Snow Day 2 of 2 (let's hope!)

Well, I really only thought I'd be doing one post about snow, when I took those first pictures, but believe it or not, we got a call this morning around 6:15 saying school would be delayed by 2 hours because of ice again...and then got a call at 8 that it was canceled!  The kids were actually not as excited today.  Elle had a big UIL meet scheduled for today, that was rescheduled from Friday...canceled again!  Ava was bummed because she liked how her hair looked and wanted to show her friends. ha!  Either way, three seconds after telling the kids that school was canceled, I told Shawn that we needed to have an emergency meeting without the kids.....being home with no plans and three bored kids has to be one of the levels of hell.  Seriously, unless your kids like playing alone all day long, it makes for a long painful day if you don't get some planning going on!  So since we weren't allowed to go to school because of "bad" road conditions....we thought it made since to drive around town doing stuff together.

This....this is what canceled another day of school.  A thin layer of ice....seems not that dangerous...except it is, if you're having to drive on it!

We got to the library as it opened and had the whole children's section to ourselves for quite a while.  We lost track of time and realized we were there almost two hours by the time we left!

 After the library we headed to Walmart altogether and I was reminded why I NEVER take all three kids to the store....they are incessant about wanting stuff and if I had let them, we could have spent $300 on a whole lot of seriously junky food.  We thought we were being generous by letting each of them pick out a Lunchable (which they never get) and a sucker, which they were SUPER excited about.  After lunch and during nap time, we played a little bit of candyland....I lost big time.  Ava wanted so much for me to win that she kept not wanting to take cards just so we could both win (she does not get this from me. lol)

Also during "quiet" time, the girls decided to use the karaoke machine microphone to make speeches about nonsensical things....I should have recorded them.....truly...nonsense.....lots and lots of it.  You couldn't get away from their voices!!!

Elle was desperate to make a speech and was looking for anything to read out loud.  She found her STAAR writing preparation paper her teacher had given her with lots of helpful hints, so that's what she read.  I considered that her homework for the day.

I also made a caramel pie for after dinner....yuuumm.

After dinner and baths, we all settled in with some popcorn to watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, which we've wanted to see since it came out in October.  The kids were very excited about this and we loved it! 

Today felt like a long day....time when slowly....maybe a little too slowly...but the kids loved our spontaneous family day and so did we.  And I'm very thankful that there is no chance of snow or ice tomorrow.

Snow Day 1 of 2

Yep, in central Texas we have had TWO snow days in less than a week's worth of school!!!  This is unprecedented.....but let's be accurate.  There was no snow involved in these snow days.  Yes, Texans do tend to overreact about freezing precipitation....but ice isn't quite as friendly and sweet as snow.  In fact, there's really nothing nice about ice. (even if it's 3/4 of the word nice...don't let it fool you.)  Anyway, I was thankful to have a spur of the moment vacation day with the kids!  Yes, it's more work and the kids fight a lot, but life is what you decide to make of it....so I chose to have a good time with this boring cold weather issue :) 

We start with the two stooges on the trampoline.  They were making me laugh so hard because they truly were falling all over the place and all over each other and couldn't stop laughing or falling!

All three out to enjoy the sleet that had accumulated on the trampoline (this was really the only major place we could find it.

Sliding for fun on a little slippery spot they found.

 Celebrating a snow day with neighbors!!!

Found some quiet time to read

 

After freezing, it was time for some hot cocoa and whipped cream on top.

Shawn worked on a project that needed fixing.  This coat rack was a gift from me to him for our wedding. (He says he asked for this...I have no idea why, but obviously I obliged.) It has fallen apart over and over and finally it broke completely a few weeks ago.  He took the whole thing apart and completely reworked it and it's perfectly sturdy again! :)

And then he read himself to sleep....this is very typical.  Shawn doesn't need sleeping pills to sleep....just a book.

And we ended the night with warm stew and cornbread.  And since the snow day was on Friday...we got to play all day Saturday too!

The Weekend Update

Saturday morning, we had a nice slow start to the day.  One by one the kids started waking up and I let them climb in bed with me and watch cartoons.  This doesn't happen all that often because they don't usually all wake up around the same time on Saturday and usually they head downstairs to eat breakfast.  I asked Shawn to get a picture of it to remember these sweet times. 

On Sunday I decided that I needed to work on my issues of control and perfectionist tendencies so I had a group of girls come over and work on a scrapbook that they will submit to be judged for the upcoming Lads to Leaders/Leaderettes convention that our youth from church are participating in.  All I was allowed to do was give suggestions and provide them with the materials they needed.  I also got to use the cutting board....but that was it.  It really wasn't bad at all to let go and let their creativity do the talking!  Really most days it's not that hard for me since I did teach middle school and high school art for a year....you can't just jerk the paintbrush or pencil out of those kids hands.  Anyway, it turned out to be so much fun and as usual I got a lot of joy from providing the outlet for kids to explore their creative side.  We got a lot done on the scrapbook and I'm looking forward to the next time the girls come over.  We still have quite a ways to go and the convention is Easter weekend...which will be here faster than you know it! 

 

We also had a marvelous time on our MLK holiday, but I purposefully didn't take my camera so that I could just be in the moment.  It was a wonderful day with about 3 miles of hiking, a picnic in the backyard, cleaning up the flowerbeds with the kids,  followed by a girl scouts meeting that evening :)

This is daily life

I haven't picked up the camera in a while and just taken pictures of what daily life is like so I decided to do it today and there were actually some interesting things to capture!  First, Levi had a few friends over this morning while their momma took care of some errands.  I loved watching the boys play dress up.  I miss those days of the girls playing that way! 

Today was the first official day to sell girl scout cookies.  As usual we set the bar pretty low.  We don't love the craziness that goes with selling cookies, but it does help provide the troop with the money needed to do the activities we want to do throughout the year.  Our goal is to sell 25 boxes each so that each girl gets a patch.  After looking at the prizes for boxes sold, Ava declared that she'd like to sell 2,500 boxes so she can get the laptop and Elle, being so much more modest only wanted to sell 1,500 to get the Kindle.  Lovely.  I'm sticking with the #25.   Shawn is wonderful with this part of Girl Scouts.  He pretty much has done everything this year and all I've really done is put it on facebook and eat 1 1/2 boxes of cookies (but I also made sure to pay for them without being reminded. ha!)  I took a quick picture of Shawn pulling a wagon full of cookies while all three kids sprinted to the next door.  Levi refused to be left out of this process!  :)

Tonight was a very monumental night for us as parents.  After 11 years of signing other parents' kids up for Camp Blue Haven, we finally were able to register our own child for her first year of camp.  We have truly dreamed about this since very early on.  We have seen what an amazing and lifelong impact that camp has on these kids and we are so very thankful to have the opportunity to send our child there!  Registration is a bit nerve-racking though.  There are only so many spots open for first time campers so it's first come first serve and we can only hope that we registered fast enough tonight to be guaranteed a spot...but we won't know for another MONTH!  That's a long time to wait. 

Here's a photo of Shawn a few seconds before he could register her.....intense!

And now to eat a few more cookies, read a book, and get some sleep before we start on all new adventures tomorrow....

Swanky Steaks

Tonight Shawn and I got to do something we've never done before....we got to eat at the fanciest restaurant we've ever been too!  Our friends got a gift card from a client and decided to take us along to an amazing steakhouse in Austin called Flemings.  We even got "dressed up" which we've NEVER had to do for a dinner date before!  After being seated, Valerie and I just kept giggling at how out of place we felt...or maybe it was just me.  I felt even more country than I already am and was trying so hard to talk quieter and act more "mature."  It didn't last long and that was fine because it got louder in the restaurant the longer we were there.  The place was so expensive that I had to cover up the column that showed the price of each thing, just to decide what I wanted because I couldn't concentrate on what sounded good for those prices!  Thank goodness they had a gift card! The food was wonderful.  The conversation was fun as usual.  We even shared a dessert which was delicious, and ended with coffee.  It was such a wonderful experience....even if we'll NEVER be able to do that again! 

First Post of 2014

I imagine I'll be mistakenly saying 2013 for a while and writing the wrong date too, as happens every single year and just about the time I get used to 2014, it will be time to change again!  Last night we had our MASH group over to help celebrate the end of one year and fresh beginnings for a new year!  It was pretty wild and crazy over here.  We had about 40 people come and we were packed in!  I knew it was going to be hard to keep the energy level up all the way till midnight so Shawn and I planned some games that we'd play every 45 minutes throughout the night.  They turned out great and were a lot of fun.  I will say that after we finally hit the midnight mark, I was relieved that I  could finally go to bed!  Within five minutes of twelve I was politely reminding people where the front door was.  Ha!  I was T.I.R.E.D.  I'm sure we'll be finding confetti for months to come....we've already found some in the dishwasher?! 
I completely buy into the whole new-year-new-start resolution thing.  I think it's good to reevaluate and assess the situation in your life regularly so as not to get into ruts or slowly let apathy take over.  So here's my resolutions for this year:
1. Do one scrapbook page per week until caught up....there's about 49 pages to accomplish for the family scrapbook (which I stopped at the end of 2011) (so that would catch me up to 2011 which is fine with me) and then also I have Levi's to do and I have up the three months done for him.....so I have a long way to go.
2. Read through the New Testament twice
3. Read 6 other books
4. Run twice a week
5. I'm leaving two off that are personal that if  I wrote them on here would have "the right hand knowing what the left hand was doing" type of thing...make sense? :)
What I want to see out of 2014 in my life?  I want a more centered, confident, calm 2014...2013 felt chaotic and tumultuous....maybe that's just life with three kids but I am going to be more purposeful about creating more peace within myself.
And now a few pictures from the party:

 

The balloons were hung with times written on them and filled with confetti and the name of a game!

When the night was young and we were still fresh faced...and I got to snuggle a baby :)

Popping a balloon...the kids loved this part!

 

I set the self-timer a few seconds too early...this was taken about 4 seconds before midnight!!! (but I'm impressed with the number of people that made it all the way till midnight at our house!

Getting a New Year's kiss!

 

Sparklers galore...and not a single person burned!

Two of a kind :)