Around the House

Last week of March, first weekend of April

Finally, a bit of quiet. 🙂 First, this photo still cracks me up:

It was Ben’s idea. 🙂

Monday we had a quiet day, recuperating from the week before. That’s what Mondays are for, in my opinion. We played around and put away laundry. Greg and I Bedazzled a shirt:

Even Nick got in some play time with the kids (after no one showed up for scouts, there was free time):

Tuesday was pretty boring as well. The kids all were in school, so I did some organizing and cleaning that I hadn’t gotten done the week before. Piano lessons were had and David was assigned the last pieces in both his lesson & performance books.

Wednesday we had a coffee/playdate with our friends Molly & Clive (& Mrs. Stephanie, too, of course). I always cherish our time with them. It’s nice to have a friendship where you feel safe & cozy & loved all the time & feel like you are cherished for your you-ness just as much as the children cherish each other. I mean, I have other really good friends that I love and that love me, too, but this friendship encompasses the children as well as the adults into its cozy center and I just love that. 🙂

That afternoon Greg and I spent in the garden, watering plants one by one, checking their progress, and then showing the big boys when they got home. We spent some time weeding & reading.

Thursday Greg and I got to playing in the morning before school, one of those play sessions where you are so very focused on your play that you don’t notice time passing AT ALL and pretty soon we looked up from the castle that we were building and realized that we were totally late for him going to school. I could swear that not ten minutes had passed since we started playing, but it had been an hour and a half since we’d spilled out those blocks. So much fun! I took him to school, then spent the rest of the day doing useful stuff (what stuff? who knows!). That night instead of having leftovers (Thursday is leftover night, whee), we bought dinner from a local fancy asian place that was having the proceeds for that night go towards helping pay for medical bills for one of Nick’s coworkers.

Friday morning I got up to a sick David, so we cancelled our fun plans for the day (we were hitting the music store, the book store, and having a playdate at Sonic with Greg’s long lost friend Tucker). We stayed home and umm, did at home stuff. Nick spent the afternoon donating plasma and I did eventually make it to the music store to buy David’s new piano books (and a clarinet solo for me!) David, after his first flush of yucky feelings, spent the rest of the day feeling perfectly fine.

Saturday morning we got up and headed over to Nick’s parents house for a family brunch. Lots of yummy food & drinks were had by all. We discussed Nick’s parents upcoming house renovations (they originally thought they might build a new house, but instead they are going to renovate the one they have, which will mean that they won’t have to divide up the land later and won’t have to rent out the house) and came up with some good new ideas for the addition. The cousins all had fun playing together, climbing trees, running around the pasture, and loving on the baby cows (they are tiny and cute). That afternoon we went on to church, and spent lots of time afterwards visiting with friends and making plans for committees we’re on.

Sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning I heard yelling from the kids bedroom. “VOMIT!” and then “David’s throwing up in his top bunk!” I went to investigate and discovered that not only was he throwing up, he was throwing up against the wall. It was SO VERY GROSS. I had to evacuate not only David, but also Ben, and clean up both beds, make up places in the living room for them to sleep, and wake Nick up to drag the mattress out to the patio for cleaning.

So Sunday morning I woke up grumpy and painful (from all the scrubbing), but my sweet, sweet husband had gone out to the grocery and came back by the time I got up and he brought me flowers.

Then he went off to work (yes, again on a Sunday, he’s crazy busy at work lately), while I tended to kiddos. David was once again feeling fine by about 10am, so we went outside and pulled weeds in the garden for a while before coming inside to get ready for Greg’s friends birthday party. We went out and got a present, then came home to drop off the big kids with Nick, who was finally home, before Greg and I moved on to the party. The party was super cute, with a bug-and-flower theme.

We spent the afternoon & evening finishing getting ready for the upcoming week. 🙂

Around the House

Now: With Video!

We got a webcam this week; did I mention that? My parents are in Germany and wanted to be able to talk to us & see us (they miss Greg, who of course has been at his Nana and Pa’s since just after the webcam came home).

So the webcam, it is full of weirdness, and also we cannot seem to stay away from it.

Here are some of our videos:

David:

Me (rambling in response to a video Ben made earlier about animals that got deleted):

Ben:

Greg (we recorded him dancing before we discovered there was no audio at first):

Around the House, Books, Computers and Internet, Crafts, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Friend Time, Parenting, What I Love

Spring Break

This last week was our spring break from school. I’ve already told you about Monday and Tuesday, so I’ll start today’s story with Wednesday. We didn’t make any big plans for Wednesday, since that was the day that we were swapping out D for B at Nana & Pa’s house, but it turned out to be a big day anyway. My parents came up to town and told us that they’d decided not to make us wait for a month to get our new van (which is their old one), they were going to sign it over to us right now. 🙂 And so we began our day long journey to get the car retitled, re-registered, and in all ways made our own. We ended up visiting the registry twice, once with just me and my dad and once with both of us, my mom, and two of the kids as well. By the end of the day we’d gotten it done. G and I spent the rest of the afternoon emptying out our old van, then vacuuming it out, scrubbing it down inside and out, then cleaning all the windows we could reach, all so Nick could start driving it as soon as he came home. (D spent the afternoon catching up on three days worth of Animal Crossing.)

Thursday morning we visited with my parents a bit, then went home very quickly for D’s early playdate with his best friend C. They had a great time playing video games, riding bikes & skates, and wrestling on the trampoline.

While the kids were playing, I once again worked on some jewelry (a post on all of that coming soon). That afternoon my mom watched the kids so my dad and I could also go out and check out a netbook at Best Buy, which they did not have in stock, and to buy a camera, which they did have. We spent some time updating his regular laptop and getting it set up with the camera software and then learning the new cameras ways before going home for the evening.

B came home just before dinner, bearing sundaes from McDonald’s. My in-laws got a tour of the new van and all it’s shininess before they left.

Friday morning B’s friend A came over for a playdate. I made some more jewelry. They spent quite a bit of time playing the Wii, but we also had a picnic in the backyard, since the weather was beautiful for it. We experimented with playing baseball/tee ball in the yard.

After he went home, Nick and the kids and I went out to the bookstore to get the kids their celebration books for having great report cards (and we may have picked up a couple things for ourselves as well. maybe. possibly. what? we never ever do! Leviathon & Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld and Good Eats: the Middle Years.). D got the second Percy Jackson book, B got three Magic Treehouse books (#20, #21, and a research guide about Knights and Castles), and G got two Barbie books (one 3 Musketeers and one Fairies) and an audio book about the movie Toy Story. Then we headed out to tour the big new exciting store in town: our local markets version of Whole Foods.

It’s called “Fresh” and wow, was it packed with people. It’s a beautiful store, filled with lots of things our regular stores don’t carry: lots of organic, whole grain products and a huge array of cheeses, meats, and ready-to-eat foods (for which there is a balcony seating area outside).

We amazingly managed not to lose any children, nor to knock down any displays, though we did pick up a lot of stuff that was knocked down by the little old lady near us, as she had a large purse and was trying not to hit my kids with it, and since we were behind her in the herd (seriously, it was so packed that you pretty much followed the same people all through the store) we did the picking up. We eventually made it back home and Nick and the kids tidied up there while I went over to help my dad with his new netbook, which he’d picked up that morning. I did all my computer magic over the course of a couple hours and got him hooked up with all his software and file needs and headed back home to start reading my book. Bwahaha. Nick went over and spent the evening hanging out with my dad.

Saturday we hung out with my parents again in the morning before we left for church. The kids climbed ropes and played on the swings. Nick and D and Dad played chess. It was a good morning. We went to church, listened to our new pastor (who was a fabulous speaker, lots of discussion of Greek words, loved it), and then kids had snacks while my m-i-l and I practiced our duet on the big piano (which has keys that are very hard to press compared to my piano at home). We headed home, I changed clothes, and headed out for Girls Night Out. Nick and the kids stayed home and did whatever boys do when their mama is away (hung from the ceiling? shot themselves out into space in rockets? who knows! It was Boys Night In!). I had a lovely time with my lady friends and this time we managed to get a photo of all of us together (something we’ve never managed in the two years we’ve been meeting).

Came home and couldn’t sleep, as I am always excited after a night out, so I stayed up late finishing the book I was reading (the second Percy Jackson book; trying to keep up with D), never realizing that the clocks hadn’t already been set ahead for daylights savings time.

Yesterday we all got up unreasonably early. The day turned out to be one of those ones were everything goes wrong. G ran into my room yelling that D was throwing up from atop his bunk bed, B was asleep below, mercifully, or there’d have been extra mess. I got up, cleaned up the mess, got the boy into the bathroom, then looked at the clock: 5:45am. My husband, who was mysteriously in the kitchen and not at work (he’s been working a lot of overtime lately), hugged me and told me he’d reset all the clocks already so I didn’t have to. I tried to go back to bed, but couldn’t since I had a snuggly, wiggly boy (G) in there with me. So we all got up, ate breakfast, then sat around reading until it was time to leave for the last basketball practice of the season. David and I stayed home because of his icky tummy. He played more Wii and I wandered here and there doing chores and trying to finish up another necklace. The laundry that I thought was clean was mysteriously dirty, the necklace that I “finished” I turned out to have left a bead out of.

After the other kids came back home, we tried to go to the zoo and got verbally assaulted by the director of said zoo for bringing in a check that wasn’t signed by me — it was a gift membership from my in-laws, which I had filled out paperwork for and brought in with me, but he refused to listen one word I said, no matter how polite I was. It was a disaster all around, so I decided to take my children elsewhere. We got to the frozen custard place and discovered that my two-for-one coupons had been left in the hallway when we were swapping stuff around between the vans earlier in the week, but by then I decided to just make the best of it and we paid full price. The custard was perfect and by the time I’d finished venting to my husband, my best friend, and finally to my mother-in-law (who is going up to talk to the zoo about their communication skills today) I was feeling much better. We had a movie night with the kids, watching an old Valerie Bertinelli movie about a robot dog, which they loved. The movie ran late, so the kids ran late getting into baths and storytime, so it was nearly 9:45pm before they went to bed. I made their lunches last night and set out clothes for them so they could sleep in this morning and it’s just now time to get them up so that’s the end of this post.

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Friend Time, health, Parenting

More catching up

I realized the other day after the fact that when I posted about President’s Day that I still had a week or so of posting to do and now it’s been a couple weeks since that and I have A LOT of posting to do. I’ve been doing that thing again where you start a post, realize that you need to have your calendar close by or your photos already uploaded and since you realize that you’re woefully unprepared, you close out of the post unsaved and promise that you’re going to post TOMORROW. Well, I have a lot of “tomorrows” to post for and who knows how long I’ll manage to stay awake at this point, so this may be more summary than actual posty goodness.

We’ll start will February 18th, as that is the first day on the calendar post-15th that I have a) something written on and b) photos for. In the morning, G, my mom, and I hit Lowe’s for the second time in a week, this time in order to buy those fabulous kid-size-but-very-sturdy gardening tools that we’d seen earlier in the week. We also scored some Gerber daisies (two varieties, it turned out), which we later planted in a small grouping in the front yard.

That afternoon we picked the kids up from school, drove out to my in-laws house, and prepped & decorated for a family dinner.

The next day we got up, got ready for the day, and then G and I headed up the hill for his best friends birthday party at the local community center. Fun was had by all, including me (I got to talk at length with an interesting woman who’d held a similar ministry position to mine back in the day)! 🙂

After that we headed out to church, then back to town to visit with my parents. Sunday was, again, basketball and more basketball, followed by Nick working overtime and the kids and I cleaning up the house and catching up on laundry and such. Monday was President’s Day, which I already blogged at length about in my last post. Tuesday was my appointment with the rheumatogist, which I blogged about here. In case you don’t follow that link, the long and short of it is: new meds and I have to see another doctor about my pre-hypertension. Yay. I spent the rest of the day cleaning and taking kids to piano lessons and Greg got to spend the night with his Nana and Pa.

Wednesday I hung out with my parents a bit, which was weird all by myself. I went home and cleaned house until it was time to pick up kids. Around 4:45 we met up with some other scout parents and took a group over to the Lady Apache Basketball game (well, I took the kids, but Nick and his dad and G eventually showed up there).

Thursday I had my appointment with my PCP, wherein I found out that due to family history, I needed to start on a beta blocker and watch my health more closely. Yay. Friday was a normal day with kids going to school, homework being done, chores, etc. We drove down to CS Friday afternoon/evening. Saturday the kids played ping pong and watched movies. My friend Sarah and her new baby came over to visit, which was lots of fun.

G loved playing Peek-a-boo with little Serenity. 🙂

Sunday the kids went fishing at the park, then we drove back home in the afternoon.

Monday was a regular day for us, with the kids at school and later B had scouts. Tuesday marked Nick and I’s 14th anniversary of our first date, so we had the babysitter come over after piano lessons, so we could go out to Sonoma Grill and the bookstore afterwards.

Wednesday, March 2nd, the car wouldn’t start, as we’d miscalculated the gas mileage (our gas gauge does not work). I walked the kids in to school, a 45 minute round trip. This, of course, put us in the marginal zone for being late for our 2nd glass appointment (the replaced glass from last week having cracked once we tried opening the window). They said that the guy was running a bit late anyway, no worries, he’d be there by 11am. Well, by 11am we had a friend lined up to help us fill our gas tank. The glass guy was, of course, terribly late, so while we waited we had a playdate at our house.

That family left after lunch. The glass guy, despite being only “45 minutes” away at 10:30am, showed up at 2:35pm. Needless to say, we won’t be doing business with the Glass Doctor again.

Thursday the 3rd all the kids went to their various schools & I had lunch with my friend Em and her daughter H. We discussed the Wii game Animal Crossing in great detail, as my whole family is obsessed with it, and H. is an expert player. That evening I went out once again with B’s Tiger Cub den (and one other), this time to tour the local TV station during the evening broadcast, which we were supposed to appear on, but due to scheduling and technical difficulties, we did not appear on. Ah well, the tour was interesting and the kids had a pretty good time.

Friday, March 4th. we went over to my friend JP’s house for a playdate. G loves her daughter K, so all was well there.

Afterward we spent the afternoon cleaning up before hosting a family from church for dinner. We had a fabulous time with our friends and the kids loved making a movie “show” and videotaping it for our later viewing pleasure. 🙂

Saturday was a church day, then afterwards Nick headed out to Men’s Club while the kids and I headed out to Pizza Hut with Nick’s parents and sister and her girls. Sunday was yet more basketball, Nick working more overtime, and us cleaning more of the house. Monday was the first official day of Spring Break. D has spent several nights at his Nana and Pa’s house. The younger kids and I made a picnic lunch and toured Mrs. Lee’s Daffodiil Garden before heading our to our friend’s house in Gladewater for the afternoon. We played at their house, then played over at R’s school playground before coming home for the evening. Today we spent the day playing video games and hosting a playdate with one of Ben’s friends and missing our D. Tomorrow he comes home, though, and B will get his turn at Nana and Pa’s house. 🙂

That’s it. Hope that was coherent enough for you. More photos can be found at flickr.com, of course.

Around the House, Books, Crafts, Family Time, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, Parenting

Happy President’s Day

We’ve had quite a day here. My eldest son hit a golf ball with a baseball bat and it went straight through the kids bedroom window. The glass company said they’d be here in less than 2 hours, but it took many phone calls and 7 hours for them to get here. Delightful, really. I made a list of good things about all this in my head all day long, to counteract the screaming, hysterical woman in my head. Such fun.

So anyways, since it was President’s Day and I’m a theme-loving kind of gal, we had a whole day of fun planned.

First we played Animal Crossing. We like taking care of our little town and I think it’s good that this game teaches them to take care of the environment with the recycling center and to pull all the weeds and take care of planting all around and not just in their own little places. It’s fun!

Then, for second breakfast, we had what I like to call “The Color of Money Muffins” which were green muffins with multicolored sprinkles inside to mimic the dollars that Presidents adorn. They were chocolate orange flavored. Yumm.

The kids played outside, which is when the glass thing happened.

After cleaning up all the glass and moving around furniture and cleaning up all the toys we found under said furniture, we made George Washington-style hats to wear around the rest of the day and also made cherry trees out of craft paper and yet more of the little red pom-poms leftover from Christmas.

Another thing we did was a game called “Ask the Kids.” The first question: If you could be president for a day what would you do?
D: make some laws, like going green and saving animal habitats.
B: wanted to save the animals, too, by checking if they were okay. for people, he wanted to have floating chairs for all the elderly people, the kind that don’t have to be pushed by anyone and that float high enough that it would be easy for them to get in and out of cars easily.
G: didn’t want to be president. he wanted to be a robber and steal peoples clothes (?!?!?!) or, even BETTER, to be a Jedi and battle the droids.

The second question: What do you think the President of the USA does all day?
D: He stays in his office and works on paper and passes the laws.
B: WORK! He works all day!
G: I don’t know. Maybe he writes to his friends every day.

The third question: Why do we have a president?
D: So we can stay free from other countries. In the beginning people wanted George Washington to be King, but he said “No, I want to be President.”
B: He’s here so we don’t get robbed or anything. He makes laws to help us.
G: (ran off & had to be dragged back) Because someone needs to do some work.

The kids left for a while after all this to hang out with my parents while the glass man came…or didn’t come, as happened for several hours. I crawled around their room with a light, checking for glass in unexpected places (it was still everywhere, despite vacuuming, because we have Berber carpet in that room), and did laundry, and entertained B when he came back because the Lord of the Rings cartoon was too scary.

We were also going to make cherry tarts today, but since we didn’t make it to the grocery, that has to wait until tomorrow, I guess. For storytime tonight we read some of our President books: “Arthur Meets the President” by Marc Brown, “Stand Tall, Abe Lincoln” by Judith St. George & illustrated by Matt Faulkner, and “Sesame Street: I Want to be President” by Michaela Muntean and illustrated by Tom Brannon. We really recommend the Sesame Street one, as it explained the best what a president actually does. The Abe Lincoln one is really good, too, but we’re not done with it yet, as it’s a very long one. The Arthur one is mainly Arthur-ish, but still good.

Anyway, hope everyone else had a great President’s Day! 🙂

Around the House

The Room of Requirement

We spent quite a lot of time this week working on our Cave of Solitude, which during the course of the week morphed into a new kind of room, instead: The Room of Requirement (yes, a Harry Potter reference). We moved out the craft table (which was really just a piece of plywood over two file cabinets) and moved in the old crib, reconfigured into it’s daybed format. We’re using an inflatable toddler-sized air mattress and some pillows the kids don’t use (because they have pillow pets now) for the cushions.

The rest of the room is not quite in order yet. There’s a couple sets of shelves in there for storing the kids art supplies, more solitary types of toys (Lego bricks, puzzles, science sets, etc), and books about making crafts or doing science experiments. There’s also my old hope chest with a mini TV for viewing videos or playing old Atari games on it in a pinch. There’s the file cabinets and the drawer systems with all kinds of old kids art, school programs, ticket stubs, etc. There’s also the tall table that used to the be kitchen island with an old computer attached to it for playing non-internet, ancient computer games. The closet is filled with sewing & giftwrapping supplies and clothes & shoes for various kids to grow into, spare artwork, my college diploma in its giant frame, and all the notes anyone ever sent me from elementary school til college. That sounds just like the Room of Requirement, doesn’t it?! I know, you’d love photos of all that. But today’s not that day. Today’s the day I’m going to organize it all. Photos to come later in the week when it’s looking more presentable.

The rest of the week, when we weren’t doing stuff in that one room, here is what we did:

Monday, the Greg and I made a few things in the Easy Bake oven. The cookies came from a mix someone was kind enough to give us over Christmas

and the pizza we made from this recipe. It was really excellent, especially with the olives we added.

Monday was also the day that Greg decided that writing words was a goodness. He chose my name as his starting point, having me write it at the top of the dry erase board, then writing and rewriting it himself until he was happy with it.

Tuesday was a MDO day for Greg (they made instant snow from a kit – he was so impressed), so I spent my day running all the little errands I’d saved up from during the break, got a free sandwich from Chik-fil-a (I registered with their site and they sent me a coupon!) and organizing my scrapbook papers and die cuts so I could get back into the scrapbooking more easily. That night was our first night back to piano lessons since the break. It was nice to get back into our routine.

Wednesday I had an embarassing moment with the police involving me being pulled over in front of the kids school because I hadn’t remembered where I put my registration sticker when the time came to put it back on. They were nice enough to leave me with a warning, so we went home and I finally filed all that stuff that I’ve been meaning to file for the last three months.

Then we went to the library and made bird feeders. We came home and explored the yard for animals and other signs of life in the winter garden.

That evening we had Double Lightsaber Dogs from the Star Wars cookbook (we’re on a roll!) and really only David loved them:

Thursday was again MDO day, so Greg went to school (they made snowballs out of rolled up socks and had a snowball fight) and I went to a couple estate sales with my friend Monaca. We didn’t find anything good to buy (way overpriced) so we treated ourselves to Chik-fil-a afterwards (twice in one week! the insanity! but never say no to a pregnant woman with a craving!). Thursday night I’d meant to go to a friends art show, but I managed to re-injure my head (remember I did that last month, too?), so I was too dizzy and nauseated to go anywhere.

Friday Greg and I cleaned up various messes, then headed up to Ben’s school to have lunch with him. He wanted to eat outside, but it was too chilly in the courtyard (there’s no sun in the part that has the tables set up), so we ate inside with his friends.

By the time the kids got home from school it had warmed up considerably, so the kids played basketball outside for the rest of the afternoon:

Yesterday we to church at our regular church. After deliberating all week and spending most of our evenings reading up on the various issues involved in our church’s big split (the big bad thing I alluded to last week), we decided that that was where logic dictated that we should go. Nick’s family and his sister’s in laws made the same decision, so that made it a bit easier, though we will miss our friends that chose to go to the other place. Since we’re lacking people to staff certain parts of the church, I signed on to the kitchen committee to help out serving snacks and potlucks and I will continue to help out with the kids Sabbath School classes. I’m also working on some duets with Nick’s mom for special music. Nick is an usher and the current president of the Men’s Leadership Club, as well as teaching at Sabbath School. After church the kids and I hung out at Nick’s parents house & they fed us while he went to his Men’s Club meeting.

Today was another basketball practice for the boys. I stayed home and tidied up from yesterday. Now the kids are “cleaning up” (which, judging from the noise in there includes anything but) and Nick is grocery shopping and I’m trying to get us ready for the snow that is coming. We’re excited about the snow; we never get it this early! (And only rarely get it all, actually).

Around the House, Family Time, health, I Am Traveling, My Own Personal Weirdness, Parenting

Happy New Year: 2011!

It has been a sincerely and completely crazy week. I’m not even going to try to tell all of it, that’s how insane it’s been.

Monday we wrote in our workbooks, ran Zhu-zhu & Kung Zhu hamsters all over the house, made food in the Easy Bake oven, looked up recipes to make reasonably priced food in the Easy Bake Oven, and generally stayed in our pajamas until it was long past time to be out of them.

Tuesday we did more of the same, but this time ventured out to a Post Holiday Jollies party at Double Daves with my former MOPS friends.
The kids ran around like crazy, the adults ate far too much in an attempt to recomp some of the money we spent on food the kids weren’t eating, and we generally laughed a lot and agreed that Christmas is totally ridiculous. A good time was had by all. 🙂

Wednesday we got up and after a couple false starts drove to Ft. Worth for D’s orthopedic visit. We got completely turned around at some point (bad directions, yay) and ended up getting to our appointment with only 4 minutes to spare, which was agonizing, as we’d left more than an hour of leeway in our schedule. My friend Kay watched the younger two at the park (along with her two) while I took D in to the doctor alone. He had his xrays done, his legs measured four ways (on a block, on the xray, with a measuring tape by hand, and another way I’ve forgotten now), and we got the whole hemihypertrophy schpiel again, as the med student in with us had never heard of it. The doctor reassured us that despite D’s “deformity” (his word, not mine), he was actually in really good shape and did I read any hemihypertrophy blogs or belong to any forums? I tried not to laugh at that. (For a really long time I was one of the top three hits on Google for hemihypertrophy) I explained that I had at one time, but really it got to be too much. The doctor said that D’s leg length difference is getting worse, not better, and that we need to keep coming back at 6 month intervals to keep an eye on it to make sure it’s not damaging his pelvis or his spine or anything. When he’s around 15 (sooner, if it keeps growing too fast), they’ll have to break his growth plate on the one leg so the other can catch up. I’m hoping that the health industry comes up with a better answer by then, as that sounds incredibly painful and time consuming and what 15 year old boy wants to take a time out from life for something like that?! Aie. Anyway, after the appointment, we went back to Kay’s parents (now Kays home as well, but they have two houses at the moment and it gets confusing) house and took the kids on an adventure and let the play games and fed them multi-colored pancakes for dinner. I think Kay has better photos than I do, but I will post those when I see her next.

Thursday I spent in pain because of all the driving I’ve been doing lately. Yay, pain. D and B each had friends over to play video games. G’s friends couldn’t make it, due to illness (argh), but B & his friend let him play Mario Kart & Wii Music with them, so he was pretty happy anyway.

New Year’s Eve day we spent running errands with Nick. We got fireworks for a future display (once the burn ban is over, I’ve been chanting this for months) and other stuff that required a trip out towards Nick’s parents house. Hung out there for a while with his dad. We had a big surprise over something that I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about yet, nothing family related, exactly, but something big we’re still talking over and making decisions about.

For the evening festivities, Nick made a whole lot of German food (sauerbrauten, red cabbage and apples, caramelized onions, etc) and

I made a lot of decorations that said 2011 and poppers for the kids.

My parents came over to eat and celebrate.

The kids got to do both my kind of poppers (with candy inside) and the more explosive kind (confetti explosion) and smoke bombs and sparklers. We had a bit of dancing in the living room and then an early countdown to the new year for the kids. Actually, for everyone.

My parents left right after that and Nick and I decided we’d had enough for the day and went to bed, too. 🙂

New Years Day was a Saturday and therefore a church day, but therein lies the madness, so we ended up going to services at two different churches. Like I said, not something I’m up for discussing at the moment, but it did take up all the day and into the evening. We had dinner at my parents house here in town, with the two D’s making us the Crazy Cantina Chili from the original Star Wars Cookbook. It turned out all right, kind of like Taco Soup, but without the meat (my dad threw some in at the end to fill it out a bit).

Yesterday we took the kids out for basketball practice, but there weren’t many kids there. They had fun, though.

We spent the afternoon at home doing necessary cleaning type stuff. I set up a Kids Command Center in their hallway with all their important info like calendars, lunch menus, emergency numbers, chore lists with dry erase markers, etc. I’ll do a post about that and the art we made today as well sometime tomorrow.

Anyway, hope everyone is having a very pleasant new year so far. 🙂