Snow Day!

We woke up this morning to a decent dusting of snow, then we had some huge beautiful flakes that started piling up on the ground. I kept watching the school reports, waiting for our district to cancel school, but they never did.

So I sent a disappointed Leeann off to school and came back and dug through our snow gear so Titus could go play outside. He ended up having to wear pink Hello Kitty boots, because that's what we had in his size, but he didn't mind so much if it meant he got to go play in the snow!

He could have played all day, but I didn't have snow gear on so I didn't last long. We came inside for some warm tomato soup and played some Wii games together.

Here's to hoping there's at least enough snow when Leeann gets off of school for her to play in a little bit. If the status of my facebook friends is indicative of the rest of the district, I'm going to guess about half of the parents declared it a snow day anyway, so I'm pretty sure today was an uneventful day for her at school.

I'm still holding out hope that tomorrow will end up being a real, "official" snow day. You know, one of those days where I don't have to get out of bed so early?

Valentine's Day!

Rob and Leeann went out on a Valentine's Day date at a little cafe in Corvallis. They enjoyed some gellato and warm drinks together. 

She made me promise this morning, that she could come home after school and change into her prettiest dress before her much anticipated date with her daddy. 

Titus took me to Red Robin! We played some tic-tac-toe and had some great conversation... like why animals have babies even though they don't get married!

He did the ordering for us, confidently and with precision, and paid for the bill!

And he got a tummy ache from eating a little too much mile-high mud pie!

I can't get enough of this kid! He's a great Valentine!

Rob and I both enjoyed our dates with our kiddos today. We don't celebrate Valentine's Day like normal people do. Instead, we take our kids out, in hopes of showing them our love and teaching them how to be great dates themselves someday. You can read about it my latest blog post over at Real Life Pastor's Wife. 

SOCK WAR!!!!

After a little bit of wrestling tonight (my kids love to wrestle with us on our bed), I taught my kids not one, but two bad habits!

First I taught them the "Don't hit yourself" game. Ooooo, that was fun... for me anyway! But, pretty soon they started making each other hit themselves-- I quickly began to regret teaching them that game.

So I decided to switch to something a little more wholesome? A little less violent? A little lot more fun! We had a full on, all out SOCK WAR!

It was inspired by, well, the pile of socks at the end of my bed that needed to be folded. We mated all the socks then started pelting each other with them. I have a feeling I might be finding random pairs of socks stuck in all sorts of crazy places in my room over the next couple of days.

Rob's at a meeting tonight, so he missed out on this particular bit of fun. But the kids and I had a blast. And, now, all the socks are folded!

Where oh where did January go?

January came and went in a flash. I'm not sure I stopped to breathe for more than a few minutes during the entire month. It's all kind of a blur!

I quit my job at the church at the end of December and started a job nannying just 3 days later. My nanny duties are temporary, just until the middle of March, but it encompasses 3 full days out of any given week. So, the reality is, I'm working even more hours than I was working before. People keep asking me if I'm enjoying all my new found spare time since I'm not working anymore. I just laugh!

Spare what? Time. Shoot, what time is it? What did I forget? Am I late for something?

That's about how my mind has been functioning lately.

In January we also got some lessons from the school of hard knocks. In the nearly 3 years that we've been landlords we've had relatively few problems with our rental and/or renters. In the last 3 months we've had nothing but problems however. We've become very familiar with rent law and court proceedings lately!

The good news is that I got to spend a couple of days helping my dad (a very, very handy handy-man) fix the damage done to our home so our new renters could move in. There's always a bright side, right?

More than ever I wish the condo would sell so we can be back down to one mortgage! Now that we have  new renters in the other house though, we likely wouldn't move back in there until it becomes vacant again. It would be nice to know that we could move back in when it does become vacant though.

Initially, our adventures in condo dwelling were supposed to be a very, very short term adventure. Then the economy started to collapse, real estate prices plummeted, yada, yada, yada. So here we are... still in the condo. We're actually officially listing on the market today. I would be delighted if it would sell... soon!

But, this also means that I have to be prepared to have someone stop by on 1 hours notice at any point. That, folks, is my least favorite part of having my condo on the market!

Remember me talking about how little time I've had to breathe lately? Try breathing, and keeping the house in show-worthy condition! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

In other news, I still haven't blogged much of anything besides our trip to Disneyland for the past few months. I have yet to post about Christmas, but I finally finished Titus's Birthday post (yes, his birthday was 2 months ago for those keeping track at home!). The worst part is, it was already 95% done, I just needed to finish up his interview.

I have stayed pretty busy keeping up on my Real Life Pastor's Wife blog though. I've been posting lots of green smoothie recipes this month, and recently blogged about Leeann's wildly successful coffee shop last weekend where she raised lots of money for our local pregnancy resource center.

You should hop on over and ready about Leeann's fundraising effort. It's an inspiring story of a sweet faith-filled little girl!