Here are some pictures of the boys out in the snow yesterday. While Deacon looks completely underwhelmed don't be fooled. The minute you'd take him out of the sled he'd cry and beg to get back in. This continued until I sent him down a hill a bit too fast and he did a roll-over, face planting in the snow. Then, he was done.
Cade had a blast sledding down the street. Although his first run almost resulted in my heart attack as he careened down the hill without any previous lesson on how to steer, slow down, or if necessary, bail out. He narrowly missed a parked truck. Whoopsie.
Give Deacon a camera and he'll entertain himself for a good 20 minutes (which is a lifetime to a 20 month old). He'll turn it on and talk into it like a phone, "Hi" "Cheese!" snap!
This goes on again and again, for apparently, 178 times. That's how many pictures we have of these images (or varieties of them).
On Friday we headed to a friend's house for "Friday Night Spaghetti Dinner" night. Before leaving, we had one of the most beautiful sunsets, the ENTIRE sky was pink. This "Friday the 13th Sunset" even made the evening news.
After having a delicious dinner with our dear friends, Bob and Karin, they pulled out a birthday cake for me. I got to blow out candles and everything!
Another great part of the evening was how well the kids behaved. It's so nice to be able to let the kids head to the basement, fairly confident that there will be no fighting, crying, mayhem. They watched a movie, read, and even had decent table manners.
This past holiday season didn't pass without injury. The first happened on Christmas day when Deacon decided to pull down one of the stockings, with it the iron stocking anchor. This resulted in a pretty good bruise on the forehead and gash on the nose.
Deacon's eating a pickle to calm down :)
Two days after Christmas Jared took the boys to Spokane for a day trip to visit with this Brother and family who flew in from NYC. Their family had suffered from the stomach flu before Christmas and the nasty virus decided to attack everyone in it's path. Two days later Deacon was throwing up, the next day it was Cade and on New Year's Eve, Jared. By act of God I stayed well. Here's a picture of poor sick Cade:
Now all are back in working order, school has restarted and all is well again in the Miller world. Hope your holidays were healthy!
I put together a "holiday 2011" photo album on the right but wanted to post a few here as well. The kids had a great Christmas. As mentioned below, Cade got a new pet and Deacon got just about every toy in the store that makes noise. My favorite being the digger that plays a country jig every time you press it's button (thanks Uncle Stow!).
I had to put this picture here of Deacon and my Grandma Ida. Aren't they twins??!! It's crazy!
Thanks to everyone who came out to celebrate with us: My mom, dad, and grandma Ida. Jared's mom and Uncle Steve. Check out the album for more pictures :)
Meet the newest addition to the Miller family: "Scorpio" the Scorpion. For the past six months Cade has been BEGGING for a pet scorpion. Looks like Santa finally relented because on Christmas morning this little creature was wrapped with a big red bow:
I should refrain...he's really not all that little, in fact when stretched out he's about the length of my hand. This took me by surprise since I was imagining a tiny creature the size of my pinky finger. This thing reminds me of a crayfish, not an arachnid!
I guess Santa thought that it would be a pretty low maintenance pet. Give it some water, a cricket or two and call it a day. Well...it's been a bit more challenging than that. In order to maintain a warm environment we're using a heating pad as well as an infrared lamp 24/7. This only gets the environment to 65 degrees since our house is SO COLD. We're also spraying the tank with water a couple of times a day to keep the humidity hovering around 70%. He eats meal worms and crickets so we need to keep these on-hand, and alive, at the house. So in the basement we've got a "cricket cage" filled with live crickets and food to keep said crickets from croaking. Meal worms are in our basement fridge. Yuck.
Scorpio comes out to play (well, prey) at night so that's when the action happens. Most days he's snoozing in his log house so it makes "showing him off" to friends a little underwhelming. But it is quite a show when the sun goes down. Here's a short clip:
Let me know if you want to come over for a live show :)
