Three-year-old son

Presents to unwrap, tractor for scooping cake crumbs

Airplanes to fly, racecar for zooming along

"fancy cars" to see equal birthday fun for a three year old.

"I'm one!"

Robert Jay turned one on Sunday.

Here we are, Mikey waiting for Robbie to be up from his nap, and me in my fancy apron from Mexico, I believe.

First, presents

then the cake--yellow cake with hidden pumpkin puree and very visable polka-dots. 

Robbie dabbled in the cake at first...

and then he picked up the whole scoop of ice cream we gave him and ate it, then grabbed chunks of cake with both fists. 

It was a wonderful birthday mess, for a wonderful birthday boy.

Spring!

The kids and I got a glimpse of spring yesterday.

As Emily would say , it was "warmacito".

 Spring has not quite sprung; just the kids were springing away 

at our favorite park for climbing, jumping, and getting dirty. 

They had so much fun playing, 

and I was content to watch them and remember 

the many adventures I once had when I was in their muddy shoes.

Not Ready

I was reading the local newspaper of our soon to be home town and learned that March is the month they start enrolling kindergartners for the fall school year. When I read it, My heart skipped a beat. It can't be time to register my

 little girl for school.

But, that is what we will soon be doing. She'll turn 5 in August, and ready or not, she'll be in school 5 days a week. It's hard to believe that she is old enough! She'll soon be spending a good chunk of her day with other kids and another teacher. I wonder what cool new ideas she'll' adopt from her kindergarten buddies.

Of course, it isn't really about whether or not we're ready for her to be in school. What matters is if she is ready. And in some ways she is, and in some ways she may not be, but then again maybe there are some things she can best learn in school. I've been there once before, but this time it's all different--it's all brand new to us.

Day at the Beach

We enjoyed an unusually warm January day visiting the beach of a nearby coastal town. We ate some sandy sandwiches, found some gigantic "beached" jelly fish, and climbed the steep sand dunes.

Robbie explored the ground, and Mikey was afraid of the waves that were "coming to get us!" He played more in the parking lot mud puddle than he did at the beach.

We left early because Emily had a tummy ache. She didn't even touch her ice cream sunday that we bought on our way home. And Mikey was so exhausted, one minute he was in the car seat eating his ice cream cone, the next minute he was asleep with the ice cream cone in his lap.

Christmas morn at the Andersons

We didn't do any traveling this Christmas, so our family kept Christmas spirits high with just the five of us. We had a Christmas made memorable mostly by its simplicity. 

Roadways from Seattle to Portland were snowy the week before Christmas, but Marta braved the roads from Seattle and slid into town on Christmas Eve. We were happy to have her safely here. Thanks so much, Martina.

The pony was a last minute gift that we got for Emily an hour before BiMart closed on the 24th, as a back up because Santa's helpers (UPS) didn't get her main gift here until after the 25th.

Adam is all about whipped cream on waffles and berries for Christmas breakfast. He made sure we had all the stuff on hand for this Anderson tradition. After breakfast, Mikey moved his caravan of monster trucks, racecars, and trucks down the hallway, all together on Christmas morn.

What is this?

This, Robbie, is snow!

Our snowman has (sadly) already melted . . .