No Good Title...

Ahh...it feels good to back in the land of the normal! At least our "normal". ;)

What a long stint of sickness we had. From the first day Camden had a fever until the last day of our family's illness was a complete 9 days. 9 DAYS! We faired well for the most part this winter when it came to getting sick.  I believe this illness that ran through our family made up for that for sure.  It was awful and I would wish it on no one.  The worst part was being sick at the same time that Camden was sick and then quickly following was the hubby. Camden and I went a full 48 hours without eating and Mike went 36 hours.  It was enough just keeping ourselves hydrated.  Needless to say we went through a LOT of these...

It was bad enough that we were sick, but we were sick during the great meltdown in our area.  The whole week was warm and all the snow we had gotten this winter was gone. We were finally able to see our patio and backyard.  Then, just as we were back on our feet we got hit AGAIN!  I should have taken a photo of what it looked like once the snow was gone, but I assure you there was not a single speck of white on our vehicles or the ground.  And in one evening, we got hammered! And this is what it looked like..

 

Blah! I'm so over winter!  I have exhausted most of my idea for dreary day activities.  But there are some things that are great standby's.  So, since we finally all had our appetites back the first thing we did was bake!  I hadn't made chocolate chip cookies with the kiddos in ages and it was a great comfort food.  

The kids are always asking to do projects and we do at least one science project and one big art project each week.  I decided to try to find a project that would cover both subjects.  So we pulled out all our old crayons, spent over an hour peeling the wrappers off, and breaking them into pieces.

We then talked about how matter can change it's form.  I asked Camden several questions and had him write a list on how he thought the crayons might change. Of course, he didn't believe me when I said they'd change their form. He had to see it for himself.  We placed all different colors together in our mini-muffin tin and baked them for about 10 minutes.

If only I had thought to take a photo of their faces when they saw the new crayons. Their faces lit up like a candle and they were so excited to try them out. Camden was very disappointed when he knew he had to let them cool before he could use them.  It was a great project and a fun learning experience.  It was great fun for both myself and the kids.

*****************************************

Thankfully our sickies came when they did because the week after we first were sick we had plans to go to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and spend the day with my life long best friend.  We've been planning this trip for months and I am so glad we all healthy and could keep our plans. 

We left early in the morning last Thursday and got to the Hall of Fame around 10:30.  We all had a BLAST!  I LOVE football, as if you wouldn't already know that if you read my blog.  ;)

We spent several hours just browsing through all the displays.  Even our little sweet girl kept saying she was having so much fun.  

The follow photo is one of a display that was one of my favorites.  This is a hologram of a championship ring. Just looking at the display you could not tell the ring was a hologram.  But when you stepped back and looked the ring would disappear.  It took Mike and I looking several times before we even realized it wasn't really there.  It was great!

We do not typically get suckered into buying little mementos or keepsakes from places we visit like this.  So when we were called over to view our photo from earlier in the day, I was certain I was just going to keep walking and so "No thank you."  But when he propped up the photo of all four of us I knew I was in trouble.  Though I'm not thrilled at my face in the photo, the rest of the family is smiling and happy.  It turned out so well that I dared to ask what the package cost.  It was $20 for a 5x7 of us and a 5x7 of the Hall of Fame side by side in a booklet along with a 4x6 and two wallets.  Well, obviously I was suckered in.  Even Mike was excited to see how well it turned out.  Even he was smiling which he NEVER does in pictures. ;)

We had such a good time!  We followed up our fun with going to see my best friend.  She moved an hour away (just near the Hall of Fame) 6 years ago.  She always comes to visit us but we have yet to come see where she lives.  So we were so happy to finally see her home.  After getting a tour of her lovely home, we decided to go to Sonic for lunch seeing as we do not have any around here.  I had a berry/lemon-aid slushie (it was happy hour and all drinks were 1/2 off).  It was SO yummy and I would have one every day in the summer if we had one around here.  SO GOOD!  We then hit some stores like World Market and the mall.  It was fun to shop at places we do not have around here.  We then headed back to her place to wait for her hubby to get home and then we all hit Outback for dinner.  It was a long day (12 hours total we were gone) but it was wonderful! We couldn't have asked for it to go any better. I was so glad to see my friend and her husband and to be able to catch up with them.

*****************************************

As spring is approaching, I can our schedules filling.  We signed Camden up for baseball and he already had his first indoor practice last Sunday. We are all excited as this will be his second year playing and his first year in pitch. He played for a different school district last year and we were not too pleased at the lack of communication.  So he is playing for our local school district and we couldn't be happier.  The coaches are amazing and work not with the whole team but are sure to work individually with the players.  He will start his official regular season practices next month but will have early practices every Sunday through the month of March.  I think it's really going to benefit him and will help better his game.  I'm so proud of him!

This week also marked a beginning of gymnastics for our Merci-girl! She had her first practice yesterday and did awesome!! She is totally cut out for gymnastics.  She was almost into a full cartwheel by the end of the class and was tumbling with the best of 'em!  She will be in class for 6 weeks and will participate in a recital on April 15th.  She is so excited and I think we have a little gymnast on our hands. ;)

*****************************************

I'm sure this much more I can think about blogging about but I am going to close this already lengthly post here for now. I'm glad to be back to "normal" and hope to have more time to blog as I have missed doing so.

So I close for now friends.

Until next time....TTFN