February

 Welcome to Winter aka February!  

Rebecah had a band concert this month.  The bands sounded really good and I enjoyed all of the songs.

We've had a lot of snow fall this year.  The last few years have been very mild winters with only a third of our usual snowfall.  This year we are meeting our snowfall averages.

We woke up on Valentine's day to two feet of snow.  It was a complete surprise.  The night before 1-3 inches of snow was in the forecast.  Joseph worked overnight at the hospital and he called me because he had gotten stuck in the snow at the entrance of our neighborhood.  Lincoln and I walked to meet him with some shovels.  A nice man leaving our neighborhood stopped and helped us push the car after we removed some of the snow.  Joseph spent most of the morning clearing the driveway with the snowblower.  Two feet of snow is a lot at one time, even for Syracuse. 

Lincoln playing on the deck in the deep snow.  

Kimball wanted pictures of the snow since it's our snowiest winter in a few years so Annika and the garbage can are for height references.  The snow mounds were ridiculous.

The kids and I worked one morning to dig out our mailbox so our mail would be delivered.  I was grateful for their help.

What a difference a week makes!  After temperatures were above freezing for almost a week the snow was melting faster than I thought it might.  Even more snow has melted since we took this picture. Our deck at one point had probably 3 feet of snow and now we are down to roughly 6 inches of snow on the deck.

The kids had a week off school for Winter Break the third week in February.  It was a fairly low key week, but the kids did have friends over to play and we went ice skating!

We were some of the first out on the ice after it opened and it was really nice to skate before it got crowded.

Eden really improved from last month!  She was able to skate most of the time without the skate helper and she got faster and faster the longer we were there.  She was all smiles!

Taking a break to warm up!

Kimball Highlights:

Kimball's host family took him to Belgium for four days.  Kimball really wanted to visit the Flanders region of Belgium and go cycling there, so Jen made that dream come true for Kimball.

Kimball with Jen's family in Bruge:

[Left to Right:  Jen, Piete, Sjoerd, Quinte and Kimball]

On the way to Belgium they stopped in Kinderdijk (which is a Unesco World Heritage site) to see the windmills.

Kimball also went to a Teddy Swims concert with Chris and Stefan his previous host father and brother.  It was Kimball's first concert and he enjoyed it.

Kimball is doing really well.  He has boring days just like he would have here in New York, but he's also having 'once in a lifetime' experiences.  I can't believe he comes home in four months!