January catch up

We've had a lot of sickness in our house this month.  We started out about 3 weeks ago with a stomach bug that caught Ellie first.  She stayed home from school for 2 days in order to get it through her system.  We were doing good for a couple days, then I got a stomach bug.  Yuck.  My bug just made me really nauseous, achy, and tired.  Not good for a mom.  The bug attacked Brad next.  He was house bound for a couple days because he was so sick.  Christian caught it last and threw up once.  Then a week later he threw up again.  Weird.  Ivan has been the only family member to escape the sickness.  Unfortunately, he is now dealing with a killer head cold.  All he wants to do is moan.  Despite the sickness, we have been able to have some bits of fun in between the bouts of sickness.

Brad took the kids sledding one Saturday afternoon after he got off of work.  We celebrated Grandpa Winter's birthday after sledding, and I was commissioned to make the cake for the celebration.  Ellie suggested we make a fishy cake to match the Christmas gift we gave Grandma and Grandpa.  I got a piping set for Christmas, so I got to test it out for the occasion.  I had a lot of fun, and I think the cake turned out really cool.

Brad and I have been married for about 7 1/2 years now.  From time to time we will bring up an activity that might be fun to do for a date night or for a family activity.  Often times, I will mention that I have done "such and such" activity in the past on a date before we were married.  Well, Brad has made it a goal that we replace all of these previous date experiences with our own rendition of the event.  With that in mind, I decided to get us Jazz tickets for a Christmas gift to check off one of those experiences.  We went on Friday night and had a lot of fun.  We even had great nose bleed seats to closely resemble my previous experience ;)  It was fun to get out and go to something a little different for a date rather than just go to dinner.

We haven't mastered our selfie skills, as you can tell by this picture...

Last night I got to go to a play at the Terrace Plaza Playhouse with two cute little girls.  Ellie decided that she wanted to invite Ainsley to a musical for Ainsley's 6th birthday.  Ellie was invited to a play for her 5th birthday last year by her cousin Isaac, and she had so much fun, so she wanted to do the same activity for Ainsley.  We went and saw "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown."  It was a fun show for the girls to see especially since they have a little experience with the characters after having recently seen the new animated Peanuts movie.  My favorite part of the night was when Ainsley let out a huge laugh during Snoopy's suppertime song and the whole audience seem to laugh at her reaction.  It's not often that I get to have time with only these girls, so we had fun singing out girly songs in the car, exploring the theater, and creating some fun memories.

Here are some other pictures of all the fun we've been having in the snow.  We love have friends close by in our townhouse community.  Ellie Christian are outside multiple times in one day after a big snow. The snow plow has made a huge snow pile right by our drive way and all the kids have made it into a huge snow fort which also includes burrowing down in the bushes behind the snow pile.  They have made slides, snow chairs, and all sorts of pathways.  It reminds me of my own memories of playing in the snow when it was a kid.   

Here's some cute snow people we made a couple weeks ago.  We named them Ernest (after Ernest Shackleton the Anarctic explorer) and Frosty.  

We have had lots of fun ice skating and Grandma and Grandpa's house in Hooper.  I think we really missed the ice rink last year while in Oregon.  Ellie is getting really good at skating on her own.  She loves to be outside on the ice.  Christian loves to go ice skating because that means he gets to drink hot chocolate after.  he doesn't last very long on the ice.