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Saturday, February 28, 2015

Old Man Winter

Well, Old Man Winter came. And he stayed. And he stayed a little bit longer. In fact, he stayed so long the children missed 4.5 days of school!!!

Oh my, that was a long week! It would have been (only slightly, I’m sure) better had I not been trying to juggle the whole “work from home” and take care of kids thing. As in Avery would have been a lot happier had I been able to play with her more than I did. But we survived. Barely. Thankfully the roads around me were cleared by Wednesday so the kids and I were able to get out each day and do something, whether it was going through the Mickey D’s drive thru to get Happy Meals or going to my dermatologist appt, where Avery freaked out when the used liquid nitrogen to freeze a sunspot off of my face and Will got lost in an elevator. Alone.

The winter weather we got on Monday evening/Tuesday morning ended up being a pretty good sledding surface so we got outside for a bit Tuesday morning.

But not without the first of many tantrums…..

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Winter fun!

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We brought out one of the kiddie pools, which ended up being a lot of fun. Even I took a turn!

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It’s all about posing with this little one.

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Stella has always enjoyed sledding with us, although one time when she was riding with me, she jumped right out. Evidently I wasn’t going fast enough for her.

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It’s so funny how dark the girls look against the bright white snow.

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The secondary roads had a hard time getting back to normal. This was the general reaction around our house to the forecast and the news on school.

Saturday Matt went to work and the kids and I headed to the mall. Will had a Lego store gift card to use (Thanks, C!!) and you know what, it was warm in the mall and I made the kids walk around the whole mall with me! Stretch those little legs that have done much of nothing all week! We also went to Target and Char Grill for lunch. And thankfully after Matt got home that afternoon I got to the gym and then out to do a little retail therapy for myself. I was soooooo glad to be out of the house. ALONE.

Then on Tuesday I flew out to Boston for work and it was snowing!!! Old Man Winter came back and dumped a lot of snow on Raleigh. Matt didn’t take any pics!! Thankfully I was able to get back on Thursday, even if it did mean standing in my leather riding boots in 5 inches of snow, digging my car out of the snow on the airport parking deck roof with a CD case!

Saturday, February 7, 2015

I have a teenager!

In people years at least!

Sandy Lady Lindy turned 13 the last week of January. As you can tell she was thrilled!

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Matt, Avery and I all teamed up to make her a birthday cake, complete with snausages and beggin’ strips!

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Time to sing….and yes, we almost caught the dogs on fire. Not really but……  :-)

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Stella ate her piece in one bite. I don’t think that dog has ever chewed a single thing in her whole life.

Lindy took hers and ran off to her bed, and then the family room rug, for enjoyment. Such is life with a dog!

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Happy Birthday to my Lindy Lou!!

Thursday, February 5, 2015

A Lazy Weekend

Recently we ended up with just a plain ol’ lazy weekend around the house. It wasn’t intentional but with Matt in bed sick with the flu, we just didn’t get to do a lot of the stuff we had planned to do. And we didn’t have masses of neighborhood kids in the house either since Matt was sick.

We did some majorette routines in a Sleeping Beauty dress using Will’s blow dart “gun”. 

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We made snow cones.

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Let me take the opportunity to say I had one of these as a child and loved it and don’t remember it being NEARLY as difficult to use.  It takes forever to get a tiny bit of ice now and I end up with blisters on my hand from turning the crank. Matt remarked that 30 years ago the metal to plastic ratio was probably higher and that the lead paint probably helped melt the ice a little better!! Ha!

We played some Roll-y Bat in the front yard. Avery was being “Bubba’s Little Catcher” because Mommy hadn’t pitched in a few months and well let’s just say I was rusty.

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Of course we played Life. We always play Life. Another memory from my youth that was a lot more fun back then! 

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And check out our banker!

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TV time snuggles. These 2 love each other some kinda fierce.

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Speaking of 2 that love each other…..it’s a wonder poor Sunshine’s face hasn’t been sucked off after all these years.

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Will spent several hours doing Sudoku, his new found hobby. Poor guy got pretty upset with the Sunday paper version (i.e. the hardest of the week).  He stopped and started over so many times and never finished. I did find some “kid” versions online for him to play and that has been a little better for him.

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We also went on a walk on the Greenway through the Nature Park. I had planned for it to just be the kids and me but the dogs heard the word “walk” and while they never want to go on their 2 mandatory walks a day, they were psyched to go on this one.  Lindy, bless her heart….she actually walked most of the way, or at least more than I expected, but man was she SLOW.  I’m guessing the walk was somewhere close to a mile and it took us over and hour. The temp dropped a lot while we were out and boy was I glad to get home!!