swimming, basketball, family, friends and more snow

My goal for 2014 was/is to blog 4 times a month. I thought that was completely do-able but am realizing now I may have been a little over ambitious. I blogged twice in January and 3 times in February. Maybe I'll get there in March. Life is busy. If I'm not doing some specific task after the kids are in bed, I'm passed out on the couch at 8:30 pm. Ben loves it. 

Anyways, here's some happenings the past 2 weeks:

• We had 2 "full" weeks of school. I say "full" because we had a 2-hour delay each week and then this past week Ted was home 2 days with the most violent puking virus I've ever experienced. I was leaning towards some sort of food poisoning until friends that came over after he got better got the same thing. I'm hoping they didn't get it from us. But they probably did. Sorry Underdonks! We spent the weekend with Ben's family and they didn't get sick (this is the first they're actually hearing about it). I didn't want to worry them. The past 2 times we've seen Henry, my kids fingers have been in his mouth and then they've been puking within 12-24 hours of that. I think it's Henry . . . 

• All the snow has melted which was actually kind of weird at first. We had snow on the ground for about 6 weeks straight which is not a common thing. It was pretty, but I have my parking space back.
  
• There's another snowstorm coming starting tomorrow. They keep upping the snow totals. Right now it stands at 6-12 inches. I ran to Giant Eagle for a quick grocery shop to get us through knowing that it's the first of the month with a snow storm coming. I'll wait for Walmart until next week.  
• I'm thinking about giving up social media for Lent. I think we need a break. Not positive on that. Stilling tossing it around. 
• Last weekend we went to Teays Valley. The whole purpose of the trip was Ben and Andy baptizing their mom at Andy's church. It was pretty awesome for them to do that. Andy is a pastor at River Ridge Teays Valley. It's a church plant of River Ridge Charleston where we used to be on staff, and a sister church of South Ridge Church where we currently attend and I work. It's all in the family. We stayed in a hotel and got in some swimming which is always fun. We've definitely had a lot of indoor swimming this winter. Which leads me to . . .
• There's nothing like putting on a swimming suit in the middle of winter after many, many snow days where you sit at home and eat. Plus the fact that you're see-thru white. It gives you incentive to give up social media and exercise instead of sitting on my rear end scrolling through my phone.

 Aunt Lois & Henry

• We stopped to meet Annie Ward for 5 minutes on our way home from Teays Valley on Sunday. Oh my what a doll! She's such a cutie and so teeny.  JB & Bethany bought a house about 3 houses down and across the street from our old house.  So many new babies being born to people we love so much.

• 4 of the 6 Santens came to Morgantown today for the WVU/TCU basketball game. We had lunch at Pies & Pints and then Ben and Ted went to the basketball game with them. 

• Last weekend at Leadership we had the Great Frozen Burrito Races of 2014. It was great! The First Year Guys won. We owe them a party at our house with whatever the request. 

• Sophie painted this picture of Ben for Valentine's Day and generously gave him a moon pie she got in her Valentine Bag. So fitting and generous.

• The Underdonks had no water at their house for most of the week with a pipe that burst. They came over one night for dinner and showers. Then we gave them our germs and sent them home to puke in a waterless house. Oops!

• The Frozen soundtrack is currently the soundtrack of our lives. We LOVE, love, love this movie and can't wait for it to come out on DVD. These songs to Sophie are like The Little Mermaid, The Lion King and Aladdin to me when I was a kid.  This may be my all time favorite Disney move - EVER.

• I have new laundry system that is somewhat effective. When all the baskets are full of clean laundry, I dump it on the living room floor. The kids are in charge of digging through to find their own clothes and putting them in their own drawers. I don't care what their drawers look like as long as there are no clothes on the floor. It's been a nice change. 

• We sleep in on Saturday mornings. The kids are allowed to get up and do whatever they want as long as they don't wake us up. One morning, Ted helped himself to ice cream for breakfast and shared the love with Sophie. He said, "You said we could do whatever we wanted." Touche, Ted.

more snow & the olympics

- We had a whopping 3 days of school this week. I had prepared the kids for 5 days until it snowed another who knows how much on Wednesday into Thursday. Friday was cancelled too - I'm really not sure why. The funny thing was Tuesday and Wednesday mornings it was about 4 degrees. Earlier in the month we had school delayed or cancelled at the exact same temps. Sophie got off the bus Wednesday crying because she was exhausted from 3 days in row. It snowed another 3ish inches last night. You really can't tell anymore. The only nice thing about all this snow is that we have had snow on the ground since the beginning of January. I don't remember the last time it's stayed around this long.

- Ted and I are glued to the Winter Olympics. I'm thrilled that he has taken the interest and that we watch it together. The Summer Olympics are by far my favorite, but I don't feel guilty being inside watching tv in the winter. Anytime we are home, we are tuned into some station watching whatever happens to be on. We have seen a LOT of curling and I still have no idea what it is, but it's fascinating to watch. We have been especially intrigued by the biatholon and the skeleton. Seriously, zooming down a frozen slide at 80 mph head first. No thank you. Really, all that speed skiing, slope style and long jumping - it's all crazy! Winter Olympics I feel like are a little more extreme. Either way, I'm LOVING it and will have no regrets when these Olympics are over that I didn't watch enough.

- Sophie has recently taken up residence in Ted's room. She has moved her pillow, stuffed animals and tissue box (for the occasional bloody nose) to the top bunk. The girl has no temperature gauge in her body. While the rest of us are dressed in layers, she is dressed in her summer nightgown. Or, for instance, this morning she watched an entire movie in just her underwear. No robe. No blanket. No nothing. We slept in and they were up early, so when they came upstairs to wake us up and she crawled in bed, she was freezing and really had no thought of it.

- Snow Days 13 & 14 the kids stayed home and we didn't play with friends. Ben and I switched out for time to work. So today when we woke up and saw that it snowed some more, we had to get out of the house. We decided to walk the trails at White Park (along with all the other neighborhood families). It was absolutely beautiful and a lot of snow to hike through. Millie went with us. She ran and played hard in deep snow. She hasn't moved since about 4pm and is pretty stiff. She turned 11 last week and still likes to play like she's 5. The fact that the kids didn't feed her when we were out this evening and she didn't really care is pretty impressive.

This is foreshadowing of how Sophie felt about 15 minutes into our walk.

And some other catch up pictures:

Sophie's thoughts on the Super Bowl.

We have spent a significant amount of time the Wow Factory over the last 6 weeks. We have added a bowl and mug to our "My Special Day" place setting and made some ornaments for next Christmas. 

Lilly paints about 50/50 table and whatever it is that she's painting.

Sophie as catching snow on her tongue. This was last Saturday when snow was trying to melt.

The Kozels came over to watch WVU basketball and eat dinner. The boys playing some xBox.

I am super intrigued to find out weather statistics specifically for the past 6 weeks, but I can't find it anywhere. Mainly I'm looking for snowfall amounts, temperature records and average temperature for the year 2014 so far.  Perhaps I can't quite figure out the right combination to search online. Either way, if you know of some secret website, I would love to know it. Next week we may hit 50 degrees. Get your swimming suits and flip flops out people - we're about to have a heat wave.

snow days 11 & 12

Sunday afternoon, there was a winter weather advisory for Morgantown that was predicting 1-3 inches of snow. Sometime during the Super Bowl it was upgraded to a winter storm warning calling for 4-6 inches. Monday morning when Ben left for the airport it was around 8 inches. It ended up around this . . .

10 inches. And so commenced Snow Days 11 and 12.

I shoveled around 5 am. This was around 10am. WVU cancelled classes. That  happens about once every 4 years or so. I had a neighborhood Young Life kid come over and shovel out the van. By the time the plow went by several times, there was about 3 feet all around and huge snow piles on either end of the van.

We spent some time at the park.

The kids spiffed up a snowman from last week that had turned to ice from rain over the weekend. (It was -8 degrees last Tuesday, 55 degrees on Saturday, and snowed nearly a foot on Monday.)

Sophie and Ted are hard to sometimes tell apart from far away in the snow. They are each wearing one piece of a zip in coat. But hey, one jacket, 2 pieces - works for us! (The inside part is a little too small for Ted but he can wear the outside part and it still fits).

Mini snowmen made from shoveling out the van.

We had friends come over Monday evening for sledding an dinner. The street beside our house was nice and icy and made for great sled riding.

We had our own little bobsled team.

And kind of our own bobsled track. The city had plowed the sidewalk down the hill and had created walls on either side.

This was University Avenue this afternoon. Mon County said we had a regular day of school tomorrow. With road like this . . .

And supposedly some sort of ice/snow/rain thing coming overnight, I'm not so sure about tomorrow.