It's been awhile.....

I'm finally posting after many colds, family adventures and travel!  We've all been slammed by a never-ending  cold/cough/sore throat and in the middle of it I had two back to back work trips.  Leaving Carlos sick with three sick kids was a recipe for disaster, so luckily my mom came down to help. Of course we infected her too...No good deed goes unpunished!

A few weeks ago the kids had 'museum night' at school and it was amazing.   Diego's class had done a walking tour of all their classmates' houses and then created a mural of their rowhouses   Each student  decorated his/her own house and some were identifiable and others less so - like Diego's!  As you can see, he did do black stairs and a purple door...a bit abstract.  Some girls, on the other hand, were using rulers to make perfect lines to represent siding!

Charlie's class did a market place where they "sold" items to parents.  Charlie and his friends did the "healthy stand" with salad and vegetables.  They drew pictures of the vegetables, labelled and priced them!  The purpose of the exercise was to have the kids add up the prices and charge the parents the total.  really cool.

There were other school events like the read-along and character parade. Principal Young was the Cat in the Hat - not the best performance, but the kids were cute.  Diego was the pickle from the Hungry Caterpillar.  Diego loves pickles so it was the perfect role!  I went with Diego on a field trip to Capitol Hill Arts Workshop and he loved the ceramics portion  - he was a natural (less so the dancing part)!

We went on a weekend ski trip with my brothers and it was so fun.  the mountain wasn't much of a mountain, but Charlie was in heaven.  Not only did he get to hang out with Wallis and Eli, but he got loads of attention from his uncles.  He was especially smitten by big Charlie and his girlfriend Alex.  He only wanted to ski with the his uncles and cousins (not his dad) and when we got home he wrote a letter to Alex telling her how much he missed her.  Diego didn't go skiing, but he did go tubing and then he and I broke into a nearby hotel pool to go swimming.  The clientele at the pool were....interesting.  One guy was completely covered in tattoos which amazed Diego.  Diego had a temporary tattoo that he wanted to show the guy so we asked to compare tattoos.  The guy was so sweet and acted excited to see Diego's tattoo.  He did then offer to give Diego a ride on his back across the pool which both Diego and I politely refused (I wasn't entirely sure he was sober).  

We found a great train watching spot behind Union Station.  I loved that it was an activity that all three kids could enjoy!

Enjoying a nice spring day before more winter hit us AGAIN:

The next day looked like this....

Little League! I can't believe my child is old enough (and interested enough) for Little League!!  well, actually I lied about his age so that he could join his friends in Little League.  T-ball was getting too boring for him.  They had a "workout" day in which they actually had numbers placed on there backs and parent coaches walking around taking notes.  no wonder they talk about things getting competitive in Little League! Luckily Charlie just had fun and is excited to start playing next month.

How much do you think the boys enjoyed having tractor next door digging up the neighbor's front yard?  Answer: a lot more than me!!

Sofia hasn't been feeling well and is refusing to eat solid food.  She only wants to nurse.  Is it teething? Is she protesting my last trip? Is it a weird developmental thing?  It's driving me crazy!

More Snow Days

We've had a lot of snow days this year.  Although I can't stand winter, I do secretly enjoy the indoor family days.  On Thursday we got enough snow that Sandra couldn't make it here so we played and played (aka trashed the house) all day.  We started the day by finding some extra wall paint and pieces of wood from the third floor construction zone and the boys went to work painting.  From there they created a fort in the living room, but then decided a mash pit might be more fun.  They found everything soft in the entire house - every pillow, every cushion, every blanket and every stuffed animal and dumped it on the living room floor.  They launched themselves from the barren sofa into the pillow pit.  We made a fire and toasted marshmallows.  Diego couldn't remember the word marshmallow so he kept referring to roasting "marshmush" or "mushrooms."  S'mores will now forever be marshmush around here.  And of course there was sledding and snowman building/destroying.

the living room mash pit

We thought we'd take advantage of the snow to go skiing over the weekend.  Carlos found a random place in WV which felt like another world, but the people couldn't have been nicer and the kids loved it.  They loved everything - right down to those crappy little machines that swallow your quarters and only sometimes spit out terrible trinkets and trash.  Charlie put his plastic "I'm-needlessly-killing-the-environment" toys into his treasure box when he got home.  We rounded Diego's age up a bit so that we could all go tubing on Saturday.  I was certainly more scared than they were.  While Charlie and Carlos went skiing on Sunday, Diego, Sofia and I spent the day in the pool, running the hotel hallways and clearing the outside furniture of snow....It was a fun time with the exception of all sleeping in one room - mainly because of Sofia.  For some reason she is nearly impossible to sleep with in the same room.  She was literally up from midnight to 3am wanting to play.  Only when I was absolutely sure that I was going to have a nervous breakdown did she finally pass out....

Sofia in her bathing suit!!!  she looked so cute. Diego took this photo

Our version of air hockey

For Valentine's day the kids tore open cards from Grandma and then used the stickers she sent to make us cards :).  They also got to work making and decorating cookies for Carlos (and themselves).   

Charlie dressed himself and this is how he came down for Valentine's Day

 

 It is a weird feeling to see my children surpass my current ability to do something.  Granted, I am totally "unmusical" so it's not very hard to surpass my abilities on the piano....Nevertheless, it was fun to watch Charlie play piano with his teacher last week: http://youtu.be/o-rWyHlysLg (also features Sofia grunting in the background).

A few more pictures of our indoor activities.

Watching the Olympics -- and ready for those ski jumps

Family Time

We had a nice and super family-centric weekend.  We went to the Georgetown men's basketball game at the Verizon Center to cheer on Diego's classmate's father who is one of the coaches.  It was us and 13,000 other people there to cheer them on.  I didn't realize how popular these games were.  Despite our nose bleed seats, we had a lot of fun.  Charlie was super into the game, but Diego lost interest after a  half-hour and wanted to wander the corridors.  Fortunately Georgetown won.  

From there we went around the corner for Chinese food and then rounded out the experience by stopping by for the $5 psychic reading.  Although we were in Chinatown this woman was not asian and when she came to the door Carlos and I had the same impression - maybe this was a front for a prostitution ring.   She closed the door on our faces, scurried around inside and then a few minutes later opened the door again and let Carlos in first with Charlie.  Diego and I had to wait in the "waiting room" which consisted of 2 chairs in the middle of a staircase.  As the door closed, Diego looked up at me, shook his head and declared "I am NOT going in there."  For $5 she did a brief palm reading.  It turns out Carlos is going to live until he is 87 and that there is a woman in my life who is very jealous of me!!  The thought of that cracks me up.  I thought for sure Carlos paid her extra to tell me positive things about him because when I walked in with Diego (who was convinced only after I promised a treat) she told me that my husband's business will do well within 5 months.  too funny.  He insists that he didn't feed her stories to tell me....

On Sunday Charlie "chefed" with me for a while and then decided to take on his own project.  He got every spice out of the cabinet, requested flour, oil and even opened up a random jar of tamarind, added some peanuts and mixed everything together.  He got out the tart molds, we sprayed them with pam and he filled them with his special sauce.  I cooked them at 350 for about 40 minutes and viola!  We even tasted them.  Not as disgusting as I would have thought watching what went into it.  He made a recipe as well in case he wants to replicate the magic another time....

 One of the highlights of this weekend was that we got Mark to bake some bread for us.  Perhaps this is what inspired Charlie's baking - look at these beauties:

Sofia is starting to have such a big personality and, now that she can get around, she loves to be part of the action.  If she hears the boys in the living room, she'll take off and scamper through the dining room (she takes a short cut under the table) and hurries right into their business.  She likes to stand at the train table, open the drawer and systematically put everything she finds in there into her mouth.  Often she'll crawl away with some toy sticking out of the side of her mouth.  This weekend she figured out she could go through the tunnel that Diego and Charlie like to use for their forts.  She spent the next 20 minutes crawling from one side to the other and back again.  pure magic to her.

I realized that I am almost incapable at getting upset at Diego. I'm not sure why, but probably a third is because I feel badly about him being stuck in the middle, a third is because he is so adorable and a third is because when I do tell him to stop doing something he gets so sad and retreats into his room.  He randomly says the sweetest things; this weekend he turned to Carlos and said "Daddy, you are my BEST friend in the whole world."  And other times he'll just randomly declare his love for us.  I worry that, because I'm not very strict with him, he won't concentrate very hard; when we try to practice his letters he loses interest halfway through the alphabet.  I'm hoping that he'll get Ms Santora for kindergarten who is quite strict and that she'll whip him into shape given that I am incapable....

Diego after 4 rounds of Hoot Owl Hoot this weekend