Panda 4

William was advanced to the next level at swimming lessons.  His new class is "Fundamentals of Swimming" level 4 and they will work on mastery of the following:

• Junior Freestyle
• Junior Backstroke
• Kid Butterfly
• Chop-Chop Timber (jump into water, swim to wall, get self out)

In level 3, "Flip to Breathe" he passed the following:

• Kid Freestyle
• Junior Breaststroke
• Humpty Dumpty with Breath (fall into water, flip to breathe, swim to wall, get self out)

We continue to be happy with the progress he is making in this continuous swimming lessons program.  He has a good deal of confidence in the pool.  Stamina is his weakness.  We swam at the gym last week after tennis lessons and he was too tired and made some bad safety choices (i.e. he followed a friend into the deeper water and didn't have the energy to keep himself afloat).  Luckily, mommy still recognizes his water safety issues and is always just an arm reach away even if he tries to ditch me.  Guess there are advantages to traveling with your own lifeguard!

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!