Brain dump

With the temperatures warming up to a balmy 42 degrees, I am snapping out of my rebellion against all things weather.  We took the kids sledding at the local park again the other night.  I’d love to share pictures or video to document, but I brought the digital camera without the media card inside it and the video camera had roughly 45 seconds of battery power.  Awesome.  Go mom!

But I can paint a word picture.  I’m better at that anyway.  I have to say that snow is a huge perk to cold weather because sledding is good fun.  And finally, Praise be to God, Tia realized what fun it could be.  Within about 15 minutes she was sledding down the hill by herself laughing the whole way.  It’s a pretty steep hill so the sled gets to moving which means her laugh was a combination of terror and delight.

Sloan brought a neighbor friend with him and they were practicing boy law by competing for who could be the loudest and could say “That was awesome!” the most.  I think they tied.

Then there was Landon.  I wasn’t sure about how he would do.  He’s a little guy…a little guy who loves sledding!  He would plop himself down face first on the sled, curl up in a little ball and bark, “Push!”  And Lee and I, like Pavlov’s dogs, would comply.  We’d run beside the sled about half way down the hill to keep it from picking up too much speed, then we just let him bounce the rest of the way by himself.

He came up with a grin every time.

In the words of my six year old, “It was tooooootally aaaaawesome!”

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With colds and fevers circulating around our house, we’ve had a couple of rough nights sleep.  There is nothing worse than having to get up in the middle of the night when it’s freezing cold and stumble out to the kitchen to get water and medicine for a crying child.  So last night, I decided we were going to be prepared.

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Before bed, I rubbed down everyone’s feet with Vaporub.  It works wonders.  I don’t know how, but it does.  I plugged in mentholated vaporizers in their rooms and they were all asleep by 7:30.  And I went to bed knowing that I was prepared thereby ensuring that I would maximize my own sleepage (should be a word).

And nobody woke up.  They all slept through the night. 

It’s amazing what being prepared will do!

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My heart hurts for Haiti.  Pictures like this one bring bitter tears to my eyes.  (The picture is graphic and it involves children- I just want you to be prepared.)  Lee and I talked with the kids today about the earthquake and how we can help them as a family.  Sloan remembers the small earthquake we had here a couple of years ago so he kind of gets what happened. 

We told them that we were going to be sending some money in to help with the clean up and rebuilding and suggested that they think about what they could give from their wallets.  We decided to give them the freedomt o give as much or as little as they feel they need to give. 

I’m interested to see what they decide to do.

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Today is my nephew Eli’s 7th birthday.  We love that little boy – particularly Sloan.  He and Sloan are two peas in a pod.  I wish we lived closer just so those two could spend more time together.

Happy Birthday, Eli!

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I’ve run out of things to say.  Shocking – I know.