Snow

It snowed here today, but too late in the morning for school to be called off. So, although the kids' bus never showed up, and they didn't get to school until 10:00a.m, it wasn't a snow day. I was disappointed about that because it was a perfect day to play in the snow. We got quite a few inches of wet, fluffy snow, just right for snowman making, and the temperature hovered just around freezing most of the day so it wasn't too cold to stay outside. Fortunately there was still plenty of snow when they got home from school and they spent a couple of hours outside playing.

My kids usually make at least one snowman every year, despite the fact we don't often have snow on the ground for long. I was thinking about that today because, although I had plenty of snow in my childhood winters, I don't remember making snowmen. I remember trying, but snowman snow must have been pretty rare. Not to mention the fact that it was so cold outside...

I've tried to describe winters in Canada to my children, but my powers of description must be lacking because they definitely have a romantic view about it. I've tried to explain air so cold it freezes the inside of your nose when you breathe and how even if it did snow you still had to go to school, but all they say is how lucky I was to have snow on the ground all winter long. Lucky? Maybe they misunderstand the definition of that word because I felt a lot of things about winter while I was growing up and not one of those feelings was "lucky."

And if you're wondering where Ryan was while the other kids were building their snowman, he was experimenting with bike riding in the snow. His verdict? It doesn't work, but his bike has awesome brakes. He also told me while he was riding his bike on the slick hill by our house a teenage boy came by driving too fast in a truck. Ryan said he had to get out of the way to avoid getting hit, but his excited thought during this near death experience was "One day soon that can be me driving dangerously down a hill in a snowstorm!" Heaven help me.

One, Two, Three, Four

Today:

1. Ella was sick. She threw up five times last night and slept on and off most of the day. We were buddies most of the night since she looked so sad I couldn't leave her to suffer alone and ended up holding her on the couch and sleeping with her in the guest room. I'm sure the queasy feeling in my stomach right now is completely unrelated.

2. Maddy was bored. It was a day off from school and I told her no one could come over because of point #1. I didn't feel too bad because she went to a birthday party Friday night and another one most of Saturday.

I talked/forced Maddy into singing in the choir the last few weeks in an attempt to give her a place to practice singing. I'm not sure if she's completely sold on it, but I enjoy it and I'm too chicken to go without taking her as my excuse.

3. Carter was content, which is pretty typical of Carter. He likes nothing more than to spend his free time playing on the computer. On Saturday I forced him to invite friends over. He begged me not to make him, but I wouldn't relent. Carter is my child with easily the most friends and also the one least inclined to do anything with them. Weird.

4. Ryan was busy. He had a scout camp out Friday night. Saturday morning a couple of his friends called him, which was a little unusual. He got home about noon and I told him about the messages and he told me his friends called because Ryan had invited them over for a party that afternoon. So an hour later we had five boys over having an airsoft battle in the backyard. It's fun to watch Ryan grow up and, so far, do a pretty good job navigating adolescence. If only we didn't have to do it three more times...

Emotional Baggage

The last day of school finally came, and it really wasn't soon enough. Along with the usual end of year longing for a more relaxed schedule, warmer weather and family fun, I've also had enough of school budget concerns that eliminated eighth grade at our school and might possibly make Ella's kindergarten next year half day, every other day.

As glad as I am to leave all that behind I wasn't prepared to face our new challenge today - swim team. We talked Carter into joining the YMCA swim team this summer. It only goes through June and July, but they practice everyday for an hour. Today was the first day and he spent most of the time sitting in a chair crying by the side of the pool, insisting nothing was wrong but a stomachache. The rest of the day he periodically burst into tears and begged to quit swim team because he doesn't like it. To be fair I think it was an overwhelming experience. There were about twenty kids in his age group and most of them clearly had more experience swimming than Carter, but I told him over and over he was only there to do his best, get some exercise and practice swimming. He was not comforted in the least.

Later as I was putting the kids to bed tonight Maddy asked when we were going to have her birthday party. Her birthday was in April. I told her we weren't going to have a party this year and she burst into heartbroken tears. I have to admit this one was all my fault, because although Ryan had a birthday party most of the first ten years of his life I have had a hard time extending that tradition on to anyone else. In fact, I'd have to say as much as I used to enjoy birthday parties, they now make me about as excited as going to the dentist.

Anyway, after all this I felt an overwhelming urge to make brownies, which I'm pretty sure would qualify as emotional eating. Which makes me wonder how someone so easily overcome by emotional issues herself can possibly be in charge of helping little people figure out their own emotional issues. It really doesn't seem fair to my children that they have me to turn to because I certainly don't have any answers. Sheesh. This parenting thing seems like a pretty messed up system to me right now.

p.s. I didn't have all the ingredients to finish my brownies so I had to settle for licking half made batter.

It's All About The Dog

My goal today was to write a post, trying to catch up on things that are happening around here, but first of all I needed pictures so I inserted my memory card into my computer. 833 pictures. Seriously? And I feel like I don't take enough pictures! Then I went through and removed all the pictures children took of various parts of the dog. How many pictures were left? 178.