Skiing

Sad to say, but these are my only action shots of Hogan skiing. And I had to be undercover about getting these few. The first day of ski school Hogan cried most of the morning and Nana and Papa had to go pick him up at lunchtime. The second day after we had bribed and convinced him that ski school was super fun, he skeptically, and with a few tears, went in. BUT he ended up having a great time and got a lot of skiing in. We wanted to get pictures of him, but we didn't want him to see us- hence the far-off shots here.

It was amazing to see someone so small skiing straight down the hill, hands on his knees, with no fear. It made me wish that I could be 3 again. When I look down the hill all I see is fear. Hogan's new year's resolution is to ski with mommy. It's so great that he thinks that skiing with me is the pinnacle of skiing. I'm going to let him keep this illusion while I can, but oh, he'll be so disappointed when he realizes that mommy stays on the beginner hill all day long. The fun skiing is with daddy!

Glorieta

For Christmas we went to Glorieta, NM to go skiing with Nana, Papa G., Tia, and Carlos. When we arrived in NM just days before Christmas we were greeted with this beautiful snowy view. And at any time we could open our cabin door and see snow and trees. For Hogan, the snow was a full-body experience. He tasted it, tromped in it, made snow angels in it, and slid in it. In fact, I think it's a perfect picture of how he approaches life in general!

Decorating Cookies!

Hogan's friend Emory invited us over to decorate cookies today. Her mom- Mary Beth posted pics and wrote a list of funny guidelines that everyone should refer to when decorating cookies with preschoolers. Check it out: http://sweetsong-sweetestsong.blogspot.com/2009/12/pre-schoolers-guide-to-awesome-cookies.html

Now for my list of the top 5 comments made by mothers while their children are cookie decorating:

1. "Aaaaaa! Don't put that spoon in your mouth!" (This said while frantically trying to grab the spoon before it gets put back into the frosting bowl)

2. "You need to put frosting on before you pour the whole bottle of sprinkles on the cookie. The frosting will make it stick."

3. "I guess it's okay if they mix all the colors....right?"

4. "Why didn't the sprinkle people put a darn shaker lid on these chocolate sprinkles?"

5. "Why don't you try making a candy cane or an angel? I think we have enough Christmas cats." (there was one Halloween cookie cutter in the mix and of course it got used a lot!)

Thanks Mary Beth and Emory for the fun morning!

Cave

One day Hogan mentioned that he wanted to see a cave. I can't remember what sparked his interest- a book, a tv show??? but when he said this I told him that Oma and Opa lived near a cave. He was very excited about this and when the big September birthday weekend came around, Hogan totally remembered our conversation about the cave near Oma and Opa and asked if we go see it while we were visiting, which as you can see from the pictures we did indeed get to do.

I think overall he liked the experience. One thing that was pretty tricky was that you're not supposed to touch ANY of the formations in the cave. This is really difficult for a 3-year old to remember when so much of his learning is through sense of touch. You also have to stay with the group. This is not a place to run ahead- again a bit of a stretch for Hogan, although I will say he tried his hardest to follow the rules.

What was very cool was that we saw an actual bat in the cave. It flitted and flew over our heads. The guide gave us directions about what to do if the bat lands on you. "Stand very still", he said(yeah, right!). Luckily, the bat made the wise choice to stay above our heads and landed only on rocks. By the time we left Hogan could point out the stalagtites and several times since the trip he's talked about stalagtites and stalagmites- so the trip definitely made an impression.

Trick-or-treating with friends

This was the first time that Hogan got to do the door-to-door trick-or-treating. He totally got into it and as you can see from all the blurry pictures would NOT stand still long enough for me to get a shot. I tried to pick the least blurriest ones. Needless to say when we finally got home we had one tired Hogan/Batman who was already talking about his costume for next year and who went right to sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow!

Hogan says: Thank you for letting me go Halloween place with me and Kayleigh. My favorite part was the scary part. I was scared because a man had a mask and we thought he wasn't real. He took off his mask and scared us. At first he scared us. He was a man and he was just playing jokes on us.

Trick-or-treating at the mall

Batman on the go

Checking his candy

Taking a break

Transformed back to Hogan- Batman had a busy night!

School Party

After carving our pumpkin we headed out to Hogan's school where his teacher had set up a mini-festival in her cul-de-sac. The kids paraded around the cul-de-sac and then were able to go around to different stations for food and activities. The top picture is the pose that Hogan would stand in anytime anyone asked to take a picture of batman.