Bye Bye February!

Here’s hoping that March brings the much anticipated warm weather!  This weekend was another fun one! Friday night we had dinner out with the Kaufman's.  Preston requested cherry cookies for dessert and props to my friend Sam for buying chocolate chips and a jar of maraschino cherries so Preston’s wish could be fulfilled.  Saturday Preston and PaPa played with the Legos that Aunt Melski bought him for his birthday (*read-PaPa built the vehicles and house while Preston played with the figures and barked orders*).  We switched gears and had him help pick out the pieces.  They are the tiny Legos so we will be working on new designs until he is a pro (like his Uncle Chris was)!  Saturday night Mommy went out with some friends for dinner which was so nice.  Sunday my mom treated Preston and I to lunch and we did some shopping. Target proved useful for a canvas storage bin that matched his Pottery Barn chair.   He needed another cute bin to store the Hot Wheels factory we have going on in his room.  Preston has a little cold and it was super windy so no bike riding this weekend.  Fingers crossed for warm weather and the storm predicted to bring nothing but rain!   Here are a few pictures of my adorable little man!

A Low Key Weekend

After all our travels last week we were low key this weekend. First I have to share this photo. Preston’s class made this beautiful rainbow for the classroom. It took the kids two days to glue all the colors on and when I dropped him off I had to take a picture.

This is one of Preston’s favorite shirts. He loves Where the Wild Things Are. It’s one of his favorite books to read. So when I (I mean Santa) saw this cool shirt I had to get it! Excuse the location-this was Preston’s pick to photograph in the corner of the library. LOL!

This weekend Preston began painting a water color picture. When I was younger they used to have cooks where you dipped a brush in water but the colors were already on the page. Same concept with this picture. Maybe this one will be sent to Nana when he finishes.

He also decided to do a big floor puzzle that he got from his friend Mila for his birthday. We had a lot of fun putting this together. I loved puzzles as a kid so I am very excited Preston is enjoying putting them together.

And what weekend is complete without Preston baking some goodies (that end up at my office by Tuesday because what would we do with 24 cupcakes)! We baked the night before and decorated before we left on Monday. We did a Spongebob theme this time!

Have a great week everyone!

Family

Family.  We use that word all the time.  We have our immediate family, our extended family, our family of friends, our family of POLPs.  Family.  When two people get married you inherit a family.  In laws.  And sometimes you like the family.  You ingrain yourself in their lives.  You start to love them and their children.  You share memories and stories, holidays and special occasions.  Then you divorce.  And the family that you inherited goes away, perhaps not right away, but things fade.  Over time, after the sides are chosen, the bonds that were once formed remain as pictures in a photo album. 

But when you have a child, the family bond is never really broken.  There are aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents.  And in a normal divorce two parents go their separate ways, but bring the child around their respective families.  In a normal divorce.  In a not so normal divorce this doesn’t happen.  So when my “sister in law” and I reconnected, we both realized that no matter what, we each had a child and that child had a cousin.  And my son has two aunts.  And a great grandmother.  And an entire extended family.  And when the opportunity presented itself that I was able to fit New York and Boston in the same trip, there was a very happy and not awkward at all reunion. And I remembered that I loved this family and fun with this family and that this family was torn.  Yet there is a four year old boy that deserves to be a part of that family.  Yes, there was the initial hesitation, the uncertainty of what was said, what was believed, etc., but that melted away quickly.  And we had fun.  And that’s what counts.

We started our trip Saturday to New York.  Lunch and goodies at Aunt Pat and Uncle Dennis’.  Even Aunt Melski dropped by to give some love to her favorite godson.

That night we had a camp out at my parents’ apartment in the city.  In the morning, it was off to Boston.  First we met up with Maeve.  It’s so awesome that we are all older now and I can totally hang out with Katie’s best friend.  She too had to love on the lil’ man (not to mention lots of cupcakes were consumed-yummy thanks Maeve)!

Then it was off to Aunt Angela’s house to meet up with her and Isaiah. When I met Isaiah he was 3 1/2.  He is 14!  It’s unreal how he is so grown up and what a sweet amazing young man he is. Angela has done an amazing job raising him! We took our Valentines out to dinner at Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse.  It’s similar to an Outback but the animals on the wall randomly start to talk.  The buffalo states, “Hi I’m Bill.  I normally don’t sing in front of people.  I sing in the shower.”  This irked Preston to no end that for two days he told me how buffaloes cannot fit in the shower and that why would the buffalo sing in the shower anyway.  Finally I told him, “It was a joke Pres!” to which he replied, “Well it wasn’t funny.” This child. The next day we went to visit Nunny again and had lunch.  Then we visited Maeve at the Channel 7 (NBC affiliate) studios in Boston for a tour of the newsroom.  Totally awesome! We then ended our day at Quincy Market for treats!  It was a great visit.  Here are some pics!

 

I Heart Preston

Getting ready for Valentine’s Day has been a lot of fun with Preston.  Last weekend he baked Valentine’s cupcakes.  He has become quite the little baker, even reading the ingredients off the back of the box.  Well not reading, looking at the pictures and telling me the ingredients, but still.  He mixes the batter but by far his favorite part is licking the beaters.  Look at my love bug:

Then on Wednesday morning Pres announced to a still asleep me that it was snowing.  My response was “Is it really snowing?  Like covering the street?”  He said to me, “Yes mommy the streets are white, not black anymore.”  And this is what we saw:

ARGH GRRRR! Just in case you’ve lost count this would be the FOURTH storm this year.  So in a matter of two hours there were over 228 accidents in Metro Richmond so we decided to stay home in the morning.  By the time the sun came out to melt the streets and ice it was early afternoon.  This was the perfect time to have Preston do his Valentine cards for school.

Today was his big party in school. 

He came home with a mouth full of chocolate, plenty of Valentines and bags of goodies from mommy and from Grandma and PaPa.

In that picture, there is actual tissue paper flying in the air.  That was how excited he was.

And just because this is just the cutest picture….Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

If You Can't Beat Em'

I can't fight Mother Nature. She has kicked my ass. I have been knocked out! She just kept pounding and pounding until I finally said, "OK FINE! Winter is not my favorite season, but I am going to find the beauty in this weather she is dumping on Central Virginia the first time in over forty years!" This weekend, in the midst of our FOURTH snow since moving, the THIRD this winter, I decided to go out exploring with Preston and taking gorgeous pictures of our property and the development. Preston even saw birds in a tree and we got pictures. And since this snow was much wetter than last week's, it was time to build the dude's first ever snowman...complete with his Yankee hat of course. The pictures I think are really breath taking and I know since December I have been taking pictures in the snow, but I hope you enjoy! So after two times outside today and four games of Little Einstein Bingo, my dude is out cold upstairs in dreamland.

I also cannot fight the blog tonight and it will not let me post the slideshow with this post, so scroll down for the show!

OK, OK I Get it, We Should have Packed the Darn Shovels

I recall it vividly. My dad hands, on his hips, glancing around the garage a few days before the big move from Long Island to Virginia.  He was scanning what was left and we were deciding what to leave for the new owners (*read* crap we did not want to move 400 miles).  We glanced at the far corner which housed about six snow shovels; plastic ones, aluminum ones, scoops shovels, flat shovels.  And we laughed.  And we decided those were so not needed where we were going.  Richmond had seen like five inches of snow in about 10 years.  Ha ha ha.   Laugh Laugh Laugh. Mother Nature got the last laugh.

This weekend marked our THIRD “8 plus inches of snow” storm since we have moved here.  THIRD.  And we don’t have a snow blower.  Because they don’t even order those in inventory at Lowe’s here.  People don’t even have salt and sand-they use cat litter.  And can I tell you how long the driveway is?  Well when you are shoveling it it feels NEVER ENDING!  But alas, there was nothing sweeter than waking up Saturday morning to my dude saying, “Get up Mommy!  Grandma says we are going to make pancakes and the snow is falling!” Adorable.  So here again are MORE pictures of Pres in the snow.  I swear it feels as if we live in Vermont.  And thankfully since Pres is small, the snowpants Melski bought him two years ago still fit, albeit a lot tighter, but at least that kept him warmer than the sweatpants/windpants combination.  Notice though we have no snow boots for him, just rain boots, but they did the trick!

Here are pictures of the storm in progress.  It fell at almost an inch an hour.

Nothing is more amazing to me than the severe clear blue sky the day after a storm.

And here are a few of us out in the snow!

And this picture was taken two days before-it was 60 and the grass was starting to get nice and green.

Well I am off to enjoy my unexpected snow day from work!!!