Sliding

Well, we spent the tail end of last week nursing a sad little boy who was diagnosed with strep. I guess we got some foreshadowing on Wednesday after work/school, when he went directly upstairs and got on his bed when we got home. By lunchtime on Thursday, we'd gotten the call to come pick him up because he had a fever and was saying his throat hurt. So, Friday, he was home from school and, after some antibiotics, seemed to be back to normal by lunch on Saturday.

Which was a good thing, considering that both of my children were chomping at the bit to get outside. They wanted to slide. I envisioned a few hours of lifting my 18 month old up so that she could slide down the slide.

I should have known better...

She thinks she is as big as Carter is. And she LOVES to slide.

Just for reference, this isn't a toddler-sized slide. I swear, Callen has no fear!

When she saw Carter going down on his belly...

She had to follow suit. I did, however, manage to convince her to go feet-first rather than head first!

Back in the Pool

Saturday morning, we began swim lessons again for Carter. He was swimming very well by last fall, but I wanted to make sure that he was confident in his skills before pool season this year.

I had hoped that the lesson[s] would be without incident, but as soon as the instructor asked them to line up to go into the pool area, Carter had a meltdown.

About 5 minutes later, after a promise of ice cream if he participated and did well {I know, probably not the best parenting technique, but I was grasping here, folks}, which he did.

Below are a few pictures of him perfecting his kicking skills with the instructor.

Valentine's Re-cap

Better a week late than never, right?

Last Monday, Carter's class had their Valentine's party at lunchtime. He was very excited about giving his friends {what else?} Wood.y & Bu.zz valentines and seeing all of the valentines he received. His teachers are very creative, so instead of the usual "party," they concocted a Happy Meal lunch for his class and ice cream sundaes afterwards. I was able to sneak away from work for about half an hour to enjoy the party with him.

Happy boy in his PJs ready to dig into his happy meal--he ate every bite! {a treat we don't get too often around here}

Carter and his buddy, Wilson, at the table. I really do love his current class and his teachers--and they love him, which is always wonderful. We are truly fortunate to have childcare that I love so much!

Callen's party was on Tuesday. Her class is a little harder to corral for these types of celebrations, but they seemed to enjoy it nonetheless.

When I got there, she was being a little tentative with her food, which is a tad unusual for her. However, she did find the cheese puff and decided it was worth tasting.

Then she realized that there was some icing on her cupcake!

After she licked all the icing off, she was pretty much through with the eating portion of her party. We exchanged valentines with her friends and hung out for a few minutes before heading home.

On Valentine's evening, Nick and I celebrated with frozen pizza and red wine. Hey, it is the company, not the food right? ;) Hope you had a Happy Valentine's Day!

Alabama Basketball

For a while, Nick has been suggesting that Carter would enjoy going to Tuscaloosa for a Tide basketball game. Last week, we got serious about planning a trip. There was a 3:00pm game yesterday against Ole Miss, so we decided we'd take the whole crew and make a family trip to watch some UA basketball.

I wasn't too sure how everyone would do. I thought there would be enough going on to keep Carter's attention, but I was a little leery about how Callen would do.

True to form, Carter enjoyed watching the game and cheering.

Callen, however, was my surprise.She loved it {although she didn't want to sit still to watch it}! She would cheer when everyone else cheered and sometimes when they didn't, she clapped, she laughed and had a great time.

Of course, nothing was more entertaining than digging into some snacks.

Animal crackers that were brought along in case of emergency {although this was not one}...

Enjoying skittles for the first time...
We left with about 10 minutes left in the game and met Big Al in the concourse. Of course, neither of our children wanted anything to do with him, so I have no Big Al pictures. After the game we met Clint and Meredith for dinner {thanks, Clint, for the tix!} and enjoyed a fun night.

Roll Tide!

In case you were wondering

My 18 month old thinks Her.shey's kisses are pretty fantastic.

And I think she and her big brother are pretty fantastic.

My cup runneth over.

It's been a cold winter

I'm not a meteorologist and this isn't a studied fact, but it sure seems like we've had more snow/ice this winter than we've had in Alabama in a while. Our children like to watch it fall, but we aren't big on getting out in it--and to be honest, we haven't had enough to really play in. I guess it just seems to fall frequently without sticking in significant amounts.

I digress...

So, this past Saturday morning, the white stuff was falling again, this was going on at our counter:

While this was being organized in our pantry:

...not by me, I might add. Yet another reason I have such a wonderful husband.

Oh, and it is snowing again as I type this...really? I moved back here to escape this! ;)