Shedd Aquarium Breakfast

We set the alarm to get up for a morning field trip to the Shedd Aquarium.  February is member appreciation month, so they hosted a morning coffee series with free continental breakfast and access to the penguin rescuer for questions.  I was expecting to see a penguin up close - which I did not - but we did get a free muffin before seeing the penguins in their regular exhibit!   The animal encounter ended up being a tortoise, which we watched eat lettuce and mango.   We also enjoyed playing the penguin play zone, watching the belugas swim, and steering the submarine.

 

 

 

 

When we went up to the Wild Reef there were a lot of divers in cleaning the tank!  This guy waved at William!

I also got a picture of frozen Lake Michigan!  It's still so cold here!  It was -11 when we woke up.   It is supposed to warm up to 30 today.  We'll see.  At least it's sunny!   I'm glad we got in and out when we did because when we left right before lunch time, the ticket line was all the way outside and down the stairs, and the line to turn into the parking garage stretched out to Lakeshore Drive.  

 

Brrrrrrrrrrr!

It's cold.   Really cold.  School hasn't closed any more, but we thought it might several days this week since it was colder than the January dates we were closed.  I think the threat of being in school all those extra days in June helped keep the doors open in February!  The trade off is that walkers get driven to school.  We live an adult's 5 minute/child's 8 minute walk (about 20 houses) away from the school.   For winter we drive past the first 15 houses and then park and walk the last 5 houses and up to the door.   One day a neighbor even picked up William and drove him with her son through the drop off line, so he was only outside to walk from the street down to the playground and into the building.   He hasn't wanted to try the drop off line with us since it's pretty intimidating without a friend.  :-)

Here's a picture of the day I made him wear a snow suit to walk outside for 3 minutes.  He didn't want his picture taken!

 

One good thing is that people know how to deal with the snow around here.  It snowed around 18 inches on Super Bowl Sunday and at least a foot of it is still around.   The school plows the snow off of the grass between the curb and sidewalk along the drop off line. I saw the grass exposed and thought it was due to a freak warm up.  My neighbor friend (who has a 2nd grader so is WAY more experienced with the school than me!) said they plow it right away so kids can get their car doors open and easily hop out in the drop off line.  Seriously ingenious.  

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?!