Photo Catch Up

Here are some photos from the last month. Read the captions for more detail on each picture. (Rowan is 16 months, Allie is almost 4, and Silas is 6-1/2.)

We celebrated Nate's birthday on a snowy day in February. 

The kids enjoyed making Nate's birthday cake. Here they were using a mixer to make real whipped cream for the icing. Afterwards they got to lick the beaters. Yum!

There were many mornings where Nate was outside snow-blowing and Rowan watched from inside.

Allie's absolute favorite thing these days is drawing. She occupies herself for long periods of time drawing, coloring, cutting and gluing different creations. The other day she cut out various shapes from construction paper and taped them together to make a sailboat, completely by herself! Our playroom wall is filled with her colorful artwork. 

The Awana Grand Prix race is coming up at our church, and Silas and Allie have been preparing their stock cars for the race. The first step here was to paint the cars (each chose their favorite color).

Silas and Rowan chatting over breakfast cereal.

Nate's been into drones ever since he got one for Christmas, and this small one is just perfect for Rowan to help with. He likes to let it lift off from his hand or his head. Below he was getting a turn flying it (with a lot of help!).

Allie sure brings out the sweet in this pepper! (To be fair, Rowan was the one who came up with the idea of putting a sweet pepper on his thumb one night while I was making dinner, then the other kids took a turn.)

The Blur of Winter

Where are the Paines, you must be wondering? What have they been up to this month? 

I wonder that myself. These past 5 weeks have been a blur of storms, snow days and school delays. Shoveling, plowing, scraping, slipping on ice, bundling up, striping back down, piling boots by the door, sweeping up salt, and wetting socks from snow puddles on the floor. We barely seem to recover from one storm before the next one swoops in. I guess this is a ‘real’ winter, which is why I prepare California weather.

Anyway, there have been other adventures going on, but the weather has been central through all of them. Silas has had 5 snow days, 4 two-hour delays, and one early dismissal so far. And we still have plenty of winter left! One of Silas’ therapists said that it’s been like a long string of Mondays... Every time there’s a day off, the next day back is like Monday again. You have to adjust to the schedule and routine all over again. It’s been a long series of stops and starts.

This past week was a dosey––Nate was away in Seattle for a Microsoft conference, so while he hobnobbed with other geeks and discussed the latest DAX software with some of the best programmers in the world, we were at home getting blasted by two big winter storms. I’ve said this before, but I'm so thankful that our families are close by. They were a huge help to me, as well as our neighbors down the street...with shoveling, helping with the kids, and providing moral support. I was exhausted from all the effort, but looking back I can see how God provided for us even in the midst of difficulty. The power stayed on, and I ended up having help each day, despite the snow and ice. Plus the days Nate flew were both clear.

I’m going to be putting up a batch of posts over the next few days to make up for the lack this past month, and making it look like they were all posted at different times. That may be cheating, by hey, this is my blog and I can do whatever I want, right? So check back soon to hear more from life on the frozen tundra of the Paine homestead.

This series of photos is from Monday's long snow storm.
We got about 8-10 inches of snow.

Wednesday's freezing rain left everything with a thick coating of ice.
Though many in the area did, we did not lose power!