Winter Happenings

It's an open secret around here. It has been Gray. And you know what that means. It means I am trying very hard not to grumble at the skies. And working hard to find things that make me smile. At least we have SNOW. Cold with new snow is FUN. Cold (and it has been COLD.) with gray and no snow is NOT SO FUN.

133. Helping bring down Krispy Kreme's profit margin.
Did you know that for every A you get on your report card, Krispy Kreme will give you a doughnut? It's a good thing they limit it to half a dozen per child. If they didn't, kids like mine would run them out of business. We are still having trouble with backwards 2's in Kindergarten. But all things considered, I'd say that's not bad.

134. Winning Contests Uncontested. The Unnamed oldest won first place for poetry in the SMAC citizenship contest. The theme was Obama's inauguration. She gets to read her poem at a reception. She entered because it was extra credit in English. She was the only poetry entry in her grade at her school. Two of her friends entered the essay category. They got first and second. They were the only two entries in that category from their school. It just goes to show, you can't win what you don't enter.

135. Band and strings concerts. They had a school wide band, strings, choir concert. Great fun. Sue and Lou both played and Sue sang with the choir. They did a great job.

And in slightly older news...

135. Walking out of the mist to rescue the hysterical children. This doesn't look as good here as I imagined it. I saw it actually in slow motion as a movie scene. I might work on it a bit more. To the rescue!...

136. Snow Days. And snow forts. And Tunnels. And sledding on hills with no sleds. And coming in pink cheeked from the cold. And drinking hot chocolate.

137. Drinking hot chocolate. Are you looking at me?

138. Singing in Church. They were asked the same week they sang, and it turned out beautifully. Thanks to Sister G for her great help on the piano.
That's all for now. Got to get back to putting away Christmas. I know I'm late! The house is crazy and I'll be gone most of the day tomorrow. I'm hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.

Christmas

130. Christmas Socks.


131. Happy Christmas Children in

132. Christmas pajamas.

Poetry to promote good Karma

129. A Poem. I wrote this one during Nanowrimo. In the middle of the night. At the end of a long day. Today is a snow day. (Even though it hasn't started snowing!!!) I think it'll be fun! After I publish this and get cleaned up, we're off to the library.

Because time cannot eat my lunch without my permission.

I solemnly declare a day of freedom from.

From laundry

From dishes

From carpools

From washing of any kind.

From ought to’s, and should haves, and need to’s, and all those burdens we lay on ourselves with heavy words.

I declare a day of freedom to

To care

And wash

And drive

And clean the world and lives of those I love into a gentle peace of calm and orderly places.

Of light loads and easy roads and hands red with love

A day of I will, I want to, I’m going to, I did.

Because outside, results may be much the same. But inside, I will be much different.

For some reason it's double spaced. I don't know why. It wasn't where I brought it from. I'll have to do a little html investigating to figure out why. Have a great Day! It's still below 10 degrees here!

Photoshop

127. Photoshop. I'm in love. The extended family picture is coming along nicely. There is still a little bit of tweaking to be done, but there are places I can't even see what I've done unless I turn off a layer. Hee Hee! I showed it to Mr. C. He couldn't find the photoshopped stuff either. Then he tried to downplay my magnificent achievement. I wouldn't let him. I rock.

128. Today's photoshop tutorial. How to make fake water. This is what Monticello might look like if it were on the water. (I know, this is very rough, the water color is off, and the ripples are awful. Also, buildings with horizontal lines don't blur well. But it was fun to do. And I learned something.)

Aerobic Exercise over the Holidays

126. Being Home for Christmas. We were all there. All of us. And we laughed and laughed. We stayed up late talking. We stayed up late doing Christmas. We stayed up late and had sibling pow-wows, and the next day we stayed up late and cleaned out the basement, and the next day we stayed up late and got ready to leave and watched a movie. And every night we laughed. I love laughing with my family. We tried to get in as much as possible. More about the trip and Christmas pictures later.

Great Events - Crummy pictures

Some of these pictures are terrible. On purpose. Because I'm trying to give a flavor of what happened, and preserve other people's privacy on the web. Sorry. But that's how the tortilla rolls. I'll email or link you up with better pictures if you want them.

121. Happiness is... Today in junior primary the bishopric message was about what makes us happy, and what can bring us long term happiness. The children were asked, "What makes you happy?" The S-Train mentioned his spy club. And one little girl said, "like when Santa brings me a pony." Oh, yes, Virginia, oh yes. Just like that.

122. Thanksgiving with the group. We had a great time with the extended family for Thanksgiving. We got a great new family picture. Determination will get you everywhere.


You aren't convinced this is the final picture? You're right. The final picture does show everyone, I promise. This was just for fun.

Risk, Scrabble, and puzzles competed for attention with the biggest, baddest lego sets you've ever seen. Courtesy of Uncle J. Who loved spoiling his nieces and nephews (Other lego sets will forever seem tame.) and who put on the best wienie roast you've ever seen.

The men took the group target shooting. Uncle J saved a lot of two liter bottles for target practice. The girls painted their toenails. A quilt was tied for grandma.

And we engaged in a little black Friday excursion. We had a talent show. And the Christmas gift exchange finished early, because everyone wanted to see their presents opened. It was very sweet seeing the cousins getting to know each other again. And a good time was had by all.

123. Coming home to beautiful new windows. They look like they've always been there. They are beautiful!

124. The Spy Club lives. Meanwhile this last week, we've had some other exciting moments. Probably most notably the spy club birthday party. We got crazy with yarn laser beams in the basement, and made spy gear (decoders) and got our spy badges (thanks to a busy child on the computer.) Great fun!
125. Pictures framed. With a little paint, an old curtain panel that was taking up space, and some pictures photo shopped and then printed on card stock - Voila! My next cool project done.
Love it! It was so successful that I think I'll write a decorator blog. I'll have one entry.

120. I finished nanowrimo. A massive push to get 18,000 words written in 2 days. I may only cut about half of them.