Movin' on up

It's Winter break, my faithful readers. That means 9 days (or 108 daylight hours) of "something to do" to be filled. The weather stinks - too cold to play outside and when it does get warm, the two feet of snow plus massive drifts and plow banks that have turned to SOLID ICE make it not such a fun place to play. We have been forced to stay inside and in hopes of avoiding 108 hours of technology / tv, we busted out all the awesome board games we got this past Christmas from our mom and pop toy store - and lemme tell ya, they don't disappoint. Today's game of the day was "Hoot, Owl, Hoot" where all the players work as a team to get the owls back to the nest before the sun comes up. Our neighbors must have been wondering what all the 'hooting and hollering' was all about because we played it ALL AFTERNOON and were screaming up a storm for those owls to survive... The best part of it all, while Em was taking a bath tonight, Ben got a piece of my printer paper and drew out his own version of the game even cutting out game pieces to make it look right. This kid is one amazing thinker / designer - not that I want to rush the years, but I am fascinated to know what he grows up to be!

Speaking of amazing males, Daddy got his creative cooking on and cooked up this octopus into the most amazing salad the other night. Emma chowed it, Ben wanted nothing to do with it...

That would be the female offspring hand on the bottom helping Daddy.

We got the confirmation today that the Bungalow is all ours from March 15th onwards. Yahoo! We are planning to move boxes in from 3/18 to 25ish, then the big furniture the last few days of the month.  Gramma Lou has awesomely rearranged her schedule to occupy the kiddos for a few days while we make that move happen so I am confident it will be a smooth transition. Emma has already requested a hot pink shaggy area rug for her bedroom - we even found it on Home Depot's website, so if any of you happen to know the Easter Bunny, tell him where he can pick it up so the girl will be happy.

Speaking of the girl (and her dog)... I'm trying to figure out how to make the move UNstressful for the dog. Dodo is old and crotchety. He has separation anxiety and is just a pain in my butt because I am not a dog person. When we leave him alone in the penthouse, we have to barricade the kitchen and close off doors and put the chairs on the sofa and, freakin' seriously, go through so much just to run to the supermarket to grab milk. It's easy enough to do in the penthouse because it's small, but the bungalow is big - too big to Dodo-proof, which means I have been scouring the internet for a giant dog crate because even though the beast is 10 years old, I am determined to crate train him so I don't have to do that anymore. Crazy? You tell me, dog lovers...

She never pays attention to the dog yet insisted I take this picture - go figure.

Speaking of hairy beasts - for some reason our barber (Daddy) is refusing to trim Ben's hair - he is insisting that if I won't let him buzz Ben's head again, he will simply let it grow into your favorite 80s metal band lead singer's style.

I look like Emmet from the Lego movie with my crazy helmet of hair...

I found him sporting this look yesterday - maybe I should have texted the pic to Daddy, maybe then he will get on the barber's back to get the trim going lest his son start looking like a bad B 80s movie star...

No one puts Baby in the corner.