Renewed love for music

Ever since we went to see Les Miserables, Aaron and I have been kind of obsessed with the music. We've been familiar with it for so long, but seeing it again definitely rekindled our love for this musical, its message, and the amazing music. This is the 25th Anniversary for Les Mis so they did a big celebration in London in the Fall to kick off the tour. Aaron has had a lot of fun searching through YouTube videos and seeing clips from that performance. This Valjean Quartet is definitely the favorite. And Aaron has a new hero Alfie Boe -- check it out! Amazing, huh?! Four men, with that kind of talent, all singing at the same time -- WHOA! Alfie is "the key change guy" who definitely steals the show. His voice is just really nice to listen to. Wow! If you get a minute, see if you can't waste some time on YouTube and see some of the other clips from this show. Samantha Barks makes an awesome Eponine! On a side note, I got to sing with my lover yesterday in church. I just have to say how much I love that! I'm so lucky to have married a man that loves music as much as I do (if not more) and sings with me. It is definitely one of our favorite things to do together. I love you Aaron. Thanks for singing.

Valentine's

Aaron and I did most of our celebrating on Saturday. During the day he left the house to fill up the car and get a haircut and came back with these: That night we drove into the city and ate really yummy Japanese food at Ai -- this is the only picture I was able to sneak -- it didn't seem very socially acceptable to take pics there in the romantic lighting. I really couldn't get over how good the food tasted, probably mostly because I didn't have to cook it.

From there we cabbed over to Cadillac Palace Theater to see "Les Miserables." Aaron purchased the tickets as part of my Christmas, so we've been looking forward to it for a while. It was incredible -- just a lot of really talented people!

It was a perfect night and I'm so happy I got to celebrate another Valentine's Day with my hot man! I love you Aaron!

On V-Day I served my boys my traditional breakfast -- heart shaped french toast. Wesley was probably the most excited. My little boys also got a little candy and silly putty they were pretty excited about. Dove chocolate for Aaron. I love all three of my boys!

Backyard Sledding (updated)

Our friends invited us over to enjoy their own man-made sledding hill. It was the perfect size for the kids. They had a blast!

Cute friends (I almost missed them!)We warmed up with homemade vanilla steamers---YUM! Thanks Noordas!

Blizzard report

We've seen quite a bit of snow around here. Estimates are between 16 and 20 inches, although it's hard to get accurate measurements since it drifted so much. The boys were pretty excited to see all the snow when they woke up.

(that's a 12 inch ruler) They were eager to get outside and help Dad shovel. There was a wall of snow waiting outside the garage door. Aaron spent at least 2 1/2 hours shoveling, taking a couple breaks to try to keep working a bit in the basement. I tried to do a little shoveling while he was on a conference call and was reprimanded by the neighbors on both sides. Why is pregnant shoveling so forbidden??

It took literally hours to get to the end of the driveway.

All bundled up

Dillon complained that his face was getting cold--we fixed that problem!

The boys loved the snow

Dillon complained that his legs were tired--it was hard work getting through that deep snow!

We had another wall of snow at the front door

Thanks to the neighbor's snow blower, Aaron finally got to the end of the driveway.School has been cancelled for the last two days and all the neighborhood kids are loving it!

We've got some pretty good mountains of snow now:

It was fun to drive around and see the mountains all over town. It's crazy!

So we lived through the "Chicago Blizzard of 2011" and we've even left the house a couple times. School is supposed to be back in session tomorrow, but I think it will still be awhile before all the side roads and parking lots are cleared. We really need it to get above freezing and melt some of this, but we've been in the single and negative temps every since the storm and it's not supposed to get above 20 anytime soon. Guess we'll just have to get used to living in a winter wonderland---it's actually kind of pretty.

Chicago Blizzard

Here are a couple little videos of the view outside our front door right now.