Catching Up

 I had a few more snow pictures that I saved to finish up blogging about our snow storm a few weeks back and then I never got around to it.

We went out to play LOTS, but John thought I was overdoing on the layers.

 I disagree.

Every few hours the area in front of our fireplace would look like this. Gloves, hats, shoes. All drying out so we could go out and get cold and wet again a little while later.

The treadmill became a drying rack.

Fun with snow! What else is there to do when you're stuck at home?

Where did our garden go??

We measured every few hours since it just kept coming down. Depending on where we measured, it varied from 10-14 inches. So we ended up with roughly a foot of snow over a few days. It was amazingly beautiful and such a rare thing for us.

We had SO much fun with our snow days (the boys were out of school on Friday and Monday, so we ended up with a long, snowy weekend). We played, we drank massive amounts of hot chocolate, we watched movies in front of the fire, and we ate every single bit of the food I had bought in preparation for the snow storm. The dogs discovered snow. Buster loves it. Honeydew gets stressed out.

What a fun, memory making weekend!

SNOW!!

We are having quite a snowstorm! We measured about 5 inches before bed last night and the reports say to expect another 5 by tomorrow morning. It started snowing again around 12:30 this afternoon and continues to steadily come down. All school was canceled for the day and John is working from home. We are loving this lazy, snowy day just watching the flakes come down. But don't worry - we're getting some play time in too!

What a Tuesday!

There was some excitement at the boys' school today. As I was picking the boys up, we heard a crash. Turns out someone drove their car right into the building! 

Photo credit: The Oregonian

Even though school was letting out, it happened in an area where no one walks, so no one was hurt - driver included. Apparently the driver accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake. Oops.

Aiden had an after-school activity, so I had to go back after a little while. There were LOTS of police officers (more than seemed necessary for the situation) and a lot of news crews. Nothing like some Tuesday afternoon craziness!

Nathan's Birthday

Ugh, the lagging with the blog posts. I do not like this. Better late than never, I guess. Anywho, Nathan turned 6 (what?!) back on January 14 and we had not one, but two celebrations!

We tend to stick with family parties for the most part because it's really just easier that way, but now they're getting to the ages where they want friends and lots of fun things to do at their parties. We were terrible parents and flaked out on giving Aiden a friend party (I was uber-stressed due to school and it just didn't happen. Aiden was quite upset), but wanted to make sure that we got one pinned down for Nathan.

But first, the family party. We had the family party with grandparents, great-grandparents, cousin, and aunt the weekend before his birthday. He loved showing off his new keyboard to everyone, and I showed off my new violin!

The day of his birthday was mid-week, so we had a fun family night at home. We made burgers and milkshakes. Yummy! (No pictures - I was too busy eating!)

Then the weekend after his birthday, we had the friend party at Out of This World Pizza. However, two days before the party, John got REALLY sick with the flu. It turned out that I was left to pick up the cake at Costco with two giddy boys and do the party all by myself as a single parent. This also meant that the date night we had specifically scheduled for the evening after a noisy kid party had to be canceled. Not cool.

I was quite stressed out being on my own, but of course my mommy friends helped out and everything was just fine. 

Aiden and Kahlan. Kahlan INSISTED on wearing her fancy dress to Nathan's party. She kind of adores Aiden and Nathan.

It turned out that the only people who didn't show were non-preschool friends, which meant it turned into a preschool friends party. Nothing wrong with that, of course!

Nathan and his "girlfriend" Rachel. They tell us that they're going to get married when they grow up. To have extremely blonde children, obviously. :-)

It's downright impossible to get pictures of children at a place like Out of This World since they are never sitting down, so I ended up with zero pictures of most of the children. Oh well. It's the memory that counts, right?

 I think Nathan had a fantastic time. We ended up with WAY too much cake and massively hyper children. And even though I was on my own, it worked out fine and I really enjoyed not having to clean up afterwards. Paying someone else to do it is very much worth it! And yes, John and I had a date night the following week.