I have to give a huge shout out to my wonderful husband who traded in a day of rest and relaxation for a day of painting! We got the second coat done and now we only need to do the trim to have it complete!

Tim has been working long hours lately, at times even going to job sites overnight. He hasn’t been home much for a couple of weeks.

The other day I started hatching a plan to surprise him. We’ve been here in our house for a while now, but because of the roller coaster we’ve been living, we’ve never gotten the chance to paint any walls. I wanted to surprise Tim by buying some paint and starting on a room. I chose our bathroom because it seemed like a smallish project to tackle.

This afternoon my sister and I headed to Lowe’s and got our supplies. We came home and got to work. It took the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening but we finished the accent wall and the doors. I’m hoping to finish the other color tomorrow. Tim was very surprised when he came home and seemed just as excited as me to see it all coming together!

Every once in awhile (way more than I care to admit) I pull up old photos of my kids and just stare at their perfect, baby squishiness. Sigh, they grow up too fast.

I was scrolling though photos today when Baby E asked to see pictures of himself as a baby. After appeasing his curiosity I kept scrolling and found the photos of when the big kids met him for the first time and I found this gem.

I remember this moment so very clearly. Big E was too young to be that interested in the newest addition to our family, but C was old enough to be instantly enamored. The smile on her face and the excitement in her eyes makes me melt just a little bit.

Sorry for the sappy sentiment this evening, but seriously they were so adorable when they were that little.

Big E is a visual learner and Baby E makes an excellent little hand, albeit a bit wiggly.

Big E has been learning to read time this week. He mastered ‘on the hour’ and the ‘half hours’ pretty well, but as we delved into quarter hours this afternoon I could tell he needed a little help.

So we built a human sized clock on the floor of the office. The big kids took turns being the big hand, while Baby E made a surprisingly compliant little hand. I would tell them a time and they would set the clock and by the end of our activity, Big E was much more confident in his time telling abilities!

While there was a lot of laughing, I’m pretty sure their favorite time to set was high noon!

School doesn’t always happen in our classroom. But that’s the lovely thing about homeschooling… It can happen anywhere.. Even at the shop.

We’ve been studying Noah’s Ark in Big E’s curriculum, and yesterday with measurements in hand, we bundled up warm and headed out behind the shop to walk the length and breadth of the ark. The wind whipped around us as we bent into the cold, watching the phone calculate the distance as we walked. The kids were amazed to learn it would have just barely fit in the alley between the two industrial parks.

During math today, Big E and I scoured the shop looking for various clocks- landing on the microwave clock, the time clock, and the clock on the wall behind the sanding table.

While our curriculum provides us with plenty of structure, I enjoy the opportunity to branch out to encompass the things that surround us everyday. And I like that we can make school work around the craziness of our lives and we can still be confident that they are getting an amazing education!!

Baby E has known his own mind since the day he was born. He has never been a go with the flow kind of kid. He knows what he likes and he knows what he hates and no amount of convincing will change his mind. So I’ve compiled a semi-exhaustive list of things Baby E just can’t come to grips with. (In no particular order.)

1- Bread- Don’t put bread within a ten foot radius of Baby E. He will immediately plug his nose with two fingers and refuse to remove them until the offending bread products have been rescinded.

2- hair- Baby E loves, absolutely loves hair… Unless it’s touching him or if it’s wet. Heaven forbid he find a hair in his bathwater or on his finger.

3- other people- technically he doesn’t hate other people, but he could really do without them. It takes awhile to win him over, so until then be prepared for some growls and evil eyes. Sorry about that.

4- clothes- if it were up to him, he’d never wear clothes. We have multiple arguments a day about his need to wear clothes, especially outside in sub freezing conditions.

I woke up this morning and the temperature was 8°. I wasn’t built for that kind of cold. I read that we are in a polar vortex. The first time I ever heard that phrase, Tim and I were living in our crazy little farmhouse with C and Big E. The house had been built about a hundred years earlier, long before electricity and plumbing were standard, so those additions were clumsy afterthoughts. The house was heated by a few baseboards, but mostly we relied on space heaters.

I remember the winter with the polar vortex, when temperatures hovered around zero for a few weeks. I would wake up in the morning and head for the basement and our oddly located kitchen, where the temp would register around 50° inside. I’d warm myself by making fresh muffins for the family each morning, an excuse to run the oven to heat the space.

Because of the poor wiring in the house, you had to be careful which lights and outlets you used at the same time, because it didn’t take much to overload them. That meant we could never heat the house in such a way that it would all be warm. And whatever heat we mustered quickly found its way out through the old windows and gap under the door.

That place was cold. I remember staring at our exorbitant power bill one month and crying because I couldn’t imagine how we spent that much money and yet we were still so cold. That was a hard winter.

I’m so thankful, as I sit in bed this evening, with temps at 11°, that we now live in a warm, well insulated house that I never have to worry about seeing my own breath!

But if you ask my kids, they won’t remember that cold winter. They don’t remember the hardship. They only remember the farmhouse with rose colored glasses. To them, that house was magical. I wouldn’t have them see it any other way.

If you ever come across this game… Buy it!

Years ago I found this game in a random gift shop at a random restaurant. I had never heard of it, but the premise seemed amusing so I bought it.

The rules are pretty simple, each person is assigned a barnyard animal (with an accompanying sound) and handed a deck of cards with various pictures of barnyard animals. You go in a circle and each person turns over one of their cards. If it matches someone else’s card on the table, they have to make the noise that that person’s assigned animal makes. So if I have a cow, and someone else has a donkey and we lay down the same card, we have to rush to make each other’s sounds. It’s a ridiculous game made funnier the more people you have playing and the more sounds you have to keep track of.

As young adults we played this game constantly, but for years it has sat untouched on our game shelf. The other day I decided the kids might be old enough to try it and it was a hit. It’s the kids’ new favorite game and they beg to play it everyday. This afternoon we took some time to play as a family and some hilarious memories were made. 🙂

The kids have been begging all week to play more in the snow, but we haven’t had the chance. With a large rainstorm predicted for this weekend, I was happy to wake up to a dry morning. After breakfast, Tim and the kids went out to build their long awaited snowmen!