Winter storm Stella!

I was thinking I'd be writing a "Thankful Tuesday" post today. I will still included a gratitude list below, but today we got the most snow we've gotten in one day in many years. I remember being in Maryland when my mom was in the hospital last year when they got more than two feet of snow in Maryland, but we rarely get that much snow even though we live farther north. Paul's parents typically get more snow than we do. They live about an hour south of us, but they live at a higher elevation. I told Paul yesterday that I thought he should either spend the night at his parents and not come home until Wednesday evening or plan on taking a snow day today. He opted to take a snow day since he won't see us for a week next month when the kids and I are planning to travel to Chicago when my sister's kids are on spring break from school. It is a rare treat to eat three meals in one day with Daddy! I made lasagna for dinner, which is one of Paul's favorite meals. I also baked two batches of cookies, one of which was Heath, which is one of Paul's top three favorite cookies.

I am always torn as to whether to take the day off of school when all the schools have a snow day. I decided to compromise and do a sort of half-day of school. We did math, reading, Bible, science, spelling, and social studies. We skipped the rest. Also, we usually do almost all of it before lunch, but today we spent a lot of time in the snow in the morning and finished our school work after lunch. Daddy did part of their science and all of their social studies with them today. Oliver usually sits on my lap when I am reading Nadia and Ian books from the library for social studies or science. I was particularly amazed when he sat through me reading a biography about Alexander the Great that was over 100 pages long. Now if I could get him to be more interested in learning to identify his numbers, what sounds each letter makes, etc. He sure does love to cook though!

1. The Frog and Toad show we saw at Bucknell last Tuesday was excellent!

2. We enjoyed learning about Mars at the Children's Museum on Wednesday morning. Nadia enjoyed making a Mars rover out of pasta, and Ian and Oliver enjoyed the space themed toys and kinetic sand.

3. I appreciated being able to carpool with another mom for getting Nadia to and from Camp Susque on Thursday for her standardized test.

4. Paul went into work really early (got up at 2:45AM) so that he could join us at the ice skating party on Thursday evening. Nadia really wanted him to come. We all enjoyed the pizza and other goodies and ice skating!

5. Grandma and Pop Pop were able to see Nadia and Ian's last basketball game on Saturday.

6. Nadia and I really enjoyed seeing a production of The Sound of Music on Sunday afternoon.

7. Ian is waking up a lot later since the time change. Hoping this lasts!

8. Nadia has been choosing to read missionary biographies that are at a reading level and 200 pages long. This thrills my heart for several reasons; so I ordered 15 more yesterday. I will read them aloud over the next few years, and Nadia can also read them to herself. I enjoy these books as well.

9. Oliver doesn't always want to be hugged or kissed (whereas his siblings never turn those down), but I'm very thankful he still loves to sit on my lap (such as when they're watching Superbook on the tv) and he also still loves to hold hands. He has been a big hand holder since he was in the NICU.

10. I sold Nadia's bike on Friday morning for $50. It was a birthday gift from my parents to Nadia in 2014. Over the past eight months I have been feeling very sentimentally attached to gifts from my parents because of my mom's passing. In that sense I wanted to hold onto it, but we had six bikes in the garage, and that was too many. Nadia is now riding Ian's new bike, which is a little too big for him just yet because her new bike is just a little too big for her just yet. So once Ian and Nadia graduate to their new bikes, I will be selling Ian's old bike because Oliver has one the same size so there's no need to save that one for Oliver. Then we'll be back down to four bikes, which is a good thing considering our garage is pretty packed. The mom I sold it to was giving it to her daughter for her birthday. Hopefully she'll get as much enjoyment out of it as Nadia did the past 2.5 years.

11. I am enjoying learning more about photography. A well known photographer gave me some feedback regarding how to improve my pictures of the kids playing basketball. Unfortunately I got the advice the day after their last game, but I hope to put it to good use in the future! On Sunday during lunch I noticed that Nadia's eyes were really sparkling. I
grabbed my camera and opened the aperture up much wider than normal (for me) to try to blur the undesirable background and took two pictures. I love how her eyes sparkle (see a photo farther down in the post), and that image is straight out of the camera (no editing involved). I am finally shooting in manual all the time (after using aperture priority mode for a few years) and in raw (instead of jpeg). The image below of Oliver  helping me make scrambled eggs yesterday wouldn't have been able to be saved if I had taken it in jpeg. It was underexposed, but I was able to correct it in Lightroom. Yay for finally switching to taking my pictures in raw (even if it meant I had to buy a newer version of Lightroom a few weeks ago).