snow days

Even though I'm no longer affected by snow days (in terms of a day off work), I still get excited when Fayette County schools are closed. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, a snow day actually means an inconvenience for me because I lose my office hours (Lauren Clay's Mothers Day Out is cancelled when county schools are out.) Still, I love a snow day.
It would be more fun if this year's snow days were actually snowy. Lauren Clay has asked daily when we can make a snowman, but we've had more ice than powder. Bill Meck is predicting snowman-levels of snow for the weekend, but the weather channel isn't even calling for precipitation, so I'm not hopeful we'll have a good, fun snow this year. We've had enough to at least enough to look like winter, but we sure would love to build Frosty before the season ends.

During yesterday's snow day I did ALL the laundry and put away all my maternity clothes. There was a point in both pregnancies when I thought I'd never go back to regular jeans (an elastic band is so nice with an expanding belly), but now that I'm fitting back into button-up jeans, I'm ready to say goodbye to the "big" stuff for a while... maybe forever (but that's a conversation we'll visit when Ty's approaching a year old.)
Lauren Clay spent the day doing snow day kinds of things. The TV stayed off, so she dressed up with my maternity clothes, played Barefoot Contessa in her kitchen (aspiring to be a gracious hostess like her cousin, Hunter), and talked with her latest imaginary friend, Psalty. Psalty is a Christian kids' CD my grandmother bought for Lauren Clay. I had the same-- although it was a record-- when I was a child.

Below I've posted pictures from the latest goings-on at the Sampson home. The first picture documents John's work on our upstairs room. We were considering buying a house that is about to hit the market, so that lit a fire under John to finish our house projects to get it market-ready. I love the house we're in; I love that it is less than 10 minutes from downtown, campus, mom and dad's, good shopping; I love that I can walk to Good Foods Coop and quaint parks; I love that I know a lot of the home's 60-some year history; that we have great neighbors and mature trees; that we have worn hardwood floors, thick wood doors, wide baseboards, and a big backyard reminiscent of a Monet in the Spring; that some of our neighbors grew up here and then moved back when they started families, and that others are the original homeowners who remember when our house was built. Sometimes we feel like we've already outgrown this house, but a family down the street raised 5 kids in their 3 bedroom, 1 bath. That's not to say we'll retire here, but I'd at least like to see what this place could be with a finished upstairs (with a second bathroom maybe?!), a renovated back room, with light paint on the wood panels, plush carpet, new shelves along the fireplace wall, and plantation shutters on the windows, and an updated bathroom downstairs. We've got space here-- we'd actually be downsizing in terms of square feet in most houses we tour. We just need to make the space more liveable, and I bet we could get it just like we like it if we were to dedicate just one summer to home projects. Of course, 2 kids makes that an ambitious timeline, but doable nonetheless.

Here's the upstairs (maybe 2 weeks away from calling in the drywall guys to finish it out):
Ty getting some tummy time yesterday after a bath:
One of Lauten Clay's dress-up outfits:
Here's Ty, ecstatic to see his daddy:
He's changed a lot in the past few weeks! In the picture below, I think he looks a lot like my brother when he was a baby.
I'm off to mom and dad's to get help with the kids so I can make up for my lost office hours. Lots of grading and reading to complete before classes this week!