bartering

in exchange for their help, we bartered with ryan and matt...

ryan got lessons in tiling and the use of our tools in his condo that he's fixing up. and matt (and pam) got a free weekend while we kept willa and alix.

willa (soon to turn 4) insisted that she was big enough to learn on that guitar.

finger painting madness
alix shows off her mad skills with the chop sticks
story time came with the realization that we don't have any kids books. the closest thing we had was a native american legend that was fairly incomprehensible, but the girls didn't seem to mind.
in the morning, we had pancakes. willa thinks forks and fingers are highly overratedrelaxing in the hammock before the day's adventures begin in earnestclimbing the holly treei like how this picture shows off alix's lugeing talentswe went to pilot mountain to see what we could see. it was pretty icy and snowy. here is alix trying to convince us she's scared of hiking or heights or something.willa and remi riding on willa's new friend the unicornlunch. 'are you gonna eat all that?'hiking a mile loop. notice who's leading the way...willa stopping to do some pushups to work those core muscles during the hike.alix showing off a giant rock of ice she found. after the hike, we built a snow woman and had a long snowball fight punctuated by willa calling a halt to it all and exclaiming, 'but wait! i thought you were friends!" after a quick explanation, we were back at it. good times!

doggy door funwe ended the night with a fire,marshmallows,and a sugary stuporfollowed by dreams of sugar plums.

all in all, don't you think matt got the better deal?