It seems like Nate was baptized just a little while ago but it was all the way back in 2001. This was Nate with Mom and Dad when he was a little baby.
Today, Nate was at the same church for his first communion. He was part of a class of twelve children who completed their instructions over the last several weeks.
Nate looks like such a big boy now!
We went Down South to visit family. Here, Nate and Sean pose with their cousin at a wild animal park in Louisiana.
We also spent some time at the beach along the Gulf of Mexico. This particular beach was located in Biloxi, Mississippi.
We took a trip across the Mississippi River on a ferryboat. The grass hillside in the background is a levee. That's all that holds the river within its banks when the water rises.
Nate and Sean enjoyed climbing a tree in the backyard of the aunt and uncle's house in Mississippi. It was a great time playing with all of the cousins!
Mom had a running race in Tennessee on the way back. We got to visit the Jack Daniel's Distillery.
Finally we got back home again, with enough time to stop off at Grandpa's house on Easter.
We went to the circus over the weekend. It was nice to travel downtown for some entertainment, followed by dinner at one of the local brewpubs.
Mom got great seats for the show, only about six rows back from the action. Sean loved the acrobats and Nate loved the animals.
There was actually a much larger crowd than what it may seem in these photos. We took them a half-hour before the show started. We'd just been down on the floor, meeting the clowns, and then settled into our seats.
It's getting warmer and spring is definitely on the way, but we're still finishing up with indoor soccer season. You'd think things would have gone smoothly through the winter -- after all it's indoors -- but who would have thought that all the snow would have damaged the facility and closed it for a few weeks? So soccer season continued just a little longer, with spring soccer just around the corner.
Nate continues to play well although everyone is a little rusty. There are no practices for indoor season and they've forgotten a lot of their previous training.
Sean has a good time, too. There's a little play area off to the side where he can enjoy himself while the game goes on.
Next we dug a tunnel all the way through the pile, from one end to another like an igloo with two doors. Sean was a big help with this part because he was small enough to crawl-in and chip snow away from the back wall.
Nate wasn't as much into construction as Sean. He spent much of the time indoors where it was warm. He was perfectly happy to join in on the fun once it was completed, though! The fort is connected to various parts of the yard by dug-out paths. All of these features make it perfect for a snowball fight -- plenty of places to hide and drop out from sight. It's sure to be a good time over the next several days, and we'll need it because it looks like we might get some more snow on Monday.
The snow finally stopped and we ended up with a little more than twenty inches. That's more snow than we've ever seen here, and one of the top snows in the area's history. Funny, we thought sixteen inches a few weeks ago was a lot! It's the day after the big storm, the sun is shining and it's time for a little fun in the snow.
The plows finally got control of the larger streets. This one is a Snow Emergency Route because the fire trucks and ambulances use it, so it's first on the list of streets that get plowed. There are few cars using it though because none of the neighborhood streets (including ours) has been touched, and probably won't be plowed for days. It's a really nice pedestrian walkway, though. We spent much of the day digging from our driveway to this street so we could "escape" if necessary although we're not planning to drive anywhere for awhile.
That gave plenty of time for the kids to jump in the snow, built forts, have snowball fights with their friends, and all the other activities they might want to do after being trapped in the house for two days.
Nate built himself a little fort from the big piles of snow we shoveled while clearing the cars and the roadway around them.
Grandma and Grandpa Nick came to visit over the long weekend. They're not used to the "cold" weather and they must have thought they'd landed in the Arctic. Although there was still some ice on the river it actually got up to 50 degrees that day. We thought it was almost a tropical heat wave -- it rarely gets that warm in the middle of January -- but tell that to the snowbirds!
We simply couldn't waste such a beautiful day indoors so we took everyone out to Roosevelt Island. This is the marsh on the lower end of the island near the Interstate bridge. It looks so much different in the winter. Everything in the background is green at other times of the year including the tidal mudflats that are filled with cattails and swamp grasses. It looks barren and empty in January.
Grandma spent most of her time in a sweatshirt and under a blanket. Luckily Sean was there to snuggle up for extra warmth.
Nate couldn't let Sean get all the attention, though!
