OUTSIDE

I FINALLY took the kids to the park and it was WONDERFUL!!! This week has been so nice. :) I'm so happy to be able to see an end to winter. Alright, it's barely 50 degrees, but that's definitely warm enough to get outside and give myself and the kids a break from the house. I know it's supposed to be colder and stormy next week, but that makes today even more worth it. Before I know it, it will be warm all the time and I'll be in my shorts.

Hooray to all of us for making it through this winter!!!

When Will This Ever End???

I know that our problems could be worse - but right now my head is so clouded by this stupid flu that I can't see anything straight. I think I'm close to being done with it, but it's been hanging on for 2 weeks now!

Alexandra and Nathan have been keeping me quite busy at home lately. Nathan has decided it's funny to keep spitting at everyone and to hit and call names. His favorite name to call is "Byoohead". Whatever. It's still buggy.

Alexandra has learned that there is stuff inside of things. This is not my favorite stage of "baby". Although it's so cute to see her curiousity, she just DOESN'T STOP and I don't have the energy this week to keep up with it. She likes to open doors and pull out the contents of whatever she has opened. The other day she went and pulled off all the magnets from the fridge. As I was cleaning that up, she opened the pantry and got into the curling ribbon and had that pulled all over the place. I got her out of that and cleaned it up, only to find her standing up to the toy basket and emptying the contents onto the floor. It is endless! OK, so I'm grateful that she is happy and healthy. Just a lot of work. :)

I'm still holding out for Spring and just trying to count these drab winter days away until I can take the kids outside for a change. I'm looking forward to having Nathan run and run and run. I can't wait until the kids entertain themselves outside for hours by catching moths and playing with potato bugs. That's nice.

So that's what I've been up to. A clouded head and busy, super busy, messy kids. It can only get better from here. Not a real exciting post, just me, venting.

Ice Skating

Monday was President's Day, which means everyone had the day off. WOO HOO! It was also Amanda's birthday. She chose to go ice skating, so we all went to join her at Seven Peaks to go ice skating too. We figured it would be too hard to have Nathan skate, so Jeremy opted to not skate as well and watch Nathan and Alexandra.

Athena and Samantha were pretty nervous about skating, but I told them that they were here to learn, so that's what they were going to do. This is before they first got on the ice.

Once we got out on the ice, both girls did just fine. I told them it wasn't an option for them to hang onto the wall - that they were going to get out on the ice and try it. I had them stand up on their skates and find their balance. Then I let go and went in front of them. I told them to come to me. As they got closer to me, I skated backwards giving them farther to go to get to me. That's basically how I taught them to ice skate. It worked for both Athena AND Samantha. :) SURPRISING! Before we left, both girls were able to skate on the ice. I was quite proud of them.

Here is part of the fun group we were skating with. Lisa and Kimball were there too, but had not yet arrived when I took this picture.

Here is the fun group of skating girls. It was so nice that they were all at the same level and could learn together.


Thanks to Amanda for choosing this fun activity for your birthday!

After ice skating, we all went to Teresa's for cake and ice cream. Then after that, Jeremy and I took our family to see the movie "Water Horse" at the dollar theater. President's Day turned out to be a really nice day together.

Our Diagnosis

Well, I kept the kids home from school today because everyone is feeling horrible. We went to the Dr and he told us that everyone has the flu. So it's official. DANG IT. I actually think our family is on the tail end of it now. I hope to escape it and I keep on popping the Goldenseal/Echinacea capsules.

Also, Alexandra has this growth on her gums in front of her teeth that looks odd. I wondered if it was a kind of tumor because it appeared so quickly and grew so fast. We had the Dr check that out and he said it is probably benign, but nonetheless, watch it close. He said if it doubles in size within the next week or two, take her to the dentist and have it removed. SCARY! Cross your fingers for us.

It hit us AGAIN!

We are sick again. Darn it. This time it started with Athena. Her throat was hurting on Friday, and by evening it had turned into an all-night fever. She passed it to Samantha and Alexandra on Saturday and Sunday. Today Jeremy is home from work, in bed, with a fever. I'm guessing Nathan and I are next. That gives me something to look forward to.

Dessert Disaster
Last night we went to Mama and Daddy's for dinner. I was assigned to bring a dessert. That turned into a comic disaster. For some reason, I just wasn't paying any attention to anything as I was making the dessert. Maybe it was because I was taking care of so many other things at the time. I made Toffee Bars - a 3-layer dessert with a crust, a carmel-like middle, and chocolate spread on top.

When I was making the crust, I accidentally put in 1 cup of sugar instead of 1/2 cup. I just wasn't thinking. Then I put the crust in to bake. When the timer went off, I checked in the oven. Instead of seeing a nicely browned crust, my crust was boiling. Because I was short on time, I pulled it out of the oven, poured some flour on it to absorb some butter, patted the flour down into the boiling parts, and put it into the oven for another 5 minutes. That kind of worked.

As the crust was cooking, I started making the middle. I put sweetened condensed milk on the stove in a pan with some butter so I could bring it to boiling. Well, I forgot to stir for a minute and burned the bottom slightly. All these brown pieces kept coming off the bottom as I stirred because it burned a little. Luckily it didn't affect the taste.

Then I took my crust out and poured on the middle part. Then I put the mixture back into the oven to cook the middle part so it turns out chewy. Well, halfway through the cooking process I had to go to the bathroom. When I came out the timer had gone off. I don't know how long it had been since the timer went off because I didn't look to see how much time there was when I left. I pulled it out of the oven and instead of being nicely chewy in the middle, the edges were all burned.

The top part required that I pour on chocolate chips, let them melt a minute, then spread evenly across the top. I put on the chips and waited. Then I began to spread. None of the chips would spread. They were melted alright, but when I tried to spread them, they just clumped together in chocolatey clumps. DANG IT!

It was time to go - so I just grabbed the pan and we were out the door.

I think the funniest part about the whole thing was watching Mama and Jeremy desperately trying to delve into their dessert. It wouldn't come out of the pan, so the 2 of them were over there with a knife and a spatula digging this way and that to get at whatever crumbs would come out. It became a contest to see who could taste the dessert first!

Eventually we did get it out of the pan. It looked sloppy, but surprisingly it still tasted pretty good! I guess I won't be asked to bring dessert again.

A Girl and a Horse

This morning when I was driving the girls to school I heard this exchange:

Out of nowhere, Athena said, "Give me an A!"

With great gusto, Samantha whinnied, "NEIGH!"

Athena said, "No! Not like that. I say give me an A, then you say it back!" Then Athena said happily,"Give me an A!"

Samantha said, "Give me an A!"

With great frustration, Athena said, "NO! I say give me an A, and you say A." So Athena said happily, "Give me an A!"

Samantha said, "A!" Then they continued through the alphabet.

I was laughing so hard.

Another Dream - It Made Me Laugh

Last night, for some odd reason I had this dream:

Jeremy and I were on a trip to Mexico with a big group of people we knew. I was laying in bed pondering what to do for the day and wondering what everyone else had planned. I got up and went outside in my red fleece pajamas with feet. I saw all the members of my group standing around whispering about their plans. Then they went into the building across the street. I panicked because I thought they were making plans without me.

I ran down the stairs and across the street. Just as I got over there, all my friends were marching out of the building in storm trooper costumes. Seeing that I had indeed been left out, I began frantically trying to figure out how I could get a storm trooper costume of my own. I was told that there were no more storm trooper costumes.

Then I saw more people coming out with different Star Wars costumes on. I raced inside to claim one for me. The people in the building laughed and said I couldn't wear a costume with my red fleece feet pajamas underneath. Frustrated, and in a hurry, I left and ran back to my hotel room to change.

I had to shuffle through my suitcase until I found some shorts and a shirt that matched. I got those clothes on and ran back across the street just in time to see all the storm troopers marching away, leaving me behind. I ran back into the building with the costumes, and all they had was this stupid hat that was decorated like a monster. I put it on over my head and ran out the door to catch up with the storm troopers. The end.

Any idea what that was all about? I don't even watch Star Wars! It makes me laugh. The other day on Dr. Phil there was this guy who was obsessed with Star Wars. He had a storm trooper costume in the basement that he wanted to fit into. Other than seeing that, I wouldn't even have known that's what they were called. LOL!

Oh what do we do in the Winter time?

This is our house this morning. It is snowing like crazy and just piling up more and more.


Here is a picture of our back deck this morning.

I have Spring Fever really bad now. I'm so anxious for it to warm up so I can open the windows, take the kids outside, stop wearing 3 layers in the house, not have to wear a coat anymore, go for a walk to the park, get out the kid's bikes, and the list goes on and on and on and on. I've been feeling really stale and out of ideas, so I've been trying to spice things up a bit in the house.

I started teaching Athena and Samantha piano, FINALLY. They are taking to it quite well. Samantha is so excited about it that she just cannot stay off the piano. Several times a day she is in there practicing her songs. It makes me happy that she is so enthusiastic about it and I wonder if I should have started sooner. Today will be her 4th lesson.

I've also been trying to read more with Nathan and spend more time with him. I have been helping him a lot more with building his train set. We have to rebuild it every day - now that Alexandra can pull herself up to the train table she has learned that it's one of her favorite things to wreck the train set. I've also started teaching Nathan how to do puzzles. He is kind of getting the hang of it and takes great pride in seeing the pieces fit together. :)

As I mentioned previously, I've also been putting more time into indexing. I'm now approaching 7000 names. WOO HOO! Before I know it I'll be hitting the 10,000 mark. I like to index. It's fun to have something to do at the computer that really seems to have a purpose. I get sucked into it and can't stop until my kids are pulling at my sleeves and forcing me to get up. Finally I just have to save and exit the program so I'm not tempted to come back to the computer and do "just a few more names".

For Christmas we gave the girls each a magnet board to hang in their rooms. Each board only came with 5 magnets. Once they started hanging their special things on the board, I could see we were going to need more magnets. I decided to make a fun project out of it. We went to Robert's craft store and got supplies to decorate a whole bunch of magnets. Athena and Samantha LOVED this project and they really got into it. Here we are decorating the magnets.

This is Athena's patriotic magnet. She gave this one to Grandma Lynda.

These are just a couple of Samantha's creations. :)

And here is the whole slew of what we did. I had fun helping the girls put these together. Now they have just another little piece of themselves in their rooms.

On to the next story . . .

I am getting a little tired of Alexandra's crazy baby hair. It is just all over the place and doesn't lay down nicely right now. After much examining, I concluded that her hair was long enough for a ponytail. After going to great lengths of trying to get her to stay in one spot so I could just loop the ponytail holder several times so it would stay, this is what I ended up with:

Even though it is very small and you have to look super close to see it - I did achieve a ponytail! It took me about 5 minutes of combing, trying, re-combing, and re-trying. We took this picture of her and then I put her down to crawl. No longer than 5 minutes later, Nathan walked over and abruptly swiped it out of her hair. It was gone. So much for that.

Before I know it, it will be warm enough to go outside and play. Hopefully I can come up with enough fun stuff before then that will keep us all from killing each other off! :)