New playground

Our county has one of the country's highest number of parks and playgrounds. There are so many near our home that if we hit a new one every weekend, it would take months to play at each of them. On Saturday, Patrick took the kids to one of them to help Will use up some energy.

Will had to take his trucks with him, of course. So in between the jungle-gym stuff, he'd race over to the wood chips for some "hard work Dad."

Will is captain courageous on the playground. He tried everything at least once but he gravitated back to this climber time and again to get to the highest slide. Hopefully he won't inherit Patrick's fear of heights.

The girls approved of Will's fun...

Will says "Hi!"

January 22: Sledding with Will

We got an inch of snow Friday night and some freezing rain after that so the ground was nice and frozen all weekend. Patrick and Will ventured out to the sledding hill at the end of our street for Will's first sledding adventure.

Will loved getting all bundled up and out of the house (without his sisters). Check out his cool boots and snow pants.

Daddy and Will slid down together from the very top of the hill. Daddy had to apply the brakes (his feet) near the bottom to keep them from flying across the next street and into the park. Will screamed like a little girl near the bottom and then erupted into laughs and cries for more!

Will got to go down the bottom part by himself a couple of times after Daddy made the mistake of letting him go most of the way down alone. Check out the video for that disaster (Patrick dove into a wet ditch to stop Will from crossing the street....).

Stand by me

The girls are now officially a hand-full. They can crawl properly now, and quickly too. Their new trick is to follow Patti to the kitchen so the once-retired kitchen gate is back in action to thwart them.

Stella and Maggie have been pulling themselves up on anything they can and standing longer and longer each day.

They stood on the couch and watched the flurries (all five minutes of them) this week...

And, of course, Will. He does his best to see that Maggie and Stella don't stand too long.