

Fairly Entertaining

We went to the State Fair with Grandma A last friday, and we all had a good time.
There's more pictures at Grandma's blog here.

Backyard!

As of saturday evening we have a mostly functional sprinkler system. All that's left to do is level the sprinkler heads, and fill in the trenches. Hooray!
Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Anderson, Uncle John and Aaron for helping. (And thanks to Bro. H. for lending us his skinny shovel.)

I'm especially proud of this second spigot. I assembled this part mostly by myself.

On Cats: Part II

Theta and Walter pay homage to Tycho and Nils.

On cats

This is from a few weeks ago when Nils got into my yarn then climbed up on the chair to snuggle with Tycho. He thinks he'd make a pretty good cat.
This morning we took Theta to be spayed. Tycho was in a very good mood all day, thinking perhaps that we'd finally seen things his way and gotten rid of the little upstart. Then I picked Theta up and brought her home, and now Tycho is grumpier than ever wandering about the house growling to himself. Theta is doing alright- she's very groggy and walks very gingerly, but she's still breathing and eating.

Free Stuff

If you want any of these things leave a comment that says which one you want. If more than one person wants the same thing then I'll do a drawing.

At Mormor's House

Three Years ago:
Last Week:

Yummy

There were a few bits left in the cat food bag, and Walter didn't want them to go to waste.

Still an unwilling model

No finer punishment than wearing a scarf.

That Darn Cat

Tycho is an indoor/outdoor cat. He normally goes out at night, hunts, and then comes back in the morning. Sometimes he brings us mice. About 2 weeks ago he went out but didn't come back the next morning. He stayed gone all day, and most of the next night too. The whole time he was gone I was kicking myself for not having a collar and tags on him (and I was nearly convinced that he was dead).

The day after he came home I went and bought a collar. I figured that I'd make him wear just the collar for a week or so before I'd bought the tags to put on it. That way if he got the collar off it would just be a lost collar. He wore the collar for a week, and never took it off inside or out.

The tags I bought online arrived yesterday. Last night I let him go outside confident that if anything happened to him, at least he'd have ID and someone would let me know. The guilt I felt for not doing this sooner finally disappeared.

This morning he came home without his collar. I could have strangled him.

Walter using his head

Walter is figuring out the light switches. First you flip a switch.
Then you look to see what changed.

Then you use your forehead to switch it off.

Earrings

Nils wanted to wear my earrings so I let him.

Electrical Storm

We had an electrical storm near our house last night. I managed to get a few pictures of the lightning. Most of the lightning looked like this- backlit clouds with a faint rumble.
Sometimes we could see clear little flashes like this:

And there were only a couple spectacular flashes like this one.

Owie

Yesterday Nils fell and scraped his knee. He came over to me, points at his knee and says "This hurt! Clean off." So I took him to the bathroom and dabbed at the scrape with a washcloth, which he seemed to like.
When I finished wiping off the little bit of blood I said "all done" and stood up to rinse out the washcloth. He looked down at the scrape and said "No! clean off! clean off!" After a short exchange it became clear that he was expecting me to wipe the scrape itself away. If only it worked that way.

Cowpoke

We went to see Mormor and Papa a week or so ago, and Nils got to ride the pony. He enjoyed it a lot.
Walter was terrified of the pony and clung to my leg just about the whole time the pony was out.

Mmmm, warm water

I was mopping, and Walter decided the water felt so nice that he'd just climb on in.

Pincushion

We took Nils and Walter to get a checkup on Thursday. The doctor looked them over, proclaimed them to be healthy, then said that Walter would need a few vaccines, but that he could get a combination shot. He also said that Nils appeared to be up to date, but that he would double check with the chart in his office.
A few moments later the nurse came in with a fist full of six syringes. One for Nils, five for Walter. Apparently they were out of the combination shot, so the poor kid got two in one arm three in the other. He was not a happy camper.

Packrat

Since I've been crocheting again, my grandma has been 'donating' all of her old yarn to me. I've received several sacks of little balls of yarn from her, sometimes the bits of yarn were only a foot or so long (in other words they were basically trash because there is practically nothing you can make out of a foot of yarn). So I've been making this blanket out of the stuff I've been given. I've often wondered to myself, "Just how long has she had some of this yarn?"

Today While I was working on the blanket I found an envelope wadded up inside one of the balls of yarn. It was postmarked 1949.

Thats right, my grandma had kept a 10 yard ball of yarn for nearly 60 years.

Yes, I am very comfortable. Why do you ask?

I was working on something in my room on the floor, and Theta came to sit next to me. After a while I looked over at her and she was sleeping just like this. She stayed there long enough for me to get the camera.

When Walter saw that lying on the floor acting cute gets mom to take pictures then he had to get in on the action too.

Storytime

The other night we put Nils and Walter to bed, but after a few minutes we heard them making noise in their room. We both put off going in to their room and chasing them back into bed for quite a while, and when we finally went in they were both sitting on the chair reading books. By the time I got the camera Walter had climbed down, but it was pretty cute all the same.

In other news Nils is officially out of diapers, and is rather pleased with himself about it. It's amazing what you can get a toddler to do for candy.

Repairmen

Our dishwasher started leaking last Sunday, so today we got to work to figure out just how bad it was. Walter was very helpful. Very.

There was just a little tiny hole in the drain tube, so we patched it up and now we're good to go. I'm curious as to how such a little hole appeared in an otherwise perfect tube. I suspect the cats had something to do with it.

Par-tay

We had a party for Nils a week ago. Here's Nils looking all pleased about us singing to him.
And I thought this picture of Walter going after a half-eaten cupcake was hilarious.

Memory Lane

Memory lane is getting to be awfully long these days.