Snow Fun

Some people think "'s no fun" being here at this time of year, but we actually enjoy the snow and an excuse to get more things done indoors (like reading some good books). Okay, I have to admit that when the wind chill is -15, which it has been a few times recently, or even just regular temps like 5, then it does get old because it's a little cold to go outside then. (It was -32 with the wind chill the morning I took the boys to church when everyone else was sick. That. Was. Cold! and my lungs could tell for the two minutes it took to walk inside the church!)

Despite the extremely cold temps here and there, we've managed to enjoy playing in the snow when we can.

This was before we got the 16 in. in two days. It was so "warm" this day, Victoria didn't wear her hat and had a t-shirt underneath. She was still hot.

Austin and Logan didn't seem bothered by the "heat". They just enjoyed the good, icy sledding.

We went sledding after the big storm and there was so much snow, we couldn't even move down the hill yet! This slide was a good alternative.

This year's snow fort.

It has since been "snowed" under.

Erik is getting good at making snow angels.

We now have a hula snow girl in our yard.

Karissa made one that is selling snow balls.

Victoria has since put her "hands" on her hips.

 Some day soon I'm buying cross country skis. That will be the year we don't get any snow!

Sneaky Bug

I enjoyed Valentine's Day with my loved ones. It was a somewhat relaxing, peaceful day.

Erik at a little playgroup Valentine's Party. There are mostly boys his age at church right now- lucky him!

Austin's 100-day celebration hat and photo bomber.

Sweet-tooth Karissa.

Victoria with her card and candy loot. 

My favorite Valentine!

We've just had the best weather... not!

The week after Valentine's Day is always midwinter break around here. Every year I wonder why we have such a break. Last year we'd had 5 or 6 snow days between winter break and midwinter break! While we've only had two so far, I still wonder. Yet, every year I realize why: this is when everyone gets sick! I'm telling you, it's the real reason for this unnecessary break! I actually don't think any of us were sick the last two years (plenty of our friends were, though). This year, it just snuck up on us and hit us like we were dominoes.

Around midnight on Saturday, Victoria was the first knocked down. I barely fell asleep after throwing her bedding in the wash and settling her on the lower bunk before Karissa was up, luckily she had made it to the trash can so I didn't have any bedding clean-up. Not long after, Jason was up for himself. We thought it was food poisoning, but it wasn't. I took the boys to church, but didn't feel great the whole day. Just ate simply and tried to care for the 3 sick ones (Jason was pretty bad.) I finally got sick Sunday night. The blessing: that was the only time I threw-up, which is an unusually low number for me in that situation. Jason and the girls outdid me, but I still felt awful and my headaches were bad enough to wake me up multiple times a night, for two nights. The other blessing: four of us were sick at the same time, instead of dragging it over the course of three weeks! Jason took two sick days and the kids were already off, so we just rested and ate nothing together! (Unfortunately, Austin hasn't gotten it yet. I did get him some food, mostly snacks, though, to his delight.) I think Erik had it last week. There was a day he spit up and he didn't eat much for two days.

We've slowly gained our strength back and I'm beginning to think that Austin may not get it. My biggest fear was that he was going to get sick yesterday or today and take out the rest of our vacation days, keeping us cooped up at home again.

We're all healthy and ready for school next week!

Odds and Ends

I wasn't quite sure what I should blog about this week. I have already posted the pictures of Austin at the Mother/Son dance on face book, which just about covers everyone who reads my blog now, so I don't need to post those pictures again. I don't have a ton of other exciting things to blog about, but I will give a couple of details that happened at the dance, as well as an update on Austin's toe.

As I walked into Austin's room to help him button up his little suit cute, he looked at me and said, "Is that how you looked in high school?" I had to smile at his cute flattering comment and took it as a compliment since I took an extra 2 minutes to look nice for our special date. When we came downstairs, one of the girls (I can't remember if it was Victoria or Karissa) asked the same exact thing! So I answered, "Why, yes! I don't think I look too different from what I look like now." I did have bangs and shorter hair later in my senior year, then of course was blond for a couple of years in college and when we got married, but I pretty much look the same. I guess that's a good thing!

At the dance, Austin received many compliments about his dancing and he danced the entire time in the disco lights by the DJ! Except for the first slow dance. When I went over to dance with him, he wasn't interested and wanted to eat a snack instead! It's already begun! He did dance with me for the second slow song (I think there were only the two played, unless they played one at the very end, which we were gone by then). During our dance, he would lift his arm up every now and then so I could turn under, which was a challenge because of our height difference, but he was very good at leading the motion. Toward the end of our time there, he told me to stop following him. So, I was given the shaft by my 5-year-old son and went and talked with my friends.

Here's a look at his toe. The toenail is to be expected, but look at the skin underneath, yuck!

That boy is an accident ready to happen. He fell out of his chair at dinner the other night and scraped his back on the fireplace bricks. It's definitely not the worst scrape in the book, but still no fun!

Progress is Progress

Remember the "mom card" I'm supposed to play after Erik's well-child exam to get him to eat more? After the holidays, when the kids went back to school, I played my "mom card" well. He also accepted it well. When he wants his "hot chocolate", I tell him he can have it after he eats two carrots. Usually he does, sometimes he wants to have some apple slices or another fruit instead. He still won't touch any greens, but, progress is progress. Also, with the holidays over, the junk is gone. He doesn't think much of candy or other treats that he would eat because we just don't have any!

The best part: I had signed him up for a Mommy and Me cooking class which took place for three weeks on Thursdays. The first day, we read Stone Soup and the kids got to help cut up veggies for our soup. We also read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and they made their own coconut trees.

Cutting those green beans!

Erik enjoyed eating the letters and banana, He also enjoyed cutting up the veggies, but when it came time to eat the soup, it was a no go. Most of the other kids at least tried it, some ate most of theirs. I tried to get him to eat some of the alphabet noodles that were in it, but they were covered in the V-8 juice, so he wouldn't touch it. He likes nothing combined together! Later that day, he helped me prepare dinner. We made the soup again one time, but still no interest for him. Sigh.

His Alphabit cereal at the bottom of the "coconut tree'" went first.
(He was on my lap, so taking pictures was not easy!)

I thought it was delish!

The next week we read If You Give a Moose a Muffin. We made blueberry muffins and berry jam to go on top. They also got to make their very own moose puppets. Surprisingly, Erik did eat the blueberry muffin, minus 2 bites! There were real blueberries in it, so I couldn't believe it. Every other kid was eating theirs, so maybe that helped. I also gave him the first few bites without many blueberries in it, then just kind of shoved the rest in. (Yes, I did have to fee it to him because he wouldn't touch it and he didn't want anything to do with the jam.)

I still can't believe he ate those blueberry chunks!

The last day we read The Little Red Hen and made bread and butter.  We made the bread backwards so it would have time to rise and bake. The teacher had the dough ready for kneading when we got there. After it went to rise and bake, we started from the beginning and got to bring home the dough to make into bread later. Erik made his dough into a ball and an E. He loved it, but didn't want to put butter on it. Funny thing is, I make bread fairly often. Erik doesn't usually like to eat it, unless the dough is made into rolls, which he did with his dough. Usually, he just eats the dough when I make it, but he does help make it. At class, they showed us a stalk of wheat, something he'd never seen, and wheat berries, something he's sees all the time when I grind my wheat into flour. It was fun to make the connection with the stalk.

The wheat and the whipping cream in a jar that we shook like crazy!

The butter came out nicely!

I'll just say that it was pretty fun cooking with Erik when I didn't have to be the one cleaning everything up! We had a great time and I think it helped him. Today, he ate 3 muffins at home! They weren't blueberry, just plain whole wheat, but, progress is progress!