January, Part Two

Pretty much only two things have happened since the middle of January - we took a trip down to Cincinnati, and it's been snowing.

First things first. My sister Amy deserves a medal! We are very much in her debt. She offered to watch our kids (again) so we could take a trip down to Cincinnati and look for a house. It was SO helpful! We drove down on a Friday afternoon and had dinner and sort of helped to get the kids to bed and then Jeremy and drove down to Cincy. We spent all day Saturday with our realtor looking around and went to church on Sunday, as well as looked around some more. Jeremy worked down there on Monday while I toured a few schools and then we headed back up to get the kids. We feel so blessed! Amy is almost exactly halfway in between here and Cincinnati, and then we were able to stay with Jeremy's cousin down in Cincinnati, making the whole trip very smooth and easy. Thank you thank you!

Since we've been back, it's pretty much been snowy. Last Saturday night, it started snowing and continued for 26 hours. Chicago got over 19 inches in that time and we got between 15-16 inches. Church was canceled on Sunday because it was a blizzard, and school was canceled again on Monday. We woke up to sunny skies though and all the snow looked so beautiful! Then yesterday it started snowing again, and we got another couple inches, and it's snowing again today!

The kids have LOVED it though. I'm always hesitant to go out with them, but once I do I always have a great time! Luckily we are well equipped, so we stay pretty warm even when it's down in the teens and twenties. I usually don't let them go out if it's below 5 or 10 degrees, haha, but anything above 20 seems pretty toasty when you're all bundled up.

Here are some phone pictures from our fun in the snow the last month:

 Snow here doesn't pack like it does out in Utah. It's usually way too dry and fluffy to form any sort of ball, so a lot of work went into forming this little snowman!

 They named him Frosty. :)

 We played lots of games on our no-church-day!

 The wind was blowing really hard during the blizzard, so we had patches of ground where you could still see the grass and others with over two feet of snow.

 Hard to tell, but this is past my knees!

 The boys loved climbing up on top of the giant snow piles left by the snow plows. They kept saying, "We're climbing Mt. Everest!" And then they'd slide down.

 This little punkin was not quite as enthused about the whole idea of playing in the snow while it was cold and snowing. She went into the garage to play in the car after a few minutes.

 Triumph!

And a few from the camera. I don't usually take it out in the snow, but I did a couple times:

 It was really pretty this particular morning. We had some freezing fog (which I had never heard of) and it made all the trees white.

See Mom, winter can be fun! :)

January, Part One

As per usual this time of year, we've been struggling with sickness over here for the last month or so. That combined with freezing temps and lots of snow has made for a bit of cabin fever. We started off the New Year with a great visit from the Worshams though and that was so fun! The same week Amy spontaneously met up with us in Chicago, Heidi called to see if they could come visit. It was great to have them here! They came on a Friday night and left on Saturday night. They brought lots of fun new games and it was great to see them. (Oops, no pictures).

Then on Monday, Jeremy started his new job! (I blogged about that already). It is going super well and he LOVES it! And I love that he loves it. :) He's working much harder/longer than he did in his last job, but he's very happy and I'm so glad.

The kids gave him some pretty good snuggles before he flew out on Sunday.

The week he started was our coldest week so far here. School was canceled for two days because the wind chills were down in the negative 30s, with actual temps well into the negatives as well.

This is me bundled up to...go get the mail. Trust me, it was necessary.

So I was going a little crazy with Jeremy out of town and not being able to leave the house, so one day I bundled everyone up (much more than our usual bundling) and took the kids to the mall. It shows how little I've gone to a mall, because not even Eli knew what a mall was! Haha. So we switched off between shopping for new work clothes for Jeremy and running around the mall and playing at the kids play place to burn off a lot of energy. They kept saying how fun it was and how they wanted to stay there forever! Obviously we need to get out more. We had lunch in the food court and bundled up again before heading out into the cold. It was snowing pretty heavily when we left, but it was well worth it!

Since then, it hasn't been nearly as bad. We've been having lots of indoor dance parties to get our exercise and we read lots of books, and visit the library more often. :)

 Connor runs around with his cape on most of the time too. :)

 Anna with her dollies in her bed. She got lots of girl toys for Christmas, but to be honest, most of the time she's playing with a gun or pushing cars or legos around in her stroller. Haha.

Luckily we've have lots of beautiful snow too! If it's going to be freezing, it might as well be snowy. I have lots of snow pictures to put up in the next post. Stay tuned...

Chicago Field Museum with Cousins!!!

I'm so behind! We've been just a little busy around here trying to get everything in order for our move NEXT MONTH. Oh my. But I wanted to do a little catching up.

Over Christmas break, Amy called me spontaneously and said, "Want to meet up in Chicago tomorrow?" I said definitely so we decided to go to the Chicago Field Museum. It was great! I'd been really wanting to go into Chicago, but I couldn't seem to convince anybody else it was a good idea, so I was thrilled when she wanted to. We met up in the morning and spent a few hours there and then her kids were begging to come to our house so they took the extra driving time to come to our house for a couple hours and play and get some Chicago pizza. :) We had a great time! The museum was a little dark sometimes, so my phone pics aren't great, but it was so fun for the cousins to play together.

 It was a beautiful sunny (and extremely cold) day!

 These pictures they're standing in front of are made out of legos! So cool!

 Below is Sue, the largest mostly-all-actual-fossils T-Rex in the world!

 I think they were watching something about the ancient Americas.

Thanks for being so fun, Weavers!