A Hodge Podge of information

It's cold out! My little weather channel icon says it is 12 degrees outside! I'm sure it was a nice day in the duck blind........NOT!

We had a pretty good day today. The kids let me sleep in a little bit. Emma came in and asked, "Mom, could you get me some breakthast?" I decided I better get up. I had been laying awake for a little while listening to them play so nicely together. It's a rare moment when that happens, so I try to enjoy it when I can.

We decided to get out of the house and head to Barnes and Noble. We almost got stuck in the driveway. When Dave was helping me scoop last night we threw some of that slushy stuff to the edge of the drive where the snow plow could get ahold of it and take it somewhere else. I think all of the snowplow drivers are out hunting deer or something? Maybe they are all on vacation? I don't know, but I do know they haven't plowed many of the side streets! I had to pull forward, then gun it in reverse to get over the refrozen slush. Then, I got to the end of our street and started to slow down because I was going to meet a car at the intersection. I kept on going and at that time I was thankful that the snowplow had not been through, as I guided my front tires into the snow along the edge of the street. Thankfully that stopped us before the other car did! At that point I told the kids to be quiet so I could concentrate on the icy roads. Thankfully we didn't crash on our little outing. Gage got his new Boys' Life magazine the other day and he discovered that there is a patch he can win by finding out the answers to some questions they asked that are in the new Ripley's Believe It or Not book. Since it isn't in the school library, I thought we would try to find it at Barnes and Noble and look through it to find the answers. That's probably not very honest, but I don't want to buy the book. I'm sure it's quite expensive. I suppose we could try to find it at the Public Library, but Gage was also looking for some books at B&N so figured we would just go there. I ended up forgetting the questions which is the main reason we went to B&N in the first place. UGH! I guess we'll have to try again tomorrow. They have been having these contests in his magazine for the first 2000 entries they receive, they will award a cool patch. So far we have been 0 for 2 on those stupid things. I suppose living in North Dakota, we are probably the last people to receive the magazines, therefore will never win. But you certainly can't win if you don't try, so we'll keep trying. When we were in B&N we ran into Juanita and Kim. The kids love teasing and joking around with Kim.

After B&N we stopped at Target to get Emma a pair of shoes for church. I've been meaning to do that for several weeks, only to be reminded each Sunday when she has to wear her tennis shoes with her church clothes that I forgot to do it, AGAIN! Her feet grew over the summer and she outgrew all of her church shoes!

The kids played outside a couple of different times today with the neighbors. Then around 4:30, Chris, the neighbor kids' Dad, took them all to the Jaycee Park to sled down the big hill. I didn't figure they would last too long since their snow pants and coats, mittens and boots were all already wet. They were gone for a little over an hour, which is much longer than I had anticipated. It was some nice, quiet time for me. I got a WHOLE HOUR TO MYSELF! WOO HOO!

Gage has been a reading machine lately. I had gotten him this book called "Who is Neil Armstrong?" from the school book orders since he's been so into the space books lately and he noticed inside the cover that there is a whole series of these books. He wanted to go to B&N to get "Who Is Elvis Presley?" We did find it there, along with 5 others and he had them all lined up on the floor and had the most difficult time trying to decide which one to get. He finally picked, "Who is King Tut?" I'm anxious to read that one as well because I don't know much about King Tut. Each week at school the kids are supposed to turn in a reading log. They are supposed to read 15 minutes at least five times a week for a minimum of 75 minutes/week (the reading that parents do does not count). Gage is already over 240 minutes and he still has another day on his weekly log. He has been bringing home these skinny sheets of papers that have long strings of numbers to add up using the calculator and I just finally figured out where the numbers were coming from. His teacher is having them add up all of their reading minutes each week using the calculator as they have a "calculator math" section. I have noticed that there aren't the same amount of numbers as there are kids in the class, so there are several not turning in their reading logs, and there are a few who just read the required 75 minutes and a few who must read 15 min every day of the week for a total of 105 minutes and a few that read quite a bit less than the required amount. I can see that Gage's number of reading minutes far exceeds any of the other numbers in the class. I'm happy that he enjoys doing so much reading. He makes my spending habits in B&N, and on the monthly school book orders, justifiable.

Emma has also been doing a great job reading. She has a Strawberry Shortcake book that she likes and can read the entire thing. I know alot of it she has memorized, so I went through Gage's book shelf to find more level one readers and tonight at bedtime we were reading some Dick and Jane. It's so much fun when she sounds the words out and figures them out all on her own. She gets big eyes and you can tell she's excited and proud and ready to tackle the next word. It won't be long and she'll be reading them herself.

I am trudging through the last book in the Left Behind series. They started out really good, but the last couple, in the series of 12, have taken me a lot longer to read. I suppose it's hard to keep that many books in a series ones that you can't stop turning pages. I should just quit and give the books back to Shannon, but I'm a little anal that way. If I start something, I want to finish it, regardless. Maybe I'll quit typing now and go try to read some more of that book. I've seen some new ones that look good at B&N, but I won't allow myself to buy any books (for me) until I am finished with the one I am already reading. I save lots of money that way! :-) Especially when I'm in a slump!