Blaine’s home. And back at work. It’s so good to have him home finally. I haven’t loaded the woodstove once since he arrived. And he cleaned the chimney – again. One week after I’d cleaned it. Turns out, the wood we’d had delivered and didn’t start burning until that really cold spell was likely still pretty green, in spite of looking dry. Thus, the dirty chimney and cold house. Sounds about right, I suppose.

I got all the cold symptoms my children had while Blaine was away the night he got back. Feeling pretty blessed that I didn’t get it until I had help. God is good.

My quilt is not finished. I’m almost finished cutting it out. I’m very, very tired of cutting it out.

Blaine worked 54 hours of overtime last week. Remember that chimney I had to clean? Yep, no complaints there. It suddenly sounds pretty easy.

Sterling has figured out how to spell his name perfectly. He can spell Ruby too. Ruby thinks her name is spelled SYT. She gets mad when anyone corrects her. I’m tempted to teach her to spell her name TROUBLE. FRUITCAKE would work too. I would thoroughly enjoy that. Until, I suppose, she is a completely confused kindergartener and my sole responsibility to straighten out. Yeah, maybe not.

Meet our friend, Tad.

Dear Leap Frog,

Twenty dollars seems like an extraordinary amount of money to pay for a stuffed talking frog. But I have to give it to you. It was a brilliant idea. Baby Tad is much loved around here. We have two. I’m trying to convince my son he doesn’t need his so we don’t have to buy another for his baby sister. Seriously, $60 invested in stuffed frogs is a little much for me. I didn’t pay full price for the first; I did for the second. I would again for a third if I don’t convince Sterling to give his to Charlotte. It’s currently on loan to her, and she loves Baby Tad too. The lights, the music… the quiet, almost-asleep baby – I love it too.

Thank you, Leap Frog. If I have any more children, I might have to buy stock in your company.

Sincerely,

Adrienne

P.s. The first model is far better than the one that came out two years ago. You should have left well enough alone.

I hereby resolve…

We don’t wear skirts all the time. Part of the time, sure. But not all of the time. Especially the boys…

The girls have a friend from our homeschool co-op who does. After spending the day with their family, Liberty, my ultimate blue-jean and shorts-wearing daughter, decided she was only wearing skirts and dresses. She promptly asked me to buy her nightgowns. I told her she could get by with what she has, at least until I’m convinced she’ll follow through with this. So for one day, she wore a nightgown to bed, wore a skirt all day, and stood by her resolve. Then, she took a bath, put her pj’s on, and came out last night… in pants.

“Pants?”

“What? I have pants on.”

“I know.”

Slow look of dawning realization. “Ah! I forgot!”

Eden decides to interject, “You’d better go change.”

Liberty: “Do I have to, Mom?”

“Good grief. Of course not. This was your idea in the first place. But I’m certain pants to bed are acceptable, since no one else will see you.”

She’s decided that chicken chores, at least in the cold weather, are also blue-jeans acceptable. I’m just sitting back and watching this one. Of all of my girls, Liberty is the last one who would want to wear skirts all the time. Oh, peer pressure. Gotta love it.

I’m right. Even when I’m wrong.

There’s an ad on the radio right now for a furniture company that “will do anything to save you money”. They go on about having turned the heat off to save money and the customers won’t even have to take their coats off. At the end of the ad the furniture guy gives a gift to his incredulous co-worker: overalls, the wrapping paper crackling in the background. And there the fun began.

Eden: “He gave her what?”

Liberty: “Overalls.”

“Eden: “What’s that?

Liberty: “Overalls. It’s paper that covers your whole body.”

Eden: “Why would she want paper?”

Liberty, oh so matter-of-factly: “She just does. It was a present.”

I finally felt the need to step in. “Overalls, honey. Coveralls. Kind of like snowpants.”

Girls: “Oh!”

And no one, even those who were quite admittedly wrong in their explanation of overalls, looked the slightest bit sheepish. Oh, to be the oldest and need to be right. Funniness.

That’s a lot of trucks!

We seem to have recovered from the “we only have girly toys” syndrome.

Snow Ice Cream

Snow Ice Cream

1 gallon freshly fallen snow

1 cup white sugar

1 Tbsp. vanilla

2 cups milk

Send five year old to collect snow. Pick out the straw she missed when gathering “only clean, fresh snow”. Mix everything together, serve immediately.

Mmm. One of the better things about a new batch of snow. Next up: sledding on feed sacks. Gotta get the sugared-up kids outside.

Does it smell like smoke in here?

Don’t answer that. It does. Bad. Without going into the gory details, our chimney got a good scrubbing today by yours truly. Have I mentioned that I’m missing my husband? 4.5 hours later, I’m certain of only two things. 1. I did that right. Painfully so. 2. My talents lie elsewhere.

To the dear neighbors, don’t fret over the flaming bucket in the driveway. I meant to do that. Sort of.

It’s been a long day. We’re getting snow today. This morning’s venture into chimney cleaning resulted in a late afternoon trip to the grocery store. It’s snowing. Do people really let themselves get so low on groceries that they all need to swarm Aldi before a snowstorm just as I’m finally arriving, trying to get a week’s worth of groceries with five children? I’d planned to go in the morning, but my plans were thwarted. It went as well as herding cats can be expected, I suppose. If you were trying to herd cats in and around a cattle stampede.

For the record, I bought neither milk nor bread.