Oh hi.

I'm back. Hopefully regularly. I'm annoyed that I let this go and sad about the memories lost. Oh well. No backtracking. Here's what's happening. 

Jac is learning to whistle. She walks around nonstop practicing. Blake is annoyed. It is annoying. But Jac is so proud of herself! If you come into contact with her she will tell you of her budding talent and show you. Beware. 

Wade is loud. Noise must be coming from his being at all times. If not, he might spontaneously combust (that's just a theory, but a situation, aka: silence, has not occurred to test the theory). I had the same combustion/silence conundrum as a kid (if you only knew how many things I want to say and don't), so I try really hard to remind him that he can make whatever noise he wants, but at an appropriate decibel. And maybe not in my kitchen. 

Blake is upset I'm not teaching her to read. She also has no desire to learn her letters and regularly flops and whines during my attempts at home preschool. It's a real pleasure. Totally related: home preschool doesn't happen regularly. Also totally related: Blake has figured out the guilt trip. She regularly comes to me when I'm vacuuming, or making dinner, or pooping and tells me that I never play with her or do anything fun. 

Everyone (even mom) is working on making their beds. I rigged up an experiment with safety pins and velcro strips to hold blankets in place - it worked really well! So now I need to ditch the safety pins (cause they kept opening on Jac's - she's the craziest sleeper) and sew little tabs on their bedding. The girls, especially, have taken real pride in their beds, having every blanket on and their stuffies all lined up. It looks ridiculous and not at all how I have their room set up, but I don't change it cause they're learning and it's theirs! Look at all my growth! Wade couldn't care less about setting up his bed, so he makes it just as I set it up - and he's gone all day so his room stays pretty clean, it's one of my happy places. 

Girls are really into preparing for any adventure that might take place, constantly packing backpacks, purses, baskets, and suitcases (and then they can't find anything at bed time - "it's nowhere!"). Blake informed me she needs her own glue gun to carry in her backpack, in case they need to do any crafts. They weren't going anywhere, just the ambiguous potential future need. 

Wade's reading more. It's equal parts joy and pulling teeth. For everyone. He loves it and despises it. One problem we've had is that a lot of books at his level are really boring. But he's moving out of that and able to read at a level that has stuff more interesting. And, thanks to the help of a grandmother librarian, we found some chapter books we can read together that he's really liking. He's discovered that the best bed time stall is reading - either getting me to read another chapter, or saying he'll stay up to read. 

We've been playing the dice game Qwixx nonstop (thanks for the introduction mom and dad). It's one of the first games that we can play as a family. I should say game we can all play and all enjoy. It's rarely put away. Bryan and I have an ongoing 2 min backrub on the line for each game. I currently owe him 9 minutes. That's what he says, I forget to keep track...

Our front yard is snowless and the basketball court is 75% uncovered! We'll get a few more snows, I'm sure, but spring is here! This winter didn't even feel that bad (don't tell Minnesota I said that...) I didn't even get tired of my boots or parka. I cleaned up the front yard yesterday in a tee shirt! It's all ready for it's spring debut (I have the tippidy tops of daffodils and tulips visible!) 

Rearranged my closet. Girls found it an invitation to play with all my stuff all week, even though it took my 2 hours to finish the closet. 

We went sledding a few weeks ago. Brought a thermos of hot cocoa, it was the biggest hit. It was super icy and hard to climb back up the hill - epic laughter potential there. It was an afternoon of personal funniest home videos content. I got a couple snow tubing tubes second hand - they had a covering that really slowed it down (on some hills that would be great), we ended up taking them off and then they were fun. But then you had nothing to hold onto. We had our family, our niece, and the neighbor kid and we were all able to get on the tube a few times...with kids laying across our legs and holding on. Idk if the neighbor kid's parents would be too impressed. 

Blake had to be upset about something. Then she saw me taking her picture, she just loooooved that. 

Sibling back-scratches at church. (we get to go back for second hour in April!)

The girls can spend hours in the tub. In the car today they were talking about taking a bath when they got home, and apparently they turn into mermaids in the tub. Pretty cool trick. 

Went up to Minneapolis and walked on a frozen lake. It's a really cool lake, but in the winter it's just another lake and we realized we drove over an hour roundtrip, had to find parking, ect. for an experience that we could've walked less than a mile down our own street. Oh well, we had fun. No jackets is always fun. And we got ice cream after. 

Blake's been my biggest helper in the kitchen - she's the pro dishwasher emptier. Dinner "help" is my...well, it's my least favorite thing. It feels like almost everyday I have to come to grips with the fact that I have to make dinner, AGAIN! And I needing to include a little humans makes it less enjoyable. But I'm trying. I've discovered that ONE little human I can handle, so only one gets to help a night. One of the tasks this night was for Blake to pick out the pasta type - she really weighed her options. 

Alright. That's all folks. 

Oh, I remembered one more story. This one needs to be immortalized here for forever. I bought a rug off craigslist. It's horribly stained, but it was $30. It's a cool wool, flatweave, vintage rug. I have an eye, I know this is a rare and amazing find. I arrange pick up. They were kinda weird on correspondence, but oh well (not creepy weird, just super conservative. 100% sure this was their first ever sell and they were sure some monsterous craigslist tale would come to life). They said it would be in a box on their porch. I get there, I knock, no one comes. So I put money under the mat and put the rug in my trunk. I sat in my car in front of their house and sent an email saying thanks and where their money was. Then I texted Bryan I was on my way home at 1:14 pm. I run some errands and get doing stuff. I check my email again around 4 and I have an email from them (sent at 1:16 pm) saying they've contacted the police! My email never went through, I must've closed it too quickly, and since I wasn't on wifi it didn't send. As we emailed back and forth we worked it out - but turns out they said they didn't hear me knock, but saw me in my car. Like, they saw me sit in my car for a few minutes. What?! And no email trying to find out what happened, immediately they assume I stole their rug. And I keep laughing thinking of the poor police man that had to take their complaint while trying to remain professional. "So, ma'am, you're saying you arranged for someone to pick up a rug from you for $30, you left it outside, and then you saw them sit in their car...and you didn't try to talk to them...okay" "YES! We've been robbed!!!!" After they realized they had not, in fact, been robbed I didn't email anymore. She send a few showing me the time stamp of my original email - was she wanted my validation or apology? I kept wanting to point out that the way they handled it was, well, wrong. But, what was the point? You can't talk reason to crazy. I spent today trying to clean the rug - it's proving very difficult, but I'm in so deep, and it has the most ridiculously epic (epically ridiculous?) story. I have to make it work. (the plan is to hang it on a wall. I'll see if I can make it work).