Week 1, 2014

Staycations are awesome!  We started out the new year right!  A week at home, going nowhere, just having fun.  Our week has been full of pajama/dance parties, kids taking over the cooking, and good old fashioned fun, sprinkled with a bike ride or two.  

So the picture doesn't do our parties justice at all, but it's the only documentation I have of the hilariously fun pajama/dance parties that Arjen has instigated nearly every night the past week.  So much fun!  

 Gus acquired a new apron and some cooking utensils for christmas, and he was fully enjoying putting them to use one morning...

"Coffee mama!" It was really sweet.  :) 

Then there is Arjen, channeling his inner Gordon Ramsay - at least the hair, who has become the family chef the past few days, making everything from toast, to pancakes, to pumpkin "cupcakes".  He's definitely testing my creativity skills in the kitchen!  Good thing Andrew is a more than useful partner in the kitchen. He has helped Arjen progress from just dumping random dry ingredients in a bowl together ala mom's guidance (imagine tortilla chips, crumbled rice cakes and uncooked noodles), to ingeniously mixing flour and water, then adding a few other ingredients from an internet recipe to actually make edible pancakes from scratch.  Brilliant!

making toast…his first solo cooking adventure

Then there's Gus, who is finding other ways to utilize the kitchen…and yes, he's watching the Smurfs.

 And there has been a fair amount of construction this week, from "taking down the attic" to "building a new roof"…

Sawing, measuring, hammering…all were done to take down the attic...

And of course, after you take down the attic, you have to build a new roof! 

Seriously, the imagination, creativity, and memory in these kids continues to make me smile me every day!  Someone is most definitely paying very close attention to his Dad's activities, then twisting and turning them to put his own spin on things.  And #2 is just a hop, skip, and a jump behind…paying very close attention to his big brother!

And theeeen…drumroll please...Mom finally got a new (used) bike, and a bike trailer to boot!  We picked up my new bike from a bike rental shop in Napa last weekend, so of course we had to take a family ride while we were there!  It was a really great, wholesome day of family fun…that even included a little wine tasting for us big kids.  :)

First there was lunch at the fancy, delicious Bouchon Bakery

Here we come...

…and there we go!