January 9th

Today was cold and brutally windy. Supposedly we hit a high of 45F, but the wind was so biting I'm inclined to disbelief. The sun came out a few times, and there was also a few drops of precipitation.

Before heading to MOPS this morning, I went through the carwash (even though Wednesdays are their $5 day, and today was $7) because my car was very dirty from the salt and snow on Wednesday. = (

MOPS was lovely.  Our table brought food, so I made a crock-pot taco soup, that I cooked overnight. My kitchen smelled so when I woke up!

We were invited to dress up and we watched videos, heard inspirational New Year ideas.  I broke out my "2020 dress" that I bought for this summer.

One of our mentor moms brought bags and bags of clothes for us to peruse.  I grabbed several pair of pants for Emily, a Unicorn nightgown, a skirt for me, and one pair of pants for William.

Our activity was to write cards that would challenge us to "have more fun!"  This is the one I wrote up.

The one that I received said "pretend our house is a restaurant and be the waitress and serve my kids."  I feel like I do this on a regular basis, but I think I can still make it fun.  My idea right now is to have a cereal and ice cream theme, but I'm still working on it.

We toasted the new year with sparkling grape juice in very fancy cups.  = )  Also, I managed to get a trivia question correct and then won the raffle for an amazon gift card!  I felt so special.  <3

We were also on clean-up, so I rushed to help as much as I could.  But I had to dash out the door at 11:30, because I was subbing for Emily's class.  Between absent students and some students being assigned to "help" other teachers, I was only responsible for about 15 students!

When we came home I was carrying the twins' backpacks, as usual, but I also had all my things from the morning, since I didn't have a chance to run home.  Billy's game had a sound byte that made me laugh when I hear it, so I have since adopted it: "My hands are full, your items are on the ground!"  I said this to my children in jest.  Then, when I went to dig out my keys, I dropped my cup on the ground.  Apparently I had hurt Juliet's feelings, because her response was: "now your item is on the ground."  I laughed so hard, then messaged Billy.

During William's piano practice, I was sitting on the sofa, while Grace was playing with one of my German dictionaries.  She opened it to the very back paged, and asked me what it said.  When I was looking at the weights & measurements, I was surprised to see that an American pint and a British pint are different volumes?!  I confirmed with google, then sent it to Billy, and apparently this was also news to him.  hmmmm.*

For dinner we had tortellini alfredo (well, my family did, I couldn't' help but have another portion of my taco soup.)

later days

*my first ever meme creation.

New Year's Celebration

Billy had to work New Year's Eve, and it snowed.  Sarah came over and kindly cleared my sidewalk and driveway, since she'd already finished hers.

 I was glad she put down so much salt, because it snowed the majority of the day!

We played an abbreviated version of Bunko.  Each person rolls and whomever scores the highest in consecutive rolls (or a Bunko) takes the round.  All the other rules are the same.  The twins were able to play with us too, which was really nice, since the big kids tend to pick games that require reading.

We kicked off celebration just before Billy made it home.  We made a 7up and lime sherbet punch.  It's my favorite.  Only Grace seemed to enjoy it as much as I do.  I made a rookie mistake though and chilled the 7up which made the sherbet not melt as quickly so it was not as good fresh as it was after a little while on the table.

I had collected a nice group of hats and noise makers for my crew.  Note everyone participated :cough::Billy::cough: and Grace fell asleep, but the rest of us rocked our decorations!

Also, the kids discovered the sonic racing game on the Wii and have been having a great time with it. = )  William has been a super patient teacher with the twins, it's been really good.  Of course, after a while, the twins like to fight about everything, so the game quickly dissolves from there.

Eating our Christmas dinner (on New Year's Day) because my oven is back in buisness!

The holiday (today) was above freezing, so most of the snow on the roads and sidewalks started to melt.  It was a mixture of sunny and cloudy, but the high was probably around 40F with no new precipitation.

later days