The Rest of January, and Snow

First off, an apology:

I left this gem out of the Trabandt Christmas post. My bad.  

The post has been duly updated, along wth a couple other good ones missed in the first edition.

Now, here we are trying on our new hats.

Anna and her friends, Da, Bear, and Potbelly Bear

For memory's sake, though, I'll note that thus far Anna has never been as sentimental or attached to her "friends" as Peter is his. Anna almost never sleeps embracing a stuffed animal, and is rather inconstant about who, if anyone, she wants in her crib. Da is the only one she actually plays with, along with another doll, given her obsession with babies. Peter, on the other hand, has a deep relationship with HopHop, RahRah, McDuff, FishFish, and Mickey, listed in order of devotion I think, with a strong emphasis on HopHop in first place. I'll do a little post about them one day while they're still in one piece.

A warm(ish) day in January: One of our hobbies, "Fishing at the Lake"

Fun day out: What goes better together than sushi buffet and the aquarium store? 

The kids didn't do a ton of the raw stuff, which I'm sure was just fine with the restaurant owners who admitted them very cheaply. Still, lots to try. 

On to the aquarium store. I guess I didn't get a ton of pics of the fish and the giant eel 

(he was pretty great), but here were some reptile favorites:

Very exciting gifts from Grandma. 

Anna and Anvika

Our big snow: 

A) The evening it started. Peter and I set off on a walk in the blizzard. 

B) The next day, helping Daddy shovel mid-snowfall

C) After the rest of the snowfall, he looked like this:

Tom was so eager to take the kids on the toboggan, but it was so deep that the only place it worked was our short little driveway after shoveling. 

Anna, completely dwarfed by the snow, was not a big fan. 

This one ventured out a little bit:

Eventually, though, a rescue was necessary.

We interrupt this post for a shoutout to the NBC Sochi Hat, everybody's favorite hat this winter. Thanks to the Trabandts for the gift! Peter wore it outside all winter, and Anna wore it inside whenever she could get her hands on it! 

Meanwhile, safe inside with hot cocoa.  

Returning from a trip out for lunch and groceries. Not that we desperately needed either, but this Mama did desperately need to get out and see the world!

My cuties. Anna will usually appropriate any article of clothing lying around. 

What else did we do?...We dyed pasta for beads. 

This next one's about the shadows 

 

 Day 4? of the snow...Tom's first day back, I think. We made the back yard, almost as deep in snow as it is wide, into snow forts. Here we go...

This happened a lot.  

So did this...

Lost boot, left. Girl more interested in snow eating, right. 

 For the life of me, I can't remember this gentleman's name. But Anna wasn't sure how long she should let him wear her scarf.