Snow Days--hopefully the last!!

Just when we thought we had turned a corner, and the calendar flipped over to March...and I think we were all hopeful that winter was behind us...BAM!  We got hit with a snowstorm.  OF COURSE WE DID.

On Thursday, March 5th Jake had his 2nd school cancellation of the year (the first was due to frigid temps back in February), and Liam stayed home with us too.  We did what I'm assuming most people do on snow days....we stayed in our PJs and decorated for Easter and made Easter crafts.

The rest of the day consisted of Legos, puzzles, games, coloring, and movies.  Pretty much the perfect snow day.

Can't stop, won't stop....building puzzles. 

That weekend we headed outside for what was (most likely---hopefully) the last run on the luge for the season.

Decided to test out the slo-mo option on my phone when taking video that day, here is the result:

 And the next day, to officially round out winter, Brian took the boys skiing.  We've had some fun times in the snow (times that even I was able to pull myself together and have fun with little whining!) but I am so ready for spring at this point.  Peace out, winter!!

Snow Tubing!!

Last weekend, Jake and I had a little getaway and went snow tubing for the first time.  Friends of ours own a condo at Hidden Valley and had invited the moms and older kids up for a night to enjoy the condo and go on a group outing to the snow tubing area of Seven Springs.  Agreeing to take part in athletic activities (especially ones outside in the cold) always makes me nervous because it's so far out of my comfort zone, but I was excited to go....it's always fun to get away with friends and I was excited to do it with Jake.  Anything athletic-related tends to fall back onto Brian for obvious reasons, so it was nice to have something planned for just Jake and I that really spoke to his interests.

And here is where I say that I was totally wrong for being nervous at all, because we had a BLAST!!  Seriously, if you ever have a chance to go, try it!  It was a lot of fun (and ended up being nice and sunny-bonus!) 

 

After tubing for almost 2 hours, we headed back to the condo to chow down on some pizza then watch all of the kids (there were 6 of them total!) run around like crazy little people for hours.  They had a blast and everyone got along, so it was nice to sit back and enjoy some wine with the other moms. 

Happy Friday, everyone!!

What we've been up to (too cold to do much edition)

If I'm being honest, we've mostly just been hibernating when we can.  I find that February is the looooongest month to get through.  Any initial excitement over winter is long gone, I get zero holidays off in this month, illness always seems to hit our house, and the temps always seem to be the lowest of the year.  All of those things have pretty much been true this month, and we're only a little over halfway through.  And all of the previously mentioned things make it pretty easy for me to stick with my weekend motto:

The illnesses started about 2 weeks ago, I had a terrible sore throat (I rarely get sore throats thanks to my lack of tonsils, so this was unusual for me)...I drug myself to the doctor after a few days to see if it was strep (it wasn't, just a virus) and lo and behold, they're still taking flu precautions and having patients rock this awesome look in the waiting room (you may remember I got to sport this same attire when I was there in December for bronchitis):

I spent the rest of the day and part of the next parked on the couch with my favorite blanket, favorite dog, and favorite housewives making a full recovery.

The next week, I was scheduled for a day off work to volunteer in Jake's class for his 100th day of school celebration; he and I were both really excited, and off he went on the bus that day, so happy that I was coming in shortly.  I get to the school about 30 minutes into their day and his teacher tells me that right after coming in, he was sitting at his desk doing a worksheet and she noticed he was crying...she went over to him and he told her that his head and body hurt so bad they were making him cry.  I met him in the nurses office to find that he's running a fever and has crazy chills and body aches.  When I asked him if he felt that way earlier when we were at the house he said that he was, but he didn't want to say anything because he was so excited for me to come into his classroom.  Poor guy :(  He pretty much immediately fell asleep on the couch, but then woke up and starting throwing up.  UGH!  NO!!! NONONONO!  That went on for the remainder of the day...sleep, wake, throw up, repeat.  I stayed home with him the next day, then he was able to go back after that.  And thank goodness, none of us got it!!

And of course.....the snow and cold.  This is what it's looked like a lot at our house:

"There's really no place that's acceptable for me to do my business INSIDE?  Seriously??"

The kids are enjoying it of course, I'm sure you remember my luge post from last week. 

After coming in from sled riding for quite some time last weekend, Liam kept insisting that he wasn't tired and didn't need to nap.  Since it was kind of late in the day at almost 2pm, I figured it was silly to try and force him and just planned on him going to bed early that night.  10 minutes after declaring there was no nap to be had, this was him on the couch:

Nope, no nap necessary here.  Not at all.

Last Sunday, Jake and daddy headed out to Hidden Valley to meet some friends for the day, leaving Liam and I with a day to ourselves.  I asked him what he wanted to do, and he wanted to go to Sunday school and go out to lunch.  Done and done!

ready for Sunday school-he picked out his own outfit :)

 I needed to run to the mall to return something, so California Pizza Kitchen located conveniently inside the mall seemed like a great pick.  Someone even conned me into letting him order dessert....

 
Other than that, we've really just been entertaining ourselves around the house.  Sometimes we play board games....

Sometimes we snuggle up and watch movies....

 Other times, we have star wars battles (in our PJs, obviously....)

 

  We've been doing a lot of coloring/crafting:

thanks for the book, Meghan!

And some of us have been soaking up the sun whenever we can get it:

I hope you've been able to seek out some sunny spots, too!!

Snowmageddon 2010

It snowed in Pittsburgh...have you heard? :) The last time I remember having this much snow was the "Blizzard of 93" (remember that? a glorious week of snow days!) Unfortunately, this storm hit during the weekend, instead of a weekday when it pretty much would have been a guaranteed day off of work. But, we made the most of it, bundled up & headed outside!



When we got this sled out, Jake thought it was a pool & asked to fill it with water:



After playing in the driveway for awhile, we moved to the backyard to measure the snow....using Jake as our measure of course :) (for the record, at 9:30am, we had about 20 inches of snow and it came down for another 3 hours after that, not sure what the total is out there now)