Gray, Gray, Go Away

Not sure about you but we are feeling like this is day #436 or something in a row of just plain gray. Seriously... where is the sun?! No one told me the giant ball of light took sabbaticals!

The little chalkboard in our breezeway has said, "Some days you have to create your own sunshine," since probably May (ahem... that's embarrassing).  In fact, when I wrote it up so many months ago, there was probably brilliant sunshine streaming through the windows. Anyway, it stayed that way all through summer and fall while the sun shined on. And now here we are, in January, without sunshine. Plenty of practice to create our own sunshine, that's for sure. I think I'll leave the saying up a few more months...  :).

It's been a little bit of a slower pace as of late, which has been nice, and in between school, work schedules, piano students, and the like, we've had time to squeeze in a little fun - creating sunshine I'd guess you could say.

Ping-pong has been a big hit lately as one our favorite winter activities. With our now heated garage, we moved our table out there and have put it to good use. Although we are about as nonathletic as they come, we can fire up some serious competition with family around-the-world or single matches. We enjoyed a fun evening last week with the neighbors pulling taffy, playing ping-pong and other games!

A few weeks ago, Jared and I got to make a short trip to Kansas with Laura and Elise before classes started back up after break! Even though some unexpected events changed our plans a little bit, we still made the best of it and enjoyed the time with Meyer's the short time we were there :).

coffee break from painting

sadly, we didn't get many pictures of our time there and I don't have any of Jared at all! Honestly, I hardly felt like I saw him at all while we there as us girls spent much of our time at Taylor and Allison's newly rented house painting and painting! Gabe was so kind as to stop in on Monday afternoon and make a run to the coffee shop for us... Loved our time together, girls, and our various conversation topics while we painted together :). It was a great little trip to finish out Christmas break!

Like father, like son, Jared enjoys spending time in the kitchen and seeing what he can come up with. With an open Saturday on the calendar and the family home for supper, the two of us decided to spend some time together and make supper for the family. Although planning it out was a little bit of a stretch, we enjoyed working together in the kitchen, and in the end I think the family enjoyed it!

and this is compliments of Jared. Doesn't he do good work? Even though he got sick of actually weaving the lattice after the first one, it still looks impressive if you ask me :). 

Lily has been enjoying a sewing class with some friends this month! 

they each made a skirt for themselves, 

and spent time making dresses that were sent to girls in Haiti! 

And there you have it: a few of the things we've enjoyed lately to compensate for the lack of sunshine:). We're hoping sometime soon we'll see clear blue skies and rays of light that are here to stay?! In the meantime, though, I guess we will keep creating our own...