Happy 9th Anniversary!

This week Ryan and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary.  We had a pretty busy week aside from that too.  We got our ski trip booked too!

Monday was a pretty usual day.  Keira went to school and I took Soren to the gym. 

Keira had  ballet, and we were actually ready in plenty of time for her to play around in her ballet clothes beforehand.

On Tuesday, I got Keira off to school, and then headed to the gym.  We got there in plenty of time today to not be rushed to storytime.  Soren was happy that there was not a storm today.

When we got home, Soren built a very long train track that extended from the playroom to his room.

They also played with the electric tea lights while I worked on trying to figure out our ski trip plans.  I spent a lot of time on the computer and on the phone getting costs together for going to West Virginia, and then started comparing the costs to going to Utah.  We didn't book to Utah today, but thought on it a night.  I was a bit worried, since we were looking at flights exactly 3 weeks from today, and wondered if things would change once they got "less than 3 weeks out".  However, there were still a lot of pieces to put together before we could make such a dramatic change.  It is not typical for us to decide in a matter of hours to fly to Utah. 

On Wednesday, it was our 9th wedding anniversary.  It was also Keira's 100th day of school.  Keira wanted to wear a party dress to school and it was an early release day.  As a result, there wasn't really time for Soren and I to meet up with Ryan for lunch if we waited until the restauarants to actually serve lunch.  I took Soren to the gym, and then when we got back, we went over to a friends' house from both school and ballet.  Keira was excited to play with Kaylie, and Soren had her younger brother, Jacob, to play with.  I also enjoyed being able to get to know Ginger a bit better.    Once we got home, I talked with Ryan some more about the tickets.  We were going to go for it.  Ryan had a lot of trouble getting it booked at work.  The prices kept changing as he was trying to book.  Evenutally, he just came home so we could go out to dinner as a family to Smash Burger. 

After dinner, we finally got it booked!  We had to play with the days a bit.  Keira will miss an extra day of school, and we will have one day less with Kris and Linda.  Soren has not been to Utah ever, so it should be a really fun time for everyone.

On Thursday, I had my long run at the gym, and then got some lunch.  We didn't do much else, as Soren has been pretty worn out all week.   We were out a bit later than usual for dinner last night, so both kids were pretty tired.

On Friday, Soren woke up pretty much when Keira got on the bus.  It worked out well, though, because I was able to take Soren to the storytime at the La Grange library.  We missed it 2 weeks ago, and didn't even try last week.  We have to be at the gym pretty much by 9 for me to get in my workout, shower, and make it on time.  Soren hadn't been to a library storytime in a while, so he was used to them being really short like at the mall.  He was anxious to play and craft the whole time, but he did great.  He was really excited about this craft.

No trip to La Grange is complete without checking out the train.

I have now decided that large burritos count as "carbo loading" due to the rice and tortilla.  They also have protein from the beans and chicken, so we went to Moe's for dinner. 

Saturday was a busy day for Ryan and I, and rather lazy for Keira and Soren.  They were both really tired.  I ran 16 miles, and Ryan did two sufferfest DVDs.  That took a good portion of the day.  We had Brianna come over to babysit, and Ryan got pizza for the them so we could go to Mitchell's Fish Market for dinner.  We were starving after our workouts.  We had a great dinner and then went to see Sherlock Holmes.  It was a fun movie.

The kids had a rough night on Saturday night.  Soren woke up twice, and after the second time, came into our room.  Keira came into our room (because Soren left the door open) a bit before the alarm was supposed to go off, and woke everyone up.  We made it to church and stayed after for a linger longer.  We completely forgot about it, so we felt bad we didn't have a dish, but were encouraged to stay anyway.  I am glad we did.  As it turns out, our ward plans to have them the 4th Sunday of every month. 

Ryan went home teaching and then we had our home teachers come over.  It was a good Sunday.

Tornados and other January Excitement

This week really wore me out, and it was a surprise because Keira only had 4 days of school.  We didn't do a ton, but did have some interesting things happen.

On Tuesday, I got up early and got Soren to the gym with plenty of time to avoid rushing.  As I was gathering him from the childcare, my friend Molly said that her TV said that there was a tornado warning.  I had thought it was just for IN, but as I was getting ready to head to the mall, Ryan called and said that the storms were on their way (and if I was home, to bring the things from our porch in).  We estimated that I had enough time to make it to the mall safely.  I figured it would be better to be stuck there than at the gym.  The playroom at the gym with the toys is along the front glass windows, and I figured there were lots of interior spaces at the mall, as well as food for lunch if we had to stay a really long time.  The mall is VERY close to the gym, just on the other side of the freeway overpass from where we were, so we ran out to the car, speed to the mall, and as we opened the car door, the sirens were going off.  It was pretty erie, and we went to the storytime area.  In another couple minutes, they made an announcement over the PA system to head to interior spaces.  This for us was the Von Maur shoe room.  We stayed here for a little bit, but then moved over to one of the dressing rooms in the children's department where there were more kids.  They let me bring an train in from the train table.  I feel like I didn't have a good concept of how bad it was, since we were in the shelter area.  They had closed the gates to all the stores and everyone was pretty shut in.  They had the radios on, and we were finally released.  We drove home and stopped at Costco, which was pretty much desserted.  That was really creepy, and we saw where 2 semis had blown over off the freeway just past the exit for Costco.  One of our neighbors lost a large section of their fence, and a shed was blown onto a row of cars near the train tracks by our house.  The Summit also had some damage and trees blown down.  I was thankful to receive an email from Keira's school principal stating what a great job the children did at following the weather drill.  Keira's teacher also sent an email, and a note came home in her backpack.  They didn't go into the details of the storms at school, so when Keira came home, she thought it was funny that the boys were in the girls' bathroom from her class, and another class had girls in the boys' bathroom.  We are thankful we are all safe. 

Wednesday was not nearly as exciting.  However, everyone was super exhausted.  Keira was off to school.  Soren got up early to help me with the trash.  Then, we hurried to go to the gym before checking out a second preschool.  This one was in Pewee Valley.  Soren was not so excited about the whole idea, and I felt like he didn't have as good of an experience because of his attitude going in.  We made a stop at the caboose, and that cheered him up a bit.

Once Keira got home from school, she was very excited about her sand painting that she made:

I also insisted that everyone lay down for a bit.  After a lot of crying, yelling, and banging, Soren finally fell asleep after I crawled in bed with him.  He woke up again later in the afternoon, and then crashed again on the couch and went back to sleep.  He was just so tired!

Soren also had interest in writing this evening, and made lots of Os and 1s.  He would count the number of 1s he was writing to make numbers.  It reminded me of binary and Roman numerals.

On Thursday, we had a much lower key day.  Keira got to school with no issues, and then Soren and I vacuumed about half the house before heading to the gym.  It was cold, and I had to scrape the car for the first time!  We got a later start than usual, and stopped at Chick Fil A for our Thursday lunch out.

Since we took so long in the morning, we didn't have time to go to Meijer without Keira.  We took her to Meijer, which wasn't as bad as I feared.  The kids were good and they rode the horse.  Soren's picture didn't turn out right on my phone.

They also went to play over at Sammy and Hannah's house once we got back, which gavee me some time to clean out the garage and get my car inside.  No more morning scraping for me!

On Friday, it seemed like everyone was pretty worn out.  Keira was grumpy on her way to school.  Soren kept complaining he was cold.  I was worried he had a fever, but every time I felt him, he felt cold!  He doesn't like wearing socks, but wears slippers, so we got him bundled and put him in front of the fireplace.   

We stayed in this evening because the kids just seemed a mess and I was exhausted from dealing with everything. I ended up falling asleep on the couch around 8:30 pm. Ryan had put in Inception, which is a great movie. It just happens to be about dreams (sleep). I was out.
Saturday was a bit more productive.  I slept in until 8:30, getting about 12 hours of sleep.  I guess I was just really tired!  I missed the group runs that I was thinking about for the morning, but when out on my own and did 10.  It was quick and felt easy, as it should considering it was a step back week and all the sleep I had.  Ryan did two Sufferfest DVDs, and then we got some lunch at 5 Guys.  We stopped into VO2 in St Matthews and chatted with the guys there and picked up some tires for Ryan to use on the trainer.  I was still hungry, so we stopped at Phlenes Bakery for some cookies.  That store has been around forever, since the 1920s!  This is the first time Ryan has been there.  The kids had been there twice before Christmas.  We enjoyed our cookies and then headed home.  We spent some more time relaxing.  I need to do a better job of figuring out what is going on around the area, because we missed a train expo downtown this weekend that I didn't find out about until today.

Sunday was a nice day for our family.  It seemed like everyone was rested, and we had a good day at church.  My class was pretty good, and we had enough material to fill the class.  Soren learned about Daniel and the Lion's Den, and Amy made these adorable masks for each child.  They were so cute!  This is why Amy is such a great sunbeam teacher!

Keira wanted a mask too, so we traced it and she made one, and Soren made another too.

Ryan had meeting after church, and later we had a nice missionary experience with our neighbor, Jen, from down the street.  She came over to receive a blessing of comfort.  It was nice to have her over, since she had never been inside.  It also helped up to keep today very Christ centered.  Hopefully we can do more with her and her family as our friendships grow.

The weather is about to get bad again, so that is all I have for now.  Thankfully, even though the weather is supposed to hit "late at night", it is actually more "early in the morning" for Ryan.  He will likely be getting up and getting ready to work by the time it hits, unless there is a drastic speed change in it.  Hopefully it does not pour on Keira as she gets on the bus.