the first full day of spring.

i've been eagerly anticipating this day for so long now! it's spring!

i did not anticipate that there would be snow on the ground (and a little more possible tonight), and i didn't expect to be spending it on the couch with a sore throat and fever.

but i won't let that get me down. IT'S SPRING!

(the last time i was sick this school year was in november, when i had about 3 1/2 weeks left in my practicum. i have 3 weeks left of my practicum this semester, guess my immune system lets down it's guard a little too early)

rawr.

this month is marching in like a lion for sure around here!

the storm that hit the midwest and midatlantic was just supposed to give us a little wind and maybe a couple inches of snow. it snowed all day on thursday, but nothing accumulated on the roads (just our driveway, where it took me 4 times to get my car up and in!). it was supposed to start sticking sometime thursday night when it got below freezing, but they were only calling for 3-5 inches around the boston area.

yesterday morning we woke up and zane turned the tv on to check if there was school. a few minutes later, the phone rang and it was his district calling off school. i kept the tv on for a little while longer looking for my school. around 6, i tried to go back to sleep, but got up around 6:15 and went downstairs. i looked outside, it was snowing like crazy and the roads hadn't been plowed. i kept the news on as i made coffee and waited to see my school listed. at 7, i realized they weren't calling off school and they weren't even giving us a delay.

luckily since zane was home, he was able to drive me and the girls to our schools in his jeep. my van would never have made it.

basically it snowed until around 3pm yesterday and we got over a foot. the roads were still covered when i left school at 12:30, and the parking lot wasn't any better. i read emails from work about people shoveling their cars out of the parking lot and needed help pushing their cars from their spots.

apparently this storm was unprecedented and all the forecasters are saying that no one could have predicted what happened, because of the unusual way the storm wrapped the moisture from the ocean and threw it back at us. all i can say is that i want spring so badly and turning the clocks ahead tonight is making me giddy. sunset at 6:45?! yay!

side note: this morning i woke up saying to myself "how do you eat an elephant? one bite at a time." (i wish i were kidding). i have so much work to do for my practicum and i can't ignore it anymore. it's exciting to think that i just have a month left, but it's also overwhelming that all i have left is a month.

on another side note: the girls are finally healthy! (i think, fingers crossed!) avery hasn't had a fever and her coughing has been drastically reduced to first thing in the morning and a few times at night. phew! now zanes turn to get healthy.

tough as nails.

we headed back to the drs today. avery has had a low grade (and sometimes higher) fever since last wednesday. and she's still coughing. and even though zane and i were saying to each other the other night that we felt like she was really turning a corner, she just wasn't "healed" enough.
so, back we went. good news, avery's lungs are perfectly clear and there's no threat of pneumonia. nola's ears are just about as clear as they've been in a long, long time. but, one of avery's ears is still terrible. enough that the dr said as soon as she looked at it "oh, honey! doesn't this hurt??" avery's reply: i don't know.  that's my girl :)

at least we got an answer for her fever! and for why no one else in the house is catching this (though zane's been pretty congested and his voice has lost its strength the last day or two).

have i said it before? i am so done with this winter. so done. when avery is done with this next round of medicine, it will be spring! yay!

sleep!

zane has a crazy week at work. tonight he's at a union meeting until 5 or 6, so he'll be home around dinner time or after the girls are in bed. in order to make it through the afternoon with a 5 year old who still has a fever (ugh...) and a 3 year old that wants to boss everyone around, i let them watch tv in my bed for rest time after school. i warned them that if they weren't resting they'd be sent to their own beds to rest. they pushed the limit and were sent to their beds after a while. i was only going to have them in there for 5-10 minutes while i finished up my paper. 

2 hours later, they're just waking up.

sometimes small miracles occur :) i think we'll celebrate with greasy drive through food. and a milkshake. 

the few but the proud.

admittedly, i didn't take a whole lot of pictures when mema was here. we did a lot (got a kitten, played in the snow, went to chuck e cheese, went to a birthday party, went out to eat, painted our upstairs bathroom, zane and i took an overnight trip to nh, began the grand reorganization of our basement) and we had a lot of fun, we just didn't think to stop and take pictures. but here's what we did take. 

ps, you'll notice the absence (or off to the side-ness) of nola in a couple of the pictures. she is a 3, going on 4, year old girl in every sense of the word. it's her way or the highway :)