It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

And if you know me, you'll know that I'm not in the least bit happy about it. I came out of the Y tonight into snow. SNOW. *Insert lots of choice bad words here. I did.*

We've been enjoying having Dada back home from his two week trip in China. He had an excellent first experience from the food to the inner workings of the business side to the landscape to the haggling/dickering/price finessing. I've only seen a handful of pictures, icnluding Tiny Traveling Tino holding a peanut with chopsticks, but the food looked amazing. Poor Dada is adjusting to the 13 hour time zone difference by sneaking in naps...

Tomorrow begins parent-teacher conferences, which ought to be interesting given Thing One and Thing Two.  There is potential for some good blogging there!

But first, I must go make Aunt Chris's Best-Ever Potato Soup for Dada's work potluck tomorrow. And Gingersnaps. And PaPa's coming! Woohoo! Goodnight. And try not to think about the nofucks . Click on that for a refresher.

Rundown

No, that's not as in "we are all rundown" so much as it is a "this is what we've been up to lately."

Last week both kids had those bad coughs that are going around, again. Liam was sicker than Care Bear, and since she had no fever she got sent off to school so she'd be away from his germs for a little while. We didn't go anywhere. We skipped church Sunday, skipped the Y Monday, skipped moms' group Wednesday, and finally ventured out of the house to play at a friend's house on Friday night for about an hour. Thanks, Casey! Dada had been in Montreal for his first time... he was gone Monday through Thursday and it was actually pretty cold there, too ;)

Saturday we all went to Mama Rita's house for our monthly potluck. The theme this time was Indian, so Dada made the naan (flatbread) and we all enjoyed Mama Rita's ginger chicken and rice. Jeannine made samosas and Heidi brought pies. We also contributed macaroni and cheese for the little guys. Yummy! It is so great to actually see neighbors in the dead of winter. I'm so glad we're making getting together a priority once a month. We have SO much fun together!

Saturday night after the potluck, Grandma Barb and Pap and Teddy arrived to stay two nights with us. The kids had a wonderful time reading to them and being read to. They had a nice, uneventful drive here and got to catch up with the kids. It was my Sunday to serve in the nursery at church, so Grandma Barb put the kids down for break time while Dada picked me back up and we got a quickie date in! They had to leave early Monday morning before anyone else was up, but we all had a nice time together. Thanks for coming!

That was our busy weekend in a nutshell. It's been really cold again but there's no snow. Lots of sun, so we're thankful for that. And it's March already, yay! Dada and Pap installed the remote controlled blinds in the upper windows of the living room, so we are enjoying decreased glare in here as well. Maybe the next task will be getting siding back on the house. Hmmm.

Tonight we need to have dinner, trim up some haircuts, have baths, get ready for tomorrow, get the garbage out, and sort through a few more boxes from the Farmhouse that came up with Pap and Grandma Barb. A lot of them seem to be pictures and teaching stuff, so they take awhile to sort through. Want to get as much pitched tonight as possible so it's not sitting around another whole week.

Please be praying for my Mary Alice. One of her students is in a boatload of trouble. Please pray that she would be a light for her students and her staff. Be praying for the student and his family, as well, please. He's made some really bad decisions with far- reaching consequences. Thank you.

Have a good week, everyone. Enjoy those sunny, blue skies! Hope to see the Oak Street gang this weekend. I'm really looking forward to that!