Let's go waaay back to the middle of December when our hiatus began. It was a Tuesday. The school let me know that both of our girls had what our sitter calls the heebbie jeebbies! Our world's got rocked by the tiniest little critters I've ever seen. Head Lice. Turns out, these little bugs create BIG controversy these days! For anyone who has not dealt with head lice, or who doesn't have small children anymore, it's a new age for managing what professionals now consider 'a social nuisance'. The CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics fully support keeping children in school and avoiding any great efforts to rid yourself of the bugs, such as spraying down furniture or obsessively nit combing (both of which we did!). Thus began what I would call a great study of the louse life cycle, best practices for both treatment and prevention, and with school-aged children in our household now, appropriate protocols for public schools. You often hear about 28-day rehab facilities; this began what I'll call our 28-days to freedom from head lice. Fortunately for us it was a mild case and a quick path to being bug free. The thing about these little pests though, is it takes a long time to be certain they are really gone. Approximately 14-20 days to be exact. So we had two weeks of obsessive vacuuming, laundering, and nit picking, followed by routine follow-up checks every 4-days thereafter until we reached the SAFE zone. That's the thing about public school though. With little ones, you're never truly safe from these bugs - they do not discriminate! This is the second leading childhood contagion next to the common cold. (Can you tell I've read up?) So we've adopted some new routines at home to help prevent this from happening again. It was a costly, stressful, time-consuming endeavor but we are now oh so very educated! If you ever find yourself needing to nit-pick, I can share some laughter and expertise with you! We were lucky to have Christmas break fall during our road to recovery so we could have some confidence that our kiddos wouldn't be dragging anything back into the house and we could have some respite from our usual routine as we were diligently trying to ensure this wouldn't linger on. While there may have been a moment or two when I thought this might ruin Christmas, thankfully I snapped out of it and got busy beating this distraction, making sure our girls were calm about it, and moving on with our lives.
We had a spectacular Christmas! One of the joys of having school-aged children is all of the fun things they are learning and sharing with us. Our school features a Kindergarten Christmas concert and Stella had fun practicing her songs leading up to the big day and we were so happy to see her up on stage - middle of the back row.
This year we joined Grammie for the holiday party at the Colton Am-Vets. It was such a treat decorating cookies, telling Santa what we wanted for Christmas, inter-coming with the elves, and opening Frozen dollies!
Just before Christmas we were blessed with some spectacular weather! Daddy took Claire shopping to buy a present for her sister and Stella and I did some racing in the driveway. It was completely Stella's idea to draw a two-sided race track and see who could get to the end the fastest. When I suggested to time each other, she asked to keep score! Track star in the making perhaps?
We ended up getting rained out but enjoyed the fresh air and learning about 'on your marks, set, go!'.
After a while Stella ended up playing board games with her new animal friends. It was great seeing her entertain herself by taking a turn for each of them!
The girls were ecstatic to get to spend a day with Niece when daddy had a game over Christmas break and Mommy was at work. As usual she showered them with holiday cheer. As soon as they were able they brought out all of their new nail polish and gave themselves manicures!
Speaking of Basketball, we've had plenty of that the past three months! Here are a few shots of daddy at work. While we aren't always feeling very welcomed by other spectators (our kiddos don't necessarily want to watch and aren't of an age where they can sit still through an entire game) we've been to a few games and this year, for the first time ever, Mommy even hired a sitter so she could attend a game and support the panthers.
To our surprise we were the only birthday party scheduled for the day so our party planner gave us lots of attention and even allowed Claire to have a special chance to try out the ticket blaster! We can't say as parents we love Chuck E. Cheese but our girls do so this 2-hour event turned into a four hour visit and by the end poor Claire was asking to leave. She had had enough! This party was definitely worth the drive - it was great fun!
Hotel fun on New Year's Eve!
At Destiny we checked our the Sky Tykes Ropes Course. While both girls enjoyed it, Stella really loved it. Mommy ended up taking Claire for a sweet cupcake cookie treat while Stella continued to climb. Claire wasn't tall enough for the Canyon Climb Adventure but both girls said they wanted to try it so perhaps someday we'll make it back for the bigger challenge!
On the way home from Syracuse we stopped at Grammie and Pa's to have dinner and celebrate Stella's birthday with them too!
January seemed to go by with the blink of an eye. Here are some pics of a few things we did last month: dancing to our new dance revolution game, going to the BMC-St.Lawrence Central Coaches vs. Cancer Basketball tournament, working on our school 100's day project, and putting together Mickey cheese, pepperoni, and crackers for snack day in Stella's classroom. Mom and Dad also made a quick trip to Burlington, VT with some friends and the girls had a sleep over at Gigi and Cami's. That was a treat for everyone!
January was also the month for mini-mania! A poor deer ran out in front of Randy on his way home from the gym one evening. While we aren't certain of the fate of the deer, our mini was totaled!
Since we loved the Mini Cooper so much, and had it for such a short time, we weren't ready to move on to another make and model. We began an internet search for another mini in our price range with some features we would most enjoy: mainly the Clubman, with a sunroof, and automatic transmission. We found one in PA and planned a road trip! Thanks to Grammie and Pa for looking after the girls, we were able to have a short trip out of town to buy this new gem. It was very exciting and nice to have some quality time together without any distractions!
On to February. It's been a quick two weeks full of excitement! The Pre-K and Headstart kids hosted families for a Valentine-themed concert. It was super cute! Claire-Bear did a super job, especially with 'Do you want to build a snowman?'.The kids celebrated their 100th day of school. We were able to visit school that evening and see the kindergarten projects and eat Spaghetti dinner at school. It was a fun school-night outing and as always was great to see their teachers and the energy at their elementary school!
While we opted not to visit daddy's gym for 'senior night' as usual the athletes spoiled our girls with a gift. They had fun playing with the bag too!
For Valentine's we came up with a do-it-yourself book wrap and handed out early readers. It took some convincing for Claire to finish writing her name on all of the hearts for her classmates but Stella was very happy to work on this project!
On the last day of school before mid-winter break the girls had a fun time celebrating with Valentine's Day parties at school. We are super proud to say we also were able to visit school for the student of the quarter ceremony and watch Stella receive an award for outstanding character. Her teacher said "she is a self-motivator, consistently tries her best, makes good choices, and loves making new discoveries throughout the day". We are so pleased with both of their progress and how happy they seem to be at school.
Next up - a week home with daddy!
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