February

I have been terrible at keeping up with the blog lately. Partly because things have been super busy and partly because I haven't remembered to take any pictures. I can tell you that my kids did not have a full week of school during the months of January or February. We started the year off with a few minor illnesses. Lots of 12 hour stomach flu going around and it was vicious. I'm just glad it didn't last long. (Why does the stomach flu always have to hit in the middle of the night?) All I will say was that it was a mess - we'll leave it at that. Besides the few holidays and sick days the kids had off school, we could not seem to make it a week without a snow day. I lost count after 5, but I was told we will have to make up 8 days of school at the end of the year.

(If you look behind the kids, you can see how much snow we received. I think this day we got 7 inches. That's what happens when you wait 2 months to blog the story, the details get fuzzy).

Sam spent hours building a snow fort.

Livie & Sam played for hours with the kids down the street. They went sledding, built forts, snowmen, and Livie & her friend built a "living room" out of snow. They even had a TV with a remote control.

After so many snow days, it was getting rough to keep things on schedule. I was ready for us to return to our normal routine, especially since our last "normal" week had been in the beginning of December. But no - one morning we woke up to this, and yes they cancelled school. We already had over a week of school to make up at the end of the year. By now we were getting stir crazy and besides, summer break is short enough. I'd rather have my kids home from school in June.

Sam & Livie played basketball this year, it was the first time for both of them. Sam only played because I told him it wasn't an option :). He's never been real interested in basketball to begin with, but I told him he needed to play at least one season so he could understand the game. He was a good sport about it, but I think he's a little glad that it is over. It didn't help that out of 10 practices, 4 were cancelled due to snow days and 2 were missed because of Cub Scout pack meeting. So I'm not sure he got much out of this season. Livie had an awesome season. She was so fun to watch and caught on quickly. The one day we did remember to bring the camera, the flash was not working correctly so this is one of the only pictures that turned out.

Even with all the school cancelled it was a really busy month. We had scheduled events and basketball games every weekend, and the weeknights were filled with scouts, basketball practices, meetings for Jer and all sorts of fun things.

And then there is Nate. When the big kids finally went back to school, he didn't know what to do with himself, so as usual he found plenty to get into, like sneaking out the front door in his Superman PJ's.