#12 and St Patrick's Day.

Seriously. 
12. 
Today, St Patrick's Day is the 12th snow day of the school year. 
It has been fun - lots of Legos, Veggie Tales, homework and shenanigans. 
I can't complain - I'm appreciating them more and more. 
The Urchins aren't going to be Urchins forever and I'm appreciating this extra time - even if it does mean a shorter summer. 
It's nice to be watching "Veggie Tales" instead of "Star Wars". 
In Family CCD we made a chain with 40 links of things to do for Lent.  We take a link off each day - so far the activities have been learning about saints and Old Testament stories and praying decades of a scriptural Rosary.  It has worked well - really well.  I hope we can keep it up.  :)
Tball and soccer both start this week.  Well...they start after the 6 inches of snow that fell today melts...so maybe we'll get a reprieve.

We went to a St Patrick's Day party this weekend.  Nate was so partied out that this was what he looked like Saturday night...

And last night, while we anticipated that there may be a snow day, we still wanted to get everyone in and out of the bathtub quickly.  I turned my head for a second to arrange Nate's clothes and this was what I found when I turned back around...

Yes.  That is Benjamin in a tub full of water while wearing his pajamas. 
Ugh. 

We weren't able to get a decent picture this morning for our annual St Patrick's Day Event. 
Each year it gets a little bit more challenging than the last.  
I got a little teary eyed Looking back at the pictures ( 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013) and thinking this is the last year we'll be able to wear the green Red Sox shirt.  8 years is a lot of wear off a $5 shirt bought off a street vendor. 

 

White Space

Sandwiched after last week and the frenetic nature of next week with TBall, Soccer, The Science Fair, Draft Prep, Gymnastics, Pre-K registration and the Happenings of Normal Life was a Day of White Space. 
We have dawdled, lounged, played, cooked, watched 2 episodes of "The West Wing" (okay - so we're 15 years behind), played Wii, made pancakes, cuddled, napped and hung out. 
Other than the part where we had to go to Wegmans on a Sunday morning before a snow storm...it has been wonderful. 
Benjamin took a 3 hour nap and Nate is in the midst of a going on 2 hour nap. 
We had a Spring Fling at Caroline's school yesterday.  It was fun.  We made 2 cakes for the Cake Walk.  It took us hours more than it should have because I had so much help. 

They looked like this and my counters are still bearing the scars...

It's pretty nice to just BE...especially after having to run around chasing children with penicillin for the past 10 days...

 

4/4

So...in keeping with tradition...the family that gets sick together STAYS together. 
All four children are now being treated for strep. 
It has been a challenging week. 

Today was a good day, though.  It hasn't ended yet - since Nate is still up screaming.  With the whole springing ahead - that really makes it 9:55.  Egads. 
Gonna be a long day tomorrow. 

We ventured into Georgetown for the 10 Miler today. 
Jim really took one for the team keeping the kids occupied so I could finish.  1:39:06.
I'll take it - especially since the entire towpath was covered in either ice, snow or mud for the entire distance.  There are muscles that I haven't thought about since taking Gross Anatomy that are going to be sore tomorrow. 

We got home mid-afternon.  Dirty doesn't even begin to describe the swamp I had splashed all over me. 
We had the wonderful McNiesh family over for dinner and the kids are just getting down now. 
Did I mention how much I love daylight savings?
Tomorrow will be wicked. 

A Few Minutes of Peace...

The kids are watching the tail end of "Return of the Jedi".
Good stuff.
They're wicked into it - they can tell you the names of all the obscure characters and the numbers of all the droids.  Who is bad...who is good...the difference between Jedi and Sith...what the different color light sabres mean...the different species...
It's more than I can keep up with.

We made some cupcakes this afternoon because, obviously, my kids don't have enough sugar in their diets already and we're desperately trying to stave off cabin fever by keeping everyone busy. 
We're hoping that we can make the cupcakes into a nice caterpillar, but either way, they'll taste good.  We used an old school Fanny Farmer recipe.  Can't go wrong with Fanny.
Here was all the help I had baking.
Because Benjamin had crawled up on the counter and tried to eat the batter hand over fist out of the bowl, we had less to bake than anticipated.  The clean up took longer, too.
Par for the course.
Who wouldn't love baking with this kind of help?

11.

Yep, seriously.  
11. 
That's right - eleven snow days so far this year.

And as fun as yesterday was...well, today has been more normal.
The kids were up, expecting a two hour delay.  Then, at 7:40, school was cancelled.
I appreciate all efforts to keep the children safe, don't get me wrong.  As parents, we are continually inundated with all things that could possibly injure/maim/scar and/or otherwise break our kids.  It;s good for them to be safely home - especially if there are stupidheads out on the icy roads. 
I can't help but feel like we're stuck in "The Long Winter", though. 

Sam and Nate both got their homework done.  Sam's penmanship wasn't up to par, but he put together a cute little story about a cat  named Brownie.  Nate made a birthday card for his teacher.  Caroline is plugging away at her Science Fair project.  To expedite the process, I typed the data into an Excel spreadsheet while she read the numbers out loud.  She needs to do a bit more reading on tooth decay and cavities.  She gets it, but can't explain it well.  Maybe it's something worth searching Netflix or youtube for.  She is an auditory learner.  After that, all she will have to do is cut out the printouts for her board, get the pics printed and attach everything.
Good.
Because then it will be time to move on to preparing for her First Communion.  She has a few hours worth of work to do for that! 
See what I mean when I say it just doesn't end?  And this is just second grade!
I get shivers to think the kids will be in 2, 4, 6 and 8th grades...
This morning wore Benjamin out...

And so now we're in the midst of Rest Time.  With Nate taking a strong anti-napping stance, we had to change the name.  Nate said he needed to snuggle with me, which I obliged.  To Nate, snuggling is a full contact sport.  He is a head snuggler and wants his face as close as it can get to the snuggler's face.  Then he can play with hair, hold hands and snuggle at the same time.  I love that boy, but his face is a snot encrusted mess, making face snuggling a little juicier than normal.  Mmmmmm...

Here are some catch up pictures from Sam's Science Fair.  He didn't get a ribbon, which bummed him out a bit (the 3 winners just happened to be on either side of him); but he did impress the judges with his knowledge of all things dinosaur.
We're proud of our little paleontologist. 

Right after that, he came down with strep - so our Iron Men got to chill for a bit in the morning...

Nate was very excited for his Farch package. 

It's still all things Star Wars in this house...good thing they're coming out with new movies...

10?

The tenth snow day of the year.
TEN.
10.
As in two full work weeks.
As in they're going to school until mid-June even though they started in mid-August.
You know...I don't mind.  I realize our situation is different than many other people are in, but the snow days have been fun (for the most part).  We've done Science Fair projects, homework, a whole lot of baking, reading, played legos and watched a fair amount of "Star Wars".
It has been nice.  Really nice. 
Just giving us some time to BE, which I'm learning is more important than I ever realized. 
The kids are under a lot of stress at school (you wouldn't believe the Science Fair projects we saw last week - YIKES).  It's good to keep learning fun.  For today's writing homework, Sam wrote a very short story about Luke Skywalker and a trip he took back to Tatooine.  It was fun.  He used his brain.  I didn't feel like I was pulling teeth to get him to do it.  He.  Actually.  Smiled.  While.  Doing.  Homework.
Nate worked on some letters and coloring.  Caroline  started putting data together for her science experiment.  Once I explained to her that she wouldn't have *any* homework for a week if she got her project done now - she moved with a sense of urgency.  She is into the project and was actually pleased when she found that her hypothesis was partly wrong.  She has also learned more about tooth decay than she ever wanted to know.
It was pretty cool.  :)
How wonderful if all days were like this...but since they're not - it makes today even more enjoyable.
I would like to add that this is what the playroom looks like...the craziness expanded into the kitchen, ,too.  One must have only the very prime play real estate to fully enjoy Daddy's Star War figures from 1980!!!  The kids are very appreciative to Grammy and Grampy for mailing them up. 

After Sam came down with strep last week, Caroline was fast to follow.
Penicillin all around!
Sometimes I fantasize that the kids could just all lick the contaminated doorknobs at the same time so we could just buy a gallon of antibiotics and be done with it.  Now Nate and Benjamin are both sounding croupy and stuffy (this is how the Olders started off). 
We ended up waiting for over 2 hours to be seen at the doctor's office yesterday and had to cancel dinner with our neighbors last night.  Since Rebekah and I had both already prepared our contribution to the big family meal, the Bensons delivered half the lasagna (Mmmmm...) and we gave them half the salad, garlic bread and dessert.  We toasted our families virtually from across the street.
We are continually reminded of the awesome people we're surrounded by.  Always willing to help, hold and umbrella or stand in for blood-relatives at a moment's notice as we're all hundreds, if not thousands of miles away from family.
We are very grateful.  :)

Happy Snow Day!