The Calm Before the Storm...Or Was It?

Yes, the past few months have been crazy in this household!

It all started with a phone call to ask Daddy to go play basketball. That evening ended in Daddy coming home to tell me that he thought he may have broken his finger...well, he was right about that one. He had what the doctors call a 'compound' fracture in his left pinky. Anyone that knows Daddy knows that this is no good...he is left handed. He had a splint on his hand for a week and a cast after surgery (two pins) for another week. It was several weeks before he was able to have partial use of his hand, so work was a bit...frustrating. The good news is that Daddy is starting to get back to normal after quite a bit of physical therapy and dedication to his exercises at home this month.

Since Daddy broke his finger and has had limited use of his hand, it seems as though we have been hit with one snow storm after another. Even with Daddy's limited help, I think I have shoveled more snow this past Winter than I have ever done in all my years combined (maybe a steep exaggeration), but with tomorrow's 'snowapocalypse,' I just might overtake that record. Really...just think about it...I shoveled about 20 inches of snow just in December. Then add all the little snows in January, plus the inch I already took care of this afternoon, and I'll be at roughly 45+ inches by Wednesday. Hopefully, I'll have tickets to the gun show to sell you by the time it is all said and done (Alex's joke...not mine :).

Just think, if we had delayed that trip to Disney by exactly one year...I'd be living it up at Hollywood Studios right now instead of typing up this silliness and worrying about this crazy blizzard that is about ready to dump on us! But, we couldn't have done that, now could we? As many of you know, Daddy and I are real strict about education and that means that Alex does not miss school for Disney vacations...

Speaking of school...Julia turned 3 and I had to actually figure out where to send Julia to preschool. This was a bit of a struggle for me...I tried to be as carefree as possible about this process as I was with Alex, but since registration for Julia was going to be more difficult than with Alex, I had to suck it up and take it a bit more seriously this time around. I miss Alex's preschool...It was so simple. No registrations. No extra fees. NO APPLICATIONS! No this and that...If you wanted to go to Alex's preschool, you just needed to sign-up before the 18 slots were filled. Period. First come, first serve. Gotta love it...and now it is gone and no more. I'm sorry, but I struggle over this whole phone-in craziness or application process. What is this HARVARD? No, it's preschool people. Having that off my chest now, I can happily say that I think we have found Julia a good fit. It is close to home and Alex's school (bonus), but we think it has the structure that will fit well with Julia's personality. My only complaint...Of Julia's millions of friends, not one will be going to the same school. The first day is going to be rough, but she is a social butterfly, so she'll move on, grow, and catch germs. Speaking of germs...

Alex's big news of the past few months (besides reading like a rock star, having more toys than he knows what to do with, actually having some homework, and teaching me (yes, me) to play chess), is that he has again caught one of the nastiest viruses at Kindergarten. I was convinced it was Strep...His throat was covered in that Strep whiteness they are always talking about. Even his pediatrician was sure it was Strep...that is, until the test came back negative. Alex was out of school for a few days, but as always, he's a trooper. He hung in there, rested up, and tried to keep the rest of us germ free...Let's hope so anyways!!