Tanner lately...

My baby is in nursery. This is such a cute age. And hard. He's getting very opinionated about things, and SOOO curious about everything. He's also in the copying stage, so he's always copying whatever we're doing. He'll put lotion on his face while he watches me get ready in the morning, he helps the kids with their jobs. He copies everything, really.


Here he's helping Erilyn dust the bookshelves.


Here he's reading with the big kids.

Here he's lamenting the fact that the big kids get to play outside in the snow and Mom won't let him out. Notice the stool.

Here he's cuddling with Erilyn while they watch Baby Songs. (This one was really cute; until I came around the corner with the camera, Tanner had his head on Erilyn's shoulder, and her head was resting on his. So cute!)

And here he's so proud of himself for climbing up onto the table with the other kids while they stare zombie like at the TV.  They really don't watch that much TV, but it's a good time to catch them when they're still, I guess. Anyway--toddlers are cute.

And then this happened...

I'm sure you are all aware of the super storm that has dumped a boat load of snow across the American Midwest.  Apparently, that includes Texas, though I'd call us the Southwest.  Anywho, we got dumped on.  And iced.  But first, iced.

First we had some hot weather, you might recall, and then we had a good ol' Texan rainstorm.  Then it froze, and Texas shut down.  We were all iced in.  Seriously.  I could never grasp this concept of an ice storm until I moved here. We had 2-3 inches of ice covering everything.  People couldn't even open their garage doors, let alone drive their cars anywhere.  I was glad we are well stocked in the food department, because if we weren't, we would have been SOL, as my dad likes to say.  Kirk didn't even have to go to work!  I still didn't see him, though.  He was studying.

The kids spent that day skating on our back patio.  Fun times.

Then it snowed.  And none of this little fairy dust stuff.  It snowed big, fat, white chunks for a full night and day!  We had nearly 8 inches of snow on our trampoline.  So the kids spent that day doing snow angels, having snow throwing contests, eating snow and icicles, and getting soaked and frozen since we don't really have the proper outerwear for this kind of weather.  (We live in TEXAS for heaven's sake!)  The kids toughed it out, though.

Notice the 6 or more inches on the trampoline and fence, and it's still coming down!  Love those fat, fluffy flakes.

I thought about trying to go sledding, but when I took into consideration our abysmal outerwear situation, and the fact that there are no hills nearby and impassible roads, as well as the fact that they don't even sell snow boots here, let alone sleds, we decided to stay home and play in our own backyard.  It's a shame, though, really.  Sledding is one of the few great joys of winter.

Kirk teased Anthon about the fact that he had more school last week than all his friends did, since school was canceled for the whole week!  Crazy.  It was kind of a bummer, though, thinking about all of Anthon's friends who were home during the day, but we couldn't play with them because we were snowed/iced in.

It's all mostly melted now, though it's supposed to snow/sleet on us again in the next few days.  We have errands to do tomorrow, though, so I'm hoping it'll hold off until Tuesday at least. 

Happy Winter!

That is SOME. HOT. WEATHER.

Said Anthon as he walked in from jumping on the trampoline with Erilyn.  "Can we have a popsicle?"

"Hmmm...hot?  Really?"  I thought.  The Weather Channel says it's only 73 F, but when I went outside, sure enough.  The sun felt hot.

I happened to have a couple of popsicles in the freezer left over from summer, so I let the kids eat them.  But when they came in asking for more, and I told them we were out, they filled up cups with ice cubes to take out and crunch. 

I just have one thing to say about all this: IT'S JANUARY FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE!!!!!

The end.