Winter in the U.P.

Samantha: 92 Months, Week 1

Aedan: 57 Months, Week 4

Owen: 16 Months, Week 1

After Aedan's diagnosis of strep on Saturday afternoon, we knew he would have to stay home from church on Sunday to keep his germs to himself. Ben and I decided to take turns going to church, so I stayed home with Aedan during the first service while Ben took Samantha and Owen to church, and then I went to church for the second service. For a kid that had strep throat and a rash all over his body, he really was in pretty good spirits. He seemed to be doing better and had more of an appetite, which was good.

Samantha wanted me to take a picture of her holding this little pink heart necklace that my grandma had given her awhile back. I like the picture because you can see her cute little layered hair cut and her face that is looking so much more grown up these days. Where did my little girl go that used to have tea parties with her stuffed animals and want to act out Frozen every night? Sometimes I wish I could rewind and relive just one of those days with her. Some days I miss when it was just her, and I spent so much time planning our days and activities together. Now that she's in school, the days and weeks go by so fast, and I miss having her around.

With how cold it was outside, I decided to dress Owen in this cute little sweater with a collared shirt underneath and corduroy pants. He just looked so handsome that I had to get a few pictures of him after church.

Now that we have Owen's bookshelf moved out of the living room, I have done a little rearranging in the living room. I decided to move this end table back upstairs and placed the black chair next to it, giving us another seating area, and a great place to sit and read a book. Samantha has definitely been enjoying sitting there to read in the afternoons.

While Samantha was reading her book, I enjoyed sitting next to Aedan on the couch, reading him some books, and enjoying some warm sunshine. I love his smile in this picture, and his cute little haircut.

With Aedan still recovering, we decided to just cancel small group for that Sunday, and it was kind of nice having extra time to just hang out and be together without having to worry about getting the house picked up and dinner ready for our group. Samantha and Aedan loved having more time to play, and they even worked on this puzzle together.

We've been talking a lot about our trip to Florida and Disney World, so after dinner that night we decided to pull up pictures and videos from our last trip down there two summers ago. The kids had fun remembering the things we did there and talking about what things we would do again. We are all really looking forward to this trip.

As I was getting Owen ready for bed that night, he was feeling warm, so I took his temperature, and he had a 101.1 under his arm. I felt nervous that maybe he had caught some of Aedan's germs. I just so wished that we could all get feeling better. I felt like the kids just kept getting sick, and it made me think that I am doing something wrong and not keeping germs cleaned up enough or something. Winter, and the germs that come along with it, are always challenging. (And I am so over both of those things.)

Even though Owen had a rough nap time and woke up crying one time after putting him down, after that he slept fine, which I was glad for. Since Aedan was still in his period of recovering from step throat and not being around other kids, and Owen had the fever on Sunday night, we had a pretty laid back day on Monday. Aedan didn't have preschool that afternoon anyways, so he didn't have to worry about missing any fun at school. Aedan and I built Legos together all morning, and we finally accomplished the task of rebuilding all his Lego sets. He was proud of all we had done together and kept talking about how fun it was to sit there and do that with me. Then, we put all his extra Legos in the play mat/storage bag we got for his Legos. It was a really fun way to spend our morning. Sometimes sick days or snow days are a welcome relief, giving us more time to just spend at home together.

Normally Monday would be a hockey night, but Aedan didn't go because of getting sick. I found these videos that Ben took last week at hockey practice and decided to just include them on this blog post. You can see Aedan practicing his drills, and even though he is still mostly using his right foot, he is gaining more confidence, and occasionally remembers to use both feet. We only have a month left of hockey, and in many ways Ben and I are glad. It's been hard having hockey two nights a week, and really just deciding to do one night a week, but then feeling bad that he was getting farther behind because of that. It's from 5:30-6:20, and that time of night is just really hard for us because it's right at dinnertime, meaning we have been eating dinner really early, and that means Aedan comes home from preschool and has only 15 minutes or so of time to play before it's time to eat and go off to another activity. Then, by the time we get home, it's almost bedtime. With hockey on Monday, gymnastics on Tuesdays, and AWANA on Wednesdays, our weeks just fly by sometimes, and we don't like it that way. I don't know if it's just an inevitable result of having kids in activities, or what, but I think what made it worse is that Aedan was never too thrilled about going and it has been difficult to get him to want to try harder. This may be his only stint at playing hockey. I just don't know if Ben and I can handle the commitment it takes to have a hockey player. Plus, I'm not sure how interested he really is in it. I'm glad we had him try it, and that we made him stick with it, but I don't see hockey as a future sport for him.

That evening after dinner we started the kids on quick baths before Ben headed out to his board meeting. I got all the kids ready for bed and we were doing pretty well, when I sent Samantha into her room to wait for me, and then I heard a loud crash. Owen was being silly, spinning around in Samantha's room, and he fell and broke her horse fence. I felt frustrated, got upset, and yelled, more than I should have. I just wanted to get the kids to bed, and then Owen was giving me a hard time. He didn't fall asleep with me, so I laid him down and then he just started screaming and crying for awhile. Since Ben was gone at his meeting, I knew he wouldn't be back to help me, so I waited for awhile and tried to get some patience before going back into his room, but then he actually stopped crying on his own, which I was glad for, it just took awhile. I'm glad that Owen is finally figuring out how to do that on some occasions.

Tuesday morning was a MOPS morning, and it felt weird not going to set-up Monday because of the boys still recovering from being sick. Sam came by to get the bins, and the others on Leadership got everything set up for me. It was a smaller group again that morning, but we had some good conversation about health and exercise, with a really good presentation from a fellow mom who helps run a local gym. We had pretty good conversation at our table. I was able to hold another mom's baby for awhile and got her to sleep in my arms, and everything went pretty well. After getting everything put away, I took the boys to Wendy's for lunch because Aedan had been asking to go, and I promised we would go the next time we had MOPS. A few other other moms decided to join us as well, so that was fun. We got out of the church later than normal because of a discussion about leadership for next year, so lunch ran over when Aedan was supposed to be at preschool, but there wasn't really much we could do about that at that point.

After dropping Aedan off at preschool and getting Owen back home and down for a nap, the rest of the day went on like normal Tuesdays. It was Ben's turn to take the kids to gymnastics that night, so Owen and I hung out at home and got dinner ready for when they got back home. After dinner we had Samantha record this video talking about the Girl Scout cookies that she would be selling. I figured it would be a good way to get the word out and for Ben to play in his classes to see if any of his students would be interested in buying cookies. Her video was so cute, and I love the little voice she started talking in, as well as how eloquently she explained the cookies, how much they cost, and how people could order. I'm so proud of our little girl and how she is growing up, but I have to admit, that it sometimes tugs on my heartstrings a little bit too much. Man, do I love her so much.

Here is a paper Aedan brought home from school that Tuesday. I like seeing what he's working on at school, and he was really doing a nice job practicing his letters. 

On Wednesday morning, Owen slept in a little bit, giving me a chance to go through papers on our counter, as well as the organizer on the wall and on the kitchen counter. Our papers to file and bills were getting out of control and needed to be filed away. It felt good to have everything put where it was supposed to be and only necessary things left out. I haven't been doing a good job of following the 30 minutes a day of organizing and decluttering. However, any little bit here and there helps. I just have to remind myself that it's not just an all or nothing type deal.

I took the boys to story time at the library, we went to the bank, went back home for lunch, and then dropped Aedan off at preschool. After I got Owen down for his nap, I spent about an hour tidying up the house because there were just a lot of things not put away, toys out, and things left out. I stuffed Owen's diapers, posted something online to try and sell, and proofread a paper of Ben's, and then Owen started waking up from his nap soon after that. It's amazing how fast nap time can go by. Plus, he's been taking shorter naps lately, sometimes not even making it an hour and a half, so that doesn't leave me a lot of downtime to get things done around the house.

As the day progressed we got more snow. Here's a video of me pulling up in the street right in front of our house as the big snowflakes fall down from the sky. Sometimes snow is pretty still, but do you see the large piles of snow already surrounding us? And there's more to come still. Aedan keeps talking every day about how he's excited about going to Florida so we can get out of the cold and the snow. I definitely agree with him on that.

As I was driving to pick up Samantha and Aedan from school, I took this picture while I was stopped at a stop sign. The snow is piled up so high on the sides of the roads. Sometimes it's hard to see around the corner, or to see if anyone is coming through an intersection.

Here's what our back yard looked like that night around dinnertime.

After dropping Samantha and Aedan off at AWANA, Ben, Owen, and I went over to church for a youth group talent show fundraiser for their trip to Spring Hill. We donated some money, enjoyed some good desserts, and Owen had fun just wandering around for awhile before we decided it was time to get him home and to bed.

This was a very average week with normal activities, and I didn't take as many pictures. Thursday was another normal day of going grocery shopping with the boys, which really is not usually that bad, just something that has to be one. However, Owen had trouble napping again that afternoon, as he has for most of the week, which was rather exhausting for me. He only slept for forty-five minutes that afternoon, waking up as soon as I sat down. However, luckily, he went back to sleep without needing me to go into his room, which I was grateful for.

Samantha had Girl Scouts after school on Thursday, so Ben went to pick up Aedan because he had to drop off a couple things around town. Aedan was really tired that afternoon, as he often is the day after staying out late at AWANA on Wednesday night. Ben told him it was okay if he wanted to close his eyes for a while, so here he is taking a little after snooze in the car. Aedan gets pretty tired out, and I think some days he really just needs a little bit of a nap to help him get through the rest of the day.

Friday morning the boys and I were invited to our neighbors' house to play. Aedan and Bridget had fun playing and looking at a book and laughing hysterically. They eventually made their way upstairs as well and Aedan found Legos, which he can't get enough of lately. Owen and Carly just wandered around being toddlers, eating snacks, and going down the little slide they had indoors. Valerie and I enjoyed talking with each other and catching up after it has been awhile since we have gotten together. It's nice to have friends that live right around the corner that are easy to talk to and hang out with.

Since Owen slept in pretty late that morning, probably because he didn't nap much that week, I decided to keep him up that afternoon a little longer. Ben and I had conferences at Samantha's school to go to, and a mentor mom from MOPS volunteered to come over and watch Samantha and Owen while we went for the conferences. I was going to put Owen down early, but decided he would be okay being awake for a little longer, especially since we had plans to stay out later for a hockey game that night.

We spent a few minutes talking with Ms. Allison, and of course, she had nothing but good things to say about Samantha. She is excelling, her MAP scores were great, and we got a good report about how she is doing socially (which I sometimes worry about because I don't know who she is close friends with, and she will often talk about how she plays by herself at recess). After that we met with Ms. Rogers, the Gifted and Talented teacher, to sign paperwork confirming our decision to place her in the program. I'm not exactly sure what changed from the last time we met when they were pushing back against allowing her in the program, but we were glad things were finally progressing. It may have had to do with her high MAP scores, but regardless, we are excited about her being able to participate in this program and get some extra enrichment. It's so nice that Bahweting has the resources to provide extra support for kids on the upper end of the spectrum as well.

Ben had somewhere to be that Friday afternoon, so I let Samantha stay home while Owen napped that afternoon while I went to pick up Aedan from preschool. Then, as we waited for Daddy to return, Samantha and Aedan pretended like they were performing on a talent show, and here are some videos I took of them. I think Samantha was going to perform and Aedan was the judge. (The kids have watched some America's Got Talent lately. I just recently introduced them to it because I thought they would find it interesting.) Right before this they were all dancing, but once I started the video, they stopped performing for me. Regardless, they were having a fun time being creative, performing, and using their imaginations.

After eating tacos at home, we headed over to the Lakers hockey game. We hadn't been to one for awhile, and the kids were pretty excited. They were giving away these white shirts, and even though they were pretty big, Samantha and Aedan put theirs on right away. Even though Owen had a better nap that afternoon, he didn't make it too long that night. He just wanted to walk around and climb the steps, and he got mad when we trapped him in, so I ended up taking him back home close to the end of the second period. Ben stayed with Samantha and Aedan so they could enjoy more of the game without having to worry about Owen being distracting and throwing fits. I'm sure they had a fun time getting to hang out with just Daddy. Here are some pictures and videos from the game that night.

This weekend was bringing super cold air, also known as the polar vortex. We were trying to find something we could do to get the kids out of the house on Saturday without being outside. I had heard of several families going swimming at a local hotel pool. I heard that the water was really warm, and it was a fun place to take kids swimming, so we decided to try that out on Saturday morning. The water was definitely very nice, and the kids had a blast swimming around. We took a little snack break in the middle when Owen was getting cranky, and then we were able to enjoy some more time in the pool after that. It is definitely something that we will try again, and next time we will bring more toys for the kids to play with. Also, we need to get Aedan his own swim goggles. He tried Samantha's on one time, and he thought it was amazing that he could see under the water. In fact, he just kept plugging his nose and dunking himself under water without gasping for air when he comes back up, like he usually does. He was really sad when he had to take the goggles off, and I'd never seen him as comfortable with going under water as he was that day.

When we got home from swimming and ate a quick lunch, I decided to just stick all the kids in the bath at the same time to get them rinsed off and clean from swimming. They had never taken a bath all at the same time, mostly because our bath tub isn't big enough for all of them, but they were having a blast playing and being silly together. It made my heart happy to just sit there and watch them interact with each other. These three kids keep us busy, but bring us so much joy.

After Owen woke up from his nap that afternoon, we went out to the Lawson's house in Brimley for a dinner with other K-5 helpers at church. There were some fun people there. We had great food, good conversation, and the kids all had fun playing. They were very respectful, and we were glad that we can take the kids out to do things like that and have it be a successful experience. It was a nice way to end a good family day together.

(Blog about January 20-26, 2019)