Yay for Grandma! and More Snowy Adventures

March 24: Reading with Grandma Carole.

We had a wonderful Spring Break the week of March 25th thanks to Carole and her untiring ability to do whatever Shayna wanted.  "Help me take my babies here," "Put them to sleep here," "We're princesses doing....," and so on, all week long.  There was also lots of chase since both the kids love that game so Carole got her aerobics in as well.  Her two travel days were beautiful but every day in between was snowy and cold.  To get the kids, and us, some out-of-the-house exercise, we went to two open gym hours at the local gymnastics studio (the whole studio is open to walk-5yo including trampolines, foam cube pit, lots of bars, balance beams and many other things the climb or jump on) and two visits to the local pool with a 37-person Passover dinner at our house just to keep life interesting.  Carole also took care of the kids while I went to crossfit and the nuchal screening in Roanoke (which looked great).  The week was so lively and the visit so wonderful it felt like she was here only a couple days.

March 27: Painting with Grandma Carole

 

March 28: The full-body workout of climbing out of the foam pit.

I was so proud of Shayna leaping off the vault on her own.  She's getting so much more adventurous; it's wonderful.

March 25: Winding down of our crazy Passover dinner.  I loving being able to put that many people in our house easily.  Passover is awesome too in that it's not a party we put on but a party everyone is involved in.  I set up the frame work then stepped back and while other people organized, setup, and ran the rest of the evening.

In one final, wonderful gift from Winter, we got ~2" of snow on Thursday.  As the kids both, now, love snow, I took them out in it in the afternoon.  I ended up excited about the snow as well so that I raced around the house the get the sleds from under the deck so we could hit all 3 hills in-ish our yard.  (The big hill is actually mostly in our neighbors yard.)  Shayna and I loved the sledding as usual.  While Elijah enjoyed most of it (I even took him down the big hill twice), the flying snow (I tried to block it with my hands) as we hit the abrupt grade changes (steep to flat instantly) still got a little in his face which took the shear joy out of it for him.  However, he did love pulling the sled around the yard and would have stayed out much longer doing this and cheering Shayna's sledding on.  Shayna's sledding ended after she ran into our house but she still recalls the rest of the sledding as great fun.  (I'll buy some straw bales next winter for a buffer.)  I'm just so happy that Elijah finally enjoys being out in the snow for a while as when we went sledding in January he didn't sled but still spent the brief time out with Shayna and I crying.  Instead, he cried when it was time to go in to help me finish making dinner.  I love the growing kids and how much more I can just play with them.

 

Now it's off to meet Nahum and the kids at the Farmers Market then home to do some gardening on this beautiful, sunny weekend.  (98% of the snow melted yesterday; haven't had that since Colorado.)

I'll end with this picture from April 2 of one of our beautiful morning rituals: Sharing Aba's cereal in the morning.  If Elijah catches Nahum sitting down, Elijah ends up eating about 1/2 of what's in Nahum's bowl.