A cold day at Chocolate World

It has been record breaking cold here. I know we are not the coldest or worst off in the weather department (like Boston-- eek!), but this has been out of hand.

Saturday Ryan took over with Hannah and I was to spend the morning under the covers with a good book.  I finished this one:

It was a quick easy book about an autistic man with savant abilities that my mom gave me.

Ryan surprised me by arranging for us to leave the kids with my parents Saturday night and go out on a date.  We haven't been out without Hannah in almost a year and it was almost eerie to  be in the car together and not have her with us. We went out to eat and when we came out of Panera it was snowing like crazy.  I was worried and thought we should just forget about the movie but Ryan was pretty determined that we were going to the theater.  When we came out of the movie the snow had stopped but the wind was howling and whipping our minivan all of the place on the back country roads of Leola.

We slept over at my parents house and had planned to go to church with them, but due to the extreme temperatures church was cancelled.  We still felt like getting out of the house, so we took the kids to Chocolate World in Hershey.  We decided to spring for their "design your own chocolate bar" experience.

It involved a LOT of waiting in line and hairnets for all, including Hannah.  But you got to custom make your own bar and follow it through the little minifactory, design the packaging, the whole 9 yards.  

Then we had cake and icecream with my parents to celebrate Isaac's upcoming 10th birthday.  How I am the mom of 10 year old!?

Snowy cold and wintery

Random school story: I used to wear dresses and skirts almost every day in the fall and spring.   This has been an especially cold winter and I have been wearing pants for the past few months.  I was unpacking an overlooked box of winter clothes from my closet and found a long sleeved cotton dress and decided I would wear that to school to show that I can make a little more of an effort in these winter months.  I am thinking I look pretty good and together, when one of my students tells me that it "looks like I am wearing my nightgown" to school.  Awesome.

We are trying to figure out the new normal around here with Ryan's new job.  He finally recovered from a week of pneumonia and has worked a few shifts.  His new hours are 1-8 which puts him home with Hannah half of the day which I love.  He is already making so much more money than his own job with the potential for his earnings to continue to increase.  It has been nice to have some breathing room in the budget to take the pressure off.  We are catching up on things and finally getting to things that had been put on the back burner forever.  Ryan was so proud to finally buy me a new fridge filter-- the "time to change" alert light has been as long as we have been together.   He even surprised me with a new laptop to help with my insane increased work load at school.   I was so surprised and grateful. 

Hannah continues to be, as her babysitter describes her, "appropriately destructive". She unloads drawers, she empties Ryan's wallet, dumps water glasses. She is always on the go.  The above shot was the best one I could get of her.  Most pictures I take turn out like the ones below:

She seems to be following in her brother's footsteps with hitting physical milestones ridiculously early.  Not only does she run now, she also jumps from both feet which is so cute it's ridiculous.   She has her own personality and opinions and is able to express them very well since she still only says "No!".  Like when we were eating nachos the other day and she had a fit because Ryan was handing her chips and she wanted to select her own chips.  She prefers her morning milk in a bottle, never a sippy cup.   She knows what she likes and she can let you know surprisingly well for someone who is still nonverbal.  (Yes, I have tried to teach her baby signs.  I know she understands them but she really can't be bothered to use them.  Sigh)

Isaac continues to be just an all round great kid.  He turns ten next week which blows my mind.  We are thinking about doing the Sixers for his birthday.  We continue to shuffle through after school activities for him which is a double edged sword.  He needs to get out the house.  He is a kid who actually cannot be cooped up within four walls for long periods of time.  The nights we end up without an activity he is bouncing off the walls.  But loading up Hannah and entertaining her while Isaac is at basketball/soccer/swimming/whatever can be torturesome.

That's about it for us.  Hang on, Friday's coming....

6 More Weeks of Winter

* January was a long month for us.  Ryan was traveling for 3 weeks.  I did better than I thought getting by without him, but it does make me more grateful for all of the work he does around the house and helping with the kids, especially Hannah. Sadly, he came home Friday and then woke up Saturday feeling horrible.  It seems that he has the flu (again) or some sort of icky virus-- high fever, lots of chest congestion.  Monday was supposed to be his first "official" non-training day of his new job and he is still as sick as a dog.  I tried to get him to take a sick day but he won't take a sick day on a normal day, let alone his first day.  Of course they sent him home though, to his great disappointment.  Tuesday he got into the doctor and ended up getting sent to the hospital for a chest X-ray.  It looks like his "bad cold" may be pnuemonia!

* Sunday night we did watch the Super Bowl.  Ryan typically likes to make a big to-do out of it, but since he was stuck under a blanket on the couch drinking gatorade and sucking on cough drops, it was pretty low-key this year.  Hannah got really into the half time show though.  Her dancing was intense and adorable.  Neither one of us made it to the end though.  We both fell asleep on the coach together sometime during the 3rd quarter.  I should start watching football the nights I suffer from insomnia.  It puts me to sleep every time.

* I finally finished I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb, the 800+ page book I have been lugging around since summer.  It was well written and I am glad I eventually powered through it, but I am looking forward to reading something a little lighter next.  It put me a bit behind on my reading goals, if I am going to hit 50 books by October.  We'll see.

* I would like to get a few fun things on the calendar for the kids.  I would love to take Isaac and Ryan's kids snow tubing.  I would love for us to spend a Saturday at a museum.  I would love for Ryan and I to go for a real date sans Hannah (something we haven't done since last February!).   The winter seems so long and dreary.  We need some fun things on the calendar to look forward to.