To Be Or Not To Be???

Well, the predictions are in... According to the local weather forecasters we're heading for wintertime doom! Unfortunately, experience with Michigan forecasters has made me jaded -- I have a very limited level of trust in the accuracy of their predictions. It seems that every storm that blows in is destined to be "the BIG one" that will cause turmoil, destruction, and a general upset to our daily lives. Usually we get a few flurries and a lot of disappointed kids in school!

But, just in case... Every teacher I know spent the day frantically getting Christmas projects finished so the kids could take home presents for their parents. I spent the day in Kindergarten with two adults doing centers that were origionally planned for Friday when there are 17 parent volunteers who are expected to show up. The day was so crazy I ended up breaking out in hives from the stress! However, we did get everything finished, and the kids did remarkably well considering they are rather excited with only 2 days left of school before Christmas break. Thankfully, the hives have now subsided.

Here at home we have not mentioned the possibility of a snow day. I think both girls would be crushed. Annika can't wait for her 2nd grade Christmas party tomorrow and Abby is excited because Daddy is going to be the special helper in Pre-School. Normally Daddy is at work, but since his semester is done already he is able to come. It's a bit strange to have everyone actually hoping we WON'T have a snow day. That is rarely the case! The only person in our house who might actually appreciate one would be Mike because then I'll be home to watch the kids while he keeps grading finals!

I guess we'll know in a few short hours (possibly before most of you read this!). So, say a little prayer tonight (you decide what for!) and we'll see what tomorrow brings!

"Loosing" my mind

It seems that recently I have just had way too much going in my life because I find that I am failing to keep track of all the many details of my life. Within the last week alone:

• I forgot that I was responsible for making lunch for the teacher's weekly luncheon. I remembered at 6:30 the night before that I was supposed to make soup and dessert. Not a problem except for the fact that we were walking out the door to go Christmas caroling with our church at Raybrook and we wouldn't get home until after 9:00. This resulted in a frantic phone call to a colleage who bailed me out (thank you, Heidi!).
• On Thursday we lost the family Christmas photographs we had picked up last weekend. Actually, we lost them last Sunday, we just didn' t realize it until Thursday when I went to work on our Christmas cards. We spent hours looking for them and almost had Mike jumping into a paper recycling dumpster (luckily we deduced that it was logically impossible for the pictures to be there BEFORE he jumped in). For those of you who follow Facebook my profile update, written while I was quite stressed, read, "Lisa is loosing her mind. She cannot find the family pictures..." Loosing? Oh, dear! Maybe that was a subconcious reference to the fact that my mind is rapidly unraveling! Or, it just reflects that I cannot spell, especially when I'm stressed out!
  
• On Friday Abby was supposed to bring candy for the Pre-K - 5th grade buddy project at school. They were making Gingerbread houses. Despite the fact that we talked about it several times at home that week guess who showed up for school without any candy!
• This list does not include (nor is it possible to recount) the miriad of times I have walked to a destination this week only to forget why I am there, left things laying on counters, tables, etc. and totally forgotten where I put them, and the list goes on and on.

I think I need a vacation! Five more school days until Christmas break. Praise the Lord!

A Conversation with Abby

While eating lunch today at Culver's we had to continually remind Abby that we were in a restaurant and that not everyone wanted to hear her every word. If you know Abby well you will know that she generally talks in only one volume: loud. She also tends to talk or make noise continuously. After several reminders to use her "inside voice" the conversation went as follows:

Lisa: What have Mommy and Daddy asked you to do lots of times today?
Abby (very proud of herself for knowing the answer and practically yelling it): Be quiet!

Glad to know the message was getting through.

Gymnastics

Annika switched from dance to gymnastics this year, with considerable success. While she enjoyed dance class last year, she's much more enthusiastic about going to gymnastics. Her strength has improved, too, even to the point that the PE teacher at school commented on it. Recently it was parent watch day, so Lisa got to go in and observe up close, and she took lots of videos and pictures. Here's Annika's one-legged bridge:

And here's a handstand:



Also, unrelatedly, here's Jake riding the horse in our basement. It's a very old horse, dating back to when Lisa's dad was growing up. All of our kids have ridden it with much gusto. It's a good thing they can hang on tight or else they'd go flying off of it.

Minivan Conversation

Last night the kids had supper with Mark and Liz, and after we picked them up we were discussing what they had for dinner. An argument ensued about whether they had potatoes, as Abby claimed, which didn't make much sense since they had spaghetti. It turns out she meant to say that she ate some tomatoes, so we practiced some pronunciation.

Lisa: "Say 'tomato'..."
Abby: "Tomato"
Mike: "Say 'tornado'..."
Abby: "Tornado"
Mike: "Say 'torpedo'..."
Abby: "Torpedo"
Mike: "Say 'portedo'..."
Abby: "Torpedo"
Lisa: "Say 'tortito'..."
Abby: something like that
Mike: "Say 'tortilla'..."
Abby: "Tortilla"
Mike: "Say 'quesadilla'..."
Abby: "Quesadilla"
There's some general noise from everyone, including Jake, when we get...
Annika: "Say 'smell my butt'..."
Mike: "Annika!" and it all degenerated from there, eventually leading to a discussion about what cooties are.

Halloween

Halloween! After coming home that Friday to find a vehicular behemoth in the frontyard and a stove in the garage that we thought was getting installed that day, the candy haul began:

Jake was a bunny and got mistaken for a girl a few of times:

Abby was a pumpkin:

And Annika was Violet Incredible:

The night before we carved pumpkins. The girls were considerably different in their gusto for pumpkin guts. Annika touched them a little bit, but Abby got elbow deep:

The finished products were a cat and a happy face:

We stopped my Grandpa and Grandma Dekker's church to do some trunk-or-treating first, and then hit our neighborhood. The girls toughed it out for a while, but didn't dare go to the "scary house" that was down the street from ours. They each came away with quite a bit of goodies.

Below is the behemoth I mentioned. The main underground power line in our neighborhood is getting replaced, which is a good thing, but we were the lucky ones that got this 20,000 pound lawn ornament:

This thing drilled a horizontal hole for new power line that extended more than 600 feet underground. It left nice ruts in the lawn, too, but those will be fixed eventually. And the next day Dad and I installed the stove, so we're fully functioning in the kitchen again. Unceremoniously, I think broccoli casserole was the first thing cooked in the new oven - oh, but we may have had cinnamon rolls first, to the girls' delight.

Electronic Tattling and Other Things

When we neglect our blog so severely I always feel like our first returning post should be stellar, so I apologize if this isn't.

Lisa's at the CEA convention in South Bend for a couple days, so I'm home with the kids. I didn't have to head to Ferris today (a Thursday), which was convenient enough. Tomorrow will involve more babysitters, though.

The other day I was home with Jake and Annika, and I was upstairs while the two of them were occupied on the main floor, albeit a bit too quiet. I was busy putting together a new bookshelf though, so I didn't go check them out. Later on I came down and Annika immediately reported that Jake had been messing with our computer. He really enjoys getting on the chair and pressing buttons on the keyboard. The worst part is the fact that our keyboard has a button that automatically puts the computer in sleep mode, but it registers each press of that button, so it has to go through the wake-up-go-to-sleep cycle for every button press. Now, Annika didn't bother to come get me while Jake was on the computer, but rather grabbed my cell phone, which was sitting by the computer, and instead documented Jake's activities with the phone. So, I now have shots of Jake playing with a calculator, pushing the sleep button, pushing other buttons, and even shots of the screen showing the results of Jake's button pushes, like a string of typing in a Word file that was open. No great damage was done, but Annika certainly can be a character.

If anyone wants to rake leaves, we have plenty.

We're still without an oven, since our old one was a built-in, and the most basic replacement would be around $800 (which is dumb, considering how cheap a basic freestanding range is). I was going to cut out a spot where our old one was, but enough issues arose that I decided not to go after that myself. So, someone came and checked it out today and will give us an estimate on that tomorrow. We already bought a basic freestanding range from Sears - a discontinued basic model with a ding or two, but it was only $160! Never used! Unfortunately, it's white, which should go awesomely with our black dishwasher and bisque fridge. Oh well - maybe I'll find buried treasure in the backyard soon and we'll redo the whole kitchen.

Well, time to finish my night - nothing but the World Series and probably a fine brew await me.