Sledding

Wish we had cameras with us, but Mercer and Dad just got back from a 2 hour session of sledding with our Flexible Flyer discs. Not sure we've ever had more fun together. It was our first time sledding and we managed to hit some pretty impressive speeds, twirling the whole way down the hill.

Unfortunately, our hill was a Village street and snow plows ruined our fun. Until next time, though.

Mercer's first swimmng lesson

Mercer and company braved the snowstorm to get in a swimming lesson this morning. Mom enrolled Mercer in a Level 1 class, but the coaches already want to bump him up to Level 2 or 3 because he is so good in the water. Mercer had a great teacher who taught him how to kick, go underwater, and use his arms. He still needs work on floating on his back, though. All he wants to do is kick. Mercer used a noodle to swim the entire length of the pool and he also used a body board. Next week we're going to try a class with more kids and see how that works.

Mercer visits the American Museum of Natural History

Mercer has finally been getting into dinosaurs lately, so we took him to the American Museum of Natural History today. We wanted him to see the dinosaur bones and how big the former Earth-dwellers actually were. We think he enjoyed it. He liked running around pressing buttons on all of the interactive computers, for sure.

The dinosaur bones in the lobby were amazing and we hadn't even bought tickets yet!

Hey, Mercer is wearing Dad's hat!!







We enjoyed a few of the dusty displays before moving up to the 4th floor, where all of the dinosaurs are now housed.


"Triceratops" means "three-horned face!"






After the dinosaurs, we wanted to show Mercer a movie at the big planetarium. He was skeptical, and once the movie started, he hated every second of it. For most of the audience, the movie was an amazing exploration into our galaxy and how stars are formed. But Mercer actually thought we blasted off into space and was whimpering the whole time, worried about our safe return flight home. Cute. We told him to close his eyes, but no matter how much he whimpered, he couldn't take his eyes off the show, either. Good stuff.



We had worked up an appetite. And since we love torturing ourselves, we stopped into Shake Shack for some burgers, dogs, shakes, and concretes. Mercer's favorite part of the day.

Look at the line for this place. Ridiculous.

New Year's at Aunt Alyssa's

We were sick the whole time. Well, not Mercer. Mom and Pop were sick. We've been coughing for weeks now and this weekend, the fever finally hit Pop, who spent half of Sunday in bed watching Star Wars and reading up on Operation Barbarossa. We still had fun out in Sunbury, though, as we have the past few years. Sorry for bringing our sick to your place, Alyssa.

We took Mercer and Murphy to the park, watched movies (Tin Tin is really good), ate wings, made and ate great party food, and drank some good beers.