So much snow!

Just when I thought we'd finally get our 3inch deep iced over sidewalk chipped clear, we got dumped with another 2+ feet of snow. Snow drifts from shoveled sidewalks taller than Alec. 100 car pile up on the highway yesterday. Our Relief Society Party cancelled because of dangerous driving conditions.

Happy Spring Break to us!

This kid cracks me up.

This picture is from a few days ago. This morning I found him wearing jeans "cowboy boots" (really just high tan church shoes) and a "cow boy hat" (really just my old floppy pink sun hat).

Outdoor Fun

When the weather warms up enough to go outside for very long it feels....sooooo good.  We hovered just over freezing for a couple of days and it was SO FUN to be outside and get hot enough to take off your jacket.  Even luckier, it happened on a day when Alec had school off. We hung out at my friend's parents' house where her brothers make this awesome ice slide coming off of their swing-set.  I have some fun videos of the kids and even myself going down but they are all sideways since I took them with my phone. I'll try to figure that out to post on here.

 We also went sledding and ice skating during that warm spell.

 

Charlie and Gwen have double blade strap on skates and can easily have fun on the ice. Alec has single blade ones and without the toe pick, its harder for him to learn but the sled helps and being distracted with a hockey stick and puck help as well.

 

I can tell winter is slowly fading because we're having more days closer to freezing than not. We went out to the local ski hill for a day since the boys have been begging to go skiing ever since Family Day (I just back-posted a little blip about it towards the end of February). They did AMAZING. We took some awesome videos with our video camera and I'll figure out how to get them on here soon. Here are the pictures we took with our camera.

Getting on the magic carpet for the first time....no problems! Both Alec and Charlie were so brave!

 

 

 Alec looked like he had been doing this for years, instead of his second time. He snow plowed like a pro and never fell once on the bunny hills.

Charlie was fearless. He even did an entire run backwards! Haha. So funny. He hardly used his snow plow V to slow down and instead just pulled his skis around to a side stop.

 

 

Gwen and I watched it all from the sidelines. Ready to help hold or go after one boy while Chris followed the other. Chris even managed to go down the big runs by himself a couple of times while the boys did the bunny hills all by themselves. Amazing.  Gwen was mostly happy to watch with me, as long as I kept the gummy bears coming. :) 

 

Such a fun day.

Also fun was the bath when we got home. These kids love to bathe.

 

Indoor Fun

Indoor play has to get pretty creative when outings outside happen on a weekly - if that - basis. Indoor fun around here consists largely of coloring; reading; hockey sticks, soft balls and a net; dress up swords and capes; play kitchen food stuffed in bags, purses and backpacks and carried around the house; play dough; baths and of course legos.  I love these pictures mostly because Gwen has her crown just the way she likes to wear it...like a sweat band, she's sporting her monkey that she often wears around her neck and her shirt is just short enough to expose her cute, soft tummy. Ooooo I could eat her.

 

 

Alec made up a 'school' for Gwen and Charlie the other day. It was so cute. He used phrases that his teacher must use like, "After today, you get 3 stay home days!" or "Now its home time." All of this he came up by himself...although I did help him expand the play (so it would last longer) by suggesting music time and bringing in treats for Gwen, then, Charlie's birthdays).

The day started with Charlie and Gwen up in the kitchen with me waiting for the bell to ring while Alec prepped the classroom.

 

 

Then he would tell them the schedule for the day. He drew pictures to represent all that they would do, Carpet Time, Work Time, Center Time, Read Books, Home Time.

 

 

 

 

I think the above picture is supposed to be the building center....I'm not sure exactly.


After a day or two like this, he added some new activities like "putting on a zombie play," - his idea, and "music time" - my idea.

 

 At the end of each 'day' Charlie and Gwen would come back to their 'home' while Alec wrote the new schedule for the next day. 

Charlie and Gwen have been caring around the Diego backpack for days going to "Grandma's House" and "Brady's house."

Crazy ....

....Hair Day.

....cold this morning.

Job Hunt - Mississippi State Interview

Chris flew out on a $1200 flight to Starkville, Mississippi at 6 in the morning on a Sunday.  Three airports, one family reunion and over 12 hours later, he arrives in the little university town.  His first layover was in Minneapolis and while he had waited at the airport in Edmonton he had emailed his cousin, Steve who lives in Minneapolis, to let him know he'd be thinking of him while he was there.  Turns out Steve was willing to drive to the airport (or get driven to the airport because of a bad sprain) to chat with Chris! It was great for them to see each other and catch up for an hour.

Chris was shown first had the meaning of the phrase, "Southern hospitality" for the short 3 days of his visit.  They picked him up from the airport and took him out to breakfast, lunch and dinner all of the days.  The interviews were casual and usually included something else like a meal or a tour of something.  Chris felt like he could be excited and unapologetic about his research since Mississippi State didn't have any issues with Poker/Billiards.

Having never really heard much about Mississippi State before, Chris was impressed with them.  Instead of being a dinky little college in a backwater town in the middle of nowhere (sorry for the horribly uneducated stereotypes) he found them to be a real, large, updated, serious university in a pleasant, small town in the middle of nowhere.  They have a High Performance Computing Center that gets a new supercomputer every 3 years to remain in the top tier of academic computing centers.

Chris gave a job talk and during various hours met with professors, phd students, deans and a local realtor who drove him around the town.  He felt like he had gotten along well with everyone and was able to be himself.  He really liked not being sick.  Chris took the advice of Elder Gavarret and made sure to ask lots of questions himself. Mostly about the department and the area. The only question he had left by the end of his visit was about the LDS community there. The head of the search committee must have been inspired because he told Chris that he thought Chris would like a chance to speak with someone from the Mormon church and changed the schedule last minute to have one of the department's teachers, an LDS woman, take Chris to the airport.  She was kind and friendly and filled Chris in on Starkville's branch.

Super short, he was leaving for the airport less than 48 hours after he arrived.  His general impression was positive like, "We've never wanted or even thought about living here before but hey, we could do it and probably love it."

We knew Mississippi State was wanting to move fast with an offer and not get caught like they did last year without a new hire because of timing issues. But while we waited to hear from them we worried and worried about our future because we had nothing else turning up and we already knew BYU was hiring someone else. The "valuable feedback" we got from BYU didn't come till after the MS State interview and we worried that since we didn't change anything from one interview to the next, and since MS State flew out more candidates we weren't likely to have succeeded there either.

Family Day

Albertans needed a holiday in February so they created Family Day.  They have all kinds of winter carnivals and festivals around this time of year too. One of our favorite parks held free activities all weekend long ending on Monday, Family Day.  We saw ice sculptures, and a Teepee, with bannock available to roast over open fires, a big ice slide, horse drawn sleigh rides, ice skating, dog sledding, free rentals for cross country skiing, snow shoeing, ice skate races and face painting!

 

It was fun! But, you guessed it, cold. There was a wind that just nipped the nose and after a couple of hours Gwen was crying, more than ready to go home. We didn't bring our sled but instead had the backpack for Gwen and after I almost slipped on the ice while wearing it I realized why we didn't see anybody else wearing their kids on their backs.  Its too dangerous. Everyone enjoyed cross country skiing, especially me! I really really really want to rent them sometime and go someplace far removed and pull Gwen behind us on the awesome sled Chris made just before Christmas pictured below:

The boys loved getting their faces painted. They even slept so carefully on towels so they wouldn't wreck it over night. Alec had to go to school the next day and I emailed his teacher to see how she would feel about him sporting a pirate face at school. To my surprise, she didn't mind! So the kids enjoyed their masks for two whole days! (It was quite hard to get all the way off and Alec's face had a slight rash afterwards...)

Scary face paint melting faces!