Sunday, February 13, 2011

February 13, 2011

Today we went to church and then out to lunch. We had been home for a few minutes. Nick was coloring at the art table. I was puttering around in the kitchen and getting ready to go sit down and rest for a few minutes with a book. Ben said to me he was ready to do some more school, which meant that he wanted to work on writing his letters again. He is very into this lately. I told him I was getting ready to sit down and rest for a bit. He said, "Nobody wants to do what I want" and I said "yes, I guess that's true". He looked at me surprised and said "you sound like you think that's OK". I can't remember exactly how I responded to that but it was just so cute, I had to write it down.

We are having beautiful weather here now and will have this week. It is 56 degrees and very sunny right now and it is suppose to get up into the 60's and 70's all week, I believe. I'm loving it. It is such a nice change after back-to-back snow storms.

I was up at the new house on Friday. The painters have started caulking and filling in nail holes and stuff, preparing to stain the cabinets and paint the trim. The trim guys are still working on trim. I didn't ask but I'm sure they probably have several more days worth of work, if not a full week. He was in the process of putting trim around the large windows and french doors in the living room. He is also working putting the wood treads and risers on the stairs and putting up the rails, which is nice. I will be glad when the rails are up. It has made me nervous having these big areas where someone could fall and hurt themselves badly and I have to watch the boys like a hawk when they are there, although they are pretty careful about it.

I am anxious to see the kitchen cabinets but they are holding off on those until last because they have their big saws set up in the living room / kitchen / dining areas and they need some room to get around with these long pieces of trim. Hopefully they will have them in by the end of this week. I am so ready for this to be done. With the bad weather we received, we know we have definitely moved out to April for our finish and move in date. I am hopeful it will be early April but who knows at this point. I need to call our builder tomorrow and discuss where we are, how much we have left and deadlines for remaining items we have to pick out.

We have ramped up our reading around here lately. It seemed that the boys had gotten to where they were so busy playing, they were not into having us read to them as often. I had not been getting as many books at the library and the used bookstore because we have so many that we have not read yet. I started getting a few here and there and now the boys are very into it again. We just finished listening to The Trumpet of the Swan in the car and we just finished reading the second book about Ralph and his motorcycle by Beverly Clearly. We all really enjoyed those two books and we have one more to go. We listened to the first one in the car and then I realized I had all three of them in my stash. I keep a stash of good books that I want to read with the boys but then I forget about them at times, as some of them are still a bit above their level. Many of them are not though now so we have some fun books ahead of us.

Well, time to get some things done around here. Have a wonderful Sunday!

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

February 9, 2011

Well, here we go again. Our city is so unprepared to handle this much snow. The neighborhood streets are still in terrible shape from the last round and we are now getting a significant amount added to it. The kids were out of school around here all of last week and Monday and Tuesday of this week, due to the snow storm we had early last week. Because of today's storm, they will be out of all of this week and possibly much of next week. Actually, even without today's storm, they probably would not have been able to go back to school for another day or two or possibly not even until Monday. With this new snow, it may be sometime into next week before they get to go back. My sister was wondering if they would cancel spring break at this point because they have already been out so much and it will really extend how long they have to go this summer.

We did have a couple of days this week when we were able to get out and get a few things done. We made it to the library and got some books and some audio books. We listened to The Mouse and the Motorcycle and the boys loved it. Turns out, I had that book in my stash, along with the sequel so we are now reading the sequel. We are also now listening to The Trumpet of the Swam in the car and the boys are really enjoying it. I checked this one out a year or two ago and the boys were not quite old enough to enjoy but I really did. I am enjoying it a second time and happy to see they like it a lot too. We had some small chalkboard slates and chalk so they figured out a way to hang that from their neck and have been having fun pretending they are Louie.

We have started working on writing again. I started this with them back in August but I pushed them to do too much in one sitting and they ended up not liking it and not wanting to do it. Can't blame them. I am still learning the best way to teach:). We started again and I cut back on what I expect and now they think it's fun. Funny how that works, isn't it? They also worked on adding to their number chart and they are doing very well on learning to write their numbers.

In reading, we just finished lesson 79 and will do lesson 80 sometime today. They are really enjoying their reading now. As long as I give them 15 minutes notice before we begin a lesson, they are perfectly fine with doing it and are usually on the couch ready before I am. We went to the used bookstore the other day and we picked out a number of books that are at their level. A couple of them are old books that have some cute jokes and riddles and Nick especially likes reading these. He picked this book for his book to read last night before bed and every time I started to read it, he would cut in and say "I can read this part". It was really cute. And then he and Ben started taking turns reading it and I would get to read every once in a while.

The first thing Nick did when he woke up this morning was to get that book, plant himself on the couch and ask the dad to read it with him. Ben joined them and they took turn reading it again. Nick continues to read pretty much every thing he sees. Ben does sometimes; he can but is less likely to think about doing it. Nick seems very motivated to read. I think he enjoys the independence of it all. He is definitely a guy who likes to do things for himself.

I forgot to mention that Nick had minor elective surgery this past Friday. The surgeon corrected his left ear so it now matches his right ear. Nick never had any pain with it at all. I thought for sure he would need to take some medicine after the surgery but he never did. He was playing and acting as if it had never happened. We had a follow up appointment yesterday and they took the wrapping off of his head. They had wrapped his head up so it looked as if he was wearing a helmet. It even went under his chin. They said that was pretty much the only way to keep the dressing on an active child's ear and it also had some padding in case he bumped it. It looked like he had had brain surgery or something major, the way it was wrapped up. He never showed any indication that the wrapping bothered him at all though. The day before they took it off, his head started itching a little but that was all. It really felt good to him to have it taken off though.

I had very mixed feelings about the whole thing. Now that it is over and it was so uneventful, I am glad it is done and I think he will appreciate it when he is old enough to understand. What made it worse though was that the surgery was on Friday morning and the streets were still very bad. It took us an hour to drive what would normally take about 15 or 20 minutes. Even worse, it started snowing again while we were there. When we came out, with a sleepy child that had a tummy ache (he drank a whole can of apple juice very quickly when he woke up from the anesthesia), it was snowing very heavily, the visibility was very poor and the streets were even worse than when we had driven there earlier. I was very unhappy about this situation as I had wanted to cancel and move it out because of the bad weather (and because I had mixed feelings about the whole thing). I was also concerned that he might start hurting before we could get him home and get his prescription filled. As it turned out, once we got home, he started playing again and was perfectly fine the entire day and night, never needing any pain medicine at all. It was quite amazing.

The boys are now dressing up in the dads shoes, boots and his big winter coats. They are having fun. They need to get outside and wear off a bit of energy though. It is challenging when the weather is like this. I am ready for spring...and it should be here soon. On Monday it is suppose to be in the 40's or 50's and should be in the 60's by next weekend. So we are going to have a very warm week and all of the snow will melt quickly....and they can start making some progress on our house again too, which will be nice. We are now looking at moving in sometime in April:).

Hope you are having a great day!

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

February 2, 2011

For the second day, we are stuck at home. I'm not complaining though. It is actually nice to be at home, have all the chores done and just have time to relax and have fun together with no demands from the outside world.

We probably got around 10 to 12 inches where we are. At our new house, they got around 22 inches. The husband shoveled out the driveway yesterday and the boys had a very fun time playing in the huge snow drifts. We saw several four-wheel drive vehicles out yesterday and a few today and many of those were getting stuck or could not make it back up a hill. The roads are pretty much impassable to a two-wheel vehicle. The major highways had been shut down but I think they are probably trying to get all of the major highways and streets plowed today. The temperature is 8 degrees so the wind chill factor is quite low today.

There is a snow drift in our backyard that is almost as high as the fence. There is another one against the front door that is probably about three feet tall. The way the wind blew the snow across the front yard makes the snow look like it has waves. It is really beautiful. I would love to see what it looks like up at the new house. With 22 inches of snow, they must have massive snow drifts (for Oklahomans anyway:).

The boys have been playing lots of games. The dad has been teaching them to play checkers and chess and we recently got Sorry and Battleship, which they have enjoyed.

I am guessing we will likely not be able to get out and about until at least Friday because the snow is so deep in the roads in our neighborhood. In our old neighborhood, we always had plows come through pretty quickly after a snow but the roads were owned by the homeowners and we paid for it through our association dues. I do not know how it works in this neighborhood where we are renting. If there are no plows, it may be later than Friday before we get out. It is suppose to stay very frigid for quite a while I think so there probably won't be much melting.

Not much else to report around here. Hope you are staying warm!