Fun in the snow & new best friend

To say that I am sick of the snow would be an understatement.  The evening news tonight said to expect another 4-8 inches in the next few days.  The only good part of our last snowfall was that is was the perfect consistency for packing.  We made two forts in the yard with the bricks molds be bought this year and they worked great.  After finishing the first fort, James brought me the bag of snowman accessories and I tried to explain that we made a fort, not a snowman.  He was so sad so I just decorated the fort as a snowman.

So, last week Haden brought home a b-day invite and as I was looking at the address on it I realized that the little boy lived just one street over.  We can literally see their house from ours.  Haden has been wanting to have kids over for playdates so this was perfect!  Haden and his new best friend have played together several times over the past week and will also be playing baseball together this summer.  Kasen's mom is going to be the head coach and Kye will be an assistant for the team.  When I told Haden that daddy was going to help coach he said, "he can do that?"  He was really surprised that Kye knows enough about baseball.  How hard can it be to help coach rookie baseball, right?

We had Haden's parent-teacher conference this week.  His teacher pretty much said the same things as she did in the fall: he is a great role model, a very good listener, gets along well with his peers, etc.  She really had nothing bad to say.  It still shocks me that he is so good at school and then comes home and immediately begins fighting with his brother.  His teacher confirmed what we had been expecting about his reading skills.  She wants most of the class to be reading at a level 4 by the time the year is over and Haden is already testing at a level 14.  She says that she's trying to keep him from getting bored by coming up with special challenges for him and sends him to a different classroom a few times a week where they have a group for the more advanced readers. 

One day this week Haden wanted to play "school" and I was the teacher.  He wanted me to teach him something new so I showed him some math problems where you "carry the 1"- that's what I remember calling it in grade school but I looked it up and it's now called "regrouping."  I really didn't think he would understand the concept but he caught on right away and was SO excited about it.  I printed out some worksheets for him and he sat for about an hour working on them!  I kind of felt bad that he spent his afternoon doing math worksheets rather than playing but he was really thrilled about it and he could have stopped at any point so I guess it's what he wanted to do.

doing more math the following morning before school

So, today was a milestone day for me.  I went for an 8 mile run!  I've never gone more than 7 miles before, ever.  Last week I did my long run on the treadmill and it was so long and boring so this weekend I was determined to run outside.  This afternoon was sunny, although a bit chilly so I dressed warm and headed out.  My run went well and I was happy with an overall average pace of under 9 min miles. The run became a bit adventurous because there were some sections of unshoveled snow, including a 1 mile stretch of path that hadn't been touched since our last snowfall so I had to watch every step.  When I started this training, I was a bit doubtful that I would be able to tack on an extra mile to the long run each week, but so far it is going much better than I expected. 

The basement project is still moving along slowly.  Kye was been working on hanging drywall in the next room (which will be the computer/craft room).  I can't wait for this room to be done so I can have a dedicated crafting space.