January

Bringing in the New Year:

We had a great time bringing in the New Year at the Rupper's house.  We played games, ate lots of yummy food, and brought the New year in with a toast and mustaches:)

Nathan with the Rupper and Parker girls...one lucky "man"

On New Year's Day we split up a bit.  I took the kids sledding and Matt went skiing with his brothers.  I got to test out my new camera too.  The camera is amazing, now I just have to learn how to use it.  This is my favorite picture for sledding.

It snowed on us a bit, but that doesn't matter too much when you are sledding.  The Rupper's and James joined in on the sledding fun too.  Sierra got brave and even tried to snowboard down the hill:)

Nathan catching some air

Matt on the slopes

Unfortunately we all had to go back to school on the second.  Ya, silly I know..whoever heard of going back to school on a Wednesday?  Oh well.  The next Saturday Matt and Tyler got to go snowshoeing with the Rupper's up to Doughnut Falls.  They all had a great time--sadly I had to stay home to take Nathan to a birthday party and Miranda had to work.

Tyler in front of the falls...all frozen

And that's about all the fun we had all month.  The rest of the month was filled with dirty ugly snow, dirty ugly air (can you see how smoggy it is in these photos?), and lots of dirty ugly sick germs....in essence, what I call the dregs of winter.

The same snow has been on the ground for over a month, the lows have dipped below 0 and the highs are only in the 20's when we are lucky, and you are most likely to find blanket humps over the heater vents....even Jack the Cat has taken to sleeping on the heater vent..now that's a smart cat!

At the very end of January on a very smoggy/foggy day, and in a sick fog of my own, I had to take the first of two big exams for my teaching certificate.  This was the multiple subject exam that covered math, science, history, and language arts..basically the test was so broad that they could ask you anything from the big bang to present time and you would need to know it....on top of that you had to know all math up to Algebra II. As I was taking the test, I was sure I was failing it, but lucky for me I passed. Wahoo! one down and one to go...that one will be in May.
So, I say, good riddance to January and may we see the sun in February!