Sunday, January 14, 2024

Sunday: snow storm

It finally felt the storm finally came in today.  Church was on-line only this morning.  Snow blowing was back normal - it was snow and nothing else.  There was between 0 and 12inches on the driveway, thanks to the wind.

We played a nice game of Space Base in the afternoon.  Everyone (including Joshua) was enjoying themselves, the snow was coming down, and the birds were at the feeders.  Speaking of birds, we had a lot of mallards and Canada geese the last two days.  I thought the geese at least would go farther south; I don't remember seeing any in the past.


We also have a mimic problem in our house.  It has caught Joshua's imagination.

Apparently area schools have a snow day tomorrow, but since it's MLK day we already didn't have school.  I wouldn't be surprised if Tuesday was a snow day due to cold, but we'll see what happens.

Saturday: shoveling water 3, dishwasher

 We got a fair amount of snow over night and a very small amount during the day today.  I think we've gotten more since nightfall, but it's hard to tell how much.

Last night I went outside only to hear the drip-drip-drip of melting snow.  It was beautiful because it was so wet, but seriously?  It was the middle of the night!


I snow-blowed today and it only went ok.  The end of the driveway, where the plow had come through, was half slush, again.  The snow blower doesn't like slush.  I got some of it, but had to spend quite a while shoveling by hand.  I finally called it good enough since I figured I'd need to deal with it again soon.

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Yesterday I put dishwasher detergent in the dishwasher and was surprised that it was white.  Last time I put it in the color was blue...and then I remembered being a little surprised that time too because I thought it was supposed to be white.  I thought about it for a little bit.  Did I actually put dish soap in?  No.  That would have been obvious.  Could it have been a dream?  Yeah, that's plausible.  Let's call it a dream.  Then I opened up the other side of the cabinet to throw away some trash and found another container of detergent...and it was blue.  Well, at least the mystery was solved.

Friday, January 12, 2024

Friday: the blizzard?

 The blizzard was supposed to start around 10am.  At 11am there was still no snow.  12pm: no snow.  2pm: finally snow!  I woke up from my nap to snow and was rather hesitant to actually get up because I was afraid it still wouldn't be snowing.  There's some snow right now, in the evening, but it's just a normal snow storm, not a major one.  (Although there was a lot of wind earlier.)

Isaac probably didn't have a great snow day.  He worked hard on getting caught up on some of his homework.  He had some fun too, but since he said he was a little bored a few times he ended up working on homework - his future self will appreciate it when he doesn't have so much to do later this weekend.

Joshua said he had a boring day, but lately I feel like he says that about 50% of the time.  His day might not have been too exciting, but I'm not sure he seemed bored most of the time.  He did have one exciting part though!

He was reading in his bedroom and I came in with a sheet ball (sheets in a pillowcase) that I was supposed to be putting away and whacked him with it instead.  This started a pillow/sheet fight full of laughter.



Thursday, January 11, 2024

Thursday: snow day!

While there was school today, there's no school tomorrow!  The snow day was called around 5:30pm, although pretty much everyone was sure there would be one most of the day.  Joshua said his teacher had them do the normal Friday classroom clean up even.

Isaac did go to school and even to rock climbing team, but after dinner he stopped moving again.  We'll see what happens tomorrow, but we all knew he wasn't completely better and it had been a long day.


Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Wednesday: More water shoveling

Today was a snow day!  Honestly, it was a pretty good day for a snow day even if I'm not sure it should have been one.  I was home, Isaac doesn't miss extra school, and we had no important, or even semi-important, plans.  However, I had some personal plans for today.  I was going to carve some time out to just work on O:CtH, since it's been over a month since I've been able to do so.  I know it isn't a big deal and we still had a lovely day, but I was a little annoyed.

I expect Isaac will go back tomorrow.  He was normal for most of the day, although he decided to rest from 5-6pm which is abnormal.  So he's not completely over whatever he had, but there's been no fever.  I'm curious if there will be another snow day Friday.  One weather places says 1.5", another weather app says 10".  The snow isn't supposed to start until 8am though, so I don't know if that makes a difference.

The kids played outside for quite a while after Joshua complained that he doesn't like snow.  It was good for sledding and good for packing.  By the end of the day there were at least five snowmen in the neighborhood.


I also shoveled more water.  It was still really heavy and slushy snow.

In the afternoon Isaac did some snow experiments.




Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Tuesday: shoveling water

The snow of the season has just started to come, but it's been slightly above freezing at the same time.  This lead to crazy amounts of slush and standing water everywhere.

Joshua was willing to help me shovel the driveway as his exercise option today and I'm really glad he was out there with me.  We wanted to get it before it actually froze because it's going to stay cold for a while and we'd have a sad driveway.  It was so heavy and wet though.  Usually when the snow is this wet it's on it's way to melting and I can ignore it instead of shoveling it.

In other news, Isaac is doing better than yesterday but we're going to keep him home for another day because he wasn't really with it today either.  Classes started for me today.  Moodle seems exceptionally slow this semester...like click a link and wait 10 seconds.  Short enough to not really be able to do anything else, but long enough to be annoying and noticeable.  The classes themselves were fine though.  The biggest question is how someone managed to have the Euro symbol as their default currency instead of the $ when their computer settings are set to $ as default.  Still haven't figured that one out, but it isn't too big of a deal either.


Monday: a valiant attempt at normal

An attempt was made to get back to normal.

But Ben was home sick from work today.

And Isaac came home from school really sick.  Apparently he got hit with it right near the end, and had to tough out a little bit.  We got home and he curled right up in bed.  Then he went to the bathroom and curled up for the next hour on the floor.  He finally started feeling a bit better after that, although it was probably due to medicine.  

We got a new cat fountain because our old one bit the dust.  As Joshua was unpacking it he said it looked like a vault.


I forgot to talk about the Lego challenge Joshua gave us yesterday.  It was to build a microscale something.

I built a windmill.  The windmill and river was good, but the flowers are a bit too big.  I ran out of time though.

Isaac made a volcano just as it is erupting.

Ben made a tree house village.

Joshua made the white house, a city square with fountain, and two toes of a giant about to step on everything.