a little bit of icy mix and life lately

On Sunday night, we had an Arctic front (or something like that) move through our area, and with it came lots and lots of sleet.  It woke me up at three a.m. it was so loud against my bedroom window.  The kids were thrilled when they woke up and saw all the lovely icy white on the ground, and of course, headed straight outside.

So one of the things I have done lots of is laundry, because when they're outside, they get dirty in this stuff.  Little bits of grass have been all over my house and their clothes, so today I plan on vacuuming and mopping.

Anyway.

This would be Noah, not that you can tell from his facial features.  He was dressed to combat the frigid temperature.  And yes, those are mismatched gloves~all of our matching pairs seem to have disappeared.  Hashtag boy problems.

They really wanted to go sledding, so I sweet talked my neighbor Travis into driving.  :)  This is all of them waiting on him to come out.

They lasted for about an hour and a half, then we came back home.  I never got out of Travis' truck~but I enjoyed watching from the warmth inside.  

And then I needed to do laundry again, and enjoyed my view while folding at the kitchen table.

It wasn't much, but we sure enjoyed what we had!  And I think it's beautiful.  

For dinner this night, we had loaded baked potato soup.  

On Tuesday, I did more laundry, but mostly, I did this:

I read almost all day.  I finished the book Angels Walking by Karen Kingsbury.  It was so good!  The second installment in this series comes out in June or July.  

Tuesday afternoon, my friend texted me and told me there were plans in the making for our tenth grade girls to go prank the tenth grade boys that night.  Let me explain why: every year, our church has a winter retreat type event called D-Now (disciple now).  We stay overnight in homes in this area, with the youth divided by gender and grade.  The then 9th grade boys rolled the home that their grade girls were staying in.  And they did all kinds of other things to them too, like stealing their chips and Saran-wrapping the car they were in.  So this year's D-Now is this weekend and on Tuesday night, the tenth grade boys were at their leader's house planning for the weekend.  The girls thought it would be fun to prank them while they were there.  

My friend and I took them to buy shaving cream, and they had wrapping paper they were going to wrap their yard with.  It never occurred to us that the boys might take the giant cans of shaving cream away from the girls, but that is exactly what happened, and this is what they looked like afterward.

Epic fail.  But it was fun, nevertheless!  And it was good to get out of the house.  And yes, I was in my pajamas, because my original plan was to NOT get out of Missy's car.

We had to stop and clean the windows so she could see.  Then we had to clean the shaving cream off her car,  because we both thought it was bad for the paint.  Turns out, it may not be bad for it after all, so we froze to death for nothing.  Ha!  Still.  So fun!

Dinner for this night was Italian roast beef, roasted potatoes, asparagus and garlic bread.  Noah was sick on this day, too.  He came down with a virus, I guess, where he ran fever for about a day and a half.  The fever stopped last night and he woke up better today.  

Wednesday we were home almost all day.  I finished my Bible study homework for the week and Noah and I went to Kroger.  Along with everyone else in The Ville.  The boys were excited that I restocked our pantry.  And for dinner, I made taco soup.

A dutch oven full.  And we had a guest for dinner!  One of our favorite people, a young man we used to go to church with, Mike, came home with Todd.  They had been at the church for something and Todd invited him to come home with him so we could see him.  He ate dinner with us and stayed for a couple hours.  It was so good seeing him and catching up on what he's been up to lately.  He used to be one of the youth leaders at our church, and we miss him so much!  He's been working with Student Life~at their summer camps, at retreats and his latest huge event was Passion 2015.  He was a small group leader for a few hundred people, including someone pretty famous from Duck Dynasty.  He also just happens to be close friends with a few big name people, like Chris Tomlin, Kristian Stanfill, Louie Giglio, Dave Crowder...people like that.  No biggie.  ;)  It's cool to see what God is doing in his life, and where he'll go next.

We were able to see him because church was cancelled last night.  

This is my Bible study room at church.  I got there really early last week and was alone for twenty minutes, so I killed time by taking pictures of the room and messing around on my phone.  It makes me sad to miss Wednesday night church.  I love our class so much!  

Today we should be at our homeschool group, but because of Noah being sick, we stayed home to play it safe.  I will be reading a lot today.  I started another book last night, one that I pulled from my library shelves.  I actually re-read a lot of my books, and that's why I like to buy them if I love the author.  This series is one of my all time favorites, the Sisterchicks series, by Robin Jones Gunn.  This will make the third time to have read through the series.  

And dinner is in the crock pot.  I love when that happens!  Tonight we are having chicken tacos.  

What have YOU been doing during these lazy days?  Share the love!  I've been hearing lots of crickets chirping on the blog.  Wherever you are, stay warm!  It's a balmy seventeen degrees right now.  ;)  Love to all!