So we’ve finally made some space on my computer so I can work on photos, and the kids are happily riding circles in th driveway, so I’m going to try to get caught up 🙂  Three weeks ago we had 70+ degrees on Thursday, tornados and severe weather on Friday, flash floods on Saturday, and a beautiful 3 inches of snow on Sunday.  It was so pretty!  We went to early church and came home to play in it.  Good thing we made the most of it because after our lunch break, we looked back outside at 1pm to find the snow nearly gone.  We threw snowballs, made a snow woman and snow angels, splashed in the snowy puddles from the rain of the day before, and brought a big bowl of snow inside and had snow ice cream.  Gotta make the most of snow here because it might be a few years before we get enough snow to play!

Bundling up to play a bit before church.

All Josiah wanted to do was eat snow!

After lunch the snow day was nearly over!

I’m glad to have Brian home, but now he’s sick in bed with a stomach bug.  Poor, poor guy.  And just 3 weeks ago, he had a terrible bout with food poisoning (lost 7lbs in 24 hours!).  In the past month, both kids had 24 hour stomach bugs and drippy colds.  Thursday/Friday of last week, Josiah had a random fever with an episode of throwing up.  And everywhere around us at church and school people have the flu.  What a mess.  It looks like spring outside, but the germs are still as rampant as the dead of winter.

Back to my Clorox wipes.  And keeping my fingers crossed that I can dodge yet another bullet and stay healthy.

Nothing like a weekend (two in a row, actually!) of solo parenting to make you appreciate your spouse!  The racing season is just getting started and last weekend, Brian left early Saturday to race in Georgia.  This weekend, he left Friday evening and just got back tonight.  Whew!  I think we’ve done pretty well keeping ourselves entertained without him, but I’m glad there’s no more of those on the radar soon!

I was going to write more, but my sweet hubby just came up to go to bed, so I’m going to go join him.  I did sleep really well with the bed to myself, but it will be nice to have his arm around me tonight.

Here are some random pictures from life around the Toone house the past week or so!

It’s been a sweet day in our house today.  Lots more loving-one-another, and that just warmed this mama’s heart.  We had lots of fun little treats and fun times together.  Let me give you some glimpses of our Valentine’s celebrating…

My sweet Valentine dressed for school

The pink-and-sprinkle-dipped marshmallow lollipops Analise and I made for her class.

Pink-tinted buttermilk chocolate-chip pancakes for breakfast this morning. I had strawberries and whipped cream on mine 🙂

Twirly cookies in the making

Our cookies turned out great!

Don't waste good chocolate on a 2 year old boy, even if is only $1 and has a racecar on it.

Dinner this evening

My favorite part of each day... snuggling and books before bed.

Brian was off on a race ride this morning, so the kiddos and I played, watched a movie, got Happy Meals for lunch (because nothing says ‘Happy Valentine’s Day, Mom!’ like not having to cook 🙂 ), made the pretty little playdough cookies, and had a super-short naptime.   Brian came home with the exciting news that he’d won the 3-month winter race-ride series, including a nice jacket, backpack, $50 Tria Market card and $20 Starbucks card.  Sweet!  And then he surprised me by shaving his rough overgrown beard back to a short clean-cut goatee.  He looks so young and handsome!

We watched the Tour of California kick off in Sacramento online this afternoon, had our heart-shaped pizza dinner, and then capped off the relaxing family day with a trip to the ice cream shop.  YUM!  Analise was excited – and tired – for bedtime, because I’d given her a new satiny nightgown and fuzzy warm bathrobe.  I should have gotten a picture of her all decked out for bed tonight!  Oh well… I’m sure she’ll wear them both again tomorrow 🙂

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Hope your day was filled with love from your sweethearts and a sense of the Greatest Love of All.

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.  –1 John 4:9-12

This morning Beverly and I took the kids to a harvest festival.  I mentioned in the previous post that Snow White was going to make an appearance.  Although Analise wasn’t excited to see Snow White at first, I remind her to be nice and to ask Snow White if she knew Belle, her favorite Princess.  When it came to it, though, Analise was quite enamored by pretty Snow White.  We saw her several times, and Snow White ooh’ed and ahh’ed over Analise’s fairy princess costume and Josiah’s little engineer costume.

Besides Snow White, we trick-or-treated at all the little arts & crafts booths, the kids bounced in the inflatables, we munched on hot mini-donuts and hot dogs, and went on a little hay ride through the pretty neighborhood.  All in all, a lovely fun fall morning.

Always trying to get a good picture of the two.  Um, this one wasn’t it originally, but I spliced 2 pics together.

Don’t I look like a movie star? 🙂  The original picture was poorly lit bc we were in a shadow… this is my try at improving it!  Just call me “Photoshop Queen”.  (Please no comments from anyone who is eons more Photoshop-experienced than I… I know who you are and you’re my heroes!)

Today was unusual as I picked Analise up and the three of us went to do some errands.  Normally, we head straight home to naptime, which both of my kids still desperately need.  They were fairly good as we did our business, and we ended up at Chik-Fil-A for a mid-afternoon ice cream & play break.

I told them that tomorrow we’d be going to a fall festival, and that Snow White was going to be there.  I expected an excited response.

Analise, though, was not impressed.

“Is Belle going to be there?”

“Nope, just Snow White.”

“What about Cinderella?  I want to see Cinderella.”

“Sorry, sweetheart, just Snow White.”

“Aurora or Ariel?”

“No, Analise.  Just Snow White.”

“I don’t want to see Snow White.  I don’t like her.”  Which, oddly enough, I could have almost guessed she’d say, as I think Snow White is her least favorite princess.

“Ok, Josiah and I will see Snow White and you can go walk around with Grandma.  What do you think, Josiah?”

“I wike Snow White!” he said enthusiastically.  That’s my boy 🙂  Thankfully, though he likes princesses, he’d still be more excited to see Thomas the Train.

The kids went into the play area with Analise grumbling about wanting to see other princesses.  A moment later, though, she popped her head out.

“Ok, I’ve decided to give Snow White a chance.”  I couldn’t help laughing.  If it’s least-favorite-princess versus no-princess, of course she’d choose princess.  And when did she learn to “give something a chance?”  🙂

After a no-nap afternoon, the kids had a burst of energy around dinner and danced and sang for us after we ate.  There was still a lot of grumbling on Josiah’s part at bedtime, but when I put him into his crib, he collapsed onto his belly with his face in the blanket, without so much as a whimper.  Analise complacently settled into her bedroom, and after only 2-get-ups, she was asleep well before 8pm.

I’ve got the Friday evening to myself!  And though it appeared Brian was going to work all evening, Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets on, and it wasn’t hard to convince him to come watch a few minutes.  I’d better go snuggle before he pulls himself away!

He’s got big shoes to fill!

Analise, all dressed up to play with the princesses.

Friday evening, Brian and I got to go out with our friends, Lennie & Kim, for yummy Mexican and a relaxing dessert evening at church.  I’m so lucky to have a good babysitter in the family 🙂  It’s a real treat to not have to deal with dinner and bedtime AND be out with adult conversation and company!

Saturday morning we had homemade waffles, and then the kids and I headed out for a walk in the lovely cooler weather (at least cooler to us… 60’s in the mid-morning!).  We walked all the way to the bridge and fed the fish, and collected acorns on the way home.  Then we hurriedly got ourselves ready for family pictures with Brian’s parents and brother.  Um, that didn’t go so well.  Analise was grumpy and she said she “couldn’t smile because she couldn’t remember how”.

We had good naps, and then we joined Brian for a quick trip to the bike shop.  Somehow, we ended up picking up ice cream before we heded home for dinner.  Hm 🙂  I had invited Brian’s parents over for spaghetti and homemade breadsticks, the usual pre-race fare.

Today, we headed to church to work in the kids’ classroom for the early service.  We headed straight from church up the Interstate to Brian’s bike race in Dalton, GA.  The 3-hour trip seemed much longer, as the kids were not entertained by anything… not food, music, coloring, movies, books or toys.  We were all very happy to arrive at the quiet downtown race course!

This was the perfect bike race setup for me with the kids.  They had a bouncy house, and Analise and Josiah were nearly the only kids bouncing, for more than an hour.  They were thrilled.  We snacked on animal crackers from the “racer hospitality tent”, as we headed over to watch the race.  The course was short, and located on a nice little park that more than entertained the kids for the whole 40 minute race. Brian did great – 4th place!  I’m sure he’ll write more on his cycling blog.

After the race, we picked up dinner for the kids and Brian, while we headed down the road to Rome, GA where I was going to meet a friend.  Darby and I had a great time catching up at a burger place.  It was a nice addition for me in a  busy day.  Not surprisingly, the kids were happy to stay in the car watching movies and resting after their bouncy-busy-play day, while Brian worked on the laptop with them.

The trip home wasn’t nearly as long, as the kids were asleep the whole way.  Whew!  We were only gone 11 hours, but it felt like the whole weekend!

We had a fabulous weekend at home.  Brian’s race on Saturday evening was just 10 minutes from our house, so we had a leisurely Saturday morning, took the kids to their bike race (see pics on Brian’s cycling blog), came back for naps, and then Brian and I headed off to the evening races by ourselves while his parents babysat.  Yipee!!  I love having my kids at the races, but I do really enjoy getting to focus on the race without the distraction of keeping my kids from dashing into the street 🙂

The evening was very fun.  Brian’s race didn’t finish quite as he’d hoped, but his team got 3rd and 4th.  He hasn’t had teammates in his race very often, so this was a big plus!  Again, the wrap-up is on his blog. We were out SUPER LATE, and then we had a hard time unwinding after the race so Sunday morning came EARLY, even though the kids slept until 7!

Pretty quiet Sunday, which was nice.  Today we’re headed to the zoo, Analise and I are going to a movie this evening, and I’ve got a meeting.  Hm.  Lots on the agenda.  Somewhere in there I should figure out what we’re going to eat for dinner…  Happy Monday!