Happy Birthday and Happy New Year!

Welcoming the new year with Uncle Mike in town, and celebrating Hugo's 10th Birthday.  As Hugo says, "This is the most awesomest day!" (And, yes, he wanted vintage luggage for his birthday 😀.)

A few Christmastime images

Some pics from the past week...with Uncle Mike visiting!

Walking NYC at Christmastime

Our tree is up!

And decorations, too!

keepin' busy

Dash's kids bike finally bit the dust so we moved him to Jen's foldable for the winter months.
We will look into cooler bikes in the spring. But, hey, he looks good on this bike.

Hugo is also getting in on the biking action.  Although, it's been a much slower process
 to get him to focus and commit to learning it.

The Dash! Faux-hawk-ing it

Teaching Dash to play crib! I am not pegging his missed points yet :)

Dash, finishing our leftover coffee in the AM. 

Hasn't been the best weather around here. Here we are waiting for
the school bus at 6:30am on a school day.

Speaking of weather.  We had 6.5" of snow one day! It was mostly gone the next day.

One of good-ole Mr. Diego. If he's standing here looking 
at me like this, he probably whining and wants something

A few autumn moments

Hugo asked one morning if I could buy him better
jumping shoes so he could jump and touch the moon :) 

Cutting veggies for soups

The other day, getting ready for school, they came out together in the same shirt.
A rare moment of morning sympatico for them :)

Ready for Halloween as space soldiers.  As Jen said, they dress
as characters from video games they aren't allowed to play yet.

End of the trick-or-treating...with a friend.

Playing Battleship with Dash...very serious stuff.

Halfway through the fall, and we've barely had any "true" fall days.  Mostly warm and humid through the month of September.  Just posting a few images from since mid-September. :)

The boys wanted a photo in front of this old car, I am not sure why.  It reminded me some of the first car I can remember my Dad owning...same lines, but his was bottle green and a convertible.  Someone on Instagram said it looks like the "Ghostbusters" station wagon.

Coming back from a farm visit we stopped for dinner in Pawling NY. Found a neat little pub and the boys were posing with mom's beer.  They tried it, though, but weren't fans.

Dash and I played our first games of chess! I dug my old set out of storage.  Anyway, the funny part of our games was the trash talking Dash was doing :).  Really?! The kid's 8! Playing a board game with Dash reminded me of playing cribbage with Nana Brown and my Aunt Nancy :).  I still have Nana Brown's old crib board, but it's tough finding anyone who wants to play crib...maybe when Dash gets a bit older.

Good friends of ours have a stake in a farmstead in upstate NY.  They host parties on the farm and it was so fun to get out of the city...chat with folks, drink a beer or two, eat good food, watch the world go by...and your kids play with fire :).  They had a bonfire.

Trip upstate, we stayed at a HoJos. They had a pool. This photo is totally posed, but I was reminded of icebergs when looking at it.  You only see the top 10% of Dash, the other 90% is below the water :)

Photo day for Hugo.  He's not a fan of button-frint shirts at all, but if he was forced to wear one, which he was, this one is his favorite.

New sweater.  Dash got his afternoon school bus and he told me that some of his friends said that he looked like he was in the army with this sweater on.  I asked him if that bothered him, and he said, no he didn't mind at all.

One of me.  No reason. We were buying costumes for the kids. Those photos are coming later in the month.