What a Winter

Well to say that I'm glad January and February are over would be an understatement.  It's been a crazy winter with extremely cold weather, lots of sickness and lots of working out of town for Rob.  Which kind of explains why I've been MIA on blogging lately.  Rob has been going out of town (Winnemucca, Nevada; Vernal and Heber, Utah) at least every other week since mid-January.  So on the weeks he is gone, I usually spend my nights (which is when I usually blog) talking to him on the phone and/or relaxing after a long day of being a single mom.  Then on the weeks he is home, I want to spend my nights with him.  And I've just been procrastinating blogging for some reason.  So much for New Year's resolutions huh?  It has been kind of a rough year so far, but Spring is on the horizon and we are all stronger for surviving the cold.

First off, this has honestly been the coldest winter I can ever remember.  We even had freezing rain which I have never experienced before.  There was a layer of ice on everything, including the snow.  It was shiny.  So weird.  The girls went out to play in the snow, the day after the freezing rain and here's Ani holding a big chunk of ice she pulled off the top of the snow.

 A few short minutes later she became a victim to the ice and scratched up her face. :( So sad..and painful.

It seriously snowed A TON this year.  Rob went out of town to Nevada and it seriously snowed every day that he was gone.  Like 3-5 inches, EVERY day!  I was out there breaking my back shoveling the snow frantically while Alivia was napping and my incredible neighbor came and stopped me and kindly finished my driveway in two minutes with his tractor snowblower.  It was amazing.  He did that for me everyday and I couldn't have been more thankful. 

You can see how deep the snow got in these pictures.  Up to the swings.

Since then we have got a snowblower from my wonderful brother in law Brody.  He is amazing at fixing things and some guy gave him his old snowblower because it wasn't working anymore, so Brody fixed it up and gave it to us!  Rob was seriously in Heaven!!  We didn't know if or when we'd ever get a snowblower because they're so expensive, so the fact that we got one handed to us was more than we could've asked for.  Rob was seriously so happy, it was like Christmas.  Boys and their toys. :)

One day when Rob got home (finally) from a week in Winnemucca, we found out that day that his schedule for the next week had changed and that he would be going to Heber in a day.  I almost cried.  Luckily he was able to come home for a couple hours each day instead of staying up there.  Except for one night and we decided to go up and stay with him.  Anisten was off track and the girls LOVE staying in hotels so it sounded like a good idea. 

Here are the girls in the hotel room

The main thing they were excited about was swimming in the pool of course.  Unfortunately once we got there, we found out that the pool was "broken."  It somehow got too many chemicals in it or something and would burn your skin if you got in it (that's enough to scare us away from it for sure!)  The girls were disappointed, but there was a hot tub so they were able to enjoy that at least.

Here's the forbidden pool

The girls hanging out in the hot tub while Rob was still at work

Of course Alivia couldn't get in, so we got to watch

Once Rob was done working (we went and met him so we could see where he was working this week) we went and ate at the Dairy Keen or the "Train" restauarant.  It was yummy food and the girl's got baton's in their kids meals so they were loving it.  Then we went back to the hotel and the girls got in the hot tub again, bu this time with daddy.

Probably the biggest hit of the trip was the fact that the suite we were in had two phones.  So the girls could each get on a phone and talk to each other (over the dial tone) from the other room.  We've never had a home phone so this was very new to the girls, which Rob and I found hilarious since it was all we knew growing up.  Such a different world our children live in (we're so old!).  They were pretty cute playing on the phones though and it kept them busy for hours.

Can you believe this?  My little three year old teenager.  It looks so natural for her.

Everyone slept really well and we were happy to be able to spend time with Rob.  He was even able to come eat breakfast with us in the morning.  The girls were very sad to leave and keep talking about "going to the hotel" again.  Going out of town as much as Rob has to, we'll probably get another opportunity.

SO..while Rob has been gone we've tried to keep busy with things to help pass the time and keep mom from losing her mind. ;)  Here are some things we did while he was gone (and some while he was here as well) this past couple months.

First off - bubble baths.  The girls have discovered our jetted tub in our master bathroom and it is their new favorite thing (sometimes it's a battle to get them in the tub, so this was our compromise)

They were even more thrilled when they found out what happened with bubble bath AND the jets!!

My beautiful bubble girls

 We also had lots of fun with Anisten's new Easy Bake Oven she got for her birthday.

 And the box it came in...:)

 We made some yummy treats

The girls had fun just being girls and playing with sisters..including Alivia

 One of the great things about an unfinished basement...sidewalk chalk in the winter!

Here they are playing with one of their gem jar toys.  They looked so funny. (The gem jar is their reward "system."  When they are good they get gems and once they get enough gems they get to "buy" a prize with them.  When they're naughty, gems get taken away...you get the idea)

Of course painting fingernails

And we love to play with play doh

 (Our Play Doh Family..if you couldn't tell)

And then lots of coloring as usual.  Ani made this in early February.  We'd had our fill of winter by then.

 Anisten made these cute little "mini-me's" of her and Aivree.  They loved playing with them like they were real people.  I thought it was so creative.

We of course had our share of illnesses this winter.  I'm pretty sure I caught everything going around (stomach flu, cold, regular flu) but I think the fact that I'm nursing contributes to that.  The rest of the family (including Alivia) mostly got colds, so there was the usual coughing, sneezing and stuffy/runny noses that go on.  Regardless, we got through it and we tried to make the best of the time that we had while Rob was at home.  Spring Fever is now the only sickness in this house! ;)