Skiing with Daddy!

Last year Ian and Nadia had their very first experience with snow skiing. Paul and I had planned to take them in January (2017), Paul couldn't take a day off of work that particular week. The same thing happened last month. In February (2017), Oliver spent the day with Grandma and Pop Pop, and Grandpa and I took Nadia and I skiing for the first time. It had been twenty years since I had gone skiing. I had made plans another year to go to Ski Sawmill. My mom had agreed to stay in the lodge and entertain Oliver. I can't recall if Grandpa or Paul was going to join me in skiing with Nadia and Ian that day, but the plans fell through that particular year. It looked like the plans might fall through again this year because the ski resort was closed Friday through Sunday due to the warmer temperatures and lots of rain. Thankfully they reopened today! Nadia was really concerned because she had a blast skiing last year and didn't want to have to wait until 2019 to ski again. The plan this  year had been for all five of us to go. We would have paid for Oliver's ticket and rental as we only get four free lift tickets and four free ski rentals, but due to his skull fracture he wasn't able to go skiing today, and since Paul didn't go last year I thought I should be the one to stay home with Oliver this year. Hopefully next year all five of us can go! I suggested to Paul he might want to have Nadia and Ian wear helmets. I am a bit paranoid about that these days. The high today is supposed to be in the 50's so hopefully they're having a great time! I asked Paul to take some photos and videos with his cell phone. He's not used to taking on the role of photographer. I'm bummed to miss out, but the upside was that I am getting  a lot more work done today than I would have if I had gone skiing.

One day last week Oliver decided to write a thank you note. I have no idea whom he intended to give it to. He was asking me for help with spelling the words. Then he asked me if he could look at his handwriting book so he'd remember how to write some of the letters. He was struggling with the "k" and asked me (I was doing dishes at the time) to write it for him. I said "sure" and he then offered to share his handwriting book with me, ha ha!!!! It was very kind of him to offer, but I have had a firm grasp on how to write that letter for more than 40 years!

Sometimes when I observe a class, I come home and ask my kids a question the student teacher asked her students. For example several weeks ago the (middle school science) teacher was discussing the birds were endothermic. We had disussed ectothermic vs. endothermic in our science curriculum recently as well. On Friday a seventh grade geography teacher was talking about the two smallest countries - Monaco and Vatican City. In his discussion of the Vatican, he asked his students what a pope was. He received a variety of answers (ex. monarch over all of Europe), but none of them were correct. So later that day I asked Nadia and Ian the same question. Nadia said he was the head preacher of the Catholic Church. She was pretty close! Ian told me that he was the man who wanted to sell indulgences so he could build a cathedral. Well that was true 500 years ago. It helps that we've been studying Martin Luther and other reformers recently.

I didn't have time to write a thankful post on Thursday, so here it is a few days later....

1. Oliver has received many cards in the mail. It's so sweet of people to do this! One lady from our church enclosed $1 in his card, which of course is thrilling when you're five-years-old. Receiving those cards was a reminder (yet again) that this is something I need to do better at.  I mailed a sympathy card (to a mother who recently had to bury her son who was in his 30's) and gave a birthday card to the secretary in our department.

2. The kids enjoyed watching the Olympics. I let Ian stay up until 9pm each night so he could watch it each evening with Nadia and Paul. Sometimes he and Daddy were playing a board game while watching the Olympics. He has been playing either Candyland, Sorry, or Chutes and Ladders almost every day lately.

3. I have eleven weeks left of this semester. I am repeating that to myself again and again whenever I feel like I'm drowning. I told Ian that when he asked me to play Sorry with him, and I had to say "no" because I had too much work to do. I will have plenty of time to play Sorry this summer. I can't wait!

4. I enjoyed teaching the 1st and 2nd grade girls' Sunday School class on February 18.

5. I enjoyed singing "My Ransom" with the choir on Sunday. It was an a Capella arrangement. For some reason lately I have really been enjoying a Capella choir anthems.

6. We enjoyed seeing the musical "Four Score and Seven Years" in Wilkes Barre on February 21 and also having lunch at Applebee's that day.

7. We also enjoyed the musical "Mr. Popper's Penguins" at Bucknell last Thursday although I was totally exhausted by the time we got home. I'm thankful for the four free tickets we received for the show from the Children's Museum!

8. I got a haircut on Friday! It had been three months since my last one. I really like my new hairdresser even though she's more expensive than where I had been going for several years.

9. The kids enjoyed learning about flowers at the Children's Museum on Saturday. The program was put on by Biology professors and Biology students at Bloomsburg University. The kids learned about the parts of a flower, picked a color for their carnation (Ian's turned orange, Oliver's turned green, and Nadia's turned blue), made rose and lavender bath salts, planted some zinnia seeds, made tissue paper flowers, etc.

10. Paul was able to take the day off of work today to take Nadia and Ian skiing!

11. Ian finished his third Sparks book. Last Wednesday he passed five sections in his extra credit book.

12. On Friday I learned that the Broadway show "Amazing Grace" would be performed in Lancaster on March 4. I had wanted to see it a few months ago in DC. My Dad and Margie attended it there, and they said  it was excellent. Paul and I only went on one date in all of 2017. One night in November we went to Lowe's and had dinner at Texas Roadhouse. I really wanted to go (Paul's parents could watch the kids), but my hesitation was that the last few weeks I've been putting in many hours of work every Sunday afternoon/evening on a combination of housework plus work for the university. In the end we decided to take the plunge and buy the tickets. We've gone on very few dates the past 6 years, and most of those have just been for dinner/shopping. It's been quite a while since we did something more special. I imagine Nadia and Ian also would have enjoyed the show, but we decided to just make it a date and not bring them along this time. So here's to hoping and praying I can manage to get my work done for the week of March 5 by Saturday night!

13. We enjoyed the gorgeous weather last Wednesday and our time at the playground! The high was only in the 30's the very next day, but it was an encouraging reminder that spring will be here before we know it!