Snow Again!

As I write this entry, I am also watching the snow fall. We have nice big flakes coming down. The ground is covered and the cars and roads are getting that way too. I am afraid that all the kids will be very disappointed tommorrow if they don't get to go to school! Yeah right...Jonathan has already informed me that he will not be able to go to school tommorrow because of the snow.
Apart from the excitment of the snow, we also had some other excitment Sunday night. Nathan was packing up to go home ahead of the snow and he locked his car with the keys in it and the engine was running!! Now I don't know about you but my car will not lock if the keys are in the ignition. Great feature for me! Apparently Nathan's car WILL let you do that. Chris and Nathan worked on getting the car door opened or the windows to roll down for about an hour as the snow fell and it got dark. Finally, Chris got the idea to call our neighbor and see if he had a lock set. Our neighbor, Mr. Nigh, came over and helped the others out until finally (after 1 1/2 hours) they were able to get the car door open. Needless to say, Nathan stayed at our house Sunday night.
However, our neighbor lost his hearing aid in the process. He came back over to our house while retracing his steps. I saw him and went out to help him look, along with Chris and Nathan. We spent an additional half hour raking through the snow trying to find the hearing aid but to no avail. Mr. Nigh called after he got home and told us that he had found it in his pocket! Thank the Lord...it would have been ruined if it was in the snow because it is very sensitive to water.

This time the weather people got the forecast right..Right on the nose. It even started snowing right around 5pm just like they said it would. I was impressed! They say that we are going to get between 3 to 5 inches, I think, so we will see if their correct prediction streak will continue.

My first snow shot-Look at the big flakes!

A trip to the bowling alley

Chris and I are care group leaders in our SS class at church. Our care group has two months during the year in which we are responsible for providing breakfast for our class on Sunday mornings and for organizing a social. This month we decided to go to the bowling alley and then to go to Chick Fil A and eat supper. I personally have not been bowling for some time but my kids love to go so I decided we would try it for our social. We had a great turn out and everyone really seemed to enjoy themselves. My kids did better on their bowling scores than I did...imagine that! A big thank you goes to Kate Elizabeth who really helped out with Laurie Grace at the bowling alley. She is the one holding Laurie in the kid picture. Laurie would not have willing sat still for that picture or any picture.
It is hard to organize 50 plus people and I called the bowling alley and Chick Fil A 3 different times to ensure that the reservations for made. (we still had some technical issues at the bowling alley though) I am glad that all went well and I am glad that we are not in charge of the social again till August.

Our family (As you can tell, I still have lots of work to do at the gym!)

All the kids yelling BOWLING!!

My Three Brothers

This past week, I had the opportunity of having all three of my brothers visit me at the same time. This is a rare event since one of my brothers lives in California. We had a great time! There is nothing like having all of your siblings together...we laughed, we cried, and boy did we eat! My brother that lives in California (Ryan) is in the navy. My brother, Nathan, lives in Greenville where he works as a librarian. My youngest brother, Kevin, is in graduate school in Chapel Hill, NC. Yes, I am the only girl!
We even had the opportunity to talk on Skype with my parents that are in SA! It is such a rare thing for our whole family to be together anymore and for a close knit family that is hard.




Ryan also enjoyed getting to know his nephews and niece again. The kids really loved for their uncle Ryan to play with them. We did have a funny and slightly scary experience on the way to Charlotte to take Ryan back to the airport. We decided to take Nathan's car to Charlotte instead of my big Durango. That was our first mistake! We had only gotten to Boiling Springs when Nathan's car over heated. I mean smoke or steam or something was rising from the car and coming into the car through the vent! Then he tells us that he has been having a few problems with that. As it turned out, Chris had to come meet us at a gas station and bring us my car so we could take Ryan to the airport. Chris took Nathan's car back to Spartanburg and was able to fix the busted hose!!
Here are some pictures from our time together. I am hoping to gather enough money together for a ticket to CA in August when my next nephew or niece will be born!

Laurie loves her Uncle Ryan!

The 4 Ludwick kids

A visit from California

My brother from California came on Tuesday for a short visit. I have another brother who lives in Greenville, SC and then one who is in school in NC..They are also coming to my house this weekend. All of my brothers will be under my roof this weekend! So far, we are trying to make the most of every minute and that has not left alot of time for blogging. I will write a review of our time together and hopefully some GOOD pictures come Monday!

Static Electricity

Two of my children have thick, curly, coarse hair. They have never had static in their hair because it is usually very short and so coarse. Of curse that would be my boys! They get their hair from my side of the family. With child number three, God decided to give her hair like her father's..FINE and full of static!!!

Laurie has such fine hair and every morning we have to work with it to get rid of some or hopefully most of the static. Sometimes, we put some detangling spray in it that Johnson's and Johnson's make and it is helpful. But usually she wakes up looking a little something like this...

Good Dental Health

Nicholas studied all about dental health last week at preschool. They made a set of sparling teeth out of paper and glitter. It turned out very cute! They also had a visit from a dentist who gave the kids a new toothbrush, flossers, and some toothpaste. Nicholas really enjoyed the visit from the dentist. Today he came home from school with an award! It is a Terrific Teeth Award for being able to show his teacher good teeth brushing techniques. I am so proud of him!
He is also in the process of getting rid of his sippy cup and learning to use a cup with a straw. We are doing pretty well with that, however he still has to have his water at night in a sippy cup. We are also going to start working on staying dry through the night so that we can give up the pull ups too. He did well last night..I think he only peed once in the pull up and he even got up at 5:30 am to use the bathroom. Nicholas is growing up so fast! I still think of him as my baby boy but I guess since he is almost four it is time for him to loose some of his baby things. He does have a good motivator though and that is helping us with this big transition.

My race training progress

As many of you know, I am training for a 5k in April. I ran (well it is more a walk and then run some too) the whole length now twice this week. I am going according to a training schedule that my SS teacher gave me and so I walked 3.5 minutes and ran 1.5 minutes of every 5 minutes for the time that it took me to get to 3 miles on the treadmill. I completed the 3 miles in 43 minutes 45 seconds on Tuesday and today I finished in 42 minutes! It is a challenge and a couple of years ago I never would have dreamed that I would be training for a RACE. But it is a little addictive and I guess this is a good one to have. I am looking forward to the race and my goal is to finish the race in 30 minutes! Dream big right? If all goes well with this race, I may try the half marathon too.
If all this running does not help my weight to budge then I guess I am just suppossed to be this size. However, I don't think I can sweat this much three times a week for months on end and not loose at least some weight.
All continues to go well on the race training front...