January 8, 2018

(click here for today's pictures)

• Monday morning and what a Monday morning it was! I have 2 little girls that I am about ready to ship off to boarding school. Everything I told Keaton caused her to have a fit, and everything that I told Campbell caused for her to talk back to me. I was just about ready to lose my ever loving mind!
• But let's start early in the morning. Whitman was up and asked quickly if he could work on his shapes. The big kids all have a new ipad game that is drawing a picture by filling in tiny blocks. It is all pretty intricate and takes a while, and Whitman loves it. I had to drag him away from his ipad to put his clothes on him and throw him in the car.
• The rest of us poured our cereal, and they listened as I read to them. Then we did a bit of work together before I let everyone go to work on their own school work. Things went fairly well-for a Monday. 
• After most school work was finished, we went to work on straightening downstairs and making our lunches. We had just bought bread the other day but for some reason we are already out of bread after today's lunch. We didn't even have Whitman eating with us for lunch. Maybe I should start making my own bread-I really wanted to do that a few years ago but never succeeded.
• When lunch was over, I worked on hanging a picture with the boys. They both used a hammer and it was pretty entertaining to watch. I think that will need lots of tool lessons in the near future. Keaton and Campbell were having a fight about their Shopkins. I told them that they would have to sit in their room and play Shopkins until 2 quietly. You would have thought that I had beat them the way that they were screaming. It was so loud that Robby had to come upstairs and intervene.
• I cleaned the shower and soon Nonna and Pops arrived with Whitman. He had had a good day and was excited to be home. Nonna had made a cranberry orange bread, and it was yummy. Once they left, I headed up to the treadmill and soon Campbell and Keaton were back at it again. This caused everyone to be sent to bed which meant that the rest of my treadmill time was peaceful!
• When I finished, Robby and I started working on supper. We had leftover fish, fish sticks, corn (made with the instapot), leftover beans and cornbread. I think that everyone enjoyed our supper, and I was pleased with our corn. We figure that doing it in the instapot takes just about as long as boiling the water and then boiling the corn, but once I put it in I never had to look at or think about it again which was a definite plus. (We still have a bag of beans to try later this week or next week.)
• After we ate, everyone put on their pjs-well, everyone really already had on their pjs except for Whitman. Then we just set around waiting for the championship game to start. Once it started, the kids paid pretty good attention to it.
• At one point, I walked through the kitchen and Campbell, Keaton and everyone else in there looked up and hollered. I assumed they were doing something for my birthday (like putting Happy Birthday on the cake that we were about to eat) but still ran on out of the room.
• At halftime, the Wilson's came over to celebrate my birthday. Shannon brought cookies, Robby pulled out an ice cream cake and ice cream, and I reluctantly pulled out my peanut butter candy from Grannymom. (Reluctantly, because I didn't want to share it at all.)
• We ate and ate and soon were all back in the living room watching the ballgame. The kids cheered, shouted and squealed during the game. No one seemed tired and the kids just got louder during overtime. We had said that we weren't going to let the kids stay up late but goodness, they would have missed a pretty exciting ending if they had gone to bed.
• When the game was over, we said bye to the Wilson's and looked at the tiny bit of snow falling from the sky. Too bad it isn't lots more snow than just this little tiny bit. The kids picked up and then went to bed. It was late, but it was a fun evening.