Kitchen Update

Ratchet smiling for the camera - had to include it!

Dad and Mom have been working hard on our new kitchen this week. After completing all the electrical and framing they hung the drywall over the old soffits. After taping and mudding it was finally the time we had been waiting for.....

A trip to Ikea!! We were great helpers measuring for the new cabinets. When we got tired of that we checked into the playcenter so the parents could choose cupboards in peace.

After a long morning of shopping we were starved so we headed to Claire's favorite, Bob Evans for lunch.


Building a new kitchen is exhausting!

I Love Science!

This week we met up with our friend Lily for a great playdate at the science museum. Arriving at 10am we refused to leave until 3pm, when we were completely exhausted.
We saw a weather show and made clouds!

Claire making a water tornado.

Water! Sarah thinks the fairies made them.

More water. They love the water areas the most. Next time I must remember to pack so extra clothes.

Giant building blocks.

Babies! You can take the babies to the doctor and they have real band-aids which kept Sarah enthralled.

The current special exhibit is called 'Grossology" and it is all about the 'gross' parts of the human body. It had exhibits about farts, burps, poop, snot and barf. Yippee! Needless to say the girls loved it.

Giant operation!

Making fart noises - too funny!

Claire being 'pooped' out the rectum slide. They thought it was wonderful.

Standing inside the giant nose. The girls had such a great time we decided to invest in a family pass for the year so we can spend lots of time at COSI!

Claire's Comic Debut

Every Sunday Dad reads the comics from the paper to the girls.
This inspired Claire to write her own comics. Mom obtained special permission to share them with the world, so please enjoy Claire's debut comics.

Various Valentine's

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

This week we have been making valentine's and playing around the house. One of my favorite things is to dress up like Princess Leia and have a star wars light saber battle with my dad. Lots of fun!

I have been using my Jedi skills to learn as well. Mom got me some new math and reading learning books, which I finished in 2 days. Good thing she bought the dry erase kind I can do more than once. Bring on something more challenging for me you must!

On Saturday we had my friend Jonas over for a little ravioli dinner. I read him a story and gave him a valentine, although it was Sarah who kept giving him valentine kisses.


On Valentine's morning mom set up a little scavenger hunt and hid little treats and presents all through the house. She is going to have to hid better next time, we found them all in about 1 minute!

We opened our valentine's and gave kisses all around!

Ratchet loves the new valentine toys we picked for him.


The cat was exhausted after a morning of playing.

We got an awesome Barbie sing-along dvd for valentines. We promptly watched it and sang along twice for mom and dad's enjoyment.


The big news this weekend was that mom finally talked dad into a kitchen remodel. Well, not so much talked into, more like she just started cleaning out the cupboards and taking things down.

Goodbye ugly brown useless posts, we won't miss you.

We were debating whether to take out the soffit that ran around the kitchen. We decided to give Sarah the choice. As you can see, she said remove it. They are gone and the good news is other than some wiring and one small pipe there wasn't much in there so no major crisis to start the project with.

Next up, drywall and a new window, then we can start installing new cabinets. We will keep you posted with progress pictures soon.

Snow Day

Last week we got a nice snow storm with a good 12 inches of snow. For the first time we can remember a snow plow actually came down our street! After shoveling, our banks are almost as high as the mailbox.

As soon as the snow started falling we were ready to hop on our new sled. Grandpa & Grandma bought it for us for Christmas, but there was no snow to use it on. I helpfully pulled Sarah around the backyard while dad built us a snow ramp.

With the ramp ready it was time to toboggan down the backyard over and over and over again.


Sarah and I took turns and had a nice run going all the way down to the fence.

Yipee!!

All that fresh air tuckered us out so we decided to watch Hockey Night in Canada, Toronto vs Ottawa.


3 Toronto fans and 1 Ottawa fan in this house.

Yeah, we're #1. We brought our good luck to the game and broke Ottawa's 12 game winning streak. I learned how to trash talk as well - Ottawa is going home crying, your going down!

Making Pasta

What better to do on a cold day in January then have a family day of making pasta. This weekend we got busy and made a big batch of spinach pasta and carrot pasta.

After expertly rolling the pasta dough out (Dad is getting really good at this) we made them into ravioli.

Everyone likes using the roller!

We made a spicy black bean filling and a cheese filling.

By the time we got to the carrot dough, we were having fun and starting to act a little kooky.

3 hours and 90 ravioli later we were done.

The leftover pasta we cut into long noodles.

Good thing there were long noodles, because no matter how long you spent and no matter that I helped - I am still not going to eat it.