Airplanes

Today was one of those unusual winter days when the blanket of cold lifts just long enough to seem almost like spring. Dad took Sean and Nate outdoors to enjoy our good fortune. We headed down to the airport to watch the jets land.



Sean has had a recent fixation on airplanes the last couple of weeks so he was particularly excited. He even brought along his toy jet to compare to the real thing. Lots of other people were milling around the park so we were lucky to get a picnic table to stand on while the planes roared by.



Nate was particularly thrilled. We got to see lots of different airlines until it started to get close to dusk.



We moved to the far side of the park where it lines up directly with the runway. Here the jets went directly over us! That was a little too much for Sean, though. He kept worrying that they might bump his head. Dad took him back to the side where he felt a little more comfortable.



All-in-all, a great day for plane spotting.

Christmas Morning

We all got up early on Christmas morning to see what Santa delivered. Nate and Sean were supposed to stay upstairs until 8:00 and they almost made it. When they couldn't stand it any longer, mom let them run down into the playroom where Santa had left his gifts.


Nate says he knows Santa is real because the cookies and eggnog set out the night before were all gone the next morning. Plus, how else would Santa know exactly what Nate wanted?


Sean needed mom's help with the first present but he quickly caught on. He was ripping open packages in no time!


Sean's big fixation this year is airplanes. Luckily he got the Plan City airport complete with turboprop and a little guy to fly it. Sean flew him all around the house that morning.


In the afternoon we went out to visit with Grandpa and Grandma Pat. They had the usual Christmas Tree that reached nearly all the way up to the 2-story ceiling. Everyone had a great time.

Christmas is for... Dinosaurs?

We had to get out of the house for awhile after so much "togetherness" during the holidays. What could possibly be better than a trip to the local dinosaur park? It's a good thing these creatures aren't around today or the whole family could have been swallowed up in one gulp.


OK, so it's not entirely the land of dinosaurs. They also had an ice-age mammoth, and more inexplicably, a giant octopus and a King Kong. The kids didn't seem to care so much about the historical accuracy, though.



Nate particularly enjoyed this epic battle between a menacing meat-eater and a sauropod frozen in time. At first he was a little nervous about entering the park but soon warmed up as he learned that nothing was going to jump out at him.




This seaborne creature looked a lot like what the Loch Ness monster should look like, assuming it had washed ashore to an inland field in the middle of winter.