Staying in Touch

It's a hard transition for moms to go from seeing and hugging and talking to their kids each day to just talking on the phone. We try to do a conference call every Sunday with the girls to catch up on things. And the only reason I even have a Facebook account is to see what they're posting (it's amazing to me how often Adri posts things like "I should be doing homework but I'm..." -- just confessing it for all the world to know -- except that she's doing fine in school so I don't worry).

But Friday I called her in the afternoon to find out how she did on a paper that I gave her some help with, and left a message. Later that evening she called me back, and said, "I just got done playing the piano for three hours. I didn't realize how much I had missed playing classical music. I saw a copy of Favorite Piano Classics at the BYU bookstore (we have this book at home) and I just had to buy it. So I went and had the best, most relaxing time I've had in a while."
I didn't say much, but inwardly was going, "My BABY! She's all grown up!" I knew if I didn't fuss too much about the electric guitar and the rock music (as long as it was clean) that she'd come back to classical music on her own. She also said that a guy in her American Heritage class had asked her on a date, and though she wasn't terribly excited about it, she would go out with him. Compassionate too! I'm so proud of my girls (and my boys too).

Well. that wasn't so bad!

We did get 24 to 27 inches of snow, but with the manpower around here, and some help from a neighbor with a bobcat who came down our lane, we're already mobile (though some of us are a little bit sore!) See our pics below.

Snow, snow and more snow!

It's been pretty fun around here lately. We had a great, wet snow storm on Tuesday night, and in the morning the trees were coated in snow. It was too pretty to resist, so even though most snow days we try to do school, we just blew it off and went exploring in the woods. Then Luke and I ganged up on Quinn and had a snow battle (which we chalked up to learning military tactics in a practical, hands-on methods). Then we decided to do a sculpting lesson (making snowmen) and ended up with a giant man-eating caterpillar and The Snowman (from the movie/book of the same name by Raymond Briggs). He almost made us cry he was so perfect, and then he did make us cry when he fell over (well, not really, but Adri knows what I'm talking about).

Now we're in the middle of what the weatherman says may be one of the top five severe winter events (in the history of keeping track of such things) of the DC Metro area -- possibly two feet of snow overnight tonight with stiff winds -- should be interesting. Hopefully this will put a lasting damper on the Cap and Trade insanity.