Snow: Part 2

We were hit with more snow this weekend. As I type, the kids are just coming in from sledding. These photos were from last Sunday. We got snow, it melted, and then we got some more!




Only one snow casualty.


We used to have a snowboard, but it cracked last winter. Now they are just using their sleds.






Graydon bought an iPad with his Christmas and birthday money. Now we can FaceTime with him!




On a sad note, my parents had to put down their dog, Brandy. She was 16-years-old. Her health had been declining in the recent year and she eventually lost complete use of her back legs. One of my favorite memories of Brandy was when we stayed with my parents during the summer of 2006. Bella was just a baby and Brandy was so protective of her. It's like she saw Bella as her own pup. Wherever Bella was, Brandy was close by.






Brandy kisses.




Look who's hanging in the background.








This was in January 2015. We were snowed in at my parents' house after seeing Disney on Ice that weekend. Bella wanted to play in the snow and Brandy wanted to join her. She was in her element; snow was her favorite thing. I thought I had more photos of this, but I can't seen to find them.


She lived a good, long life. But she will be missed. Losing pets is hard.

Back to Realty!

Our Christmas vacation was nice, but now it's back to reality.

Bella had her first basketball game this past week. I did my best with the photos, but I only had my cell phone with me. She was moving pretty quickly, so she's blurry. She'd been so nervous leading up to this game - just didn't feel prepared. Then she ended up injuring her thumb at practice the night before the first game, which didn't help things. She was able to play throughout the whole game and score a couple of baskets. They ended up winning with a score of 21-18.


She just passed the ball. I missed the photo by a split second.


Feeling pretty relieved to have that first game behind her!


The kids received this 500 piece puzzle from Mimi Jane. We put all of the pieces out on the kitchen table after we got back from WI and finished it in a few days. It's a 3D puzzle, which made it extra tricky.


Unfortunately, it remains incomplete. I think the missing puzzle pieces find their way to wherever all of the missing socks go.


Just as the kids went back to school this week, so did I. I'm taking three classes this semester, which is going to have me pretty busy. Because everything is online, keeping track of everything can be challenging. The best method I have found is going through each syllabi and all of the course workshops to write down in my planner the books and chapters I need to read each week, discussion and response due dates, and all assignments, papers, and presentations. I spent about five hours on this last Saturday - which was made a little difficult since Mabel insisted on being in my lap.




It felt good to get a good overview of the semester and to have everything organized in my planner.  And then a few days later, Mabel did this!


She doesn't usually chew things up anymore. I'm wondering if a little bit of food may have landed on that page? She chewed all the way through to March; so I had to go back and write in some of the assignments again. I wasn't the happiest with her.

But she does look pretty sorry.


Actually, later that day we noticed that she broke a nail. I have a photo of it, but it's gross so I won't share. The nail literally split in half from top to bottom - which left the quick exposed. I'm sure it hurt her quite a bit. She spent a lot of time licking it.

Graydon is now responsible for doing his own laundry from start to finish: wash, dry, fold, and put away. This new chore came out of a conversation we recently had with him about playing Fortnite. This is a game that he has wanted to play for several months. We told him "no" back then with the addendum that we would discuss it again when he turned ten. Well, he didn't forget! We sat down and had a grown-up meeting where he shared why he would like to play the game and why he thinks we should let him. We shared our concerns about the game with him and said that, if we allow him, it would come with limitations (only one hour/day and only two days a week plus Saturday). In addition, we gave him the new job of laundry. He also cannot play if there are any clothes on the floor - so all of his clothes need to be either put away or in the hamper. So far, it seems to be a pretty good arrangement.




He's become a really good at the KonMari method of folding shirts.


Southern Indiana finally got its first big snowfall! We woke up on Saturday morning to a winter wonderland. Conveniently, we live by the best sledding hill in town. Mabel's interests perked when she heard the squeals of the children and saw the dog that one of the families brought with them.


She was so excited to go outside, so we took her. Here she is meeting her new friend. They just stared at each other for a solid minute - both of them frozen in those positions.


They slowly got closer to each other and just sniffed each other for a while.


This little extrovert was really happy to have made a new friend.


And of course, we did some sledding.


Andy made a little snow ramp.










Even more snow fell that night, so everyone's back out sledding again today!

Graydon's TENTH Birthday!

Here is Graydon at the exact moment that he turned TEN!


Each year, it's the same. He's always asleep. He wanted us to wake him up this year so that he could be awake for the moment. We tried.

After breakfast at Denny's that day, we took the kids to play at Action Territory for the afternoon. They each had bracelets for unlimited bumper cars, laser tag, ball pit, and the vault. Plus, Grandma Debbie bought game cards for all of the arcade games. I wanted a photo of all the kids before they started playing, but didn't want to hold them back from getting started. In hindsight, I should have checked the photo that I took because the birthday boy's eyes were closed!


We didn't get too many photos from the activities, but here is Graydon doing bumper cars.


This was a neat bowling game.


This lucky birthday boy hit the jackpot...TWICE! Look at all of the tickets that he accumulated! One really nice thing about this place is that all of the tickets get loaded on their token card. That meant that we didn't have to keep track of all of those tickets and potentially lose them! They simply gave their card to the prize counter and it was all done digitally.








Later that evening was the official family party. We brought back pizza for everyone.




TEN!




Presents! This water bottle was from Bella. Graydon received a nice water bottle like this a previous year, but Bella used it and lost it. She made good on paying him back for it.








He also got some money. Between Christmas and his birthday, Graydon came home with a lot of money. He used it to purchase himself a new iPad!

Also. . . I didn't want to forget this. When we were at Action Territory, Graydon was playing a claw-like game. The prize was a $500 prepaid MasterCard. Graydon was really disappointed that he didn't win it. When Curtis saw that he was upset, he whispered to me that he wanted to play the game and try to win it for Graydon. After a few attempts, Curtis was also unsuccessful. We didn't try more than a few times because each attempt cost $1. Since Curtis was unable to win the card, he offered Graydon some of his ticket winnings to choose a prize at the end. Graydon chose an orange emoji ball that cost 400 tickets. When we arrived at my parents' house for his party, Graydon took out the ball and began playing with it. Within that first minute, the ball bounced into the fireplace. Andy retrieved it pretty quickly, but a hole had already formed and the ball deflated. We are keeping this ball though. It's a great little reminder of Curtis's generous heart towards his brother.