How much is that halibut in the window?

Everyone needs a hobby. Johan's latest passion is... grocery shopping. He has discovered that some grocery stores have kid-sized carts. Some even with a customer-in-training flag signaling their location (so nobody runs into them with a larger cart). The other day we spent our trip with him spending most of his time walking around in the store proclaiming, in a loud voice "I have a cart! My cart has a flag! I have a cart!...". He finished the trip asking the cashier what her name was.

Somebody has to provide the comic relief during the routine event of loading up on food!

Big Bird, the King, and I

When it rains, it pours...

We spend the weekend in the audience. On Friday night some friends endowed us with tickets to see Sesame Street Live. The boys enjoyed the antics of Ernie, Bert, Big Bird, and that blue monster. They sat quietly for about two hours, which doesn't happen very often.

On Saturday, Ericka took Mathias to see the Lion King (where photo opportunities were a bit harder to come by). It is probably a good thing we did the shows in that order. Mathias was a bit confused about the story line and thought the lionesses were bears. He was concerned that the people playing the hyenas were 'bad guys'. He liked Poomba the farting wart hog. All-in-all, he summed it up as a big WOW! It was fabulous.

Closing out the season II

Before we're ready to finally go beyond Christmas there is one more detail to, ahem, attend to... The dismantling of the ginger bread house! Yum!

Closing out the season

It took some negotiating... but we convinced the boys that Christmas is over and we should take out the tree. Once we got the process started they enjoyed taking down the decorations. Oreo, of course, has enjoyed taking ornaments off the tree for a month. But that's a separate matter.

Once we removed the decorations there was a compromise made to put the tree itself out on the deck where they can still see it. Perhaps by spring we can get rid of it altogether.