Lately

A quick rundown of what we've been up to these last few weeks....

It got cold. I mean real cold. So we did what normal people do and we went to eat ice cream. Had the whole place to ourselves!

This same beyond frigid weekend (did I mention Matt was working?), we also coped by hitting our favorite brunch spot after church.

One Sunday evening I got to be on call for Matt. Well, sort of. He had to go up to MSP to stay the night and work there the next day and was still on call here, but they were unable to reroute his pager, so I had to function as the go between and call him on his cell phone if his paper went off. I don't remember anything about this sort of responsibility in our marriage vows.

Matt had a birthday and turned 38 (old man). More on that in another post. For now, know that Adrienne helped me with his requested cake (turtle ice cream pie), and that the girls were delighted to give him the game 'Pie Face' as a gift. Lots of laughs.

Adrienne had another play date with her friend, Paige. These two get along SO well and have a nice little friendship developing.

Jillian had her first basketball game. She thinks they won because she made a basket.  Here she is dribbling up the court. Watching 1st and 2nd graders try to play basketball is quite the painful, er I mean entertaining experience.

Jillian had her first playdate with a friend from school after her game. She and Noah are such good buddies. This was the first time that she's had a playdate with or been to someone's house that I don't personally know well (outside of a birthday party), so we are moving into this new season of parenting and trying to figure out how we handle this as our kids choose their own friends.  Noah's mom happens to be a social worker, so she gave me all the info I would want to know and I didn't even have to ask! Whew. They had a fabulous time together and his mom sent me this adorable picture of them together.

We've experienced a lot of bath shenanigans this month. Twice (twice!) Adrienne has gotten her hands on a full bottle of something (the kid wash below, and then my shampoo) and dumped nearly the entire bottle into my bathtub so she could have some "suds". Jillian was present the first time and allowed it to happen, her excuse being "You weren't in the room so I'm sure you couldn't hear me if I yelled to you". Nice try, kid. Adrienne coughed up some dough to pay me for this shenanigan. Let the punishment fit the crime.

Jillian won a Terrific Kid award at school last week. This month's award focused on being trustworthy. I was able to go to the assembly and surprise her. Here she is with all the first graders who won the award.

And guess who the other classmate was who won the award??? Yep, her friend Noah! As if the award wasn't enough, she found out that she moved up a reading level (which is a very big deal) that same day. Her teacher sent me an email later telling me that she overheard her telling Noah "Noah, this is like THE BEST DAY EVER! I am a Terrific Kid AND I moved up to 2R!" Super cute.

Grammy and Grandad came up to spend the weekend with us. We all enjoyed their visit and had fun taking them to J's basketball game, to Newts, church, brunch, etc. I gave Grammy the honor of helping Jillian with her homework. I was glad to not have to be the recipient of all the whining and complaining for once.

Also this month--Adrienne (who has been learning about the solar system in her science class at preschool) told Matt that the biggest planet is called "Cupider". She may have misnamed Jupiter, but we think NASA should consider using Cupider as the official name for Planet Nine. And I got a nice tongue lashing from my 7 year old the other night as Jillian yelled "You are making my life miserable!!!!" at me for the first time. Man, things are going to get interesting over here in the teen years.