I've said it before and I will say it again: I hate January. The weather sucks and you are coming down off the high of all the holidays and family time. Being in Michigan has not exactly helped my love of the month. We didn't really have any snow through the holidays and then bam we got slammed in January. In fact the kids had only been back in school for 2 days when we had so much snow that we had 3 snow days in a row. I did try to make the best of it, but then we ended up with more snow days later in the month and for some reason we had 2 school holidays and 2 half days at the end of the month. We really shouldn't be scheduling any school holidays in January when we know we will probably be missing a lot of school for snow. I love our new house, but I really didn't want to be trapped in it with the kids any longer. And it was so stinking cold outside that the kids couldn't even really play in the snow those days.
Anyway, there actually were some fun things that happened this month. First EZ and I went on a little date to see the last Hobbit movie. John is not a fan of the movies so EZ and I had watched the first 2 while John was out of town. It dragged on a little for my taste, just like the last Lord of the Rings movie, but EZ loved it and that is all that matters. I also love that I can let him watch these movies and I don't have to worry about and sex or swearing. Yes there is violence, but at least they are killing monsters and not real people.
The most exciting part of January for me was when they finally opened a Five Guys right by our house! I couldn't believe it in the fall when I saw signs saying they were building one. And then they kept pushing back the opening date, but finally in January it opened up. I feel like we are one step closer to civilization. We went the first Friday after they opened and it was busy but they handled the crowd really well. It was also one of the half days we had so earlier the kids and I had gone to the Children's Museum and they had painted their faces, which is why they look kind of scary in this picture.
Conrad discovered a love of Netta's dress up clothes this month. Netta was ok with him wearing the dress but she had a really hard time parting with her tiara. She keeps asking for a little sister, but I am not sure how she would actually feel about having to share all her sparkly stuff.
My kids have been begging to go to a Chuck E Cheese and of course the closest one is 45 minutes away in South Bend, so finally on one of our Mondays off we headed down there. It was a random school holiday that only our district had, which was awesome because we had the entire place to ourselves. The best part is that it was a really old Chuck E Cheese and they still had all the scary looking animatronics that could give you nightmares. As scary as they are I kind of love them because that is what I remember growing up. The Chuck E Cheese itself was in a kind of sketchy part of town, but there were lots of other stores and restaurants and as we were driving home through the sketchiest part EZ said he really wished we could live in South Bend so we could have all those places to shop and eat. Look what you are doing to us St. Joseph!
The last big event of the month was when King finally got to bring home his preschool mascot Braveheart the dinosaur to play with us for a week. Like a lot of preschools I have seen, you get to bring home the stuff animal for a week and you document what you do with it in a journal. King was the last kid in the rotation and every week he kept asking if it was his turn yet. And then there were all the snow days that threw off the schedule and actually pushed his week back further. So, it was quite the big deal when he finally got to come home with us. King carried him around everywhere and of course had to introduce him to Green Yoshi.
