The Lindenbergs

Behind Frosty and Wilbur, Anna's favorite fictional character is Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer. One of her disappointments this Christmas/Hannuka was that she did not receive one. The problem was made worse when we visited some friends in Virginia who's son did have a plastic toy Rudolph.

Over the weekend Nora pulled out some modelling clay and built a beautiful Rudolph. Anna was ecstatic. After about 30 minutes in the oven (to harden it), and another 20 minutes to let it cool, Anna was in Rudolph heaven. While waiting for it to bake Anna laid on the kitchen floor in front of the oven.

She's been playing with it almost non-stop and Rudolph is already showing signs of wear. He's lost an antler (Anna doesn't care) and a leg has been glued back on.

-Eric (Dad)

On Saturday we took Pierce and Anna to the skating rink. Its been at least a year since we went last. The good news: Pierce and Anna had fun; the bad? We were in and out in less than an hour.

Pierce and Anna were both terrible at skating, Nora and I held them up for most of the session (and have the sore backs to prove it). Pierce looked like one of the three Stooges, his feet were never underneath him. Anna has asked if she can "have a pair of skates for home", Pierce isn't even interested in that.

I had been considering taking Pierce and Anna out to a local ski resort to get them lessons, but given the lack of success on this (much less expensive) outing I think I'll wait.

-Eric (Dad)

Labels: skating

Last weekend we got the first really good snow of the winter. Nice and wet and sticky. The whole family spent a lot of time outside building snowmen and sledding. With a little help from Pierce and Anna I built a half-scale Herbie the Love Bug.
Enjoy the pictures!
-Eric (Dad)

We’ve had some pretty sever weather here in the Midwest (you may have seen it on the news). Starting Friday afternoon we got a LOT of sleet and freezing rain. By that evening most paved surfaces were a sheet of ice. While others might complain, we Lindenbergs took this as a perfect opportunity to go parking-lot sledding.

We loaded up Nora’s SUV with sleds and kids and went to the local community college (which was shut down for the day). Originally we were looking for a good hill to sled down, but they were only covered with a sparse amount of ice, dead grass and crud. But the parking lots, oooohhh baby. We parked at the top of a slightly sloping lot with no cars in it and spent the next hour+ sledding. It was a blast. Pierce and Anna were besides themselves with excitement and Nora and I had a blast too.

We finished up the outing with a trip to Dairy Queen for hot dogs and ice cream.

-Eric (Dad)

For the holidays Anna got a new game" Balloon Lagoon. Its put out by a company called Cranium (we have a few other of their games). One day I'd love to shake the hand of one of the company's founders; there stuff is brilliant.

Balloon Lagoon combines elementary reading and spelling, matching, patterns and tiddlywinks. All four of us enjoyed it, with Pierce and Anna taking separate parts of the game, after we finished playing as a family, and continuing to play until bedtime.

-Eric (Dad)

A few years ago I wrote a blog entry about Pierce's use of words completely out of his league as a young kid. Well, now its Anna's turn. The other morning Pierce was having a nightmare. Anna climbed out of bed and went to his room to comfort him (which seems to have worked well).

Last night I asked Anna what had happened. Her description:

"Well, when I heard Pierce having a nightmare I scrambled out of bed to help him."

SCRAMBLED out of bed? Unbelievable.

-Eric (Dad)

To all our Blog readers, I hope your holidays were joyous and your New Year is getting off to a good start.

We’ve had an interesting mix of relaxation and business over the holiday season. Hanukah was a joy in our house. Pierce and Anna are both old enough to enjoy lighting the Menorah and Pierce has almost memorized the blessing recited while lighting the candles. The kids took turns selecting candles to put in the Menorah and we alternated nights where each child was holding the “shamesh” (leader candle) and helping to light the candles.

On the tail of Hanukah came Christmas this year. As always, Santa, Mom and Dad, and the grandparents were exceedingly generous. Top gifts for this year included a Legos train and airplane for Pierce, a new flat-panel monitor (for Nora), DVDs for everyone, a life-size Ariel (the Little Mermaid) head and complete make up kit (for Anna) and big thick books and clothes (for Eric). We spent the morning at our house celebrating Christmas morning in our pajamas and then headed over to Nora’s parents house for the late afternoon to spend it with her extended family.

A couple of days after Christmas we flew out to Virginia Beach to spend some time with my family. My brother, Scott, and his son, Chance) came up from South Carolina to join us (unfortunately Scott’s new wife Stacy was not able to be there) along with my Mom and other brother Doug and his family; Lots of eating, visiting, and relaxing. Our trip out was a little long with an unexpended night in Baltimore at the less than ideal airport Ramada Inn (complete with a karaoke accompaniment to our hotel restaurant dinner).

Probably the highlight of our inbound trip was on landing in Baltimore. For the last several weeks Anna has been a steady Christmas caroler. She’s constantly singing “Frosty the Snowman”, “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer”, or “Jingle Bells” (or a unique medley of all three). As we were waiting to de-plane she broke into an impromptu version of Rudolph complete with her own interpretation of some of the more “confusing” lyrics. The plane was relatively quiet as people were retrieving their bags from the overheads and her high, singsong voice carried throughout the plane. As she sang the plane became quieter until Anna’s voice slowly became the only one remaining. Oblivious to the attention she was receiving, Anna kept on with her song until she ended it with a grand flourish -wherein she was greeted with applause from every row of the plane. Anna promptly tried to hide under her seat.

-Eric (Dad)