Winter

This winter has been so odd. We've had 2 snowfalls with around 6 inches. Last week, Becca was only in school Monday because of the snow. There was actually a 2-hour delay on Thursday so the afternoon preschool went but Becca goes in the morning so she missed out yet again. This was the view from our deck last week...really beautiful.

Becca is outgoing and not afraid of too many things. At church, we usually sing a couple of songs, then they have a children's sermon where the kids go to the front of the church and then they leave for children's church. Becca usually raises her hand and I'm never sure what she'll say, although she rarely embarrasses me. The question was something to the effect, "What do you give for Valentine's Day?" She said she likes the good chocolates, not the bad chocolates. I'm going to have to teach her there's no such thing as a bad chocolate.

Darren was gone overnight to a bowling tournament on Friday night. so, he was able to do shopping while he was away. I must say he did really well. Before church, i received a Valentine's card from each kid and one from Darren. The kids got me a candle and a couple of Godiva bars. Darren got me Ralph Lauren's 'Romance' perfume and chocolates. The chocolates were almost too pretty to eat...I said, Almost. My favorite chocolates lately have been the Lindor truffles...they really melt in your mouth, but now these are a close second.

Today for my birthday, it got even better. I had showed Darren some coats I had been wanting and the good sales I had found online. I have a leather coat but it's only waist length and wanted something longer and warmer for the really cold winter days. So, this morning, he gave me a great coat. He had to go into many stores, so he really had to shop. He was thinking he made a mistake not getting it online. But he finally found one...many stores didn't have long coats. I was hoping he found a good price and I was proud of him...he got it for almost 70% off. It's a Kenneth Cole coat and it is super warm. Sorry about the picture, it's really bad...just concentrate on the coat. It also has a fur-trimmed hood.

I put on my coat and we went to Olive Garden for lunch. I would highly recommend the four cheese stuffed pansotti with chicken; it was deelish!

I had also put a bug in Darren's ear about the cake I wanted. I saw it in the paper and had to have it. The cake has 2 layers of red velvet cake layered with 2 layers of chocolate-dipped strawberry ice cream topped with chocolate fudge ganache and chocolate shavings. The cake part wasn't as good as a fresh red velvet cake but everything all together was pretty good. I know, you're jealous huh? Okay, now that I've had another piece, it's much better if you eat it right out of the freezer rather than leaving it out to soften.

Since it was my birthday, I decided I would take it easy and not do much. Well, you definitely pay for it the next day. It's amazing how much piles up when you just take 1 day off. Oh well, it was worth it.

Winter

Near the beginning of the month we had a little over an inch of snow. It didn't get above 30 for a week or more, plus it snowed very, very lightly over a couple of days so the snow didn't melt. There was enough snow on the golf course to go sledding. Barrett had a nasty cough and didn't get to go but Darren took Becca and met some friends up there. They were out for 2-3 hours sledding, playing and roasting marshmallows. The second day, there wasn't as much snow on the bigger hill so they went to another hill. The hill sloped down to the right so Darren wasn't concerned about the pond. Well, Becca and her friend went down the hill and instead of turning with the slope they headed right towards the pond. Darren is yelling at them to fall off while they're happily careening towards the pond. Darren is running after them and they slide right onto the pond...frozen! It didn't crack but Darren was still nervous what would happen if he got on it. Luckily, it had been so cold for long enough and it was a small enough pond that it didn't break. Needless to say, they didn't try that hill again. Darren got some pictures on his phone, however, he dropped it in coke so I'm not sure if we'll ever recover those pictures.

We have a group of friends who get together once a month for game night. It varies from 4 to 8 couples. Sometimes we combine the kids together, get a couple of babysitters and have them at one house and we go to another. Well, we picked the weekend of Disciple Now weekend for the teenagers here, so, we decided just to have the kids here while we were here. Luckily we decided to do that because about an hour after the kids arrived, the girls came running in saying Becca is throwing up. I didn't think she was really sick (see my Christmas post about the airplane ride); I thought we were having deja vu. I put her in my room and we commenced our evening. I checked on her every once in awhile and she did end up having a stomach bug. I felt so bad for her. Eventually, she was up every 20 minutes for hours..until 3:00 in the morning. I felt horrible and so wanted to do anything to make her stop. We were both miserable...I was so glad when it was over.

We sometimes have schizophrenic weather around here, but I had not seen anything like this before. Check out this video. 5 minutes or so later in was lightly raining. 10-15 minutes later, it was doing this.

Well, it snowed again this last weekend and Darren got a couple of pictures. This time, we took Barrett outside in our front yard. We got 4-6 inches (I've heard different reports) so Barrett wasn't really sure he liked it.

This video is at the golf course, Becca and her friend are the second sled coming down.

As a side note, I follow several couponing blogs that help me save money, show me where some of the best deals are, let me know when something is on a huge sale and give away things. I've signed up for giveaways that interest me and I finally won! I never win anything I enter so I was ecstatic! I got my stuff in today. It doesn't take much to make me happy. I love "school supplies", so I was excited to get this. The only thing is I was hoping the notebook would have been a little bigger. I was wanting to use a really cute book for my preschool/nursery job, but I will put it to good use. I got this from the blog www.frugalcouponliving.com