Family Memories: Our Busy Day.

This new year has been busy, busy, busy. I am finally over the first trimester misery and am feeling great, so I've been trying to make the most of it. I've organized both kid rooms as much as possible, for the moment. I want to rearrange furniture and paint almost every piece I have, but the temperature outside has been absolutely freezing and I'm too indecisive about colors right now. So instead I have donated a lot of toys the kids no longer play with and a lot of other miscellaneous items I have found sitting on the closet shelves. It's heartbreaking but refreshing at the same time.

Our first weekend we got to go to my brother's wedding. Gabe has been dating Jessica for over two years and I have asked him over and over to make the girl my sister. After annoying the guy to the point where he almost broke up with her, I finally backed off. And, of course what does he go and do? He proposes when nobody expected it. I wasn't there for the proposal. Wish I was. I heard he was so nervous he couldn't even speak or look at Jessica. It's very rare for my brother to be speechless.

Needless to say, I am super happy for the couple. The ceremony was lovely, or so I heard. I had to leave right as it was beginning because my 18-month old son was so fascinated by the flower pedals the cute little flower girl had spread on the ground. He kept wanting to pick them all up and give them back to the cute little flower girl. He kept saying, "Uh-oh" so loudly I had no choice but to take him out. So I missed my brother's vows, but the reception was excellent. Very classy, simple, elegant. We really enjoyed ourselves.

Handsome little busy body

I was loving the time together with my family. All my siblings and their kids were there, with the exception of Caleb. He has been stationed in Germany. Cousins came, friends came. It was a fantastic little party. Although it was good times, we did duck out a bit early. For the first time this winter we had a decent snow fall and the kids were BEGGING us to take them sledding. They were relentless. But we, too, were itching to have some fun in the powdery, white stuff. So off we went!

There is a great little hill in our community just right for the kids. This was Solomon's first time sledding. We were so amazed at how he took to it. After a couple of tandem rides with mom and dad, he wanted to go on his own. He kept trying to drag a sled up the hill by himself. We were getting tired of dragging him all the way to the top then going down with him, we finally came up with a better idea. We let him drag his own sled up about a quarter of the way, then we held the sled for him, while he climbed on, then we let him go down by himself. He loved it! Beatrice thought the idea of only going up part way was a good one too. She started only going up half way then would go down by herself on her sled.

Franklin was an all-the-way-to-the-top guy, but he decided he'd rather slide down on his belly, like a penguin, than use his sled. He discovered his coat was slippery enough to slide on the packed snow. He'd get a small running start at the top of the hill, then belly flop onto the ground and slide all the way down on his belly.