Another new year?

Sheesh! We were just getting started with '09 and now it's already time to move on.

It's been a good year with very little change for the 4 of us. We have all settled into a routine with R.C.'s crazy school schedule, so even though it would not be considered normal for most people, it felt normal to us. The boys are growing like giant weeds and have been very healthy all year (we only had one round of sickness). They are both doing great in their schooling and get along beautifully during their "down time". R.C. is excelling in school and has been able to be home most evenings for supper, which is a wonderful change from the previous year. I am keeping busy with lesson planning and trying to keep everyones lives in order.

You see, very little change.

I feel it's all in preparation for the coming year though. In 5-6 short months we hope to be relocating and beginning a new adventure. The where, when, why, and how are yet to be determined, but the coming months promise to be busy, stressful, celebratory, scary, exciting, and adventurous.We don't know if we will be in a large city with everything within a block of our home, or in a small town where the nearest gas station is 3 hours away. We don't know if the boys will be enrolled in public school or if I will continue to homeschool them. We don't know if we will be on a coast near an ocean, in the desert with a cactus in our front yard, or in the north where we will be snowed in 10 out of 12 months.

Although the coming year holds a lot of unknowns, it is exciting to begin something new. Rhode Island has been good to us, but we are ready to move on. I fear if we stay here much longer my perfect driving record will be no more, due to road rage, or we will gain 50 pounds each due to too many Dunkin' Donuts.

Watch out 2010, here we come!!

We have been having some very lazy days enjoying our time with no school work to complete and no late studio nights. We have been doing very little except "hanging out" so there is not much to blog about.

We have found these 2 men roaming the house though...I guess they could make things interesting.

Merry Christmas from the Sayler family!

I don't think I will be blogging tomorrow or the next day, so I thought I would send out a Merry Christmas now.

Here is our family picture for today....

Yes, some are still in their jammies, but hey, whatever keeps people happy.

Today the boys have been plotting their wake up scenerio for Christmas morning. I made the mistake of telling them how early I would wake up as a child on Christmas morning. I must have been so annoying on Christmas morning when I was 17 8 years old. I remember one particular Christmas morning waking up well before 5 am and being told by everyone that it was too early, so I sat in the bathtub (no water and PJ's still on) singing Christmas carols for well over an hour. Sorry family...what an annoying little sister I was on this day!! I see that now!! :) haha! My days of payback are here...

Anyways...Merry Christmas!

We will have a white Christmas after all!!

I'm sure you heard on the news that New England got record amounts of snow last night, and it is still coming down. We awoke this morning to probably a foot of snow on the ground, and at least a 2 foot drift in our driveway. Since we are the "caretakers" of this house now, due to our landlord living in Missouri, we are responsible for snow removal on the front steps and sidewalk, the driveway and the parking lot out back. We all bundled up this morning to head out and shovel some of the snow away and play in the fluffy white snow. After shoveling until our arms and backs ached we did what any responsible "caretaker"/parent would do. We left our shovels in a snow bank and went sledding. We live on a massive hill and just behind our house is a perfect little sledding hill and R.C. found a plastic tray of some sort in the basement that worked great as a sled.

We still have A LOT of shoveling to do, but it can wait until later. There are few plows out and roads are covered, so there is no rush getting cars dug out.

R.C. put this video together with some little video clips we took while sledding...he sure knows how to do videos better than someone. We sure like having him around during his break!!

R.C. has become very good at making our evening espresso. This was a beautiful one he made the other night complete with whipped cream and a dash of cinnamon. And the best part is it only cost about $0.25 to make, yet it would cost $3.00 in a coffee shop. This could be the reason that I have a hard time sleeping at night and find myself awake at 3:30 am watching reruns of Intervention and Hoarders. I have no plan to cut it from my diet anytime soon though.

This week we had our water heater give out. Luckily the plumbers were able to come and install a new one so we were only without hot water for 24 hours.

This week our dryer stopped working. Luckily we have radiators and I can do a small load of laundry and then lay it on the muliple radiators throughout the apartment and dry the items. This only works for jeans...or things that you don't mind being very stiff once they are dry. I'm not about to try this on t-shirts or underwear.

This week R.C. has been working at home. He has been needing the sewing machine so he sets up "shop" on the kitchen table and works the day away. Due to this, the boys can't concentrate on their school work. They have become used to having R.C. home only on the weekends so since he has been here they think it is the weekend and school work doesn't have to be done. It has been a HUGE struggle this week to complete our lessons without me wanting to pull my hair out or threaten to send the boys to bed at 5:00 pm. Luckily the week is almost over. R.C. is done with classes for the semester today, but the boys are still going to be working next week (the first half of the week only...chill out! I'm not that much of a "mean homeschooling mom".), so we will see if next week is as rough as this week.

Due to our dryer being broken, and BOTH of the boys having "accidents" last night, I had to make a trip to the laundry mat this morning. I took some coffee to go and some school work for the boys and set off to spend my morning among several swishing washers and tumbling dryers. Luckily I was at the laundry mat and was able to wash my sweatshirt immediatly after my cup of coffee decided to spill all down the front of me as I was pulling into the parking lot.

The repair man for the dryer was supposed to come 2+ hours ago, but I still have not heard the doorbell ring.

sigh.

Today is R.C.'s birthday!!

This is the last slide show of the year and it couldn't be dedicated to a better person.

R.C. is the best dad/husband/friend we could ever ask for and hope he has a wonderful birthday today!

R.C. has "grown" a lot in the past year and it is exciting to think about what the next year will bring...and where it/he takes us...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY R.C.!!!

It's been over a week and you might be wondering what we have been up to.

Well...let me give you the update, in picture form...

We have been making, and yelling into, megaphones during science.

We went to take part in "Christmas with the Paw Sox" last weekend.

We ate free hotdogs, drank free soda, and saw "Santa Paws". We also got to go in the Paw Sox club house. We also received tickets to a game in the spring (this could have been the real reason we went....)

We have been taking pictures of books we are now reading.

We have been busy taking close up pictures of our teeth so we can play dentist properly.

We have been taking other weird pictures of ourselves and tubes of chapstick.

We have learned how to take a self portrait with the camera. Setting the timer on the camera and running to get in the picture is a new favorite past time for some of us.

We have been wearing big boots.

And some of us have been great brothers lately and really cute.

That's the run down on what is new and exciting in Little Rhody.

It's time for an overload of photos!

First up are the Christmas drawings we did this morning. The boys did an awesome job and put great detail into their drawings. Max even made sure to put a microscopic red nose on one of his reindeer pulling the sleigh. (Russell only wanted a picture of one of his drawings...trust me there were more...MANY MANY more.)

And finally (what? finally already? Talk about cutting to the case on this posting) I thought that while I had the camera out I would try to get a decent picture of the boys. I didn't ask them to pose a certain way, all I did was ask them to sit next to each other. From there, well....

A quick break for eggnog...

And they end on a good note...

I've heard chatter that people noticed there have been no pictures posted showing the boys birthdays or birthday cakes. Well, you see Russell would not allow me to take his picture with his cake, so I felt there was not much to see. Then when Max's birthday came around he was all for getting his picture taken, but to keep things even and fair I felt I could not post pictures of Max with a cake since I didn't post pictures of Russell and a cake. Does that make me sound crazy? Maybe. But, here are the cakes I made this year for the boys. Russell requested a Pokeball (pronounced poke-e-ball). Trust me, this looks just like one. Max wanted a lego cake. I opted to make just one lego brick in his favorite color, blue.