Yes that's a snowball

Guess what Jasper ate...

A TEA BAG.

Seriously. What dog eats a TEA BAG off the counter?!

She baffles me.

Contrast

We've had INCREDIBLY cold weather. As in single digit highs and below 0 lows. Brrrrrrrrr. Why does weather like this even exist?!?!

But we did get some snow, so Archer got to have his first "real" experience with snow. Last year we didn't get much snow at all, and he was too little to enjoy it. This year...

The picture speaks for itself. He LOVED the sled. And then he LOVED plunging himself into the snow. I wish I had a picture of it, but I was too busy trying to keep him sort of upright since his snowsuit inhibited his motor skills!

The big boys. B on the left, P on the right. They helped John shovel the driveway, and built a little sledding hill. My little daredevils. Bryton made it almost to the street!

And in contrast to the unbelievably cold temperatures and snow, my little lemon plant! A little piece of summer in the midst of winter. We've had a couple of lemons grow so far, but we picked them before they reached maturity to try to get the plant itself to grow a little. I think this one is actually going to ripen!

Bad Dog

I find it amusing that the most consistent word (well, words) in Archer's vocabulary are "Bad Dog" which he uses repeatedly throughout the day. Most used time of day: meal time, when Jasper is lurking around Archer's chair hoping for a handout (which she usually gets).

I still have more pictures from our trip (I know, they're never-ending), and now some snow pictures. I'm just incredibly behind. Hmmm...maybe the fact that I have 3 house-bound boys and 1 dog who refuses to go out in the snow for more than 2 seconds at a time has something to do with it. Add that to the fact that I just finished the bulk of my Christmas shopping (yay!), but I have some sewing projects on the agenda for the boys that will hopefully be Christmas presents...yeah, the blog is getting neglected.

QOTD

QOTD: "God is bigger than the boogie man...and Inspector Gadget!" -Preston

The Olympic Park

Obviously we had to make a trip to the Olympic Park since we stayed in Park City! We happened to be there when they were doing some sort of Bobsled trials, so we even got to watch a few bobsled runs. It was pretty cool to see - it definitely looks MUCH faster in real life than on TV.

P&B in a bobsled at the Olympic museum

Future Olympian?!

Watching the bobsleds. You can see the bobsled coming towards the far left of the pic. As I mentioned before, I forgot our camera (ugh) so John didn't quite have the timing mastered on the new one. Bryton was actually a little bit intimidated by the bobsleds - they were pretty loud and he didn't want to be anywhere near the track. It was pretty fun to watch them zooming past though (and he did enjoy watching them...from a distance!).

The Aquarium

Sorry for the massive amounts of "picture posts." I no longer pretend to be a scrapbooker, so this will have to do! :)
And continuing on with our vacation...

The Living Planet Aquarium. The boys loved it. John and I thought it was a bit of a rip-off. Too much money for too small of a space! P & B are into all-things-under-the-water so obviously it was a hit with them, and the $2 toy turtles that they purchased in the gift shop kept them occupied for the rest of the trip with lots of games of Hide the Turtle.

Faux-boat that they had set up on a "dock" - a lot of the aquarium seemed geared toward older kids, like the steering wheel selected different facts on a computer screen. Not exactly practical for kids who can't read, but driving the boat was exciting nonetheless!

Petting the sting-rays! This was by far the most exciting part for Preston (along with the sting-ray "sting" simulator...he seemed to think it was fun to shock himself repeatedly).

Crocodile!