January…. quickly becoming my least favorite month of the year. Lots of days off school, illnesses, snow days and recovering from Christmas. November and December are filled with so much activity and excitements and then it’s all over. A bit sad for everyone, but it’s nice to get back into your routine after two weeks off school. Then it snows…. Well, sleets with some freezing rain and snow mixed. The second week back as school they started predicting a huge snow storm. Usually I am skepitcal of these forecasts. I’ve lived here long enough to know 99% of the time it does nothing, or ends up being ice, but this time it looked like we were really going to get snow. A lot of it. I ran around getting groceries like any good southerner. Target will filled with other moms trying to get snot pants and boots for the big snow. Then we woke up to nothing despite the forecast still calling for 4-6 inches when I went to bed at midnight. Gotta love the south. We did get a dusting with a bunch of icy stuff mixed in and the kids had a great time. It’s the first time we’ve taken them out sledding. Graham is the cautious child that hasn’t been interested in sledding, but after watching Caroline go down a couple small hills he decided to try it out.
Even though I was dissapointed we didn’t get more snow we still have fun and missed THREE days of school thanks to icy parking lots. Again… gotta love the south. It was 60 degrees outside, but we had a snow day.
The kids spent most of January with some cold, cough or other illness. Casey and the kids were kind enough to bring home a stomach bug from their time in Charlottte which they shared with me. Graham missed 4.5 days of school and had his second ear infection. Caroline was snotty and/or coughing about 60% of the month, but didn’t miss much school other than scheduled holiday (of which there are way too many in January).
Casey was given the task of putting the lights on the Christmas tree, a task usually done by me and I should have known better. I came home to find the biggest mess. Lights were strung up and down the tree, wrapped around branches and in huge tangles. I managed to restring the color lights on the outside of the tree, but didn’t even attempt the inner white lights. When it came time to take down the very dead tree I quickly gave up on the white lights. I asked Casey to remove them which required cutting off most of the branches. Never once in all my years of stringing up the lights have I had to cut off a single branch to free the lights.
Caroline and I go to a baby gymnastics class once a week and she loves it! She is still working on jump, but loves the trampoline. She also loves the slide and foam pit. How cute is this?
Other notes from January – Caroline’s 4 canine teeth are starting to finally come in, Graham lost his second tooth, Graham had his second ear infection ever and missed 4.5 days of school, Caroline had many colds and was kind enough to share them with us, Caroline’s favorite phrases “it’s heavy”, “it’s hard”, “where _ go?”, Graham continues to do well in school and is reading on grade level!