February

Well, the month of snow is over!  Erin tracked back in to school at the end of January, only to have nearly 2 weeks off in February!  We enjoyed the snow a lot, but I promise to get the kids and myself snow gear for next year!  We had a fun outdoor super bowl party at our neighbor friends' houses, complete with tv projected on the side of someone's house!  I had Anna's preschool conference on the 2nd, where her teacher declared her ready for kindergarten.  The questions remains - is kindergarten ready for her?  Her preschool had a field trip on the 4th to the NC Museum of Natural Sciences, a really nice museum that I am embarrassed to say we have only been to two other times.  It's really good, close by, and free!  Of course, it was more of a social event than anything for Anna.  We had lots of fun at Jimmy's birthday party on the 7th at his gymnastics place.  Erin was sure to wear HER gymnastics t-shirt so as to flaunt her attending gymnastics elsewhere.

Bob and I had an exciting dinner at Outback on the 12th for my birthday, which was very nice to get away for a couple of hours (but of course we missed the kids every second...!).  We had Erin's yearly IEP review meeting on the 13th (happy birthday to me, 8am IEP meeting!), which went really well.  Erin has surprised all the teachers this year by how well she is doing in the regular kindergarten class, especially compared to the Erin of 2 or 3 years ago.  I really hate to brag...but she's just amazing!

We got to check out a new place on the 15th for neighbor friend Laney's birthday party, Grandma's Princess in Apex.  It is an old house that a woman bought and decorated like an old-fashioned tea party place.  Princess Belle was there, and the girls got to have makeovers, wore beautiful dresses, and had a wonderful time!  Snow/ice storm #1 started on Monday afternoon, so Erin got out of school early and both kids were out the rest of the week.  We did have fun sliding around on the ice (maybe 1" accumulated) and sledding with neighbor friends.  We also made it to Ash Wednesday Mass, OT, and out for errands and pizza on Friday.  One day at home on Tuesday was enough for us!  The weekend of the 21st was the calm between the storms, so we were able to get to the first fish fry of the year on Friday evening, to our regular Saturday morning classes, then to Nina and Lily's gymnastics party (at Erin's gymnastics school this time) on Saturday afternoon.  Poor Ike kept getting sick so his party was rescheduled once and then canceled.  Can you tell that February has lots of birthdays?!?

The kids were back to school on Monday the 23rd, only to have Snow #2 hit on Tuesday morning with about 2" of heavy, slushy snow.  It was enough to cancel school for the remainder of the week though, even though it was mostly melted by Wednesday.  We again were able to get out and made the most of it!

So, that was our snowy month!  Oh, the most important thing - we decided to take a "last minute" trip to Disney World in April!  We figured the kids are so excited about Disney stuff right now that we should take advantage of it.  We also may be switching schools next year to a traditional calendar school and wanted to take advantage of low crowds and good weather before we end up on the same vacation schedule as most of the rest of the country.  So, we are going on April 11th until the 14th and are super excited!  We'll fly direct on Southwest, will stay at the Art of Animation Nemo suite again (because Grandma A. is going too!!), will be at Magic Kingdom on the 12th and 14th, and Epcot on the 13th.  We knew that meals were going to be a challenge since most people book their dining reservations 6 months out and we were well after that window, but Bob whipped up a program in Python to scan the dining site for our preferred restaurants and times and notify us when something becomes available.  So, thanks to that, we have a pretty good schedule set up.  We can't wait!

Evidently February was really unexciting because I can't find any pictures on the camera.  I'll work on getting pictures from my phone uploaded soon!