A Little of This, a Little of That

So I'm going all over the map with this entry. I'll start with the last week of January. A couple in our ward asked us to stay at their house and look after their kids while they went to NYC for three days. If I didn't know that this family is totally incredible I would have had to say no as they have seven children ranging in age from 2 (nearly 3) to 13, one of which is an 8 year old girl who is mentally delayed and has regular seizures. It turns out that she had been having a rough week with many seizures so they decided to take her with them along with an 11 year old girl who they felt needed a special treat for being such a big help with the younger sister. So we were down a couple kids, but our family of four became a family of nine over night. All the kids were really good but it was BUSY. John had school two of the three days as well as a dental conference one of the evenings which left me to hang out with four under the age of 5 for most of the day until the other three came home from school. We had a great time. The family is very scheduled, organized and the kids are so well behaved and do their part. Aiden and Abby had a great time with the two younger ones running around an extremely large house. Just to give and idea of how large, the master suite was almost as large as our 1000 sq. ft. apartment and it was only one of five rooms on the upper level. I got quite the workout just running up and down the stairs tying to keep track of everyone. We did not have our camera with us but I did get a few shots with my cell phone. Please excuse how grainy they are. Sorry no proof of all the kids as I am not including photos of the L children because I have not asked permission to do so.

They had a big closet filled with dress up clothes that Aiden thought was sooo fun. He especially loved this milk costume, he thought it was so funny to dress up as a carton of milk.
And here he is being a pirate.
I'm sure John will hate me for posting this one, but I see no reason for him to be embarassed as he did such a great job entertaining the kids.

Abby wanted to get in on the action too. I guess I lied about not posting any of the kids as this shot has half of the little boy Aiden's age.

We've had so much snow that never has a chance to melt before the arrival of more, that we have spent a lot of time inside. We've been told this weather is unusual and that they don't usually get this much snow here. Lets hope. Here's a few shots of what we've been doing to entertain ourselves.

Playing with a new toy from Aunt Jenny.

Abby enjoys putting random things in random places.

Aiden is constantly using books and cards as laptops, so it was pretty exciting when I found this little kids laptop at a consignment store for really cheap, it even works!

Abby would run around all day naked if I let her. So after she has a bath I give her a few minutes of freedom. This particular day she brought me this hand towel, I wrapped it around her and she loved it. Every time it fell off she'd bring it back to me so I could re wrap her. I'll spare you the photos of her whipping the towel right off.

And of course there has been way to much of this in front of the t.v.

When we have ventured out to play outside, this is what it looks like.

Now on to the New England Aquarium in Boston. We went just this past Saturday with a few of John's friends from school. John being the fish nut that he is took a ton of the marine life but not many of the kids. Here are of few of his favorites.

Penguin exhibit.

Anemone tank.

Emperor Angel.

These Sea dragons were very cool and something I've never seen before, look closely as they blend in to the weeds around them.

One of many tanks in the jellyfish exhibit.Trying to climb the jellyfish sculptures.

There is a 3 story circular tank up the center of the building that has a ton of fish, a couple sharks,

and a couple sea turtles.

Touch and feel tide pool, Abby just wanted to climb right in.

The highlight was the seal demonstration, unfortunately the seal tank is outside and we had already put our coats in a locker and were not about to pay another $4 to get another one. Thanks Melinda for keeping our little man warm!

I know this was a long one, I'll try not to fall so far behind again.