There's No Place Like Home: January and February

Well, I know it’s no shock and surprise that it has taken me this long to blog. Forgive me. I'm not good at keeping up on everything. I think I need to commit to one thing or another instead of dabbling in mediocrity with everything. My house is kind of clean, my laundry always almost done, I somewhat have a blog. I sometimes really do wish there were two of me. But mostly my two beautiful children are how I spend most of my time. I figure, everything will be pristine again someday and my blog will be up to date. Then I will just have to make sure I have something to blog. They make my life exciting.
To catch up, we have had many things happen in the span of a month and a half. Our little Clare has up and turned 4 months on us but I will keep her to a separate entry. We had a week of "no school" (or work rather for Derrick) due to inclement weather. It was a lovely time...until our pipes froze and burst, flooding our garage and a few spots in the house. Derrick is a very handy man and was able to get our pipes in working condition but it looks like our remodel has now extended itself to the garage. We're still in the process of dealing with that. However up until then, we were feeling blessed to have heat which much of New Mexico did not have due to natural gas shortages.
We began to look for a preschool for Hayden in the fall and are pretty sure we've settled on one. He'll go in the mornings. He's just so bright and he amazes me every day at what he knows. It's so precious to hear him singing (even when he's supposed to be sleeping) the ABC song over the monitor. He actually has it down. His language development is exploding. He's speaking in actual sentences and can recall exciting and scary parts of his day. He still loves to read and has a new love for puzzles. He was supposed to be starting gymnastics and soccer for toddlers (just to burn off energy and start to learn to follow instructions from other people than Mom and Dad...don't worry, I don't have visions of an Olympian) HOWEVER, he fractured his collar bone. We don't know when or how. He gets hurt ALL the time and cries and because we couldn't see evidence of it until what we believe was a week later we just visited the doctor. Poor guy, we couldn't figure out what he was complaining about when we would pick him up. There is nothing we can do but let it heal for the next 4 weeks. So our physical activities will have to be postponed for now. We'll start swimming lessons in the summer. One of these days, surely I'll be able to wear him out...he certainly wears me out. We have been blessed by having minimal illness this year however. For that I am grateful. Now onto some pictures.