Not-So-Springy Morning

Rilla was deeply disappointed when the first day of spring didn't bring loads of flowers.  She's been reading too many Eloise Wilkins books.  Today, we still have loads of snow on the ground, but the sky is a gorgeous blue!  Hopefully, the maple trees are producing sap like crazy to make up for their negligence the past few weeks.

The kids have a half day today, so I am trying to cram in lots of productivity before they come home.  I just had to stop and console a sad baby with a few renditions of "Be a Little Candle" and "Building Day by Day", though, and since I was already seated in the chair by the computer, I thought I would type something up quickly!  My poor, poor neglected little blog...  If only the posts written in my head while I do dishes/fold laundry/braid hair could magically appear here every day.  Or the posts I could actually write if I wasn't too busy reading books until unearthly hours, or playing Ticket to Ride on my iPad...  But that's all changed!  I have put myself on a stern schedule of going to bed a decent hour every night.  Mind you, I haven't actually gone to bed at that mythical hour yet, but at least I'm getting to bed before midnight now.

My husband recently picked up on my exceedingly broad hints along the lines of "wives who hold down the fort all winter while their husbands are away would sure appreciate a new camera", so I am in total picture-taking bliss.  I still need to sit down and install the software on the computer so I can download the pictures (#13 on today's schedule), but I am having so much fun with it!  I can't wait to take pictures of sugaring this weekend.  (Hear that, Madam Maples?  Crank it up!)

The kids are currently blissfully engaged with playing in the new dishwasher box.  Our dishwasher up and died the beginning of December.  It took a few weeks (and millions of hand-washed dishes) for Evan to get home to verify it was truly a dead dishwasher.  We planned on going to shop for one that same weekend, but that was the weekend the kids had such bad fevers, so Evan went shopping without me.  Well, the dishwasher he bought that night never worked great.  I tried every trick I knew of, but it wouldn't clean the dishes.  Finally, a couple of weeks ago, we bit the bullet and took the new dishwasher back to the store.  The new one we chose, while significantly cheaper, had to be ordered.  Two weeks later, we finally have it!  I haven't run a load yet, so I can't speak to it's efficacy, but I'm already happy because A.) It was cheaper, B.) The kids have a new playhouse, and C.) I didn't have to wash the dishes from the last two meals.

Since I'm a terrible person and not putting up pictures for far-flung relatives, I'll give a State of The Children brief here.

Cheyenne is nine now, and fearfully Grown Up.  She wanders around with the camera we gave her for her birthday, photographing everything.  Thankfully, she has no way to post pictures anywhere, so the umpteen pictures where I'm in the background at an unattractive angle are safe from public view.  She's doing Battle of the Books in school this year, about the only bright spot in this grade.  (Battle of the Books is a quiz-type competition about books.  2013's titles are thus.)  She's a very fun person to be around, as long as you're not a younger sibling.

Elliott has outgrown a lot of clothes lately, which makes me happy.  He is heavily into the computer game, Minecraft, and will grudgingly play with Legos when he's used up his computer time.  He's starting to have a little pre-teen attitude, which is somewhat encouraging.  He's growing up!

Marilla is Miss Helpful these days.  Every morning, she tells me, "I want to help you ALL DAY!"  Of course, it's more "help" than otherwise, but I keep reminding myself that "help", if encouraged, leads to actual Help someday.  So, there's a middle man in all my chores.  No more tossing clothes from the washer to the dryer-- they go from the washing machine to Rilla's hands to the dryer.  No tossing chopped potatoes into the pot.  They go into Rilla's hands, THEN into the pot.  She also needs lots of hugs and books read.

As does Lincoln.  Lincoln is into babies in a big way right now.  There's four or five that have to be with him when he sleeps, and he struggles to carry them all over the house.  Very cute!  He's talking a mile a minute, and generally growing. 

All this is weak sauce compared to pictures, I realize.  Maybe soon!