Winter

Not going to be lounging in these chairs for a while....

Hideaway

LittleNortherner insisted that a blanket fort be built for him. A blanket fort was indeed built for him, right after he cleaned all of his stuff out of the kitchen and living room. (Fun is a great motivator for house cleaning!) During a brief excursion, the elusive LittleNortherner is caught on film...

Welcome to Winter

Too Cute

Great Artist

Picasso. Gauguin. Matisse. Monet.

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Famous artists. Great skill. Internationally and historically acclaimed works.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, another great is added to the list of Masters: LittleNortherner!

 

Since he only knew one or two of the Christmas carols being sung at church tonight, LittleNortherner turned to his art. He produced the above work between "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Frosty the Snowman". Yes, those two songs were sung by the congregation of our church. Sacrilegous? Maybe, but they helped to balance out some of the not-so-popular carols that were being suggested for singing.

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Now, if you'll excuse him, NorthernDaddy has to go frame this important, ground-breaking work of art before LittleNortherner wakes up in the morning.....

"Stuff" LittleNortherner Says

Yup - the title is a total rip-off of "Sh*t My Dad Says", but sometimes the little genius says some really off-the-wall stuff. During the first thirty minutes of a two-hour car ride, there were three statements that were so unexpected that NorthernDaddy spent the rest of the ride trying to unscramble things.

First up, breakfast was at Dunkin Donuts. Don't judge: you eat junk, too. The order was complicated enough (coffee.no cream, no sugar.) that it got messed up. The bag of donuts was found to be light one apple fritter and LittleNortherner decided that he did not like the Red Velvet donut that he had chosen, so the one (beautiful, tasty-looking, heavenly) apple fritter that should have been NorthernDaddy's was shared by LNorth and NorthernMommy while Daddy got the Red Velvet donut with a kid-sized bite mark. (Donut tasted like lighter fluid. Ate it anyway.)
After demolishing his breakfast, LittleNortherner started to refer to his pastry as an "Apple Critter". Despite numerous attempts to correct the name to "fritter", LilNorth insisted that they were called Apple Critters, which just set Daddy off on a tangent. There must really be such an animal as an Apple Critter. They live in apple orchards and eat from the trees. We don't see them because they only scurry around the orchards in the summer - they hate the cold, which is why they're all gone by the time the Northerns go apple picking in late Fall.  They're really quick, too - which is why they have to be caught by luring them into traps with donut pieces. Apple Critters love donuts, and that's why they're mainly sold at Dunkins - donut shops have lots of donuts to use as bait, so it's easier for the shopkeepers to be the ones who catch those pesky apple critters.
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It was all fun and games, until LittleNortherner decided that the family was going Apple Critter hunting at the orchard next summer. Who's laughing now, Daddy?.....

Photo from brokencookiesdontcount.com

As the LittleNorthernerAdventureMobile wound its way across the state, the Northerns saw quite a few flocks of turkeys. NorthernMommy and Daddy talked back and forth a little bit about turkeys (did y'all know that a wild turkey once tried to knock NorthernMommy off of her bicycle?), and tried to engage LittleNortherner into the conversation by having him do a quick count of how many turkeys were in that one flock. He refused, and NMommy and Daddy continued with their conversation. Several minutes later, out of the blue, comes a stern pronouncement from the backseat:

"I'll will count them after I put them in the oven."  Dude? Where did that come from? Are you going to need counseling for this turkey hatred?

Photo from wildlifelandmanagement.com

NorthernMommy gets the third totally oddball statement of the ride as the Northerns pass a perfectly normal North Country yard with a line of six or seven Wranglers and CJs out by the shed. Mommy wonders aloud, "That guy's got six different Jeeps, isn't that just too many Jeeps?"

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Too many Jeeps? NorthernDaddy doesn't understand. What does that mean?