Cousin Love

My kids are so lucky!  They have always been lucky enough to live by at least some of their cousins. This is not by accident, growing up my cousins were some of my closest friends and Jeremy and I have always made it a priority to live by family so that this could be true for our kids as well.

When Merrick was first born, we lived by Emily and Kai and in that time Merrick and Kai became very close.  Even now that we don't live by each other, they love to talk on the phone and when we do visit, they pick up right were they left off without missing a beat.

Now we get to live by Brendon and Rachel's and Ben and Becca's families.  Merrick loves Brendon and Rachel's kids.  He looks up to them so much.  He even told me that he wants to marry Lauren (or maybe Carrigan.  He said it depends on who is taller). Carrigan also loves her oldest cousins!  Lauren in particular loves to hold her and make her laugh (she is pretty good at it too).

Right now my kids spend the most time with Ben and Becca's boys.  They love to be together and Merrick is so excited every time I tell him that he gets to see them.  Carrigan is getting old enough now that she is becoming interested in spending time with her cousins too.  She and Lincoln are becoming thick as thieves.  They love to play side by side and Lincoln loves to say "CC".  It seems like they are together so much lately that I am snapping adorable pictures like these left and right.

Even just now when Jeremy asked me what I was blogging about and I said "cousins", Merrick said "Cousins?  I love my cousins".  Unfortunately, our current living situation is up in the air with Jeremy looking for a job.  We have said all along that we would go where he could find work, but we are really hoping that we can stay close to family so that these strong bonds can continue to grow.

Valentine's Day with a CC bonus

This week was Valentine's Day and while I will focus my blog today on that, I also have Carrigan's 9-month pictures that I have neglected to post so I will do that as well.

So Valentine's Day...This year we decided to start a new tradition with our children.  We call it the "love scavenger hunt".  What we do is plan a scavenger hunt for each child old enough to participate (this year it was just Merrick).  At each stop they find a paper that tells them one thing we love about them, a little treat, and the clue for where to go next.  At the end of the scavenger hunt, after they have read all the things we love about them, they find a small present.  While this was our first year, I am excited about doing this for lots of years to come.

Merrick really enjoyed his scavenger hunt this year.  Jeremy set it all up while Merrick and I were at school and his first stop was at his toy box.  When he found the paper and treat inside he said "Hey! That was not there before school! Daddy, did you do this while I was at school?"  Then, after running around the house and finding several clues, he said "Daddy, how did you do all this while I was gone?  You must have been really fast!" And, while I must admit I was not super stoked that daddy was getting all the credit, I am really happy he enjoyed himself so much.  At the end of his hunt he found a Spiderman monster truck for himself and a caterpillar pull toy for Carrigan.  I think it was a pretty big hit.

Jeremy and I kept Valentine's Day fairly low key for each other this year.  He did get me these beautiful flowers and I made him this series of cards.

Since Valentine's Day is about love, I always try to measure the success of the day on whether everyone in the family felt loved.  I think by that measurement the day was definitely a success.

And now, without further ado, here is the adorable CC.

P.S. She has started officially crawling with a traditional crawl and is pulling herself up to stand all over the place.

Snowmagedon 2014

This week started out like any other.  It was a little cold, but no biggie.  Wednesday night, Jeremy and I were watching TV.  There was a breaking news alert and the weatherman came on and basically said "There will be snow withing the next 24 hours!".  Jeremy and I looked at each other and commented on the fact that he was a little dramatic.

By the next morning there was no snow in sight, but Jeremy and I were daydreaming about a snow day.  And then, just like that, before I left for work, the school district announced that they would have an early release day.  All schools would end two hours early and there would be no after school activities.  It seemed like a bit of an overreaction given that not a single flake had fallen, but it did give us more hope that Jeremy's classes would be canceled as they were not until that afternoon/evening.

I got home from preschool about 11:30am and there were a flew flakes falling, but nothing major.  I knew though that is was only a matter of time before it would start sticking since it was about 20 degrees outside.  About lunch time it started to stick.  We watched the Lewis and Clark website just waiting for the announcement and sure enough, at about 1pm, the school announced they would be closing at 2pm and classes would be canceled.  By early afternoon this is what things looked like

And we went sledding

Even Carrigan got in on the action

After that the snow just kept coming.  We spent the next two days alternating between sledding at our house and treking (and by that I mean walking because we could not get our car out) over to Ben and Becca's house.  The boys created a run with a jump outside Ben and Becca's house and had a blast seeing how much air they could get.

Today the snow began its slow melt.  We decided to knock down the icicles on the house before someone was impaled and go build a snowman now that the snow was crunchy enough to stay together.  Merrick wanted to name the snowman "Milmo Merrick"

This has been the most perfect weekend imaginable.  It was so nice to be stuck more or less at home as a family and to get a rare snow experience.  Tomorrow it may be back to business as usual, but only if the snow melts enough that we can get off our street.  Only time will tell.

Update: It is official..school is closed for tomorrow.

I Know That There is Pain But You Hold On For One More Day

For those of you who don't know, my parents write a weekly blog and their blog title is always lyric of a song that sum up the events of their week.  This week I thought I would try my hand at it with the help of the legendary Wilson Philips.

The few of you who read my blog on a regular basis may have noticed the lack of a blog last week.  This was not by accident.  About a week and a half ago I began struggling with a health issue.  It is nothing life-threatening, but is has effected my self-esteem, self-worth, and confidence.  Last week I was just to sad to do my weekly update.

All week this week I have gone back and forth as to whether I would blog about the details of the last week and a half.  I thought that it might be sort of cathartic to get it all out, but at the end of the day this is a public space and things are still too raw.

For now let me just say that I will be fine, things will get better, and I promise I will be back next week with tons of pictures of our adorable children.