More Snow = Canceled flights

I just thought this was a cute picture of Natalya and wanted to share it! She loves playing with her big sister and wants to do what she does and so often wants to wear headbands and gloves.

With all the snow we had the first two weeks of February school was canceled for 2 weeks. I wasn't too sad about the snow and cold because I knew we were heading to Phoenix and warm sunny weather for a week while Mike went to a medical conference and we visited my parents. But then the snow kept coming and the day before our trip our flights were canceled because of the weather. I called to get them rescheduled but unable to get us out of the East before the weekend and it would mean Mike would miss his conference we decided to forget the trip and stay home.
Since we were planning on being gone for Valentine's day I didn't make my usual sugar cookies and decorate them. But we were home and so the girls and I made cherry chip cupcakes with pink frosting. I think the best part for the girls was getting to frost their own cupcakes and themselves too. We celebrated Valentine's day with heart shape pancakes and pink strawberry milk for breakfast and heart shaped peanut butter and honey sandwiches for lunch. Raquel loved the heart shape pancakes and asks for them most mornings for breakfast. Raquel was even able to make her own valentines for her preschool class and write her name by her self in all of them.

Frosting cupcakes and their faces!

On Saturday we took the kids to Winterfest, it is a fun indoor carnival like activity that VT puts on for the community. We brought our neighbors along for the fun and everyone enjoyed playing on inflatable toys, making sand art, eating snow cones and making their own sugar straws and playing games.

Making sand art

Getting ready to race through the bouncy maze with Tom & Kaitlin

Posing with the Hokie Bird!

Snow, Fire and Walking

Its been another long week with snow and more snow closing school for the week and canceling work. We have been stuck inside for too long and can't wait for spring. When you start dreaming about Wii games you have been playing almost nonstop for the last week because its too cold to go outside you know you have problems and need warm weather.

There are sometimes you should listen to your husband without questioning why and Friday night was one of those times. I was laying in bed reading a book and Mike calls up from downstairs for me to get my shoes on and come outside. Of course I'm warm in my bed and ask why he would want me to do such a thing. He calmly yells up that our neighbors house is on fire. Ok, so I didn't exactly believe him but I did hear him go outside so I thought I'd get up and take a look for myself before taking the time to get my shoes on and go outside for what I thought was a joke. It didn't take me long to see he wasn't lying and get my shoes on and race across the yard. Luckily it had snowed that day and was currently raining or it might have been a lot worse than the melted trash can and charred deck that was left. Mike quickly doused the 6 ft flames with the snow and I ran to tell the neighbors. I guess one of the neighbors had been burning documents in an old coffee can and had thought the ashes were out and then dumped them in the big blue city garbage can. Its amazing how quickly a big piece of plastic was reduces to nothing and thank goodness for Mike's quick reactions. I will quickly obey when asked to do something as simple as putting on my shoes next time I'm asked.

But the biggest excitement that we have had this week is that Natalya is walking! Its taken a while and she is still a bit wobbly and chooses to crawl most of the time but she can do it!

A picture of my little walking Frankenstein!

January 2010

January was a busy month filled with more snow, friends and good food. Because of the weather, snow, ice and such both Raquel's school and Mike's work were cancelled often in January which gave us plenty of time to spend together. We have been working with Raquel on learning to spell her name and now she is a pro and can also write my name and Mike's with a little help.

Raquel's first attempt to spell her name by herself.

On the 8th Mike took a trip up to Lynchburg to say goodbye to some of his National Guard unit that was deployed to Iraq. We are still very thankful that he didn't have to go with them this time since he hadn't even been home a month when they left.

The battalion took a few pictures at the D-day Memorial before heading to Mississippi.

We were planning on hosting a Turkish exchange student, Berfun from March until June. She had stayed with us for a few days while her current host family was out of town over Christmas. The girls and I had done quite a bit with her while Mike was gone and Raquel absolutely adored her and was so excited to have a big sister come stay for a while. Berfun had been very home sick and had thought about leaving to go home before Christmas but decided to stay. Then mid January we got a call saying that she had a ticket to go home. So we went out to celebrate with her at Zeppoli's. Poor Raquel was so tired that she fell asleep before dinner and didn't get to say goodbye. Berfun did give Raquel a beautiful bracelet to remember her by.

Finally in January it warmed up a bit so that we could take a walk to the park and play. We brought Raquel's friend Autumn. It was nice to get out of the house and enjoy warm weather. Little did we know that it would be the last time for a while and we would soon be snowed in for a couple of weeks.

Running to the park!

This month we also tried a lot of new restaurants and we were kind of on an Asian kick. We tried the Thai place in town which left us wanting our yummy place in Boise. Then we took our neighbors Ann & Wes to the Korean restaurant Kalbee in Pembroke which was good food but not authentic Korean that Mike was use to and finally we ate at Kabuki to celebrate Mike's partners birthday. We both loved the food but came home extremely stuffed. We had a good food month!

Lastly we had a fun visit with cousins. Anna, Lexi and Marilyn came to visit and play and ended up coming the day before a major snow storm and so we were stuck inside most of the time because of the cold weather but the girls had lots of fun playing with each other.