Snow

This morning we work up to 14 inches of snow. We were hoping that Jay would have a snow day but because the snow had stopped before dawn, he got out of bed and shoveled the snow. It took Jay about 2 hours to shovel all of the snow before he headed off to work.Amy stayed inside the warm house with Chase checking on Jay periodically throughout the morning.

Vacuuming At The Grandparents

Sunday afternoon we went to Griff and Barb’s house to celebrate Gwen birthday. Chase has a lot of toys to choose from when he is at their house. Today’s favorite toy was the play vacuum cleaner. He vacuumed the living room, the hallway and the front room before crashing to the floor by the sliding glass doors.

If only we could get Chase to use our real Rainbow vacuum cleaner. Someday that day will come, and we cannot wait!

Modeling After His Peers

Saturday night we had several of our friends over. While the adults were talking, the kids had a lot of time to play together. First they played with the toys on the carpet.
Caden and Luke then moved into the kitchen where they proceeded to race the cars on the floor. Chase quickly picked up on how much fun that was and he started to model them.

Amy had to get a video of Chase learning the best way to race cars.

Reading Time

The past several days, Chase has shown some interest in reading. He loves his chair and every now and then he will grab a book, hop up into the chair and read...
for a few seconds. Then he has to find something else to explore.

Sometimes he grabs a book and sits in the next best place, the Lego table.

Sometimes he doesn’t even grab a book, but instead gets up to date with current events by reading the newspaper.

And still other times he just sits with daddy while they read about current events on the World Wide Web...Daddy on the computer and Chase on his "Smart Phone", I mean Leapfrog Learning Phone.

Eating With A Fork

This morning Chase enjoyed some play time in the cabinet. If you have not tried it, clanging pots and pans sounds awesome early in the morning.
For breakfast, Chase was eating some toast and we have been working on his fork skills. Today he finally understood how to work the fork.

We are not sure what to make of the grunting sounds heard at the 30 second mark, but if you have any suggestions, please be sure to let us know.

Chase has the spoon down and now the fork, but we think that we will wait a few years before we introduce the knife.

BOO BOO

Today Chase got his first really big boo boo. Thankfully he was not in our care at the time or we would have felt really bad. After work, Jay went to pick up Chase at a friend’s house. When he walked in to the house, he found out that Chase had fell a half an hour earlier and that he had quite a big bump on his forehead. It turns out that Chase was very unlucky because he hit a coffee table and the only part of the coffee table that was not padded were the corners. This is exactly where Chase hit.

Being that Chase is an active boy, we think that there may be many more bump and bruises along the way. Hopefully Chase will NOT be like Jay and we will be able to keep him out of the emergency room getting stitches.

Feeding Time

Tonight Jay was eating his dinner, and as usual Chase was begging for some of his food. We put some Cheerios on Jay’s plate and when Chase begged, Jay gave him some. Baby saw that Chase was successful in begging, so he then decided to beg Chase for some Cheerios. Chase gave in but felt the need to feed Baby by hand. Baby took the food and Chase laughed and laughed and laughed.
Check out the video. So funny!

Amy Goes Back To Work

We tried to figure out a way for Amy to stay home with Chase, but right now is not the best time for that. Although Amy was extremely sad to leave Chase and go back to work, he will be in great hands. Amy’s sister, Gwen will be watching Chase when we are at work and we knew that he would have a lot of fun playing with his cousins, Braydon and Addison. We were right.

Hopefully he does not get too accustomed to Braydon and Addison and start asking for a brother or sister.

Super Hero New Years

This year marked our 10th annual costumed New Year’s Party. The theme for the party was "Super Heroes".
Jay used this photo to show all the traits of a super hero. Throughout the evening, we played several games that utilized these traits. The goal was to find out who was the greatest superhero of all time.

The turnout this year was a bit on the low side, but we still had a great time. The guests included:

The Davis’

The Derstein's

The Defazio's

The Michalak's

The Shank's

The Schreier's

Mike Burn and Shannon Kearney

(No photo)

And Us.

The kids also got dressed up and played in rooms throughout the house.

While we waited for evertone to arrive, we enjoyed some super hero food.Before the games started, the guests enjoyed some social time.

The first game was called Toddler Theater and it tested the traits: Intelligent/Earns Respect. Jay recorded his nieces and nephew saying 20 lines from super hero movies. These recordings were played and the guests had to guess the name of the movie.

The next game was called “Ice Toes Challenge” and it tested the traits: Athletic/Has a Weakness. Jay filled a baby pool with several bags of ice, 100 marbles and water. Each guest was given 1 minute to remove as many marbles as possible from the tub, using only their toes.

Check out Amy's record time.

The kids even had an opportunity to play.

The next game tested the traits: Determined/Uses gadgets/Has a goal. The guests were broken into groups. The goal of this game was to remove a cork from a wine bottle using the items: Popsicle sticks, tape, paperclips, scissors, rope, clothespin, cup filled with a small amount of H2O, screwdriver, straws, and toothpicks. The only rule was that they could not break the bottle or damage the cork in any way. They were given 15 minutes to complete the task.

This was the moment that the first group successfully removed the cork.

The next game was played using the game Lightning Reaction Revenge and it tested the traits: Strong/Brave/Special Powers. Jay had purchased this game several months ago and was looking forward to seeing it in action. A bracket was filled out and each super hero went head to head. To start each round, the center button of the game was pressed. The game made an eerie sound which continued until the sound stopped and the light turned from red to green. The last player to press the button received an electric shock. Also, if they pressed the button too early, they also received a shock.

Congratulation to the winner, Dave Defazio!

The last game tested the trait: Role Model. The guests were given 15 minutes using only Playdoh to create a model of anything Superhero-ish. The results were pretty cool.

Everyone voted and the best model was created by Pete Shank.

The last voting of the evening was to find out who were Super King and Super Queen. After the votes were tallied, the winners were Sarah Davis as “Mange” and Shann Davis as “Absorbo”.

Finally, after all of the tokens from all of the games were counted, the winner, and the greatest superhero of all time was discovered. Congratulations to Shann Davis.

The only thing left to do was to wait until midnight so that we could welcome in the New Year.

We are not sure how she did it, but Avery Derstein even managed to stay up to see the ball drop.

The party was once again another success and we cannot wait to do it again next year.

Happy 2011!