All that hard work paid off

Grace at 8 months, starting with some gymnastics training.*



"Gym Dawgs, here I come!"



Moving on to weights at 11 months...



Making rapid progress with the weights at 12 months...



Adding a little climbing at age 2...



Plenty of running at age 3...



Nearly 4 years old, and just look at that impressive muscle! ;)

*This was how she went from being on her belly to a sitting position when she was 8 months old--she would push up from crawling until she was sitting in a split.

Wordless Wednesday: Snow Day

More photos from our recent snow day...










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Winter Wonderland

Friday night it snowed steadily until after 8:00...


and it was absolutely gorgeous the next morning!







By noon on Saturday, the snow was rapidly melting, which was fine with me by that point. I get tired of all the wet shoes, wet clothes, wet gloves, wet floors, etc., faster than the kids get tired of bundling up to play in the snow. ;)

Besides, Robert throws snowballs much like Flint Lockwood does in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, which isn't much fun for Josiah...

Snow Day!

We finally had a good snowfall on Friday!

I made the obligatory trip to Kroger along with about half the people in our area for cereal (we were completely out) and picked up some bread, too, even though we already had a loaf in the pantry. It's required, you know...whether you need it or not, it is your civic duty to show up at the grocery store for bread and milk. (Shhh! Don't tell anyone, but I didn't buy any milk that day. And, somehow, we survived without an extra gallon.)


Whoo hoo! It started snowing at 2:00 p.m.!


Robert and Josiah started making snowballs


and began a series of snowball fights.

(For the record, Robert does indeed have a nice, warm coat that he could wear. He eventually did wear it...sometimes...but it had to be his idea, seeing as he is 12.)

Grace, on the other hand, decided it was the perfect time to take a nice, relaxing bath.


Later, she was ready to check on "Black Beauty." She said she put some blankets on her horse so she wasn't cold.

She had a quick snowball fight with Robert

and then got busy making a snow castle, which she named Bella. You can barely see her castle, which was about two feet tall when I made her go inside because I'd had enough of the cold we came back inside to warm up.

I was at the back edge of our yard, where I took lots of photos of the snow in the trees (where the falling snow wouldn't get on my camera too much--I'll share those photos later). That's Grace near the middle of the photo, working on her snow castle and asking me to come help. I did.


Shortly before we went back inside, I asked Grace if she wanted to make a snow angel. My words were still hanging in the air when she plopped down on the snow and gleefully flapped her arms. ;)


Josiah and Grace played outside again while I fixed supper. Josiah is always ready to pose for the camera if he has any kind of prop, especially if that prop is a giant snowball.


More snow pictures coming soon! :)

Did you make any snowmen?

Hope you had a Happy Valentine's Day!

Wordless Wednesday: Miss Monopoly

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A Furry, Happy Confession

We heard R.E.M.'s song Shiny Happy People during lunch today, and I have a confession to make.

This is what I think of every single time I hear that song now...



(If the video doesn't appear for you, you can click here to see it on YouTube.)

An unintentional blogging break

It's been a wild several weeks. A quick recap for you...On Thursday, the day we were expecting the "big snow" (ha), I took Robert to the doctor for an ear infection and pink eye. Yay...pink eye. (For the record, it was the first time in several years that Robert had been to the doctor for anything but a well visit. And it was our first experience with pink eye with the kids. I guess that's why he got hit with a double whammy.) Before we left the exam room, the pediatrician poked her head back in the room and said, "Oh, and if the other kids get pink eye, go ahead and start them on the eye drops, too, and just call on Monday for a refill."

She sounded so casual about it. I knew what that meant...

As we were driving home from the doctor's office, it started snowing! It looked promising for a little while, and Josiah and Grace were very excited to start playing in the snow as it fell in beautiful, gigantic flakes. In the next photos, you can see a few white blobs of snow falling:


If you look closely in the next photo, Grace has a white blob of a snowflake as a nose. Josiah had already given up on the playing in the snow thing because, quite frankly, it was merely cold and no fun at all, so Grace was left to play outside by herself. (I was taking these photos from the door because, hello, it was COLD and I'm no longer impervious to the cold weather like my daughter.)

It only snowed briefly that evening, and this is all we got:


That night, Grace had pink eye. Yay...

And the next morning, we didn't even have snow to play in. It was the non-snow event that I'm convinced was promoted only to boost sales of milk and bread. A conspiracy, really. See?


Robert and Grace soon had clear eyes with no signs of pink eye (or "The Pink Eye," as Josiah was calling it). And it really looked like Josiah had successfully avoided "The Pink Eye."

Or so we thought.

Sunday night, Josiah started with signs of (the) pink eye. Ugh. I practically had an assembly line going with the eye drops, and by Monday morning we were completely out and calling the terribly swamped pediatrician's office for refills so I could continue the assembly line. Yay...

By Friday, I was at my own doctor's office for a sinus infection. The upside of it? It was first illness-related doctor visit in, oh, about four years, so I figure I can't complain too much. And I made the physician's assistant laugh when I ranted about the new albuterol inhalers--how it's really the asthmatics causing the depletion of the ozone layer, and that's why they had to change the inhalers to the new, seemingly ineffective CFC-free ones.

I'm easily entertained, and so is the P.A. He even made up a bumper sticker about it.

The P.A. was impressed that I had managed to avoid getting The Pink Eye. I took large doses of vitamin C all week, so that helped...but I have since found out that it may have also caused the low blood pressure I had the day of my office visit. Oh, the look on the nurse's face as she finished taking my BP! She looked shocked and, nearly whispering, said, "Your blood pressure is 90/50!" Well, that explains my lack of energy and how I could barely hold a thought in my head...

Yes, I do tend to be on the low end of things with my blood pressure, and I was, after all, sick.

Yes, I've quit taking so much vitamin C.

And, yes, I am feeling completely better.

I just can't seem to get back in the swing of the blogging thing since early January. But I will try harder now, OK? :) I hope you have a great weekend!