The Mouse in Our House

Something has been nibbling at our gingerbread house. The pretzel fence is missing. The "pine" tree in the front yard is missing. The m&m's "lights" are gone as well. Today, I caught the mouse in action...

So I Can't Type

I know I can't type. I spend so muich time corrcting my mistakes. I am the queen of typeos. so I thought I would be fun to write a quick post that is not corrected so you all can see just how aflu of a typist I am. I'ts a good thinkI never aspired to be a secretay becuase no one intheir right mind would hire me. I did taky typing (yes typing, not keyboarding) in high school and I did well nthe class (because I was the teacher's pet), but any skills I gained inthat class have been long lost. IO think it moght me a good idea for me to start playing typershark on the computer or completing a mavis bacon tyoping series. By the way, as much as I tried not to correct anything I typed, my pinky in auto trained to his the backspace button and make corrections that my brain know have been made. So, as bad as this post has been typed it really should have been worse.

Look, that last sentence was typed without a tyop!

Gingerbread Houses

Last night we had a "local family" gingerbread house decorating party. Aly's family, Leslie and Pieter, and Amy came to play. Nolan said the party was dumb and he wasn't coming, but guess who was right in the middle of everything? Last year when Christmas items were 90% off, I bought 4 houses to decorate, so this party was in the works for over ten months. Each family got a house to decorate in whatever manner inspired the exterior decorators.
The frosting was so hard to work with. First, it had to be kneaded to "warm it up" so it would flow; then it got too soft and ran off the house. Amy's creation... icicle perfectionist. (I don't know why this is underlined in blue)Nolan's amazing house!

Wounded Weekend Warriors

Our weekend was filled with bumps and strains, bruises and cuts. I guess that means that we were busy! The only person to get through the weekend unscathed (or at least not whining about any injuries) was Jonathan. Nolan has dry cracked bleeding hands because he refuses to wear gloves outside in the cold and refuses to treat his sores. He also has sore biceps from pushing a door shut while on a "mission" at the Space Center. I think he was trying to keep the aliens out of their ship (He explained it to me, but I think to really understand you had to be an active participant in the action). Miles walked into some molding around a windowsill and has a nice bump below his eye. I tripped/kicked Miles' trike which resulted in skin being scraped off of two toes (try wearing shoe when you don't have skin on two toes). Dan is the winner though. On Saturday, he was being "good" and was installing new blinds throughout the upstairs of the house. He was raising the biggest (and therefore, heaviest) blind up and the brackets popped open and the blind fell and hit him in the face cutting him both above and below the eye. The cuts were straight, but quite deep and the one below his eye would pull open every time he blinked. Instacare visit for Dan... he came home dermabonded! Sorry, no bloody pictures. I know everyone is disappointed. You're welcome.

Holiday Concerts

The holiday concert season is upon us. There are 4 concerts that my boys are in for us to attend within the next 2 weeks... Jonathan has in 2 band concerts and Nolan has a school orchestra performance and a violin recital. Actually, last night we attended the first 2 of 4 concerts... Nolan's school orchestra and Jonathan's Jazz Band concert.

Nolan is 3rd chair violin this year (which is awesome since he is only a second year violin student). His school orchestra combined with the school choir for a concert, and let me tell you, I'd rather listen to the stage full of elementary school students playing string instruments than listen to the school choir. Here's the orchestra playing Jolly Old St. Nicholas.


After Nolan's concert, we hurried over to the high school for Jonathan's concert. He plays in a small jazz ensemble with 8 other jazz musicians (but his teacher said that the ensemble was actually a large ensemble, so if Jonathan's group is a large ensemble, then what's the other jazz group that played called?- they had at least 20 musicians in it!). His group is for the students who want to be in a jazz band but can't fit the jazz band class in their schedules (or for the diehards who can't get enough of jazz band and play in both groups. They meet at 6:45 a.m. (one more reason I am looking forward to Jonathan getting his drivers license). Jonathan was the featured soloist in the piece "The Kings of Swing".

Family Pictures 2010

I finally decided that we couldn't/shouldn't put off having family pictures taken. I scheduled a photo shoot with my friend Kristine and 2 weeks ago, we met her "on location" for our shoot. It was a cold, overcast day. Miles was completely uncooperative. Well, yesterday we got our pictures. What do you think? P.S. Ignore my blurry hand in picture #3... it's being cropped out!

My First Alarm Clock

I had a flashback today that took me back to the late 1970's/very early 80's and to reminisce about my first alarm clock. I had a cheap white plastic rectangular alarm clock. It had a clock face, hands and all. I don't recall digital being invented then! To set the time, I turned the clock over and pushed the knob "in" while rotating the knob until the hands got to the correct time. The alarm was a small gold hand. To set the hand, I pulled the "time setting knob" out while rotating the knob until the alarm hand was at the correct wake-up time. To set the alarm, there was another knob on the back- pull it out and the alarm was set; push it in and the alarm was off. It sort of looked like this clock...Now, this "cheap white plastic rectangular alarm clock" was pretty high-tech because on the top of the alarm clock was a rectangular button-- a snooze alarm. I never used that snooze button, and because of my first alarm clock, I never have used a snooze button. My first alarm clock had the most awful sounding alarm ever. It sounded worse than a spoon in the garbage disposal. I hated my alarm clock and I remember never sleeping well when the alarm was set because the alarm sound was so terrible that I would wake up throughout the night to check to see if it was time to get up so I didn't have to hear the alarm. If the alarm did go off, I never hit the snooze because I didn't want to hear the alarm again. Fortunately, I was able to train myself to get up before the alarm went off. The alarm clock made a click sound before the alarm sounded. I trained myself to hear "the click" and shut off the alarm really fast so I didn't have to hear the "buzz-of-death." That alarm clock, as awful as it was, taught me that when an alarm clock goes off it is time to get up. I've never had a problem getting out of bed in the morning when an alarm clock is sounding.