Surprise Visitors

It was around 9 Monday morning (at home - car trouble canceled our trip to Jamestown) when I checked my email and had one from my friend Amy that she had sent me at 2:36 that morning. (Amy and I have been friends since we were kids growing up together.) She and her husband were traveling and had crashed at a hotel after driving all day - then realized they were only a few minutes from us. Of course we told them to come right over. It worked out well that our plans had been canceled, so we had nothing scheduled for the day. It was also an added bonus that it was Amy's birthday! We had a blast hanging out, catching up and going to the best ice cream shop in Columbus!

The honesty of a child

Jeff went for an audition for a musical yesterday night, it's been a long time since he's been in one and we're excited to see what happens with this. Before he left for the audition he sang his two songs for me and the boys. His singing was great, but the whole scene was pretty funny, Marley kept barking along and Trey was trying to hold Marley's mouth shut! The best part though was after Jeff left when I asked Trey what he thought of Daddy's songs. He said he liked them. I asked him if he thought Daddy was a good singer and Trey said "yeah, he's greater than you"!

Blue Party

We finally had our Winter Blues party this week, we've been looking forward to it for so long after it was snowed out last week. On Wednesday we woke up to another load of snow, but we went ahead with the party anyway. The party was a BIG hit, we all had so much fun. All of our guests remembered to wear their blue clothes and were eager to have some fun. The boys and I had decorated the house with blue crepe paper and blue balloons. We even put crepe paper streamers on the ceiling fan, then turned it on so they fluttered around. After playing for a little while I got the kids up to the table (with other moms helping) and did our craft project - blue hand prints, then decorating around (or on) the hand print with blue markers, crayons, sequins, buttons, scraps of paper and winter-themed stickers. I loved watching them all be creative and share the supplies. They seemed to love being messy and using as much glue as possible! When they were done we cleaned them up and sent them off to play again while the art dried and us moms set out food. Of course, our food was blue too; we had blueberry muffins, blue yogurt, blue star jello jigglers and blue frosted sugar cookies. Oh, and of course blue kool-aid (a rare treat in my house!) with blue ice cubes!

When that was done and cleaned up the kids played together really well, so us moms got to hang out and chat without too many interruptions or refereeing. It was really great. I definitely think we beat the winter blues! :)

Here are some pics, you can see the kids working on their crafts. The three girls in the top two pictures are Madeline, Katie & Paige. On the right you see Trey and Davis working on theirs, and on the middle and lower left you can see our blue food and the kids at the end, Lily had already left and Roman was doing something else, but in the picture are Paige, Madeline, Davis, Katie & Trey



Actually, as I'm looking at it, Lily is missing from all those pics! So here is one of her working on her craft, and another cute one I like of Trey Davis & Katie working on a puzzle together. They were doing it together with no adult leadership, I thought it was so great!

Happy Valentines' Day

Happy Valentines' Day! Jeff and I had a great date tonight while the kids were happily home with our wonderful sitter.

Unfortunately, the morning started out rocky. Jeff discovered late last night that someone had been accessing our checking account. The bank helped us figure out what was going on - someone has stolen my debit card number. I still have the card (yes, we've canceled it), but somehow someone got the number and went on a phone/internet shopping spree. Our bank has been great, they're assuring us we'll get all our money back, but there's a lot of complicated stuff to get through first... what a mess.

Let's not dwell on that though, it's much more fun to celebrate Valentines' Day! The boys and I went to a friend's house for a lunch play-date. They had a great time with little Ava, who certainly enjoys them! I loved getting hugs and kisses from her and letting all three of them sit with me to read a book.

Trey has always been full of questions. Lately he's really amused me with questions that start with a statement about what he DOES know. For example, today he said "Mommy, I know that some big dinosaurs eat little dinosaurs, but what do little dinosaurs eat?"

It's over!

The writers' strike that is. According to reports I read tonight the strike is ending and writing will begin again. I'm not a huge TV addict, but I have some shows I like to watch and I've been getting mad at being stuck inside with nothing good to watch! Unfortunately though, they're anticipating 4-6 weeks before new episodes air, so we're still waiting.

On a positive note though, we had fun at a church dinner tonight. And the boys and I had a really good day today. It wasn't anything extra-special, we just stayed home, but we did a collage, read some books, tickled... and had very little fighting!

A blue day

So today was supposed to be our Winter Blues party. I've been planning for a couple of weeks now and the boys have been so excited, but we woke up this morning to a winter storm. I spent about an hour making phone calls and checking the weather channel, trying to find out how bad it really was, and we ended up postponing. What a bummer. A couple of people still came over - they chose to face the weather rather than face being snowed in. :) We were glad to have them, it balanced our disappointment. So, we're back to the scheduling stage, I'm hoping to have the party next week...

Add'l Pics

And here are a couple of my favorite B&Ws from the Hocking Hills trip:

What a weekend!

I'm sure you've been dying to hear about my girls' weekend! :) It was fantastic. We left right on time and found the cabin without too much trouble. The owners had just been there and left it lit up, warm, and candles burning. We settled right in (actually, four girls, we really just MOVED in!), mixed up some taco dip and started relaxing. We watched movies, ate and sat in the hot tub before crashing for the night. Saturday morning we had a great breakfast and lounged around before heading out to hike. We went to Conkle's Hollow (one of the many hiking spots in Hocking Hills) and took the 2 1/2 mile rim trail. It was beautiful. We had a great time. It was hard to miss God's glory seeing rocks, trees, icicles, cliffs and waterfalls around every bend! When we left Conkle's Hollow we didn't really want to take another big hike, but we did want to see Old Man's Cave, so we stopped for a little bit. It was worth it. It's a beautiful location anyway, but it was stunning with the sun sparkling off the ice everywhere. Unfortunately, it was also dangerous, and fear of falling icicles (four-foot icicles!) as well as hunger sent us back to the cabin. The rest of the evening we spent eating, drinking and lounging - we spent two hours in the hot tub! It was fantastic. Overall, it was a really great weekend. I'm so glad I got to go!

Here are the four of us early in our hike at Conkle's Hollow (Amber, Kim, Deb & me):


And here are some pictures from the two places: