The Weather Outside is Frightful

Sorry for the Christmas lyrics so soon after the holidays, but nothing could be more fitting here in the land of seemingly endless snow. Last night we were treated to another douse of snow, and then today the temps plummeted and the winds kicked up to 40-50 mph--blizzard time!! Cliff, naturally, had to drive to Lincoln and back for his first grad class of the semester today. It's about 5 hours round trip in the car on good roads, and today he was cursed with snow covered roads, high winds and poor visibility. Needless to say, he is exhausted tonight. I was just glad he made it there and back in one piece! We both did our share of shoveling this morning, but with the high winds this afternoon, we have more drifts to go out and deal with tomorrow. Ugh..... The high on Thursday is zero, so we are in for quite a week of winter weather!

Otherwise, we are settling back into the normal groove. Cliff is full-swing into his semester at work now, he's training for a triathlon this summer and he's taking 9 graduate hours--very busy man! The kids and I are getting used to him not being home all day again--we get spoiled over long breaks!--and we make our own fun. Nathan is starting to discover food textures outside the Gerber jar. He loves biter biscuits, although I'm not a fan of the gooey mess they make (see photo above!). He also is learning to bite a saltine, and today he learned how to pick up Gerber puffs and put them in his mouth himself--he gobbled down 1/3 of the container after dinner! With only 2 teeth yet he's still a little limited in his diet of table foods, but we're working on it.

Laura, of course, keeps busy with her pretend play and learning her numbers and letters. She's mastered identifying the lower case letters now, so learning to write letters is up next. Today she "read" me 4-5 of her books. It's cute to see what lines she knows and how she ad libs the pages she doesn't. Here is a great pic of the 2 little partners in crime up to something in their play tent.

Well, I hope all of you are warmer than we are!

Gina