Almost February

It is almost February. Sometimes I think, "Finally!" Other times I think, "Where has the time gone." It has been a cold, snowy Winter and I don't think we are halfway done yet. At least I can tell that the daylight is getting longer each day.
I wanted to share some pictures that were taken on New Years Eve. We went to a party and we all had a good time. The blond girl next to Emily is Callie's good friend, Alexia. The other two kids were at the party as well and we had just met them. The other picture is Callie and her friend Rebecca at Brownies last Tuesday. They had a little ceremony. Rebecca lives up the street from us.
Callie has been sick. She is getting over pneumonia and now is home with a stomach bug. I feel so bad for her. We have all been sick a lot this Winter. I am so ready for Spring to come. We have our last ski club night on Friday. Super Bowl on Sunday. How about those Pats!!! Another Boston team makin' it big.

Time to go check on Callie Girl.

Beautiful sight

The phone rang Friday morning at 5:10am. It was the school phone tree calling to let me know there was a 90 minute delay for school. It had snowed a bit and was turning into freezing rain. I got out of bed to go down stairs to call the next person on the calling tree and wondering why I hadn't brought the phone number upstairs so I didn't have to get out of my warm bed. As I was heading back upstairs, to get back into my warm bed, I stopped to look out the window. All was quiet and beautiful. White snow everywhere! The trees were beautiful and with daylight almost here everything looked bluish. Then all of a sudden I saw a deer walking down the street right in front of the house. Then another deer and another deer and yet another deer. After standing there for a couple minutes I counted NINE deer. There was a mommy and two babies that stopped to eat a bit of leaves on a bush sticking out of the snow across the street. It was amazing. Three of the deer had walked into the yard between our house and our neighbors house. I then ran upstairs to wake up Todd so he could see them. We looked out our side bedroom window and three of them were looking right up at us. Makes me wonder what goes on every morning out there before we all wake up. We also saw coyotes in our back yard last week one night. There seems to be a party going on out there once daylight is gone. I wish I could have taken some pictures.

So we had a good week. We started off with a snow day on Monday so we now have three days to make up in June. It was a pretty quiet week. Both girls had D.I. on Thursday. Callie's team has finally started up. Skiing was Friday but the conditions were horrible. I didn't even make it down the hill one time successfully. It didn't seem to stop the girls. They skied until well after 8pm.

So now it is Sunday morning and all is still quiet here. The girls are sick. Emily has a nasty cold she must have caught from Todd and Callie is running a fever with a nasty looking throat. So I guess we will be at the doctors tomorrow. There are all sorts of things going around second grade right now. Luckily we have tomorrow off for MLK day. We plan on having a very low key day in front of the fire watching football. The next few days will be very cold.

Have a good week!!

Yet Another Snow Day

Happy New Year!! I haven't blogged since before Christmas. We have been super busy but a good busy. We had an awesome Christmas with Ann, Bob and Allison. I have included a few pictures from their visit. We spent a day in Boston ice skating on Frog Pond at Boston Common and then had a late lunch at the original Cheers. It was a beautiful sunny New England Winter day. A perfect day to be in Boston ice skating. The picture at the top of the blog is of Ben and the girls being silly. Ben lives in Maine and is a good friend of ours from Ohio. The girls call him Uncle Ben and always look forward to his visits. Ben stops here and stays a night on his way to Ohio for Christmas.

Since Christmas we have started the ski program. Todd and I are chaperones again and I am actually skiing this year. I have a group of level 3 and 4 skiers. I have trouble keeping up with them but we are having a blast. Poor Todd has a group of beginner snow boarders. The first week he never got on his board. But last Friday he got a chance to do a couple runs on his own while the kids were at their lessons. It is nice that we are all doing it together. After the bus leaves with all the other kids we stay as a family and ski later. There are a couple other families that stay too.

Another exciting thing was being a part of the New Hampshire Primary. Todd got to meet a couple of the candidates at work and we went to see John McCain speak. We got to meet McCain and shake his hand. He chatted with the girls and had one of his camera guys take our picture. I keep checking his website in hopes to see our picture posted there but no such luck yet. The day of the primary the girls and I went to vote. They were very interested in how this whole thing worked. They had a lot of questions this past month. When we were leaving the polls I was interviewed by a Boston radio station. Never heard the interview though.

The other thing that has consumed our lives lately is Destination Imagination. I am one of three team managers of Emily's team and we are having a blast. Such a great group of kids with great ideas. Saturday we went to a day of workshops at UNH. I had so much fun watching these kids create and do some improve skits. Amazing! They are creative and so funny!! If you go to the NH DI website you can see some pictures that were taken on Saturday. http://www.nh-di.org/ The home page has a photo of some of the kids at the workshop. Emily is to the right of the troll. If you click on the photo album underneath the pic you can see the rest of the pics from the day. Page 4 has most of the pictures from our team.

We are home today due to yet another Nor'easter snow storm. Maybe we can rebuild Jingle, our snowman. We had some Spring like days last week and poor Jingle shrunk to about two feet. One day we were leaving for school and Callie yelled out, "Oh no. Jingle's head fell off!" I started laughing but apparently this was not a laughing matter for Emily and Callie. They were horrified at my laughter. Oops.

So that is all for now. I will try and post more often now that the Holidays are behind us.

Happy Snow Day!!