Quick 5

Holy smokes, the Broncos are in the Super Bowl. This year I was most definitely a fan, but NOT a believer.

1. What do you do when it's 60 degrees outside, but there is still snow on the ground? Send your kids out to play in snow pants and shirt sleeves. The girls had a blast and now I have a bunch of muddy snow clothes. I suppose the good news is it is supposed to snow in a few days, so I could send them back out and let the clean snow wash off all the dirt.

2. When you play as hard as Alaina, you wear out your clothes quickly. Alaina needed to make her case for a new pair of snow mittens. I'll put it on the list.

3. Shortly after they went outside, the girls came running back into the house saying, "Dad! We found something that looks like a frozen dead rat!" So Lee went out to investigate, and lo and behold it was a frozen dead rat, right in the middle of the yard. It was disconcerting because we have never seen rats around our house. Just mice. Rats are a whole different ball game. But the frozen dead rat was missing a tail, and so the theory is that a hawk or owl or something was flying over our yard holding its mighty prize by the tail, when the tail detached from the body, dropping the body into our yard. We hope that's the case because gross.

4. Lee started his new job on Monday! For the record, he is a Billing Specialist at a company called Twenty Eighty. The week has gone well, full of meeting people and beginning to learn the ways of this job. He was delighted to be introduced to a guy he worked with a few years ago. This guy has helped us move once or twice and has been over here for dinner, and we were sad when he left Lee's old work. But there he was! He's doing contract work, so he's only around for another month or so, but it was nice for Lee to see a familiar face.

5.  That's about it from the home front, really. Next week is a short school week thanks to parent teacher conferences. Then home grown Super Bowl festivities. And the beginning of Bria's birthday month. If anything remarkable pops up, you'll be the first to hear about it.

Life marches on.