Wintertime Blues and Reds

I have officially had it with winter! I'm sure there are many of you who echo that statement. Dan & I both have had a cold that has lasted for more than 3 weeks. Three miserable weeks of sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever...yeah yeah we've been hitting the Nyquil pretty hard. The below freezing temps and grey days haven't exactly helped our attitudes either. At least back home the sun still shines when is 3 degrees outside. Despite my fear of skin cancer and wrinkles, I'm considering making a trip to the tanning salon a few days a week. I think it will help my jan/february blues. Does sunscreen work in tanning beds?

Every spare moment not working, blowing our nose or sulking, we have been packing up the tremendous amount of crap that we have managed to collect over the last 5 years of living in this house. Wow, how did we get all this stuff? Maybe I am more like my Mom than I thought;) We are about to put our house on the market and have been watching WAY too many HGTV shows. We have pretty much redecorated the place just to stage it for showings. Ridiculous? Maybe, but with a slow market and our impending move, we have to do whatever we can to maximize the chance of selling. Wish us luck in finding the right buyer soon.

This little gem of an amarylis has been my little ray of sunshine though. I love gardening and seeing this beautiful flower sprout out of the bulb over the past couple of weeks has been fantastic. Get yourself one.

Whole lot of goofing off!

Bathtime fun with Daddy. Maybe she could get a part in a production of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas!

She says "yeehaw" everytime she rides her horse. (Pretend you don't see all the clutter behind her. Just part of our latest adventure: "Sell our house so we can move to Pittsburgh")

No she does not have cancer and is not getting chemo!

However at the time of the photo, she was sick and had a fever. We were home sick, dressing up with the handkercheif (do-rag, or is it dew rag?) and playing in the Dora kitchen (Thanks Uncle Coley and Aunt Lisa). And in hindsight, she does look a little like a heartbreaking child cancer patient. But she is not.

A compostion only her Daddy can appreciate

Alli created this composition completely on her own. This is Alli's cute little stuffed bear hiding inside of an external fixator designed for the lower leg with a grocery sack on top of its head and a variety of imitation bones scattered about. Unless you are a podiatrist or have ever severely broken your ankle requiring you have one of these things attached to your body with rods driven into the bone, you probably can't appreciate the artistic beauty of this layout. However, I am sure that just about anyone can appreciate the nuttiness of having this stuff just laying around for our kid to play with.

Boone's Bed/Alli's Play Pillow

She has yet to take a nap on it, but she looks pretty comfy.

Kids online

I watched a very eye-opening program on PBS last night called Growing Up Online. If you have kids, you should consider watching this. It is available at the PBS website for free and is about 1 hour long. Here's a link. Our kids are growing up in a much different world than you or I did.

Her favorite sweet.

Science Center

We spent an afternoon at the Science Center of Iowa on a darn-near zero degree day to stretch our legs and get out of the house. We were accompanied by some friends who had equally as much fun.