2021!

The Queen of Ice Cream and her baby, Slothy, got busy on Monday with some Lego sets. A multi-tasking woman of many talents. 🙂

The kids spent some time on Monday using stencils to paint canvases that I had in the house.

Penni had taken a picture of Amaya but she said, “Wait, I wasn’t ready. Take another one.” The kids definitely have this blog top of mind when we’re taking (many) photos during the week.

We had a Raddish Kids recipe we hadn’t made yet so, on Monday night while Steven played with Legos, Sammy, Amaya and I made Alpine Pancakes. Delicious. We made the batter from scratch and it included rolled oats. The kit also came with shapes for creative pancakes.

Steven has this glow-in-the-dark mobile kit that he worked on for a while on Tuesday. “I’m going to paint Jupe now,” he said.

Sammy still looooooooves slime and, fortunately, he also still has a slime kit.

Checking it out, and sharing, with Amaya.

The hill in our yard continues to prove itself useful. It doesn’t take a lot of snow to get going and the kids can play outside on their own, which is great. It’s going to come in handy the rest of the winter while we remain (mostly) stuck at home.

On Wednesday afternoon, Sammy had his first Minecraft play date. He and his friend Ruxin met up on FaceTime and played Minecraft together in Ruxin’s realm. It went really well. They stayed on for 2.5 hours! I’m glad there’s a way for the kids to be social when they can’t be physically present with their friends for play dates. (On Saturday, Steven had his own Minecraft play date with Ruxin and their friend Quinn.)

The kids have digital watches from Vtech and one of these features is a “Silly Meter”. You take a picture of someone and it tells you have silly they are. Amaya was working the system to increase her points lol.

I worked a half day on Thursday and then was off. (Jason was off on Wednesday and Thursday.) After I finished for the day I got some amazing cuddles from SSA. <3

It was warm enough on Thursday afternoon, and sunny, so Steven, Sammy, Amaya and I went to a playground where the played for an hour or so. It was quiet there and I had a parking spot right in front of the playground entrance so I sat in my warm car, with the window cracked, while the kids played. It was amazing to be able to do that!

Home in time for a New Year’s Eve dinner which included crab legs for Mommy and Sammy.

We decided the kids could try to stay up until midnight and, after dinner, we still had 5.5 hours to go. We kicked off our night watching Soul – which was a bigger hit for the adults than the kids. I got in some great cuddles, though.

Ready for 2021! I know the big theme of New Year’s was leaving 2020 behind us but we had a lot of wonderful moments in 2020. Steven, Sammy and Amaya finished Kindergarten. They started first grade and are doing so well with school from home.

We kicked off 2020 in NY and had another trip over President’s Day weekend, oblivious, to what was to come. We did our best to see family with outdoor visits with Grandma Sunshine and Aunt Annette and, by August, made it back to NY with two week long visits – one in Aug and one in October.

Amaya passed her deep end test at the JCC pool and the boys made tremendous progress in swim lessons at Aqua Tots. We also had a fantastic trip to FL in December. Plus, the year was full of family time – cooking, games, cuddling – and that counts for a lot.

So while the pandemic was rough, and still is, 2020 was still full of a lot of amazing memories.

Then and now!

A tired fying squirrel playing Super Mario Party.

Steven was the first one down, just after 10:30pm. Amaya watched NYE coverage and rubbed his back.

Shortly before 11am we carried a sleeping Steven upstairs and settled in. Sammy was out about 5 minutes later. Amaya fought the good fight and fell asleep at 11:35pm. So close!

Jason and I promised the kids we’d try to wake them if they fell asleep before midnight. At about 10 to 12 we tried out best. We tried really hard. But these kids were not going to wake up for anything.

I’ve watched this video at least 10 times now.

Happy New Year!

The 1st was a pretty quiet day. Queen Amaya, Sammy and I made some yummy chipotle bbq chicken for dinner, with cheesy cauliflower. Definitely something I’d repeat.

Sammy is not the only one with a Switch. I have a Switch Lite (as the kids would want me to clarify) and, on Friday, I beat Link’s Awakening. Playing a Legend of Zelda game takes me right back to 1988. It was awesome.

We woke up on Saturday to a dusting of snow that iced over a bit – perfect for sledding. Amaya headed out on her own for a while before we convinced her brothers to join her. The first outdoor hour of 2021!

Amaya had a tooth hanging on by a thread and I wanted one last picture of her with all of her baby teeth. It’s so bitter sweet for me.

All my kids together!

With so much downtime, there has been a lot of gaming over break. Here we have Amaya on my Switch, Steven playing minecraft on one of my phones and Sammy on his Switch. Right now, as I type this, Steven is playing on my Switch and Amaya and Sammy are both in a classmate’s Minecraft realm.

At Steven’s request, we played Catan Junior. Amaya was our winner this game.

It’s also been a weekend of magnatiles. With the cleaned-up playroom, it’s easier than ever for the kids to play with their best toys.

While I was making dinner, Amaya pulled out her tooth! She was sitting on the couch with Jason and just pulled it out! Our girl. <3

The center bottom tooth next to the one she lost is loose, too, so I think Amaya will be the last to loose a first tooth and the first to lose a second tooth!

Tooth fairy pillow! We have one believer (Steven), one non-believer (Amaya) and one on the fence (Sammy).

We woke up to more snow today. It wasn’t good sledding snow but the kids were able to make snowballs and snow people.

Snowlady!

“Mountain Man”

A new Raddish kids kit arrived so we made homemade ravioli. It was more work than I expected! The dough was dense but Amaya and Steven both said they liked it a lot – and Amaya doesn’t usually enjoy ravioli. I’ll call it a win for the experience and the first-try outcome.

Steven, Amaya and I found the energy to also make a delicious dinner. Amaya took pont on the green onion, as she often does, and Steven was on celery duty.