Christmas week this year went fast. The weekend before Christmas my mother went into the hospital. She woke my dad up that Friday night and told him to take her to the hospital...she could hardly breath. After she arrived and had been put through various tests and lots of poking they determined that she had blood clots in both her lungs.
While she was in the hospital she watched a snow storm outside her window dump a couple of feet...NOT inches...of snow on the ground. (Notice the table on the deck above.) Christmas Eve morning she was finally allowed to go home. We drove all Christmas day to get to their house. The roads were dry until we got off the expressway, about 15 miles from my parents house...then I battled ice mixed with black ice. It was a challenge, especially since the guy behind me thought I was driving too slow. We arrived safe and sound.
The snow piles at the mobile home park where my parents live were pretty impressive. In the photo above Tessa was impressed that she had to be thrown up on the snow bank to do her business. I told my children about when I was young and it would snow we would hear the familiar sound of my uncle's snow plow hitting the ground and being pushed up the driveway. We would get excited b/c the snow pile was always big enough to sled down. Sometimes we would get the shovel out and dig a fort in the back of the pile...it was tall enough for us to stand up in. Now THAT is winter.
The past two years have been hard in the way of family meal time. Dinner time was very important to Chris and we seldom didn't eat dinner together as a family. Sitting around our round dinner table has been too painful for me. No matter how we arranged the chairs it always felt like Chris was missing. A few weeks back the girls and I went to Amish country and we found a new table. It was delivered this past week. It is rectangular and it doesn't have the feeling of a missing person. We really like it. The times we are home we have eaten at the table and not in front of the TV...another step. It feels good.
Today we started ice skating lessons. Even I signed up to skate. It was quite fun. I kept having to laugh, b/c I would hear this loud thumping and falling sound echo through the ice arena. I would turn around and Caleb was sprawled out on the ice. He has never been what you would call graceful, but today made me realize how much like his mom he truly is. JoAnna made it over half way around with out holding on or falling.
Lydia was so graceful out on the ice. I think she would do well at just about anything she would try. We have 6 more weeks of lessons and I look forward to seeing how much she progresses by then.
The running joke in our house right now is: What do you call a dog who loves to lay in front of the furnace duct? The answer of course is a hot dog...in this case Maia. This winter we have a simple way of telling when the furnace is on...Maia enjoys the warm air that blasts from the duct in the kitchen. It's pretty funny to watch. She'll lay with her back to the hot air and after a minute or so she'll turn over and roast the other side. Last night Lydia went to a winter retreat at Skyview Ranch and tonight I caught her on the floor catching up on a days worth of lost snuggle time.
vite unwanted guests. Caleb is the biggest offender b/c he always eats down there and forgets to bring up the dishes. This past week the children wanted me to play Raving Rabids on the Wii with them. When we descended to the basement and I found lots of dirty dishes. Let's just say that mama was not happy. Upon further examination of things I realized that there were droppings on the some of the dishes and shelves. Now let's just say that mama was furious. I made Caleb clean up his dishes and told him he was in charge of mouse removal. He set out his traps last night and this morning he found that he had successfully eliminated one mouse. I am fairly confident that there was only one mouse, but we will leave the traps set for a while to make sure. There will also be NO more eating in the basement. 
