Spring please...............

Well, it has been about a month since my last post.  I believe the reason to be that winter is dragging on and we are all lacking in some Vitamin D.  Please spring come quickly!
New England winter has not been kind to our 1st and only winter we are going to be living here.  We have had another two snow storms since winter storm Nemo.  The city of Newton and surrounding areas do not handle snow fall very well and so the response to snow fall seems to be to cancel school.  Snow removal is difficult and there is just no place to push it.  The kids have used up all 5 snow days that are built into the calendar year plus an additional one this past Tuesday.  This unofficially puts them in school until June 26!  The crazy part is that we are hoping to be packed up and leaving on June 29th.
Along with the snow came another wave of illness that struck hard in our home.  All three kids acquired a mean virus that involved tons of snot, coughing, sore throats, and fevers.  Hailey has now officially missed 12 days of school this year with 10 of them being due to illness.  She gets hit very hard each time and it always lingers for her longer than the other two.  Taylor and Carter both also missed school with fevers and poor sleep.  We also had our first fainting episode in our family as Taylor fell over at 2am after coming to me in the middle of the night with a fever spike.
Despite the illness and snow, Mike was able to persevere and finish his course work for his masters at the school of public health.  He had finals all last week and can officially say that he is finished with classes FOREVER.  (For those of us that know Mike well, I am never really sure if he will ever be finished.)  Anyway, now he can regroup and focus on all the research projects he has going on.  He is off to New Orleans to present at AHA over the weekend.
To add to some of the stress of life, we received a phone call from our renters in MN that the sewer had backed up into our basement back home.  After spending most of the day on the phone, we have all the carpet removed there and the area cleaned and inspected.  I guess we will have nice new carpet to return to in July!
Next week we are eagerly anticipating the start of visitors from the mid-west.  My sister and her family are coming to celebrate Easter and to tour New England.  Hopefully the weather will cooperate with all our plans and sight seeing.
I look forward to the next blog post............................