January and February

(A lot of these pictures have been posted on Instagram. Sorry if it's a repeat for you, but I wanted to record these on the blog too.)

The past two months have been full of snow and cold weather.

We've played out in the snow a bit, but have mostly stayed inside for two months. And between Dallin getting sick a few times, me being sick for a week, and a handful of snow days off from school, we've been at home A LOT. Bennett has been fine with that, but the older boys: not so much. I've tried to come up with a few fun things to occupy them.

I saw this fun idea on Pinterest to put paint inside a ziploc bag and tape it to the table.

It's supposed to be mess free finger painting.

I think I should have used more paint. It didn't work very well because the boys couldn't quite figure out how to manipulate the paint through the bag. So 15 minutes of preparation bought me 5 minutes of them playing. That pretty much sums up parenting.

One craft project that did work came from the Kiwi Crate my mom ordered for the boys. It's a service that mails a few age appropriate craft projects to your house. Perfect for the winter months!

This crate had crafts related to baking. First they got to decorate a chefs hat and apron with crayons and stickers. Then they got to decorate a foam cake with "frosting" clay. They had a lot of fun with the cakes.

We've also played with the Periodic Table building blocks that Connor got for Christmas.

 

We spelled out the names for everyone in our family. Mine was the only one that could be spelled out perfectly.

The 3 boys all needed silent letters at the end of their names.

Other ways to keep life interesting when it's below zero:

Penguin sandwiches, floating through the cantaloupe-iceberg filled ocean, eating goldfish crackers. Connor loved it and has requested this lunch several times.

I found some Christmas pajamas on clearance for Dallin.

They pretty much made his life.

 For Valentine's Day this year, I didn't make valentines for Dallin's Kindergarten class. Too much effort for not enough appreciation, in my opinion. He chose Avengers cards from the store and we were both perfectly happy about that. Connor, however, was invited to a little Valentines party with some of his pre-school age friends from church, so I helped him make some train valentines to pass out.

I did it because 1) I only had to make 8 valentines, and 2) Connor was so excited about the trains and went crazy gluing hearts coming out of the smoke stacks. Worth it.

 Dallin's class had a fairy tale ball on Valentine's Day. The kids got to dress up as a fairy tale character. Dallin asked to be the big bad wolf and I almost made him this costume. Then I thought about how much time/money it would take, and then I remembered this costume we already had.

He was a dragon. The cutest dragon at the ball.

Connor, who now thinks dressing up in costume is part of Valentine's Day, wanted to wear something special to his party too.

So he went as Superman.

We've been to the doctor more times that I wanted to in the last two months. Once was for Bennett's 2 month check up, so that was to be expected.

He weighed 13 lbs 5 oz and is looking just perfect.

Dallin had a couple of ear infections. More doctor visits and antibiotics.

One morning just after Dallin got to school, I got a phone call that he had fallen while getting off the bus, cut his chin and would need stitches. From what I've gathered, his aid was holding his hand and Kendal's hand, and the Special Ed. teacher was holding Dallin's other hand as he was stepping down. Dallin was distracted looking at the other kids getting off buses, and with his coat hood up, his vision was limited. So when he tripped/stumbled/fell, he couldn't really see where he was going and his hands weren't really free to catch himself, so his face did the catching instead.

Luckily, Mckay hadn't left for work yet when I got the call, so we all drove over to pick him up and took him to urgent care.

He was pretty calm and happy by the time we saw him. 

He was cut badly enough to need three stitches. He HATED having his arms and head strapped down so the doctor could stitch him, but he was fighting so much that it was necessary. After screaming for 10 minutes straight, he was finally stitched up and we could leave.

As I drove him back to school, I told him he should tell his friends how brave and tough he was. His response was "I not tough! I was a little scared."

As for the rest of the month, we've been snuggling with Bennett

 and enjoying the peaceful moments.

The very rare, peaceful moments.

Ice Skating

We went ice skating in February at a nearby outdoor rink. The ChemE grad student organization reserved the whole rink for the grad students that night, which made it a lot less crowed than last year.

It was also not a well attended activity because it was about 13 degrees that night. We wore lots of layers and took plenty of indoor breaks.

Dallin really enjoyed it. He skated on his own, albeit very very slowly. He fell down several times, but he did most of the falling on purpose. I guess slipping on your butt is more fun when you have lots of padding.

 Connor took one step on the ice and started to freak out because it was "too slippery!" He screamed until we removed him from the ice. Even skating while holding onto someone was too terrifying for him. He didn't seem to remember that he enjoyed skating a year ago when he was only 1 and less coordinated than now. So Connor stood right outside the rink and watched us skate the whole time.

Notice the cool two-blade kid skates strapped onto his tennis shoes? Even with the support of an extra blade, he did not like the ice.

 Connor had more fun hanging out inside and taking pictures of people.

He really likes taking pictures with our digital camera (what little kid doesn't?) and his pictures are actually semi-decent with a flash.

He took a few pictures of other friends at the rink:

And Dallin took this one, so the photographers could be in a picture too.

We had fun, despite the cold and Connor's ice aversion. Maybe he'll like it again next year.

January

January 2014 in Indiana broke all kinds of records for cold negative temperatures and snowfall. School was cancelled several days. Even Purdue cancelled for 3 days. Universities RARELY cancel class so this was a big deal. Our January was spent like this:

We shoveled a lot of snow.

We got about this much snow every week, and it never melted in between so it's really piling up on our grass.

Dallin and Connor love playing in the snow and we've found that sand toys (shovels, pails, etc) also make great snow toys.

And then sometimes I just give them a spoon and cup from the kitchen. Equally as fun.

 One time after shoveling, Mckay used the snow to cover our big green electric box and cable box in the front yard, and he made a cool sculpture out of it.

Connor was amazed.

It was a snow train!

Mckay wins best Dad of the year award.

We've spent a lot of time indoors and I'm running out of fun activities for the kids. We've done Play-doh a lot. 

I'm not good at selfies so I had Connor take a picture of me and Dallin.

We're working on his photography skills.

 Dallin's picture-taking was a little better.

We've also done a lot of art projects. Sometime they are as structured as using glitter glue and making cards for people. And then sometimes I just let the kids cut up junk mail with "fancy" scrapbook scissors.

Dallin and Connor still manage to get a little exercise while being trapped indoors.

Connor is saying "Come on Tookie." I don't know how he came up with it or why he's calling Dallin "Tookie." Connor is entering a fun stage where he makes up words. We never experienced that with Dallin.

You might also be wondering what Dallin and Connor were carrying in that video. That would be foam insulation tubes for water pipes (which they played with like pool noodles or light sabers). These frigid temperatures (-13 degress F was the coldest in January) are causing our water pipes to freeze. Luckily, the pipes are plastic so they don"t burst, they expand with the ice. But having no hot water (or any water at all) in the winter really stinks. We've been spending a lot of time here in the garage:

Running a space heater on the pipes for a while usually does the trick. And hopefully the foam insulation will help, because waking up to take a shower or make breakfast only to find no water comes out is not fun. It's happened about 10 times now. I'm SO ready for spring.

Other fun thing we've been up to:

 The Denver Broncos made it to the Super Bowl. (Yes, I know this was actually in February.) We don't really watch football, but we're fans of all things from Denver, so we had to show our support.

Conveniently, orange and blue happen to be the only nail polish colors I own...

Connor really didn't want to wear this adult size orange shirt. We made him keep it on for a picture, but it was ripped off seconds later.

Too bad the Broncos didn't win the Super Bowl. There's always next year!

We're hoping February is a warmer month. Even just above freezing would be welcome. I'm working on some Valentine's decorations to brighten things up. I'll let you see them all when I'm done.

Any guesses as to what I'm making?

Snowmageddon

We left Denver On Saturday, January 4th, knowing that a big snow storm was about to hit the east coast and the midwest. As we prepared to leave the night before and checked the weather forecast, we saw that snow was expected to hit Denver starting at 6am, with the storm heading east along our planned travel path. So we left at 5:30am as snow was starting to come down. It took about 30 minutes of driving before we got completely ahead of the snow and onto dry roads. The rest of our 12 hour drive was dry, but anytime we stopped for gas breaks, we could see snowflakes starting to fall as we finished each break. It reminded me of the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" where the big "freeze" is following right behind them. We had to keep breaks short and keep driving to stay ahead of the storm behind us. We got to Grace's house in St. Louis about an hour before the snow hit.

Sunday was a very relaxed day. We had no intentions to attempt driving home in the snow storm, so we stayed with Grace another day. In anticipation of the weather, Church had been cancelled for much of the St. Louis area. We stayed inside all day and watched the snow fall. That day happened to be my birthday, so we celebrated.

Grace made me a cake and helped all the kids make Birthday cards for me.

I felt very loved.

We played games and snacked on food all day long.

By Monday morning, the sky was clear and we figured the roads would have been plowed and salted enough that we could slowly and carefully drive the (normally) 4.5 hours back home to Indiana.

This is the view out Grace's front window. Her husband, David, braved the negative temperature outside to shovel a path to our car and clear the mountain of snow off of it. They loaded us up with snacks, water and an emergency candle just in case something happened. I thought for sure that everyone was overreacting about the severity of the storm and that we'd be home by that afternoon.

How very wrong I was.

Leaving St. Louis, the roads weren't too bad. They were mostly clear, with patches here and there, but we could drive about 40-50mph safely on them so we were feeling pretty good.

It's hard to see in this picture, but this is the Mississippi River, frozen over......

In all the years and winters that I've spent in St. Louis, I've never seen the mighty Mississippi completely frozen. It was ridiculously cold!!

 We kept going on I-70 through Illinois. The road conditions were getting a little worse, but still drive-able.

We passed several cars and Semis that had slid off the road. Rarely was there a person inside the car (Thank goodness they had already been taken to safety), but there was no way to tow a car out of a ditch in all this mess. Many of the semi trucks had flipped onto the side. It was starting to dawn on us how severe this storm was and we said several prayers during the drive of gratitude for our continued safety.

Just before Effingham, IL, we reached a traffic standstill. (The trucks and our car in the picture below are stopped on the highway. We would never be following that closely behind if we were moving.)

You can see how bad the roads were at this point. You could not see a single patch of road; it was entirely covered in packed snow and ice.

This is what we were driving on. Scary.

After not moving for quite some time, we turned on the radio and discovered that there had been an accident further up the highway and we had to wait for the road to be cleared. We waited in that exact spot for almost 3 hours. Cars as far as we could see in front of us, cars as far as we could see behind us.

 Luckily, the boys slept through most of the down time.

We finally got past the traffic. By this point, it was 4pm. It took us 7 hours to travel what normally takes 1.5 hours. And we were still very far from home. Knowing we wouldn't make it home before dark, and knowing how dangerous the roads were even when it was light out, we stopped in Effingham to get a hotel.

So did thousands of other people.

All the truckers and all the travelers were occupying every single hotel. We called and/or drove to over 15  hotels and not one of them had a room for us. I called my Dad who looked up some hotels in the next town down the road. We called several places and finally found a Day's Inn who would book a room for us. Now we just had to drive 30 miles to reach Mattoon, IL. At a speed of 15-20 mph, it took us a while, but we made it.  In the 130 miles from St. Louis to Mattoon, we passed 31 semis and 61 cars that had slid off the road. And I'm sure I missed counting several cars when I was on the phone trying to find us a hotel. Yes, we counted. It became a game of sorts to count and find all the cars buried under snow drifts.

We grabbed some Taco Bell for dinner (Thank you for being open!) and parked at the Days Inn. Finally! The day is over right?..... right?....

Even though we had called ahead to book a room, we still had to wait in a line of several other people who also had a room booked. Our kids ran around the lobby making friends with everyone.  After 2 hours in line we finally got to the desk, checked in and got a key card. We walked to our room, unlocked the door... and there was already a family in our room. What?! Mckay went back to the desk to sort the mix-up out while I tried to keep the kids in line again. I was so grumpy, tired and fed up by this point. About 15 minutes later, Mckay led us to our new room: an exterior (meaning a drafty door with all the wind and -20 degree temperature) smoking room (we booked a non-smoking) that had not been cleaned from the previous occupant and had "used" sheets. And yet, despite the sub par conditions, I was so glad to be "safe." After cranking up the heat, we said a prayer as a family, thankful that we had a safe, warm place to sleep and that our car was fine and working.

We spent all day Tuesday in Mattoon. We checked road conditions online throughout the day and everything indicated that Indiana highways were not quite safe for travel yet. We got groceries, watched a lot of TV in the hotel, and prepared to hopefully leave Wednesday morning. On Wednesday, the temperature was in the 30s (a heat wave compared to the days before!), Indiana highways were looking clearer, and we needed some clean clothes to wear, so we drove home!

After all the time we'd spent in the car those past few days, the boys did really great for the last leg of our journey. Though Connor got grumpy if you denied him snacks.

Over the next 150 miles of road, we saw 28 more semis and 80 more cars off the road. We made it home in the early afternoon and we were so excited to finally eat lunch in our own home again.

After we got home, there were some minor things to deal with, like shoveling the 18 inch snow drifts off our driveway so we could get in, and thawing the frozen (but not broken, thank goodness!) pipes so we could use water. And there was the flat tire on our car that mysteriously showed up only after we made it all the way home.

That's the epic tale of our journey home. But we did finally make it home, and that's the most important thing. 

And it keeps snowing, so we haven't left our house much ever since.