Single mommy for a week

This past week has been much like any other week.  Kids have school, we have dinner, play and go to bed.  But this week has been slightly different in the fact that one main person of our family has been missing.  Daddy.  I feel like a single mom most days, as I am the only one with the kids all day long, taking them to doctor appointments and to and from school.  I'm the one that gets called if someone gets sick at school and I'm the one to take them to extra curricular activities.  But always at night, after work, daddy comes home to have dinner, play and sleep, and it makes my single-mom syndrome disappear for the night.  And then comes this week, where there is no escaping the single-mom feeling as I am the one and only caretaker, morning, noon and night for an entire week.  


So in between going to school, we had dinner dates with grandparents, play dates with aunts and uncles and we tried to have fun.  We also had a good time just the four of us.  We made angel food cupcakes; for the first time I might add.  Go us!  I was, however, a little unprepared for baking, seeing as though the only cupcake liners I had were Christmas and Halloween...oh well!  

And while the house filled with the smell of sugar and the warm oven, we "pretended" to cook with mommy's kitchen supplies.

And whenever we are in the kitchen and there are chairs close to the counter, to Heath that is an invitation to climb onto the counters and plop a squat.

We could have left them plain angel food cupcakes, but where is the fun in that?!  I didn't have any frosting on hand, which actually worked out for the best since Konner can't eat it because of his inconvenient allergy, so Natalli and I made chocolate frosting from SCRATCH!

Yum!!

They were delicious!  And of course, like anything sweet and delectable in this house, they were all gone in less than 2 days!  

And now we are upon the weekend, and the last couple of days until daddy comes home.  I wanted to do something special with them, but was having a hard time thinking of something to do that didn't require leaving the house, seeing as though we are suddenly in the Arctic Circle!  And then my mind flashed to my friend's blog, my bestie who moved to Arizona.  At first a frown came upon my face, realizing how we are frozen inside our house, while she can go strolling at 7 in the morning and be perfectly warm.  But then my mind flashed to a recent photo of hers, her family outside and enjoying the sun, and while I wished the kids and I could enjoy the same splendors, it made me think: PICNIC!  So, I made a fort in the kitchen, using blankets and the kitchen table.

The kids were MORE than thrilled with the change in the dinner routine.  And I have to admit, it was pretty fun!

I have to say, tonight made my week so far.  We had a blast under our fort, and to my utter surprise, they actually ate their dinners!  We have a couple of days left without daddy, I wonder what kind of trouble we can get into?  I usually don't look forward to my single-mommy weeks when daddy is on vacation without us, they certainly are tiring!  But this week has been a blast!  Maybe we can convince daddy to go on vacation again sometime soon!  ;-)

I'm THAT crazy mom!

This morning we woke up to this:

It is the middle of January and so far this winter we have only had two snow storms.  The latter storm produced that; 8 inches of lovely, sparkling, fluffy white stuff.  In fact, so much lovely white stuff that we had a snow day off of school.  It was too dangerous to travel, with snow-packed roads, wind chills in the negative numbers and winds blowing snow at a constant 15 mph.  So what was a home bound mom and her three small children to do on said snow day?  That's right, go outside and play in the snow for the first time this winter.  It was COLD!  -2 degrees and wind whipping your face, making it numb.  So we dressed warm....

And we set outside to explore as only children can do.  We made snow angels....

We attempted to throw snowballs, even though the snow was too fluffy to make proper snowballs.  So we improvised and used already created snow chunks that the snow blower left behind....

And even though daddy had just snow blown that morning before he left for work, the wind had whipped the snow into giant drifts, that we preceded to get stuck in while trying to frolic....

And we attempted to stay warm....

And after we were done freezing our bottoms off and decided that we should get feeling back in our faces, we peeled off our wet snow gear, went inside and warmed ourselves with a hot cup of hot cocoa.

And what goes better with hot cocoa then mini Oreos?!  And of course dunking said Oreos in the said cocoa.

And some of us were so tuckered out that we didn't even make it through snack time, we decided to fall asleep right there at the table.

I may be a little crazy, I maybe should have my head examined, but we had a great time, despite the cold.  That's all I could have asked for on our first snow day.  And that made it all worth it in the end.  And that's what it's all about, right?

Another Christmas gone by

And as fast as it came upon us, it left.  Christmas is now officially over.  Christmas this year seemed to be especially fast and especially busy.  After all was said and done, we had 6 Christmases to attend, including our own.  That was a lot of get togethers, a lot of food, a lot of presents, a lot of happy kids, a lot of smiles, laughter and pictures.  In fact, so many pictures and presents that I'm having a hard time deciding which ones to post.  So I've decided to narrow it down to our own family Christmas.


When Natalli was born we decided that Christmas day was going to be a day for our family.  It was important for us to have the time together as a family, welcome Santa, to eat and open presents.  If part of our extended family wanted to come to our house to help us celebrate, that was perfectly fine, but we were not going to leave the comforts of our house.  And so far, it's made us extremely happy in our decision.


The night before we leave out cookies and milk for Santa, we write him a letter that waits patiently next to the cookies and we sprinkle a mixture of reindeer food out on the front lawn.  Then the next morning, after a long and peaceful snooze, the kids wake up to this:

The first thing we do after the kids wake us up is to see what Santa left in their stockings, which of course, were hung by the gas fireplace with care.  And besides the lovely stocking stuffers that Santa so carefully placed, he left each child their own cowboy hat, to which Konner was EXTREMELY happy!

My little cowboy

After the hats were eagerly put on their heads and their stockings were gone through with excitement, it was on to see what Santa had brought them and if it fulfilled their wish...and boy were they pleased!  It was a good thing they were good this year!

Heath got a robotic Buzz Lightyear

Konner got his Toy Story Geotrax train

Natalli got her Barbie jet

After presents were opened, wrapping paper picked up and toys opened and put together, it was time for playing, eating and lounging on our fabulous Christmas day!

We wrestled with daddy....

We played the Wii....

And we hung out and acted like goofs!

Christmases just keep getting more fun as the years go by.  The anticipation of Santa and the ripping open of presents brings me back to my own childhood.  And there is nothing better than to see the joy on your children's faces when they walk down Christmas morning and see that someone sneaked into their house the night before while they were sleeping and left them presents!


Christmas may be over for now, but with as fast as it came up last year, it will be here again before we know it!