I was talking to a friend yesterday and I told her that it feels like our seasons have been slowly shifting back one month and no longer match up with the calendar. Winter now seems to be January through early April. Spring is starts to show itself from mid-April through June. Summer doesn’t appear until July and goes until the end of September, and Fall is now October through the end of December.

Since we didn’t start getting any snow this winter until mid-January, I have a feeling we will still see snow on the ground and cold temperatures until the end of March and even into early April. Our brains and bodies haven’t adjusted and now that it’s almost March, we instinctively start looking forward to the winter thaw just to find ourselves stricken with a terrible case of cabin fever.

That’s what happened in our house just the other day. Normally, when we get snow, we like to go outside and play, sled, and build snowmen. Unfortunately, we’ve had a lot of head colds around these parts the past few weeks and haven’t had the opportunity to go outside so we’ve been climbing the walls and praying for warm weather. Just the other day my two younger kids dug out the swim goggles and wore them around the house. Just seeing Little Miss Throwsafit and Littlest One wearing them brought images of warm, sunny days, flip flops, and tank tops.

Is it summer, yet?

Gretchen Gotthart Skeldon, a friend from my days at Libbey Inc., died on February 17th after a long battle with breast cancer.  Even though the phrase “one of a kind” can be over used, it really did apply to her. She was kind, beautiful, brilliant, and generous.  She had an unshakable faith in God that lifted the spirit of everyone around her. I loved running into her at work because she always greeted me with a big smile and a kind hello.  No matter how busy she was, she took time out to ask how I was doing.

Back in early 2005, I ran into Gretchen at my obstetrician’s office. I had left Libbey two years earlier when Little Man was born, but she remembered me and gave me her trademark smile and a hug. At that time, I was pregnant with my second baby, Little Miss Throwsafit, and had been coming to my doctor’s office weekly for non-stress tests after LMT exhibited decreased fetal movement. I remember Gretchen’s hair was very short, which made me think that she was battling breast cancer once again. Even though it looked to me that she had been grappling with her own health issues, she took out a few minutes to have a conversation with me about my pregnancy. She was so encouraging that I remember being grateful that I ran into her.  She couldn’t help but have that effect on people because grace and hope emanated from her.

She must have fulfilled whatever it was that God wanted her to accomplish on this earth because He called her home. I know her husband Phil, daughter Lilly, and the rest of her family and many, many friends will miss her terribly as they adjust to going on without her.  Please say a prayer for them.

Gretchen’s obituary was published at the Toledo Blade yesterday. You can read it here.

Update: Chrys Peterson, a news anchor at WTOL in Toledo, was good friends with Gretchen and wrote a post at her blog that really captures Gretchen’s spirit.

Little Man and Little Miss Throwsafit were both home from school for President’s Day. We all celebrated by sleeping in and having a little party:

It was cacophonous but great fun.

One thing I have always hoped for my kids is that they find an activity that they enjoy doing so much that it becomes a passion for them. Since I never really knew how to go about encouraging them to find an activity without overwhelming them, I just left it alone. While I was trying to figure out how to introduce my seven year old son to an interesting activity like maybe martial arts, it seems he found something he loves all by himself: art. In fact, he loves it so much that from the time he gets home from school to the time he goes to bed, he’s drawing, cutting, or pasting something. Unbeknownst to me, I stumbled upon the secret to helping kids find their passion. According to an article in Live Science, the best thing parents can do to help their kids develop a passion for something it to leave them alone:

Parents who want their children to discover a passion for music, sports, or other hobbies should follow a simple plan: Don’t pressure them.

By allowing kids to explore activities on their own, parents not only help children pinpoint the pursuit that fits them best, but they can also prevent young minds from obsessing over an activity, a new study finds.

“Passion comes from a special fit between an activity and a person,” said Geneviève Mageau, a psychology professor at the University of Montreal. “You can’t force that fit; it has to be found.”

The article is based upon a study that found that for a child to really develop a passion for something he must have a sense of autonomy, which means that if a girl decides to take ballet, it’s because she has chosen it for her own reasons and enjoyment, not her parents’s desire to live vicariously through her.

That seems to be what has happened with Little Man. Only one year ago, he wasn’t much interested in drawing, coloring, or painting at all, so I never really pushed it. However, this year, his interest in art has really blossomed. If he still enjoys it my husband and I may enroll him in an art class over the summer, if he’s interested, of course.

We got home earlier this afternoon and had a great time watching the Super Bowl. Yeah Saints!! I’m not a usual New Orleans Saints fan. It’s that I love to see the underdog win.

I enjoyed many of the Super Bowl commercials. Several of them were hilarious, this one in particular

This Snickers ad made me, well, snicker:

As usual, Budweiser had a good ad:

You can see more 2010 Super Bowl ads here.

As you all know by now the eastern part of our country got hammered with snow. Maryland was walloped with 40 inches! Can you imagine waking up one morning and seeing more than three feet of snow on the ground? Well, we’re going to get our own little snow storm of sorts here in southeast Michigan. It’s going to start snowing Monday night and by the time it’s all done Wednesday afternoon we’ll have about eleven inches, at least according to Accuweather. We’ll actually be able to do a little sledding.

Of all the photos I’ve taken of the falls this weekend, this is by far my favorite. I even put  my name on it and turned it into my laptop’s desktop background (click image to enlarge).

I look at it and am amazed that I actually took this picture with my little $149 Fuji FinePix. I uploaded it into Picnik, hit Autofix and it was done.

I went back to the falls today to get some video. I apologize for all the moving of the camera but it was freezing cold and I did my best to keep my little camcorder still. You can hear the wind in the audio.

I took more images of Niagara Falls today only this time . Not only was it cold but mist rained down on us as I took the photos. But that didn’t make it any less beautiful. Here’s Horseshoe Falls (click the images to enlarge):

Here’s a view of the American Falls.

In this picture I was standing on the overlook beside the falls.

The spots on the lens were from the mist that rose up from the falls. It was perpetually rainy next to the falls but dry a few hundred yards away. Unfortunately, my video camera’s battery was dead so I couldn’t get video of the falls, but it’s charging as I write this and we’re heading back tomorrow.

One of Steve’s Christmas gifts to me was a weekend away to Niagara Falls. We left home yesterday afternoon when my parents arrived at our house to watch the kids and arrived at our hotel around 6:20pm. We’re staying on the Canadian side because there are more activities, casinos, bars, etc. on this side. But our hotel has an amazing view of the American Falls. I took a few photos of the view that we have right outside our window (click to enlarge).

Isn’t that beautiful? We’re far enough away that we can’t hear the falls, but they’ve got to be deafening. This is the view we have of the Canadian falls (click to enlarge).

The view of  Horseshoe Falls limited, but we will get a better view of it once we get out and about today.  One thing we want to do is take a ride up into the Skylon, which looks like this (click to enlarge):

The falls you see behind it is Horseshoe Falls. What an amazing view and there’s a restaurant at the top. We’re hoping to have dinner there either tonight or tomorrow night.

Stay tuned, I’ll have more pictures later.

The more active Little Miss Throwsafit becomes, the more we get to know her and what interests she has. We know she loves to play with her dinosaurs and make them eat each other. She’s picking up the concept of the food chain a little too well, I’m afraid.  Now I’m learning she loves to play catch with Littlest One’s baseball mitt ball.  The baseball mitt has velcro on its fingers and the baseball is made of fabric so when it comes into contact with the mitt it sticks. Little Miss Throwsafit loves to throw the ball back and forth with me.  It brings back a lot of memories of my dad playing catch with me when I was a kid. I was a real tomboy and I can see a lot of that in her, too.

LMT has improved so much over the past year. She walks on her own almost everywhere now. She walks so fast that she’s almost at a run. As hard as she works, though, she can’t yet fully run, jump, or skip and her balance is still a bit shaky. Making things more difficult is that she will have to wear DAFOs (Dynamic Ankle Foot Orthoses) for many years to come to help support her ankles and arches. As the years go by and she grows stronger and advances physically I hope she will be able to climb trees and fences and participate in sports in some way like I did because I can tell she’s a tomboy trapped in a special needs body.