We had four days of no snow this week (no boots, woohoo!), but another inch or so overnight covered everything back up. Maybe we'll all stay healthy enough for some sledding this weekend. I was down for the count last weekend--fever, congestion, sinus pressure, ugh! John was basically a single parent for most of the weekend. Except the part when I got up on Sunday and decided I would still make the navy bean soup I was planning for dinner. Then I said I'd give John a break from kid duty and took them to ride bikes in the basement, forgetting the soup, which burned on the stove top. A double batch. Inedible. Oy. Well, actually, we did eat it that night; Daniel slurped it up, Edward said he liked non-burned soup better but it was still good, and John had seconds. Based on that, I put the leftovers away. But when we tried to eat them later in the week, the burned taste was even more intense (once again, Daniel didn't notice, but the rest of us did.) So down the disposal it went. So sad.

By Wednesday, the cement-block feeling in my head was gone, but then Ed woke up from his nap with a 101-degree fever. Stayed home Thursday and never had a fever all day, but he still has a stuffy nose and cough. We'll see what the weekend holds.

In other cold-weather activity, our whole family tried ice skating two weeks ago--three of them for the first time. I used to skate often enough as a kid that I usually had my own skates, but John says there was roller skating, but no ice skating in Des Moines when he was a kid. Our kids have seen the rink at the mall and been intrigued, but we hadn't taken the plunge until the Children's Museum offered a special "Healthy Families" event that included free skating on a Friday night. The (little) boys actually did surprisingly well. At first they were very clingy, and let's just say that while I can hold my own in the rink, my skills are not sufficient to keep two people upright. Acting on the advice of the instructor leading the museum program, we had the kids try a kind of marching gait, that actually worked pretty well. They were excited to be able to move on their own, though they still spent quite a bit of time on their butts. We all had a good time and the boys have been asking to go again.

During our annual February thaw the week of Valentine's Day, we took the opportunity for some outdoor play, despite the lingering snow.
At the beginning of the week, our sidewalks weren't clear enough for bikes, so we walked a few blocks to the creekside path to expend some energy. The boys were thrilled to be on wheels again (hence the bikes in the basement when the winter temps returned at the end of the week.) We thought it was funny to juxtapose the bikes with the snowy background.
Our attempts to capture a festive Valentine's picture devolved quickly from this:

To this:
And here's a little video John pieced together over the weekend.