I knew it had been forever since I blogged. I didn't realize it had been a full 2 months. But it's a new year, so it's time for a fresh start.

And what better time for a fresh start than on a day with record breaking cold temperatures?  This is one of those days they'll talk about for a long time. It went below zero air temperature about 10pm last night, and hasn't come back yet. In fact, as I write this, my weather app tells me it is Negative 14 degrees with a 'feels like' temperature of Negative 37 degrees. That's about what it's been all day long. And it isn't predicted to go above Zero until 1pm tomorrow!

Today was supposed to have been the first day back to school after Christmas break. Instead, all the schools are closed through tomorrow.  So our unusually long break became even longer. That's a LOT of time we've spent together over the past 2 1/2 weeks!

I decided that if we were going to live through record breaking cold, we could learn something and make memories.  We came up with various science experiments  as a way to pass the time between bursts of cleaning and playing games of CLUE!
And so, I give you or day in pictures. Videos in the next post?

Yes, I let them go out in the cold...in the name of science!

Tossing hot water into frigid air

We made our own cloud and tiny bit of snow!

An egg

Cracked onto an old toaster pan

left to sit on our front porch, with an ice cube tray of water

In the time it took to go inside and remove our winter gear (about 4 minutes) the egg froze on the tray.

After a few hours, when we cleaned up our experiments, Katherine held the frozen egg.

Many people on Facebook suggested filling water balloons with water, but we didn't have water balloons. I found 1st birthday balloons in a box in our basement. Did you know that if you put water into regular balloons they don't expand? No, first you must blow up the balloon, and then find a way to get the water in without letting the air out. And if you want to add food coloring to the water? Your best bet is to squeeze that into the balloon BEFORE you blow it up and fill it with water. 

 The balloons did freeze, but not until after dark, so the big reveal on those will be tomorrow.

Another friend suggested freezing a soda can. We've had exploding soda in our garage, so I wasn't keen on the idea, but I figure the mess will be in the snow, and we won't need to clean it up.

The top of the can stretched first

Then the bottom of the can. This picture was about 6pm, 5 hours after leaving it outside. As of 10pm it still hasn't exploded. I'm afraid the girls will be disappointed if it is still intact in the morning.

This picture tells the story of much of our break. Santa brought the game CLUE and we've played it multiple times every day since Christmas. But tonight we had a fire. Bonus!

Katherine was disappointed that her first Prep squad gymnastics practice was cancelled tonight. So she taught herself how to fall backwards onto the couch into a backbend. She tells me it's the beginning of a back handspring. Oh boy!

The girls and I ended our night snuggled into the big chair watching TV. We didn't use the TV during the day - so we vegged out to Kung Fu Panda 2 and enjoyed being cozy.

2 Funny stories from today.

After lunch, Abby and I were watching pre-nap TV sitting on the floor together. She climbed onto my back, and I asked, "Are you a monkey?"
"YES!" she replied with excitement.
"Are we going to swing in the trees if you are a monkey?"
Brief pause before she sighed heavily, snuggled into my neck and said, "No, I think I'd rather be a sloth than a monkey, because then we could just snuggle."


Tonight, after dinner, Chris had to go back into Church for a meeting. The girls were thrilled to have an hour after dinner before needing to start the bedtime routines. They asked to play in the basement. Not long after they went downstairs, I heard them singing, or trying to sing "76 Trombones."  Katherine asked, "How many clarinets were there? 102?" and Maggie snapped back, "No it's COR-Nets not clarinets, and there were 110!" They had a few other creative lyrics, but I was just enjoying the sound of them playing together without fighting.

After a while I had to go down to get something and when they heard me coming, they shouted, "Mom's coming, she can watch the show!"

It turns out they had a very elaborate storyline going. They were a very poor family, trying to raise money so Maggie could go to college and Katherine could go to the doctor for her broken leg. Their fundraising plan involved participating in the local 4th of July parade. Maggie and Katherine were on roller skates, Abby marching behind. Katherine was holding empty trick-or-treat pumpkins, to collect all of the money that the audience was sure to give them as they went by in the parade, singing "76 Trombones." When they weren't singing the lyrics, they each had assigned "instruments" that they were playing.

I gave them no money, but I did congratulate them on their creativity!

Other excitement over the last 2 months:

Abby's class trip to the pumpkin farm. It was a little sad for me that this was possibly our last trip to Green Meadows. I remember coming with Maggie's class and realizing it was the same farm I had come to as a kid. It's been fun to go back every year with the girls. I've even gotten used to the idea of actually touching the animals!

We had a beautiful day and Abby has so much fun with her new friends. And we each took home a perfect pumpkin.

Preschool Divas

This just cracks me up. Abby figured out how to use the remote for the TV - just to turn the TV on or off. But every.single. time. She makes this face. Like it takes all of her concentration to push a single button.

We had a few perfect weather weekends, and then we had a weekend when we actually had time to go apple picking. And it was cool and rainy. We still managed to pick 1/2 bushel and eat 1/2 dozen cider doughnuts. Success!

I may curse all of the raking our yard requires, but I also try to stop and appreciate the beauty before they fall to the ground. Love the color!

The Halloween event at school was 3 weeks before Halloween - so we didn't really have a good plan for costumes. But, digging through years of costume pieces and a well-stocked dress up drawer, they created these ensembles which were perfect.

Maggie was determined to help with leaves by using the leaf-blower. Pretty sure it nearly blew her over, but she was happy to have helped!

SCHOOL PICTURES!



These are pictures of the pictures - so not the greatest, but you get the idea.

4 year old preschool

7 years old, 2nd grade

9 1/2, 4th grade

And finally, you know it's time to update your blog when the seasons change from swim suits to winter coats. This was the scene waiting for the bus last week. It was 34 degrees.

I was inspired to get caught up with the blog. And then I was overwhelmed by my own lack of blogging. And then I had so much fun looking back over the last 2 months of pictures.  So in this post, let's cover 2 major family developments. The Deck and The Car! 

If you were paying attention, back in August we started demolishing the deck.  Chris had a willing, and sometimes helpful crew.

 He did the majority of the work, cutting and removing each piece. He stopped to take this picture, his last glass of wine on the old deck.

 We worked together to load all of the pieces into a dumpster. And we bid farewell to the old deck!

 On the first day of school, the crew came to start the deck.  It was a fairly slow process, as it seemed each time they did anything, they had to wait a day or more for the city inspector to come out and approve their work.

 But day by day we watched it grow. And, since school was back in session, there was great excitement every day around 4pm when Chris and the girls came home to see what had changed while they were gone.

First glass of wine on the new deck

Peeking out an upstairs window as they installed the first deck boards

 And finally, it was done! It is a slightly different shape, and it feels HUGE. Currently it is covered in a thick blanket of leaves. But we are looking forward to MANY hours spent on the deck next summer.  And oh, yes, now we need to do all the landscaping that we've ignored, reasoning that it would be a waste to landscape if we were planning to do the deck.........

 The other major development of the month of September was the death of our beloved Stratus. Chris and I bought the Stratus in Iowa in 2001. It has always been the "no kid" car. We traded cars based on who needed the car seats in the red car. The Stratus had served us well. Just over 98000 miles. According to Kelly Blue Book, it was worth around $1000.   But we took it in for a horrible grinding sound and discovered it needed $1000 in new brakes  and other things. It was time to declare the Stratus, DNR. Thank you faithful Stratus!  

 Our mechanic actually bought it from us for $1000, saving us the trouble of driving it without brakes and trying to convince someone else that it really was worth $1000. (Who needs brakes?)

 So, we spent a frantic week, driving a rental, researching minivans. I, of course, have been dreaming of a minivan since before Abby was even a dream, let alone a reality. So I knew a little of what I wanted. In the end, I drove 2, loved 1, and talked with 4 dealerships to negotiate my best price. I even took the 3 girls, and their car seats, on a solo trip to test drive one of the cars. (Considerably more complicated than my solo trip while all 3 were in school - Go figure!)

Snapped this while parked during our test drive

 We ended up with the 2013 Toyota Sienna that the girls and I tested. It is everything I hoped it would be and more.

 Safe, spacious, fresh, clean, new, spacious, pretty, functional, spacious. THE SPACE!

We've put 1000 miles on it in its first month and have no complaints at all! We love the new car!

2 funny kid stories from dinner tonight.
So, we did our Trick or Treat, and then came home to have a nice dinner with fire in the fireplace - our Halloween tradition.


Katherine announced, seemingly out of nowhere, "I really think I know what they should call'American Girl' books.  I think they should be 'Nick-shun' (Niction?) because they aren't really Non-Fiction, but they aren't really fiction either, I mean, they are sort of about things that happened once up on a time, right? So it's not Fiction, but it's not Non-fiction either! I think they should call it Niction!"

After we let that sink in, we moved on to what everyone wanted to be NEXT year for Halloween. (seriously?)   Maggie was talking about how she was not really anything this year - she used left over things to be a Witch, and she was  a Bee for our race yesterday because we all were. She said, "I was a Bee and a Witch..........I was a BE........Ah - A Beach!"  I nearly choked on my food as I gasped anticipating what she was going to say, and then laughing when she created BEACH instead of the other obvious possibility.

Abby just came and asked me for just ONE more piece of candy. And somehow, I managed to say no to this face



Never a dull moment here at our table!

Abby is obsessed with the notebook Chris gave her. She is constantly scribbling in it.
I found this page today:



Abby, what does this mean?
Well, 1 plus 1 equals 2.....but I didn't know how to write a 2, so I used 3, but 1 plus 1 really is 2, not 3.

Thanks Abby, that makes total sense. (Let me introduce you to your Aunt 'MEH')

But Abby what are the other numbers?

Well, I wanted to do 2 plus 2 equals 4. But my 2s look like 3s, and I didn't remember how to make a whole 4, just 1 line of the 4.

Sure Abby. Perfectly clear to me!






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Many mornings, the girls start their day by reading the newspaper.   They might glance at the headlines to see if the Brewers (or Packers) won, look at the comics,  or see how far Chris got with the crossword/sudoku.  But what they love to linger over is the weather page. You know the weather page, right?



They look to see what it will be like locally, they see which planets are visible, what time the sun rises/sets, and what the weather is in other areas.  They always look to see how hot it is in Phoenix.
This morning, Katherine and I had the following conversation.
K--"Wow, it's going to be 110 in Phoenix today!"
"I'm glad it's not that hot here today!"
(talking to herself) "I wonder if that's the hottest in the world....."
"Hey Mom! It's also going to be 110 in Baf-dad!"
"Where?"
"Baf-dad. It's usually hot there too, so I looked and it's going to be 110 just like in Arizona!They are the same today"
"What city are you talking about Katherine? Do you mean BAGHDAD?"

(confused/embarrassed look on her face)

"Yeah....but I thought it was BAF-DAD. It has a 'gh' and 'gh' says 'FFFF' like, rough and tough. I didn't think the H was a silent H!"

I just love the way her mind works.