If A Picture Speaks A Thousand Words...

...Then I won't have to write very much explaining these amazing photos! This past summer, long long ago, while we were visiting Boise, my sister in law Sarah took some family pictures for us. Literally, we spent about 20 minutes corralling kids and trying to force them to cooperate, which was no easy task-- but the results she managed to capture despite it all turned out fantastic. I'm not sure why I forgot to post this, but better late than never! 

 Isn't she just the most gorgeous 6 year old ever?!?

 Ahhhhh, those beautiful blue eyes kill me every time...

 Such a cute little stinker!

I love these little people!

March Madness!

We've had a very sloooow couple of weeks with not much going on lately. Just the same ol', same ol'! And I'm certainly not complaining-- I'm grateful we'be been able to just enjoy some down time with the kidlets and let the work-school-church routine take over for a little while. 

 Leah and Zach have become great friends since they are home together so much during the day--and they mostly play together very well. Zach LOVES to hear Leah giggle. Leah's three favorite parts of the day are 1) Zach's preschool pick-up, 2)Lucy's school pick-up, and 3) when Daddy gets home. She loves her siblings and is totally a Daddy's girl-- she runs to the door and waits when she hears the garage door go up, and just hugs and hugs him when he comes inside. She's a lover! She also likes to "dress herself," which is what is happening in this picture. She picked a neon orange sports bra to wear for a belt. Pretty stylin'!

 She is also a Mommy's girl. She is my little shadow who follows me wherever I go, and just finds a place to play next to me. I love it...mostly. She is absolutely in to EVERYTHING, and has an obsession with markers. Nothing is safe with Leah around. Jon and I laugh because when she's looking for me or wants me, she has this loud, low-pitched bleat, "MOM? MOM?" She makes us laugh every day.

 Jon finally bought himself a car-- a luxury he'd been waiting for six long years for! He's been driving a '98 Toyota Corolla which has been the perfect commuter car for him to put 80 miles a day on, but the poor man has yet to be rewarded for all of his hard work going to school non-stop for 9 years and then jumping right into a strict military environment for the last 2 1/2. We've learned that sometimes you just have to spend your money to feel like it was worth earning it in the first place! 

 He's very conservative with our finances, so when he came to me last fall and told me of his plan to buy a 2014 Ford Focus ST (functionality + style, according to him), who was I to deny him? He bought it clear back in December for a screamin' deal, but it had to be special ordered from Michigan, so he's patiently waited 3 1/2 months for it to finally come in. This weekend it did, and he LOVES it!

 We can fit all five of us in it comfortably, it drives like a dream, and he's not the laughing stock of the dental clinic when he pulls up to work in a car 10 years older than anybody else's.:) Not that it mattered, but it is a nice rite of passage to buy his "first car," since the Traverse is technically mine. 

 He'll probably keep driving the Toyota to work anyway just to put all the mileage on it, but it was sure fun to drive his "race car" (as the kids dubbed it) around town this weekend. Speaking of the Toyota, Zach kept asking, "What's Daddy going to do with his white car now?" I told him, "Well, I guess you'll have to drive it." Zach's eyes got huge and he thought for a second, "But, but, but! I'm just a small guy! I can't drive a car yet! I'd crash it!" Ha ha!

 The kids got invited to a fun Harry Potter themed birthday party this weekend for our next door neighbor Josh. They've been great playmates to have so nearby, and Josh is really into the Harry Potter books and has subsequently gotten my kids really into HP as well. Which is fine by me, because I absolutely love that series. Lucy has totally impressed me with how much she's learned about the books and has even read the first few chapters of the "Sorcerer's Stone." She dressed up like Hermione for the birthday party with special frizzy hair.

Zach-O, confused about the whole dressing-up aspect, decided he'd wear his Green Lantern costume. Fine by me! I guess when they look back at all the old birthday party photos, they'll be like, "Oh yeah! Who was the weird neighbor kid who came dressed up like Green Lantern again?"

 March for us definitely came in like a lion so here's hoping it will go out like a lamb. We had torrential rain for three days straight-- I mean humongous puddles everywhere-- and temperatures with a high of 40 degrees. Saturday and Sunday finally blew in sunny and warm and perfect. We spent as much time outside as possible! 

 Leah likes to steal people's shoes and wear them instead of hers. She's so funny to watch shuffling around the house in Jon's slippers or my gym shoes. How can we resist with that cute little grin?

Zach finally mastered riding his bike without training wheels so we're pretty excited for him! He was a natural on his little Spiderman bike and figured it out really quick. Hopefully if it's warmed up once and for all, he'll get plenty of chances to ride trainging-wheel-free during the rest of the month of March!

Snow Jinx!

I believe my parting words to the month of January were as follows: "Hopefully February brings us better weather, and no more snow days!"

Well if I didn't just set myself up for disappointment, you can call me Uncle Sam! How does that old saying go? "Red sky in morning, Sailors take warning!" This was out my kitchen window Monday morning.

 I'm not Uncle Sam, and I'm certainly not a sailor, but February DID decide to bring with it some more snow. Another monster storm (at least according to these parts) moved in Tuesday morning and dumped about 3 inches over the course of the day. It was lovely, beautiful, fluffy stuff, and the kids had an early release from school and Jon got off work-- so no biggie. Hooray!

Wednesday morning they'd canceled work and school, and actually, the snow hadn't even stuck to the pavement, so the roads were clear and we headed to the gym like usual. Myself and Jon (and the two other people there) were unfazed by the modest amount of snow, but the news alerts on TV were going crazy warning everyone to buckle down because the worst was yet to come. They were predicting more snow, followed by freezing rain, followed by more snow-- which would result in mass power outages. The rain makes the snow so wet and heavy that it breaks the branches off the trees and falls onto the power lines, creating havoc.

We decided to head straight to WalMart to pick up some milk and other necessities just in case it got as bad as everyone seemed to think it would. This is about an hour into the storm, driving home from the store. For seasoned veterans like ourselves, who have driven the Snowville-to-Burley-run a million times in the dark of winter, it was nothing. We got stuck behind a big truck going about 10 mph though, and what should have been a 20 minute drive home ended up taking about 45 minutes. Honestly!

We spent the day enjoying the snow, making treats, and watching movies, and then that night the freezing rain hit. Holy cow! I've never been in an ice storm, but it sounded like hail hitting the windows and roof all. night. long! We kept hearing big cracks outside as the ice fell off the power lines and branches broke with too much weight. I was SO afraid our power would go out and we would have to wake the kids up and put them in bed with us so they didn't freeze to death in our drafty house! Thankfully it didn't and we were able to enjoy a yummy pre-Valentine's Day breakfast of red velvet pancakes and hot cocoa in our warm and cozy kitchen!   

We decided we'd all head out to observe the arctic wasteland that had become North Carolina overnight, so we bundled everyone up starting with the baby.

 Yup. Even Leah got the grocery bag treatment despite pulling out Lucy's old snow pants from storage. She was not thrilled with the bundling job, as she could barely walk.

 I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but there was about 7 inches of snow--more where there were drifts, which is a LOT of snow for around these parts. The snow was rock hard with about an inch crust of solid ice. Not that much fun to play in! 

 You had to stomp through the ice crust in order to walk on it, so building a snowman was out of the question. Our neighbor friends brought out their sleds so we could try sledding down our hill, but we didn't have much luck with that either.

 All the pine needles on the trees were encapsulated in a layer of ice. The branches became so heavy there were downed trees everywhere! We knew it would take poor North Carolina a loooong time to dig out of this one, so we bid our time patiently at home. Luckily Lucy and Zach played with their neighbor friends almost the entire day-- bouncing from one house to the next when they got bored. That was a life saver for our cabin fever!

But by Thursday evening I had absolutely had it!! I was beyond ready to get out of the house after 3 days stuck inside, so we figured the main roads were probably plowed and decided to head out to assess the damage. There were a few other brave souls out on the road, and one or two fast food joints open, but otherwise the entire city was SHUT DOWN. I've never seen anything like it! That just doesn't happen in the west, unless of course it's the end of the world. 

So, Lesson #1: The South really does shut down for snow. Apparently the freeways in Raleigh became a parking lot for abandoned cars-- people just got out and walked rather than drive in snowy conditions. They said on the news that Durham reported over 141 accidents in a 3 hour period. Seriously?!? Seriously. Lesson #2: You know there's no hope when even the police officers don't know to scrape their own windows and drive by with snow piled up 6 inches on their back windshield. Obviously there was no school the rest of the week, and Lucy will have to go to Saturday school for the next month, but these are just all things to remember from our time here in North Carolina! 

Funny February

I like February. You blink and you're already halfway through the month, and each day creeps closer and closer to spring! We've been having fun so far this February. Here's a glimpse of what we've been up to:

 Miss Lucy reached 100 days at school and is officially 100 days smarter for it. Their count was kind of messed up considering the 4-day-snow-day back in January, thus it came four days later than planned, but she still got to wear the shirt she'd made with 100 pipe cleaners hot glued on. I like Leah's photo-bomb in the background.:) 

 Lucy also has lost two teeth this month, one week apart from each other exactly. She looks like a little jack o' lantern. 

Unfortunately she somehow lost the second tooth in all of the excitement, so when it came time to hide the tooth under her pillow for the Tooth Fairy she was really upset. We told her to write a note explaining what had happened, and when Jon found it, it totally cracked me up! It says (sorry about the sideways picture): "Dear tooth fairy, I lost my tooth. I mean I really lost my tooth. Can you still leave something? I will be more careful next time. Lucy, your friend." 

 Bet you didn't know February 6th was National Frozen Yogurt Day?? Neither did we, until I got an offer on Facebook for some free yogurt at Di'lishi. Once I'd picked up Lucy from school, Zach and his huge sweet tooth satisfied a frozen yogurt craving in honor of such a wonderful "holiday."

We've been working with Zach on his temper and occasional grumpiness by doing "Grump Marks" (Mom? Whitney? Anyone else remember those?). Every time he whines or grumps he gets a tally mark on his chart, and if he's able to get less than 20 in 2 weeks (we're halfway right now), he earns a Star Wars Lego set. So far, he's done impressively well. All we have to do is remind him and he shapes right up. I love bribery! He reeeeally wants that set. 

 This is the lovely sight that greets us each morning-- bed-head to beat the homeless. Leah takes a bath every night, so I guess between the wet hair and tossing and turning, she creates a major rat's nest.

 Here's a frontal view. Good Morning sunshine!

 This little stinker is a total mess maker! Holy smokes! I remember it with Zach too-- it's like all of a sudden right around 15 months they go from 0 to 60, and she's running and climbing and destroying everything that gets in her path. I can't keep up. You can't really tell, but behind her is about a million little rocks from our fireplace that she looooves to pull out and dump all over the floor. They're the worst to clean up too, because they won't vacuum up. This came after she'd already pulled all of the ziploc bags out of the box, and dumped my box of cotton swabs in the toilet. She's always very proud of herself, too.

 The only time she slows down is if she wants to read a book, which thankfully is often. She loves books! She finds one, brings it over to Jon, Lucy, or I, and then backs into our laps and sits down with her hands folded in her lap. She's a funny little thing with her own personality.

 This afternoon we went out for a walk and she creamed her face on the pavement yet again-- in the exact same place on her nose as last time. Not a good picture to see because of the flash, but already her cheek and eye are red and swollen and I'm thinking she'll definitely have a shiner by tomorrow morning.

 My sister in law Sarah took these amazing 12 month portraits while we were there visiting over Christmas. She was NOT cooperating, but Sarah managed to pull out some treasures! 

 Crazy about this one. So sweet!

We sure love our Leah! Even if she is really, really, a handful.

 Look! Look! Do you notice anything different about this guy?!? NO GLASSES!!! He has special eyes now. At the end of January, he underwent PRK surgery to permanently correct his eyes so he no longer needs eye glasses or contacts to see. How very lucky!! His surgery went off without a hitch, his recovery was wonderful (no pain and very little irritation) and he's already seeing better than 20/20 just two weeks later. We are sooo grateful everything went so smoothly and now he can get back to fixing teeth.

 Aaaaand unfortunately I still have my glasses, but this February I've been up to a few new things too. Our gym added another Body Pump class for me to teach on Mondays at 12:15 p.m., so now I'm up to teaching twice a week (Mondays and Fridays), one Saturday a month, and still subbing occasionally. Woot! Woot! Compared to the once a month I was teaching as the "newbie" last year at this time, I'm thrilled.

Finally, in honor of the Olympics in Sochi we went to Mellow Mushroom for pizza before the Opening Ceremony. I've mentioned Mellow Mushrrom before but I gotta document it since time is dwindling and I want to remember the little things like this when we move. It's definitely one of our favorites here and it's one of the few "local" places unique to the South that we really like. It's kind of a hippy-dippy place featuring all organic ingredients and super yummy whole wheat crust. Our favorites are the Caesar (pesto chicken pizza with Caesar salad on top) and the Thai Dai (curry chicken pizza with veggies and Thai chili sauce).

 We've been enjoying the Olympics so far. I hate that we have to wait until 8 p.m. to start watching, because then it  goes on and on until midnight which is much too late for me, but we absolutely love celebrating all the amazing athletes around the world. So fun to see all these countries and cultures come together for something positive for a change! While watching the Opening Ceremonies, Jon and I couldn't help but comment that without their country's name on the clothing, most of the time you couldn't tell where anyone was from. Isn't it amazing that people are just people no matter where they're from? Here's hoping the second half of February is just as good as the first!