Tea For Three

On the way home from church today, the girls decided we needed to have a tea party. I made tea and bagels with cream cheese, and the girls each made their own specialties: Nat made cinnamon rolls (bread spread with butter and sprinkled with cinnamon-sugar then rolled up and cut into small pieces) and Miss Moo made her famous apple crisp which is just apples sliced up with cinnamon, powdered sugar with a little water added. I have no clue why she calls it an apple crisp, but it's good, so who am I to argue? We added some sliced oranges, and some fudge my friend gave me and it was a lovely tea!

One Tough Cookie

Miss Moo slammed her finger in a door about a month ago. It was pretty nasty at the time and she got very white and almost passed out. From then on every day the finger and nail turned different colors.

Finally the finger recovered and she was left with a black nail. She painted all her nails black, so it wasn't very noticable. Then she and Nat were playing rough and her nail almost came off. Ugh...that was about a week ago.

After wearing band-aids and babying it for a week, she decided the nail had to go. I give her credit. I wouldn't have had the stomach for it. While she watched her favorite show she wiggled that nail and got it off. I know. Ugh, again.

She said that it made her tummy feel weird, and Nat and I said it made our tummies feel weird just to think about it!

After she made the big Nail Detachment announcement, I asked her if she threw the nail away (as in "please, please, for the love of Pete, don't let me see that thing sitting on the coffee table"). She said, "No, I saved it so I can show Dad 'cause he'll want to see it." Being that he's a guy and all, he probably WILL want to see it. As for me...Ugh, ugh, ugh! My tummy feels weird.

Back to Basics

We’ve had a week of storm after storm and it took a toll on our little town. Sixty-plus electric outages and over 5000 people affected. This is roughly the population of our town and surrounding Podunk suburbs. I was feeling a bit guilty when our little neighborhood only lost power for a few hours and most of those during the night. All around town folks were talking about trees that had come down and taken out power poles, or how long they’d been suffering without their modern conveniences. Yep, we got off REAL lucky.

Then it happened. Out went our phone line on Sunday. Due to our own economic circumstances we’ve been without cable and cell phones for about a month, so we’ve been toughened up a bit by that deprivation. But no phone line? And in our world that equals no internet! Yikes. No contact with the outside world. No watching tv shows on HULU. No local news or weather. UGH!

The first day wasn’t so bad. I broke out the bread machine, dusted it off (it’s been neglected for years) and made bread. We played some games, read, went to sleep early. And with the tons of snow we got I was feeling very Little House on the Prairie-esque.

The second day not so much, the third, forgettaboutit! And the fourth…finally in the afternoon, contact with the outside world again. How Laura, Mary and Pa every made it through The Long Winter is beyond me!
Wow, getting back to basics. Ain’t it grand?

(Here's a photo of what we found upon opening the front door after the last storm)


"Pa! put down that fiddle and get a shovel! A BIG shovel!"

Coping

A January Paddling

This week has been filled with gorgeous, if not unseasonable, weather. On Monday I made a plan to kayak today if the weather held (Fridays being the day I'm off work at noon and don't have to show up at the restaurant till 4:30, so I knew I'd have plenty of daylight and time.)

I came racing home, loaded my boat and took it on the short drive to the lake. Ahhhhh...me time. And I didn't feel guilty.

I really wouldn't have guessed I'd get a chance to take my kayak out until spring, certainly January wasn't on my mind at all. I have to confess it was nice to go out just by myself. I love having the girls go with me but there's always someone who's wet, or tired, or doesn't want to go to that end of the lake, etc. It was just too cool to do what I wanted and get it out of my system so that I can really cater to what the kids want to do next time.

Here's my moment of zen...

and just bliss...

I did have to share the lake with my fellow paddlers though:

It Was a Test!

Remember my post about how I read everything, and the chopped red ants on the order board at the restaurant?

Well, when I worked on New Year's Eve, I had to check out the board. Usually I see if the same stuff is up there that I remember from last time or if there's something new for me to read.

This time among the lists of items I saw a circle with a slash and then "of ur bznz".

They're out of some kind of beans?...none of your beans?

Hmm...no, that's not it....

"None of your business!" I shout in victory!

The chefs just start laughing. "Yeah we put that up there for you to see if you'd notice"

I did. Ha!

Savoring the Last of My Christmas and My Chocolate

I really think this was one of our best Christmases. Such fun, such laughs, such great times together. For me the best present is always having all my kiddos under one roof enjoying each other's company. That's always the best gift.

Christmas has wound down, the Christmas decorations have been boxed up. Good old 2009 has wound down as well. This is always a melancholy time: the packing away of the Christmas magic and hoping I did a good job to make it special and memorable for my kids the way my mom always did.

Then the whole new year thing, which makes me look back--well, literally because as I put up my new calendar for the year, I look at all the pages on my old one: appointments, work schedules, play dates, birthday parties, short trips, awards, school performances, and I remember what the first of last year was like and it seems like so long ago but not that long ago all at the same time. Weird.

And now our Christmas break is almost over. Only two more days and it's back to work and school. I have so cherished this time. With my school job, I get the same vacation as the kids, and my restaurant job has only worked me 3 days over the last 2 weeks. I haven't had two days off in a row in a very long time and then I get all this! Wow!

The girls and I have totally gotten off schedule. We are such night-owls and sleeper-inners now. That first week back is going to kick our collective butts!

I am proud of myself for getting a lot accomplished with my time off. I have been going through all the boxes that I have been storing (and moving) for the last, gosh, must be 18 years. I have boxes and boxes filled with the kids' school keepsakes. Entire boxes for one grade and ONE kid. Goodness, every lunch menu, spelling test, doodle, worksheet, you name it. I have weeded through each box and kept the treasures and tossed the rest, and I've been making myself be brutal.

My goal is that each kid will have a plastic storage box of special toys, baby blankets, first outfits, etc, a scrapbook of school artwork, and a binder with awards, special cards, stories they had written and other fun things (not counting their photo scrapbooks, but that's a whole other project!) and over the last 2 weeks I've come very close to achieving this goal. (Hearty pat on the back.)

I'm almost at the end of the box of chocolates that my son had given me for Christmas and it reminds me of this time of year...the days (and chocolates) were plentiful at the beginning of our break, we had everything to anticipate and look forward to and it seemed like we had so much, and now my box is almost empty and my days off with my girls are almost gone too. The chocolates taste just as delicious if not more so...I slowly savor each one, as it is with my days, I try to savor that time that I don't have work and can just be at home with my kids. Sweet, indeed.