The first photo is Hugh and I posing before we headed out to the grocery store, then we were playing with the air popper for making 'sitcky corn', gluten free caramel corn. Then we have the princess shoveling off the inground trampoline before heading out to the midget sled hill in driveway.

And it is over......

What is it about January that makes it seem so long? One theory is all the smog and fog we had this year but I am not convinced. So many good things happen this month but it always seems like a struggle to get thru it. We had three or four inches of new snow this morning, just enough to make driving up the hill to church a spiritual experience. We are all set to launch into February....indoor soccer is wrapping up and tryouts for high school soccer are on the horizon, Brenton might go to Nevada to ref a tournament, there is some scout camping in the freezing cold because we are manly thing, our firs real Feis (Irish dance competition, Valentine's Day, the Super Bowl party Brenton has to have every year and hopefully one shopping trip to the big city! So not much happening here....some friends came for an impromptu Sunday dinner and we had fun, their cute little almost four year old daughter told her Dad not to worry about her picking up toys...the kids would do it for her! We laughed hard at that one. Brenton's sister is our new neighbor, about a half mile away so we made her sticky corn as a welcome to the neighborhood but Hugh was deeply disappointed when they were not there for the delivery of the treat. One of her boys cannot have gluten so it is a special recipe for gluten free caramel corn. Actually it is quite good and we probably ate half the batch! We will catch up with them tomorrow and use delivery for our family night activity, how is that for multi tasking? Hope that life is treating everybody as well as it treats us. Oh and Moira's Irish dance dress will be delivered this week she is a wee bit excited. Yeah for February!!!!!!

That's too crazy?!

Can it really be nearly the end of January? Could preseason training for high school soccer really have started? That is an outdoor sport right? Last time I checked our driveway resembles a rather soiled winter wonderland complete with midget sled hill...which wonder dad Brenton added sides to for a bit of safety. Of course Liam still slid down the side (accidentally) yesterday and hit his head on the hitch of the scout trailer parked a bit too near the midget hill. Luckily he has the hard head of the Irish and seems to be fine. It amazes me how long the younger boys can play in the driveway and have a blast. Sunday night we invited our neighbors (the Fawson's..I actually taught Jared a million years ago when he was in high school, and Tiffany is one of my first friend here in Utah...her parents guided me greatly in those early years of marriage) and their two little girls over to sled. Brenton hooked up lights and they played until the dads starting giving snow bellies and generally being rowdy. Life here still revolves around high school, home school, dance, Irish dance, soccer training (indoor, in Logan), not enough running, Brenton's work, church, and whatever else we can cram into our alotted hours of the day. Moira performed at a drill team competition with her local dance studio, Cody and I went to watch her....fun was had by all and I got to listen to music on Cody's Ipod with his cool Skull candy headphones! The Irish dancers first competition (called a Feis) is on the 6th of next month so we are focusing on getting ready for that, the kids are excited but it is something oh so different for them to experience. I am excited because new can be hard and hard is always a good chance for growth. Well I am off to find Hugh's well loved and tattered "Thomas" blanket and prep for tomorrow's school....maybe it is time to sneak in an all art afternoon. I love those and Liam has been asking if he can try running the sewing machine so maybe we need a stay at home field trip. I will post pictures as soon as the techie daughter is out of the shower to help me get the cute ones of she and her brother out of the digital camera!

Sledding

January Thoughts

One of the problems I have discovered with maintaining a blog is not the time or technology issues, but my past as an English teacher. Once people are aware that I formerly taught English there expectations of my grammatical abilities often become unrealistic. This situation causes me to have writer's block over the silliest things, particularly when one considers that my readership consists of mainly myself and my children (whom realistically are only checking to make sure that they are evenly represented in pictures). So if anyone else ever reads this and discovers my grammatical shortcomings, work thru it I have!

With that off my brain, we are deep in to the crazy days of January! The weather alternates between below zero with windchill and sunny almost pleasant winter days. We really need more snow but that seems not to be in the cards, instead bad air and ice are the order of the month. I always get restless in January and with homeschooling most of my running is on the treadmill so I need alternate outlets. Therefore we are rearranging furniture, cleaning out cupboards (again), and gearing up to repaint the princess' room. I am also measuring for curtains since Brenton got rid of the ones that came with the house and it has been five years since. I figure that if I get really good curtains that I can justify replacing the always nasty, dirty blinds with reflective film of some sort. I hat cleaning blinds!

Another reason for insufficent blog development is we played like crazy during the winter holidays. Our neighbors built an outdoor ice rink in their yard and we have been to skate several times with groups of neighbors. Liam taught himself to skate fairly well, Hugh decided that snowboots are much faster, and he convinced Moira to ditch the idea of skates to chase him and his friends that much better. Of course Cody was a natural and Brenton learned as a kid, I do not skate where I come from one puts ice in their glass they do not walk on it! The little kids really enjoy the big toy (Brenton) as he puts them on plastic sleds and hauls them all over the ice. The night Brenton decided to play hockey with the teenagers about put him under, getting up for work the next day was no picnic! We also spent New Year's Day at Uncle Jake's house helping with some wiring, and sledding on his hill. We also had fun watching Tivoed episodes of "So you think you can dance" with Rachel and Lily. Hugh showed some of his own moves when we turned on Irish dance videos from You Tube. There is also a 'midget' sledhill in our driveway so we have been busy not to mention the fact that the kids have been keeping up with school and trying out all the new gadgets they received over the holidays. Moira is already better at button holes than I am. Well I am off to work on verb tenses and persuade Hugh to practice writing a few more 't's. Off to the races we are....