I love holidays

Really, I do.  I think about ancient and medieval Europeans a lot when I think about holidays.  Yeah, some of their holidays were religious, but a lot of them were just to mix things up a bit and free them of the monotony of their lives.  Now, don't get me wrong, I love my "job" but sometimes it's nice to be able to insist on a pink craft for Valentine's Day instead of just cutting up any old color of paper.

We started the day with the Pinterest-tradional pink heart-shaped pancakes and heart-shaped strawberries.  Then I made dinner (best idea ever by the way, make dinner before the crying hour of 5 pm), did the dishes, cleaned the house and got all things ready to leave for a play date.

Went to said play date after only getting a little stuck in the few inches of remaining, yet melting snow.  Then to Wal-Mart to get some last minutes supplies for our afternoon activity and holy cow was it crazy.  People had all sorts of un-necessary things to buy after being hulled up for two days.  (I had paint pens and toys in my cart, so really shouldn't be judging).  It was like Christmas, minus the Christmas part.

We got home and the kids did an art project--paint pens on ceramic plates.  Like the Sharpie on a mug craft you've seen on Pinterest, only I went straight for the paint pens because they work, unlike every comment I read on various blogs that the Sharpie just washes off.  While the kids did that, I made a cheesecake--I know I'm awesome right.  And while it didn't really have enough time to cool before we ate some, it was/is awesome.  Seriously, first thing I did right all week.

Alice as Hitler

Rex's plate

Alice's

threw this one in for fun--Alice's favorite hiding place--between the counter and the deep freeze.

Figuring out how to make cheesecake is not going to be good for my butt 

And then we had dinner.  Heart-shaped meatloaf because I'm so cute.  But really it looked like a red...well, you look at the picture and see if you're thinking the same thing I'm thinking.

Then bath and bed for the kids.

Next, I decided to do an at-home-date for Valentine's Day, because, let's face it, going out when you have kids is hard.  First you have to find a sitter, which means remembering to call one after school and hoping they'll answer and blah blah blah.  It's a pain.  So you get the sitter.  But then the day arrives and you have  twice as much work as usual getting ready for the sitter, because you still have to make dinner for the kids or at least write out detailed instructions of where everything is in the kitchen so the sitter can make dinner.  Then you have to clean up because you don't want the sitter to judge you and even if you don't care about that, you're pretty sure your kids are going to go crazy once you leave and pull out at least 10 more buckets of toys, so you want to start as close to clean as possible.  Then you have to look cute.  I mean, really, it's a date and it's not often that you leave the house with out kids so you should probably at least wear clean clothes.  And then, if you live where I live, you have to plan at least 40 minutes to pick the sitter up--20 minutes to her house, and 20 back.  So basically, I just spent my entire day getting ready for the date.  Then you go on the date and it's only like 2 hours because 1. you are paying the sitter and 2. she needs to get home and 3. you still have 40 minutes of driving to drop her off.  So you drop her off and by now it's like 10 o'clock and you still have to do the dishes from the kids' dinner and clean up their toys.  Most sitters will at least attempt at these last two things, but they don't really know where stuff goes and you didn't pay them that much anyway.  So you have now spent from 3 o'clock to 11 o'clock getting ready for/cleaning up after a 2 hour date.

I decided to ditch all that and planned a stay-at-home date instead and will probably repeat a lot in the coming weeks.

After experimenting with the kids' plates earlier in the day, Greg and I also made plates.  It wasn't what I normally think of as a date (did you not read the above paragraph?), but I still got some cheesecake (why Mom did you deprived me of it's goodness my whole life?) and got to spend time talking with Gregory and laughing at his ridiculousness, which is really all a date is right?  Time talking together and not just sitting in the same room as each other, which is what we are doing right now.

Greg's--Happy Valentine's Day to you too.

Greg says I'm a narcissist because I wrote "I love you" on my own plate.

So we had a lovely Valentine's.  Now onto Greg and Rex's birthdays, St. Patrick's Day, which I accidentally made a big deal at our house, oh, yeah, and I'm supposed to have a baby sometime...

Winter Storm 2014

So it snowed this week.  And they called it Winter Storm 2014, and I'm glad because I hate dumb names like Snowmageden.  Back to the actual snow--Beautiful, fluffy, lovely snow.  Really, I love to look at snow--play in it...well...And then the whole state shut down again.  And by "and then" I mean, two days before it started to snow.  But to be honest, it was great.  I know my last post mocked the South for shutting down just for a little snow, but this time I didn't mind at all.  

It started snowing on Tuesday.  Nothing stuck. Mostly just flurries, but school let out at 11 anyway.  But, oh my, you should've heard the news.  Seriously, they way the anchors were talking, had my Utah family calling to see if we had been buried yet.  No.  In fact, we got a fairly normal amount for a good snow in Utah.

Wednesday I woke up to nothing and thought, "Holy cow these people exaggerate."  I had planned to go play at the mall, but Greg was staying home because the weather was bad and it was going to be a huge snow/why not work at home when he had a good excuse, so we stayed home too.  Around 11, it started to snow.  Enough that I thought, you know, I'm glad I'm not out driving in this.  I could drive in it if I wanted, but I'd rather not.  So Greg and Rex suited up and headed out to play in the snow.  I attempted to get Alice all suited up--had on two pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, boots, a long sleeved shirt, but she faltered at having to put a coat on and decided to stay inside.  Rex didn't last long anyway and was back in after about 15 minutes.  Greg went back out to play with the teenage boys that live behind us because Greg is also 15.

Greg helped the neighbor boys make a tow hitch so they could pull each other on skis behind the truck--Greg did talk them out of tying their feet to the skis though.

 Thursday I knew we weren't going anywhere and Greg decided to "work from home" again after getting his truck stuck on the Wheatley's driveway.  Rex had told me on Tuesday to get a snow shovel, but I didn't believe there would be that much snow plus I was being lazy plus I hate shopping even for important things like snow shovel.  After Wednesday's snow, the van door barely opened so there went my hope of leaving.  But I was prepared, I spent all night Wednesday night on Pinterest looking for fun things to do in the snow.

We started off the day with sledding with the Wheatleys.  Surprisingly, Rex went down by himself and was not scared.  Alice even agreed to put two coats and went down three times before her un-mittened hands got too cold and she started crying. (PS getting my kids dressed to play in the snow brought back at least a million memories of going to the snow with my dad as a kid--when you live in California you have to drive two or so hours to get to the snow.  We didn't have proper snow equipment since we only went to the snow once a year, so we did things like wear grocery bags on our feet and pretend like jeans are water proof.  No wonder my mom usually opted to stay home.  I wouldn't have been seen with us either.  My kids looked the same--rain boots are the same thing as snow boots right?)

 After lunch at the Wheatleys, we came home and painted snow, inside, because it was cold outside.

 And then they ate some of it so I let them use the rest of our root beer flavored snow cone flavoring.

Rex painted/ate snow for a good hour

Around 3, Greg started getting antsy from staying home for two days (see there are hard things about being a stay at home mom), so he dug the van out and after many attempts finally got out of our driveway and very carefully drove to Target, and then ripped a plastic piece off the bottom of the van on the way home.  I had a few very nonessential things I wanted to get for Valentine's Day.

After dinner, Greg and Rex harvested some snow for us, which was hard because although it had snowed a good 8 inches, it was already starting to melt.  The kids and I made snow ice cream for dessert, which tasted like a creamy snow cone and not so much like ice cream but it was fun anyway.

Friday was back to life as usual, and I was actually really sad and part of me wishes we'd stayed home on Friday too.  Our two and a half snow days were a little magical.  There was no wondering, well should we leave--think we can make it out to do X, Y, or Z?  We were all stuck in the same room (we only heat 1 room in our house) and we had to get along and play nice.  It was like our own little Baker Bubble--no body else existed or mattered because we couldn't get to them anyway.  Except for the Wheatley's, but they're pretty much like family anyway.  Or at least I tell myself that because I'm a little obsessed with their whole family.  And then when we left on Friday, the bubble popped and we had to deal with crappy drivers, and traffic, and overcrowded stores, and we couldn't just be and play together any more because other people reentered our world and I was little sad.  So South, thank you for not having enough snow plows and for shutting down for two days so that I had to stay home and just play with my family.  It was magic.

Spoiled Brats

A normal week at our house:

Monday--clean house

Tuesday--Joy School/library

Wednesday--playgroup

Thursday--Joy School/park

Friday--crafts/another playgroup/park/mall

Basically, nothing too big or exciting but enough to get us out of the house.  But this week, my little hoodlums got spoiled.

Monday--Ray's Splash Planet.  

I looked into going once when we first moved here, but when I discovered I would have to pay for my 1 month old to get in, I decided I was not interested.  Grant it, the one month old was more likely to pee in the pool than me, but still, she wasn't going to enjoy it, so I wasn't going to pay for her.  But this week, a friend of mine told me that on Monday, parents get in free and kids were only $3 a piece so we went.  We stayed for 2 1/2 hours and the kids just loved it.  They stayed in the water the whole time.  And then they both fell asleep in the car on the way home, which would have been nice had I not also known that naps of any sort always mean a late night for the whole family.

Tuesday--usual.  Nothing really to comment on this.

Wednesday--Charleston.

I had planned to go to playgroup in the morning and then head down to Charleston, but playgroup was cancelled.  And not because of the snow.  The hostess got sick.  Take that 1/2 inch of lame North Carolina snow that shut the state down for 2 days.  We ended up staying home and playing games with Grandma Libby.  After lunch, despite fears of the absolutely no snow on the roads, the kids and I braved the perfectly safe driving conditions and went to Charleston.  You see, Greg had left in the morning for Utah to once again deal with our house there and my dad was on business in Charleston, so I figured, why not?  

We arrived around 5:30, got the kids out, jumped on the hotel beds for a bit then packed back up to drive by the Boeing plant to see the 787s parked outside.  (Rex is super into planes these days.  He wants to be an aeronautical engineer when he grows up).  Dad then treated us to a North Charleston specialty--IHOP.  Both kids actually ate their dinners and Rex later informed me that we can make the funny face pancakes at home--thanks IHOP just one more silly thing I have to do now to get my kids to eat breakfast.  We went back to the hotel, jumped around a bit more, wrestled Alice to bed and were asleep by 10.

Thursday--more Charleston

Dad had to work so it was just me and the kids.  But because of the melting snow conditions, Patriot's Point, the air craft carrier/museum I had planned to visit was closed.  Luckily, the children's museum across the street from the hotel was open--but late--noon instead of 9, because of the melting snow (are you catching my irritation at the reaction of the South to 1/2 inch of snow?).  So we hung out in the hotel room until noon before heading over to the museum.  The kids had a great time, but I was a little annoyed that I drove 3 1/2 hours to go to a children's museum no better than the one 30 minutes from my house.  But Greg was out of town and it was fun to see my dad so whatever.  And the kids had fun.

driving a pirate ship

 We met my dad at the Boeing plant when he got off work, then we were once again treated to a North Charleston favorite--Jim and Nicks.  But this time the kids didn't actually eat anything.  Good thing I was smart and only ordered one meal for them to split.  Then we drove home.  We got home around 9:30.  But for some reason, I was on crazy pills and didn't put the kids straight to bed.  It was around 10:30 before they went to bed.

At the Boeing plant with a real live Boeing engineer--this is pretty much the coolest thing to my super nerdy 4 year old

 Friday--Aviation Museum

Due to two late nights in a row, both kids slept in until 8 or 8:30--can't remember exactly but it was lovely.  When they finally got up, we went to the Charlotte Aviation Museum to make it up to Rex that he didn't get to see airplanes the previous day Patriot's Point.  It's a pretty small museum.  The main attraction was the Miracle on the Hudson River plane--you know the plane that Captain Sullivan landed safely on water.  The museum also has the 3 real cock pits to sit in that did it for my kids though.  They flew the Boeing 727 for a long time--like 30 minutes at least.  We stayed for a good 3 hours before I got bored and decided that we should leave.  On the way home, Rex convinced Grandpa Brian that he needed to try out the Bojangles Bobiscuits because Bobiscuits are better than the cheese biscuits we had the night before at Jim and Nicks.  Grandpa said the Bobiscuits were pretty good but wasn't sure if they really qualified as biscuits since they were covered in a sugary glaze.  We finished the night off with baths, games,  and another late bedtime.

Alice using the life boat as a bounce house.

Flying the 727

Flying with Grandpa

Flying an F-4 Phantom

Flying a Cessun (maybe--I forget what this one was called)

Rex's favorite plane--the DC 3.  He seriously recognized it as soon as we walked in.  Also notice the very non-Alice proof barriers they have around the planes.  She took those things apart in seconds and then set off the alarms.  Luckily we were the only people there so it wasn't a big deal.

Saturday--Park

By this time, I was starting to get a little spoiled too.  The kids didn't wake up until 9.  Seriously!  The weather forecast said 55 so we packed up some snacks and bikes and headed to the park.  Rex loved riding his bike around the track as fast as he could--until the pedal fell off, again and again and again.  He held it together pretty well, but he was getting frustrated that he couldn't just enjoy his bike.  Alice rode her bike a bit, played on the swings a bit, then mostly just ate snacks.  We came home for lunch and to fix Rex's bike.  Also Grandpa had to catch his flight.  Then Derick came over and played for the rest of the day.  After that, since Grandpa was gone and it was just me, you better believe I put those kids to bed on time.  I was tired.

Alice observing--she chilled there for like 10 minutes just watching the other kids

See how sad he is that he can only go like 100 feet before his pedal falls off

And there you have, my children's very spoiled week.