ok- snow has been fun, but enough's enough =)

I asked if this is going to be our normal winter weather here, but Jill said, "no, this is a snow storm, it won't always be like this" and she said this is what Canada's like too. She said to expect maybe 4-7 of these for the winter season. This weekend we had SUCH FUN playing in it! Ollie's b-day was Sat. and I got to go out and make snow angels and pick K. up each time she sank and fell in the snow, and we built an igloo (although not as impressive as the neighbor's; they had a fire pit and hot tea!) I really got into playing in the snow-it was fun! Later I learned the not-so-fun side of snow; when grandma wants to shovel off the driveway-not just clear a little path for her car, not just push the extra snow to the side,...but dig out ~12in. off the entire driveway down to the brick.....well, at least I burned a few hundred calories. =)

A couple neighbor kids came over to celebrate Ollie's birthday. We had cake-it had a picture of him in his hockey equipment/outfit. He loved this hockey counting book I found in Nashville..and! some "pirate" underwear I brought-ha, ha! I also gave him a 100 Kc -woo-hoo, which seems like a lot, but it's only worth $5 =) I got him a wallet as one of his Christmas presents (because formerly he was carrying around a giant purse thing) and he has lots of coins, but no bills.

Back to weather-we're working on 2ft here, I'd say-but so far today (is the first day in about...4 days?) it's not snowing. Also, another great thing is that the actual temperature feels quite pleasant-well, maybe because I'm dressed appropriately for it..no, because my face doesn't even get cold, so that's nice. It has the potential to get bitter, biting cold though, because it was like that the day I left for the airport in Dec. Jill says it feels colder out today. (I haven't been out yet). Yesterday the big kids and I walked the recycling over (which is now a big adventure treking through the snow =) and about five feet in front of us CRACK! SHOT! (I thought it was a gun shot) two HUGE braches off of an evergreen tree fell right in front of us on our path! It was scary! I grabbed the kids and said "we're going to stop and thank God for protecting us right now"- so we had a little prayer session and decided to go the long way around (down hill and up hill) to the recycling instead-even though we were very close already. I see this morning that the snow's taken down half of one of their medium size evergreens in the backyard.

What else?...Oh! report card time =)

(see?! I'm such a teacher!)

Nightly Baby Report Card:

(to preface, to receive an "A" you have to have no crying before bottle, fall asleep by end of bottle, and not wake up when I lay you down after bottle =)

Maya- A

Cameron- B +

Maya- A-

Cameron- B

Maya- A- (this is good, because all day long she had horrible I-can't-poop pains and screams of terror =) and I'll also report she has a great dirty diaper last night and this morning, so all should be well today

*don't you love what I have to talk about these days?...-oh my

So, I'm on a roll at night- Jill seems to be not as fortunate and now it's kind of weird about "who will get up in the morning with the big kids". Before I left she kept both babies in her room and I would just come in at feeding times. We fed them at the same time to keep them on the same schedule, but when her mom came they each took a baby all night and that's what we've been doing since I came back- which, really, has worked out fine, I don't mind it at all especially now with my new positive attitude towards no-to-mostly-interrupted sleep. But, I used to set my alarm to get up about with twenty min. to go before I knew the kids needed to be up and I would start in on breakfast and get them ready and take them to school. We never really discussed this, but I just thought it was "fairer" since I knew she had the harder job at night and didn't get as much sleep as I did. Now, we're both doing the same thing so, it's not really "fairer" for either of us to get up with the kids-so we just kind of wing-it. We discussed today that maybe Maya's doing better at night (even though Cameron, once asleep, will sleep a lot more hours straight through), so maybe whoever has her should get up with the kids-but we didn't make it a hard and fast rule. It's kind of like whomever the older kids decide to wake up in the morning, just gets up and does it, or if she knows she has errands to do after dropping the kids off, she'll do it, or whatever, it's really play by ear.

Oh, Andrea and family were not able to come because of the snow for O's bday this past weekend, so they're planning on coming this coming weekend. I'm looking forward to comparing baby Ella with C and M. They'll be 7 wks and she'll be 9. Snow also prevented R. from being able to drive home last night. The computer weather report says will prob. snow T-W-Th of this week too. Wow.

I think that's it. =)

(2 1/2 months to go =) The babies will be 4 months when we go back to Nashville and 7 !!! when they leave to come back to Czech (or wherever they end up going- who knows?!)