Random January Photos

Here are some photos that sum up the month of January for the Jean Team.  Following the absolute bats**t craziness of the holidays and our trip to Ohio, we have been laying low for the past month.  And it has been extremely enjoyable!  Enjoy the pics below.

 

Kayla started her new school during the first week of January.  This child has never transitioned well into new classrooms, starting when she was a year old. Well, transitioning to an entirely new school rocked her (our) world.  This has been an extremely rough month.  Kayla got into a habit of coming into our room several times a night; getting a lot more physically rough (if it is even possible) when playing with her big brother; not listening (to the n-th degree); and initiating random screaming sessions before bedtime.  We have been trying our hardest to be patient and empathetic, but.....arrrgh, how frustrating!  Kayla has received lots of love and attention....but there were a lot of timeouts involved too.  Here's to February!

 

 

 

Avery wanted to "go camping" one night.  This was his idea of camping.  My man.

Kayla and Avery reading books to each other one night.

This video is super dark and if you aren't fluent in "Kayla", it might be hard to understand the dialogue.  Basically, click on this video if you are a grandparent and want to hear Kayla read a book about frogs to Avery. 

This month has been ridiculously cold.  I know that we have no right to complain, as many parts of the country have seen temperatures in the negatives all month.  But mild winters are the ONE time of year I enjoy being down here!!

We have had to find a lot of indoor activities to do since it has been so cold (usually we are racking our brain for indoor activities in July!!).  One day we went to see the movie "Frozen" and the kids enjoyed some arcade games....

...we have dilly-dallied in the grocery store....

...enjoyed playing with friends indoors... 

...made shadow puppets from scratch...

....played countless board games and put together innumerable puzzles....

 ...Phil even busted out his old-school Nintendo 64 and introduced Avery to the world of video games (thank you very much)...

...we (Phil) put together dinosaur models (thanks Aunt Kelly!!)...

 ...and played in boxes.  *sigh*  It's been a long month!

 However, there were some decently warm days peppered throughout this month, which served as a nice reprieve from the bitter cold.  We took advantage of these sunny days to hit the great outdoors and, as MawMaw likes to say, "Get the stink blown off us".

And then, of course, came the icing on the cake: the great "Snowmaggedon" of 2014.  While other areas of the south were hit pretty hard, our particular area of Moncks Corner only received a smattering of snowflakes and ice on the trees.

This is a palmetto bush (I am sure that is not the technical name, but I just don't care) at my work.  Over half of our employees called out on this day.  Ha.  Hahahahaha.  Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

 

And so that is basically the month of January.  February has already been much kinder to us, as we have been enjoying temperatures in the 60's and 70's all month.  :)