Yes, we've been out west and traveled in real mountain ranges, but yes, I still insist on calling our home Mt. St. Utter. This has been confirmed by my children. Char took B and E skiing at Boston Mills. Upon arriving home and sledding on our driveway, B informed us that the ski slope was "not quite as steep as our driveway."
This makes our driveway the perfect place to practice snow boarding skills.
For everyone who worries about our kids sledding into our road, our car was parked at the bottom of the drive. This wasn't necessarily intentional. Char does a fantastic job of plowing and salting our drive. I feel very well cared for! But, you still may need four wheel drive to visit us on our mountain in the winter.
Here on Mt. St. Utter, even with four wheel drive, you still get to hear your children make exciting comments like, "Mom! We spun around, slid down the driveway backwards, and tore up all the grass! I'm never going to get to school." Mt. St. Utter just realizes that there are times to stay home and relax in front of the fireplace. Or relax by being crazy in the backyard, being towed on sleds behind a four-wheeler, like this:
There's just time to enjoy the scenery. See the deer party in the backyard?
Plus, there's always the barn hockey arena.
Of course, now that it's winter and we're inside more often, we have to spend a great deal of time trying to convince our children that it would be better to live in a room that did NOT look like it was ransacked by a robber intent on finding all of Miss I's plastic jewelry.
The best news of the winter, though, is Chera and Jagan's new twins, Judah and Justus. We play a daily guessing game, trying to figure out which baby is which.
Like most families this winter, our family has had a share of sickness. Y has chronic stomach and headache issues. Currently, we're taking him to Whole Body Health in Medina, and they're trying weird techniques of allergy elimination on him, involving sticking vials of grains and eggs into his socks for 15 minute time segments. They're also giving him lots of various vitamin supplements. For anyone who ever wondered about allergy elimination, I'll try to keep this blog posted with the results. I feel like we've tried absolutely everything else, but if anyone has ideas, please let me know!
In a few weeks, we'll see if I can update this blog from Germany, where I'll be going on a mission trip, to help at an English camp. I'm super excited, as I'd been thinking that next year, once Miss I is in kindergarten, that I might like to learn to teach ESL (English as a Second Language.) It didn't necessarily seem overly practical to me to go to Germany and leave behind my husband and four kids for a bit, but I'd prayed about it, and God provided the money to go in under two weeks. Before I saw the paper about how much the flight would cost ($1234), He'd already provided $1236. So, it will soon be time to go to Germany.
I hope you are all doing well! From our snowy mountain to yours, Happy January to you!
