Winter's Last Gasp

One of the things that I was nervous about when I started my new position at work that required me to go to a shift schedule was that I was considered "emergency essential". This means that on snow days and other weather-related delays and closures, I am still required to come in at my normal time if I am assigned to work that day. Fortunately, this year hasn't been terrible weather-wise, and most of the days that there were snowstorms that caused closures, I wasn't scheduled to work anyway. That made for a fair number of days that I got to spend at home playing with the girls out in the snow, or perhaps better stated, chasing them around as they ran through the snow-covered streets and yards while I was trying to shovel the driveway. Luckily, because of the snow, there weren't a lot of cars out and we live on a very quiet cul-de-sac anyway, but there were a few times when Lydia ran laughing across the street and I had to go look for her.

Here are our girls playing in the snow bank left behind by the plow.

Lydia is a great helper when it comes to shoveling. She saw me shoveling and insisted she needed to help. The first two were with a shovel one of the neighbor kids had left behind. The one in the driveway is the result of her taking my shovel away from me to help. She's cute.

A last few pictures of our girls in the snow. Spring weather has started to arrive here, so I don't think there is going to be any more snow until Winter comes again.

The girls like helping Tanja in the kitchen. Mostly, they like sneaking tastes of the batter or dough or whatever it is that she is making.

I love Karina's face in this picture (that unfortunately can barely be seen). She gets upset when Lydia pushes her out of the way in the kitchen.

Tanja did Lydia's hair up with two flower barrettes that my mom had sent us from her trip to Hawaii. We thought she was so cute, we needed a photo shoot. These are the best two pictures from that day.

Karina being silly and pushing her way through the cubby holes in our coffee table.

Our girls being silly playing in some of our canvas boxes. At some point, I am afraid they are going to break our stuff...

...it's much better when you can use cheap cardboard boxes to have fun instead, like we are doing with this cardboard box train.

We've reached a few recent milestones in our family. Through a combination of canine dieting and normal toddler growth, Snoopy has lost enough weight and Lydia has gained enough weight that she now outweighs him. Lydia and Karina have also been working on their math skills. Karina has the basics of addition and subtraction down (as long as she has or can borrow enough fingers to make it work). Lydia has started counting, and we have heard her count up to 13 before without help, and I am pretty sure she made it to 17 but skipped 14. It's possible that she got that early start from listening to us count to 20 every time we play hide and seek with Karina (one of her favorite games). This mathematical prowess bodes well for them in this family, since today marks the sixth Pi Day that Tanja and I have spent together, which makes me excited for six, sixteen, or sixty more. On the menu today is a chile enchilada pie with coconut cream pie for dessert. Can't wait!