Merry Christmas

Remember how I mentioned the bunches of snow we've been getting?  Well, besides that and the colder than freezing temperatures, the air quality has been really poor.  Cough.  Cough.  So there's been a lot of staying inside, including when the kids are at school.  Lately, everyone has been a little stir crazy.  Aaaaagh.
The other day, after a few days of warming up and melting a lot of the ice and snow, on a day when the air wasn't quite so bad, we decided to go out as a family, and enjoy it.  Nichole and Jr. got scooters for Christmas and hadn't yet been able to play with them outside.  So we brought them along to a park and let them have fun.  The park has a walking path which had been plowed.  There was still a lot of snow on the grass, but enough of the parking lot was cleared so we could park, too.
We kept it a surprise until we got to the park (the kids thought we were only going to take papers to recycle at the school).  The kids were ecstatic when they found out what we were doing.  Jr. Jr. was happy to be pushed in the stroller part of the time and to be able to run around the rest of the time.

Apparently, we did this just in time, too.  Soon after, the air got bad again, and sadly, there was a fire this morning in town and some buildings were burned to the ground.  All that smoke in the air only made the air worse.
So we had an afternoon of escape and it was great.
Good family time.