Winter Break Roundup

 Winter Break is almost over!  Here are a few more pictures of fun memories from this week:

Meeting friends at the park

Choosing a variety of Whole Foods cookies to sample

Anna made a time capsule at a church activity

Joy helped Todd create an Old Republic character, and then taught him how to safely handle a light saber. (Pro tip: Don't use your light saber to slice a loaf of bread.)

Animal Adventures

 This weekend, Todd's friend invited him to a birthday party . . .

 

. . . at a small local zoo called Animal Adventures.

The party included a tour of the zoo . . .

. . . and a chance to pet some of the animals.  Todd was reluctant to touch the first few, but he did pet the fluffy chinchilla . . .

. . . and give the baby gator a high five.

By the end, he had even warmed up to petting cold-blooded critters like this one.

The exotic animals in the zoo are all rescues who were injured or kept illegally as pets. That raises all sorts of interesting questions when you consider that they have least a dozen alligators and crocodiles.

  They named this beautiful serval Lazarus because he was so sick when he arrived that they thought he was going to die.  He somehow managed to recover is now completely healthy, but they can't return him to the wild, so he spends his time clambering around on old furniture.  His home looks like a weird mashup of "Wild Kratts" and "The Office." :)

Cleaning and Frosting

My plan for today was to have the kids clean their rooms while dough was rising for cinnamon rolls.  The kids were surprisingly cooperative about the room cleaning . . .

. . . and everyone wanted to help frost the rolls at dessert time.

When Todd asked how he could help, I told him I really needed somebody to lick the last bits of frosting off the beater.  It's a thankless job, but somebody's gotta do it!

This new cinnamon roll recipe turned out really well, but I think we might need to make it again soon, just to be sure. :)

Service with a Smile

 As we brainstormed family activities for this winter break, the top thing on my list was . . .

. . . a trip to the temple with Phillip, Joy, and Daniel.  It's been really hard to get temple baptism appointments during the pandemic, so when some friends couldn't make their appointment this week and asked if we'd like to go instead, I jumped at the opportunity.  It was a sweet experience to worship and serve in that sacred place with members of my family.

Anna and Daniel performed another kind of service this evening when they helped Daddy assemble some computer parts he needs for work tomorrow.  They asked if customers might pay extra for the servers if they knew some components were voluntarily assembled by adorable children.  Sounds like a good selling point to me.

Standing Water Trail

 The weather was sunny and warmish today . . .

. . . so Daddy aired up our bike tires . . .

. . . then the kids and I took a pleasant ride (or scoot) around the neighborhood.

I also thought it would be a nice day for a hike.  Ever since slippery ice thwarted our attempt to hike Two Brother's Trail two years ago, I've wanted to go back and see what the last 98 percent of the trail is like.

The good news is that there wasn't any ice at the trail head.  The bad news is that there was a lot of mud.

I told the kids I at least wanted to keep going around the bend this time and see what was there.  We found a dry (though rather thorny) field . . .

. . . followed by another stretch of soggy trail.  And hey, do I see some ice up ahead?  Time to turn back!  Maybe we'll revisit this trail during a dry spell this summer.

Seed Bandit

 Sometime after the kids went to bed tonight, Daddy and I heard a loud scrabbling sound on our back deck.

Phillip turned on the outside light, then hurried to grab his camera . . .

. . . because we had an extra-large fluffy marauder raiding our bird feeder.

I wonder if doing yoga during your meal is good for the digestion?

Candy Not Cheese

Massachusetts schools take a week off every February, so the kids will be home for the rest of this week.  When I asked them what activities they want to do during their winter break, one of their requests was to visit the Concord Cheese Shop where I bought interesting cheeses (and "Death Brie") for our family's first cheese board.

The kids were really excited to check out the store and select a new cheese or two . . .

. . . until we got to the door and discovered that they're closed on Mondays.

Hmm, what should we do now? (Says the weird red mannequin outside the lamp shop next door.)

Fortunately, the candy store a few doors down was open, so we decided to look for fun treats there instead.

It took the kids a while to decide what they wanted to buy.  After about 20 minutes, Joy still couldn't settle on anything so she told me to just pick out a few chocolates I thought she might like.  

I chose three for her, and these three for me.  We all shared nibbles of our treats when we got home, and I liked Joy's cookie butter bon bon better than any of the things I had carefully selected for myself.  Isn't that always the way?

Thaw

By mid-February, I sometimes feel like the toy car I recently saw mired in a nearby pond:

Surrounded by ice, wondering if it will ever thaw.

Of course, it eventually does.

The sight of colorful lawns seems kind of weird after weeks of white, but I've enjoyed the warm weather this week . . .

 . . . and it's fun to see bluebirds and blackbirds visiting our feeders again for the first time in months.

Piano Lessons In Person Again

COVID numbers have finally come back down to where they were before Thanksgiving, and all of our kids are now vaccinated . . .

. . . so Daniel, Anna, and Todd were all able to go our piano teacher's studio when she resumed in-person lessons this week!  Yesterday was the first time Anna had been there in two years.

One downside to taking Daniel and Anna to back-to-back in-person lessons was that they each had to sit VERY quietly for 40 minutes straight during their sibling's lesson.  Sitting quietly isn't Daniel's forte, and the schedule doesn't leave Anna much time to practice before we leave home, so they may end up taking turns going in person each week.

All of Todd's piano lessons have been virtual since he started last September, so he was excited to finally be in the same room with his teacher today.  They even played a quick duet together. :)

Mystery Ailment

If my January theme was "blooming," my February theme is "mystery ailment." At the beginning of this month, I started having a lot of annoying symptoms like headaches, brain fog, joint pain, and shortness of breath.

I thought I was becoming allergic to nuts or possibly dairy, so I made an appointment with an allergist and replaced those foods with a bunch of weird-tasting alternatives.  Maybe they're an acquired taste.  If so, I haven't acquired it yet.

The only alternative food I actually liked was this soy yogurt.  It was delicious (probably because it had so much sugar in it), but I felt the same annoying symptoms after I ate it.  Was I allergic to soy too???

Nope!  The allergist tested me for reactions to 60 different foods, and I'm not allergic to any of them.  The good news is that I can go back to eating all of my favorite things.  The bad news is that I still don't know what is making me feel so lousy.  An autoimmune issue?  Or perhaps Long COVID?  Maybe I caught a mild case of it and just thought it was a cold (at this point, there's now way to know for sure).

This sign in the allergist's office said, "A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book."  Those things certainly wouldn't hurt, but I'm also going to visit my regular doctor to see what else might be going on.

UPDATE: The doctor ordered a bunch of blood tests a few days later, and they all showed that nothing was wrong with me.  By early March, the symptoms had largely subsided.  My best guess is that I got a mild case of COVID without realizing it, then had some Long COVID symptoms for a few weeks afterward.  Of course, I've also been making a real effort to get enough sleep, stress less, and exercise more.  Maybe the allergist's sign was right after all.

Christmas Lite

I love that Valentine's Day is a low-pressure invitation to do something nice for people you love. It's like getting a dose of Christmas fun and generosity without all of the Christmas stress. :)

This year, Red Grandma sent us some See's candy, a velcro dart board . . .

. . . and bubble wrap!  Unfortunately, there was also some air pillow packaging that sounded like a gun going off whenever somebody stomped on one of the pillows.  After the kids nearly gave me a heart attack twice this afternoon, I cut the rest of the air pillows up and threw them away.

Getting back to Valentine's Day, Pink Grandma sent each of the kids a Star Wars pun valentine.  Yoda best, Grandma!

I celebrated Valentines Day by buying and seasoning steak for Daddy to grill, because he loves steak and I love him!

I hope you and the people you love had a happy Valentine's Day too!

A Snowy Sunday

Today looks like . . .

. . . spring inside, but winter outside.

What should we do on a snowy Sunday?

The kids decided to make muffins . . .

. . . then we had family home evening and played "Flour Tower" for our activity.  Do you know what happens when the coin falls down into the pile of flour?

The person who knocks it down gets to fish it out with their teeth!

Some players think that's fun.  Whatever floats your boat!