Joel

 We’ve had a very busy month and I think this is the first weekend I’ve been home in a long time but before I forgot I wanted to record that on Feb 28 Joel tried to sue me.

I had told him if he did his exercises all month and didn’t complain then he could finally get Halo on the Xbox. January came and he didn’t get Halo because he slacked on his exercises. February came and he did his exercises consistently but was worse complaining about anything and everything.

He came home from school Monday and was so excited to download Halo. I said no. He lost it. Then went downstairs, took out his chrome book and started typing away.

He then informed me that he was going to sue me - I was in violation of a breech in contact. Also there were several articles of the constitution he thought I violated. He did not agree to the no complaining only the exercises and I did not make that clear when we made the verbal agreement. He researched multiple ways he could sue me for a breech of contract but then when I said it was only verbal and no witnesses he stopped. I told him to write out an actual contract that we can sign. I have yet to see a contract so we will see what happens. 

more snow

It snowed the next weekend.  At first they were calling for tons of snow but then it was less than the week before. Still enough to play in and more than previous years. 

Our fort was still standing.

Waiting for Brent to come outside
 

Snow

It finally snowed a few weeks ago. They originally said it would start snowing on a Friday so the kids got a day off for the snow that never came.  You never saw such sad kids all day looking outside waiting for a snowflake to fall.  It finally started snowing that night, so they went out to make a snowman in case that was all the snow we got. 

They were very excited to wake up and see it had snowed a few more inches.

Joel engineered a snow fort.

Wilbur was brought out to see the snow. He is wearing a sock Joel made into a sweater for him.

Snowball fights

Safety first

Football in the snow

The next day we went to the sledding hills to see what they had. 

The best runs were down to mud and grass but we got to go down a few times

And then all but our fort melted the next day.

 

Swimming

We are almost to the end of short course season and also high school season. Colin has been swimming sometimes both practices a day.  A few weekends we have been in Williamsburg on a Friday for a few events, driven home for the high school pasta dinner, back up to Williamsburg Saturday morning to swim 3 more events, home Saturday evening for high school meet, then back up Sunday morning for his remaining events.  It's a lot of time driving but it's fun to watch him swim. And I'm enjoying all the time with Colin.  I take him to his Williamsburg meets because we have to leave the house at 5am and Brent is more than happy to stay home and watch online!  One day I had a missed voicemail from Joel.  He had tried calling me but then forgot when I didnt answer and its a 4 minute discussion between him,  brent and Norah about cleaning.  All of a sudden in the background I hear Norah yelling at Joel, "Just because you are hitting puberty does NOT give you an excuse to be so emotional."  So that day an early morning wake up call was a gift to avoid all that.

One meet Colin made finals in 100Fly so we went and crashed at Jeffs house for a few hours between sessions.  We also stayed with him one night so we could sleep in a little longer. That has been fun and we love seeing Jeff but we will be glad when long course season starts. From what we can tell most of the meets are on our side of the bridge tunnel.

I'm glad he is enjoying it.