Snow Fun

After the recital on Saturday the boys all wanted to go out and play in the snow. We got them bundled up and took a couple pictures, and then Michael decided to go out and join them. The boys all had fun eating snow (something that I remember loving to do as a child), and Isaac enjoyed watching his big brothers play from the window (and watching Daddy throw snowballs at the window where he was standing). Before too long they all came in and got out of their wet clothes. I had hot chocolate (actually, “warm chocolate,” since they can’t stand anything too hot, so I just get the tap water as hot as it will go and then add the coco to that) waiting for them, as is tradition for our family after we play in the snow. It snowed just a bit today, and I think it is supposed to snow some more this week. The last couple days have been quite cold and rather windy here (for the first time this winter), and it is starting to remind me of the beginning of a Milwaukee winter. But with how mild the winter has been here so far, I assume that it won’t stay this cold out for too much longer.

Lights on Temple Square

Yesterday Michael had a day off work, so we called our new friends, Miriam and Wayland Barker, to see if they wanted to go downtown and look at the lights on Temple Square. (We were glad that the Barkers were able to go with us, because Michael’s work schedule has made it rather difficult to do much so we’d only been able to get together with them a couple times before). Anyways, we met last night and drove down to Temple Square. It has been several years since we were able to see the lights there at Christmas time – Kolby was a newborn last time we went. The Barkers’ two older girls, Shaylee and McKayla, were visiting their dad last night, but their younger girls, Kiera and Aspen, came and had a lot of fun running around with Kolby, Eli, and Camden. We saw the nativity scene set up on Temple Square, then walked through the visitor’s center to see the Christus statue, and then went around to the other side of the temple past the reflecting pool before heading home. After we got Camden and Isaac down for bed (and Kolby too, since he missed naps that day for piano lessons and so he was extra tired and fell asleep in the car on the way home). So, by the time the Barkers got here Eli was the only boy awake, and he and the girls had fun chasing each other around and playing the piano with Michael while we had hot chocolate and peppermint ice cream. We had a fun night together, and it was nice to have them over to visit, even if Michael’s schedule doesn’t allow us to get together with friends as much as we’d like to.

Snow Day

In the spirit of catching up on posting photos to the blog, here are some from a fun snowstorm that we had on February 6th. It was the biggest storm that we were around for this winter (I don’t know if Milwaukee got any bigger storms while we were gone in December and January). It was actually a “fun” storm because everything got cancelled – Michael’s school, the kid’s preschool, swim lessons, and church – and our whole family just got to stay home and spend time together (and none of us had to go dig out the car to get anywhere on the icy roads). That night, after the big snowfall, the Kearls came over and we took the kids out to play in the snow (except Isaac and Katie, they were happy to stay inside where it was nice and warm). The boys (including Michael and Tyce) had a lot of fun playing in the snow out in front of our apartment building. And then we all came in afterwards and enjoyed some hot chocolate – this is a tradition with our boys every time we go out to play in the snow – they would probably feel like some great injustice had been done to them if we went out in the snow and then they weren’t promptly offered a sippy cup of “warm chocolate” [they don’t like to eat/drink anything that is too hot, so I have to tell them that it is just warm chocolate to get them to drink it]. I got some fun video of Michel throwing the boys into the deep powder, but later realized that I hadn’t changed any of the lighting settings on the camera and it was dark out, so you can’t really see anything on the videos. Oh well, the pictures turned out cute too. (Oh, and in case you couldn't tell what the one close-up snow photo is, it's the handle to our back door totally covered in snow). Enjoy!