Monday, January 30, 2023

A Cold Winter Weekend

Hey hey, happy Monday! We had our first bout of truly cold weather since Christmas. January has been so incredibly pleasant, so feeling sub-zero temps was a shock to the system! Hopefully this is our last cold spell but that is likely wishful thinking... Here is how we stayed sane during a weekend when having the kids outdoors was not possible!

Friday was National Lego Day, so Paul and I worked on part of a big Spiderman Lego set that he received for Christmas once Will was in bed. I really love Lego sets! We've been slowly working through the ones he got for Christmas but I imagine he'll get some more for his birthday in March. I'm just struggling with how to store them! Right now they reside on his dresser. I want them accessible to him as he does play with them and they need to be out of Will's reach. But his dresser looks soo cluttered. I might need to just accept this, though. 

I got up with the boys on Saturday. Will is starting to have some interest in what Paul is watching, but it's still pretty limited. 


We had our usual morning routine of facetiming with my parents, going to the library and then to gymnastics, followed by lunch at home. The morning felt long so after lunch, I headed out for a walk to get my 23 minutes of outdoor time in. I'm giving myself a pass if it's below zero but I think it was 8F so I bundled up. 

How one dresses for cold weather - a warm coat, balaclava, hat, and hood. I wore thin snow pants over my sweat pants I was pretty cozy!

Phil and Paul went to his mom's that afternoon so Phil could deal with his mom's ice dam (something that happens in the Midwest when you have a lot of snow on your roof that thaws and then refreezes - it's common when you have an unusual roofline or an older home. Luckily we do not have this problem!). So I was on Will duty for the rest of the day. His new obsession is our broom. He's also newly into stickers. I was very happy when bedtime rolled around as several hours indoors with a toddler with a limited attention span can feel really long... 


I slept in until around 7 on Sunday as Phil got up with the boys. We had breakfast and kept the boys busy until 8:30 when we headed to the Children's Museum. 

More fun with stickers and crayons

Will got a membership to the Children's Museum for his birthday/Christmas from my parents. We went there on New Years Day and it was pretty quiet for the first hour or so. This time was completely different. It was SO busy! Phil and I divided and conquered - there is NO WAY one of us could take both kids here... the boys have such different interests and it would be so easy to lose a kid! Will's favorite thing is the car wash. He could have spent longer there but some bigger kids came to the area and weren't, um, very well behaved/respectful of all the little ones? 





Overall it was a great visit, but just WAY too busy! The employees told us this was not at all typical. Clearly everyone had the same idea when they saw the forecast and were desperate for something to do with their kids. 

The rest of the day was spent at home. I did an upper-body workout and went for another 25 minute walk during nap time. We tried to watch the football games but didn't catch much of the SF/Philadelphia game, which is fine because that was not much of a game unfortunately. We spent lots of time in the basement. The nugget continues to be a super source of entertainment for the boys so I highly recommend it to parents of littles!


After the boys were in bed, I watched the KC/Cincinnati game with Phil while working on a puzzle until I headed up to bed at 8:30 to read. My current read it "Tell Me Everything" which is part memoir/part expose of a sexual assault case at UC Boulder involving the football team in the early 2000s. It is a HARD/HEAVY book, but very interesting. The author, who was a private investigator, doesn't explicitly identify the university but it's so obvious that it's UC Boulder. 

And that was a wrap! This week is going to be a busy one at work. My volume of meetings is really picking up. I have 5 client meetings today! Our sales people were all away at a conference last week so I think/hope this is pent up demand and not the kind of volume to expect going forward but we'll see... 

How was your weekend?

11 comments:

NGS said...

It was cold and snowy here, too. It snowed all day on Saturday, so we just snuggled up and pretended that we wouldn't have to shovel it all. Fortunately, while there was a bit (six or seven inches maybe?), it was light fluffy snow, so it wasn't too bad to shovel on Sunday. This morning, it's quite cold (we're look at a high of eight today!), but it's sunny and the skies are blue, so I'm going to walk to do my errands today.

Anonymous said...

As a fellow parent of little kids I recommend the busy toddler website for activities that are fun and not too much work for parents. Busytoddler.com

Sarah said...

I love a good snowy weekend. We let Minnie tear up a new to her library for an hour or so, and that helped not be cooped up. We also had a bajillion sports to watch, despite over a foot of snow (GAH-- WISCONSIN).

Life of a Doctor's Wife said...

The Children's Museum has a car wash?!?! That is amazing!

If you find a storage solution for LEGO, please let me know. My kid loves LEGO and there seems to be no good way to store them. We have bins dedicated to LEGO in the basement but still they wind up all over the place. (And we have a side table in the living room that is completely covered with LEGO.)

It's so cute that Will is interested in stickers now! I hope that he finds them entertaining for longer and longer periods of time.

Nicole said...

I'm so sad for the guy in Cincinnati who caused the 15 yard penalty at the end. I wanted to hug him. We all make mistakes! And he had such a good game and then that stupid penalty cost them the game. I HAVE FEELINGS.

It looks like you had a busy and fun weekend despite the cold! I loved your selfie because that was what I looked like when I walked Rex this weekend (it was cold, but not DEADLY COLD).

Elisabeth said...

It is supposed to get BITTERLY cold here this week. I was shocked when I saw the forecast because we've had such a mild winter so far. Oh well. It WAS inevitable.

Love your selfie - there is no bad weather, just bad clothing choices, right?!

That museum looks so fun. I do wish we had (or had had when the kids were the right ages) something like that handy. While I love living in a small town and there are lots of amenities, we don't have anything like that handy and I think it would have been such a nice place to spend a day.

Storing built LEGO is an issue. My husband displays all of his in built-ins in our office. Since it's a Star Wars collection, anything our son gets/builds for Star Wars LEGO kits goes here. For non-kit creations (which we store on top of a Kallax in our family room), a few times a year we have the kids dismantle things and put it back into the colour-coded bins.

And I'm so glad the boys are using/loving the Nugget.

coco said...

looks so cold!!! I love that you have a set routine with the boys over the weekend and you and Phil got get to sleep in or have a relaxing morning. that's so precious! I think before marriage I would never thought about husband as a core team member to carry on life. hahaha.... 5 meetings in a day? that sounds so tiring but it seems that's your normal work load. I had zero meeting on Monday except a coffee chat meeting, which made it more peaceful than usual rushing back to work Monday.

Jenny said...

Wow- that looks like an amazing children's museum- a car wash? My kids would have loved that. I can see how everyone decided to take their kids there on such a cold weekend- things like that get a little less fun when it's crowded like that.
Yes, Legos are the best! Over the years we ended up with so many legos. We ended up taking a lot of them apart and storing the pieces in big bins, then eventually gave the pieces away (to a very thrilled little boy!) My son STILL gets Legos for Christmas, and he has a bunch of them displayed around his room. Now... I know a mom who meticulously took apart and saved every single piece of her kids' Lego sets and stored them with the instructions, and she plans to give them to her grandkids someday! Lucky grandkids.

Jeanie said...

We're in a super cold spell. Almost 10 and it's still 0 out. I don't know if we'll get to double digits today. We divide and conquer at the kids museum, too! It sounds like a great weekend. Have you thought of installing a bracket shelf in the boys room -- something Paul could reach, maybe with a stepstool? I think they're fairly easy to install but not sure!

Kyria @ Travel Spot said...

That is great that the kids liked the car wash because that means next summer you can put them to work! I think that is a strange but cool thing to have at a museum. When you come back to SF with the kids one of these days we will have to take them to the Exploratorium. It is just like that with all kinds of fun and weird things to play with and I absolutely loved it when I was younger.

I am glad it is not going to be as cold this weekend because I definitely do not own a jacket like that! I will be layering up, but even when I got backpacking in the mountains in the snow I don't wear that many clothes!

Stephany said...

Whew, getting your 23 minutes of outside time when it is 8F out is dedication! I don't think I could do it, but perhaps if I had proper winter wear, I could. You're so cute all bundled up!

That children's museum looks AMAZING! What a fun place for them to explore and use their imaginations. :)