author, author

Rachel's becoming a writer.  This sudden love of the A to Z Mystery books has inspired her to start writing her own mysteries.  For a couple of weeks now, she gets up every morning, and after getting dressed, making her bed, and brushing her teeth, she sits down in her room and writes a chapter.  She's on her second book now.  

She plans her stories ahead of time, coming up with the chapter titles first, and writing a table of contents.  After writing her chapter she then draws a picture.

And she does it all with oil pastels, so her hands are a MESS when she comes downstairs every morning.

But she's having fun, using her imagination, which has always been amazing, if you ask me, and practicing some great skills.  I'm thrilled!

She's now trying to decide if she wants to be an artist, writer, or a chef when she grows up.

sweets for my sweets

Valentine's Day = sweets

My present to the family ( this is my Grandma's famous Christmas cookie recipe, so it tastes like Christmas today, not Valentines Day!):

My husband's present to me:

My presents to the girls:

So much for watching what we eat.....

be my valentine

Rachel's never had to decorate a Valentine's box before.  They've always decorated them at school, so I've never had to worry about helping her make one.  I've seen other people's creations on Facebook and Pinterest, but we've never done one.  

On Monday we got a note from the teacher telling us that because of all of the snow days the kids have had, she didn't have time to have them decorate them at school, as usual, so we needed to have them decorate one at home.  I got on Pinterest to see what ideas I could show Rachel, but some of them were so elaborate that I knew it would end up that she'd want ME to do it to make it look "right." I decided I didn't want to be the one doing it, I wanted it to be her creation.  So I didn't show her any ideas.  I didn't give her any direction, really. I just wrapped a box with the only non-birthday/non-Christmas wrapping paper we had, and turned her loose with my scrapbooking supplies.  

She had a blast!  

Afterward she wanted pictures of ALL of the sides....

She's so proud of it, and I'm happy that it's all her work, not a mom-made box.

little engineer

Rebecca LOVES Legos.  She spends much of the day some days making and tearing apart different creations.  We don't let her play with regular Legos yet.  They're just too tiny and she'd make a huge mess with them, but these duplo blocks are perfect.

She makes "Zoomers" and planes and cars of all sorts.  (She calls them Zoomers.)

Love my little future engineer!

round two

Yesterday we came home from the library to find a SNOW PLOW on our street!!  I can count on one hand the number of times a snow plow has come through our neighborhood, but on our little street, a cul de sac, not a through street?  NEVER!  We were so excited (and almost took a picture.....but resisted the urge, because who  takes a picture of a snow plow on their street??)

It plowed the street, which threw more snow into the end of our driveway, but once my husband shoveled that out, it was lots better.  

But then.....it snowed again this morning.  We have probably three or four more inches of snow in the street.  We got stuck again trying to get out this evening.  Ugh.

So now I get to look forward to the stress every morning again of whether or not I'll get stuck on the way out.  So much for our snow plowed street.  Thankfully it's supposed to be cold again tomorrow morning, so it should harden again like it did last time, so hopefully it will be okay.

In other news, the Olympics are on, of course.  I wrote two years ago about how every two years the closet sports fan in me comes out and I'm glued to the TV for two weeks.  Rachel seems to have inherited this gene.  She loves the Olympics.  We watched the opening ceremonies from start to finish yesterday morning (recorded from the night before) and it was so fun to watch it with her, listening to all of her questions and comments about the countries, their flags, their outfits, their athletes....  Yesterday and today she watched bits and pieces with me of ice skating, ski jumping, luge, snow boarding, and even hockey!  Then she'd go to the other room and have her own version of the Olympics.  She and Rebecca put on leotards and tap shoes and pretended to ice skate through the kitchen.  Today they went outside with the sled and pretended it was their snow board on the very tiny hill in our yard.  Hilarious.  

In other Rachel news, she wrote her first fan letter today.  To Ron Roy, author of her current favorite chapter book series, A to Z mysteries.  She became obsessed with these books a couple of weeks ago (which led to giving up on her 41 book run of reading through all of the Magic Treehouse books, which she's been working on since last summer), and she's plowing through these new books.  They're too easy for her, which I don't like, but since she's sitting down and reading on her own without being told, I don't say much about it, because I'm just happy to see her reading for pleasure.  Anyway, she told me yesterday that she wanted to write a letter to the author.  So this morning she got up and stayed in her room for close to an hour, working on a letter, all on her own.  Then during rest time she re-wrote her letter as neatly as she could, made an envelope, and a stamp.  She only asked me how to spell the word partner, and there isn't a single spelling mistake in the letter, which is a huge surprise, because she's not the greatest speller.  She's been asking me all afternoon when she can mail it and whether he'll write back to her. The whole letter made me smile.  She told him what book she was on, asked him how many books he's written, and whether he would come visit our town.  She said she meant to ask if he would come visit the library here, but she forgot.  It's so cute.

snowplow?

Three days after the storm, and we still haven't seen a plow in our neighborhood.  There's almost 10 inches of snow, full of ruts, up and down the roads.  Yesterday I got stuck in the middle of our road trying to get Rachel to the bus stop.  She had had a two hour delay, so it was the middle of the morning and everyone was at work by then.  The neighborhood was empty, and there I was, stuck in the middle of the road with two little girls in the car.  I didn't know what I was going to do. I kept going forward and backward, tires spinning, but finally I somehow got out and got to the bus stop.  

At the end of the day I didn't want to chance getting stuck again so Rebecca and I walked.  But the guy that lives in the house behind us doesn't shovel his sidewalk, and it's a corner lot, so that's a whole lotta sidewalk, unshoveled.  Rebecca's little legs had a lot of trouble in all of that snow, and she was crying, not even halfway to the bus stop.  I finally go us out into the street, which was a little better than the sidewalk, but then we had to keep stopping to wait for cars to go by.  It took a long time, but we got there, and then got back, with Rachel in tow.  

Last night I asked my husband to try and do something it in the street to make it easier for me to get out.  He tried using the snow blower, but it had no traction, since there's solid ice under the snow, and couldn't get through the packed down snow.  So he shoveled some of it out.  Then he got in my car and tried to get out.  And got stuck.  The neighbor was out and he helped push him out.  He shoveled some more.  

And this morning we hoped for the best.

Thankfully it's lots colder today.  While I knew that meant we couldn't really walk to the bus stop, I thought it might make the soft, slushy snow harder, and maybe it would be harder to get stuck. Well, it worked!  I got out without any problems.  Now I have to hope for more of the same this afternoon.

But what I REALLY want is a snow plow!!!  

Groundhog Day

You know the movie, Groundhog Day, where the same day keeps repeating over and over and over?  Well, that's what it feels like here right now (how ironic that tomorrow IS Groundhog Day!).

First Rachel was sick.  That was a week ago.  Then Rebecca got sick a few days later.  Then my husband.  Now it's my turn.  Meanwhile, Rachel and Rebecca are still coughing up a storm, and my husband still isn't completely well, either.  None of us is sleeping well.  So for a week straight, we've been replaying the same cycle.  Fever, chills, lots of blankets, ibuprofen, fever going down, sweating, naps, rinse and repeat a few hours later.  It seems to go in five hour cycles.  But we have to wait six hours to take ibuprofen, so the last hour is hard to endure, and then it takes about a half hour to feel better.  

I'm REALLY TIRED and this can be over anytime now.  I've basically been stuck in the house for an entire week, first for snow, then for cold, then for sickness.  

I feel horrible.  I haven't been this sick in a long time.  And I thought my month long sinus/ear infection in the fall was bad.  At least I could function most of the time during that.  I've been in bed/on the couch for pretty much all of yesterday and today.

Thankfully my husband was able to take a half day off work yesterday to help me, and it's the weekend so he's been here all day today doing everything....cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, you name it.  And he's not even all well yet.  What a guy!  I don't know what I would've done without him today.