Snow

We had snow last week. I am writing about it this week. 

Did you know a week had passed? (I was only vaguely aware!)

For the first time in at least a year, and probably the only time this year,

Hot Daddy & I shoveled snow from our driveway. 

Of course, I took my camera. Here are a few gems from the day.

Hot Daddy loves these wind chimes because they don't actually make much noise. I love the way they look against the snowy tree backdrop. I also love that I could take this picture from mostly inside the house by hanging out the back door!

Princess Pea Pod has been talking about catching January snowflakes on her tongue since we watched the Charlie Brown Christmas show this year.

She finally got her January snowflakes! 

And we finally got enough snow to make a good snow angel.

She is a big fan of snow angels!

And then it began...

the snowball showdown...

BOB AND WEAVE! BOB AND WEAVE!!!

The Other Family Member

Recently I posted that our kitty firmly believes he is human. I suppose that is not entirely true; he does stalk like the little panther he so closely resembles. Here is the squirrel stalking incident I managed to capture the other day:

We saw the squirrel nibbling happily at the bright orange bowl, and our kitty dropped down low to the floor and scurried up to press his nose quite close to the window. 

The squirrel pretended not to see him. 

Our kitty's muscles tensed. He was wound tight. 

The squirrel pretended not to notice.

Our kitty shuffled a fraction of an inch closer.

The squirrel pretended not to notice.

Our kitty nearly burst with tension.

The squirrel nonchalantly made his way to the window. I could hear him in his little squirrelly voice: "Haha! Punk! You can't get me!"

Our kitty pounced. Whack! Take that!

Both survived. The squirrel ran off to take a break before coming back to help himself to the bird seed. Our kitty had defended his home against the dastardly squirrel. Its not like he was hunting for food; he knows where food comes from.

He knows he is part of the family. He likes to hang out close to Hot Daddy when he is working.

He knows he is the family protector. (See squirrel incident above.)

He's not keen on intruders.

He should have been prepared for what followed.

 But its not all bad. When he isn't sleeping with Princess Pea Pod, he enjoys her toys.

That's the puppy bed she got from Build-A-Bear for Christmas. 

Our kitty got there before Pluppy or Caitlyn could. Puppy? What puppy?

He has been known to try to stow away in our luggage. 

He knows what it means when the suitcase is flopped across the bed.

And he thinks he's the greatest gift we've ever received.

We think he's pretty cool too. I think we'll keep him.

Bestest Friends

Princess Pea Pod has a friend we'll call LG. LG is the kind of girl who lives life in "all caps." As in "LOOK! IT'S A BIRDHOUSE!" or "COME ON! LET'S GO PLAY DRESS-UP!" LG gives great hugs, has a sweet heart, and is just about as close as I've ever seen to "If you look in the dictionary at the word 'vibrant' there is a picture of LG right there."

Vibrant: the state of being that is LG

That kid sure is fun. She is high energy, and sometimes she gets too wound up to listen.

For example, in the middle of lunch today she decided to take off the dress up dress.

She said she was putting her clothes back on, and ran off to Princess Pea Pod's room.

She did not return. It got too quiet.

I found her playing with the princess dolls. "Hey, LG, why aren't you getting dressed?"

"I can't find my shirt."

"Its right there."

"Oh, ok." She went back to playing dolls.

"LG, you going to get dressed today?"

"Yeah. I can't find my shirt."

"Its right there."

"Oh, ok." She went back to playing dolls.

"Hey, LG, where are your clothes?"

"I dunno."

Roughly twenty minutes later I had crammed the kiddo back into her clothes and she was eating lunch.

Alone.

Princess Pea Pod had already finished lunch, gotten ready for naptime, and curled up on the couch.

Still, its interesting to watch LG bounce and ping through life.

I think she only has two settings: pinging mode and sleep mode.

It's interesting to me that I can hardly remember life before LG, even though she's 9 months younger than Princess Pea Pod. These two have already had a lot of fun together.

Here are Princess Pea Pod and LG. Last January I found them sitting on the vent with their baby dolls.

They said they had taken their babies to the river and were playing at the spring.

See the twinkle in her eyes?

Too cute!

Trouble!

Both, but who cares?

So this afternoon I heard Princess Pea Pod say

"Come on! Let's hug each other! You're my best friend!"

*Sniff, sniff*

The End. Amen.

I love it!

Tea For Two... or Four

This morning our little principessa decided to have a tea party. This morning I decided to not freak out when she insisted on getting her "tea" from the bathroom -
primarily because I heard her at the sink in there. Whew!

(For the record, these pictures are from March. The sun is NOT shining today and 

Princess Pea Pod's attire is slightly more appropriate for the season.)

She poured a cup of tea for Mommy.
She poured a cup of tea for Daddy.

She stopped.

She looked around.

She puzzled.

She asked "Where's Daddy?"

Daddy left for work an hour ago.

She decided to save a cup of tea for Daddy.

She also decided to get the kitty in on the tea party. (I say "Why not!

He already insists on drinking from a cup anyway!")

I'm pretty sure he isn't even aware that he isn't human.

So she filled a tea cup and put it on the floor next to his water bowl.

I shouldn't be surprised that he drank the tea readily when it was on her table

and shunned it completely when it was placed on the floor.

Geez! Don't we know he belongs at the table with the rest of the family?!?

Tea anyone?

The Princess Dreams

Princess Pea Pod likes to tell me about her dreams, and I encourage her to. I treasure our little exchanges in the mornings after she has had a particularly vivid dream. I love the creativity and excitement in her voice as she paints the picture to share with me. However, I have been confused because she does not call them dreams. Instead, she tells me

"I had a wish last night and I remembered it!" Where in the world did she get that?

For example, yesterday she told me "Last night I had a wish that I was a princess and Daddy was a prince and we danced at the royal ball." How sweet!

Then today we were in full princess mode and I found myself humming

"A dream is a wish your heart makes

when you're fast asleep..."

OOOOH! I get it!

Princess Pea Pod wishing peacefully on vacation last summer.

Any Snow Is Good Snow

It snowed here last night. Not much... not much at all... but to our four year old it was very exciting. She woke up this morning and ran to all the windows, peering out and finally assessing that it snowed "EVERYWHERE!" She promptly began gearing up for a romp outside, then ran to the back porch to make a snow angel.

The snow angel picture was taken through the window with my phone camera. (Its too cold for this chick to be standing around outside.) This is a picture of her cute little nose peeking out of its warm, cozy place. She's standing in front of the grill, which is where she was standing when her daddy came around the side of the garage and pelted her with a snow puff. (There isn't even enough to make a respectable snowball!) Then he flipped snow off the grill and onto our principessa.

She would not be outdone! Haha, Daddy-Waddy! Back atcha!

Then Daddy-Waddy announced that he had just about had enough of this white stuff and the wind that came with it.

She sure does love that Daddy-Waddy! She likes the snow too.
(And the backyard birds like all the food she and Daddy-Waddy set out during
their morning frolic in the snow.)

Now THAT'S Resourceful

I happen to know a kid who loves to open gifts. (Who doesn't?!?)

I also happen to know a kid who loves to give gifts! She's a lot like her mother. So after all of the paper slinging and gift giving of the Christmas holiday I was a bit frustrated that our little principessa was upset that she had run out of gifts. We had a long talk about how a gift is from the heart of the giver, and we should be thankful for them without being greedy. I was really getting into a discussion about materialism and appreciation for the best gifts of all - love, friendship, grace - when she set me straight. "But Mommy, I don't want MORE, I just have fun wrapping and opening them." OH! I get it! So I asked her how she wanted to solve the problem. She decided to re-wrap her gifts so she could open them all over again, so she gathered up gift bags and went to it. Now THAT'S resourceful!

Looking Back

You know, I finally kept a resolution all year! Last year I realized that I was living every moment through the camera lens, determined not to miss a moment, but to record every event of our lives. I ended up living our moments through the pictures I took, and rarely enjoying them with my family at the time they occurred. Therefore, I resolved to live more in the moments. Looking at the number of pictures I have taken this year vs. last year, I have managed to do just that!
Having said that, here are a few glances back at our Christmas and New Year's celebrations.

There was some friendly family competition! Note to niece: I said I wouldn't put the pics on Facebook and tag you. There were no blog-related promises!
I do regret promising not to take pictures of Hot Daddy playing Just Dance 2 with his brother and all the kids. It was priceless!

Maddi, the panda, made out like a Build-A-Bear bandit! Princess Pea Pod was psyched!

Do you see that Maddi is asleep, but Princess Pea Pod is still dancing and prancing in her Snow White slippers?
She did a lot of that.
She's still doing a lot of that!

This was Princess Pea Pod's first year to really get into leaving cookies and milk for Santa. Those are some of our Cookie Day cookies.
That's a tradition we should definitely keep!

There was a lot of this. Sleeping peacefully, dreaming blissfully?
About every 30 seconds we would hear "You can tell Santa I'm asleep now!"

But she did finally give in! Thanks to a pretty rigid sleep schedule, we were able to get up at the usual time and get the camera ready before she stirred.
We know this year could be the last. We savored it!

She was even groggy enough to let me get a picture before the paper slinging began!

This little beauty is our 4 year old's first gun.
"You'll shoot your eye out." (If you can't name that movie then you seriously need to go watch  A Christmas Story. NOW! The come back and finish reading.)
It was Papaw's idea. Was I upset?
Just a little jealous that I didn't get mine until I was six!

These beauties are my cousins. I love them. They are some pretty fantastic females!

(Hey C! We'll see YOU in June!)

And THIS is the remains of an M&M cookie ice cream sandwich.
Princess Pea Pod loves them.
She ate the cookies first and scooped the ice cream out of her palm
to eat it with her fingers.
I only spazzed a little about the sticky mess.
She must be breaking me down.

What better way to bring in the new year than with loved ones we don't often see?
This side of the family lives  seh-veh-ral hours away.
We love these guys!

This is what Princess Pea Pod looks like when she's wired on sugar
(see the ice cream blob above) and wound up!
"I'm so happyyyyyyyyy!"

We had an experience with Build-A-Bear, and I learned a valuable lesson in making promises I may not be able to keep. I also learned a valuable lesson about malls in the big city. You see, I looked online to check the  hours for BABW on my handy-dandy phone. Then I told Princess Pea Pod that we could do something very special and go to Build-A-Bear with her cousin, Caitlyn. As a result, we had a very.excited.principessa.
Then we got to the mall and found all the stores closed. Including BABW. As a result, we had a very.bummed.principessa. I was in the dog house, and it was not one of those cute, foofy Build-A-Bear doghouses either. I decided to make it up by having her at the store when they opened the next morning. Again, I used my handy-dandy phone to check BuildABear.com and quickly found the local store hours. I made a plan for all of us to arrive just minutes before the store opened. The plan was executed beautifully. And then my sweet principessa ended up standing outside the store for an hour.

So what is the lesson here? When in the big city, make sure you are looking at the hours for the correct location. Apparently there are places big enough to have multiple malls.
I am shocked!

So Princess Pea Pod and Caitlyn built matching puppies. True to her style, our principessa named her puppy for a friend. The above picture shows her with Caitlyn the puppy, Caitlyn the cousin, and Dawg.