Olympic Fever, Actual Fever and Cabin Fever!

We've had some crazy cold, snowy weather or actual winter as I like to remind myself.  The past few years we've had a relatively mild winter so while this winter might be closer to "normal" in the record books, it isn't what we've experienced the past few years.  It could also be the fact that the kids are older, louder and more energetic that makes the winter feel different as well :-)  Either way, with some really crummy weather, a round of flu for James and some extremely cold weather we've spent more time inside than I'd like recently.  To make the best of it, when we're healthy we've had lots of playdates with friends and gotten into the olympics.  We made our own podium that the kids kept testing out:

 Even though our house is not particularly warm, Catherine enjoys running around announcing "I naked I naked" while I'm huddled in a heavy sweater hovered over my coffee.  Inevitably it's followed by a "take my picture take my picture!"

 We hosted an olympic playdate with a torch run:

 Some slalom and moguls:

 We did some olympic ring art:

 And the kids with their finished medals (I'm still cleaning up gold, silver and bronze glitter!)

We swapped some babysitting with some friends and let the kids go wild with the "kids" camera!  One of Matthew's friends took this one for us:

 We made two trips to the museum last week where Matthew hid behind the bison:

 And Catherine rocked the park ranger outfit:

 Olivia spends most of her time stealing all the heat in the house by sleeping on the heating vents or snuggling in our blankets and giving us the "don't you dare move me" look:

 We had a Valentine's arts and crafts playdate the other day.  Matthew was very serious!

 Then this past weekend we celebrated James' bday.  A few weeks ago Matthew convinced himself (and me) that James really wanted a Turbo birthday cake.  Turbo is a mediocre movie about a snail that races in the Indy 500.  As we made the cake, Matthew was pretty disappointed that the snails weren't blue so he has clarified that this cake is "not Turbo but like Turbo but the snails have different names like Slade and . . . " I wish I remember the rest of the names he gave them because they were hilarious.  We also made one car out of a fiber one brownie that's been floating around the pantry and the chocolate in the middle is an unwrapped gold coin that I could not convince Matthew to leave wrapped.  It was the prize.

 After we celebrated we headed to the children's symphony.  Matthew's favorite was the baritone.  Catherine wasn't interested in trying out the instruments but she was an enthusiastic audience participant.  I wish I had taken a pic because she was very excited to cheer on the symphony.

 We also got to meet "Indiana Jones" in the lobby.  He luckily saved the symphony from some snakes and found the treasure!

 It was all very exhausting and when we went to tell Matthew he could get up to go see the Lego Movie with daddy, he was totally zonked.

Matthew got to go to his friends' house when he woke up and James and I got to go out ourselves so there was no real disappointment in missing the movie thankfully.   And last but not least, a picture from our playdate this morning.  He is certainly an adorable little cow: