Life is a Journey

So what have we been up to this January? A whole lot of "anything-that-can-be-done-inside." The kids and I only get out a couple of times a week at the most, and usually at least one of those are because we have clinic appointments with Jeremy. Things have been going well though. We've been laying fairly low this week because of some colds, but we've been trying to enjoy ourselves anyway. Here are some pictures of some of the goings-ons around here. These pictures go from about January 13th through 22nd:
Here is Reilly lounging in Daddy's Chair. It is his favorite place to watch TV. It is also Daddy's favorite place, but since Daddy is home within half an hour of bedtime more often than not these days, it hasn't been too much of an issue. :)

















Play-dough is a big hit these days. It will keep them both busy for anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes, depending on the day, and how cooperative the play-dough is being. :) Reilly got a fun set with lots of little tools for Christmas (thanks Grandma and Grandpa!) and we trade them back and forth (as well as trading colors) at least once during the dough session. This also gives me an excuse to put their cute aprons on, though somehow they usually manage to get multi-colored deposits on the backs of their pants...

One day (when it actually got up to about 40º) a week or two ago, some industrious friends of ours organized a play group in the snow. Our kids hadn't played in the snow since before Christmas (it's just been way too cold!) so even though I wasn't feeling fabulous that day, I figured I'd better take them. They had a blast. Jaina did a little more than eat snow (though that was still their favorite activity) and Reilly got to do some hard-core sledding, thanks to one lucky dad that wasn't in classes or clinic (not his). It was a mess, but we were glad we went. We even got to follow it up by picking Jeremy up and visiting our favorite Mexican restaurant in Moline: La Rancherita. :)

The other night Jeremy had an Elder's Quorum activity. They set up a bunch of different video games and had pizza. Sounds fun, right? Well, the kids and I were a little jealous, (and Reilly misunderstood, and thought Daddy had gone "to pick up the pizza,") so we made our own pizza and followed it with ice cream cones and a movie. The three of us LOVE ice cream cones. :)

Here is the pizza. (that I managed to burn, but there were still plenty of edible parts, I promise!)

Poor sweet Jaina! She was with Jeremy at the school the other night (he was giving me a little break because the kids and I had had a long day) and she tripped and hit her face on the floor. The resulting bloody nose slightly traumatized all three of them, and he had even tracked someone down to drive them home, because he wasn't having any luck getting it to stop for a while! This is the "cleaned up" version of her that evening - she couldn't handle any more pressure on her nose. The shirt, miraculously, came clean with a little TLC.

This is the blanket I finally finished after picking out the fabric with a birthday gift card last summer. It is one just for me (the kids both have so many little blankets for curling up with!) and I'm really glad, considering what an amateur I still am with my sewing machine, and how beautiful the zig zag stitch that I used to finish it looks in a few places.
The other day I was looking in a basket of clean clothes for a shirt for Reilly, and he immediately grabbed this one, saying "I want to wear this one. It's my favorite!" Technically, this is a pajama shirt, because it's too big for him still, but for whatever reason, he's a BIG fan.