Snow Day Feb. 26

On February 26 we got a big snow storm. We got about eight inches of snow. Not surprisingly, school was cancelled. We were able to get outside around 10:00 and play for a long time in the snow. The kids had a lot of fun. It was the perfect kind of snow for playing. I also got some pretty good pictures, which was good because I forgot to bring out the camera the other two times it snowed. As hard as it was to have Kevin miss so much school because of the snow, I was grateful that my kids got the chance to enjoy playing in the snow. It was a fun day.

Kevin kept stealing carrots from snowmen and eating them.

These young pine trees bent over to the ground from the weight of the snow.

Kevin learned how to roll snowballs around to make a big snowball.

Heidi enjoyed seeing all of the snowmen that other people had created.

After we were done playing in the snow we spent some time with some of the neighbor kids who go to Kevin's school. I think they normally go to after school programs because their parents are students, so I had never had a chance to meet most of them before.

Laughing makes it easier to bear.

If there's anything I've learned in the past two and a half weeks, it's that laughing makes the hard things easier to bear.

I think I got proof yesterday that I'm starting to get it. I had made some cornbread for breakfast. Ryan and I ate some together because the kids had already had cereal. Ryan didn't finish his piece, so he left it on the table intending to finish it in a while. A few minutes later, Heidi came up to me and said sweetly, "Mom, is it okay if I eat that?" while pointing at Ryan's cornbread. I started to say yes, but then I stopped and said, "Actually, you probably shouldn't eat that because Daddy was sick with a stomach bug yesterday and you might get sick if you eat it. But I can get you your own . . . " Then Heidi got a horrified look on her face and I realized she had actually already eaten a few bites of Ryan's cornbread. Heidi started crying because she was so scared that now she was going to get sick. She cried so hard that she started coughing. She was coughing so hard that I started wondering if she would throw up. Then I realized she was throwing up, and instinctively I put my hand out to catch it because by this point she was on my lap and I guess it seemed like it would be better to wash my hand than to have it all in my lap. All I could do was yell, "Um, bowl!" and stare at my hand and laugh, because I just caught throw-up in my hand and how in the world was I supposed to know that she would react that way to what I had said? And of course now that Heidi actually did throw up she started crying and coughing even harder and saying, "I'm sick, I'm sick!" No amount of reassurance that she wasn't sick could get her to calm down, so I desperately grasped at straws and started talking about the freezing rain on the trees outside like it was the coolest thing ever, and luckily that seemed to calm her down enough. Once she had run off to play I just looked at Ryan and laughed and laughed at the absurdity of what had just happened. It seemed like a better option than getting upset.

Did I mention we've been getting a lot of snow here? In the past two school weeks the kids have had 1 1/2 days of school, plus Kevin missed the 13th because of an ear infection. Heidi hasn't been able to go to joy school, either. And yesterday church was cancelled because there was freezing rain. The first week with no school was rough. I had plans and I kept thinking there would be school again the next day and I could get some stuff done, so when school kept getting cancelled it was really frustrating. The second week was mostly better, although Friday was rough. At some point it got so ridiculous that I could only laugh when we got the calls cancelling school every evening, and laughing about it seemed to make it better. It also helped that the snow was better the second week, so we were able to have some fun in the snow.  It has been hard to have our routine disrupted. I haven't been able to get as much done as I want to. Some days I was lucky to get an opportunity to brush my hair.

I am hoping that school will be back in session this week. The school has changed all teacher workdays and delayed opening days to regular school days, and they've also decided to have school on Memorial Day and a couple of Saturdays (early release) to make up for what the kids have missed. The next couple of weeks still won't exactly be routine, though. I'm teaching joy school this week and next week, plus we have a piano tuner coming (finally!!), a doctor appointment for Ann Marie, my birthday, and of course Kevin's surgery today (Ryan is with him at the hospital right now, actually). I think what I'm starting to find is that there are always things that disrupt your schedule and while it's good to have a plan it's also important to mentally prepare to be flexible instead of getting grumpy when plans change.

I got a lot of pictures of the snow, but I haven't gotten a chance to go through them yet, so those are coming soon.

Snow Day #2

On the 12th we started getting our second snow storm of the year. In the morning I went to class as usual, met with my advisor after class, and then did some work on some of my samples. I went to check and see when the next bus was coming and found out that classes for the rest of the day had been cancelled. Then as I walked out of the building I saw a professor walking into the building alongside a student and he said, "Esta nevando, ¿no?" Then I looked up and, sure enough, tiny flakes were starting to come down. By the time I had gotten to my bus stop it was falling much faster and in fluffy puffs of snow. There was a group of girls on the bus who were talking about whether to go home or proceed with plans to work on some school projects. By the time we had gotten to my bus stop the snow was sticking and one of the girls said, "I'm just going to go home. The snow's already sticking and I have to go all the way to Cary." What went through my head was, "You're not going to make it to Cary." Honestly they probably should have cancelled classes about an hour earlier than they did.

The rest of the day my news feed on Facebook was full of pictures and status updates from friends who had gotten stuck in the snow and had to walk home, friends who barely made it home and had seen lots of abandoned cars, and friends whose husbands had taken five hours to drive three miles home. The roads were really slippery and there were tons of accidents and abandoned cars. As much as I'd like to take some credit for us already being safe at home, a lot of it has to do with living so close to campus. I'm certainly glad I wasn't stuck somewhere facing the possibility of walking home with two kids.

Classes were cancelled on the 13th and 14th as well and the university told everyone except emergency personnel not to report for work. Usually they tell teachers and such to continue to hold office hours, so this was quite the snow. Overnight the snow melted slightly and refroze, so the bottom layers of snow were still powdery while the top layers of snow had turned icy. Ryan took Kevin outside to play in the snow for a while, and when you stepped on the snow it was hard on top and then your foot would break through to the soft layers underneath. There was also a lot of ice frozen on all the plants.

Apparently Kevin found this toy guitar at the playground and spent the entire time walking around strumming the guitar and slipping sometimes because of the icy snow, but he still wouldn't let go of the guitar so he could keep his footing better. It made some cute pictures, though.

Yes, these are flowers with ice frozen on them.

After the kids were down for naps, Ryan went back out to get some more pictures and then walked to his office to get some homework to grade. The snow was very good for making snowballs. He threw some at our bedroom window, but I opened it and told him I couldn't sneak out because my dad would probably find out and I would get in trouble.

Some people got creative on campus and made some sea creatures out of snow.

In the evening the snow had melted quite a bit on the roads and we decided to venture out and get some milk before the roads got frozen overnight. It was amazing to see all the abandoned cars still on the road. Some were stopped in the middle of the lane where they had gotten stuck. Most of them probably stayed there another day or two since all the slush on the roads froze again overnight and the roads were probably pretty treacherous. I wished I had a nice big snow shovel, because looking at some of the cars it seemed like a few scrapes from a snow shovel would be enough to be able to get the car out.

Snow Day #1

On January 29 we got a snow day! It doesn't snow here very often, so when it does it's a big deal. School was cancelled and everything (which was awesome since I had a quiz that day that I wasn't ready for).

Ryan got the kids all bundled up and took them outside, and I joined them a little later with the camera. Kevin and Heidi had a good time in the snow. It wasn't great snow for snowballs and snowmen, but we did try.

Fox prints in the snow

Heidi was done with the snow a lot earlier than Kevin, but when I offered to take her inside she didn't want to go in without Daddy, so we stayed out a little longer and then Ryan took her inside.

Kevin stayed out much longer. He was having a fabulous time. We found this cute little snowman that someone had made and Kevin picked it up and carried it around.

At one point he wanted to play but didn't want to let go of the snowman, so I told him to put it down in the snow and I would keep an eye on it for him. Unfortunately I got a little distracted talking about kindergarten to a friend and before I realized it some mean kid had grabbed the little snowman, carried it off, and stomped on it. I was hoping Kevin would forget about it, but later he noticed the stomped up snow and immediately recognized the little snowman. We were not successful in rebuilding him, but fortunately Kevin wasn't too upset about it. (He has his challenges, but fortunately when it comes to stuff like this he rarely gets dramatic.)

already an interesting day

The night before last night I dreamed that I had beautiful twin boys. They sort of fell out of me. I was really concerned because I'm not even halfway to my due date, but they were healthy and strong and looked full term. My mom was there and we were busily trying to figure out a way to get to the hospital with them to make sure everything was all right (because they were five months early!). I was kind of glad to wake up and find it was a dream, but it did make me feel more baby hungry.

When I woke up I mentioned to Ryan that I was out of breath, and he said, "No wonder. You were running through my mind all night. Literally. We were running from the flood."

So between running all night and having two babies at some point as well, I guess it's kind of surprising that it was actually a rather restful night.

Then Kevin and I made bread together. By hand. It was the most stressful thing I've done in a long time, but I feel like a good parent because I cooked with my child and didn't even yell. It was fun too, though. Kevin enjoyed stirring the dough with a measuring spoon and helping me measure ingredients and trying to taste the dough (which he didn't like, but he kept trying it anyway). In the end, the damage actually wasn't too bad--one flour-covered outfit and a counter covered in about as much flour as you'd expect from making bread by hand, plus the dishes and our hands, of course. It was a new recipe that calls for a little bit of cornmeal and oats, and it turned out very nicely. I bought a lot of cornmeal a few months ago and then realized that I don't like cornbread enough to cook it often enough to use all this cornmeal by the time I die, so I'm on the hunt for other good recipes that call for cornmeal (besides cornbread). We still need to try making tamales. The bread turned out quite nicely. Kevin ate about five pieces yesterday evening before dinner--he kept begging for more! Now I can't decide if it was good because it was made by hand, or because it was a good recipe. Or maybe it's just that Kevin makes awesome bread. I usually let my bread mix in my breadmaker and then I bake it in the oven, but lately it hasn't been tasting good to me, so I've been wondering if it's the recipe or if it's something about the breadmaker (I suspect that the breadmaker warms the dough slightly while it mixes, and I wonder if that changes the taste). I know I shouldn't have changed two variables at once (method of mixing and recipe), but I guess I was so excited to try this recipe that I did it anyway.

My first class today was cancelled because of the snow, but they only cancelled class until 11:00, so I still had to go to my second class. It didn't snow a lot, but there was a lot of ice. On my way down to catch the bus, I passed a girl who was standing by the sidewalk, staring at it rather fearfully. As I passed, she asked me if it was slippery. I told her it was a little slippery, but her shoes looked like they had better traction than mine did, so she would probably be fine. I had to walk a little more slowly than normal, but it didn't seem that slippery to me, and the stairs are easy because you take one step at a time anyway. So I was a little surprised to look up from the bottom of the stairs (there are a lot of stairs before you get to the bus stop) and see her still almost at the top of the stairs. She was clinging to the rail for dear life and going down the stairs very slowly. I'm pretty used to ice because we had ice pretty often in Idaho when I was growing up, so it didn't really faze me. If you have ice often enough, you kind of get used to the different types of ice and figure out how to walk without slipping. I guess this was the first time it occurred to me that a lot of people around here are scared of walking on ice because they don't know how to do it.

Just before I left, I was doing the usual things--putting on my coat, grabbing my keys, putting on my backpack, etc. Then Kevin got a look of realization on his face that said quite clearly, "No! It's starting again!" and started crying because he knew I'm going to start going to school again. It didn't take him too long to recover, but it's always tough to leave him crying like that.

long post about Christmas 2010

Christmas was interesting. I knew that I would probably be keeping Christmas simple this year. I had finals until the 17th, which only left me about a week to get ready. I didn't have a lot of plans, but I did have some. There were several things I wanted to buy to make some Christmas treats, I wanted to make said Christmas treats, I was still hoping to get a small Christmas tree even though we knew Kevin would destroy it, we still wanted to get a few Christmas presents, and I had some secret plans to make some personalized stockings for Kevin and Ryan. And I had some grand plans to make clam chowder for Christmas dinner.

On Monday we went to Costco and got a lot of things. We always had chocolate kisses at Christmastime growing up, but once we were at the store I realized I wanted candy bars, not chocolate kisses, so we bought candy bars. And of course we bought a couple of boxes of oranges. By the way, Christmastime is a great time to go to Costco. They have so many awesome samples because lots of people come to sell Vitamixes and fancy cheese and fudge and cheesecakes. Ryan and Kevin shared a spicy meatball. It was the kind of spicy where you put the food in your mouth and it seems just fine but then two seconds later your mouth is on fire, so by the time Ryan realized it was actually really spicy he had offered the other half to Kevin. Kevin had tears trickling down his cheeks and looked miserable and angry. Poor kid. We found a sample of a smoothie to wash it down, and then he seemed to feel better.

On Tuesday we went to Target to find some Christmas presents. We let Kevin play with a few toys, and soon we found just what he wanted: an AlphaBerry. It's like a fancy phone except it has buttons for all the letters of the alphabet and plays four different versions of the ABCs. Kevin loves buttons. They're his favorite thing, especially if they make noise. So as soon as he got his hands on the AlphaBerry it had to be his. We also found a cute little puzzle.

Still no tree and no personalized stockings. I hadn't had a chance to get to Joann's to get materials yet. The nativity set also still wasn't out, although we had taken out the advent calendar and used it fairly consistently.

Ryan started getting sick Tuesday afternoon. He took a really long nap and I tried to keep Kevin out of his hair. When RT woke up we tried to have dinner. Kevin was grumpy and wouldn't eat and Ryan said Kevin was tired and probably starting to feel sick, so we hurried and got him to bed.

We woke up in the morning to a hoarse and pain-filled cry. My comment was, "Oh, he seems a little sad." Ryan, already feeling sicker, said, "He's dehydrated and coughing and his throat hurts and he can't breathe, and he probably wants to be held." Even though it wasn't fun for Ryan to also be sick, it was kind of nice that he was sick slightly ahead of Kevin, so that we had some idea of what Kevin was experiencing based on what Ryan had just gotten through. So I got Kevin out of bed. He was so terrified and uncomfortable that it took a while for him to realize that he was being held and taken care of. We went and laid on the couch and I tried to get him to drink some water. For the next few hours we did a lot of holding and cuddling and thumb-sucking (in Kevin's case). I dosed off occasionally, but I think mostly Kevin just sat there in a reverie. Occasionally he would cough and it would hurt and he would cry and I would have to help him calm down. It was a really awful-sounding cough--really dry and barky and raspy. His breathing was also loud and labored for a few days. Occasionally he would get down and play for a few minutes but then remember he was miserable and come back and ask me to hold him. At one point he also went to get the blanket his Aunt Eliza made for him (it has silky edges, which are really nice to hold onto, so it's one of his favorite blankets). When Ryan woke up and came out he said we would probably need a humidifier, so we called Eliza and asked her what kind is good to get, and then I went to Target. At first I figured I could also get the grocery shopping done while I was out, but then Kevin got pretty bad and Ryan took him into the bathroom and turned the shower on as hot as it would go. So it became a trip for just a humidifier and baby Tylenol.

Would you believe that Target keeps its humidifiers in three different places in the store? And they put different brands in each place. So after visiting two of the locations I had concluded they didn't have the brand Eliza recommended, so I chose a different humidifier, and then when I went over to the baby Tylenol I found the brand of humidifier I had been looking for.

When I got back, Ryan and Kevin were on the couch, and Kevin was sleeping very heavily. He was very hot. We got the humidifier set up in his room and put him in his crib. When he woke up we gave him some Tylenol and tried to get him to drink something. He just wanted to be held in the rocking chair with the blanket. Even though he kept falling asleep again he would cry and beg us to hold him if we put him back in the crib. He also tended to want both of us to be there with him. It was a really hard day for him. He has never been this sick before. When we got to bed that night I wasn't sure if I wanted to leave him alone all night because I was afraid he wouldn't be able to cry for us if he started having a hard time breathing.

We also realized that Kevin had several molars trying to break through (the tiny sharp spots finally just poked through a couple of days ago), so that was possibly augmenting the problem. Kevin was putting his fingers in his mouth a lot and chewing on them in the back where his molars are. He hasn't seemed to have any pain at all with his other teeth coming in, but I guess molars are a whole different ball game.

On Thursday morning he was still really sick, but for some reason we felt like he was getting better. He needed a lot of attention and Ryan still didn't have a lot of energy. By this point I had given up my plans for personalized stockings and the Christmas tree. We felt like if we could just get the house clean by Christmas we would be happy. Kevin was feeling better as the day progressed, and his coughs seemed more constructive rather than just dry painful coughs that he couldn't control. His fever had also reduced quite significantly. We were able to take apart his broken down dresser, take it to the dumpster with the garbage, and replace the dresser with some nice shelves our neighbor was giving away for free, and we vacuumed Kevin's room and picked up the living room a little bit. I put out the Nativity set on the shelf and mopped the kitchen floor.

On Friday (New Year's Eve), we still had hopes to get all the dishes washed and vacuum the living room. Kevin was closer to feeling back to normal, so he was playing with things and throwing food on the floor like his normal self. He would cough occasionally and cry in pain, but it wasn't as painful as before, so he could cope with the pain on his own. We actually managed to get the kitchen all clean, wash off the table, and vacuum the couch and floor. The apartment looked really nice, and we were relieved that we had gotten the house clean before Christmas. I thought it would be a good opportunity to take pictures so people can see how we've decorated the place.

(Our new camera does panoramas, so you get to see our whole living room.)

And then we had an earthquake. Just kidding. : ) That would have made Christmas really interesting.

Our new nativity set from Becky. The figurines look like origami. It's very pretty.

We had a nice Christmas morning. I decided to put a few things in my stocking for Kevin, just some things that we thought would make him happy. There was an orange in the toe (of course), and then we put a couple of packages of M&Ms, and then a bag of goldfish crackers. Kevin really enjoyed walking around eating his bag of crackers. He wasn't really interested in opening presents. He may be destructive, but he's actually not that interested in ripping. So we just opened his presents for him and handed them to him. He's the only grandchild on my side of the family, so my parents and siblings sent him several fun things. And he is really enjoying the buttons on his AlphaBerry.

Kevin was doing much better on Christmas Day. The new symptom was that his nose was running like crazy and his eyes were watering, which we took as a good sign that his sinuses and throat were working on clearing up. He was also pretty sleep deprived since coughing and wheezing had robbed him of a lot of sleep. So by the end of Christmas day he looked like this:

I promise he was not drunk on eggnog.

We also have a couple of lovely videos of some amazing temper tantrums, which you are welcome to come see if you're interested. Although many of you have other resources for tantrum-viewing, I'm sure.

Christmas afternoon I made some orange rolls and a cheese ball. We had a nice day. Despite all my worries, we actually ended up doing most of the things I was hoping to accomplish for Christmas. The house was clean, we had candy bars, and my family is healthy again. So far, I haven't had any symptoms of getting sick with whatever Ryan and Kevin had, so that's a blessing too. It's been long enough that I feel pretty confident I won't get it. I was rather worried that it would set in on Christmas Eve and I would be sick on Christmas. Ryan and Kevin were a lot better by the end of Christmas day, so I was hopeful that on the 26th we would be well enough to celebrate Annandag with some friends in the ward. My grand plans for clam chowder on Christmas didn't work out. Turns out Ryan can't stand clams. But I decided to bring clam chowder to the Annandag celebration where hopefully there would be a better reception for it.

We got several inches of snow that night. In Idaho and Utah, snow doesn't slow us down too much, but here everything shuts down as soon as we get a light sprinkling, so we weren't too surprised to get an email from the bishop saying church was cancelled. Soon we also got a call from the hostess of the Annandag celebration letting us know that it would take place the next evening instead.

So on the 27th we had a quiet day, I made clam chowder, and then we headed down to the car to go to the party. I was excited because it looked like we would at least get to do one Christmas thing with friends after being cooped up all week with croup and such (or I guess I could say we were crouped up all week and save some words). But then we got down to the car and one of the tires was pretty flat. We keep a pump in the car that plugs into the cigarette lighter and fills up your tires, so Ryan pumped the tire full of air. We weren't sure if we should drive the car since we didn't know how bad the leak was. On the one hand, I really wanted to at least go to one Christmas celebration with friends, but at the same time we didn't want to have a blowout or something. We decided to go, and even though we were an hour late we actually arrived in time for the opening prayer.

Annandag is a Scandinavian holiday, so there were a lot of traditional foods--mostly Swedish since the host and hostess are very Swedish, but also a few things from Norway brought by our bishop. There were some fancy cheeses and yummy fish (this is the only fish I've liked since I went to the Stewarts' cabin and had fish there). The bishop always makes a Kransekake (see the link), which is quite good. I got some nice compliments for my clam chowder. (It didn't turn out how I was hoping, but it was still good. I had some clam chowder at a restaurant a long time ago, and ever since I've been hoping to find a recipe for clam chowder that tastes like that--this recipe didn't taste like it.) After everyone had eaten, we did some ring dancing and then danced around the house (they do this every year).

It took a while to get Kevin back to eating normal foods. After M&Ms and goldfish in his stocking, plus being sick, he wanted nothing to do with normal foods. He was pretty tired and grumpy for a few days, but I think he's finally caught up on sleep, and he will eat real food again.

We went to Costco to get the tire looked at the next day. Then on the way home we missed our exit and decided to try taking another highway and see if we got somewhere we recognized. We saw some signs pretty soon for a highway we use sometimes, so we kept driving until we found it, but once we were on it we realized we had passed our city and we were in the next town. But it was fun to explore, and we ended up at home okay.

We had another interesting adventure a few days later looking for a park. It wasn't very cold, so we thought we'd go to a park that Kevin and I had visited and liked last summer. We missed a turn and didn't realize it for a couple of miles, so we turned around to go back, and then once we were on the right road, we missed the park. It didn't matter anyway because it had started to rain. But soon Ryan realized we were right by a shopping center with a frozen yogurt shop that he had heard about, so we decided to check it out. It was a cute little place where you serve your own frozen yogurt and toppings and then they weigh it all and charge by the ounce. It was kind of frustrating to have no idea how much your frozen yogurt is going to cost, but it was still a fun concept and we enjoyed going out for once.

It has been very special to tell Kevin stories about Jesus during the Christmas season. It's definitely a tradition we'll have to do every year. It didn't always go well, but I did notice that a lot of the time when I started telling him the story he would become calmer, and we did feel the Spirit. Kevin probably got more out of it than what I could see. I'm excited to do this again in future years, especially as he learns to talk more and participate more in telling the stories. It strengthened my testimony of our Savior and helped make Him the main point of this time of year.