One of Sara's coworker's daughter's birthday party was held at Winterlodge, an outdoor ice skating facility in Palo Alto.  It's a pretty neat thing to be able to skate outdoors in +20C weather.  The ice quality was pretty bad, but who cares when you're skating in such a warm and sunny environment??  And it was Cam's first time on ice, so Sara and I were pretty excited.

Cam's very first time on ice

We imported kid's skates from Toronto for Cam, the type that are double blades for easier balancing and strap onto your regular shoes.  Margaret and Winston were kind enough to get them from Canadian Tire, but there was only one colour left.  Hot pink.  Yes, Cam was wearing hot pink skates.  Cam got TONS of comments on them.  As I was strapping them onto his shoes, the owner walks by, notices them, and says "wow, I haven't seen cheese graters since I was a kid in Minneapolis!!"  At least she knew what they were, other people had never seen beginner skates like these before and there were many stares and other bigger kids said stuff like "wow, two blades, that's so cool!"  Every single girl or mom who passed by gushed over the hot pinkness of the skates.  Meanwhile, I'm hoping Cam's a natural skater and I'm trying to let him stand on his own.  He lasts about 15 nanoseconds before his feet go flying out from under him.  He was unable to stand on his own, and I ended up skating bent over holding onto him the whole time.  He loved it though, full of smiles as we cruised around the rink.

Take a look at the few pics we snapped, which include Cam eating a banana on his own, and our latest visit to a playground.  Here's a quick video we shot of the ice skating shenanigans:

I caught Cam picking his nose for the first time last night.  It was actually sorta cute - he had a very curious expression as he was mining for booger nuggets.  I don't want him to develop this as a habit so I pulled his hand away from his nose, but I wonder if that makes picking his nose an even more tempting activity - the thrill of doing something parents don't want and all that.  He *is* demonstrating Terrible Two qualities, after all, perhaps this would become a rebellious activity on his part?

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Winston, Margaret, and Wesley arrived in town last Wednesday night.  I was worried the boys would have mad fights over toys, but they've been great playing together.  They've spent a ton of time just chasing each other around the condo, and they were dancing up a storm on their first night of hanging out.  I've actually never seen Cam dance so wildly before - Wes' fun energy is contagious.  They started to have sharing issues last night, starting with a fight over a Thomas book.  It moved onto ownership of a nerf football, luckily we have two footballs so that screamfest was resolved before it went into full gear.

Double teaming T-Rex

Yesterday was a lazy Sunday afternoon.  Winston was off on a bicycle ride, Margaret was doing some online studying, and Sara wanted to nap.  The kids, of course, were full of energy so I offered to take em both out to give Sara and Margaret some quiet time.  I figured I'd take em on a Costco shopping run.  Costco's gimungous shopping carts have seating room for two toddlers on the top basket so it would be easy to control them and probably be quite fun.  By the time we had prepped everything for me to head out, however, Cam was yawning so we let him nap with Sara and I ended up taking Wes out for a walk in the neighbourhood.

Wes is soooo talkative, able to say many actual words - during our walk he would be constantly pointing things out and saying various things.  Too bad I could only understand a fraction of what he was saying.  At one point, he would point up into the clear blue sky and say "Bibble".  I have NO idea what he was talking about, as there was nothing up there.  At a loss, I had to say "aaah, right, bibble!  That's fun, isn't it?  Yes, bibble."  That seemed to satisfy him and he continued babbling about other stuff, having a grand ol time.

I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get to take the boys out on my own.  I think that'd be an interesting experience, especially getting them in and out of the car.  I guess I'd have to get the shopping cart first and transfer them directly into the cart so there's no wondering off into traffic.

I've posted some pictures from the first couple days of their stay, take a look and enjoy!