PLOWS

This blog entry is devoted to the bigger boy in our house. :) An acronym for "Profiling of Winter Storms", PLOWS has come close to taking over Brian's life this winter. Whereas the normal person tries to avoid bad weather, Brian flies into it. (He doesn't actually do the flying, thank goodness...but he does get to ride in the cockpit - very exciting. :)
On Wednesday, there was "show and tell" day out at our local airport (they usually fly out of Peoria, but the plane was here for the day), and since Ethan and I were daycare-less, we headed out for the event! BIG plane. A revamped military cargo plane, this one is filled with just a few seats and much equipment. There are sensors on the wings to take readings as they fly through clouds, and we got to see the little hole in the plane where they shoot the dropsondes out. While this project is taking up just tons of Brian's time, he's kind of enjoying it. I enjoy it slightly less :), since we can't plan anything more than a day in advance - the meterologist-on-call has to be ready to fly any time. But I'm glad he's having fun, and this is a great project for him to be so involved with.

In the meantime, we're all having a good, though messy, winter! Ethan is a great cold weather boy (he did NOT get that from his mother) and doesn't mind at all being hauled outside to go every which way on the weekends. We've gotten into a nice Sunday breakfast routine, where we either go out with my folks or just the three of us. We're finding several restaurants in town that are very family friendly and don't mind when there is a 3 inch layer of pancake or muffin crumbs on the floor when we leave. (Brian is just so messy!) Or maybe they mind, but they don't say it to our faces. And we tip pretty well. :)
(By the way, this is just one of my favorite pictures - and was taken with an iPhone - but Ethan isn't really coloring with those crayons. We try, but they always seem to end up in his mouth. Sigh.)