Simple Woman's Daybook Entry

 

 

Outside my window... Snow! And LOTS of it. Most of it is blowing sideways right now... We are supposed to get around 6 -12 inches, but the garden beds are already partially buried because of the wind. We live on a corner lot, and because of the way we are situated, when the snow is accompanied with wind, it whips around the front of the house and we get a nice 3-4 ft drift up against the garage door, yet the bottom of the driveway is mostly swept clean. I conveniently forget this fact, and since I am always running late, whenever we load up the car to dash out of the house, I raise the garage door to find the drift waiting for me and I have to dig us out before we can go anywhere. It's sad that it ends up being a 'surprise' every time. Maybe that is the gift of a terrible memory... life is continually full of surprises!

I am thinking... About how grateful I am for the snow. We have had hardly any snow - just a piddly dusting here and there. I love me a big whoppin' storm. (Well, as long as we have plenty of food, diapers and toilet paper...)

I am thankful... Okay I just said I was thankful for the snow, so now I have to think of something else. I am thankful for all of the good things that have entered our life lately... that update will be on my other blog - My 2 cents.

From the Learning Rooms... I am officially in love with Homeschool Skedtrack. It has made our life so much easier. Rylan has finished all 120 lessons of Reading Eggs, and has moved on to Reading Eggspress - which is just too cool for words. It is like having an entire library at our fingertips - fiction, nonfiction, all broken down by genre and reading level, complete with comprehension questions at the end of every book. LOVE THAT. Rylan is studying the water cycle, Jordan is researching different galaxy formations and creating some artwork with that, and Owen is finally showing some interest in working with letter sounds. Did I mention that I suspect he is a lefty? That might explain some things....

In the kitchen... Today has C*H*I*L*I written all over it..

I am wearing... Thermal pj's and my robe.

I am creating... A huge pile of shredded paper as I (finally) shred documents from 2004 and 2005. Does that count?

I am going... Thankgoodness we have nowhere to go today!

I am wondering...How on earth do birds stay warm and sheltered when it snows like this?

I am reading... Got two books going right now - Voyager by Diana Gabaldon, and The Year of Learning Dangerously by Quinn Cummings. I'm on a kick to finish the Outlander series. In the past two weeks I read Outlander and Dragonfly in Amber and so I am just going with it. I love history, so I am finding the story fascinating. The other book is about a family's experience with homeschooling. I've just started it, so I don't have a lot to say just yet.

I am hoping... That Dean won't have to drive to work tomorrow and get a work-at-home day instead.

I am looking forward to... Owen's 'birthday' on Thursday. He's a leaper, so in non-leap years we celebrate on the 28th.

I am learning... About the Jacobite Rising (due to Outlander) and other bits and pieces of Scottish history.

I am hearing... In a different sort of blogging mood today, so my musical accompaniment is one of Dean's Spotify playlists called Dubstep 2013 by Filtr Norway. I actually don't care for most of the list, but one of my favorites is Xception (Original Mix) by Starkillers & BL3ND, so I just end up playing it over, and over, and over....

Around the house... Rylan is curled up with Kitty on her lap, watching tv, Jordan is on his iPod, Colin is playing with two large paperclips and a small toy truck, Owen is sleeping in, Dean is sleeping in (or feigning it and actually playing Clash of Clans on his iPad), and Abby is curled up into a tight ball o'fur on her pillow. My goal for today is to finish up my financial recording keeping for Rylan's girl scout cookie sales, print off the Holiday letter (which is finally completed and why I can start blogging again without any guilt) and get through the last of the paper piles that have plagued our desk for at least the past six months. I have been working very, very hard on getting caught up - and it is so close now I can taste it!!

I am pondering... How deep the snow will get..

One of my favorite things... I know that it is totally bizarre, but I love the smell of Abby's paws. It's deep, earthy and complex. I give her a big hug every night before bed, and I just breathe in deep. My previous two huskies had the same sort of scent too. I don't really care for the smell of other dogs which is probably why I am reluctant to consider any other breed.

A few plans for the rest of the week... Jordan has a Court of Honor/Potluck night tomorrow night. And so it just dawned on me right now that I need to come up with something to bring foodwise, and that I have a bit of patch-sewing to do, in very short order. We have the usual activity schedule and a field trip on Thursday to the Garbage Garage (a recycling-themed classroom/museum place located adjacent to the county landfill). Thursday is also Owen's birthday, and I am planning on taking the kids to the new children's science museum in our city that just opened up a couple of months ago. I have to get his cake squared away, and figure out what else we will do that day. He is not really giving me any special requests other than that he wants a Thomas train cake and a Buzz Lightyear. On Friday Jordan will be babysitting again. Jordan has taken on a small job of babysitting for a homeschooling mom twice a month on a Friday morning. He basically gets to play Legos for three hours with a 4 year old boy and earns money by doing so - he thinks it is the most awesome deal in the Universe. On Saturday the scouts will be doing a snowshoeing/camping overnight - this snowstorm came just in time to put down an nice soft layer of deep snow for them.

Here is a picture for thought I am sharing...

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Down the drain...

 

Do her eyes look red? Maybe a little puffy? There had been lots of tears. It was past 10 pm and she was tired. So was I. And her dad. We were all tired. That stubborn little bottom tooth was driving all of us crazy. It had twisted sideways and leaned forward like the leaning Tower of Pisa. She looked a little like a bulldog with a bad underbite. It had to come out. It hurt her to eat and the top tooth above it kept hitting it and causing pain. She wouldn't let me pull or push it beyond a certain amount (even though it may have finally popped loose if she had let me). She wouldn't let her dad mess with it much either, and Jordan was just itch'n to have a crack at it. Even her older cousins (whom she saw earlier in the day) regaled her with tales of how one pulled the other's tooth by tying it to a door handle and yanking the door shut. Rylan was terrified.

 

But in the end, that's (almost) exactly what we did. Dean made a slip knot with dental floss. After a serious amount of coaxing, Rylan finally let him slip it over the tooth and pull it snug. She was trembling like a leaf. Dean gave her the end of the floss string and told her she was in charge. She would be the one to pull when she was ready. I have to hand it to her - she is a brave, brave girl. I don't think I could have done it. After a couple of attempts, she handed the end to her daddy and told him to do it - as long as he promised that it would be fast and that it wouldn't hurt. So, he pulled the string slightly upwards until it was taut, and then gave a yank...and then a harder one. Pop!

 

The tooth, a tiny white speck in the corner of my eye, flew over Dean's shoulder and ricocheted inside the shower stall after it slipped free from the knotted floss. Rylan's look of relief, mixed with surprise was comical. She laughed. I took a picture. Then we looked for the tooth. And looked. And looked.

 

We went to bed. In the morning I put on grubby clothes and gave our bathroom the most thorough cleaning it has had in over a year. But alas, no tooth. The most likely culprit was the shower drain, for that is the only possible explanation. I combed through cat litter, inspected the shower door track (not recommended for those afraid of mold), the floor vents (not recommended for those afraid of spiders), and scrubbed behind the toilet (Yuck. I hate cleaning toilets).

 

Needless to say, Rylan was not happy about her tooth going missing. She was certain that the Tooth Fairy would not leave her anything when she came to visit. I suggested that she write a letter of explanation. So she did...

 

"Dear Tooth Fairy, I am sorry I lost my second tooth. It is down the drain probably. From Rylan"

 

The Tooth Fairy did indeed pay a visit, and she left behind four shiny gold dollar coins. Rylan was impressed that the Tooth Fairy was able to fit down the drain and find her tooth. I am too. I wonder what else she found down there?

 

 

 

(For the record, the other top tooth that was loose at Thanksgiving is STILL there, although it is now sitting at a beautifully awkward 30 degree angle...and no looser than the day we discovered it. I did predict Valentine's Day, didn't I??? Somehow I don't think it will be coming out in three days time...)

 

 

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GMA <3 JRO&C

We had a beautiful greeting outside our front door this morning....

 

 

And a dusting of snow!

 

Thank you, gma...

 

D, K, J, R, O & C <3 U 2

 

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Playing catch up

 

 

Every morning this is the image that sits before my mind's eye.  How far will I get today?  How much of my leftover to-do list can I cross off?  It feels like a race that goes on, and on, and on.

 

I still have my pile of Christmas (now called New Year) cards to sign and send off.  I'm doin' it man!  I spent 40 bucks on those photo cards!  I still have the Thank You's for the kids (and Dean and I) to write.  I still have nine girl scout patches left to sew on, three boy scout, and 10 karate stars.  I still need to write out my New Year's blog post.  (and post about 15 other over-due missives as well.  Halloween and Pumpkin Patch anyone?)  A whole host of stuff to put away, cart away and haul away...

 

We're all in the same boat.  We're behind, behind, behind...

 

Nowhere is this more evident than in my log of the kids' completed school hours/assignments.

 

 

Sigh.

 

 

 

But I think I just may have found my answer....

Building Legos with 6,000 friends

We did something new last week. I don't remember now where I saw it, but I read somewhere (I think it was in my Facebook feed) that CurrClick has clubs that you can join. Specifically, a Lego club. All you do is register and it's FREE. You don't have to bundle up your kids, (hunting down coats, mittens and snow boots), just to drive across town and mess around with millions of tiny pieces of Lego and referee the occasional disagreement between kids and stretch the truth about it being an 'educational' endeavor. Nope. We got to stay home, commute to the computer desk, log in and click a couple of links and we were golden.

It is my understanding that this online 'club' meets live, twice a month - the second Monday and the fourth Wednesday. Both classes are exactly the same, so if you miss one, you can do the other - AND, the classes are recorded, so you can actually do it any time you please - if you don't really care about the live chat bit.

The moderator is a homeschool mom of two boys, and she runs the class. There are several windows open on the screen during class - a window with a webcam on the moderator, a large screen that displays videos and various graphics that relate to that month's build, a live chat window, and a window that shows who is present for the current class. The attendees can communicate via the chat window, either with the moderator or the other club members.

Each month has a different theme and build that goes with it. This month the theme is snow, and the kids constructed a rather intricate snowflake. Next month it is a section of the Great Wall of China. The moderator posts a materials list (various Lego pieces) way ahead of time (like weeks), so you have plenty of time to gather the correct number of pieces before the class. The color of the pieces do not matter in the builds. You can, if you choose to, order a kit for that month's build - and the prices seem very reasonable. Fortunately our kids own an obscene number of Legos, so I think we will be okay.

For our class (we did this last Monday), we got our pieces gathered up over the weekend. We logged in five minutes before class, and things were already up and running, with more attendees logging in at a fast pace. I think there were about 50 in attendance by the time the class started - and there are over 6,000 in the club worldwide. The moderator came on right at 2 pm, the appointed time for the class (which lasts an hour long). She introduced the month's theme, did a little bit of housekeeping, and then launched into the subject: snow. We first watched a video about the formation of snowflakes, and looked at a series of microscopic images of snowflakes - all categorized by structural form. They were absolutely breathtaking. Then a short presentation about the different types of snowfall, avalanches and the destructive force of massive amounts of snowfall. Finally we got to the build. The pace was reasonable and the difficulty level was fairly easy for Jordan. Rylan....not so much. I think she was frustrated by the constant chatter from the instructor as she helped other students, and got lost fairly quickly. An advantage of watching a recorded session versus live, is that you can pause the video and take your time to complete a step before you continue on.

The kids enjoyed it very much (when they weren't busy fighting over the chairs and grouching at each other). I enjoyed the fact that the other people in the session could not hear the kids bickering and my subsequent yelling at them to pay attention to the moderator. A win-win situation all around!

A short video presentation about a scientist's perspective on snowflake structure.

A snowflake...

Working on the build...

The finished product!  (If you had purchased the kit, all of the pieces would have been white.)

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Visual chaos: Organizing Board Games

I'm not playin'

 

Don't even think that this is a nice little piece that is about to preach the merits of a well-organized games closet and a 'how-to' bit that will only further demonstrate my OCD tendencies. This is about preserving what little sanity I have left when it comes to dealing with the chaos underfoot in this household. It's also about survival. Because I'm going to strangle the next little urchin who comes along, drags out a game, and scatters the pieces to the wind.

 

If it's been awhile since you've had little people running around, let me refresh your memory. They get into things. Lots of things. They open drawers and clear out the contents. They open boxes and dump out the contents. If the boxes are hard to open, they just tear them open, because they are on a mission. TO DUMP OUT THE CONTENTS.

 

Colin is a master at dumping out the contents. For the past 18 months, he has, on a daily basis, dumped out the contents of at least 10 - 15 different board games - in addition to everything else he does... These are games that have lots of little pieces, like RushHour, Tipover, Blokus, Dominoes, Scramble and BoobyTrap. It didn't matter if I shoved them to the back of the shelf or moved them out of reach - he would grab a chair to find them. Some days I just didn't feel like fighting the fight. Those were the days that the various game elements would migrate to every. damn. room. in. the. house. Imagine fighting this fight every day. Every day. You begin to feel that there is no hope. The mess, the broken and missing pieces... Now add this on top of the normal (and excessive) toy, laundry, and paperwork clutter. It is just too much.

 

My first attempt at containing the mess was to clear out the lower half of the upstairs linen closet and store the games there, where they would be out of sight. It is one of those closets that goes a ways beyond the width of the door, so there was room to tuck plenty of games in. This closet is located in the main hallway, and you have to walk past it all the time to get to the W&D and the kids' rooms. So Mr. Dump Out the Contents would consistently open the closet doors, drag game after game off of a shelf, and dump out the contents right there. Right where you have a 3 ft wide hallway to walk through and right in front of our bedroom door. Most of the time I would employ the 'sweep it all aside with the foot' technique, until I could take the time to put it all away. Sometimes I would forget it was there, and at 2 a.m., when a young child was calling out for me, I would have the pleasure of stepping on something like this:

 

 

 

Now that's a sure fire way to wake your ass up in the middle of the night...

 

So in November, when we moved the dining table out of the kitchen and actually had a designated dining room again, I moved the games onto a book shelf in there, thinking that we could start up Family Game Night again. Nice idea, but a very, very stupid move. Because now ALL of the games were accessible! Oh the joy! The timers! The card decks! The letter tiles! Woohoo!

 

I reached my limit last week when I took down the Christmas tree and found a treasure trove of game pieces under the tree skirt and tucked in the lower branches of the tree. I Googled up a boat load of storage pictures, ideas and suggestions. I wanted to keep the games in close proximity to the table, but if that little boy dumped out the contents ONE MORE TIME!... So they had to be out of sight in some way, but the budget was not going to allow for the purchase of anything - every potential storage container would have to be something we already owned. The most reasonable way to deal with it was to reduce the amount of 'stuff' that needed to be stored in the first place.

 

 

 

 

It took a couple of hours of all-out searching to get as many game pieces as I could find back in their boxes. I had to bribe Jordan to keep Colin occupied in the basement so he wouldn't undo everything. And then I spent the most cathartic hour..ditching the boxes, game by game. Yes. I threw away the boxes. (My brother is dying a thousand deaths right now...). I read it in multiple places, all over the advice columns of the internets (sic), that getting rid of the packaging was the best thing you could do to reduce clutter. Some of the best ideas came from homeschooling families that RV full-time - now they are the storage solution masters. There is NO reason to keep the packaging - the game boxes come in every shape and size (mostly B.I.G.), they can be a nightmare to try and keep stacked neatly, and they don't last. So, with a Sharpie, empty containers and a box of Ziplocs by my side, I went to town...

The outgoing pile of paper goods to be recycled, and non-recyclable plastic (boooo!).

 

So where'd all the games go? Well, I moved the old bookcase out, because I wanted it upstairs in our bedroom. I moved in the shoe cubby thingy from the front hallway (just a couple of feet away) and stood it up vertically. Only the kids keep their shoes here, with each kid having their own bin. (So those are the four bottom bins). The top four shelves were now going to be repurposed to hold the games. Before this, they were just getting filled with toys and dirty socks. This is configuration is MUCH better, and it is one less piece of furniture in a high-traffic area.

 

So here is about 80% of the games. Ziploc bags hold most of it, and plastic Gerber baby food containers (I saved a jillion of them, and they are an awesome size for smallish things) hold things like dice, gems and playing pieces. It is also nice that most game boards now fold down into fourths, instead of just in half.

 

The rest of it went into the Hall Closet of Doom, which is just adjacent to the dining room. There was just enough space to jam the rest of the stuff (including the games that I couldn't stand to 'debox')' and the over-sized things like the Blokus game boards and so forth. And, most importantly, the most problematic games that Colin liked to get into the most.

 

This is the lower half of that closet. Last year I moved all of my cookbooks out of the kitchen because I needed upper cabinet space to move the arts and crafts supplies into because, you guessed it, Colin kept getting into them. So this was my solution for that. The white drawer bins hold a couple more of the over-sized game things.

 

One last thing - thanks to a tip on Pinterest, this is what you can do with all of those game instructions. Grab a bunch of page protectors (I had a ton left over from my college days) and stick a set of game instructions in each one, and file them away in a binder. So now the games binder resides on one of the cookbook shelves as well. And no, it is not categorized in any way, shape, or form. What do you think I am? Anal?



So, did it work? Has Colin left things alone? Yes, with the exception of one item - the Bananagrams letter tiles. They are (were) in a small wicker basket (see the bookcase picture) that holds our most-often used games. I think I found them all... I guess I had better go check the floor vents.

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I want mah co-feh!

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

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