Happy Sunday

Sisters, sisters...there were never such devoted sisters!

Today Julia and I went on a shopping marathon...2 1/2 hours, five stores....phew! Everyone at work is getting very coupon-happy, and we wanted to try our hand at getting some deals. We clipped coupons and made lists....and despite my best efforts, my grocery bill was STILL $100. I don't know how I have such talent...my grocery bill is almost ALWAYS $100. I can go to the Kroger with an enormous list or just to pick up "milk and eggs," and the cashier always asks me for a Ben Franklin. Anybody else out there have that problem?

Julia was a shopping champion. She held coupons and didn't run away to play with toys. I didn't catch her opening all the musical cards in the Hallmark section and she didn't "taste" all the grapes. By the time we made it to Target, she was pointing out Clearance sighs. She was so good for me that I rewarded her with a fairy wand and some boinger-oingers with stars. I love that my kids are young enough that a 50 cent gift from target is enough to make their day!

I had to post this picture. Mary looks beyond enthusiastic about her new wand and matching jammies. Life is good.

Spring fever, kicking in.

Right around the end of February/beginning of March everyone at our house starts to go a little bit nuts. We do our best to keep the kids busy, playing outside in the snow or over at friends' houses or chucking them in the basement to play when our toes start to curl. I can't put a number on the times we've headed shopping more just to get out and about than to buy anything that we actually needed. I'm hoping that that doesn't mean we now own a bunch of random crap that has no function...
Sarah happened to be off this past Saturday (yay!). Her cure for the Fever for the day was to roll out a bunch of sugar cookies and have the girls help her decorate them. For good measure the children selected all the spring-oriented cookie cutters they could find (ducks, tulips, bunnies, etc); unfortunately for me these cookie cutters happened also to be of the "mini" variety - as in bite-sized. I say unfortunately because Sarah makes a mean sugar cookie, and making them tiny only increases my ability and propensity to gobble them by the dozen. I'm pretty sure that I ate almost two dozen before they were even cooled.
It's a good thing I'm not on a diet.

Let's get started.

Mary enjoys her role as taste-tester.

"I think I hab do sdeeze..."
"COVER YOUR MOUTH!!!"

Jules trying out her artistic talents on a cookie-canvas. It's nice how, as the kids get older, messes during activities like this tend to be smaller.

And one final shot of the cookies, a.k.a. my nemesis.

Yesterday's post...

...was a little premature. Because this is what our yard looks like tonight.



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It was fifty degrees!!!

Yesterday, it was FIFTY (yes, five-oh) degrees here in Ypsilanti. (Ip-suh-lan-tee) and we took advantage of it! We walked Luke around the neighborhood and greeted the new green grass as it peeked out from under the snow. Living in Michigan has its perks: winter is literally cut in HALF. It feels like we went straight from November to March. It went from fall, to the "brown crunchy stage" to SNOW, snow, and more SNOW, and now it's melting. So far it's been all of the fun parts of winter without being cold! I don't think we even made it below zero. So our fifty degree day in February was met with welcoming arms and we attempted to replenish the stores of vitamin D.

Mike was our photographer. I love this one!

Almost all the snow is gone.

OK, so the pics are a bit out of order. Not sure why. Also not sure why this text is suddenly underlined. I am such a computer guru...shoulda made a career out of it!


Hi everybody!

A little Christmas decorating

This post is a leeeetle belated - my apologies. I started this post back at the front end of December, put it away, and now it's February! Isn't it unfortunate how the holidays, designed to give people family time and relaxation, usually end up having the opposite effect and sending us into a tailspin of busy-ness and tiredness? I end up doing a whole bunch of things that I think need to get done while neglecting the things that should be enjoyed. Just an observation.

A little post-script here: I see the post before this one was at Halloween-time...yup, it's been a while. I'm trying to keep up, honest.

At any rate. About Thanksgiving-time one usually starts thinking about getting the tree up, so it was off to the tree nursery we went. This year we invested in what is called a "noble fir" - a very beautiful and well-proportioned tree, but with weak branches that tend to bend when laden with heavy ornaments (note to self: look for something else next year). We got out the boxes of Christmas decorations and the girls had a blast digging through all the boxes for stuff they hadn't seen for a year. Moosie helped himself to some homemade dough ornaments (mmm...salty) and sat on the floor to watch.

For your viewing pleasure:

Mary surveys her work.

Julia, playing with the plastic Fisher-Price nativity we finally broke down and bought this year, after the little ceramic Mary on our good one got her hand broken off for the fifth (sixth? seventh?) time!

Said Mary is huddling in fear somewhere in here. What's that you say? Snow? What's that stuff?

My wife extends her campaign to torture our long-suffering Simon.

Moosie can't get enough of that box!

Moose-snacks...er...I mean, dough ornaments.

Trying out my artistic talents here...

The finished tree.

sNO!!!!w

Is this May, or November??!?


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Glacier

No, this isn't some glacier in Norway, or a panoramic of the Grand Canyon. It's the ice in the alley behind our house. That's a good six inches you're lookin at, folks. It's been a good year for the ice, apparently. Thank God it's finally melting.


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Pass the Tylenol.

Apparently it was really important that we get all of our snow for December, January, and February in the space of about 36 hours. I just finished shoveling the walk for the umpteenth time, and it's time for some painkillers. As a lifelong Minnesotan (say it with me: "Minnesoooohtan") I appreciate the value of good snow removal tools. A broom propped against the back door to get those really light fluffy flakes that fall when the clouds sneeze in October. A sturdy shovel with a handle long enough so my nose doesn't touch the sidewalk for the medium stuff. And a snowblower for those batten-down-the-hatches-here-she-comes-holy-cow-is-that-a-lot-of-snow blizzards that start in January and pretty much settle in until March.

Broom? Check.

Shovel? Check.

Snowblower? Buried in the shed under about three feet of snow.

Since this is the first real snow (and by real, I mean it will last longer than until the clouds clear) we've received this winter, there hasn't been an occasion for me to fire up the old gal. Unfortunately, by the time I finally realized that Old Man Winter meant business this time, the shed and its contents were already entombed under a foot and a half of the white stuff. It's been coming down pretty much solid since Saturday night, and though I've taken the time to keep the front walk clean (at the expense of my back, arms, legs, and several other things I won't mention) my duties as student and Papa haven't left me enough spare time to tunnel to the shed. Okay, okay, yes, I did have a few minutes free between laundry and dishes and toys and diapers and infectious disease notes, but I used them to sleep.

So now I face the prospect of trying to retrieve my faithful friend from her white prison either after everyone else is in bed or before they get up. As you can see, I'm wisely using my time now to blog for you. And why, you ask?

The gas in the tank on that snowblower has been sitting there since September. I'm sure it's become a gelatinous goo by this point. Which means that it probably won't start anyway, even if I can get it out. I have grudgingly promised my aching self to try tomorrow, if only to give my arms a reason to hope (I may be approaching the overdose point on Tylenol) but if you hear a groan/scream/snarl followed by an explosion...well, you can guess.

Ah, the joys of winter. Next year, I'm buying a Bobcat.

Where is the blizzard???

Where in the world is our snow??? Our yard is brown!

I won't smile for you!!!

....but I will try and steal the camera...

There is supposed to be snow this weekend. As you can see above, we don't have anything but a dry, brown yard. Julia has been cooped up in the house because mommy and daddy have been studying and in the hospital a lot. You can really see her burns well in one of these pictures. How the Lord has healed her!!! We're very grateful that we don't have to worry about big ugly scars or infection.

There's a little baby at St. Mary's who is in the PICU (peds intensive care unit) with burns. I felt so sorry for the poor family. He is worse off than Julia. He pulled a pot of hot coffee onto his face. He is three weeks older than Julia. I showed them pictures of Julia now for inspiration.

Have a good day, everyone. I hope we all get a nice dumping of snow this weekend to snap the drought we've had for the past two months. Julia wants to try out her new sled!!!

Igloo, sweet igloo.

It's good to be home. After spending the last month with our in-laws and parents (very nice to visit, but it gets to be long) Julia and I are finally back in Duluth. And it is really flippin' cold here. I guess 7 degrees really isn't unusual for Duluth (it's almost tropical, based on my experience with January in this frozen town), and certainly not something I've never seen before, but seriously. Either the ten degrees difference between here and Saint Cloud is more than it seems, or I'm getting wussy in my old age. Of course, it might have something to do with the fact that we keep the house at about 58 degrees. Like I said, brrrr!

Julia says: "It's good to go home, but only if you drive and I sleep."

I'm trying not to be cynical. There's a certain expectation I have for myself that, when I write, it should be fun to read. "Fun" in this sense equates with "funny", at least, for me. I like to think that I can be funny if given enough time (here I go, claiming more talent than I probably actually have) but my particular brand of funny is sarcasm, which so easily lapses into cynicism. And I think there are enough real cynics in this world without me adding to the mess with my vain attempts at comedy. So forgive me if (when?) I become cynical. It's the cold, I tell you.