I am so Behind

It's been a while, but we went to the Museum of World Treasures here in Wichita.

There were dinosaur bones,

and artifacts from exotic places,

but we ended up spending the most time in this huge playroom. There was a bunch of toys and a puppet show stage. The memory card on the camera had filled up before I could take photos of the kids jumping in one of those inflatables. We had the place to ourselves, and got our money's worth out of our admission fee.

In the past we had typically taken advantage of the Cessna Fitness Center's indoor pool for weekend aquatics. But we no longer have access to that place, so we got a membership to the YMCA (subsidized by Pop's work).

The location closest to our house has a very nice pool. It's just about the perfect size for our family right now. D and E had a good time for sure. One of the best things about the Cessna pool was that when we would go we would usually have it to ourselves. The Y is a different story, but we can cope.

Desmond a Pops built a modest snowman.

Emma shown here checking it out. We had fun building it, D and I, and I thought he was proud of it...he seemed to like it anyway. But the day after we built it we had a bit more snow, and while we were outside shoveling D sliced the head off of the snowman with a shovel. It was grotesque and was made even worse when he commenced to kick the head around the yard for no apparent reason other than boredom.

Our trip to Nebraska to celebrate Christmas was delayed because of the huge storms there. After they had a chance to dig themselves out we went up there for one last dose of present-opening bliss.

Desmond got a punching bag. We did get it home, but shortly thereafter he thrashed it. Luckily Wal-mart is pretty forgiving about making exchanges...Santa, for instance, has no return policy.

Emma got some fairy wings. At first she didn't know quite what to think of them. They came with an antenna headband, but since this photo I think that one of the antenna have been chewed off.

It was very cold in Nebraska, and there were several people inside the house. Consider also all of the cooking and all of the dishes that had to be washed, and the inside of the house got pretty humid. The frost on the front storm door was thick, and Emma did her part to clean it off.

Did I mention that it snowed a lot in Nebraska before we got there?

Check out these drifts!