February was marked by three big events:
1. Valentine's Day- the kids were diligent about making their awesome Valentines. Enoch wanted to write all his friends' names on the same one. We had to explain that you make a card for each of them. Of course, Aaron's pink-white-red-&-unnecessary performance is something more and more people look forward to hearing about. He pulled off another great and totally original year to his growing credit. I got a 'white' book (Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell) for us to read together. I thought it was perfect and we did have fun reading it together. The kids got an off-the-charts original treasure hunt through....their book shelf to find some big marshmallow suckers (by the Zillow: under their pillow). Every clue was a favorite line from a beloved bedtime story. They had to hunt through the shelves to find the particular book, page and line, where a sticky note held the next clue. It's a spin-off of one of their favorite pass-time games: quoting books and movies together. They loved it and were experts, of course.
2. A Trip to Utah- Aaron made his annual recruiting and interviewing trip to BYU and we decided to all tag along since our next planned trip wasn't until July. We got to see everybody even though we only had two short days. The highlights were meeting Baby Aspen and Aaron skiing with his dad. We were really thankful to Todd and Tana for hosting us during such a busy time for them, and to Camille for watching our kids while we went to the temple.
3. More Snow! Since they hauled off our awesome mountain of snow last month we decided to build our own one Saturday afternoon. Everyone helped build a GIGANTIC igloo made from snow blocks, complete with a slide out one side and built in seats on the interior. It was a hit with our kids (like adding and extra play room to the house), & the neighborhood kids (and adults) for a good solid 4 weeks until 4:40 last Monday when we heard a thud and looked outside to find it had finally caved in. Spring has to come some time, I guess.
The last photo is included to document the ongoing brilliancy of our snow plow guy here in Flag. It's our only consolation to rant about the situation here. Why bother clear the cul-de-sac if you are going to leave a burm of snow across the exit? And how about that rubble in front of our mailbox? It started as a 6ft. wall of snow, then we got a 6ft wall of ice, albeit 10ft. closer to the curb this time, now we have a complete lane of chewed up asphalt in front of our mailbox. The mailbox finally melted out and was accessible again only to be hedged in now by a mound that will never melt. The mailbox is pretty worse for the wear after this winter. It deserves a picture. I'll snap one tomorrow and post it.....sometime in the next year.
February Chronicles
Special Edition: Addie's Aquarium
Here is how Addie spent a weekend. One Saturday morning Aaron and I each dove into our own projects upstairs and after a couple of hours I wondered what Addie was up to and went downstairs to check in. She had animal books spread all over the kitchen table and was busy at work copying facts. She had collected 'animals' from all over the house and decided to make an aquarium. The research lasted all day from 'building' the goldfish tank (the frog she made on Tuesday night with Dad) to searching and reading and drawing (notice the cute illustrations on each info card) to writing and setting up. At one point we discovered National Geographic for kids online and I showed her how to copy and print a picture from the web. She thought that was great! For the next week she gave each member of the family multiple guided tours on which she read the entire information card for each animal to you (the argument was always, "so-and so, I need your help to test out the aquarium for such and such age group). Thanks to Uncle Anthony for calling in for a narrated 'virtual' tour and to her wonderful teacher Mrs. Drayton for letting her show the slide show on the computer at school and answer questions from her classmates. It has been such a hit we thought we'd share the whole virtual tour with you. We're so glad she is curious and creative and self-motivated.
January Chronicles
We spent a fun weekend in St. George with Nana and Papa to celebrate Enoch's 3rd birthday. Enoch loves anything green. It's more than a favorite color. It's an obsession. He loves to wear PJ's. He loves monsters, dinosaurs, trains, and race cars. His favorite food is Dad's waffles. However, he recently made a rather loud announcement to me when I was at the opposite end of the produce aisle at Sam's Club. He was standing in the cart holding the broccolli up, yelling, "hey mom! I love this stuff! I call it 'trees'. It's green!"
We also got A LOT of snow this month! The third biggest storm on record for Flagstaff. School was cancelled all week. Aaron's work was even cancelled for a couple days. He said he always dreams of how great it would be to get so much snow that work was cancelled, but in the end it was just a lot of shoveling. We had the biggest mountain of snow that filled the entire cul-de-sac. It was mind boggling. The girls were playing in their snow castle (complete with a secret entrance stairway, awesome emergency exit slide, and tunnels) one day when a tractor came rolling down the street and proceeded to load 15!!! dumptrucks full and hauled it all away! It was the craziest, stupidest, saddest, most wasteful thing I've ever seen. The girls stood on the driveway during the whole thing and bawled like their house had burned down and their parents had both died. Enoch thought the tractor and trucks were cool, so he didn't mind too much. (The pictures show it all!). I think the guy felt so guilty he cleared the 18ft deep, 6ft high wall of ice-snow in front of our driveway, but don't tell, because he said the city would fire him. (by the way, I'm not exaggerating those figures. we measured. The plow guy has something against us-that or we are at the end of an exceptionally long street for the neighborhood and also not on the clean-sweep-in side).
Later in the month Aaron went on the snow cave campout with the scouts. We met him up there the next day for some sledding fun.
Oh, and the funny swim suit picture is how the kids spent their entire first snow day: playing in a 'fort' under the kitchen table...in full swimming gear?!?!?!?!
Needless to say it was an adventurous month, and we loved every minute of it.
Special Edition: The Laundry List for a family of 6
When I finished folding the laundry this morning I paused for a brief moment to look at the row of finished piles. It occurred to me that they reflected the family members to whom they belonged in a uniquely telling way.
Mine was a pile of jeans and pajamas: two staples in my life right now. I remember when I only had one or two pair of jeans and could wear them more than once before they needed laundered. Being a mom is a dirty job and now I have several pair which I wash every single week.
Aaron's pile: no jeans. There have been no jeans in Aaron's laundry, nor on his closet shelf since he was in middle school. It's just one of those quirky things we love about Aaron. He owns no jeans.
Addie has the smallest pile: 3 items (for a whole week?!?!) including 1 pair of pajama pants, 1 pair of pants and 1 shirt- incidentally not from the same outfit. Bless her heart, in an attempt to be responsible and helpful she always puts her clothes away in the drawer- clean or dirty.
Quinn has a usual and varied stack. She usually has the largest stack of all of us because she thoughtfully selects just the right outfit each morning by digging through her drawers for just the right shirt and pants, flinging any article that just won't do, willy-nilly over her shoulder. Then she frequently repeats this ritual after lunch- just because.
Enoch has a pile of no less than 8 pairs of pajamas (minus the pair he dug out of the clean basket last night to wear to bed), and as a gesture toward convention three shirts: the soccer shirt, the motorcycle shirt, and, of course, the green shirt. Enoch puts on a pair of beloved pj's each night before bed. When he wakes up he takes them off and gets dressed into another pair of beloved pj's. 'Is going out a problem,' you ask? No. He finds that cowboy boots fit quite nicely over footsie pj's.
Jean has a neat and tidy little stack of pink, brown, and white clothes and a soft, square stack of blankets next to it. So sweet. Just like her.
