Back to the grind

We started school back up yesterday. 

I had planned for youngest to start last week, but then all the snow and..yeah. Whatever. We'll get through everything and I'm calling it "embracing the flexibility of homeschool." In reality, we still end up doing more in less time than public, so I think it's all right.

Eldest has three classes toward his dual enrollment this eight week term (and then three more in the next eight weeks.) One looks ridiculously silly as it's basically an intro to online school...which he has been doing for 2.5 years now. But whatever, I'm all for easy As. The other two, he actually seems excited about (intro to Theology and Speech) so that will be good. I think he'll do better in classes that he's looking forward to. (Not that he did poorly the first two terms - but he procrastinates a lot, thanks ADHD, and these seem actually motivating.)

Of course we're still juggling the joy of youngest who says every thought that pops into his head with eldest who would prefer absolute quiet when studying. So far, the noise cancelling headphones are making it work, but it's fun?

Snow Daze

Late to the party reporting on the storm of the century -- but we did get just about 11" of snow over night Sunday and all day Monday.

No one here was complaining.

Of course, at the other house, we purchased a little corded snowblower that could handle our driveway and the piece of our pipestem that we were responsible for. It was fantastic if we got our usual inch or two and made clearing things much nicer.

Here at the new house, our driveway is about as long as two of the old pipestems. Which means we need every extension cord we can rustle up if we have any hope of making it to the street. And also it's just not tall enough to handle 11" (there's an off-color joke or two in there, but I'll resist.)

Anywho, the boys (all three) were very insistent about waiting for it all to fall prior to getting out there to try to clear. I suggested this was a big mistake, but was overruled.

I did actually go out and get started before it was all done, but it was basically already too late. Down where we are, it was a pretty wet snow, so shoveling was heavy and the snow blower would clog up (positive spin, it was great for snowmen and snowballs).

Long story short, it took two days for us to get all the way to the road in a swath wide enough for a car, and there are still some spots that you best keep moving on lest you get stuck and spin your tires (as the UPS man about that. Oops.) But most of it is in the sun, so even though we're hovering at freezing (or just below) it looks like God is clearing it up for us.

I told the hubs we needed to get a better blower. He's debating. On the one hand, this was a disaster. On the other, how often does this really happen? So it's a cost outlay vs use proposition for him right now.

Maybe I know what I'm getting him for Father's Day. 

Happy New Year

The first week of January is always something of a rush around here, since eldest boy's birthday also falls there. Thankfully, we're past the days of needing Christmas put away prior to said birthday -- he actually seems to enjoy having all the decor out. And his friends are also large enough that no one is grabbing ornaments off the tree.

In fact, he has now turned seventeen.

Seven. Teen.

What on earth?

Of course Google Photos and Faceplant conspired with many many pictures of an adorable toddler and small boy that made me nostalgic. Although, for all his teenagerness, I'm really proud of the young man that he's becoming. What hangout time he allows, I treasure.

A small group (ha) of boys went out to laser tag and then basement shenanigans for the night on Friday. But "the real party" is a massive nerf war planned for an upcoming weekend. It amused me, when looking at a FB memory from I think his 3rd birthday that I pondered if we had set an unrealistic precedent for birthdays that year.

Yes. Yes we did.

Or, you know, we just like celebrating the kid. It could be that. (No fear, his brother gets equally ridiculous celebrations. But that's next month.)

The puppy does as well as one can expect of a baby with the glut of people in the house. And also with sleeping long and not needing potty time. But still I end up awake by 5:30 most days these days. I am trying to remember to put my laptop somewhere accessible for the groggy mornings so that I can do something more productive than scrolling on my phone and playing word games while the house is quiet and I have one (sometimes two) dogs curled up on or beside me. Today, it worked. (I have the unfortunate affliction that, once I've been awakened after a longish sleep, there is no chance I'm going back to sleep. I have tried. Oh, how I have tried. But I end up just laying there getting frustrated. So it's better to just acknowledge that I'm up now.)

My one hope for 2025 is that no one I love dies. Given the state of Daddy these days, I'm not sure how well that's going to pan out, but it's still my hope.

Fa-rah-rah-rah-rah

When I was trying to figure out what to make for our Christmas dinner, I polled my kids and my dad. Other than Dad, no one had an opinion. Dad wanted baby back ribs. That was easy enough and we hadn't had them for a while so easy peasy.

I picked up the ribs while at Wegmans - taking care to check the use by date to ensure they'd be fine for Christmas. They were.

If you've been following along at all with my 2024, you know that there's a big ol "except" coming.

Yesterday morning, in between throwing waffles on the iron, I opened up the ribs to peel off the back membrane and...they did not smell right. But maybe I was over reacting. So I called hubby over - "Smell these. Do they smell right?"

He sniffed. "I'm sure it's fine."

I hesitated, but it was Christmas and we needed food and...okay fine. So he seasoned them up and threw them on the smoker.

We went about the rest of our festive breakfast and present opening.

And then, it was time to pull the ribs off, sauce, and wrap them. And hubby brought them in and waved me over. "Do these smell right?"

No. No they did not.

Not being fans of food poisoning, we wrapped them up and into to the trash can they went. Hubby and I looked at each other and burst into song, a la the Chinese servers in A Christmas Story, "Fa-rah-rah-rah-rah."

That left the question...what would Christmas dinner be?

Digging through the freezer, the option became hot dogs or chicken breasts.

Shockingly (ha, not so), no one wanted hot dogs for Christmas.

In the end, we were able to thaw the chicken and season it up in time to grill them and have our late lunch/early dinner as previously planned. And the chicken tasted good, even if it was a little more boring than we wanted for said festive meal. 

I'm ready for 2024 to end. Obviously, on one can promise 25 will be any better, but at this point, even if not, I'll be glad to see the back side of this year.

Have a Very Blessed Christmas

 Tis the season....

Tis the reason.

Christmas Parties

One of the recurring themes of Eldest Boy's struggle is that he feels like he's socially awkward. He doesn't particularly care for my response of, "Join the club, kid." (Hubby gives a similar response. I suspect that 99% of the world thinks they're socially awkward, but really we're all just normal.)

Regardless, one of the things he's doing to try and combat this, is finding reasons and ways to trick me into having big parties at our house. (I say trick, it's not really tricky. He asks and, because I'm a sucker who wants him to feel good about himself, I say sure.)

Most of the time, these parties (gatherings or hangouts, whatever one wants to call them) are just him and his friends. I'm all for him having groups of friends over and will happily provide pizza and chips.

But sometimes -- like at the start of summer and then again last night -- he gets a wild hair that hubby and I also need to participate in the party, so asks if we can invite whole families.

Which is why we ended up with somewhere around 40 people at our house last night for a Christmas party.

My therapist is trying to get me to see the positives in things...so I guess the big positive is that for ten sparkling minutes before people started to arrive, my house was immaculate.

Of course, then people descended. And those people ranged in age from 18 months to 50+. And the crowd of littles were, largely, unsupervised with hot chocolate. Meaning my floor ended the night stickier than I had thought possible.

That said, all the kids seemed to have a wonderful time. (They were, by and large, in the basement. Although they ran up to get food as we'd set up the dining room as the buffet.) One of them is a burgeoning DJ and brought along his equipment (including a smoke machine! He did not turn that on as there was concern about smoke alarms. I think it would have probably been fine, but I also appreciate his discretion.)

The adults all seemed to also enjoy one another. We hung out largely in the living room with conversation ranging here, there, and everywhere. It was loud. It was amusing. 

It was exhausting.

I got a lot of the house put back together last night (because sticky floors and dropped food are both bad ideas for puppies) and finished it up this morning. But right now, the boys are all out with Trial Life doing an escape room, and the pups and I are reveling in the silence.

If I could go another week or two without another large group of people that I had to interact with, I might just recover.

My question though is this: do the socially awkward go out of their way to plan a party? 

Mrs. Grundy says no.

A Whirlwind Trip

Wednesday, Daddy and I hopped a plane back to Texas. This time Austin, for the funeral of my uncle. It was lovely, again, to see all the aunts and uncles from Dad's side. And one cousin also came. (She and her father are estranged, so I was surprised she would willingly be around him for a few days - but she had been very close to this uncle earlier in her life, so it probably shouldn't have been a shock.)

Anyway, as funerals go, this one was lovely. 

I'm still pretty convinced I don't want one. And Dad reiterated that he didn't, either. But if I were to have one? I would want it to be like this. Lots of glorious music. Their church actually has (and still uses!) an organ. They sing mostly classical church music (think Bach) and that was honestly so lovely. Uncle had been a choir member and so the whole choir was there to sing.

What music wasn't glorious choir music, was congregational hymns. Good hymns. Again with the organ.

I would love to find a church around here that had music like that and also good theology. But it's hard enough to find the latter, I think I have to settle on the former.

Regardless, we were glad we went. We were also glad we were able to change our tickets to come home yesterday (Friday) rather than staying until Monday as we'd originally planned. 

Daddy has been sick for the last week? Two? He was pretty convinced he wasn't contagious (but man, the chest cough that lingered got him a lot of side eye) so still went. But that was also a near thing. (Honestly, I think the difference was that cancelling would have cost money, but changing things was free.) And I know my aunt, in particular, was glad he was there.

Still, there's truly no place like home.