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.