Happy Birthday Heidi!

Heidi is getting OLD...unfortunately that means I am too.  To make her feel special on her big day I made a special homemade eggplant veggie burger (my first attempt and it was delish) along with a homemade strawberry shortcake ice cream cake.  Yum!  Happy Birthday ya old lady....holy blazer...look at all those candles!

Superbowl...

You can't win them all...it was a complete upset for the Pats from the first play.  We did have a great Superbowl party though with the kids though!  Complete with wings, peanut butter cookie dough dip, pizza...the list is so long and bad for you that I could gain 5 pounds just thinking about it.  We even did our own family football square betting, with $.25 squares that the kids were obsessed with winning.  Nana won in the end though and the Pats lost...not sure what devastated the kids more.  Colton had been "trash talking" Nicks family for two weeks since they are Giants fans, he even made a friendly wager with his Uncle Stash...2 matchbox cars for their bar in Jersey City...Colton wanted to win that bar sooooo bad.  I honestly don't think he understood that we weren't moving to New Jersey so he could own and Irish bar that served Shirley Temples play video games all day.  :)

My sister thinks she is funny...

I thought my sister was sweet when she asked me to pose for a picture the other day on our hike.  

Hysterical and way too funny to not share.

On a side note...why in the world do people deface property, let alone nature like that?  So sad.

Multi-caching...

On Sunday we the kids on a hike/geocaching since it was another abnormally warm winter day.  I even got Heidi to come on our adventure and she found our first cache of the day!  There is a park not far from Heidi's house that is close to the ocean and surrounded by marshes that has a multi-cache hunt that we decided to try.  Basically you have the gps coordinates for the first find and then when you find that cache it gives you coordinates for the next, then so on and so on.  This particular set has 6 hidden caches.  We managed to find 3 of the 6 before it got dark and we needed to head back.  My gps was also dying since it hasn't been charged or used in so long.  Usually we just use the iphone app but with longitude and latitude coordinates I need to bust out the garmin.  The boys are getting really good at using the gps and the compass.  They were so mad that it was getting dark but I promised we could finish this hunt another day.  :)

 Taking a snack break...luckily one of the paths led us to a baseball field!

Holy Cow - this would be Brayden actually posing for a picture!!!

This was the last cache we found.  

We were searching all over and then I spotted this little birdie.  

It is hallow with gps coordinates hidden inside of it!

Riley the rising hockey star...

Riley's hockey team got to play on the ice between periods at the Quincy and North Quincy rivalry game.  Of course being his biggest fans we were there to cheer him on.  Colton thought it was so cool because they played the "snoopy song" too just like they did for his game at Providence.  The game was really exciting and I couldn't help but foreshadow my future when I was taking in the parents sitting in the parent zone and all the kids sitting in the kids zone trying to pretend they don't know their parents...lol.

Izzy the Piggy...

My friend Christine just bought a pet pig, Izzy.  She also just moved to South Plymouth with the state forest literally in her backyard.  Colton and I went down on Saturday to meet Izzy and go for a hike, yes, Izzy came with us.  Although, Izzy took her time on the trails and Christine had to carry her part of the way while she literally squealed in horror (she hates being carried), she was a trooper.  We went by so many other people on the trails who would stop to meet Izzy saying they had heard about a pig in the area that likes to hike...lol.  It was an abnormally warm day in New England and PERFECT hiking weather so we just kept going on the trails and decided to find a geocache along the way.  Colton was excited because there is a geo series in these woods named after "Jedi's" and being a Star Wars fan he thought it was the coolest name for a geocache ever.  So we found this one down by a tree right next to a pond.  We were searching for awhile when all of a sudden Colton said "Mom, look at this cool rock"...bingo...he found the cache!  The log was hidden in the rock and we were able to check off the "Jedi Knight" from the list.  Our goal is to find 50 geocaches this year...that means we have a lot of hikes with hopefully a cute pig in our future.  Colton didn't want to leave but after 2+ hours of hiking he said, well let's just go back to Christine's and hangout.  We ended up walking straight to the car and he fell asleep as soon as we pulled out of the driveway.  So fun and we are already planning our next visit (did I mention before we hiked we did lunch and bloodymary's?...that is how you start a hiking adventure people...also how you spend a perfect Saturday!)

Skating in Providence...

Colton's hockey coach arranged for the kids to play a mini game at the Dunkin Donuts Arena in Providence right before the Providence Bruins game this weekend.  It was a 10 minute game but they got to get dressed in the Bruins locker room, sit on their benches and even got a free hat!  Such a cool experience for a 5 year old.  Of course his biggest fans were there to watch (Mom, Dad, Nana, Auntie Heidi, Riley and Brayden).  The kids seriously had such a great time and then all of the families (we played another Weymouth team so there were a ton if us) had tickets to the game so we all got to sit with each other.  Colton and Riley busted out their dance moves and got on the jumbo-tron twice...so that was just the icing on the cake for these two hockey playing dance machines.  The coach said that the Providence Bruins taped the game and he is going to get us all copies...I will definitely update this post when I get it!

 Waiting with his fans!

 Coach Brady telling him to kick butt!

 #5 - first one on the ice!

 Look at me mom!

  

Team Picture - The Jaguars

 Time to watch the Providence Bruins tear it up!

 Fire and Ice for dinner after the game, complete with the ice cream bar and everything!

 

Here is a little video of the boys showing off their dance moves...not quite sure the other parents and kids knew what was happening.  This particular video cracks me up because the two young kids sitting in front of us were videoing them dancing because it was so funny.