Life Lately in January

It is February!  We have made it past the dreaded January.   We've had too many snow days, I mean the whole city was shut down for a week.  

The month of love has begun and we've been hard at work making Valentine crafts.  Amy especially likes the heart stickers and Leo loves to paint.  They've been happily showing off their creations. 

 

Well, I've spent the past couple of weeks being sick, classic January, right.  I was really sick last week and actually went in to the doctor and had several tests run.  I was just starting to feel better and was hit with a sinus infection.  It's funny though, I'm usually sick in January (because it's January) and it really brings me down but I don't feel that sad about it this year.  Must be that Vitamin D I've been taking.  The kids have all been sick too, colds, and then Amy caught pink eye. The joys of January.  We are all healthy and well now. 

My glass studio is finished!  I moved most everything down last night and I am so excited.  I'll post more pictures when things are a little more put away.  I never dreamed I'd have a space in my house that I could do glass.  I can just picture all the beautiful things I am going to create there.  Heber spent a lot of hours framing, sheetrocking, putting lights in, painting.  It really is so nice.  You ought to come over to see it sometime. 

In the last month, Heber and I have been out on two dates.  I can't even believe it. We even arranged for a baby sitter to come.  Pretty momentus.  We went to Star Wars for the first. The second we had a throwback date to our old days.  We went to Red Lobster for dinner (channeling the old Sizzler in Logan) and then went bowling.  When we lived in Logan, there weren't many things to do on all those winter nights, you know, all 8 months of them.  Bowling was one thing we could do. 

Back in January, we took the kids to the National Zoo.  Amy is a real animal lover and we wanted to a special activity around her birthday.  She was beyond excited to be there.  Leo was cold.  I mean, it was cold for Virginia standards. 

I have been singing quite a bit lately.  Over the last month, I've sung three times.  It feels good to be back to singing.  And I got another calling and have begun to teach the Relief Society sisters every month.  It's a fun change. 

The kids have decided to sleep.  This month, we've have these things called evenings and full nights of sleep that we don't quite recognize but could really get used to. 

We made it through yet another January and I think it was, dare I say it, actually a good one.  It must be all that sleep I've been getting lately.   Whatever it is, I'll take it!  On to February!

Snow!

The snow has finally come after a full week of anticipating it's arrival.  We've been preparing for the storm because people take their snow seriously here.  I used to make fun of it, I mean, what's the big deal with a little snow but on Wednesday, we had a dusting of snow and it caused 1,000 car accidents.  So, I guess that hunkering down for a few days isn't such a bad thing.  

 

It started to snow on Friday and continued on through Saturday night.  We got over two feet in just over 24 hours.  It was crazy!  Heber and I were talking about the times that we had seen this much snow at one time and they were few.  I thought of one winter in my childhood living in the yellow house on Main Street and Heb thought of one from his childhood too.  Living in Logan, we saw quite a bit of snow but usually it would build up over time and not in one big storm. 

When we were first married, we lived in a red brick bungalow house that didn't have a garage.  We had parking spots that came right off the street and the plows would blow through and block our cars right in.  This shouldn't be a huge deal but I drove a little white Saturn at the time.  Our neighbors were always out shoveling and we'd work to get the cars cleared out.  One January, they had a huge mound out front that they plopped their real Christmas tree.  There it stayed until it all thawed out.  Heber and I started dating right at the end of January too so it always brings back a lot of memories of snowball fights and snowy date nights. 

We have been digging out the snow and playing outside as much as possible.  It's been neat to see all of our neighbors come together and help each other out.  There was even a knock at the door yesterday from one of our neighbors who brought by a case of beer to thank Heber for his help in digging them out.  Heb and I had a good laugh over that one.

We've had a couple of nice sunny days to make all the snow more tolerable and fun.   The kids have loved it.  Leo digs and climbs the big mounds.  Amy likes to sled and pat the snow.  It's been a pretty relaxing few days.  Heber headed to work today, which made it feel not quite so fun and vacationy.  Now, it's just real life without the option of going to any of our normal activities.  

 

 

An Unexpected Weekend

Our weekend did not turn out like I expected it to.  We have been planning for ages (we're talking months here), to go up and visit some family in Philly for the long holiday weekend.  When we finally got it worked out, we were going to head up for just Sunday and Monday but we were getting out of town, that was enough for me. 

The highlight of the weekend was heading to a Firebirds meeting.  It was one of the best I've attended and came away excited to do glass.  Here's one of the beads I made there.  We even all made it out to a movie together.  Amy did ok, it's a work in progress. 

Anyway, as we were driving to church, the brake light came on in the car and was flashing that we were low on brake fluid.  Now, I would have simply filled up the fluid but this same thing happened not 2 weeks ago.  It's funny, I've been watching White Collar on netflix lately and the guy has the same error flash on his dash board, he loses his brakes and gets into a car accident.  Total tangent but I thought it was oh so pertinent to my life.  I did not want that to happen to us. 

So, we cancelled our trip so that we could have our brakes looked at.  The last thing we need right now would be for us to lose our brakes while we're driving the three hours and to get into an accident.  It still wasn't what I'd hoped to do this weekend.  Who really would trade a weekend away for a $600 mechanics bill?  Oh boy. 

We tried to make the weekend fun still, even without a car that would fit us all.  We hung up some pictures, we watched movies together, made jiffy pop.  On Monday night, snow started to fall in Virginia and we accumulated about 6 inches.  Which in NOVA is way more than enough to shut everything down.  I heard the stores were jammed and all of the toilet paper, milk, eggs and bread were gone.  Why you would wait to buy toilet paper until a disaster is set to strike is beyond me. Even the base that Heber works at was shut down so he got to spend the day with us playing in the snow. 

 

 

 

 

All in all, a pleasant weekend, just not what I expected.  I'm happy the brakes are fixed but it made me antsy to get out and go away for a weekend.  Luckily, I won't have to wait long, I've bought tickets to go to Chicago (just me!) in March.  I am so excited!

Snow

We woke up to snow this morning.  There was a little part of me that was missing snow, especially around the holidays.  Leo, of course, was thrilled and ran around and shoveled and stamped.  Leo discovered his footprints and the sound snow makes beneath your feet.  So much of happiness is these small little moments. 

Amy is like me and not a huge fan of the snow but she stood up.  This is big news.  She has stood a time or two here and there but never very stable.  Out in the frozen snow, she stood.