A house full of people

This photo is hanging on the wall outside of Maya's classroom. As her father's car died, I had to pick her up from school

My brother in law with two of the girls

Jet lagged nephew

Breakfast at noon. Very hard scheduling outside adventures with conflicting schedules and wake up times  so I tried to have as many meals at home

tried to brighten the place up with some tulips

Made an enormous baked apple pancake for one of our shut in days

coloring kids menus

all the grandbabies Allie is almost as tall as Maya despite being more than 3 years younger

All of us minus the brother in law and nephew who had left a day earlier though it took them a day to get home due to Seattle shutting its airport. They got to learn to abide Boise

She is getting better at reading but math is still a big problem

Have I mentioned how much I hate winter? Two more ice storms since I've last blogged: more days off of school so we are doing daycare. Ann Arbor is over the amount of snow days allowed by the state yet they are persisting with their midwinter break that starts tomorrow. There have been only a few days it has been possible to run outside so I hope I am doing enough exercise on the elliptical trainer downstairs with all my weights. Yes my geezer health plan allows a free membership at a cheap gym but with the roads being glare ice, I wouldn't be able to get to it.

A year ago today we were headed to sunny Costa Rica. Next year I will have more winter breaks!

So last week Steve's family flew in from Seattle so we had a full house plus Maya as her dad could not get her. For all those of you wondering why we have such a large house even though there is usually just two of us, it's for occasions like this as every bedroom was full, even our study plus the back up bed in the basement. And all our kids and their kids were here during the day and evenings so the house was full and noisy. Lots of cooking and cleaning on my part but it was fun. We did go out as did the kids without us on some of the evenings to spend time with their aunt. We had tea at a tea house, breakfast in downtown Ann Arbor and dinner out near Josh's. Hard to find tables big enough for us all. So with all the grandkids, kids and spouses I think we were 16.

In my spare time I continue to learn Dutch. What a strange language though at least its syntax is similar to English as opposed to the romance languages (I've studied Italian, French and Spanish) such as a simple sentence: I give it to him. In Italian it would be To him it give. But still the pronunciation is giving me problems with is silent 'g's. Van Gogh doesn't sound anything like it is pronounced here. It sounds more like someone clearing their throat.

I did spend several hours at a medical appointment. All I can say was that it was anxiety producing.