Catherine Turns Five

Birthdays are a big deal for Catherine. She'd been planning for months, telling us exactly what she wanted (and changing it every other day, just to keep us on our toes). I was just praying that her little sister would wait to arrive until AFTER Catherine's birthday. While Catherine thought a sister on her birthday was a fabulous idea, I don't know if she would have the same enthusiasm in, say, eight years. 

Really poor lighting, but she woke up to her selected birthday cereal (Lucky Charms), and balloons featuring princess stuff, Elsa snowflakes, and Minecraft Creepers. 

Birthday breakfast!

She spent her post-breakfast time systematically popping all the balloons.

So glad I spent so much time hanging them all up.

Birthdays also mean a trip to the (dollar) store for a birthday balloon.

Also, lucky Catherine got to have Grandma Cathy here for her birthday!

Catherine wanted to decorate her own birthday cake.

I already had big plans for cake, so we compromised and made two cakes.

Half Minecraft, Half Elsa.

A very, very fitting cake for Miss Catherine.

Catherine's cake, complete with leftover cupcakes from her school party and holes from all the "candles" (toothpicks) she had shoved in there earlier.

The original plan was Broom's Bloom for dinner, but Seth convinced her to go to Chickfila instead. She seemed quite happy with her decision, even if it made for a late night. 

Ready for us to sing to her.

The girl, the cake, and the presents

According to Catherine, you don't actually turn five until you blow out the candles: 

Present time! 

A beautiful dress and shoes from Grandma! 

Frozen books! 

Aaron was super helpful about opening gifts.

Luckily Catherine was gracious and let him help: 

We gave Catherine a mirror for her bedroom.

Aaron spent the evening talking to himself in the mirror: 

Princess Sara Catherine--five years old! 

Valentine's Day

This year for Valentine's Day I got Jon to take me out twice. First we went on a double-date with the Knoxes to Red Lobster, which was fun and delicious. Also, early, since we weren't sure when baby girl would make her debut.

When she still hadn't arrived by February 12th, he got to take me to the ward couples dinner, which was also fun. And also spent with the Knoxes. Benefits of having some of your best friends live five minutes away (and have kids old enough to babysit your kids). 

I was super lame this year and let my mom cover the Valentines for the kids. Needless to say, they were quite spoiled. 

Investigating her loot

Seth investigates his loot, with the assistance of Aaron.

Three very happy, candy-filled kids

For the record, I did buy them our traditional Valentine strawberry milk syrup.

I just forgot to give it to them until a few days later.

#momwin

Snow. Again.

I would have been fine with no more snow the rest of the winter, but the kids were thrilled to have another snow day (two, actually. Maryland is so wimpy about snow). 

Finally some good, sticky, snowball snow

Aaron liked the snow much better this time.

Probably because it wasn't up to his chest.

Seth loved rolling down the hill.

Aaron loved trying to get taken out by the rolling Seth.

This kid LOVES the snow

A little sad because there wasn't enough snow to sled in.

Aaron was so, so pleased with his stick.

And the snow.

And being outside.

Not pictured: me totally turfing it trying to keep Aaron from falling into the icy pond. Yet another activity that didn't manage to put me into labor. 

February Begins

If you're going to get a blizzard and end up with 30 inches of snow in 24 hours, it's best to follow up with a week of gorgeous sunshine and temperatures in the mid-40s. No need to shovel those sidewalks when the sun will melt it for you!  Also, huge, huge puddles everywhere:

Aaron was so happy

Princesses like puddle jumping, too

Brothers bonding over electronics. Better than fighting over electronics, I suppose: 

Then there was the adventure of the flat tire:

Our van has a sensor that tells us when the tires are getting low. Sounds great, but it's been acting up: telling us the tires are low when they're fine. We've taken to just ignoring it. 

We headed out to preschool that morning and the light turned on, as it usually did. I ignored it, also as usual. I was sitting in the turn lane to merge onto I-95 when a truck pulled up next to me and told me my tire was basically completely flat. Awesome. 

I had nowhere to go but the on-ramp. I immediately pulled over and assessed the damage. Totally flat with a large screw stuck in it. Ugh. Luckily Jon was in town this time and headed over to rescue us. I was not changing a tire by myself at nine months pregnant. 

Of course, by the time he got there it had started to rain. A nice, cold rain. First the tire wouldn't come off and we had to drop the van off the jack in order to get it off. Jon finally got the spare on and I climbed in to drive to the repair shop.

Dead battery. Awesome. Jon drove off to get the jumper cables while I sat there listening to Aaron scream in the backseat. Which was when an MTA truck pulled up behind us. The poor driver took pity on us and used a jumper box to get the van started again. I thanked him profusely over Aaron's screams before slowly driving away. On the freeway. I'm sure everyone on the 95 hated me that day. 

The day ended well, though. Not only did the kids get Dunkin' Donuts out of it (the tire shop was right next to one), but the tire shop was having a deal and we got the tire fixed for FREE. Also, I didn't go into labor. Winning all around!

Catherine took this picture of the flat tire.

It's Aaron's favorite picture to look at. 

Blizzard

Maryland has disappointed us many times in the past with storm predictions that woefully overestimated the snowfall we actually received. When everyone started talking about the huge blizzard that was supposed to hit, I was skeptical. But as the storm got closer and the estimated snowfall kept getting higher and higher, I was excited. We'd had basically no snowfall to speak of this winter, so we were ready for some serious dumping. 

Friday evening, snow just starting. 

It was supposed to last for over 24 hours straight.

Saturday morning.

It was hard to estimate the snowfall because the wind was blowing it like crazy.

Blizzards call for cinnamon rolls.

Or cinnamon roll pancakes, if you're lazy like me.

Jon is an excellent father and braved the storm to play with the kids.

They didn't last long with the wind and huge drifts.

Saturday afternoon.

We used to have a back patio.

Russian Jon heads out to take on the driveway.

Again.

Sunday morning, backyard.

Cul-de-sac

No front porch.

No driveway (despite Jon's shoveling).

No road.

Total snowfall was around 30 inches. 

Aaron was in no way interested in going out to play in the snow.

I suppose the snow being up to his neck had something to do with it.

Monday afternoon we had our first plow sighting.

It didn't do much, but it was better than nothing!

Watching the plow from the mountain of snow on our driveway.

Seth spent most of his time chasing around the neighbor kids and trying to start snowball fights.

The big plow! 

We're saved!

Little girl in a huge pile of snow.

A pregnant wife means you have to shovel the entire stinking driveway by yourself.

It's easy to climb trees when there are 4 ft. drifts underneath them.

Poor Seth.

He needs some neighbor friends who are actually home and come out to play.

This was a familiar sight for the next few days.

Snowplows just weren't able to handle the volume of snow, so it was front-end loaders to the rescue!

As far as blizzards go, this was a perfect one. It started at night, on a weekend, so no one was trying to get home from school or work. There were no widespread power outages in our area, so everyone was warm and dry. And the weather after the blizzard passed was ridiculous. Sunny, mid-40s, gorgeous! The only issue was the snowplows--some people were stuck in their homes until Wednesday. School was cancelled all week, and Jon even got out of a day and a bit of work.  

Now I think we can say we've had our fill of snow for the winter!

Jon, Megan & Baby

My name is Jon Blood and I have serious light bulb hoarding issues. I currently have two bins and a black cube full of bulbs I "might" need one day. The candle-shaped bulbs I removed from the fan in our townhome when we moved in eight years ago because I hated them? Still have them. All the old energy-sucking bulbs I insisted on replacing with LEDs? Still have them. So if you're ever in dire need of old, energy-sucking bulbs, I'm your guy.

(He did let me give away most of these after some serious soul-searching about which bulbs he actually needed to keep). 

My name is Megan Blood and I'm getting really, really close to having this baby girl. This was taken at 36 weeks when I was feeling still pretty good about my belly size.  As I write this at 39 weeks, I'm not so cute and tiny anymore.  Doctor thinks this baby will be close to 8 lbs.  But she said that about Aaron and he was my smallest at 6 lbs. 14 ounces. So we shall see...

Not actually snuggling with my childhood stuffed snowman.

But he makes an excellent heartburn prop.

Heartburn and restless legs are killing me this pregnancy.

We're ready for you, baby girl!

Not that we're in a rush to get you here. I appreciate every night's sleep I manage 

to sneak in before I get to spend every night hanging out with you!