Beautiful Snow

Ohio doesn't get a ton of snow by my standards, but the winter storm that rolled through yesterday and today sure made everything beautiful. I think that we ended up with about 9 inches, unfortunately some of that was in the form of freezing rain which is weighing heavy on some of our trees in the front yard, I am hopeful that they will stand up again when the ice melts.

The kids have had the last two days off school and even Matt's office has been closed, so we have just been hanging out enjoying the snow.

Today several of the neighbors came over and went sledding on the hill in our backyard.

Hopefully the snow will not melt to quickly.

Urgent Care Visit Number 2

As if one visit to the urgent care in a week wasn't enough we decided to make a second trip. I got a phone call from Nolan's preschool yesterday telling me that he had fallen and hit his head on the rounded corner of a table. They were sending him home with a Band Aid and thought that we might need to take him in to have stitches. Well sure enough he got home and we took one look at it and knew that it needed stitches. Matt has stitched up Parker before but he was smaller and easier to hold down, we didn't feel like wrestling with Nolan while trying to stitch him up so I took him to the urgent care. Nolan received three stitches and a chance to try out the Papoose Board (I told him that it was like getting a big hug which he seemed okay with).

Nothing like covering our deductible in the first month of the year.

Parker Joins a New Club

Parker has decided to join a new club, a club that most people do not want to be a member of. This club is know as the broken bone club. That's right, little Parker had a fall (mom actually dropped him) on Saturday which resulted in his right wrist being broken.

Matt was off with the eleven year old scouts at the Klondike derby, so I had to call for help from a neighbor and a friend to watch the other kids while I took Parker to the urgent care. They put him in a splint and today we replaced that with a real cast, of course we had to get green to match his frog that he carries everywhere. He will have the cast on for four weeks. He is a tough kid, so hopefully he will heal quickly.

Dress-up Day

Nicole, Nolan and Parker are playing dress-up today. I am sure that someday these pictures will come back to haunt my boys.

Nolan at the Aquarium

Matt and I made a goal this year to spend more one on one time with our kids. So once a month each of us will take one of the kids on a special outing.

Yesterday was my opportunity to take Nolan out and I decided to take him to the Aquarium down in Cincinnati. We have all been there before last spring right before Maris was born. It was very busy that day because they had a new shark exhibit. Normally they don't allow strollers but because I was very pregnant they made an exception. Matt had Parker in a backpack and I pushed Nolan in the stroller, Nicole is always good to stay right with us. After an hour we made it about half way through the Aquarium when Nolan took off. It was the worst possible place because it was a convergence of several areas and there was a huge line waiting for the new exhibit. We got staff involved and after about ten minutes we were able to locate him. Needless to say we decided to leave at that point.

Yesterday I decided to give Nolan another chance. It was the perfect day to go because it was snowing and cold so no one was there, we saw about five other families the whole time. The only problem was that I couldn't get Nolan to stop running. We made it through the entire Aquarium in twenty minutes plus about twenty minutes at the play area half way through. I thought that I didn't like looking at museums, boy does he have me beat. Regardless of the quick speed, we still had a good time. We stopped for dinner at Chick-fil-a and then headed home.

I look forward to more days out with the kids in the future.

A picture from last April's adventure. I forgot to take the camera yesterday.