Leaps and Bounds

Patrick seems to be doing a lot of growing up recently. A few weeks ago he jumped off the high dive:

Yesterday he read me an extremely detailed story about the Steelers playing a football game for literacy day: 

So it was even more bittersweet when on a recent Saturday Patrick and a friend asked me to take them to Blue Park, where they swung on the swings and raced around like the big little kids they are: 

Pinewood Derby Champs!

Patrick and The Golden Bear came in second place overall in the Pinewood Derby today!

Snow Fun

Huge breakthrough for this year's ski trip: the boys skied down the hill and hopped on the lift themselves! Madeline suffered a case of "cold toes," but everyone had fun tubing the next day.

On the lift!

Snowplow

Snow bunnies

More snow bunnies

Tubing

Ready to race

The gang

Winter Scenes

Skating with Cousin Soph

Frozen Karaoke

Taking a spin

Hosting a "sale": paper airplanes for $3 each!

Big Game

Patrick and Coach Daddy

Patrick's first basketball game was one to remember: he got the tip-off, friend Ben scored the first basket, Patrick played amazing defense, and the team won 16-4.

Patrick makes a basket during warm-ups.

Patrick gets the tip-off!

That's him guarding the kid with the ball. We don't know where he learned this.

Snow Days

We're on our third morning of two-hour delays, and our third morning of snowball fights with Patrick.

Adventures with Indy

The kids discovered Indiana Jones when we were in Disney World and we've had a really fun time watching the four movies with them. Patrick got a set of Raiders of the Lost Ark action figures and several books for Christmas, and he did extra chores in order to be able to buy his own Indiana Jones hat. He's wearing it here while watching The Temple of Doom.

His reading report on an Indiana Jones book below, "my favorite movie."