New School Year

Well, here we go again! Everyone advances to the next grade.

With my web design business keeping me busy, and making sure that our boys get a proper education, blogging has not been the first thing on my mind.

However, since I am pushing my boys to blog as a daily routine, I figure I should do a little too.

This year I have a 9th grader and a 7th grader. Yikes! They grow up so fast. Do you ever do the "Remember when..." stories? Do you sit looking at your children and remember when they were little tiny poop machines? What a trip!

So, this year we have subjects like Algebra 2, Biology, Literature, Social Studies, Creative Writing, General Science, & Pre Algebra (Algebra 1/2) for my youngest. I think this year has started out well. At least now I have their interests.

Well, back to work I go...

More later.

Fighting the Bug

This past week has been a struggle for the whole family. The latter part of last week brought on a couple of snow days. The weekend was supposed to be Boy Scout Klondike… but we’ve had a lot of snow. We have almost two feet of snow in our yard.

On Thursday night, our oldest started feeling sick. By Friday morning, his temperature spiked 102 degrees. By Friday night, maybe Saturday morning, it’s all a blur, I got sick and so did my youngest… Then by Saturday night, Sunday morning, my husband was hit with the same thing. Since then, we are all trying to help each other recover.

So here we are snowed in and sick!

Well, I think we’re getting back on track. The boys will go to their band classes tomorrow and I will “attempt” to restart school for them. They aren’t real thrilled with that.

Matthew told me tonight on his way to bed… “You know mom, it has been great having sick days off from school, not that I liked being sick, but I loved having the time to play my games!” He then continued to beg me to go easy on school. He didn’t want to hit “the Wall.”

“The Wall” is how my children view school when we start all subjects in the same day. They prefer to start with one subject, then the next day, two subjects, and so on.. Although, I must say, this is tempting; it is just not the way school is run. I had to tell my son to “man up.”

Sometimes it bugs me to see how lazy my kids are. Neither likes to play outside like normal kids. We get their whiny undertones whenever we lay the law down. “Oh do we have to?” It is really pathetic. Well, I guess that’s a blog for another day.

So, Lord willing, tomorrow we'll hit the books again.

More later…

Syrupy Mess!

There is nothing like going to bed hoping to sleep for 8 hours only to awaken 4 hours later with an explosive sound and cussing in the kitchen. I jump out of bed all blurry eyed, run to the kitchen, only to find a puddle Maple Syrup on the floor.

All hell seemed to break out… not only from the person who caused the catastrophe, but from me because I know my 8 hours is interrupted indefinitely while I get to clean up the mess! It took 2 hours to get a cursory clean up done… Syrup was everywhere.

You see, last night I put a half-gallon container of Maple Syrup in the refrigerator. I just bought the stuff at Costco and paid nearly $20 for this wonderful nectar! I was in a hurry to go to bed, so I wedged it in between the Orange Juice and the wall of the refrigerator. It never occurred to me that someone would reach in to grab the OJ and without looking, just pull it out with such vigor. I guess I am the only one who notices when two containers are coming out at the same time when I only want the one. Go figure. I knew there was something wrong with me!

Apparently, the Maple Syrup was wedged in there pretty well because it sprang out, dropped to the floor, launching Maple Syrup back up to the ceiling. With this explosive action, it shocked the one pulling the OJ out for a drink.

The first thing after the surprise was the culprit looking at me asking what should be done. He leaps for a bath towel (you see they absorb a lot, right?). All I can envision is every bath towel in my linen closet covered in syrup! I grab one, already gently used bath towel from the back porch and tell him to get the towel covered in hot water… So, he does. But he forgot to wring it out! Now I have a trail of water from the bathroom to the syrupy mess… he lays the towel across the mess and watches the water flow from the towel down hill (You see, my house is 106 years old and had to be raised to put a foundation under it. Once the house settled… well you can imagine.) “I don’t see what good this is going to do!” he says, as he attempts to wrap the towel around the sticky mess. He picks it up and carts it across my kitchen to the sink. Now I have a trail of hot water and syrup across the kitchen.

Argh!! I am livid at this point… Seething might be a better word!

I finally have to get on my hands and knees to sop up this mess… Yes, you read that correctly… I did it. The person who made the mess resigned to the living room to eat his food and drink his Orange Juice.

There is syrup on the wall, syrup on the ceiling, syrup in the refrigerator, syrup now in my hair, and on my clothes…not to mention in the dog food, on my bare feet, and up to my elbows!

I think I’ll be cleaning syrup for the next week! No matter how meticulous I am about cleaning it out of all the nooks and crannies, I still find it oozing out onto the floor!

Well, back to the mess…