Winter Break

we have had a lot of time on our hands lately...some of you may have heard of the school closings and "terrible" storms in our area lately. my mom called me worried that I drive carefully, etc, etc. the truth of the matter is this...on valentine's day, our schools were closed! alan's work had a delayed opening at 10:30 am! we decided to drive him to the train station rather than making him ride the bus as usual. boy were we surprised at the 3" of snow! that's inches....not feet. luckily we had a valentine's surprise in store to bust the boredom (in the form of the cranium superfort -- photos pending.) the next day, alan's work had delayed opening again, as did alexander's school! the bus never showed to take him, so i drove him. school was scheduled to open at 10:30 and we arrived at about 10:25 only to wait in line for nearly 20 minutes with all the other parents dropping off. don't know what the deal with the busses was. the roads were clear and dry. i have no idea what the problem was, but due to road closures in our area, i arrived home at 11:15. alexander's bus brings him home at 11:50. what a wasted morning!
friday the 16th, schools had a scheduled day off for parent-teacher conferences, and remained closed monday for president's day and tuesday for a teacher prep day! we had a LOT of time on our hands. here's how we filled some of it....

hadley brought me the "doodle" a couple weeks ago and proudly said "i drew daddy!" sure enough, she did! looks just like him, don't you agree?

we have been spending a lot of time with lucy, the neighbor 2 doors down. she is sophie's age so they get along wonderfully. the other day, lucy and hadley were having a snack and hadley was telling lucy about her "brubber" asked me, "who's my sister?" when i told her she didn't have a sister, she was indignant, and said "sophie's my sister". "sophie is your cousin", i corrected her. she looked REALLY upset for a second and then said "lucy can be my sister. she is my sister friend." glad we got that settled. :)

alan had president's day off, so we braved the cold (but not too cold) and went into new york for the day. we visited the met and met our friend tom for dinner at chow fun. (walking to the restaurant, we passed another restaurant and alexander said "this place doesn't look very fun"). tom graciously put up with children climbing on him, chattering non-stop, and acting like robots. you're a great sport, tom!

we found a FREE family pass to the met online (you can't beat that!) so we splurged at the gift shop. hadley got a "degas ballerina doll" for a whopping $6 and alexander chose a harmonica for $5, which he informed me he will "practice every day until i'm as good as bob dylan." what an awesome kid!

we stopped for a snack at the met cafeteria and hadley's ballerina danced on daddy's head for about 10-15 minutes.

after that, the armor!

isnt' this just cool? there's a cooler photo of 3 of the 4 riding knights here.

i was fascinated by the jousting armor. it featured special plates that were screwed and/or bolted on to the regular armor, as you can see here. also notice the helmet. i have NO IDEA how they could see at all inside this thing. note the little lever that swings out on the right. it's for resting the lance on!
another view of the same knight. notice how the extra plate curves to better deflect the oncoming lance. and you can also see the little window that opens for them to talk. it has cute decorative punch-outs so they can breathe.

another set of jousting armor. i love the big bolts, especially the one on the face, which bolted the face guard onto the helmet. there are also screws around the neck, because the helmet was too heavy for them to hold their heads up...it had to be screwed to the breastplate. again, no idea how he sees, but this guy had a little string for someone to pull to open his talking hole. (probably not the technical term.) alexander went crazy for this stuff. hadley was bored and had to be taken elsewhere. i tried to get some pics of the little guy with the armor, but i ran into 2 problems. #1--low light and no flash allowed plus a moving 5 year old = blurry. #2--little guy was just a bit leary about standing too close to the knights, know what i mean? they are a bit too lifelike and slightly scary, even inside glass cases. :)

this is the actual field armor of henry VIII! henry the freaking 8th! how cool is that? huge guy, no? i'm a geek and just could NOT believe the met has a set of henry the VIII's armor. cool!