Christian is 12 and a half!

 We celebrated Christian's half birthday last week.  Per our tradition, he got to pick all the meals for the day and select one present.  He chose a new basketball.  We also often take 1/2 day off school, if desired.  He wanted to go to school in the afternoon because he didn't want to miss band, but he decided it would be fun to leave school at lunch time and go get MOD pizza.  So that's what we did. Peter and I picked up the pizza before getting Christian and then we went and ate the pizza at the park while playing.  Christian forgot to tell me he wanted to bring a football along, so we used the smaller pizza box from Peter's personal pan pizza as a football and threw it between us as we played.  It was really fun, except for when the wind picked up and carried our "football" in all the wrong directions!  Then we dropped him back off at school and Peter and I wet back to the park for another 3 hours of play on the playground.  It was a wonderful, unusually warm, winter day. 

Such a stark contrast to a week earlier when we attended the Ice Festival in Plymouth.  We bundled up in all our snow clothes and braved the sub zero temperatures to see the fantastic ice sculptures.  The massive crowds killed the joy a bit for me, but I was still glad we went and saw the sculptors creating their masterpieces.  Christian came along at the promise of hot chocolate.