Is spring coming?

As I sit here at the computer and type my blog updates for February, there happens to be a swarm of about 10-15 robins in the tree outside the window. They have really thick feathers and some of them have really big bellies. Is this a sign that spring is not too far away? Is this a sign that the snow will melt and not come back? Is this a sign of sunshine and flowers just around the corner?

It has been a dark winter and February was a long month. The last ten days have been no fun. It started with me which never happens, I am always last. I had the aches and soreness Thursday night. Chills and fever on Friday. All of the above on Saturday. I finally started to feel like a semi-normal human on Sunday. Then it struck the rest of the family. Steven and Lyla are now official statistics for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. They got the flu test and were positive. Tommy and I can just say unofficially that we've had this year's virus.

Tommy was home with the kids almost all week. He logged about 2 hours at work on Thursday (before they closed their office for our latest round of snowy weather) and about 4 hours on Friday. I was home on and off nursing the three of them as best as I could. The fever has been ridiculous. It just won't go away even with medicine. Now we are on to snotty noses, coughs and general ornery-ness. Being quaratined in a 900 sf house for a week is no fun.

We are on the mend and hopefully March will come in like a lamb. We need a break.

Things he said at church on Sunday

Steven has been doing great at church ... when we go ... and this Sunday Lyla did pretty good for 3/4 of mass. But while at church, Steven did say and do some pretty funny things ...

First, during the Lord's prayer I held Steven's hand while he continued to play quietly until he thrust his superman toy at me so that I could hold his hand while praying. Wow, superman and the Lord's prayer - what could be more powerful?!?

And then, Steven's timing was impeccable. I am not sure if it was coincidence or if he was truly paying attention but at the exact moment that Fr. Glenn raised the Host, Steven whispered "Blast Off". I was very thankful that he whispered it so that only I could hear. That would have been quite embarassing!

Sticker Pox

Superbowl Sunday

Its all about lounging around watching the commercials, right? And our favorite was the Volkswagen Darth Vader ...

Snow day craft

I get all kinds of random magazines that I don't subscribe to. I really wonder somedays how they get my information but then I notice my name spelled with an "h" at the end or Clarke (with an "e") and realize that it probably came from some strange internet things that I signed up for using a "fake" name. The particular magazine that I got in February was Disney Family. I can see why no one would want to pay for a subscription to this magazine because it is full of advertisements and hardly any content. However, there was a Valentine's art project that I found in there using corn starch glue that we just had to try.

I have never made corn starch glue before and I thought it would be really great to try with the kids. I pulled out all the ingredients, fired up the stove and started stirring. Well, it never really got translucent like the instructions said. It ended up just being a globby mess. But Steven and Lyla liked it nonetheless.

The project used a heart shaped cookie cutter (cardboard shaped like a heart in our case) as a form to place yarn covered in glue inside. Again, our glue was really not the right consistency and we ended up with big clumps of cornstarch. Our finished hearts were ok, probably not something to display in a museum and we won't be mailing them to the grandparents as originally planned. They are a little too fragile for the USPS.

In like a lion...

Oh, wait...isn't that supposed to be March? In any case, February started with a bang in Kansas City - much more snow than we are used to but we made the best of the snow days with crafts, snowmen and imagination games.

It was quite the winterwonderland outside of our window. That thing hanging on the left is a bird feeder Steven made at preschool last fall. They used someonething to "glue" the seeds onto a toilet paper roll. It probably wasn't peanut butter because their are kids with peanut allergies. I hope it wasn't actual glue because that might explain why it still hasn't been touched by our neighborhood birds.

Steven found a stick in the yard and wanted to play baseball with Tommy using snow. It was pretty fun watching him hit the snowballs and seeing the snow spray all over him!

Yet again, the snow wasn't really right for rolling a snowman but we did get to pack one together and make it look like Frosty.

Note his work glove ... gender roles are definitely not defined in our household!