Gone Fishing

Ethan has been fixated on getting a fishing pole and having daddy take him fishing. We decided to make that the theme for his birthday party.

So of course we needed bait. The kids started by making some creepy crawler bugs.

What's fishing without worms? The kids obediently dug their gummy worms out of the cups of chocolate pudding and oreo cookies. A few of them even liked it.

The kids fished in our pond, to gather some fish stickers. Somehow we missed pictures of that.

We ate our catch. Okay, so it was chocolate cake covered in cream cheese icing. Obviously, I'm no professional, but it worked out pretty good.

And we ended the day with some present opening chaos.

I think he was pretty happy with the events of the day.

Christmas Joys

It didn't take much convincing to get the kids up on Christmas morning. And despite the look on Ethan's face, they really were excited.

Through our trip to Disneyworld and riding the carousel, Maya cemented her love of horses. This made her Christmas morning all the more joyous when she saw her rocking horse, which has galloping and horse noises and some animation of the head and tail. She has spent several hours riding her horse since. She has also loved her various dolls (her babies).

Ethan loved getting his toy tools and a new air plane addition to his train set. We had the livingroom covered with a huge setup. Luckily, we have enough trains and remotes for everyone to play because Maya refused to be left out of the fun.

Of course, a miniature city means that somebody's going to play monster and knock it down.

By mid-day, the kids had more fun than they could handle.

Todd got some gear and accessories for his new hobby. Todd managed to keep a surprise and obtained a string of pearls for Maya and I, thanks to a colleague who had traveled to China. I also got some books to complete "The Great and Terrible" series. So I've spent the last two weeks fussing over food storage, water and emergency supplies after reading about potential events in the last days.