A few things from the last week or so:

Observations from cleaning the church building:
* It takes two women three hours to clean half a church building. Double the women, and I'm told it can take only 45 minutes.
* Wear layers, it's hot work.
* The youth eat a lot of candy ... a lot of candy ... and they all do the same thing with their wrappers ... wad them up in to very, very small balls and forget to put them in the trash can.
* "Polish all wood surfaces" ... Have you ever noticed how much wood is in a church building? Lots, and lots and lots.

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Last Thursday the Desktop decided to start working after having not worked for a full week (it simply refused to turn on). Over the weekend GR backed up all essential files and rebuilt the desktop for me. I have now added the following items to my list of essential files for the next time this happens:

• My Outlook Address book
  
• All downloaded Fonts not native to Windows
• My bookmarked "favorites" (family please email me your blog addresses, again)
• All passwords and user names for websites I use frequently (blogger, lds.org) and infrequently (yahoo)
  

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Alex had his 6 month check up Monday. He continues to be perfect in every form. He's been eating solids for the last two months and LOVEs every bite! He eats huge portions, and uses every bit of it! He's now in the 25% for weight ... weighing in at just over 16 pounds. He's built just like Sam ... long and skinny. We finally purchased him an excersaucer and GR's on the search for a Johnny Jump-Up. Sam loved the one we borrowed for him and I'm sure Alex would too.

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When the batteries in your thermostat die and need to be replaced, the heat shuts off - duh. When I discovered this on Tuesday, I couldn't for the life of me get the cover off to access the battaries. By the time GR got home, it was 63 in the house.

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Wednesday we got a couple inches of snow - the entire town looked like it had been coated in powdered sugar. This afternoon Emily spent a good hour out side shoveling our driveway and most of our neighbors driveway. She specifically worked on GR's side of the driveway ... I'm not sure he knows this, and I need to make sure he does, So he can call her tomorrow from work and tell her what an amazing kid she is and how nice it was to have a clean driveway.

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Until this morning I thought Sam was back to 100%. A week ago, out of no where, he came down with a fever, weird body aches (his eyes hurt, his knee or legs hurt - all at different times), occasional cough and slightly runny nose, additionally he hasn't had any real appetite for food and has missed dinner more than once because he's fallen asleep early on the couch or big blue chair. Monday I kept him home from preschool and he did well in the morning, but by afternoon his fever seemed to be back. Tuesday AM he was doing really well, and spent a quiet afternoon with Grandma. Wednesday he went to preschool, and last night I thought he slept well ... he even slept in. But he spent the morning screaming ... every little thing set him off... so at noon I put him in my bed for a nap ... 2.25 hours later, I had to wake him up so we could pick Becca up from school. We'll see how tomorrow morning goes ... for his little bodies sake I hope he's kicked this.

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A number of weeks ago a girl from Emily's Sunday School class sent her a chain letter for a sticker club. The idea being that you send a package of stickers to the address listed in spot number 1, move your friend to spot number 1 and put your name in spot number 2 ... and then send letters to six of your friends ... they do the same thing and in 2 weeks your child gets 36 letters in the mail with stickers. I still don't know why I got so excited about this particular "project" ... but I did. I thought it was such a cute idea and so do able - stickers are cheap, they are easily accessible (grocery store, wal-mart/target - we're there multiple times a week) and who doesn't know six other kids who'd love to get stickers and mail.... I'm gratefully Emily has forgotten about this little project ... I'm grateful I can't remember who Emily chose to mail her letters too ... tomorrow, I'm mailing her Sunday School little friends an envelope of stickers.

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One of the gals on the Mormonchic.com forums is losing her job due at the end of the month because her boss is an alcoholic ... his drinking has led to the slow demise of the company. She posted this quote and I thought I'd pass it along as food for thought.:

“Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don’t judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. Charity is accepting someone’s differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended. … Charity is refusing to take advantage of another’s weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other.” (“The Tongue Can Be a Sharp Sword,” Ensign, May 1992, 18–19).

Snow much activity!

We had two weekends in a row of snow. Our first weekend of "snow" left us with nearly 2 inches of sleety ice. It started Friday evening (1/12) and ended Sunday night (1/14). Monday the kids didn't have school for MLK Jr. Birthday and begged to play outside, but the temps didn't even got into the 20s, so we stayed inside. Tuesday wasn't much better. Wednesday (1/17) it got to the upper 20s so I decided to try and shovel a pathway from the driveway to the front door - 15 feet or so. The snow shovel didn't even make a dent in the ice, so I spent a good hour using the garden rake to chisel a path just wide enough to get to the door.

The next day, it warmed up again, and this time Emily offered to shovel snow for me. For those who haven't seen my driveway, it's pretty long ... you can easily park 8 cars - 2 across and 4 deep - on it and since our house faces north, the sun doesn't get much of a chance to work it's magic. But Emily was excited about shoveling; she worked really hard and did a fantastic job. Between the two of us, we got 1/3 of the driveway cleared. Friday after school, we worked on it again and got another 1/3 cleared. I had really wanted to get it all done, because I'd heard something on the news about more snow coming over the weekend. And I really didn' t want to deal with snow on top of a thick layer of ice.


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Monday (1/22) after school the children played out in the snow and did a little sledding on the kid sized sledding hill we have next to our house. Sam took some kind of a spill and came in screaming hysterically. From what we've been able to piece together from his account and Becca's, He came down the hill at an odd angle and ended up going under the trampoline and we think, he hit one of the tramp legs.

The result was a bump on his right forehead the size of a large marshmallow - black, purple and yellow with a small red line running down the center of it. I have never seen a true goose egg protruding from a child's forehead. We watched him pretty closely for the rest of the day and by morning the swelling was gone, but the discoloration went all the way down into his eyebrow.

Every day Sam has been going into the bathroom to check on his goose egg to see if it's healing. At dinner Thursday night, after having checked it earlier in the day, he told Becca, "Becca, it's healing, now my goose egg is smaller!" Without missing a beat, Becca replied, "Now it's a chicken egg!"

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Saturday afternoon (1/20) I mentioned it started to snow ... by Sunday morning we had 4-5 inches of perfect snowman building powder. It was beautiful and wet and sticky. We didn't get out on Sunday to make a snowman - huge disappointment! - Monday the snow was more like ice so the kids couldn't make a snowman then, but Tuesday it softened up, and Becca made this beauty after school all by herself (Emmy and Sam were at Grandma's for the afternoon). I was so proud of her ingenuity and determination to make this snowman.

Years ago my SIL gave us a snowman kit - complete with eyes, mouth, carrot, pipe, buttons, and hat. This is the first year we've had snowman building snow and it was so nice to pull out this kit and use it. It was such a great addition to Rebecca's already perfect snowman.