Winter Wonderland

Can you say "snow"?  Ours was melted down to mostly the two inches of ice that had rained down a week or so ago and then today we got a new blanket of about 7"-8" of beautiful snow.  It's the first good packing snow this winter so Ken, Mariah, and I played out there for a couple hours today.  We made an 8' tall snowman, most of an igloo, and a chair.  We are trying to think of a theme for our snowman.  Last year we made two side by side.  One had on a bikini and the other was pushing our lawnmower!    We will have to spend some time thinking about this!

Alex and Ethan are at winter camp in Montello, WI now and will be there until the 1st.  This is Alex's first year at this camp and was pretty nervous the night before he left, but I didn't get any phone calls so he must be doing fine.  With all this snow I'll bet they are having a ball!  We better enjoy it as tonight's weather forcast says maybe around 50 in about 10 days!

It's been a really enjoyable, quiet week.  With school closed I know I won't have to work so I've been sleeping in a little and finally exercising again.  I've been trying to tackle one cleaning project a day.  I got the lights in the kitchen done ( have I ever mentioned how much I hate the kitchen lights?  All those individual pieces to clean.......) , all the grates on the stove cleaned, the tree in the living room washed off, the lime buildup on the tub soaked off,  and that's about it.  I spent most of Monday watching a maration of "Kids by the Dozen" on TLC.  I love that show and it's usually on Monday evenings and I never catch it.  I decided to commondeer the remote for Monday and watch what I wanted for a change!  

There isn't too much planned for this coming week so I hope to get some things listed on ebay.  Mariah and Alex have some nice clothes that I don't want to just give to Salvation Army so I'll see if I can sell them.  We also have a brand new refrigerator that I need to get aggressive about selling so I'll have to work on that.  Right now I think I'll get a glass of wine and call it a night.  Hope to post some pictures tomorrow of our snow creations!

First......The Good News

Josh wasn't hurt in the accident. The bad news.....he went through the windshield. The good news....the dog wasn't hurt. The bad news.....Josh hurt his legs. The good news....it was a snowmobile, not a car! The bad news....he has to replace his friend's windshield. The good news....this happened on Sunday and it's now Saturday and Josh's legs are doing much better and he can almost walk normally again! See-in every bad situation you can usually find some good :)

We have been enjoying warmer temps this week which is great to finally melt off all that ice that had built up on our sidewalk, driveway, and porch. Unfortunately so much ice built up along the gutter of the front porch it caused the melting ice to divert through the porch ceiling. It was leaking pretty steadily for a couple days but now it's stopped. We had talked about redoing the front porch and I'm glad we didn't do it yet! We would have had some big water damage repairs to do. We need to put a heat wire on the roof somewhere so this doesn't happen again.

I've been doing more college and scholarship applications for Ethan again this week. I think we are done with the college apps. We've applied to six schools and he has already been accepted into Milwaukee School of Engineering. By Monday we will have all the documentation sent to the schools (transcripts, letters of recommendation, etc...) and begin the waiting process to hear back. In the mean time we will continue the scholarship apps.

This coming week will be a little different. Ethan and Alex will be leaving on the 27th for winter camp until the 1st. Josh left yesterday to go to MN and see his girlfriend until the 24th. That just leaves little Mariah without any travel plans! I've told her she could have a friend over for a sleepover a couple times while the boys are gone. She's fine with that and doesn't feel left out! Now Ken and I just have to find something to do! With two weeks off from school I can relax and not worry that the phone is going to ring at 6am with someone asking me to come in and work! I think we were all ready for a break!

Time to finish my veggie pizza for the snack table at church.

It's Friday Again?

How can it be that a week has gone by already?!

This has been an incredibly busy week. I worked all week at school in the kitchen. It was my second week straight in the kitchen. We did have a snow day Tuesday which meant the kids didn't go to school, but I went in for three hours to cut up turkeys for the big community lunch held yesterday. Tuesday's storm brought sleet and freezing rain for hours and hours. I got a call at 6 am on Wednesday stating that the head cook's car was frozen to her driveway and could I come in as soon as possible to cook breakfast! I was scheduled to be in at 8am so I was up anyway and just got it in gear a little quicker and made it in by 7:15. Thankfully another teacher was able to pick up the cook and she made it in a little after 8am. We had a lot to do yet for the big dinner and were able to easily get caught up. Everything went very well with the lunch yesterday and there was a very nice write-up in the Rockford paper about it from the reporter who attended. We served about 250 people (including students) and had enough leftovers for today's lunch! I was on my own today in the kitchen as the cook takes the day off after the community lunch. All went well. It was a little difficult to face the task of coming home and cooking for my family all week after cooking all day at school!

Evening activities this week were curling Monday for Ken, Josh, and Ethan and Girl Scouts for Mariah and Ruth, concession stand work Monday and Wednesday for Alex and Mariah during the basketball games at school, curling Thursday for Ken and Josh, an interview for MIT Thursday for Ethan, and 4-H Thursday for Alex, Mariah, and Ruth.

Monday and Tuesday I spent the afternoons doing the application for MIT for Ethan and following up on some scholarship applications that needed to be finished. His interview with an MIT alumni went well, although he said Ethan was the cream of the crop but not the cream of the cream and his chances of getting in were pretty slim. We need to do a couple more college applications yet but haven't decided which ones. Have to work on that Sunday.

Anyone need any mice? All of the sudden we are having an influx. I found one in the trap in the living room this afternoon and Ethan just heard that basement one snap a few minutes ago! I better buy some more. I can't stand to reuse them so I throw them out-mouse and all! At least I'm catching them now. For several weeks something was eating the bait but not snapping the traps. I reevaluated my bait and evidently found a better way of securing it, which is apparently working! Hopefully I won't have anymore for awhile. I better go get rid of the one in the basement!

Bald Barbie

I decided to give all the guys haircuts tonight and Mariah wanted to cut somethings hair and picked a Barbie doll. Thankfully this one had already had a "trim" so I didn't care. She promised to do it over the trash can and not make a mess. Hmmmmm, I think I've heard that before! The trash can is by the refrigerator and the static caused the hair trimmings to stick to the side of the fridge. It looked like it need a shave! She is in the process of "styling" my hair as I type this. I have clips and bands all over my head. Maybe this is an indication of what her future calling will be. I always thought it would be fun to be a beautician so maybe she will want to do this when she grows up.

Ode To Spring

Is it too early to be wishing winter was over already and spring was here? We won't be seeing green for a long time so I thought I would post a couple pictures that included some nice green grass! These were taken this summer at my parents house when we had our Harrar family reunion. The only one missing is my new nephew, Logan, born last month. He was present, but not visible!

Dashing Through the Snow

We've gone from snow to rain to sleet to freezing rain and now more snow!  We woke to about 4" more this morning, but school was on as usual.  Ethan has had his first lesson in winter driving....cars don't stop or turn well on snow covered roads!  He called last night from the ditch he slid into on his way home from work.  Luckly he was fine and so was the car.  Ken and Josh were able to pull him out and they made it home fine.  The forcast shows snow every day for the next week.  We won't be seeing grass again anytime soon!

I Love Friday Nights!

This has to be my favorite time of the week. The work week is done, the house is clean (usually), dinner is over and we are all enjoying each others company. Ken, Alex, and Mariah are playing Monopoly, Josh and Ethan are hanging out in their room and I'm trying to figure out how to post pictures bigger on this blog! I've had my glass of wine for the evening so it really doesn't matter if I figure out the pictures or not!

Mariah wanted to be our waitress at dinner tonight, hence the pictures! I cooked the dinner and then she came around and took our orders. Everyone had appetizers at their place to tide them over while she took the orders, dished up the food, and delivered dinner. Ethan provided dessert. He had bought some delicious fudge yesterday that he shared with all of us.

Last night was family reading night at school and a chili cook-off. I made my usual unexciting recipe and it turned out to be the winner! Oh-did I mention there were only five entries?! We had to name our chili and Ken entered it as "Bland Betty". My prize was a cute horse beanie baby since the theme for the evening was western. The kids had fun and each got to pick a free book to keep. That may come in handy this weekend as we are possibly going to get a major storm. It is not known yet if it will be snow, sleet, freezing rain or a combo of all. It's due to start tomorrow afternoon. Could get exciting around here!

Ethan won his first college scholarship this week. It's $200 and is from the local VFW. This now qualifies his entry to be put into the regional contest for a chance at more money. He had to write an essay on veterans. The current award will be presented to him at a banquet in January. Hopefully this is only the first of MANY scholarships to come! We are apply to all that we can. He's applied to one college so far-Milwaukee School of Engineering. Over the weekend we need to get out the rest of his applications. Sunday morning he is supposed to take the ACT. Hopefully the weather won't prevent that.

I Think We're Done With the Flu

It seems I never know from one day to the next what I'll be doing. I thought I would have today to finally spend a day at home catching up on miscellaneous stuff, but got a call late last night to sub at school today. Alex was better from the flu and I didn't have it so I went on in. It seems the flu has really struck school. There were 23 students and staff gone today and for a school of only 140 that is a pretty high percentage! I made Alex stay home this morning, but said he could come in at lunchtime. I didn't want him pushing it too fast and having a relapse. He really wanted to be there part of the day as there is a reading program/dinner there tonight that he couldn't have gone to if he missed the full day.

Better get at the laundry. Thanks for reading my blog!

Welcome to my world!

I've been wanting to start a family blog page for some time now and have finally done it! I will be tweaking it over the weeks to come, I'm sure! Today's big news is the flu has struck at our home! Alex got sick during the night and came in and woke me. After cleaning that up I laid in bed for a couple hours, unable to sleep. Anytime I have to clean that up I get a knot in my stomach and think I'm getting sick too! I had to run errands today and all day have had that same knot in my stomach. I sure hope it is only sympathy pains!