emgup: Winter Blah

It's felt a little winter blah around here lately. After Christmas winter feels a little less magical and a lot more bleak - you know, that old dirty snow pushed up against the side of the road feeling? That "where is the sun??" feeling? One thing I liked about Colorado was that it was sunny a lot in the winter. Utah, less so. But its not so bad, I guess.

Going back to school after Christmas break always feels a little hard for me. I enjoy the time off. And our break was short this year. So I was sad for them to go back to school. Here are some pictures of our adventures over the past month. Some of these I've already shared on my picture a day blog.

Here is John on one of the first days back to school helping me to empty the dishwasher.

We had soup in bread bowls one night. You can see our Christmas stuff is still up. I just don't want to let it go.

Going out to lunch at a Mongolian BBQ place with Scott and the two younger kids. It's fun to have lunch with Scott when we get a chance.

Taking the Christmas tree down. I spent the better part of one Saturday taking down all the Christmas decor. Some places we've lived there are neighborhood rules about how soon your Christmas lights and decor must be down so we hurried to take it all down. I've since noticed that lots of people still have Christmas decorations up even now (early-mid February). So I guess we didn't need to hurry with that.

Scott manages the tree for us.

This was taken on the first day of the new church schedule (2 hours vs. 3 hours of church). I'm happy for two hour church but it feels weird to me. The Sunday school room is now filled to capacity each week when it wasn't before, and I can't figure out why its different. Are more people coming each week? Was some other Sunday school class cancelled? The Sunday school room is so full that people are literally turned away. Its standing room only in there and at some point its just no longer possible to enter the room. It was never like that last year so I don't get it. Scott and I had to sit in the foyer today. After church the kids played in the snow in the yard. No other neighborhood kids play outside on Sundays so not sure if its frowned upon or if the other Utah kids are not as excited by snow anymore. In any case, our kids had a fun time playing out in it today.

Grant and Emma built a snow man together.

The older kids worked on a snow fort.

We put up Valentine's Day decorations right after Christmas stuff went down. Here Emma put up some heart gel clings. The night is so dark and blue out there.

I've been trying to do the kids hair more often. I'm not a good hair-do mom. Or a good craft mom. But Emma wanted me to curl her hair one day after I had curled my own hair. I did John's hair too

Kids enjoying some personal pizzas they got from reading at school

The kids had an administrative day off school and spent most of it running in circles screaming and sword fighting. We're in the process of getting our basement finished. I wish it were already done so I could make the screamers go down there.

I watched the Marie Kondo Netflix show (I have read part of the book) and was inspired to clean out some of the boxes I had yet to empty in our bedroom. I got them cleaned out and emptied the closet. Still have lots of kid rooms to tackle.

Scott is much tidier than me and Anna has inherited some of those neat and tidy qualities. I went to put away her clothes one day and saw how her pants were all folded so she could see them all. This is similar to the Marie Kondo method of folding, but Anna has never seen that show or read the book or anything. She just came up with that on her own. I decided to leave her clothes for her to fold them. She's a little bit of a perfectionist. Carry on, Anna. Carry on.

Scott left town for two weeks for his Air Force Reserve duty. I had a busy Sunday that day - taking him to the airport, teaching my primary class for the first time, taking Matthew to a Priesthood Preview meeting and Grant to a Great to be 8 thing. By the end of the day I was starting to feel very sick. I laid on the bed to feel better - and helped John finish up his homework. So tired!

Emma had a dentist appointment in which she needed a few fillings. It didn't go well. They did one filling and she cried and screamed a lot. The dentist said they would have to sedate her to do the others. They told me to *try* and keep her from biting her cheek, tongue and lip. And I did try. But, really, how can you prevent that? I didn't give her any food and tried to watch her and tell her not to bite anything, but she bit everything. And by the end of the day her cheek and lip were swollen up really badly. Poor Emma.

Anna and I tried to make her feel better by making her look like Elsa. I tried a sideways French braid and Anna brought an Elsa crown.

Another day John got into some hair product I'd been using for the boys and gave himself a crazy hair do. We had fun styling it all around. So many hair styling pictures.

We had lots of rain one day and the kids field at school flooded.

Out backyard also flooded a bit. We have a drainage problem.

The electrician came and worked on our basement. We have new light switches in the basement now. Exciting!!

More snow! We didn't get as much snow as Utah and Salt Lake counties seemed to have gotten recently. I don't know if its like that all the time or what.

I let the kids camp out in the living room one weekend when Scott was out of town. They had fun.

Emma is impressing us with her big girl abilities. She can dress herself very well. Next step is keeping the bedroom clean.

Matthew and I got up late one night to check out the lunar eclipse.

The picture is bad but the eclipse was cool.

Grant taking his turn at the dentist - also needed a filling.

The dentist made an incision to help his front teeth come in (he lost those in July and they hadn't broken through yet). The next day they were already coming down.

Our new treadmill (hooray!) has different runs every day. One morning the run was across the Astoria bridge between Oregon and Washington. Very cool.

Matthew did a little school project about microprocessors. He did a great job.

We're still plugging away at Aikido, although I'm not sure I want to continue with it. I vacillate on whether or not I think there is any value for my kids or if we should switch to some other activities.

Anna and I got to go shopping together one evening to get a few things for the house. Here we are admiring a blanket the we didn't buy.

We got to meet our new nephew, Clark Campbell. Everyone was so excited to meet him. I think Anna was the most excited. She always wants to go visit the Campbell cousins - mostly to see Lulu. But now also to see baby Clark.

John made a little paper bag lantern in kindergarten. We finally got around to lighting it.

Anna really wanted to make a chocolate cake for chocolate cake day (Jan. 27th) but we didn't get around to it that day. A few days later we made a cake. I used a different recipe. The cake part was great (made from scratch too) but the frosting, was weird and different. Will have to try a different recipe next time.

Anna helped frost the cake.

Insulation was installed in the basement. So far the basement is not noticeably warmer and there is still lots to be done, but its a step in the right direction.

The kids all had parent teacher conferences at the end of January. Everyone seems to be doing well and enjoying school. Here is John showing me a "love bug" he made in school.

At the dentist. Emma sedated after getting a few more fillings. I was sorry she had to have fillings and had to be sedated to get them, but glad her teeth are all good now. We need to floss better apparently. Poor Emma.

We got frozen yogurt one Friday to celebrate everyone's good report cards.

John working hard on his homework.

Scott was able to take the two younger boys to a Dad's and Donuts morning at their school one day. They were excited for that.

Scott, Matthew, Anna and Ma2 (Scott's mom) and I all went out to dinner in Salt Lake City and then to see Wicked. It was lots of fun. I'd never seen it before - I love musical theater and the show was great. I think Matthew and Anna were getting a little tired by the end of the show, but they liked it. It was fun to go out with our older kids and Ma2. Here we are having our fondue dinner.

At the theater!

It was lots of fun. I'm glad we got to go!

Scott painting Anna's fingernails one night while they had Anna and Dad time.

Anna shows me her bell pepper method.

This is for you mom. Anna cuts through the top, but not all the way through, just around maybe an inch in. And then pulls out the core of seeds. This is how she likes to cut bell peppers.

We got some different sicknesses that had been going around. John ended up with some ear infections and pinkeye at the end of his flu bout. He's currently on antibiotics. Poor John.