Not quite sure if it's safe........

Week ending January 12th 2013

Well just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water, Ali and Avery caught the stomach flu.  It has defiantly been an in like a lion year of sickness for our family.  Josh and I were able to stay ok thus far, since we had it the week prior.  We have gone through a series of cleaning every known article of everything in our home to rid us of these unwelcome visitors that seem to continue to crop up in our home.  Hopefully the worst is finally behind us, even though Josh's voice suddenly became two octaves lower this week with the possibility of a new cold coming on.  We are pretending to ignore it right now, and hope it just disappears.

Out side of that we had our first winter storm that we had to drive in this week.  On Thursday my dad bought us tickets to a play in Salt Lake.  The storm hit around 4pm and snowed all through the night.  Grandma Debbie watched the kids while we drove in the storm in separate cars to the play.  We had a fun time and drove back to pick up the kids and headed home at 10:30pm.  The roads were much worse at this point and the little Civic hybrid we have let us know that it is not a snow car.  Josh and I were in that car, and if I traveled over 30 MPH the back end tried to overtake the front end.  We slide all over the place.  Josh kept asking, "Dad why are you doing that" believe it was an on purpose move. The Accord that Ali drove loves the snow, and she decided to take advantage of it and arrived home much quicker than I did.  But slow and easy won and we arrived alive.

The next day, Friday, turned into a snow day with school cancelled and me unwilling to drive in the cruddy weather I stayed home.  We went and bought some sleds and made snow hills with all of the snow pile ups.  Our neighbors house has an uphill driveway that turns into a fun little hill for the kids.  Since we are at the top of the circle we get all of the snowplow pile ups and can turn those into some fun hills as well.  Beats trying to fight the crowds and we ended up really enjoying the time.  

Ali and I are trying to do this with electronics and more with interactions.  She hs turned the TV off most days now, and is limiting the kids to about 30 minutes a day.  It has caused more work for her to entertain them, but we both feel it will pay off in the long run.  Seems that electronic additions are becoming more and more an everyday occurrence.  It can be so easy to turn on a TV and just get things done.  Kids struggle with entertaining themselves, and rely on these items to entertain them.  Here is hoping this becomes a doable new years resolution.