January 2017 ~ week 2

This week has been one of wintry weather and lots of downtime because Abigail and I got colds -- just sick enough that we didn't feel like getting off of the couch.  We did not start back to school on Monday as planned...instead, we were bums most of the week!

Nice things about being sick: staying home, extra rest, snuggling under a warm blanket, extra cat time, Grandma-socks...and a good nurse.  David takes great care of us during the day so that Bruce can work.  He is not quite so cooperative about pictures...

 

One afternoon we made homemade snow-cream for the first time.  It tasted like French Vanilla ice cream, but with the icy-snowy texture of snow. Fun!

More resting...more couch-time and more cat-time...Mindy is not a big snuggler, but she knows when someone is ill and appoints herself their nurse.  It's very sweet.

In the midst of David's tending to us, he managed to spend his Christmas money on Amazon and was delighted when his new Star Wars Lego set arrived!  It is always so much fun to watch him go to work on a new building project.  Here he is with his U-Wing Fighter.

By Friday, we were starting to feel like normal human beings again!  We cleaned and organized and played board games in between projects.

And for a week that started out with ice and snow and frigid temperatures, this is how we ended it...70 degrees and outside without even a coat! Ah, Georgia, how we love thee... :)

Thankfully, Abigail was feeling much better in time for our church's youth group event on Saturday -- her first time to participate in the annual "Cabbage Bowl," where our teens compete against our senior citizens in Wii Bowling.  It is a really fun event and a great chance for the strengthening of relationships between these two very different age groups.  The seniors won the overall tournament as their combined score was higher than the teens' combined score (this is typical...they have won the overall competition four out of the five years).  Abigail and her friend/bowling partner, however, won the individual team competition, defeating the usual bowling champions!  Here they are with their "trophy" after church today.

Not only that, Abigail was the individual high-scorer, so she brought home that traveling trophy and a Chick-Fil-A gift card!  Nobody suspected she was going to be such fierce competition, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed her victory. :)  The teen guys have already started vying for her to choose them as her bowling partner next year! Way to go, Abigail!

Boy-blood and a birthday cookie (but not together!)

We have moved to the next phase of boy-wounds.  No more of the kiss-it-and-put-on-a-Bandaid type of wounds...now it's the full-body, there-aren't-Bandaids-big-enough type of wounds!  David wiped out this past Saturday while riding his bike and tore up his arm from shoulder to elbow.  On Monday he wiped out on a scooter and tore up his leg from knee to toes.  I have now gone to the store and stocked up on lots of supplies for big-boy-sized wounds. :)  (It's a good thing I had three younger brothers who were just as go-get-'em as David is; this prepared me well.) Just for the record, these wounds look even nastier in person than they do in the picture!

^Do they ever outgrow looking sweet and snuggly when they get out of the bath/shower?!  Mine haven't yet and I'm glad. :)

Tonight at our Wednesday night "Patch the Pirate Club" we had our monthly birthday celebration.  It's amazing how nice the picture turns out when you tell them that we can't eat the cookie cake until we get a nice picture -- we got it on the first try. :)

All in today's work

Some highlights of our busy day today...

Abigail got a trim this morning.  We cut six inches off...and her hair still touches her derriere!  That's some long hair!

 At Abigail's PT today, I got an in-depth session on how to stretch her foot/ankle/heel cord.  Due to her recent growth (two inches since the beginning of the school year), her foot is quite tight and we want to do all we can to help improve that.  Stretching is one of those things that we can easily do at home.

  After PT/OT and errands, we stopped at Bobby G's to use Bruce's birthday gift certificate to get our lunch (we got some for him, too!).  This is the only place where we have found true Chicago-style food outside of Chicago.  YUM.  David channeled his maternal grandfather and informed the guy taking our order that he (David) was born in Chicago.  That boy has never met a stranger! :)

 That's all for today -- it's way past my bedtime!

Good news - we're still alive!

I am horrified to see that it has been nearly two months since I posted on here.  It is not intentional...it is just because the days keep rolling along, often without much time to get the "hafta"s done, let alone the "wanna"s.  Our weekdays are busy with school, music lessons, and appointments, our weekends busy with catching up on everything we can't do during the week as well as being at church.  In the midst of this busyness of life, though, we are thoroughly enjoying every moment of togetherness.  These are sweet days that I wouldn't miss for all of the leisure in the world!

Sibling love

Summer days

We have been enjoying a hodge-podge of days at home and days with friends...and trying not to think about the fact that we are already more than halfway through June!  We have been busy with...

Crafts

An indoor campout, complete with s'mores and a tent

 

 Teaching some friends how to do free-motion quilting

  Redeeming our Chick-Fil-A kids' meal prizes from the library's summer reading club

 Playing with friends at the lake beach

 Projects at home...most of my projects have been of the cleaning-out-and-reorganizing variety, so they're not very excited to show for a blog post...but I have been happy to accomplish them! (...the kids loved this project -- to them it was a fort!)

 Ahhh summer, how we love thee!!!

Summer splashing

Once again I find myself woefully behind on the blog...and once again, my mother has urged me to forget the backlog and just start again -- I think perhaps that advice is given out of desperation to see pictures of the grandchildren, but it's good advice nevertheless!!!

We have been thoroughly enjoying our summer break.  It has been hot, hot, hot here and so we enjoy either the air conditioning or the water during the hottest part of the day!  Yesterday I had some errands to run that were near a splash park that I had just heard about, so I surprised the kids with a visit there.  We had a blast!  I sat in the shade and read my book while the kids had fun in the water.  (I have more pictures of Abigail than of David because he, our little socialite, liked to be in the middle of lots of other kids!)

 

 

 

 

 On a side note, look at how long and leggy this girl of ours has gotten!  She has grown a whole inch since the beginning of this year.

We've also been enjoying our neighborhood pool...

 ...our sprinklers...

 

 ...and our sandbox.  There's lots of summer fun happening around here and we're loving every minute of it!

Outside and on the move

We spent almost the entire day outside yesterday -- it started off cool but sunny and got warmer and warmer as the day progressed -- I was working on a project and the kids ran from bikes to swings to imagination games around the yard and back again.  By the end of the day, we had lots of dirty bodies and clothes, a bee sting (me), and a bunch of allergy-related sniffles and coughs...but we all agreed that it was definitely worth it!

 Not surprisingly, every one of us went to bed willingly last night and slept soundly until this morning!

I love autumn

The autumn colors have been particularly beautiful here in Georgia this year.  I have seen so much lovely foliage while driving around town, but driving is not conducive to picture-taking.  Here are a couple of pretty trees from our area (there was a magnificent, vibrant, orange-hued tree down the road that I still wish I had pulled over to photograph! Oh well).

 

Other than that, we have been busy with everyday things.  Abigail and I got sick almost a week and a half ago and are still fighting the remnants of it...this is a stubborn, lingering virus.  I have started Christmas shopping...my goal is to finish before everyone else starts because the only thing worse than shopping is shopping with everyone else and their brother! :)  School is trucking right along and we are only a month or so away from our halfway mark.  We've still been enjoying days around 70 degrees, but it's fun to wake up to sparkling frost most mornings.  The cats are all hunkered down and ready to hibernate!

Hope you're enjoying your autumn, too!

A bit of chaos

We are in one of those times right now where it seems we are running in a million different directions every day, even on the weekends!  Here are a few random events from this week...

We knew our hot water heater was on its last leg, but it reached crisis point this week and we had to get it replaced.  It's one of those things that isn't fun to spend money on, but the alternative isn't very pleasant either!!!

Our neighborhood pool will close for the season after this weekend, so I took the kids there yesterday for one last swim.  Since we have had a week's worth of nights in the 50s, the water is cold.  I suggested to David (rather wickedly, I admit) that he should just jump into the deep end, and he did...Abigail and I had a good laugh!

Here he is as he came out of the water yelling, "MOM!!!!!!!"

 "It's freezing!!!"

 They did a little bit of swimming and a lot of lounging in the sun.

 Cold-water swimming, some books, warm blankets, and company like this makes for good napping!

 Mindy likes to burrow into a pile of clean laundry until she is in a little cave.  She's so cute.

 David got his stitches out on Monday and the scar looks great.  You can hardly see it -- it's the thin purple line along the top of his right eyebrow.

And now we are on to the chaos of today!

Musical children and grumpy mermaids

Today we started piano lessons again (after a summer hiatus).  Both kids were so excited to start again (phew!).

After lessons we ran errands, and by the time we got home, everyone was a little short on constructive energy and on patience.  I took the kids down to the pool to burn off some steam before dinner.  Lately they like to play "mermaid" together when they have the pool to themselves.  Here are "Gem" (David) and "Ice Sparkle" (Abigail) swimming out to the 'ocean'.

 Unfortunately, "Gem" was in a rather persnickety mood and only wanted to splash and spit at his mer-sister, which resulted in much shrieking and whining, which resulted in more splashing and spitting.

 This resulted in a short swim and an early bedtime for two very overtired mer-children!!!