See what you've been missing?

It is raining today and the girls and I are bored. We should bake something. That's what I normally do when I'm home and it's raining.

But alas. Our house is a messy disaster area (except for the basement, which Greg did his best to turn into a bed-and-breakfast by expending significant effort this past Sunday). So I must clean.

After all, we're excited that the British invasion is coming on Thursday for 12 days. And though we may be able to get away with a cursory cleaning for our normal house guests (who usually only stay 2-3 days and about whom I theorize therefore could not possibly have time to notice how dusty the tops of all of my picture frames are), these people will be sticking around long enough to notice all of our dust.

So I'd best stop procrastinating and get to the cleaning. Right after I surf the web for an hour or so.

I don't know

I don't know why I stopped blogging. Boredom with my life, I suppose. Winter depression, seasonal affective disorder, something. The fact is that I had not much going on in my life for the last few months, so what would I write. I'm not really depressed, I guess. I'm just not having all that much fun lately. Though there have been moments.

Regardless, I'm going to try some blogging again.

So I spent most of last week painting. We've been in our house for 10 years now. It was new when we moved in, all white walls of course. And after ten years, some areas weren't looking too good. I think the first room we ever painted was when we were expecting Allie. Then we did a bathroom, then Julia's room, then the dining room, then another bathroom. A few months ago, I painted the master bathroom and now last week, I painted our living room/kitchen/dinette, which is all one big space.

It was probably the least satisfying room we've painted because I went with off-white. In all of the other rooms, we've added some color. After literally almost four solid days of work, all I ended up with is walls that look like they did 10 years ago. But they do look good.

Unfortunately, the rooms we have left that have never been painted are our bedroom (which could use it but really isn't any kind of priority), the mudroom (which could use it but gets so beat up through use that it probably wouldn't look like we'd done anything about 10 minutes after the paint dried) and our foyer. And the foyer needs to be painted pretty badly. But. It's two stories high, with clerestory windows that I think we've cleaned twice in 10 years. And light fixtures that were probably pretty cheap 10 years ago and that I now dislike immensely. So I'm thinking if we ever get around to painting this area, it'll require scaffold rental and a head for heights. And money for new light fixtures.

In other words, it won't be happening soon. Which is just as well since I'm kind of painted-out at the moment.

Home again

Well, we made it home from our latest travels last night and now, we're not going anywhere for the rest of the year! Except maybe to exchange some gifts. And to the grocery store. And the library, probably. And maybe to the Madison Children's Museum, if the girls are especially squirrely. But nowhere else!

The weekend before Christmas, we traveled to central Illinois to visit Greg's family. It was a wonderful visit, marred only by the intense cold and horrific wind we experienced driving back home. It was one of those trips where you have to hold the steering wheel at an angle for the entire time to try to counteract the sideways action of the wind, only to weave a bit when you go under a highway underpass and the wind is blocked. On top of that, there was blowing snow across the highway for the entire portion of the trip that took us across prairie.

Trust me, you haven't lived until you've driven three hours straight through with snow blowing across the freeway that's been flying for ten miles or so, there being nothing to stop the snow out there in mid-America. That trip was only topped by our adventure last night.

This weekend, we traveled to visit my family and to attend the 50th wedding anniversary party of my Aunt Carol and Uncle Jim. I was insistent that we were going to my party, since I'm ashamed to note how long it's been since I've seen these relatives. Let's put it this way; Julia was almost a newborn. I very much wanted my girls to meet the kids of my first cousin Ken (their second cousins).

So despite truly dense fog, we traveled about 1/2 hour north of my parents' house for the party, then drove home in really, really dense fog and darkness for almost three hours. We took the interstate again (a different interstate) because it seemed safer to not have all of those intersections to deal with. But it was bad, really bad. So bad that I didn't feel very comfortable unless I had someone's tail lights to follow. So bad that Greg suggested stopping at a hotel and going the rest of the way home in the morning.

But I persevered, and we made it to Milwaukee, where the fog dissipated. We ate some dinner, then drove the rest of the way home, about another hour. When we stopped to eat, the temperature was an amazing 49 degrees. By the time we pulled into our driveway, it was 34 degrees. We were very glad to see the house still standing and to be welcomed home by the cats (and a pile of dirt from a tipped over plant--hey, you had your holiday and they had theirs).

And now, it's home sweet home for us. Ahhhhhhhhhh.

Merry Christmas

"My favorite part was when we got to hold FIRE!" (A quote from Allie about going to church last night and having a section of the service that was lit by handheld candles in the congregation.)

I hope you and yours are having a wonderful holiday season. Merry Christmas!

Cold? Oh, yeah.

Yes, I'm reduced to blogging about the weather. Well, have patience. Yesterday, it was in the 40s and rained. This morning, it was 1 degree and very windy, wind chill of -10 or less. Surely that's worth at least a note.

In other news, we had a relatively quiet weekend. On Saturday morning, we got out of the house early and took the girls to see Santa at the mall. We love this particular Santa--his name is Tom something (I know because he's been featured in our area newspaper) and he has a real white beard and he always says, "Have a blessed holiday," as the girls hop off his lap.

Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures because the company that provides Santa decided to go hardball on not allowing any parent-taken photos. We've purchased the (incredibly overpriced) photo package in the past but chose not to this year. So no photo with Tom. Trust me, the girls looked adorable.

Hah! Off the hook--

It snowed today. Actually it started snowing yesterday and it's not supposed to be done until tomorrow, but most of it landed today. So much, in fact, that the school district called it's first snow day. The girls were thrilled. I figure we got about 6 inches so far and it's wet, icy stuff.

So 4:00 came and I'm thinking, all right. Time to get outside and at least snow blow enough of the driveway so Greg can get his car in the garage. The snowplows have been busy, so there's a considerable pile of icy junk at the end of the drive.

The girls and I get bundled up (it's about 20 degrees out) and I get busy. OK, I successfully get the thing started (only two tries). I make one path down the driveway, gnaw away at the snowplow pile, gnaw some more, wrestle with the snowblower, gnaw some more, tilt it this way and that, gnaw some more and phew! Made it through to the street in one little place.

Okay. Now back the other way, gnaw, gnaw, gnaw (I'm shortening this process in prose, trust me, it took a lot longer)--and then through. Up to the garage. Back again, start gnawing when I get to the end of the driveway and the snowblower dies. I try restarting it by hand. No go. Haul the snowblower back up to the garage so I can plug it in and try the electric start. Nope. Gee, I wonder if it's out of gas. Oh look. It's out of gas.

About this time, our neighbor, Charles came over to see he could help. What a sweet man. He wondered if I could put in regular gas or if I needed a gas-oil mixture. Greg and I didn't cover this in our lesson the other day, so I send Allie in for the cordless phone and called him.

No, he says, you don't need a gas-oil mixture. And I just got gas the other day. Fill it with the gas in either of the two gas cans on the top storage shelf. Hmm, the top storage shelf that has just a big enough gap to fit two gas cans but is empty? Those imaginary gas cans?

Yes, he still has the gas cans in his trunk from the other day. And I get out of snowblowing for today. Aww. I'm so sad.

Snow queen

On Friday, Greg and I took the girls to a local production of the above-mentioned play. It was about 80 minutes long and featured all youth performers. Some of the singing we heard was quite good and there was an attempt made to entertain adults by including some references aimed at adult humor. Nonetheless, when Allie asked me afterward what my favorite part was, I said the end. Not the ending, the end. She got it after just a moment.

Yesterday, Greg taught me how to use our snowblower. It was cold and quite windy and we tackled the 3 or so new inches of snow in the driveway. Allie and Julia came outside with us to play but Julia only lasted about 5 minutes. She's such a fragile flower. I didn't really enjoy my lesson. That was partially because the wind blew a LOT of snow over my body and especially in my face. It was also because the snowblower is considerably heavier than the lawnmower and I found it tough to maneuver and turn around.

Then I blew snow off the sidewalk and didn't do a good enough job for Greg. While I was coming back down the block (and getting pummeled with an avalanche of light blowing snow from the chute and the wind), Greg took pity on me and showed me how to adjust the output. He went over the sidewalk again and we were done. At least yesterday, snowblowing doesn't take as long as lawn mowing, that's a good thing. And now I have a new skill for my resume.

Snow and school

Yes, Dan, it has been snowing where we live. And snowing. And snowing. There was a Winter Weather Advisory yesterday because we were projected to get up to 5 inches of snow, but our eventual result was about three inches. Nonetheless, Greg got to use the snowblower. Oh, what fun. And today it got cold--I think the high was about 20 degrees. I went out to shovel a little leftover snow on the sidewalk and my hands (in thermal gloves) were quite numb in only about ten minutes. When will spring arrive, again?

This week at school, Julia is her class's Student of the Week (SOTW). This honor means that we had to come up with a box of things that are special to her so she could show them to her classmates, we had to make a poster with photos, and we were encouraged to bring a special treat for the class. Yep, it's all about the food. Yesterday afternoon, I made cupcakes and last night I frosted the cupcakes and the girls decorated them.

This was, by the way, the first year of SOTW celebrations where we actually made the special treat. For the last three years, we've bought cupcakes when Allie was honored. Now, I know why that was a good idea. Folks, there were enough sprinkles, nonpariels, candy pieces, and colored sugar on these things to light a neon sign. At my suggestion, the girls left two of the cupcakes plain, just frosting. And when two leftover cupcakes made their way home tonight, what were they? Yes, they were the two plain frosted cupcakes. Shows what I know about the tastes of kindergarteners.

I also went to Julia's class for a visit today. I brought two books from home to read aloud to her class, which went well. I tried to use my dramatic voices and ask a few questions along the way (did you know that 30 percent of kindergarteners have piggy banks?). It was fun, except that Julia cried for fifteen minutes when I had to go. Ah, the travails of school.

Turkey hangover

Happy belated Thanksgiving! I hope your holiday was warm, talk-filled, food-filled, and overall much to be thankful for. That's what mine was.

We traveled to see my family this year. The girls enjoyed seeing their aunties, uncle, grandparents, and quasi-uncle. I made apple and pumpkin pies as my contribution to the meal and I only regret that I left the leftover pie at my sister's house. I'm thinking I might need to make another pumpkin pie this week for us.

The best part is that now we're home in our own beds and the girls are still off of school and Greg is still off of work for two more days. Yay for long weekends!

What was this--guesses welcome

On the weekends, we let Julia sleep in Allie's full-size bed with her and we let both girls stay up later than usual. The result is that they normally talk and giggle for awhile in bed and as a result, they sleep in the next morning until 8:00 or so, which is a wonderful side benefit for Greg and me.

Last night, I couldn't tell if Julia was covered with blankets or not when I went up to bed. I stepped into Allie's room and the floor creaked. Julia flopped her arm over in her sleep and it landed on Allie's shoulder. Allie pushed up on her elbow and leaned over the edge of her bed to look intently at the floor for about 30 seconds.

What she was doing and what she was looking at, I have no idea. I don't even know if her eyes were open since I was on the opposite side of the bed. She says she doesn't remember doing it. I'll remember for awhile because I stood there laughing silently at her for more than a minute.

My child left where?

This week Allie discovered that she likes bagels with cream cheese. I like bagels too, but we don't buy them very frequently; in fact I can't remember when I last bought some. The bagels were part of the special snacks provided by parents at school this week, and Allie didn't want to eat breakfast at home all week because of a provided breakfast also. What was the occasion?

Third grade was taking their "Wicky" tests--the tests that determine if our school system is meeting it's obligations under the No Child Left Behind law or act or whatever it's called. To make sure that Allie's grade does as well as they possibly can, the school system does some extraordinary things.

First, they have the entire second grade practice taking a week of the tests to smell out any problem areas (or problem children, I assume). During that week last year, every child was provided with a nutritious breakfast--just in case they didn't or don't get one at home, I guess. The mid-morning milk break was also special "nutritious" snacks; not just the normal crackers but also string cheese, yogurt, and fruit. They did the same thing this week, plus the school hallways were under special "quiet test time" rules.

I appreciate what they're trying to demonstrate here, I really do. I just think it's sad that they only go through these efforts to provide an extremely positive learning and testing environment for one week during the year.

We sent string cheese. Does that mean we did our part for education this week? This year?

Warning to future buyers of any car I have owned in the last 11 years

Once upon a time, I diligently followed the service recommendations that came with my automobiles. I'd get oil changes done every 3,000 miles or so. I'd get the recommended 30,000 mile check done, and I'd keep on top of getting new windshield wipers and such. Then I'd trade my car in and buy another one. At about 50,000 miles or so.

Actually, I did used to do these things but those were the years when I did sales and put about 25,000 miles on my car each year and I got a monthly car allowance of several hundred dollars.

Then I quit sales and got married and started having kids and car maintenance slipped way, way to the bottom of my list of priorities. I read some things about frequency of oil changes and realized I was an idiot to spend so much money on them and I started going a lot longer between changes. A lot longer.

Umm. Well. Today I got my oil changed. I think I went about 13,000 miles on this batch of oil. Oops.

So if you ever buy a car that I've owned, this has been your public warning that the maintenance hasn't been the best. Oh, and I never wax my car anymore either.

Gotta go--the oil change place discovered that I have a screw embedded in one of my tires and I'm off to have it fixed. See, I take care of my tires. Kinda. Not really, but I'm taking care of this one.

Sigh.

Busted!

Allie lost another molar last night. I think that's about tooth number 10 that's she in the process of replacing. She'll be 9 in January and she lost her first tooth before age 5, so her dentist says she's on track, if running a little early.

She found her little pewter tooth fairy tooth holder (a long-ago gift from Lisa--thanks again, Lisa!) and put her tooth in place on her nightstand. I should find out where Lisa got this gift because if I could stop any parent from having to reach under a sleeping kid's pillow--but I digress.

Allie looked at me, then asked Julia to go away for a minute. I had a sinking feeling. Yep, she wanted to tell me confidentially that she saw me exchange her last tooth for cash. Dang! That night, she wasn't stirring when I went in her room, but she stirred right after I made the exchange. It was probably a month ago and she hadn't asked any questions until now, so I thought I was in the clear.

She's agreed to keep the tooth fairy secret for the sake of her sister. Her only condition was that she wanted to see the teeth I've been keeping. Why I've been keeping them, I don't know. Why she wanted to see them, I don't know.

But now we're conspirators together. I'm wondering when she's going to bring up Santa. And again, she's growing up too fast.

November blues

There's supposed to be a high of 37 degrees today and snow this afternoon. It's also going to snow tomorrow, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, according to the meteorological powers-that-be.

Why do people like autumn?

Can it be 500?

According to Blogger, this is my 500th post. I've actually written over 500, but I deleted a few a few months back because I changed my mind about how much I wanted to talk about work. So 500 official posts available for review. That's a lot of talking about my kids and the cats.

Ah, who am I kidding. I know that I have about 10 regular readers and I know who all of you are, so most of you only really care to hear about my kids. I'm OK with that.

So, because we didn't report before, we did have 277 kids for Halloween this year. It was unseasonably warm, so that was actually a lower total than I expected. Our two kids had a good time trick-or-treating with their dad and the Clausen family. All of the chocolate is gone now from their candy stashes. I wonder how that happened? Oh, come on, please. I'm home all day with big candy stashes and those little fun size Milky Ways are just staring at me. What would you do?

By the way, I'm somewhat surprised that I haven't actually gained any weight since I've not been working. I've lost about 10 lbs. instead, which is exactly the opposite of what I thought would occur when I have immediate access to food all day. Not that the candy vending machine at work was all that distant, but whatever.

OK, so that's about it for my 500th post. More of the same old, same old. 500 posts in almost 5 1/2 years. I'm not exactly publishing enough to set the world on fire, but I'm capturing some family moments for my kids someday. That's enough for me. Have a great weekend!

Isn't puke fun.

Julia threw up at 4 a.m. this morning. And 7 a.m. and about 11:45 a.m.

I guess the benefit of having a five-year-old who's got a tummy bug is that she's not managed to make much of a mess throwing up. And since I'm not working, if she isn't well enough to go to school tomorrow, I'm obviously available to take care of her.

That's looking on the bright side of things, isn't it? Instead of me and Greg debating (fighting) over whose work for that day is more important?

Now we just have to hope that she's the only one in the family affected.

November already

We have a new president-elect, and I'm happy about who won.

I have a third interview tomorrow with a local company, so I'm pumped and a little nervous.

And the girls brought home their school pictures today. They both look adorable and older than their years. I told Greg on the phone that he wouldn't believe them when he saw them, especially Allie's. I said she looks about 20 years old.

Julia heard me and piped up, "And I look - - um, 14!"

What's goin' on

Nothing much, how 'bout you?

I took the girls to their Halloween dance last Friday--ah, the overwhelming joys of a grade school dance. The first 1/2 hour was horrible, the next 1/4 hour was tolerable, the next 1 hour was much better, and the last 1/4 hour was horrible.

After 10 minutes, I offered the girls a bribe of each their own fullsize candy bar if we could leave. Allie said yes, Julia said no, so we stayed.

In other news, yesterday it snowed. Yes, by god, it snowed. Big chunky flakes that melted when they hit the ground.

Thank goodness it only lasted about four minutes. Our snowblower is still in the shop and besides, it's October!

BTW, Happy Birthday to my sister, Claudette!

Not too full

Today is the 12th anniversary of the day that Greg and I married. Last night, I arranged for one of our exceedingly rare babysitter visits and we went out to dinner to commemorate and celebrate and all that.

We ate at a relatively new restaurant in Madison called Samba. It's one of those Brazilian meat restaurants. The kind where there's an amazing salad bar and then you turn over a disk (or in this case, hourglass type of thing) from red to green and men with large skewers of meat keep coming to your table and slicing off pieces and chunks for you until you turn your hourglass back to red. They had 8 different meats on the menu last night.

Barbecued chicken, flank steak, duck, lamb, tenderloin, sirloin steak, and so on. Greg and I joked during our meal that we should bring Dan and Kerry to try it if they come and visit again (bad joke, sorry Kerry--she's a vegetarian and I imagine that anyone who wasn't a dedicated meat eater would have been literally sickened by the skewers of meat walking around). But if you're a carnivore--mmmm, it was really good. And then they had these little rolls that tasted like Yorkshire puddings--it was quite an event, actually.

So 12 years ago today at this time (11:15 a.m.), I was at the beauty salon with my bridesmaids, getting our hair done.

At 12:15 or so, I was arriving at the church to get dressed for photos. A friend got sub sandwiches and no one ate them.

At 2:00? 3:00? (oh my god, I can't remember what time!) we got married.

At 5:00, we arrived at our reception and had a little popcorn from the popcorn machine. This was hours before my Uncle Jim, who had been doing a wonderful job helping us out by running the popcorn machine, got a little distracted by the amount of beer he'd drunk and forgot a bunch of popcorn and it smoked up the hall a little--not too bad.

At midnight, our feet sore from all the dancing we had done, we left the hall and discovered that our "friends" (I use the term lightly, at this point) had filled the interior of our car with those little circles you get when you 3-hole punch paper and the exterior of our car with written congratulations. We didn't have time to clean the interior before we left on our honeymoon, so we still had those little circles blowing around more than a week later. And more than six months later, I was still finding them when I vacuumed out my car.

It was a wonderful day and so many wonderful things have happened since. I love you, Gregory. Happy Anniversary!

Campfire songs

Last night, me and the girls went downtown to the senior center for a campfire sing-along. The logs were made of cardboard columns, wrapped with brown paper and decorated with squiggly lines. The fire was shapes cut out of orange and red paper, propped into the "logs." It was about 55 degrees outside, but I guess Allie's school didn't want to risk frostbite or something. So the sing-along was inside on the carpeted floor.

The music teacher, the principal, and a friend of the teacher had instruments and the 40 or so assembled kids and 30 or so assembled parents sang folk songs that the kids have been learning recently in class. I guess that's a good reason for being inside, so that people could read the song lyrics.

We weren't very good, but Allie liked it and Julia liked that they had cookies afterward. Gosh, it's only two months until the December All-School Sing--I guess I'll just have to bear the wait.