Valentine's Day

We spent our Valentine's Day as a family:  we made red velvet cupcakes decorated with cheesecake pudding frosting (and/or some combination of red velvet Oreos, giant marshmallows, and sprinkles)!  We opened cards and little gifts and just kept eating that red velvet cake!

 

 

 

John sent me flowers to the office, and the boys were sweet enough to squeeze me limes so I could make a margarita after the new Mexican restaurant we tried for dinner had an undrinkable margarita.  (Seriously, how it that even possible?!) 

 

Oh, and I just have to post this photo of the homemade pizza we made earlier in the week.  William had the great idea to make a face out of the pizza sauce.  Unfortunately I ended up burning the pizza when I got sidetracked doing other things   The part we salvaged wasn't that tasty, but it was a fun little project.

Friday vs. Saturday

A lot has changed in the 18 years since John and I had our first date at Kansas State.  I surprised him by lining up a play date for William at Dylan's (where pizza and Hawaiian ice and a partial sleepover was AWESOME!), so we could go to a nice dinner.  The food was good, but our drink better!  I think the quality of our beverages is the biggest difference of the last 18 years!

 

Saturday we returned to life as suburban parents and went to Ava's 8th birthday party at Brunswick Zone for rides and games - after a morning of soccer, of course.  William was the only boy at the party, and one of only three kindergarteners, so we got a glimpse at what summer camp is going to look like with the older ladies.   

 

 

  

 

 

Artwork

William's art work makes me so happy, so my office is full of it.

Willis Tower complete with William on the Sky Deck Ledge as drawn by the artist on my office dry erase board:

 

Illustrating the sentence "I love to slide with my Mom" to recreate a day we launched his race cars down the yellow twisty slide at the playground:

Illustrating the sentence "This weekend I went sledding!" with smiles all around:

Sledding

Since I missed out on the sleds last season, I was sure to stock up this year.   I mean, Santa was.   He brought three sleds to our house for Christmas.  And this was just the reason; we all three slipped and slid down the hill at the elementary school. If it's going to snow 16 inches, waking up to it on a Sunday morning when we had no place to go was just perfect!  So much family fun! 

     

  

   

 

 

 

  

 

 

Super Bowl Blizzard

We had a beautiful blizzard over Super Bowl weekend!  It started snowing overnight Saturday into Sunday, and when we woke up we had about 8 inches on the ground and covering Ryan's car.  It continued to snow perfect snow throughout the day and we finished with around 16 inches.   Happily,  our tennis lessons were cancelled, so once we dug out Ryan, we went sledding!  We got an hour in before the 2 p.m. blizzard warning hit.  Like clockwork, at 1:58 I looked outside and it was nearly a white out with the blustery wind blowing the snow.  While we were out playing it was still relatively warm (if appropriately attired in full ski gear!) and virtually no wind. 

 

 

 

Dylan and Tyler's dad, Dave, created this awesome snow fort when the snow was fresh.  We all checked it out before Ryan left.  Well, Tyler mostly wanted to eat the snow!

 

We had two families over to watch the Super Bowl that evening.  Two more had to cancel due the weather and sickness. Since the boys out numbered the girls 3 to 1, there was a lot of running and battles happening in the background.  The big excitement in our neighborhood was the McDonalds  "Pay with Lovin'" commercial which was filmed at the McDonalds in our subdivision and had many neighbors in it!  

 

 

 

 

School was cancelled for Monday as the snow fall was too much for the plows to keep up with before morning.   My work was not closed, but I didn't want to get my car out so I took the bus to the train and waited and waited and waited.  Luckily Megan and I had been on the bus together so had someone to chat with.  After 40 minutes,  we walked to a Starbucks and waited for Dave to come pick us up for work at home/play at home days.    Not sure if it was the sledding, shoveling the back deck for Rachel, or traipsing through the snow to Starbucks (including a fall on an icy street), but my body was exhausted on Monday!  It has taken most of the week for my muscles to stop hurting.   Guess I need to workout more.    

 

 

  

Weekend Events

We had a pretty social (for us) weekend.   On Friday, we had dinner at a friend's house where the kids enjoyed playing together and the adults enjoyed chatting.   Saturday we had soccer followed by errands and then a visit from Uncle Ryan.  We enjoyed making tacos on Saturday night and pancakes on Sunday morning before we went out to play in the snow.  In the dinner prep picture you can see everyone is at work; John is putting the cabinet pulls on! 

 

 

  

 

Snow/Cold Days

After two weeks off for Christmas break, we were back in class for two days before two more days off for dangerously cold weather.  Last year was the exact same situation except I think it was the first two days after break instead of returning for two before two more off.  As a result, our last day of school has moved back at least two days (the winter is young; hard to say whether there will be any more emergency days burned).   And I had to reschedule our summer vacation!  Guess I'm a novice mom.  I forgot that the "last day of school" is just a tentative date.  There are five snow days built into the schedule after that.  For each day the kids miss school, there is a make-up day tacked on.   On the Friday of the cold week, school was back in session but parents could choose to keep their kids home as an "excused" absence.   From what I heard, about 20% of the school stayed home.   But, since school was in session, no more emergency days get burned up.   The annoying part of the snow/cold days is that the kids already had a scheduled four-day weekend over MLK Day for the Monday holiday and a Friday teacher work day to do 2nd quarter grades.   And then we have off President's Day and two more random days in February. . . .Sigh; feels like the kids never go to school!  We also threw in a sick day after a random bought of tummy troubles.  With all of that, William has not had a full five days of school in the past five weeks!   On scheduled school days off, William can attend a YMCA School's Out Camp, which he really loves.  For the two most recent days, they took field trips to Chicago to the Museum of Science and Industry and to a local bowling alley

Prior to the days off, I took this picture of William walking in the snow to school.   I need to find the picture from the first day of school to contrast.   He fought me about his snow pants this day, so he is wearing jeans tucked into his snow boots.  The kids have to take snow pants and snow boots to school if they want to be let off of the slab during recess.  We've lost (and refound) a single glove from two different sets of gloves this winter.  If this is what we have to go through here, I wonder how the kids in Minnesota and Wisconsin do it?!

Winter Soccer - Year Two

William started his fourth session of soccer - also known as winter soccer, year two.   We first started down this soccer path a year ago with this same indoor, winter soccer league.  It was a huge success.  He was pretty good, so he had fun and loved it because he was frequently the one with the most goals.  That launched us into summer soccer where he - as a newly turned 5 year old - played on the kindergarten league.  It was hot and the kids were bigger and better than he was, so he didn't love it.  For fall soccer, we made sure he was on the same team as his buddy, Blakey, and it was good on nice weather days and a bear on the heat wave or freezing cold days.  This was also when he told us his shin guards were "like needles in his legs."   Ugh.   Armed with a new pair of shin guard that fit inside his soccer socks, we decided to tackle winter soccer again.   He is playing with kindergarteners, but apparently all the big kids from summer are on a travel team or playing some other sport because these kids are all his size and speed!  He had fun for week one, and I'm looking forward to seeing him play on the Saturdays that I don't work.  He likes running around for an hour, and he loves Saturday brunch afterwards!  I think it may be the promise of brunch that really gets him going!    He told me that was where he and Daddy "always go after soccer," and they were kind enough to invite me along last weekend. 

 

 January 2015:  5 1/2 years old

January 2014:  4 1/2 years old

New Year's Eve

We hosted John's parents for New Year's Eve - also known in William's world as Second Christmas.  He was super excited to get to open one more gift, especially since it was a Star Wars LEGO AT-AT Walker!

John helped guide the grandparents to an advanced LEGO sets.  This kid is such a LEGO master, that at 5 1/2 he really needs the sets for 8-years +.   We both helped on parts of the walker -- mostly because he wanted help for repetitive pieces and because he wanted to build it faster so he could start playing with it. . .not because he couldn't do it himself.   And this was either a toy that John had as a child and loved - or wanted as a child.   Not sure which one, but you'd better believe it was his idea to suggest it to his parents!   I'm rather shocked by the sheer number of LEGOs (especially Star Wars kits) around my house, but we mostly manage to keep them off the floor where they could be dangerous to bare feet.