Snow News

We had lots of snow on the day of inauguration. The bad news was the grownups really wanted to stay inside to watch this historic moment whilst the young ones wanted to play outside. We went outside for awhile. Our "snow" gear was limited, so although they enjoyed themselves outside, once they got inside they realized that they were miserably cold and we had to work on warming everybody back up.

News from this month...

* I've realized (once again) that teaching school is hard work. I think the hardest part is communicating with parents. The planning and teaching parts are the parts I really like. Maybe I could go back and teach 50 years ago when what the teacher said was the gospel.
* Birdie is 18 months old (and one day) and still not walking. She's talking up a storm and moving all around. When she goes outside with her class, she continues to crawl around and the teachers always have to change her near-muddy clothes. She is still very laid back, and her favorite thing to do is give out kisses to anyone. When I ask her if she wants to kiss Brother Bear or whoever, she immediately sticks her lips out towards that person. So cute! She also loves participating in saying the prayer before a meal. She only refuses to participate if I haven't prepared her plate of food yet.
* Bug is still our most laid back kid. A little boy from our church and her daycare class calls her his "Queen of the South" from some song he listens to. He also calls her his Honeybunch. Her teachers said that once when she was crying in timeout, he came over and patted her back and said, "It's okay. You only have to sit here for a little while." Right this minute, she is asking me if she wear two pair of underwear so that she can stay extra warm:).
* Bear participated in his first pinewood derby race today. We had no clue what we were doing as we prepared his car. This was our "learning" year. Bear did not win, but came home with some good ideas about how to make a "faster" car.
* Bear and Lou Lou both had wonderful report cards and they were so proud of them. Lou Lou wanted to know what each little thing on the report card meant, but when I told her that everything was good, she got on the phone with MaJe and told her how great she did.
* Currently, we're reading The Whipping Boy and Kit - American Girl Story. Both very interesting stories!
* My new organizational technique which REALLY works is to lay out 35 outfits on Saturday for the whole week. That's seven outfits per child plus seven for me. This is probably the #1 thing I've done recently to help myself not feel CRAZY every morning.
* Recently, I feel most passionate about the sanctity of life. Thinking about anything that causes life to come to an end is awful. How can it be a crime to kill a human being that's already been born, yet lawful to kill a human being prior to being born? I've been reading a book about the culture of life versus the culture of death. Our current culture is such a culture of death because you hear so much about preventing conception, a woman's choice, etc. Jesus said in Matthew 25:40, "Whatever you do to the least of these my brethren, you do unto me." You can't get much more "least" than an unborn child at conception. Now I'll step off my soapbox!

Happy 2009!

So we enjoyed the holidays and the multiple days off. It was nice for everyone to be home together for awhile. Now we're back in the swing of things with school, work, etc. Tonight was Jimmy's first night back in Chapel Hill. He'll be done with graduate school at the end of May. I'm so glad because taking all four of the children to martial arts for Bear's class is not a piece of cake. Tonight we all went, and I felt like everyone was staring at me and my children. It wasn't because we were too loud, but the baby girls were a little cranky. Thankfully, we left there and headed to Mama C's for supper (while I dashed off to PTA). When I got back there to pick everyone up, I enjoyed some of her wonderful broccoli and gingerbread muffins. Now we're home and all four sleepyheads are unbathed and in bed. We did get homework done though.