That's what I call a BEDroom

Using a variety of pillows, foam padding, a crib mattress and crates, the kids rearranged the boys' room to extend the bed so it now pretty much takes up the entire room.

They were quite excited about the final result. I love their ingenuity. It would be nice if I could take more than a half step into the room, though. It would have been doubly nice had they cleaned the floor first, but I guess we'll just have to send one of the little ones to crawl under anytime we need something from the abyss underneath it all.

They are lucky I have so many other fires to put out first that they'll likely get to keep the megabed for awhile before I can't take it any longer and decide I need to see the floor again. 

Lots of snow

Me: Looks like we might get more snow tonight.
Sam: What?? We already have like 4 feet!
Frankie: No. We have 2 foots.
Me: You're right, Frankie. We do each have 2 feet.

I may not be keeping up on pictures, but Elena does a pretty good job now that she has a camera of her own. 

And speaking of all the snow, we've had more than our fair share of snow days and late starts/early outs. The wind chill has been cold enough to drive the kids back inside pretty quickly, but they have had fun building forts inside! (They're not so enthusiastic about cleaning up the forts when they are done.)

Here's a few shots of their latest 2-story creation (also taken by Elena):

Christmas Poems

I failed to get any pictures of our family at Xmas this year - I've really been dropping the ball on documenting anything on camera lately. I recall one of Seth's aunt, who is the 7th of 10 children telling me once that she doesn't have a single photograph of herself as a child. Now I can see why - especially considering she lived long before the age of the constantly available smartphone camera....which I don't have...which is probably part of my problem.

Our sister-in-law got a couple of pictures on our hay ride with Seth's family Xmas day so I have those at least:

And my sister got a video of the kids reciting their Christmas poems for my mom. Grandma's request for a gift this year was for all of the grandchildren to memorize and recite one poem. They all did a great job - except for Frankie. I think he finally said his poem after lots of goofing off and the cameras had been put away, but you won't get to see it.

A few are hard to hear so I added captions. They each memorized a new poem for her birthday this month as well. I wasn't there for that one, but I'll see if I can get them to recite them again on film sometime soon (don't hold your breath!)