New word for Silas

Silas is talking a lot more these days. Not quite sentences, but 3-4 word combos are not too uncommon for him. Here's a funny little exchange I had with him this morning.

Me: Silas, is that a monkey?

Silas: No, Daddy, chimp!

And the other day he found some black crumbs on the floor in the living room. He picked a few up, brought them to show to Jorie, and said, "Mouse! Mouse poop!" He must have been paying attention when we first moved in. (for those who were not aware, yes, we had a mouse - I captured it in a garbage can and chucked it into the woods)

Meltdown Day

On Sunday we had temps in the 60's, so we had a good time in the afternoon getting out and enjoying the warm weather. The snow and ice was melting into rivers and streams flowing down our street. I chopped away the ice from around our driveway so that the river of melting ice could flow past our house and on into the storm drain. Silas loved splashing in the puddles and throwing leaves into the streams to watch them flow down the street. Joel loved throwing big ice chunks into the street, where'd they break up, and eventually melt.

However, this was NOT why I called this post "Meltdown Day". You see, Silas is taking this "terrible two's" thing quite seriously. We've been seeing this face a lot around here:

So this past Sunday, we headed off to New Covenant for church and as soon as Jorie walked in with Silas, he started screaming. He was completely inconsolable. This is very strange for him, as both he and Joel have always been very good about going and playing in church nursery, or at the gym, or preschool, or anywhere really. We've been blessed to have no real struggles with separation anxiety. But Silas had made up his mind, he was not going in there without a fight. Jorie had an idea - let's try putting him in Joel's class. The teachers were OK with this, so we decided to try it, and at first it seemed to work as Silas was happily playing with the 3-year-olds. But as soon as he looked over his shoulder and got the idea that we were leaving it was back to the screaming. So we didn't know what to do. We couldn't leave him in the nursery screaming (even if we'd wanted to, it was clear from the workers' attitude that it was not an option). So we admitted defeat, had to pull Joel out of his class, and headed home. Such a bummer. But Silas has good days, too, and we know this phase of temper tantrums will pass.

Here are some pics of the boys enjoying the nice weather.

It's snow fun in Iowa!

Hope you enjoyed that terrible pun, I couldn't resist. Just some more pics and vids of the boys enjoying the arctic state of Iowa. That reminds me, there was a day during the week last week when the sun was shining and it felt warm and pleasant. I was driving around town with my sunroof open and it felt so nice. When I got home, I checked the temperature - 20 degrees! I fear my internal thermostat has been irreparably damaged by this Iowa winter. It seriously felt nice and warm to me.

The shoveling discharge piles (well, what do YOU call 'em?) at the ends of our driveway have gotten so huge, we were able to make a mini sled run out of it.



I also had fun building this:



These next pictures are from this past Friday. See, told you I'd catch up!



Since the snow was packing better now, we decided to build a more respectable snowman. Unfortunately, we were unable to locate an eye and the hat, so we ended up with this.

Back in Grayslake

OK, so I'm falling behind in my blogging a bit, as what I'm about to post happened 3 weeks ago, but I promise I'll try to catch up. The weekend after Silas's birthday, we went back to Grayslake to visit our friends and the boys' friends too. James and Amy Tanner were very gracious hosts, letting us crash at their place and even letting Joel and Silas use Elizabeth's room. We even ended up staying a day longer than planned as Iowa got hit with a huge snow/ice storm and I-80 and I-380 were basically shut down on Sunday.

Here's Elizabeth, Joel, and Silas having fun building with KAPLA blocks. Check out Joel's outfit - Pajamas, tennis shoes, and a burger king crown. You gotta love it. Don't you wish you could still dress this way and get away with it?

Silas is hangin' with the ladies here, Elizabeth and Ella.

Jorie went to visit our friend Alissa, who had just given birth to identical twin girls. Silas loved the babies and he couldn't resist trying out the bouncer and sticking both fingers up his nose. Lovely pose, Silas!

We couldn't resist driving by the old homestead a few times while in town, but safe to say, we are very happy to be in our new Iowa home.





On the way home from our trip, Monday night, we were amazed to see how many cars were in the ditches and in the median along the highways in Iowa. We started trying to count, but quickly lost track when we started passing 10+ car pileups. It was seriously insane. We'd pass a slick spot and then a little hill and then we'd see a spot on the side of the road where tons of cars had gone off and just slammed into one another over and over. I'm very glad we made the decision to stay in Grayslake Sunday night.

As it turned out, we didn't make it all the way home Monday either. The roads were getting a little icy and Silas woke up near the I-80 truckstop and did NOT want to go back in his car seat. So our choices were either strap him in and try to drive through the icy conditions at midnight with a screaming 2-year-old, or we could stay in a hotel. Being of the masculine persuasion, of course I wanted to press on at first, but eventually I consented and decided it was worth it to leave in the morning. And HOLY COW the roads were still really bad on I-380 (between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids) so it's a good thing we waited. The ice was so thick and bumpy on the highway, we had to slow down to 20 mph for long stretches. That would have been tougher to do safely at night and with no other traffic on the roads. But in the morning, it was no problem. And there were STILL cars going off the road, even that Tuesday morning we saw people getting stuck in the median. But we made it, safe and sound! Hopefully spring will come soon, as I have had it with snow and ice and shoveling and cold and BLEH!

A very veggie birthday!

Silas is now 2! And we had a very nice family birthday party for him. It was great that Grandpa John and Uncle Tim got to come out and visit for a couple days and be here for Silas's birthday, too.

As you'll see from the pictures, the theme was VeggieTales and Jorie went all out, with a VeggieTales cake, VeggieTales invitations, VeggieTales party favors, VeggieTales gifts, Veggie-colored plates and balloons, and even a Veggie Tray. Ha! The boys even got Larry and Bob shirts, which we bought off E-bay. Silas has been asking for a "Bob" birthday party for months now, and I think all his wildest dreams have came true with the actual event.






While Grandpa John and Uncle Tim were here, they helped Joel and Silas build a snowman in the front yard. Unfortunately, the snow wasn't packing too well, so it ended up being a midget alien snowman. Still very cute!

Pictures from the latest blizzard

Here are some pics from the most recent snowstorm, since I talked about it in my last post, but didn't include any actual pictures. Turns out we got 17 inches of snow in about 24 hours.



I included these last two to show off the height of my snow shoveling accumulation piles. That's gotta be some kinda record.

Enough with the snow already!

I think we picked the wrong winter to move to Iowa. This has been one crazy season of snow. I'm sure we're breaking records for snowfall. We got another FOOT last night. Yeah, I said FOOT. See pictures below.

These pictures are actually from January - we have even more snow now.
The kids like to ride their trikes in the driveway despite the cold and snow. I guess they are looking forward to spring.


So, I hope everybody enjoyed that Superbowl. I loved seeing the mighty Patriots go down. I've never liked Belicheck and I can't stand how the media constantly labels him a genius, when all he is is a grumpy sourpuss cheater. Congrats to the Giants and to the NFC for finally producing a Superbowl champ! (5 years since the Tampa Bay Bucs won - wow) Hopefully the Bears can get back on track next year. They still have a lot of talent on their team - too much to miss the playoffs again. They just need a little O-line help and oh, yeah, some consistent QB play. Is that too much to ask?

We actually almost missed the Superbowl, due to an adventure we had on the way to our friend's Superbowl party. We got a lot of snow the afternoon before the Superbowl and we were considering just staying home instead of going to the party, but I thought it would be fun to go, so we loaded up in the car and set off through the unplowed snow. And the roads didn't really seem all that bad, as long as you stayed in the grooves the other cars had made. But I guess the roads got a little worse as we got farther away from the city and I didn't really notice. Suddenly I found my right side tires were in about two inches of snow, and as I tried to steer back to the left to get back in the grooves, the car wasn't moving left. So I steered a little more, still plowing snow, getting a little worried now. So I steered a little more and suddenly it found a little traction and jerked to the left. A little too far to the left because next thing I knew, we went into a spin. All I could think of as the car spun around at about 45 mph was those two little boys in the back seat. I thought about what could happen after we left the road - would we hit something? would we flip? All I could do was pray the boys would be OK. Fortunately, God was protecting us, because we went off in a very safe spot - a shallow ditch with a big drift of nice soft snow. We came to a pretty soft stop, actually. Silas immediately started crying, as he knew something had gone wrong, but Joel just asked, "Why did we stop? Why did you drive off the road, Daddy?"

Another huge blessing was that Delane, the host of our Superbowl party, has a big truck and towing chains so he was able to come pull us out of the ditch, and we didn't have to pay a tow truck to do it. The car was mostly OK, but since we went off the road facing backwards, the snow piled up underneath the front bumper and popped it right off the car. So there is some repair work to be done for that, and I think we're going to need snow tires on at least one of our vehicles. These all-season tires are a joke if you're in serious snow. Maybe before next winter.

The kids hanging out at the Superbowl party. Joel proudly wore his Urlacher jersey. Silas proudly picked his nose.

So, besides all the snow and sliding into a ditch, what else have we been up to? Jorie and I had a nice little getaway weekend at a Premier Designs rally in January. The boys did very well staying at Grandma's house for a couple nights. We also recently became members at the Children's Museum, which is at Coralville mall. (about 20 minutes south) This allows us to bring the boys as often as we want, for free! The great thing is, the membership is good for Children's museums across the entire country AND we can bring two guests for free too, so we can visist Children's museums whenever we travel for free, and bring our friends. Naperville and Chicago both have Children's museums that we hope to visit soon! Come with us and get in for free! Free is always good.

Joel says his favorite room at the museum is the construction room, which is really designed for older kids, but he loves working with the tools and bolting pieces of wood onto the house frame. Both Silas and Joel of course love the room with the giant train table and all the Thomas trains. Actually, we haven't even been to every room of the museum yet, since we have the membership, we don't feel the need to rush through everything and squeeze it all into one day, so we let the boys decide how long to stay in each area.

We've gotten a little more plugged into a church here, called "New Covenant". We went to an ABF class this past Sunday for couple with small children and it was excellent, so we are excited to feel like we might have found our church home. They have very good children's programs at this church too, which was important to us. Plus, we feel like we've made some friends, from the New Year's party we attended. Jorie has hung out with some of the girls and their kids a few times (the first trip to the Children's museum was a mom's day out) and we are planning to start up a Bible study group with a few couples too, so that will be a great time to get to know some people here better.

Joel's new bunkbed has a double bed on the bottom, so of course all the boys had to try it out.



Play-doh time! One of our favorite activities.