Many years ago, I spent a fortune on the greatest Christmas present ever.  The complete collection of Calvin and Hobbes. I bought them for my dear husband- who has never ever read them.  Friends and family alike have drooled over our collection while they sat lonely on the shelf.  Finally the collection is getting the love and attention it deserves… all the time!

And just for fun because she’s so dang cute….

If you look really close (and expand the picture) you can see her pearly new tooth.

To all our adoring fans, I apologize  for my lack of posts in recent months.  We have been very busy at our house and I just haven’t had time to write.  But you can all feel better, as I do, that there haven’t been any catastrophes for which I need to write about   to find the humor, thereby saving myself a trip to the psychiatrist.  In our case, sometimes no news is good news!!!

We’ll start with Ladybug. She is growing so fast! 

Strawberry Shortcake

Ladybug had her first cold last week at exactly 7 months of age.  Pretty darn good considering that she has 3 germ covered, adoring brothers.  Everyone else had been sick so I couldn’t avoid it forever.  She had a constant faucet of the nose and mouth , a yucky croupy cough and even a fever for a few days.  There’s nothing more sad then a sick baby.  What is really pathetic, is that her mother did not even notice until she was all  better that during that week of suffering, she also cut her first tooth!  I feel horrible for not catching it sooner-something I can only blame on the number of children I have now and the fact that her real cold hid the regular symptoms of a tooth.  She is still a very happy, easy going baby, content to sit on the floor and chew on her tag toys.  She is infinitely patient it seems, for which I am very grateful!  We’ve started calling her Mini Go Go because she looks identical to him as a baby and everywhere we go people are amazed at how alike they are. 

This funky little towel was a gift from a friend that we like to call her Princess towel.

Next is Blue Jeans.  He has recently learned the benefits of friends-probably because his brothers are gone all day at school now.  He has started asking me every day if we can play with “our friends today”.  He has really enjoyed his little playgroup this year. 
Two weeks ago when he was sick, he called out to me in the middle of the night.  When I came in to see what he wanted he said, “Mommy can you kiss my ear, it hurts.”  Needless to say we got out the Tylenol-after a kiss on the ear of course.

Go Go is very much into drawing and math right now and I do believe he has a talent for both-excuse me while I dote for a minute.  We taught the boys to play monopoly recently and he is a better/faster banker then me!!!  Rock has started doing math problems with the boys at the dinner table and Go Go is proving to be a pro just like his brother and Dad.  When he has free time in school he chooses to do math.  Personally, the thought of doing math for fun gives me the shudders, but I’m thrilled he’s taking after Dad on this one!

Mr. President had his first Cub Scout Pack Meeting (finally-thanks to his father volunteering to be the Cub master)  where he earned his Bobcat

Today at his Cub scout activity he got to watch a python swallow a rat.  He LOVES scouts.  He has also gotten into Pokémon of late, to which I was remiss to allow, but oh well, right?  Now there are Pokémon cards strewn all over my house almost as much as LEGOS.  I don’t know which is worse.  Ok, Pokémon cards don’t hurt to step on-it’s true.  And speaking of which, here is his latest massive LEGO creation. These things keep getting bigger and bigger.  Who needs the $50.00 sets when you can make your own?

We are finally seeing grass for the first time since the day after Christmas.  It’s as brown as the trees, but at least it’s not white!  Spring can’t come fast enough! 
We recently rearranged our house, swapping the hardwood floor family room for the carpeted dinning room and I feel MUCH better about this house.  We are much more comfortable on the carpeted floor and the kids can drop their food on the hardwood and Mom doesn’t freak out!  We are thinking we may stay here for a few more years now, rather than move to a different rental and so I finally got out all the rest my decorations and I’m feeling much more at home in this house.  It feels more like it’s mine, rather than someone else’s.  Yes, I know, I should have done it long ago.   For those of you who have been here, here’s the finished product.

New family room

New dinning room
I want to point out the fact that Rock came up with the great idea of making a mud room behind that bookshelf.  So now we have all our cubbies and shoes back behind there and we love it!  I know most of you haven’t even been to our home, but it’s a cool change that I wanted to share.  And those little pink things you see all over are from our Valentine’s day heart attack.

So Happy Belated Valentine’s Day to all of you!

My children have started waking up in the morning and instead of saying, “Good morning, Mother dear” they groggily say “Is it another snow day?” We have had a full snow day, a late start or an early release from school due to snow almost every day since 2011 began. This time it was “just” an ice storm instead of 2 feet of snow. Not too bad as ice storms go-we still have our power- but we got a snow day out of it. The trains into New York were blocked by fallen trees and ice on the wires so Dad got a snow day too. We knew that might happen when he had to scrape a 1/4 inch of ice off his car to pry it open before driving it home from the train station last night. When we asked Mr. President to help shovel the driveway again, he claimed he couldn’t do it because he found a new use for the ice on the driveway.