The Felix Helix

One of Felix's Christmas presents was this giant cardboard rocket. The idea is that it's kind of a temporary play-fort that comes with magic markers to color it in. Seemed like hours of potential fun. It was perhaps a bit TOO much fun, in that the cardboard took way too much of a beating from crazy excited boys to get much coloring done. Anyway - fun while it lasted.

Sorry - I'd rather get these all up than come up with some sort of unifying theme... so, I give you "January".

Bath time has become substantially more fun now that they can both reasonably fend for themselves (we still watch them, just to confirm. most of the time) and have fun doing so. They are now unable to tolerate one having a bath without the other. No sooner will you have put Felix in the bath than you'll turn around to see Leto awkwardly climbing in in all his clothes, or contrariwise, Felix will be desperately trying to get his shirt over his head by himself so he can join Leto in the tub. Happy days, with bubbles.

The New York Botanical Garden was doing a special exhibit: their Holiday Train show, involving a half-mile of track with trains chugging around amazing little buildings and over bridges made entirely of natural materials. To cut a fairly short story even shorter, it was basically built to test the theory that one cannot give a 3-year old train obsessive a heart attack. The exhibition culminated in a stage show involving Thomas and the expression on Felix's face speaks to his complete disbelief that he was finally in his presence. OHMYGOD IT'S THOMAS.

Bri cracked out one of my stocking presents this Christmas: a d20 which flashes red when you make a critical hit. Felix was delighted and kept on demanding we roll crits until eventually Bri started "getting lucky" and magically "rolling" a 20 every time. Suffice to say, we'll be packing it for our next encounter in the UK.

We've been absolutely covered today. I think there's about a foot and a half of new snow out there now. Felix was a tiny bit overwhelmed by the snow that, on him, is waist-high, but he eventually warmed up (haha) to it.

We took Felix and Leto up the Montenvers train today. We were planning on a nice lunch at the Hotel du Montenvers and then hitting the ice grotto, which I have never seen. Unfortunately, after days of beautiful clear skies, today was a bit of a big cloudy mess. I'm certainly glad the weather for our wedding was like THIS and not like this: Despite some grumbling from Felix, and our chickening out of the 400 steps to the grotto, the trip was still fun. Felix on a train is always a good move.

I realize there are a lot of snow pictures on here. Sorry about that, but there's a lot of snow here and a lot of playing in the snow going on!

Or just Felix and Leto and their cousins, really.

After two flights with two children and enough luggage to outfit a small army, we arrived in France in relatively good spirits. Felix loved the flights - especially the extra-bouncy last few minutes on our short hop between Zurich and Geneva. So far, we've had some of the loveliest weather possible - Mount Blanc has been showing off - and we've been enjoying some Copp family time with the whole gang, lots of snow and babies on skis. Expect many more pictures to follow - with my new awesome Christmas present camera!