Snowed in!

The kids and I drove down to IA on Saturday for my niece's second birthday party. We came intending to return Sunday, but knowing full well that the weather may not cooperate until Monday or even Tuesday. Well, here we are, snowed in in IA. Actually, IA isn't too bad, but the roads between IA and our house in MN are pretty bad and not really appropriate for traveling upon with a minivan and two small children. So here we are and Jason is in MN in a very quiet and lonely house. He stayed home as I gave him the instructions to "Finish the basement while we're gone". Not really, my instructions were more like, "Make sure you eat, drink and sleep while we're gone." Whenever Jason works in the basement he gets in this mindset that he cannot stop and will not stop until he feels light-headed and dizzy from lack of eating, drinking and/or sleeping. I really don't want to return to a passed out Jason in the basement.

We've been enjoying some extended time with Grandpa Don and Grandma Sue. Sam and I sleep in the upstairs guest room. To be more specific, Sam actually sleeps in the upstairs guest room closet and I sleep in the guest room. The closet is a walk-in, lest you think I am a completely awful parent. When we arrived Sam ran up to the guest room closet and excitedly said, "There's my room!" He apparently likes having his own space, however cramped it might be. He's been sleeping very well, as always, and Matthew is doing fine too as he gets his own room on the main level. It's actually a bedroom and he doesn't sleep in the closet so he's quite a spoiled child. Sam doesn't bother me too much during the night as he only a few times has said, "Mommy?" in the middle of the night. In the mornings he says, "Mommy, get me!" and I do if it's after 6:30 or so, otherwise I tell him it's the middle of the night. The white lies parents must tell to survive toddlerhood.

We've played lots of cars and animals as Grandpa and Grandma have a plethora of farm and zoo animals. Matthew enjoys pulling up and looking out the windows which are less than a foot off the floor so they're very easy to pull up on. He also enjoys trying to get to places he's not supposed to be like near the stairs and computer cords. My little Matthew is becoming quite independent too these days. I offer him my hands to help pull him up, but he'd rather crawl/slither his way over to a structure and pull himself up. Once he's up, he lets go with one hand and turns around and waves then switches hands and otherwise shows off his skills.

I keep looking up the MN road conditions and they pretty much remain pretty yucky. Now about the southern quarter of the trip appears to be decent, but the remainder is classified "difficult driving conditions." We'll have to see how it progresses as the day goes on, but it appears that we may be enjoying another evening at the farm.