Month: December 2006

  • Sympathy Pains

    Tonight as she was getting into the top bunk, Rachel (7) smashed her permanent front tooth and chipped part of it off. Yee-ouch!  My tooth is throbbing in sympathetic pains. I don’t think she knocked it loose, although there was a touch of blood.  Plus, since it isn’t grown in the whole way, I don’t really know how noticeable the chip will be.  I’m still ouching for her.

    Tomorrow, I’m hoping to dust of my Xanga-posted resolutions of last year and see how well I did.  Speaking of resolutions, I am much more likely to make them in September, as that really is the start of the year.  As a daughter of two school teachers, the wife of a college professor, and a homeschooling mother, how could I think otherwise?  Anyone else feel as I do?  January is the middle of the year (and an excuse for a good party).

  • The Year is Running Out!

    Hard to believe that only two days remain in 2006.

    The older four and I went to see Eragon tonight.  Now, if you’ve not read the book, you will more than likely enjoy the movie.  If you read the book and liked it pretty well, you should enjoy the movie. If you read the book and really loved it, you will give the movie one star (as David did) because there is just SO much missing from the movie.  It’s hard to cram 16 hours of reading aloud into an hour and forty-five minutes.  Alas.  I thought it was well-cast, except for Angela, who was too young.

    Today we cleaned and I sewed and baked some cookies.  Why do all the baking before Christmas? There’s plenty of time afterward.   Tomorrow, we have Christmas with my brother and his family at my mom’s house.  Then, Sunday night is the big party!

    Here’s a funny story.  We have a propane heater/fireplace thing in the basement.  However, over the past month, the pilot light wouldn’t stay lit. I cleaned out the line, fiddled with things, and made sure the propane tank was full. We finally called the repair people to come, but they couldn’t come until January 8th, too late to make the basement warm for the party.  On Thursday, before I left for the afternoon to run errands with Rachel, I begged James to have a look at it and call a friend to see if he had any advice. 

    When I called later in the afternoon, James reported that he and Nathan had fixed the heater. “Oh, we were down there most of the afternoon,” he said. Then he laughed. “Actually, we were down there about five minutes. Someone had  unplugged the blower.” When the heater got hot, the blower did not turn on, so the heater shut itself off. Duh. 

    I finished P&P two nights ago and was struck by how many sequels and spin-offs took their titles straight from lines in the novel: An Unequal Marriage, An Assembly Such as This, Pemberley Shades, The True Darcy Spirit, Bridget Jones’ Diary…

    Seriously though, I did have a question when I finished the novel. How deep is Elizabeth’s attachment to Darcy? She tells her dad that she loves him, but I think she is just really grateful and respects him an awful lot. Is that the same as loving him?  I’m not questioning his attachment to her (which is a main reason why we like him).  I’m not questioning that their marriage will be a happy one.  I’m just questioning that idea her LOVE.  Now, in the Bible, husbands are to love their wives and wives are to respect their husbands. The future Darcys will have that for sure. But, what do you think about Elizabeth and love?  Compare it to Jane’s love, for example.



  • Shopping Dreams

    Today was a bonanza day for shopping. I returned a ton of things, but we found so many great outfits for Libby at Kohl’s.  Sometimes we can’t find a single thing that’s decent, but we were in luck and found a lot on great sales! 

    While Libby, my mom, and I were out hitting the mall, The Good Doctor and the kids hit the house and de-Christmased.  I realize it is only the 27th, but it’s convenient to get everything put away before our New Year’s party. Plus, I like having it done for me, so I’m certainly far from fussing!

    Last night I had the most interesting and violent dreams. I suppose that’s what comes from watching Sahara and then half of a James Bond movie on TV (Ooooh, James!)  I know it is tedious in the extreme when someone tells a dream, but one part was so odd, I thought I’d share.

    In my dream, I was making a cell phone call from my car.  A man picked up on the other end.
    “Hello, Ron Deer,” said the voice.
    “Oh,” I replied, “I must have the wrong number.”
    “Yeah, right.  I get this all the time at Christmas. Ron Deer. Reindeer. This is a prank call.”

    How odd a dream is that?  But, it is rather funny.  Ron Deer–HA!

    Thanks for all the recommendations for healing medicines.  I should have read your ideas before I went to Wal-Mart today.  I’m sure I’ll be back again soon!

    If any of you are in the area (or would be willing to come to the area), consider yourself invited to our New Year’s Eve party!  It should start around 8:30 or so. Bring some food or drink to share. 



  • Christmas!

    On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…many pictures of Christmas day!

    I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas and are still finding lots of time to relax and enjoy yourselves. We had a delightful time, even though David woke up feeling very sick Christmas morning. No one likes to be in painful tears before opening presents, but Advil worked its magic, and we were back on the road to a happy day.

    The first picture is of Sibling Night, which was last Tuesday.  I have pictures of Christmas morning, but I like this one better.

     

    We opened presents at our house and then headed to my mom’s house where we had our usual lunch of ham, cornflake potatoes (mmmm!), and crescent rolls.  Although we got so many wonderful presents, I won’t fatigue you with all the gifts. Here’s a pictorial representative sample.

    David got an Ipod. (So did the Hunter.)


     

    Here’s the mighty hunter with his quarry, a Snapalope.  (My mom made it. She’s cool.)

    Lovely LibbyK models a shirt that her brother got her at Disney. It’s another Sibling Night shot, but I didn’t think anyone would mind.




    LoeschDogg may be a bloody-toe athlete, but I’ve got a Mathlete!

    My mom got me this pie plate. Er, pi plate.  She also got me a Jane Austen stuffed doll, and you can see Jane and me in my bio picture.

    Michael got two new Gameboy games, so he spent most of his time at my mom’s house taking advantage of the “no time limit” playing time.

    Rachel was thrilled to pieces to get American Girl Doll Bitty Baby Twins and a double stroller. She named them Daniel and Sarah.

    This afternoon, we packed up the presents and our diseases and came home. David is still coughing badly, although the fever seems to be gone. Rachel is now coughing, and I’m still going strong, too. Thankfully, I feel just fine. We enjoyed ourselves and watched Sahara tonight. I’d seen it before, and it contains one of my favorite lines of all movies, but the line is in the deleted scenes.  If I can quote it correctly, it’s, “You know, I’ve been thinking about the funny part. We’re oceanographers, and we’re probably going to die in the desert chained to truck parts.  So, when they write our obituary, that will be the funny part.” (It’s much better spoken. Really, it is. I promise.)

    Tomorrow, Libby, my mom, and I are going shopping again! This time it will be to return the “don’t wants” and “don’t fits” and spend the $30 coupon I got at Kohl’s (clothing store) which expires in a week.

    What fun plans do you have for the rest of your Christmas break?


     

  • Joy to the World!

    Let there be light!


    May you and those you love have a blessed Christmas.  (And may those you don’t love but just like an awful lot have a blessed Christmas, too.)



  • A Ca-cough-ony of Christmas

    I have discovered that Equate’s version of Robatussin cough syrup has the same effect on me as caffeine. 

    My mom and I had a great day of shopping yesterday.  We ate “lunch” at Perkins (if you can call a piece of lemon meringue pie and half a banana nut muffin lunch!), supper at Olive Garden, and a yummy mall snack of a berry smoothie and a cookie. Mmmm!  We got back to her house around 11:30 p.m. and I discovered that David was lying in the bed where TGD usually sleeps.  “Hey, why are you here?” I wondered.  “I can’t (hack, cough) sleep.”  He and I each had a small dose of cough medicine (a Triaminic dissolve-on-your-tongue strip) and turned out the lights. Thirty minutes of almost solid coughing noises from the two of us then began. The silences were punctuated with loud snores from Poppy in the next room.

    At 12:00, my desperate, sleepy mother came in.  “You know, my friend swears that if you rub U… (some name of ointment) on your feet, you’ll stop coughing.”  David and I took the “sort of like Vicks, except it smelled like pine” ointment and anointed our feet.

    After another half-hour of coughing, I gave David a dose of NyQuil and myself a dose of cough syrup.  He fell asleep within 20 minutes.  My road to sleep did not follow the same map.  Although my coughing slowed to one bout every ten to fifteen minutes, sleep eluded me.  The last time I remembered looking at the clock was at 4:35 a.m., which means that I probably fell asleep around 4:45 a.m.

    Why didn’t I just get out of bed?  Well, the Hunter was sleeping downstairs in the living room, and I was SURE I’d fall asleep soon.  (Even though I knew better.)

    So, today has been a tired day, yet much fun.

    This afternoon, we had Christmas at my dad’s house. My stepmom and sisters are excellent cooks. They served us minestrone and chicken noodle soups, stromboli, and cookies.  The kids were impressed as they set the table with wine glasses, and we all had “kid wine” (sparkling grape juice).    Ashley, my college-freshman sister, chooses the gifts for my kids, and she’s an excellent shopper.  Nathan got a gift card (useful for the hunter). David got art supplies and a computer game, Safe Cracker.  Libby was thrilled with black dress boots with four-inch heels and several books.  Michael got several nifty games–20Q (a twenty questions hand-held game) and Speed Stacker.  Did you know that there is a world federation of cup stackers? I had no idea. This game has twelve plastic cups, a mat, and a timer (all official regulation stuff!) and you stack cups in various ways. We’ve had a lot of fun with it so far.  Rachel got a dog that makes all sorts of noise and has vet supplies.  Little nurse/vet girl was thrilled. She also got a pair of boots (pink suede with no heel!) and a Klutz nail polish kit.

    TGD and Libby
    are presenting special music at church tomorrow. TGD will sing and
    Libby play the flute. Since David is running a fever, I won’t be
    there, I fear.

    Jokes!

    For MathMom:  What’s brown and sneaks around the kitchen?
    Mince spies

    For Memof6: What the most special part of the body at Christmas?
    The Mistletoe

    For ElizabethDNB (who doesn’t know of such things, surely): How does Jack Frost travel to work?
    By icicle

    For AJ1965:  How does Good King Wenceslas like his pizza?
    Deep and crisp and even

    For all the Kroekers: What carol is heard in the desert?
    O Camel Ye Faithful

    Especially for GhostFroggy:      What do you get when you cross a snowman with
    a vampire?
    Frostbite

    For the Hunter: What do you get when you cross an archer with a gift-wrapper?

    Ribbon hood.

    For KID and the Godfather: What did Adam say the on the night before Christmas?
    It’s Christmas, Eve!

    For Avaricewrex and RJDohner and the Hand:     How do Mexican sheep say Merry Christmas?
    Fleece Navidad!

    For EnglishWestern and Non Sequiturian: How many Surrealists does it take to decorate a Christmas tree?
    The fish

    For Words_are_Things and Mamaglop: What do you have in December that you don’t have in any other month?
    The letter D.

    For everyone else who should have had a personalized joke and didn’t get one because I couldn’t find any more amusing ones:
    Knock, knock.
    Who’s there?
    Mary
    Mary Who?

    Mary Christmas!

  •  I Like My Version Better

    You know, it’s funny how we long to rewrite books.  We want this person to
    match up with that one. We don’t want so and so to die at the end.  I felt
    that way when I read this section in P&P last night:

    “[Mr. Bennet], captivated by youth and beauty, and that
    appearance of good humour which youth and beauty generally give, had married a
    woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind had, very early in their
    marriage, put an end to all real affection for her. Respect, esteem, and
    confidence had vanished for ever; and all his views of domestic happiness were
    overthrown.”

    We discussed the Bennets before, and I was convinced that Mr. really did love
    his Mrs. But, Jane Austen herself tells me otherwise.  Isn’t it vexing
    when the author takes the story or her characters in a way in which you do not
    want? 

    Thank you to the many who offered me well-wishes on my cold. I’m still trying
    to cough up a lung, and sometimes it seems I almost succeed. But, in general, I
    feel pretty good. The kids are starting to fall victim to this malady. 
    Thankfully, school ended for us today, so we have little to do and lots of time
    for resting.

    Tomorrow (Friday), my mom and I head out for our yearly all-day Christmas
    shopping.  We don’t really need to purchase any presents (except for an
    outfit for me from my mom), but we spend all day browsing and buying and eating
    out (Olive Garden or Red Lobster, pie and tea, pretzels at the mall…). 

    The sounds of Rudolph and Yukon Cornelius and the Bumble are currently filling
    the living room with scary yells.  One of my favorite Christmas pins is
    the Bumble holding a star. Actually, I’ve got the whole set.



    I like this picture I found on the web.  It was called “The Bumble Has a Snack.”   

     

    Ho ho ho and a bottle of Nog!



  • Top Ten and Darcy’s Proposal

    We subscribe to Todd Wilson’s You Da’ Dad email list. He’s a homeschool dad who sends out encouragement and humor to other dads via email. If you are interested in subscribing to his emails, go HERE.   (Or go here to access his website.) He often has funny lists sent in by others, and this list is one.  My family got a chuckle out of it. 

    Top Ten Ways to Know your Christmas is too Commercialized…

    10. Your kids want to know if the 3 wise men provided gift receipts

    9. You’re upset because McDonald’s is closed Christmas Day.

    8. Rudolph is an integral part of your Nativity set.

    7. You are first in line at 3 a.m. to buy the new game at Best Buy, but sleep through church.

    6. You spend two hours with a concordance trying to find the story of the Little Drummer Boy in the Bible.

    5. You refuse to go to church because the parking lot is too full at Christmas.

    4. You miss the irony of your “Jesus is the reason for the season” wrapping paper.

    3. You skip the Christmas Eve service at church to get a jump on putting together a bike.

    2. You wonder why Mary and Joseph didn’t use their AAA membership to find better lodging.

    1. Your kids tell the story of Santa being born in a manger at Target long, long ago.


    Back to Pride and Prejudice…

    I read the story of Darcy’s first proposal  last night. Do you feel he “with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?” Or was it  “my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design”?  (I realize that using the quotes makes the questions seem rather strangely worded.) In other words, was the first proposal as horrible as Elizabeth makes it seem? I’m trying to put it into my context and my world and imagine my husband saying similar words to me.  It seems pretty bad then.  If the proposal is so hideous, though, why do we still like Darcy?  (Proposal is in Chapter 34.)



  • Not So Very Bad

    Today, I woke up and said, “I think I’ll just stay in bed.” My cold took a turn for the worse, so I spent most of the day under a thick pile of blankets on a soft mattress. Some of the children wandered into my room to do their school work, but I still got the rest I needed. 

    By late afternoon, I felt I should get up and do something other than forage for food and hot tea. This need was precipitated by the fact that the washer repair man was coming.  (By the way, it was yet another sock and piece of a pair of windbreaker pants clogging my front-loading washer.  HOW do they get in there?)

    TGD brought pizza home for supper, and Libby made a salad.  It was a tasty start to Sibling Night.  We played Spinergy and Catch Phrase and had a good time with the opening of presents. Afterward, we all watched Nathan’s present, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.  We snacked on popcorn and milkshakes/Blizzards made by my dear husband.

    So, all in all, the day was not so very bad!



  • O, Cough, All Ye Faithful

    That’s the song I requested we sing at church tonight. I’ve been coughing so much that my back hurts!  It’s a dry, annoying, tickly cough–pesky thing!  The Hunter also has something and has been raiding the Kleenex box quite regularly. 

    Who else watched It’s A Wonderful Life Saturday night?  Who cries every time?

    The Tipping Point is such a fascinating book! If you enjoyed Gladwell’s Blink, I’m sure you will enjoy this one as well. He discusses fads, epidemics, and trends and why and how they start. One thing which fascinated me was this tidbit.  Think of all the people whose death would be genuinely distressing.  How many are on your list? Chances are, if you are honest, the list has about 12 people. (I suppose those with a large number of children and siblings might have a list a bit larger.)  Numerous people at different times and stages and for different purposes have researched and have show that 12 is about the maximum number of close relationships a person can manage.  What does this have to do with trends and epidemics?  Well, you’ll just have to read the book!

    Tomorrow, Nathan has his last concert of the year, this one at a nursing home. TGD gives his final exam Monday night, and the kids and I plan to watch Ice Age 2.  Tuesday night is Sibling Night, and the kids are thinking of the games and food they want to have to go along with the present exchange. 

    If you are keeping up with the Pride and Prejudice reading, you should be through chapter 30. By this Friday, you should try to be through chapter 45. 

    What surprises or treats do you have for your family or friends or for yourself this Monday?  Make it a fun day!