2014 Week Eight | Februar 17 - February 23

Yep, I'm blogging about the middle of February on the second to last day of March.  But really, when have I ever been current on Project Life once their birthdays hit.  I actually haven't even printed these photos.   All my scrapbooking stuff is packed away as we prepare to move.  They'll get scrapped eventually, but at least I know what pictures I'll use.  

 

We went and picked up Ian's birthday present, a big bike with no training wheels.  We took it up to our church's parking lot and tried it out.  He did SOOOO well!  Our normally timid boy was fearless (though we didn't let go) and is excited to go again.  Annaliese wanted the wheels off her bike as well, but once she realized what that meant, well, look at the picture above. That was her response. 

 Picture on the right was the happy girl biking at church before the training wheels came off.  Picture on the left was a few days later. Ian on his scooter because he's not up for trying his bike on the hill yet.

 Just a snapshot of my girl. She likes to pose for pictures, and I like when she does :)

 Friday night game night.  Ian and I played some Scrabble while Annaliese played with the colorful star pieces (on the tray to the left of the board). 

 A comparison photo of our yard on the left and a picture from my sister's drive home on the right. Same day, 360 miles apart.

 A snapshot of Darrin.  His last day in glasses.  He had lasik surgery the next morning.

The view out my windshield at one of my schools on Tuesday around noon.  It was snowing so bad I called to switch a visit I was supposed to make to another school at 2:30. Crazy thing, by 2:30, it had stopped snowing and most of it had melted away, and we got about 2 inches that day.  It was a very wet, slushy snow, that obviously didn't last. 

2014 Week Six | February 3-9

SNOW DAY! Yep, that much gave us a snow day on Wednesday. Our first snow of more than 1.5 inches this year. I think we got out of school more because of the wind that was howling all night long, blowing the snow around. 

Ian has been opting not to read with us at night, but instead read some of Darrin's old comic books. And in the morning before school. And whatever chance he's had. He's gone through all of them in one week.

Annaliese has started "reading" the books back to us after we read them to her. Sometimes it closely follows the story. Other time, she just makes it up. If we're lucky, she'll sing it. (There on the floor because she had an accident the night before. We keep the mattress from the crib under her bed and pull it out for her to sleep on when needed).

Getting ready in the morning, I walked out of the bathroom to find them putting Legos together in Annaliese's room.  Love when they play together, especially when she gets to decide the activity (bossy first born often makes the decisions...).

Ian's practice at decorating his TMNT cupcake. I figured if he could do it, his friends could  do it for his party.

Ian's 7th Birthday Party was Saturday (post to come later).  It was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle themed, so of course we had to have pizza.

And that night we went out for dinner at Red Robin, where they sang Ian Happy Birthday and he got the biggest ice cream sundae I'd ever seen.

Don't we all wear our high heels, dress, superhero cape, and bling glasses when we go shopping.

Our Sunday night dinner (minus baked beans for me).  The bacon wrapped steak was on sale at Target, so my plan for dinner tonight was thrown out the window in favor of that and honey lime garlic shrimp. It was quite the meal, and soooo easy to do! A bit of summer, all done in our kitchen on a below-freezing night.

2014 Week Five | January 27 - February 2

I stepped out of the shower one day and Annaliese was waiting to get help zipping her coat.  Apparently they were in a hurry to get to school for some reason because they were both ready to go before I had even had time to comb my hair. 

I had something on my phone camera lens, so it's blurry, but I thought it was cute how he was sleeping with the quilt over his face.

And then I went to her room and saw her sound asleep with her thumb in her mouth and had to snap a picture.

100th Day of School! He came home with a Fruit Loop necklace, that at one time had 100 pieces on it. They made a 100 piece "stew" with popcorn, goldfish crackers, M&Ms, etc. And he did a writing activity about what he'd buy if he had $100 (a video game or mansion).

This picture just makes me smile.  Ian has been picking out about four books every week from the children's library at church.  He starts reading as soon as we sit down (empty sanctuary = well before church) and they usually last until the sermon, which is when the, "How much longer?" questions start.  This week, he actually waited to eat his snack after the Children's time until he finished reading. 

Proof we got snow this winter. The kids ate very quickly on Saturday and headed out.

It wasn't very deep, but they sure had a great time.

And by two o'clock, it was pretty much all gone. 

2014 Week Four | January 20-26

Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day,  so it was a short work week.

He is not a fan of the dentist... or at least he wasn't until he found out he has three loose teeth. Then he was super excited and loved the dentist.

She is not a fan of the x-rays, but loves watching the TV on the wall.  Both of them were cavity free!

This is what he asks to do every day after school, after he's had a snack and done his homework.  Current obsession- Lego Marvel Super Heroes

And when he asks for XBOX, she asks for Netflix.  We recently subscribed after Blockbuster went out of business. Not impressed by the movies available for free streaming, but there are TONS of TV shows, especially for the kids.

This actual story is included in the album, but I snapped a picture of it to share here. A piece of Ian's homework- writing a story about something that happened over winter break. 

Ian reading his library book about bees  to me while I was making dinner. He has been bringing home lots of non-fiction books lately, especially about animals.

Darrin and I did a bit of shopping and got ourselves new shoes for the gym. Look at the size difference. Me = 7, Darrin = 14.

2014 Week Three | January 13-19

This past week was exhausting.  I had early meetings 3/5 days this week, and was busy with something every night after work but Friday. Because of that, most of the pictures for this week-in-review come from the weekend.  It's a three-day weekend, so plenty of time to recoup my sleep.

Here's what happened this week:

My office, a place a barely saw this week because I was busy at schools. And when I did, I made a trek.

By the time Friday night rolled around, I was exhausted, so we went out to Red Robin for dinner.  Both kids started out on my side of the booth, and by the time dinner was done, they were on Darrin's side.  If you are going to RR anytime soon, might I suggest the sweet potato fries. They're the best I've ever had.

Saturday was PJ day.  Here, Ian's helping Annaliese on her Innotab. Later, they were practically in the same position, and they were reading their magazine together.  They are each others best friend.

Saturday Darrin installed my tablet shelf he gave me for Christmas.  It frees up much needed counter space and works beautifully... if you're my height. Darrin's too tall and it cuts the top off when sitting vertically.

Saturday it was 63 degrees in January. Unheard of.  Perfect weather for taking down the Christmas lights.  Ian went up in November to put them up with Darrin and never moved from the spot Darrin told him to sit; he was terrified. I walked outside and heard Darrin telling someone to be careful. I figured it wasn't Ian, and yelled up, with astonishment and fear, "You have Annaliese up there!?!?!" She was walking around up there, fearless. Darrin told her to sit so I could snap a picture and she said, "But that's boring!"

When she safely got down, she went for a bike ride.

Then we went for a family walk on the trails behind the houses that are across the street from us.  We've lived here nine years, and this is the first time Darrin and the kids have been back there. I've been running/walking back there when the weather's nice for about a year.

The frozen creek bed. The only sign of winter on the 60+ temp day.

Ian had fun running the trails and jumping off the hills. We saw many bicyclists, and he decided he wants to learn to ride his bike without training wheels so he can ride back there.

King and Queen of the mountain

Annaliese and Darrin headed home, while Ian and I stayed out to explore longer.  I was going to snap a shot of him walking from behind, but he turned in time and posed for me.

2014 Week Two | Jan. 6 - Jan. 12

This week winter break ended and school started again, and boy, was that rough to get used to. By Friday, it was practically impossible to wake the kids. They were definitely not happy campers in the morning.  They did both sleep in this weekend, which means Darrin and I did as well.

Some pictures you won't see below, but that I should have gotten, are of the storage area in our basement.  Sorting through nine years' worth of stuff in there was my goal for this weekend, and I'm fairly impressed with myself that I stuck with it.  Unearthed some treasures (letters I wrote Darrin while we lived apart during college) and created quite the pile for Goodwill and Best Buy (which I learned recycles most small electronics).  Hopefully next weekend I'll tackle another room (or two!) in my effort to purge and organize in the new year.

Here's what else happened this week:

Confession: this actually happened last week, but I forgot to pull the image from Darrin's cell.  Ian earned his first stripe on his ju jit su belt thanks to the great report card he brought home. 

The picture on the left was the temp on Monday when I woke up.  The image on the right is on Sunday night. Quite a temp change in a week, and that doesn't take into account how cold it felt like on Monday.

The kids killing time before Friday night game night playing a friendly game of catch.

We played a couple rounds of UNO Attack on Friday Night Game Night, and then I introduced the boys to Skip-Bo.  It was too long of a game, and too involved for Annaliese to play with us, though.  We decided if we play again, we'd reduce the starting size of the stock pile. 

The picture quality on this isn't great, but the sandwich sure was yummy. Trying a new recipe each week. This week was an Italian Beef Sandwich which cooked in my crock pot all day.

One of my stops while errand running today.  It will probably be the last time I ever walk into an Archiver's, as they are going out of business in February.  Already, just about 10 days after announcing the close, much of the items I wanted to get were gone. 

While I was out errand running, everyone else played outside for a bit.  Yeah, I know the picture quality is bad, but the picture captures the fact that it's the middle of January and there's no snow on the ground here, and it was warm enough to play some football outside. 

This happened on Saturday, too.  Annaliese LOVES her jammies that look like a princess dress, and is always dancing in them.  Usually she just spins by herself (and sings songs from Frozen at the top of her lungs), but this time she convinced Ian to dance with her. 

2014 Week One | Dec. 30 - Jan. 5

I've tried in the past posting weekly pictures of my project life layouts. Everything goes great... until I get behind, and then nothing gets posted. Just like the years before, I'm starting off January great and with the promise to myself that THIS year, I will keep up with it until the end.  Guess we have 51 more weeks to see if that's true.  I actually do a better job of keeping up then what the blog reveals, I just get behind in taking a picture of the spread and then posting it. So, this year I'm trying something different. No pictures of the spread, just pictures of that week.  My thinking is that even if I get behind in the physical book, hopefully I can record the memories here consistently and refer back to them when working in the book.  So here was the first week in January, without further ado....

What are the days after Christmas for if not to enjoy all the presents received, and play with all of them, at least once.  We made it back from Iowa on Sunday the 29th, and with all of us home until Thursday, we got a lot of playing time in.  

Ian learned how to play checkers and chess during break.  He's too much of a thinker for me to play with him.

He also did an experiment with his chemistry kit (yes, goggles are required when adding water to sugar and salt...).  He also spent a lot of time over break playing with his TMNT Legos.  He was able to successfully put together a set all by himself for the first time!

Annaliese played a lot of babies (this new one's name is Ori... which sounds very similar to her cousin's name) and loved dressing up as Rapunzel in her new skirt and shoes (hair was from her birthday).

We played some family games of UNO Attack.  Way more fun than regular UNO. 

The kids always love daring Darrin to get them, and now he has a new weapon to try out on them.  Annaliese did lots of singing and playing with her new Disney Princess toys. 

Ian building with his Snap Circuit set.

This week also brought Darrin's birthday. As always, he said he didn't want anything. As always, I didn't listen (he got a new XBOX game).  He also didn't want a cake... obviously I listened there and didn't get him a cake, but cupcakes instead.

We actually started the new year with some snow... and 1.5 inches.  The past few days have been in the 20s and sunny, so it's practically gone.  We were all out there shoveling, and the kids somehow even managed to go sledding in the backyard on the minimal amount we got. 

 Annaliese and I got our hair cut on Friday.  It was FREEZING out, but you wouldn't have known that by all the sun. She said from the back, "I should have grabbed my sunglasses." Well, I wasn't wearing mine, so she used those instead.  Oh, and her curls, basically gone... so sad, but it really needed to be cut.