Home Day

Jane is on a roll today...Lucy is doing okay...Gene is a little slow.  All three have a chart, and Jane can actually read hers now (yeah!!) so she can work without asking for direction.  She just wrote a letter to Ellie (a little heartbreaking Kathleen, as it seems she thought Ellie would be up north...I helped her write a disclaimer on the back), and made a birthday card for Aunt Kate, who's birthday is tomorrow (so far, only her name is on it but I'm sure it's not finished yet).  She's picking up sticks now:)

Lucy spent a lot of time sleeping, a lot of time in the bathroom, a lot of time doing her hair, a lot of time practicing piano.  Moving slow, but moving.

Gene got a good start, but then actually went and lay down on the couch and said, "Mama, tell me when it's 12:00"  It was only 9:30.  Now he's up and a little more active.

I was moving laundry and suitcases and checking on the girls...Lucy was bursting with something to tell me.  "Mama, next Halloween you (or Papa) should dress up as a monkey and put bananas in people's candy buckets."

Some Random Thoughts...

1. I am hard-boiling eggs, and just heard furious chirping coming from the pot.  Not loud, but constant.  My first thought was to wonder if an egg had accidentally been fertilized, and now the chick was ready to come out and didn't want to swim in hot water.  I guess it was just some air bubbles coming from an egg, but I'll find out for sure when I take the shells off!

2. We had a rainstorm yesterday afternoon, and the girls and I went out with rainboots and umbrellas to enjoy it.  (It hasn't rained much these last couple months)  The street gutter was getting clogged, so we got some buckets and shovels and scooped up the leaves and muck around the drain.  The girls thought it was SO COOL to be in the street, and the cars that passed (this was 5:00 and many people were driving by) all slowed down and smiled as they drove by.  Well, the girls stayed with me for all of maybe 3 minutes.  Then they had an idea to make "mud soup" and brought their buckets up to the backyard.  Leaving me scooping the muck by myself in the hot sun (it had returned with a vengeance).  I was on a roll though and didn't want to stop, and there is a lot of gutter by our house (we're on a corner lot).  The cars that drove by this time didn't see me (there were no girls standing on the side wearing brightly colored raincoats) and gave me funny looks when I half-startled them.  I would have put some orange cones around me and a sign that said, "Gutter De-Cluttering in Progress" if I had them.

3. The kids were out catching fire-flies last night, and Lucy was so excited when she also caught a moth.  "It's a white moth, Mama!  They are very fast and very hard to catch!"  To Brendan- "I caught a white moth Papa.  What will you give me?"  (He had previously offered to pay the kids $5 if they caught a squirrel, and she was hopeful).  And then a few minutes later, to Jane who was awfully jealous that she had not also caught a white moth- "Jane, white moths are very hard to catch.  You might not catch one until you're 16..."  That really made Jane feel better.

4.  Gene's baseball season is almost over!  It's been fun, and we'll probably do the travel team again next year.  Probably:)

March Update

We had Mid-winter break last week, and spent one day pretending we didn't have electricity. This was also the day Lucy was recovering from a fever, so she stayed on the couch most of the day. Lots of games, books, a fire to keep warm, a dipper instead of a faucet, and chicken and dumplings for dinner in the crock pot (kind of like a pot over the fire, right?)...








A couple days later we went to the Henry Ford Museum, the kids' first time.



We built and flew our own paper airplanes.





We sat in the bleachers with some other "people" and watched a movie about aerial stunt riders. Jane liked the statue she was next to...she thought it was definitely Thomas Edison.





The kids all said this was their favorite vehicle:)


This was not really one of Lucy's favorites, but I made her pick one of the other farm machines, and this was the closest one I think!


In other news, the girls are getting interested in the piano now.


And a random picture of breakfast one morning.


Everyone is healthy now and doing well. And thinking about Spring...

Quick Update

Why does everything have to be "quick" now? I feel like that's all I say these days! Well, I am posting a quick post for the sake of posting something...I'd rather post something longer, but I just don't have the energy:) It's bedtime!

• Valentine's day tomorrow! The kids all made valentines on Sunday for their classmates...they are so old now, I just had to lay out things and give them some ideas, and they pretty much did all the work! Last year I felt like I was forcing the girls to finish "just one more", this year was much easier. Gene and I made brownies for his class party also
• Brendan is at a meeting. Sometimes I like that, sometimes I don't...I get some time to myself, but I also have to do everything myself...bedtime, make lunches, clean up, etc. Hence the late bedtime.
• All the kids have colds. But no fevers, even though that's going around. Jane's immunity has gone WAY up this year, compared with last year. Thank you Lord!
• I am starting to train for a 10K and at least one triathlon coming up this summer. I love getting back into the swing of things!
• Lucy was walking around with a cloth headband over her eyes, pretending it was a blindfold. She also made a container, out of paper, to put little slips of paper with math problems in them. She and Jane are obsessed with calculators these days, and I make them write the math problems on paper first, then check on the calculator. Hence, her creative mind went to work to make it more fun.
• Jane wrote a sweet Valentine's card to one of her teachers tonight. I love finding things like that just lying around, that I didn't even know had been made till after the fact. She is in the "sounding out words and writing them using any old spelling" stage...and also "writing the letters for the words any old place on the paper" stage. Hence, her card has words that are vertical and horizontal, and the later words start up again at the upper half of the card. "Happy Valentine's Day Miss Lisa I love you My love for you is _____ (can't read the last word) From Jane" is what I finally deciphered.
• I haven't yet figured out how to download pictures from my iphone. I know it's supposed to actually download for me, using icloud...maybe I just haven't set it up right. Soon, soon!
• Brendan and I went to dinner the Parthenon restaurant in Ann Arbor over the weekend. It's a Cousino favorite restaurant, and it's closing soon, so we had to get there while we could. We generally go a couple times a year for flaming cheese and good gyros sandwiches. I'm going to miss it!
  
• Ok, that's a good enough update, right?
  

Good night!