laowai = foreigner

RAMBLINGS

• Claire got a cold. She stayed home from preschool on Wednesday. I feel like we haven't had a regular week without a holiday or someone home sick in a long time. I guess I like a normal, regular schedule. 

• Claire is a trooper when she is sick. She's here sleeping beside me in my bed. Stuffed up and breathing noisily. I let her sit around and play on the iPad all day. Our park district has a no screen week coming up and I think we should do it. I've let the screen time creep up and up during these cold winter days. Bad mommy.

• Bea also has a bit of a cold but she never wants to acknowledge it. I tell her it's my job to find out how she's feeling, but she just clams up. She's afraid of being sick. Luckily she's not too sick.

• Claire sleeps with me when Brian is gone - it's a regular thing now. She doesn't really like sleeping in her bedroom. Even on nights when Brian is here and she is relegated to her own bed she usually comes into our room around 3:00 and wakes me up. She has to go potty or she's had a bad dream. Then I go sleep the rest of the night with her in her room. It's comfy in there and I am too much of a weakling in the wee hours of the night to try to get her to go to sleep on her own. Oh well, she's only going to be little for a little bit longer. And besides - I know how she feels - I like to sleep next to someone too.

• I was giddy with our finished bathroom last weekend. We installed the ceiling light. It was so great, it worked perfectly. But just one problem... it won't turn off. Flip, flip, flip that switch and it stays on. So the light has stayed on until Brian is home later this week and we can hopefully figure it out. Never ending projects!

• Someone said they were "trying to make friends with the winter". I liked that expression. It's hard to make friends with the winter at the end of February. We got a few inches of snow last night and today and I didn't relish the shoveling nearly as much as I do in December. 

• When Brian is traveling I can't go to sleep. I usually don't do anything useful - I watch TV or read blogs. Or I look at Etsy and obsess over objects that I really don't need. Things like Crewelwork - I have a couple that were done by Brian's grandmas and handed down to me. And I have my eye on one at my mom-in-law's house (signed Donna).

More obsessions - I have a collection of these:

But now I am loving these too:

 

• Things, things, things. At the same time I'm feeling like sorting through things and getting rid of stuff. Throwing the windows open and cleaning stuff out sounds divine.

• And I'm dreaming of my garden. Just going out on a cold day to trim the old stems of hydrangeas and coneflower sounds so nice right now. We are going to take out the old overgrown junipers that run along the front of our house this spring. I can't wait to get out there and start hacking away. Of course in the back of my mind I know that it is going to be a really hard job. 

• Alright - enough rambling. I'm going to try to go to sleep next to my little snuffleupagus here.

SKATING ON A RIBBON

We went down to Chicago to check out the new skating ribbon at Maggie Daley Park on Sunday. Instead of a typical ice skating rink they built a ribbon of ice with gentle hills. It was very cool. Bea just ate it up and zoomed around like a streak.

Claire is getting better and better at skating but she still likes to hang on to hands. 

Skating seems to legitimize hand holding in even the most anti-hand holding characters doesn't it. Not that we have any of those characters in our family:

The park also has a big new playground too. It was pretty chilly out and it made me imagine how busy the playground will be when the weather turns warm.

Fun!

BEA IS EIGHT

For Bea's birthday we filled her room with balloons like we usually do. We sneak them into her room while she sleeps. 

She requested a red velvet cake - but I may have to switch back to Grandma Dice's chocolate cake recipe for her party with friends. I was not happy with the red velvet - what's the deal with red velvet anyway???

We ate diner out and Bea got a little bowl of chocolate mouse from the restaurant so we ended up eating her red velvet cake for breakfast. Cake for breakfast - it's a good thing. 

I've been a mother to this girl for eight years. I feel that as much as I've watched her change - she has changed me too. I love her.

Next weekend she'll have a skating party with 13 girlfriends.

BEFORE, DURING AND DONE!

Well - I still need to touch up some paint and get a mirror but, pinch me, the bathroom project is done!

Here are a couple before photos. Carpet, painted tile, wallpaper and red sinks - it needed updating. 

Here's a photo of the mess during the long renovation. 

And now - welcome to our new fresh and feminine bathroom.

The girls got new bathing suits for Bea's birthday so they wanted to try their new suits and their new shower. Actually they're still up there giggling and splashing as I type this.

It's not flawless. It's an old house after all. But it functions so much better than before and I think it turned out perfectly cute for a couple girls. 

Now onto the next bathroom.

SLEDDING WITH AUNT JENNIFER

I just downloaded the photos I took from last weekend and I COULD NOT narrow down the number of photos. I love so many of them. Love the smiles and the excitement on those girls' faces.

We got to spend our long weekend at Jennifer's house. So nice to relax and chat with mom and Jennifer while the kids got some quality cousin time. Jennifer's house is truly a winter wonderland - she has her skating pond and the sledding hill plus she makes a fire - it's magical. It was super, super cold so we didn't spend a ton of time outside but you can tell by the faces below that the time was filled with giggles. 

Jennifer made doughnuts for us and then Grandma Dice brought her light fluffy lemony cookies. Mmmmmm. A delicious weekend!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

We've made some new hearts. A paper triangle heart that Bea and I made:

 

And some chicken scratch that I did:

WE MADE A SNOWMAN

On Sunday the temperature was around 37 degrees. We had a whole yard of perfectly sticky snow - just right for making a snowman. Of course Brian had to take it to the next level - literally - by building it about 8 feet tall.

I heard him say: "Hands down, this is the best day of my life, and quite possibly the last." And then about two hours later he collapsed. Bea said she was sure he will be back again next winter.

HELLO FEBRUARY

I'm enjoying February but at the same time looking forward to more and more sunshine and the thought of spring - it's in the back of all of our minds isn't it.

Thanks Lisa and Aunt Sandy for your quilt votes. Bea decided on her favorite configuration and I was nearly done sewing the blocks together when my trusty sewing machine seized up. So I need to take it to be repaired and that project is on hold again. Bummer.

This week we made Valentines for the girls to take to their school parties. I prefer non-candy and non-food gifts for school parties, but Claire got all excited about this Swiss Miss hot chocolate  with colored marshmallows. So we came up with an idea to fit a pack of hot chocolate in each valentine. I made a mug shaped card and then we tried this cool method for marbling. You use shaving cream and drizzle paint on top and after you press the paper onto the paint the shaving cream comes off easily with a squeegee. I was so impressed with our results. Claire loved swirling the paint around.

She's known as Claire C. at preschool because there is another Claire in her class.

I helped Bea make these penguin (of course) cards. She used some stamps that she made for the inside.

Tulips from my neighbor for inviting her boys to hang out at our house when they forgot their house key. Completely unnecessary, but so nice.

I made a last ditch effort to make this dress appealing to Claire. I also needed to sit down and sooth myself with some embroidering after we had a couple tough mornings. Here's the before:

And after (the jury is still out - will she wear it or not?):

Also, it's hard to believe but the tiling has started in our bathroom. I finally got ahold of a contractor that I like. I have my fingers crossed that this will really truly go smoothly to the end. The contractor is a really likable guy who appreciates our old house and listens to what I want and his price was reasonable. He spent so much time stopping over and checking the details before he even gave me a quote. I thought, he's either planning to murder me or he really is a genuine guy interested in doing a quality job. Yeah - my mind wanders when I watch Masterpiece Mysteries and Brian is traveling. Anyway - fingers crossed - I hope to show you a finished bathroom by the end of next week.

I'll leave you with a couple photos of two girls enjoying some deep snow.

A BIG SNOW

We got a big, big snow on Sunday. The snow started before noon and just got stronger and stronger into the night. We shoveled the driveway twice but by morning you couldn't even tell because there was so much drifting. The snow was above my waist along one side of our driveway. When I went out I said "Oh my goodness". Luckily the girls had a snow day because it took me (and a couple high school boys) all day to get the snow shoveled off the driveway. It reminded me of the amount of snow that they get up at Michigan Tech. 

Bea's best friend and her parents joined us for dinner on Sunday and I told her "if school is cancelled while your friend is still here you can invite her to spend the night". Well, they were about to put their shoes on and go home at about 8:30 when all our phones rang with the message that school was cancelled. It was like a miracle had happened for the girls - nothing compares to the exhilaration of finding out you are getting snow day.

Even though my back and my arms are all tired and noodley from shoveling - I love it. The mounds of snow that accent the end of every driveway. The feeling of bleached white clean that is everywhere. The sound of big snowplows rumbling along. And the sunshine - the sunshine - yes - I'll take a few more days like this.

ROMAN STRIPES

I finished all the blocks for Bea's quilt today - this block is called a roman stripe. Now we need to decide how we are going to arrange the blocks. Fun!