It's a Wonderful Life

We've had an unexpected mini-vacation this week with Jackson only having school one day.  Monday and Tuesday were scheduled days off, but then Thursday and Friday were canceled due to the "snow" that has (hardly) covered the ground. On Tuesday evening, I came home from Zumba (which I'm a little obsessed with right now) to find Erik and the kids like this!  They look like freaky villains from the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit!  They crack me up. On Wednesday I promised Wyatt that we would use our free coupons for the Children's Museum that we got at Halloween.  However, both he and Anna fell asleep on the way, so I turned around let them to take a little nap. Jackson usually takes the bus home, but I showed up at his school 15 minutes early and picked him up.  It was so fun to see his excited face when he saw us in the office :)  Anyway, we had a great time at the museum! On Thursday, sch...

The past two weekends, we were blessed to have Erik's parents visiting (the week in between they were in PA with Janet's mother).  I really can't say enough about how grateful we feel living so far away, to have family visit us.  It certainly brightened up what can be a bummer of a month. Last Friday evening when they arrived, we went over to a local pizza parlor.  Erik and I had never gone to this one, but it was great.  I'm sure we will go again sometime. On Saturday, after hanging out for awhile, we lunched at McDonald's (where else when we are with Nyholms? :) ), then Janet and I got manicures.  We were going to do a pedicure, but since it's winter and we didn't want to wear flip flops, and my left big toe nail is still just a tiny stump (my toe nail fell off in October) we went with doing our nails.  It was a lot of fun and a nice get-a-way.  We hit up a couple of stores which is always great kid-free. Saturday night was our bowli...

January 6th was King's Day or 12th Night or whatever you want to call it.  I have always wanted to mark that day somehow . . . it's nice to talk about the birth of Jesus once more before Christmas is really over.  Last year, my sister Kathryn gave us all a children's book by Tomie DePaola about a traditional story of a woman that bakes lots of treats to give to the baby Jesus and then searches for him.  She never finds Him and is still searching today.  When she sees sleeping children she leaves some of the sweets for them on the 6th of January.  So the kids got a couple of mini donuts put by their bed from "Old Befana."  Anyway, another tradition that I thought was cute was hiding a ring in a cake.  Whoever gets the piece with the ring in it is the winner :)  I didn't want to put a nasty, toxic plastic ring in our baked cake so I put in a lifesaver . . . and uh, no one got it.  Erik finally got the lucky piece the next day! This ...

. . . because when I'm bored, I take pictures of the nearest kids.  When they are bored, they take a lot of baths.  I feel like we have been trapped at home for too long now.  Anna fell ill on Tuesday and ever since then, we have been extreme homebodies.  I'm not going to lie and say that I haven't been bored.  Especially because while Anna is sick, she likes me to be her personal teddy bear and I never can set her down to get anything done.  While this is quite flattering, I also like getting things done occasionally :)  She seems to be doing better but still has some lingering issues that I would love to see gone.  Gotta love January sicknesses!