The Boss

As I'm sitting in the family room, catching up on my blogging, I can hear the kids upstairs cleaning the playroom. Emily is directing the effort and I'm hearing some of the best lines out of her mouth...

"Ok, Evan, its your turn for a break..."
"Dani, you can finish whatever you were working on when you get your next break, but right now you have to do 3 jobs. Just 3, Dani."
"I'll give you a penny if you pick up that bear over there."
"Do you want to go outside, Dani? Well the sun is going down and I NEED HELP."


In moments of frustration, my mom used to tell me that she hoped I had a kid just like me when I grew up. Well, Mom, you got your wish. I guess I have about 2 years before she turns into a total monster.

SNOW

We had our first snowstorm of the season on Thursday night. It was greatly anticipated by the weather men -- promising us 6"-10" and trying their best to freak everyone out. It ended up only accumulating about 5" but Jason think it would have been more if it hadn't been such wet snow. As Jason shovels the driveway, he has to chip the ice off before he can scoop it away. While not necessarily impressive in total accumulation, this ice was enough to require the first school cancellation we have seen in the 3 years we have lived here! One of my seminary students has lived here for 6 years and this was the first time SHE had ever had a snow day. We stayed nice and warm in our house all day, so I don't know how bad the conditions actually were, but I heard lots of stories of cars spinning out and accidents from around the area.

The girls used their free day to play in the snow with their friends down the street. Their friends' mom called to tease me, "Don't you know welive in the North? Why don't your kids have snow boots?" I had a difficult time justifying our lack of need for boots and by the end of the phone call was determined to buy the kids some snow boots before the end of the weekend.

Today, another neighbor invited us to go sledding at the school and we decided to attempt it. On went the layers of clothes and socks, the search for gloves and hats and such and out they went to frolick in the snow. Even I went down a couple of times and I can testify that it was a perfect sledding hill -- nice and fast and just enough distance at the bottom that you stopped before you went into the street... well, most of the time.







The probably had fun for about 20 minutes, though Brendan was less than impressed with the activities. Within less than an hour kids were crying and begging to go home. Evan was especially devastated by the experience. I don't know if he was cold or scared by the speed of the rides, but in the history of all Evan's meltdowns, I have never seen one that quite matched this one.

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So I took the whiney ones home (Emily, Evan and Brendan) and gave them cocoa and eventually Evan calmed down. Dani came in a little while later -- she was defintely the best of the four of the kids, having sledded for probably an hour total. I was very amused by this struggle:


Her pants wouldn't stay up for anything! Everytime she went down the hill, we had to re-snap them. Good thing she was wearing 2 pairs!

This whole sledding ordeal reminded me why my kids don't have boots. They won't stay in the snow long enough to make the investment worthwhile!!! Let 'em wear tennis shoes... they'll be back inside before they're thoroughly soaked anyway. Or better yet, let's just skip the 3o minutes of prep and hour of clean up for 45 minutes of fun and go straight to the cocoa.

Neglect

With as much attention as Dani demands, apparently she is somewhat neglected. I was horrified to discover, a couple of weeks ago,that she had, not just a colony, but a CIVILIZATION of planters warts growing on her feet. I mean, the warts are growing at least 2 cm thick. How long had that been festering for it to have grown to that magnitude!?!?! Don't I ever look at my own kids feet? Apparently not. We have turned our attention to elimiating the layers of warts on her feet and soon she should have nice smooth feet again. I really feel bad that it got so far along before we noticed it.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, I was giving Dani a dose of antibiotics a couple of days ago and noticed that one of her teeth looked really crooked. It occurred to me that it might be loose, so I attempted a wiggle and sure enough, it is loose! Dani had no idea! We screamed and jumped around and got all excited. Jason tried to wiggle it, too and discovered that no, Dani didn't have A loose tooth, she has TWO loose teeth! How can my kid have 2 loose teeth (which I might add are so loose that they will probably fall out by Christmas) and I didn't notice?? I brush the kid's teeth for her half the time and I didn't see it!

My only consolation in this is that Dani wasn't aware of the warts or the loose teeth either (in fact, she keeps asking me to show her which of her teeth are loose -- she can't remember where they are or find them on her own and when I tell her to show me her warts, she gives me the wrong foot). Am I supposed to just recognize these things, or is she supposed to tell me herself? Poor Dani... loved but neglected, in spite of all her efforts to be noticed.

Colonial Night

At Lincoln Elementary, the third graders do a big unit on Colonial Life, the culmination of which is Colonial Night, when their families are invited to come and see what they have learned. Emily very nearly didn't get to go, since she threw up in the wee hours previous to the big day. Never have I seen a kid so determined to go to school. She had been waiting to do Colonial Night since second grade!! She was going to be a teacher with Lindsay!! She would never get a chance to to this again!!!! She kept insisting that she felt good and I told her that if she still felt good at lunchtime, I'd let her go to school. Lunchtime came and she went to school. Two hours later, i got a call from the school nurse to come and bring her home. She didn't throw up again, and she took a nap at home, and against my better judgement, I still let her go to Colonial Night. The classroom had been transformed into a colonial village with areas set up to teach their visitors about things like food, schooling, games and work in a colonial town. All the kids had notecards that they read their little "presentations" from.
Em's read
"1. Hi my name is Emily and today I would like to tell you this part of colonial schools, teachers.
2. The teacher usually taught his or her students how to read. They did this because they believed that everybody shoeuld be able to read from the Bible.
3. Math and writing was still important to them just not as important as reading.
4. The teachers would tell his or her stduents a poem and have them reapet it untill they memorised it.
5. The teachers had his or her students say a prayer at the end of the day then they would leave.
6. Most of the lessons were on reading. Some teachers had them read poems or prayres.
7. Do you have any questions about the teachers in colonial times?"



Isn't she just the cutest little colonial girl you ever saw? And she didn't barf the whole night either!

Tradition

In continuing our beloved Christmas tradition, we trekked to Sinnissippi Forest again this year for a little Christmas tree selection and holiday revelry. It was unbelieveable weather -- in the 60s! It took us a little while to find the right tree, but eventually, as we always do, we pinpointed the BEST tree on the entire lot and made it our own.



We tried a different field this year, farther from the Christmas lodge and we barely made it in time to get delicious apple cider donuts -- we got the last dozen! We learned that the town has a Christmas Festival the Saturday after Thanksgiving every year, so we decided to check it out this year. It wasn't incredibly impressive, but we did get to ride in a very pretty horse drawn carriage -- the kids LOVED it. We didn't see Santa, but we heard he'll be at our ward party next week, so we'll catch him then.