Quick Takes

1-
Happy (almost) Halloween! Our town had it's trick or treat street last night because the school has some sort of day off today. I normally find the fact that everything has to revolve around the school in all these little towns annoying, but since we basically have a blizzard today, I guess it was probably a good thing that the girls got out (in the snow) to trick or treat! This picture is of them before going to the library for story time, Eva is dressed as Mulan and Charlotte is (clearly) Snow White. You can't really tell in the picture, but we sprayed both girl's hair black with temporary hair dye. NOT a plan I'm going to do again, as it took about 4 hair washings to get it out and it got all over their clothes and faces because of the snow while trick or treating.

2-
Hubby just left for work. He wasn't sure if he would be going in at all today, because the roads are closed. The truck never made it to Denver last night, and even if it had, the roads out here are closed, so they'll get a double dose of mail tomorrow (just the thing everyone wants on a Saturday!) On the plus side, the last time the mail couldn't get out here was a couple of years ago, right before Christmas. Hubby ended up volunteering to deliver packages on Christmas Eve that year.

3-
My parents had come up with the idea that we should go on a trip as a family for Christmas, since this is the first time hubby won't be working at Christmas (the p.o. doesn't like to give people time off between Thanksgiving and Christmas, for some reason!) Originally, the plan was going to be driving somewhere. We suggested Santa Fe, NM or Branson, MO (both under 12 hours of driving...about all I think I could handle!) somehow, by the end of it, my parents booked airfare to Hawaii for a week. We will be staying at Turtle Bay Resort on Oahu. I'm excited about the trip, but also a little stressed out with all the little stuff I need to deal with. Eva is very excited about her first plane trip, and her first trip to a beach. Charlotte doesn't really get it yet, I don't think.

4-
Speaking of my parents...my dad just had his 61st (I think) birthday this week. His school also had a snow day on his birthday, and I am pretty sure they are still having a snow day today. So, he's having a good time not going to work. My mom is still on fall break from her school. Personally, I am about ready for them to go back to school, because they are having WAY too much time available for worrying about trip details, and I don't have the time right now to deal with their worries. Like yesterday, I am running out the door to get the girls to story time, and my dad calls to tell me he is e-mailing me an article (he needed our e-mail address again) and he's still talking to me as I am driving away from the house, telling me that my mom suggested that we get state IDs for the girls. Personally, I think it would be a waste of my time (and money) to get IDs for the girls, but my parents are worried that we might be delayed in security if our girls names match the name of someone on the terrorist watch list. I think that is very, very, VERY unlikely! So, anyone fly with kids frequently (or ever)? Anyone ever been delayed because TSA kept their kids back to check on them?

5-
Our goal to have the house ready to list by November 1st seems to be right on target. Other than A LOT of cleaning that I need to do (I have a ton of black hair dyed clothes to wash, and have a lot of floors to clean, not to mention some clutter and half a dozen cold medicines to put away) hubby has come pretty close to finishing the repairs. We have a new kitchen faucet, the wall is built in our basement/crawlspace, and he has the primer and paint in the house for touching up the wall where we had patch some cracks. We still had hoped to paint the doors (not happening in the blizzard), replace some weather stripping, and hubby wants to put a sweep on an interior door (which could probably get done tonight.) The hard part once the house is listed will be keeping everything clean and tidy all the time...it's just not in my nature!

6-
I'm pretty sure I've whined on the blog about us all being sick...but this week I finally sucked it up, and took myself and the girls to the clinic. Well, it turns out that Charlotte just had a cold, Eva had a slight case on pneumonia, and I had a sinus infection. Eva's on day 4 of Zythromax (my favorite antibiotic...gotta love the five day total thing!) and seems to be doing better, I guess. She never really slowed down, but her appetite is back up to normal. I'm doing better, too...still on antibiotics for a while, but I was also given a sinus rinse thing to use...I guess it's kinda like a neti pot. Basically, you squirt water up one nostril while bent over with your head tilted, and it rinses gunk out of your sinuses, I guess. It's pretty gross, but works pretty well. I'm thinking I might get one for hubby, as he ALWAYS has sinus problems.

7-
Well, I fully intend to enjoy my blizzard today by staying in my PJs and sipping hot tea all day long. Of course, I still have to carve pumpkins with the girls (I meant to get it done yesterday, but with all the running around a black spray on hair color, it just didn't happen!) and do a bunch of laundry, but there's something so satisfying about spending a cold day at home in jammies with a warm beverage, isn't there?

More quick takes at Conversion Dairy!

No, I haven't completely given up blogging...

I have just been extremely busy! I've been contemplating several ideas for future posts, though. Just to let you know that I'm still alive, here are some possible coming attractions. Please let me know what you think of any one(s) of them, or feel free to suggest anything else! "Discuss amongst yourselves." Hope to get back at it soon.
Post ideas:
1. "Show me your friends, and I'll show you your future."
2. State Department report on religious freedom around the world
3. Has the Republican Party lost its collective mind??
4. Upcoming Hawaii trip
5. Getting the house ready to list for sale (which is why I haven't had time to blog)
6. your brilliant suggestion!

Quick Takes Friday

1-
Hubby had his 32nd birthday this week. He also had to carry mail on his birthday, and my aunt and uncle came into town for a visit, so my surprise for him was limited to making a carrot cake in the morning, and having it on the table when he walked in the door for his 30 minute lunch break. Because I got started on the cake later than I should have, it wasn't completely cool when hubby called to give me a 20 minute warning, so the frosting looked really bad (lots of crumbs). So, for the second year running, I pulled out some Halloween themed sprinkles to cover up the bad looking frosting. I chose grey and black headstones with purple sprinkles. It looks like next year, I need to make a cake with a non-white frosting so that I can use that last section of the can, white ghosts. My aunt thought that it was mean of me to put headstones on his cake before he turns 50. It's really not MY fault that his birthday is so conveniently close to Halloween!

2-
My aunt that was visiting is my mom's sister. It is kind of funny how much they are alike in many ways, since they have lived on opposite sides of the country for their adult lives (my parents have been in Colorado for over 30 years, and my aunt and uncle have lived in Ohio their entire lives.) There are also a lot of differences, but mostly due to the fact that my aunt is very religious (my uncle is a retired Methodist pastor) and my mom is not very religious at all. It makes a big difference in life.

3-
We seem to be passing a cold back and forth in our family, and back and forth with my in-laws as well. I was feeling pretty awful on Saturday and Sunday, but have been getting better all week (I still have a hacking cough) but Charlotte seems to be the one down with it now...she was really hacking all day yesterday, and seems to be a little tired and cranky. It is always hard to tell when that kid is sick though, because she never stops, and nothing really slows her down (for instance, when she broke her arm, she didn't really seem too hurt, but hubby noticed that she was favoring the other arm.)

4-
38 more days until hubby is unemployed. I'm getting a little excited, and a little nervous. Of course, that means that we only have eight days left before our target date to list the house. Not completely sure we'll meet our goal, but we are getting closer. I have the bathroom, the girls room and our bedroom all ready to stage (I know what needs to go away in each room before showings) I'm getting closer on the living room/dining room and kitchen...I have a long way to go yet on the laundry room. I haven't started the outdoor staging.

5-
It's been snowing the last two days...yuck! I'm glad that hubby took the time on Sunday and Monday to finish up the outdoor painting...other than the doors, which we haven't totally decided what to do with yet. We are thinking of painting them a slate gray color, but I guess we'd have to have some good weather to get that done!

6-
Because of the snow, school was cancelled in all of the little towns around here yesterday. Because the schools were canceled, so was story time at the library, which bummed Eva out a little bit. But, since Charlotte has been coughing so much, she's not going to her coop preschool class this morning, which is a bummer, because they will be doing something with orange paint...and I don't do very many painting activities (too much cleanup!) with the girls here.

7-
Speaking of school...my mom and my dad are both school teachers, my aunt and my uncle are both former school teachers. My grandma worked in the library at a school...I'm guessing there are educators further back in my family, too. One of my mom's not so great traits that my aunt shares is a strong bewilderment and disapproval of my homeschooling. Not to say that they MEAN to be disapproving, but they both think it is a phase I am going through, and while both my aunt and my mom bring me curriculum stuff when they visit, they just can't help themselves to open up their mouths (sometimes right in front of Eva) and state their opinions that I must be nuts to home school, and that living in a rural community that is relatively free of crime, I have no real reason I could possibly WANT to home school. Of course, then later in the conversations it will turn to many good reasons to avoid institutional schools, such as a college that has taken a dorm that was not in use and turned it into a sort of quarantine dorm for students with the swine flu...

Well, I guess I might need to go check on my little coughing girls! More quick takes (as always) at Conversion Diary!

Quick Takes Friday

1-
Okay, I know I say this just about every other Quick Takes, but YEAH for PAYDAY!!! I still haven't taken back over the budgeting, and I think that the low dollar amounts in just about every account were making hubby twitch. He's going to take us girls out for lunch today to celebrate, and I already have dinner cooking in the crock pot. I am liking my meal preparation today!

2-
I'm trying to get into some sort of cleaning routine so that when we put the house up for sale (our current goal date is November 1st) we have a system to keep the house mostly clean. I am not a particularly neat person. In fact, I used to be a slob..unlike hubby who used to be a neat freak. In college, I used to go into his dorm room and throw his laundry all over his floor (it was always neatly piled in a laundry basket) because his room was unnaturally clean. Now, I would say we are a balance of the two. Mostly clean, but there's always a couple of things that probably should be cleaner or neater. Not the best cleaning philosophy for selling a house. So, as of now, in the mornings (right after getting the girl's breakfast) I put away their clothes, make their beds, make my bed, unload the dinner dishes from the dishwasher, and start reloading with anything left over and breakfast dishes. At lunch time, I will continue loading the dishwasher, and run it if it is mostly full. Then, at dinner, I am unloading the dishwasher (if necessary) cooking, eating, praying, reloading the dishwasher, running it, starting a load of laundry while the girls and hubby pick up toys, wipe off table and get into jammies. After the girl's bedtime, the laundry gets dried, folded, and put away, except for their clothes, which go into a basket until the morning. I still need to work the floors and counter tops into the deal. Not to mention continue packing items we won't need for a while.

3-
On the cleaning front, for Eva's home economics this week I had originally planned to follow the lessons in the order of her book, which would have had her learning how to cook with eggs this week and use the stove next week. I thought about teaching a kid to cook while trying to keep the house in excellent shape for showings, and decided to skip the rest of the cooking (and all of the baking) until we are in the new house. So, I skipped ahead to the cleaning section, and taught Eva how to vacuum. Charlotte wanted to learn, too, so I gave her the dust buster and had her vacuum underneath the couch cushions. I think having Eva able to run the vacuum will be helpful to last minute cleaning sessions.

4-
Eva is currently taking a ballet class twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays. This Monday was a federal holiday, so hubby was able to come with me to take her to class (Charlotte had spent the night at grandma's house) so we watched from the second floor. She is so serious about her class, you can just see the concentration on her face, but at the end of class, they were learning a step (a little bit like a grapevine) and Eva was just not getting it (she kept putting one foot behind the other and stepping back more and more with that foot turning herself in a circle) so after class, hubby decided to try to show her how to do the step...I thought it was pretty hilarious, particularly since hubby was showing her how to do ballet moves in the middle of the community center while people were picking up their kids.

5-
Some other moms in town and I have started a cooperative preschool class once a week, and Charlotte had her first week. She had a lot of fun, and was not at all sad about us leaving her there (I'll be teaching at our house the first week in November). She is the youngest of the group, but appears to have held her own. It's funny, she is the only one of the four kids that isn't the oldest...so she has prior experience with things like cutting with scissors, where the others, being the oldest and 3 or 4 years old, really haven't done any cutting at home. She has her own pencil box and notebook to take to class and bring home, and she just loves them.

6-
Today is the feast of St. Gerard Majella, Eva's patron saint. Tomorrow is the anniversary of Eva's baptism. So, tonight I am going to get out Eva's baptismal candle to light during dinner...maybe I'll make dessert, too.

7-
That dessert will have to be made of apples, I think...since I have a large bowl full from MIL on the counter. I also have all of the carrots and beets that hubby pulled out of the garden when the ground softened up enough. I need to figure out how to cook the beets (we only got two large and two small total), and figure out what to do with the carrots...I am thinking that I may slice them up and blanch and freeze them. I just have to figure out how I am supposed to do that!

More quick takes this week at Conversion Diary!

No Quick Takes...

Well, Jen at Conversion Dairy PUT AWAY her computer for a full WEEK...so there are no official quick takes this week, but I thought I'd pop in with a few thoughts.

Hubby is a morning person and I am NOT...so it is not unusual for hubby to tell me something when he leaves in the morning, but he usually knows better than to make me guess something before 7 in the morning (actually, before noon its probably not a good idea). This morning he bounded in the room to say goodbye (its just not natural to be that cheerful at that hour of the day...) and said "Guess who won the nobel peace prize?" I mumbled, "someone stupid, no doubt" (otherwise why would he be bothering me) I have to admit, I found it a little surprising that President Obama was the recipient. Not that I should have been, after the whole Al Gore thing several years ago. I had a good chuckle at Simcha's post this morning.

I've started some packing. It's hard to figure out what to pack (other than most of our books, which are already packed and waiting in the garage to be moved) and what I will need in the next 2 1/2 months. My mom really wants us to get our house on the market as soon as possible. Hubby the perfectionist doesn't want it listed until everything is perfect. We've been having some disagreements about how to handle the selling of the house. I do think that my mom had a good point about the $8000 first time homebuyer tax credit which actually expires on December 1st.

Hubby has been hard at work trying to make the house closer to perfect. Yesterday he installed a new bathroom faucet, and earlier in the week he had done some patching, filling, caulking jobs that needed to be done. I haven't been that on top of things, but I guess I need to get moving.

Eva started Ballet classes this week. She seems to be enjoying them, but I have to admit that running around at the same time as all the school moms are running kids to activities after school is not very much fun. Lots of traffic and people around.

Charlotte will start her coop preschool next week. We had our planning meeting this week, and I don't have to be the teacher until the first week of November. I put together most of her pencil box (I still need to buy her some new crayons) and she was very excited carrying it around the house. She's so goofy about things...she says "Holy Moly" about almost anything she finds exciting or unusual. So, she said "My pencil box?? Holy Moly!" when I showed it to her.

Quick Takes Friday

1- Life seems to be getting very busy for us...and to think that all summer I kept thinking "I can't wait for fall! Things will finally slow down then!" Yeah...not so much. Starting next week, Eva has ballet class twice a week, Charlotte has coop preschool once a week (although next week is a planning meeting, not class) and Eva has story time once a week. Add in my Bible Study, Knights of Columbus activities, doctor's appointments, birthdays and out of town relatives stopping by for a day, and we have a very full October calendar (and of course, trick or treating with the girls!)

2- In the past week, hubby and I finally looked into the buyout thing being offered by his employer. We had originally thought it probably wouldn't be worth it, because the amount you get is based upon the hours you work, and hubby is part-time. BUT, when we looked at the numbers, it turns out that he worked just over 10 hours more during the time frame than the minimum to get the full amount. Plus, we figured out that we would have a month worth of free health care under the plan, and the option to continue coverage if we needed to, for up to 18 months. After hubby talked to his dad about whether he would be able to give hubby a start date of January 1st, we decided to go ahead and do the program. Hubby told his boss yesterday, and is just waiting to hear back on a couple of questions before he mails in his resignation form. SO, he will be unemployed for about a month between the date he has to leave his current job by and the date when the farm is all split up. Kinda scary!

3- We drove up to Sidney, NE on Wednesday, mostly because I found out there is a Salvation Army store there, and we were cleaning out our garage (which has been a pit of despair since we bought the house, and it came full of junk...) so we took up a large load of stuff, then stopped by the Cabela's store before coming home (to look at the fish and animals). We ended up buying some vanilla and nuts...when we put it into Quicken and typed in Cabela's...it brought up the purchase of our entertainment center, which we bought before Eva was born...at a different Cabela's. One brother of the guy who founded Cabela's opened a furniture store in Chappell, NE...it is FAR less famous...but we thought it was pretty funny that although the name Cabela's was already in Quicken, it wasn't THE Cabela's that everyone knows about...I know, I'm a dork!

4- School is going well with Eva. We've started to split the day in half. In the morning we start with reading, then do religion and handwriting (and sometimes phonics, if we have a lot in the second half of class) then in the afternoon, we do Phonics (if not done already), Math, Spanish and an Elective. Right now, we are doing Art on Day 1, Home Economics on Day 2, Music on Day 3, and Science on Day 4. Eva made a very nice carrot tray in home ec yesterday, she peeled the carrots independently, and then I helped her use a garnisher to cut them up (she doesn't really have the coordination yet that I trust her not to cut herself...but that will come with time and practice, I guess!) We made a little dip, and made a fan pattern with the carrots to serve with dinner.

5- I've been being nosy using the computer this week. I've checked out the websites of both Realtors in town to see what they have listed, and how the houses are priced. I have seen what not to do when the realtor comes to take pictures. Note to self...clean up EVERYTHING, and take pictures YOURSELF! Also, one of the Realtors in town either can't spell or can't type...I'm leaning towards the can't spell, because she seems to be able to create Internet slide shows, so I would think she could type!

6- At story time yesterday, we got there a few minutes early, so Eva got to see some of her friends that are in the earlier group. She went up to hug one of them, and they were chatting away. Her little friend was telling us that she just went on vacation and got to stay in a hotel and go shopping, and swim in the hotel pool. I asked her where she went, and she told me a hotel. Then Eva stated in a very serious voice "What COUNTRY did you go to?" and her little friend answered, equally seriously "Denver!" I had a good laugh with her mom. They had gone up to Denver to pick up the little girl's aunt at the airport, and decided to make a mini vacation out of it. I never would have thought to ask her what country she went to, but that's exactly how I found out where they went.

7- We borrowed the movie "Tarzan" from the library, and had a family movie night last night...much cuter movie than I had expected! I was impressed (of course, it was the Disney Tarzan...I liked the goofy elephant.) Charlotte kept swinging from couch to couch and pretending she was a monkey all through the movie. Little goofball!

More quick takes over at Conversion Diary!