Christmas Time Is Here

It finally did stop snowing, but we pretty much were stuck for about 10 days in the house. Super-hero dad was able to go to work every day, although he left later than normal. The kids played outside and here are some great pictures of the piles of snow around our house, as well as Christmas Day pictures of the kids and family. Make sure you have your volume up so you can hear the song!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

The Snow Won't End

Not saying that I'm sick of the snow - it's very beautiful. But it's so hard to be stuck in the house with three kids who are getting on each other's nerves. We are running out of staples like milk, bread, fresh fruit and no chance of getting out. Super hero dad went into work today and is stopping at the pharmacy to pick up some meds and milk, but that's about all we're doing.

We made a Chex cereal snack, played Zoombinis, played Rummikub, I did laundry, watched TV, played in the snow, Holland shoveled the sidewalk and built forts for the cats. Here's a little video of Holland as he goes out on the deck and checks out the snow drifts and icicles.

Room Overhaul

On Friday, my mom came over to help me clean out Holland's room. It's just getting so out of control I cannot find the time to even attempt organizing it. I should have taken a before picture, but it's almost too embarrassing to give a permanent account of what it looked like. We got about half way finished cleaning and then I had to take my mom home because of the threat of snow.


On Saturday, we worked more but couldn't finish before the kids went to bed. I had the boys sleep together so I could vacuum and put everything away. I knew that they had the cats with them and went in to check before I went to bed. It was complete darkness when I went in, but I grabbed my camera when I saw what Holland had done. Our cats just love him to death, I'm sure. Cats love to sleep in weird positions and Holland helped Fancy find a comfy new way to sleep. Romania has a loft bed. Just enough room to play underneath and that's where Holland was sleeping. I see this down blanket hanging from the slats of the bed. I tried to pull it down, but it was weighted. Then I realized that he had hung up the cat and she was just laying in there and purring! They're both crazy. So before she decided to crawl out of her hammock, I ran to get my camera. I took the picture in total darkness, so I couldn't even tell if I was getting a picture of the cat. Here she is right before she crawled out.

Here's LuLu sleeping with Romania.

And here is more evidence that cats will sleep anywhere.

Worshipping at home

Today, not surprising, church was cancelled. A lot of things have been cancelled this week. I've only been out once or twice in the last 8 days. But despite all the inconveniences, we have the most beautiful scenery outside right now. I've never seen it snow so much here and on top of all this snow (probably 8 inches or more!) we had freezing rain fall last night. I decided since we weren't having church, we'd do our own worshipping at home. So I had the kids take baths, get their church clothes on and we sat on pillows in front of the tree reading stories about the birth of our Savior. And the cinnamon rolls weren't bad either!

We went out for a quick picture in the snow.

Oh The Weather Outside is Frightful

It hasn't been this cold, this long for awhile. I'm talking the high the other day was 22. The kids went out and played on Sunday when church got cancelled. I haven't left the house in 4 days. Not that I haven't wanted to. The kids are getting antsy, and I've been doing way too much baking.

What usually happens is the snow falls, it melts and then refreezes, but it doesn't snow again. So we are left with ice rinks for roads. This time, we never got above freezing and now it's supposed to snow again tonight. Romania has had two days off from school so far this week. Well, that's not entirely true. We have still been doing school here - otherwise there would be even more chaos than there already is. We just get out old books and he does work from them. He told me in class they see how much math they can get done in 5 minutes. He told me it takes him only 2 minutes to complete the work. I told him he needs to ask for more work and he said the teacher just said to sit quietly. Yup. That's what happens in a class of 22 kids, a lot of sitting. He did three pages of math today, some writing and vocabulary and read a couple chapters from a book. I still plan to do history and maybe an art project. What I really want to do is make cookies. I have a new GF flour mix I want to test out with my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.

The kids feel I'm trying to trick them when I say it's really cold outside. They can't grasp that sunshine wouldn't make it warm. So Holland has tried about 3 times to go outside without gloves and comes in crying because he's so cold. And my heating bill is going to take a beating this month. There have been about three different times I've felt like I was sweating it was so hot in the house. I thought it must be because I was working so hard. That was not the problem. The thermostat had been hiked to 90 degrees in here. Holland gets so cold and that's how he solves the problem. Super-hero has the opposite problem: I woke up to a house that was 55 degrees this morning. I told him I'd rather not feel like I was sleeping outside (although it was 17 last night, so it was actually warmer inside). To which he replied "you have a good sense of hoo-mur". I told him I didn't want humor, I wanted heat.

A Mom's Scientific Experiments

I've been doing my own scientific experiments. It happened last weekend when I (again) helped Romania clean up his room. Only this time, we cleaned it out as well. I gave him two blue metal boxes and told him whatever he could fit in there was what he could keep in his room. He picked Bionicles and Legos (good choices: nice small parts). Everything else was put in his closet with a lock on it. The results of my experiment? I've come to the conclusion that garbage multiplies. Every two or three months, I go into one of the boys' rooms and I haul out enough garbage to fill a plastic garbage bag. How does this happen? Every time we clean up I feel like I've picked up everything that could be construed as garbage. The floor is perfectly clean; boxes are stacked nicely in the closet; all clothes are put back where they belong.

So I reached a conclusion, but I haven't figured out how it happened. There is some kind of molecular force that causes garbage to seek out other garbage and bind to those molecules. My next experiment will be how to keep those molecules from binding. I need federal funding (or maybe my "redistributed wealth") to conduct these experiments.

You Call That Art??

This morning after dropping Romania at his bus stop, I got to chatting with two other moms. I usually don't stay because I want to get right to Holland's schooling. But this morning one of the moms was talking about her son getting a referral, so I was curious. She said her son had brought clay on the bus and had made a body part. An inappropriate body part. She said her son fessed right up, didn't even wait for someone to confront him and he felt really bad. But the other mom's son had been sitting nearby and she said "was considered an accomplice". Whatever that means. She has some pretty strong ideas about what is appropriate for kids. Her son got in trouble for downloading vulgar songs on his iPod and passing it around on the bus. (She thought the school over-reacted.) So I wasn't surprised when she said that making clay body parts was a form of art expression and they should be allowed to do it! I spoke right up and said, "not at that age!" I knew that I would have to work hard to instill a Christian worldview with Romania being in a public school setting. What I (naively) didn't factor in was other parents having such strong liberal views.

So Long Mr. Telemarketer

This morning during school with Holland, the phone rang. I usually keep the ringer off so we aren't disturbed and can work without him being distracted. The phone downstairs had the ringer on, so I looked at the number. It said "New Jersey". I do not know anyone in New Jersey, so I didn't bother picking it up. Holland thought that Egypt answered it upstairs, but I thought the answering machine came on. We went back to work and then to Costco. When we got home I picked up the phone to dial a number and the screen showed "line in use". Sometimes one of the three phones will get bumped and the Talk button will get pushed. I went upstairs and found the phone call from New Jersey had been left on for 4 1/2 hours! I wonder what that telemarketer did when the line wasn't disconnected!

Cat's Cradle

Did you ever play that game as a kid? I loved that game! Just a few months ago, I remember begging my sister to play that with me. And because we're so stupid, we couldn't get past about 5 or 6 turns. Then we just laughed because we're old and our kids think we're weird. For some reason Holland decided he wanted to make his room look like a giant Cat's Cradle. I didn't even get a picture because Egypt decided she needed to cut it all down because she had to rescue one of the cats (who didn't need rescuing, by the way). He had used half a roll of curling ribbon and strung it all over his room. His plan was that if his sister or brother came in in the middle of the night, he would have a light sensor set up by the door and then they would get caught in all the ribbon. What he didn't count on was his sister cutting it all to pieces.

He actually wasn't as mad as I was preparing myself for. The next day he had two old phones, more ribbon, blankets and bungee cords strung around the room. I'm not even asking what it is. I guess I should be thankful that he wants to create - but the experiments are getting pretty elaborate. When I was getting two of the kids ready for church on Sunday, he came up with blue fingers. I asked what it was and he said he was doing an experiment with water and food coloring (of course. Why did I need to ask that?) He got out baking soda and vinegar and wanted to see if the water bubbled the same color as he put into the cup. This is my fault. We used to shoot foam rockets 100 feet into the air in our driveway with vinegar and baking soda.

I think he's going to be a spy.