For those who don’t know, Greta and I picked a different animal for each of the kids and took a monthly picture with them next to their animal. Now that they’re all older, we’ll just be doing it yearly, but here are pictures of the three kids, through the months and years:

Corinne’s Bunny Shots
Mason’s Monkey Shots
Ethan’s Elephant Shots

Crazy!

In case you live out of state, let me give you an idea of what is happening in the Buckeye State. We have been literally buried in snow. Friday Tony decided to work from home to beat the storm. That was a good choice. By 3:30, the streets near our house were covered in thick ice. The snowy ice pellets/snow never stopped coming until near 6 pm on Saturday. I thought I heard we topped out around 15ish inches?!!? We had drifts that were over the kids’ heads. That leads to conditions like these (taken a few hours before the snow finally stopped):

Our view when we opened the garage door

The front walk

Of course the kids had to get in on the action:

Mason was excited to help Tony “shobel” the snow.

Isn’t this awesome? The kids didn’t even need a hill for sledding! They just used the bank of snow from shoveling the drive. Ha!

It also seemed a good time to introduce Ethan to snow. He kept crawling to the window to look at it, so I decided to bundle him up and go outdoors. He had socks for mittens with his hand left inside his sleeves. Two pairs of socks and boots. By the time I was done, all I could think of was Randy–”I can’t put my arms down!”

Another Christmas Story quote: “He laid there like a slug. It was his only defense.”

They didn’t last too long. The wind was really whipping around out there. They left their clothes in their wake and ran to the kitchen for some hot chocolate. Ethan crawled over to play with the little chunks of snow that came off of the boots.

Church has been cancelled for tomorrow. There is honestly a few feet of snow blocking the end of our street thanks to the many passes by snowplows. Not sure when we’ll get dug out. Meanwhile we have kids to entertain.

Ethan is bored, too. Can you tell he’s teething?

Ethan also turned six months at the end of January. He is getting around the house with ease doing the army crawl and is starting to get the hang of real crawling. He is as cute as ever. We finally had to give him his first haircut. It was scary but looks way better than the long, wispy look he had going.

Mason is starting to understand birthdays and answers with the correct age and date when you ask him about it.

As always, there are more frequent updates on Greta’s website. Feel free to check it out!

The turkey is going into the oven soon. Can’t wait to smell it cooking! All the best to you and yours!

Corinne also started preschool this past week. She modeled her backpack for everyone:

She sure is a cutie!

Click here to

Also, Mason loves to crawl into bed with Corinne. We thought this would be a rare occurrence, so we took a picture:

Turns out, he does this on a nightly basis. Maybe her bed is more comfy!

If you knew what kind of ordeal it is to cut his hair, you’d understand. At least now it will take a little longer before we have to cut it again.

(More of Mason’s haircut are also here)

First, the kids went with Greta to Hartford to help out with the Strawberry Patch. Corinne helped out at the patch:

While Mason and Papa Bill played:

I took the kids up to North Royalton, and Mason loved playing on Papa Tom’s tractor:

We also got the kids a sandbox they love:

For comic relief, here are couple pictures of Mason, turning himself into Don Juan after eating a chocolate cupcake:

Finally, just to remind everyone — the Rices are about to welcome one more into the fold: