rain on tulips

This morning, as we left to drive Fuul to work and EK to school, the rain falling on my windshield was a little slushy. That quickly let up, turning to rain. Back to slush by the time I dropped Fuul off (on the other side of the lake) at work.

Around the bottom of the lake and up the hill to EK’s school?

S.N.O.W.

None of it stuck, but it was falling hot and heavy — errr… cold and heavy… or something — as I unloaded kids to head into the school.

(The picture does no justice to just how much of the white stuff was falling!)

Now, there is still no snow on the ground, but it was falling heavier when GC got off her bus here at home at 11. I am so done with snow! The kids already are in school nearly til July to make up for the days already missed this year!

NO MORE!!!

JS’s teacher (DA’s teacher last year) is going in for some pretty serious surgery next month, and I thought that it would be nice to knit her a shawl/lap afghan, so she’d know we had her in our thoughts while she’s away recovering. This is the result! (It came out really nice, and is warm without being heavy.)

I finished it this morning while EK was at school. I’m still up in the air about adding some purple-y beads to the ‘eyelets’ that outline the border around the edges. We’ll see if that happens.

But, aside from its possibly acquiring beads later, its done!

FO Stats:
Finished size: Approx. 24″x64″
Yarn: Lion Brand Homespun in Waterfall (approx. 3 skeins)
Needles: US15
Pattern: Diagonal Pattern Baby Blanket Modefied: when first side reached 24″, begin k3 inc1 at beginning of ‘long’ side of work, and k3 k2tog at beginning of ’short’ side, until the long side measures the desired length of the shawl. Then return to k3 k2tog at beginning of both sides until the end of the pattern. Return to regular pattern finish)

DA left his homework on the table last night while he came to talk to me about arrangements for wrestling…

When he got back to it, EK — who had been sitting playing with playdough at that same table — was happily helping him by filling in all the blanks on the graphs, and tracing over all his equations!

(In that moment of his realizing that she was doing that and actually getting her something else to write on, the wonderful “Mom” grabbed the camera… look at all that wonderful fine-motor skill she’s displaying!! Hehee!)

A sure sign that I am on my way ’round the bend???

I just realized that I did all that cleaning and reorganizing and furniture moving wearing 3½ inch heels!!!

(Yes, I wear heels all the time, and think of them as just shoes… but still!!! I’m seriously going to lose it soon!)

Two and a half hours.

One full garbage bag.

One toddler bed removed. One dresser moved. One desk moved.

The girls’ room is not done — not even close! — but the dressers have been moved, the toddler bed is standing in the hallway, and the desk is out of the playroom and into the girls’ room. AE’s bed is finally mostly cleared off (she stored all her art supplies and ‘lovies’ up on her top bunk, to protect them from younger siblings; all those treasures are now safely ensconced in the desk and the drawer boxes on top). The floor is not cleaned up completely, but as I work through the rest of the bookcases and rearrange the contents of dressers, that ought to change.

So. Now, without guilt — or, more aptly, without much guilt! — I’m going to stop working on their room, surf the web, maybe knit a bit, watch some Firefly (hopefully before I have to return it to the movie store tonight!), maybe work on the quilt squares for the sampler class I’m taking with AE and JS, and possibly think about some plotting for writing*.

And tomorrow? Either I’ll attempt to make some progress with the boys’ room, or I’ll empty the bookcase in the playroom in preparation for moving the boys’ bunkbed in there. Or something. Who knows: I may run out of steam before this project is complete, and they’ll all just live in limbo a few months more!

Bwahahaha!!!

*Thats about all I can get my mind around of late!

…and not a clue where to start!

• I need to shuffle bedrooms and dressers.
• I need to move the desk from the playroom into the girls’s room.
• I need to move the toddler bed out of the girls’ room to make room for the desk.
• I need to move EK’s clothes out of her dresser and into the new green dresser — thats in the garage.
• I need to move the green dresser out of the garage into the boys’ room.
• I need to move the bookcase out of the boys’ room to make room for the green dresser.
• I need to move the desk out of the playroom to make room for the bookcase.

And on and on… add in moving the cribs into the boys’ room, the bunkbeds out of the boys’ rooms into the playroom, the tv out of the playroom into the boys’ room, EK’s dresser into the playroom for the boys to use, the tall dresser into the boy’s room for CC’s clothes…

…ACK!!

And I need to decide if I’m going to buy a mattress/bunkboard for the green bed frame or just let EK keep going in the crib or toddler bed for the time being…

No room… no time… no plan…

This morning is our first try back to school for EK since the 12^th… she got a fever/cold on the 14^th, and there wasn’t school last week because of midwinter break.

With luck, we will make it out the door and to her class, sniffle-free and on time!

Feel free to send us luck on all those fronts!

I got an email from a lady at church the other day, wondering if we might be interested in a dresser that she had — she’d just replaced her bedroom furniture, and was looking for a new home for the old stuff.

So, yesterday, Fuul and I went over, and came away with a dresser/mirror set, a full/queen bed frame, two bedside cupboards, a queen quilt set, and a bureau dresser. All because she didn’t want to store any of it for later!

Now, I can’t walk in to the house through the garage, and I’ve got to do some serious rearranging of furniture… we’re talking about moving the boys to the playroom, the babies to the boys’ room, and setting up some dressers and beds! (I need to get a mattress/bunkboard for the bedframe, but I think I might do that so I can put that bed into the babies’ room and put EK in there, and get the toddler bed ready for CC. OK, sometimes I’m an optimist!)

Of course, this means that I’ve got to disassemble and reassemble the bunkbed in the boys’ room; that’s not really a welcome prospect, but I think I’ll like the results once its all said and done! And, I think the boys will like the larger bedroom, the girls will like having the toddler bed out of their room, thereby freeing up a little more space, and Fuul and I will like having babies out of our room, so we don’t get awakened by each and every little noise that they make! (EK trained us well, what with her not breathing thing she used to do!)

So… wish me luck as I start in with rearranging all the sleeping arrangements in the house! I need it!

JS and AE got the chance to sing the national anthem at the local pro hockey game tonight! They said it was pretty neat, and they were pretty excited to be able to eat dinner there and watch the game with their dad! And the home team won! Woohoo!

What better night could you ask for?

(Of course, they said that their choir instructor dragged out their start until the entire stadium was quiet… they said that one time she finally got ready to start and someone in the stands yelled out, so she waited again! Fuul said that they probably waited a full five minutes for quiet before they actually sang! You can tell she’s an elementary school teacher, huh??)

I did it! I finished the Official Kitty62 Knit Hat — well, sans ears, I finished it! Its my first completed project done entirely on circular needles and DPNs… even my first shot at I-cord, which was simple, after a few false starts!**

And here is my beautiful hat model… funny, when I had her try it on, and she saw the ‘handles’ (the ties that hang down the sides) she giggled, signed “mine-mine-mine”, and ran off with it! It took me a while to get it back to do the finishing on it!

My other girls have been asking me to make some for them. Fuul has been asking where people get the time to sit around and come up with such things!

Me? I’ve been knitting instead of doing writing or anything else useful… well, except for the laundry. I suppose that with this little side project done (only took about 3 days, on and off) I ought to get back to working on the knit prayer shawl that is sitting half done on the countertop. Oops!

*FO=finished object, term usually used to refer to finished knit/crochet/fibre arts projects
**Pattern: Official Kitty62 Hat; yarn: Red Heart SuperSaver multicolor acrylic, in 0982 Plumberry; needles: US4 (3.5mm) circulars and dpn; pattern adaptation: cast on 98 stitches (original pattern was for US7 needles, CO 84).

The drinks, the chairs, the entertainment… what more could toddlers ask for!?

I have a boy who just can’t seem to keep it together when there isn’t direct adult supervision: he will work diligently at a job until you turn your back, then he’s off and playing, leaving things lying where they fall. When an adult is present on the playground, he plays nicely with the other kids; when there isn’t, he winds up reprimanded for pepper-bombing kids at the bottom of the hill with pinecones. When the teacher stays in the classroom during lunch, he does fine; when she steps out, he winds up reprimanded for throwing food to a friend across the room.

I don’t know what to do. I’m at a complete loss. Fuul is almost as lost as I am. It seems that nothing we do — no punishment or consequence — gets through.

What to do? What to do.

So far, none of the things he’s done have wound up causing any permanent damage, or had any lasting effects, but I’m afraid that, left unchecked, its not far off.

Being The Mom certainly has its challenges some days.

Just in case anyone was wondering: I’m still without a dryer. Fuul’s not been able to reach the landlord to find out if he is going to fix the one here, and I’ve not been able to bring myself to put a new dryer (and washer!?) onto a credit card… bad enough not having extra money right now, but to add to money owed? Trying to avoid that, I suppose.

What I have learned, though, in the past week and a half sans dryer, is that I can still do two or three loads a day, hang everything in the dining room/office, and mostly keep up. The actual time spent is more than if I had a dryer, but we aren’t running out of clothes, and I’m not running the risk of being buried under a pile of dirty clothes!

So. Kind of in limbo, I guess.

(And consoling myself that maybe my horrific power bill will be lower next month, on account of having not run the dryer?? One can only wish!)

Peace…

(Find more Wordless Wednesdays here)

OK… one quick one… more to come, I promise!

Ohh… all that sweet baby goodness…..