Gingerbread BlockParty!

OK, it's a little odd, but my cousins Jeni & Glen have a tradition of making and decorating gingerbread houses after Christmas. Usually the sweet construction activities occur on New Years Eve, but this year to fit everyone's schedules it was a few weeks later. No matter! We have found that if you ask kids (big and little) if they would like to play with frosting and candy for an afternoon, the answer is always "yes!," no matter what day it is. Probably would work in the dead of summer too...

Jeni baked up a subdivision's worth of gingerbread walls and roof sections, made up some "spackle" and we all got to work. As usual, it's a comedy of errors trying to get the houses to stand up straight, or stand up at all, sometimes. Then comes the fun part- candy decorations.

We tried to keep Ciara and Aiden's candy consumption to a reasonable level, and after awhile they did get bored of construction and switched to playing with Ciara's toys. I, on the other hand, ate WAY too much candy and had a serious tummy ache on the drive home. I don't think I have felt that miserable in a long time... you think I would have learned that lesson when I was three, huh?

The finished products!

Here we go again...

With any luck, we will have a new little one in the Deegan household this summer! It took us quite awhile to be "ready" for this again, given the last pregnancy with Aiden and the several months I spent in the hospital with that one. And I can't say we will really ever be "ready" but we're taking this one day at a time. So far, so good... I have had a "preventative" cerclage surgery which will hopefully prevent pre-term labor, and we will be visiting the OBs at Dartmouth-Hitchcock very frequently to keep a close eye on things. It's still anyone's guess whether I will end up on bedrest, but if so I hope it can be in my own house! It's a stressful time for us, but we are trying to keep everything in perspective- hopefully about 6 more months of stress and worry and probable inconvenience, which is a very small price to pay for a new family member :)

Not for the Faint of Heart...

Last Hurrah

We really didn't think we'd make it to Florida this year, but as it turned out we had a small window of opportunity, a little less than a week, and we took it. A last hurrah for awhile, so to speak. It was wonderful to feel the warmth of the sun again and visit with Mom, Dad, and also Grandma Rising. We didn't tell Aiden where we were going until we arrived, which worked perfectly- he was so excited for each "surprise" - flying in an airplane (he really didn't care where to) then getting to ride in a new (rental) car and finally arriving at our destination.

It wasn't really warm by Florida standards (60s and low 70s) but I think Aiden spent the entire time in the water. He was so happy to just be out there. No one but Timber wanted to go with him though.

Andy, Mom, Aiden and I did a day's driving tour of the Everglades and saw lots of cool wildlife. Birds, of course, but Aiden was most impressed with all of the large gators.

We also went to a cool Butterfly Conservatory in Key West. There were thousands of colorful butterflies and birds flitting around. Andy went nuts and got some really great photographs of butterflies. Here are just a few below.

It had been really cold (just at or above freezing some nights) for a long stretch before we arrived - 11 days - which was the longest cold snap in at least a century apparently. When we drove through agricultural areas, you could see that all the crops were brown and frost burnt, probably irrecoverably. And even sadder were all the reef fish and animals washed up dead on the beaches. We saw parrotfish, pufferfish, moray eels, angelfish, tilefish, grunts, jacks, and even a green sea turtle lifeless on the beach at Bahia Honda.

Andy and I went on the ultimate birding experience - a trip to STA 5 in Clewiston, FL. STA stands for "Sewage Treatment Area" for those of you uninitiated in South Florida water management. Everyone we told (mostly family and all non-birders) thought it was pretty amusing that spots on the monthly "STA 5" birding trip are highly coveted, since the place is otherwise off limits to the public. We were lucky to get last minute spots since our trip was fairly unplanned to begin with. It was as good as advertised. We saw TONS of wading birds and ducks, including Purple Swamphens, Limpkin, Fulvous Whistling Ducks, and Snail Kites. And it didn't even smell bad.

Wood Storks at STA 5

Sunrise near Clewiston

And the moment of zen... which will have to last us another 5 months til it warms up in NH...

Skating into the new year...

One of the blissful frustrations of childhood, at least in the frigid climes where we happen to live, is learning to ice skate. Blissful because every kid says they want to go ice skating (ooh, what could be more fun? Can I please, mom?) but it's obviously supremely frustrating as you watch their ankles collapse inward and their little feet step and slide backward, going nowhere quickly. And then... whump! They're on their behind again.

The Town of New London floods a small skating rink on the town green right across from our house, so Aiden has been able to go skating quite a bit lately. We started him out with those double-runner "skates" for toddlers that you strap onto your boots- they were pretty stable but they kept falling off every five minutes. So we bought him a pair of real skates of his own. One parent of a 4 year old we met on the town green rink (whose kid was zipping around like a pro, mind you) mentioned that an area rink offers free ice skating lessons to kids as young as 3, so we're planning to check that out soon. We're pretty sure it's a hockey mill to raise up new Kearsarge High School champions from scratch, but hey, if Aiden learns how to skate and never picks up a hockey stick, that's fine too. Mamoo and Dadoo are not very constructive to learn from since we either don't have skates (in my case) or have no idea where they are (in Andy's).

Since Aiden's school was on winter break for the last two weeks, we drove down to North Andover to see the Downers, Becky and Tim for a day. Abbie, Michaela, Livvy and Grayson are as fun as ever, and after Friendly's lunch (including "happy ending" desserts), gymnastics, Wii boxing and tennis, and a pizza party, Aiden (predictably) did not want to go home. Can't say I blame him... it's a tad bit more boring at the Deegan household than the Downers!

Becky holding Grayson (9 mos); the Downer's new Bernese Mtn Dog pup, Charlie

Gymnastics in Abbie & Kayla's Room

Alivia gets twirly...