Snow day!

The blizzard did finally come! Our snowfall, according to KXMB, measured out at 12.4 inches and it is around -15 degrees outside! It's going to be a COLD walk to school tomorrow morning! I'm sure glad I didn't have to leave the house today! In fact, I'm still in my pajamas that I put on last night at bedtime. I love days like this!

Pastor Jake called our house early this morning to let us know that church had been cancelled. Gage called him back shortly afterwards to find out if the Christmas program was going to be cancelled or postponed. It is undecided at this point. The kids were sad about not having the program today, but they soon forgot about it after their day got started.

Scott snapped this picture from our front door this morning after we got up. We had quite a big drift in our driveway. THANK GOD I didn't have to shovel it! I think that would have killed me!

Grizzy decided a great way to spend the snow day was sleeping in an empty box. He was pretty snuggly warm as the box was right next to a heater vent.

Emma spent her day making forts out of the Christmas presents that are (were) under the tree.

Scott and Dave spent their day outside removing snow from the driveways. They cleared out 6 driveways and the sidewalks that went with them.

I apparently didn't get a picture of Gage today. He spent his day playing video games and complaining about having spelling homework to do.

I spent an hour or so this morning attempting to scrapbook. I just wasn't feeling very creative this morning, so I spent the rest of the day dinking around and playing video games with Gage. We have been playing darts with the Wii, with one of the new games we have from Gamefly. If you don't know, Gamefly is like Netflix, only with video games instead of movies. I really like it because it allows us to try out a game before actually buying it. I think it has saved us a couple hundred dollars already because we've gotten a few games that I would have bought, but got through Gamefly only to find out we didn't like it!

Emma had eventually decided to turn her "fort" into a library. She had all kinds of books and DVD's available for check out!

Emma is scanning this book that Gage wants to check out of her library. Emma made the nunchuk controller for the Wii into a scanner for her library so books and videos can be checked out.

After Scott had pointed out to me what Emma was doing, I had to get a little video of her playing. She decided to be a librarian so she could makes "lots of money". I thought it was pretty sweet that she was doing this, because she must really be proud of me being a substitute library aide at school. She has never done this before. It makes me think about things a little differently, and that maybe I should be a little more cautious about what I'm doing, since she seems to want to do what I do. I guess it's a good thing I didn't decide to become a hooker, or drug dealer, huh?

Still waiting!

I'm still waiting for the weather to get REALLY bad, like they have been saying it will. We could possibly get up to 9 inches of snow. It's supposed to get really bad tonight and the blizzard warning expires at midnight tomorrow night. I'm not real impressed yet. It is darned cold out, however, I will admit that. Scott called this afternoon to say he was on his way home and said he was driving pretty slow because it was really bad visibility. No crap! That's why they advised no travel!

The kids had their program practice this afternoon at church. It was MUCH better today. There were still a few "problem children", but nothing like the other night! Emma is very excited about the program tomorrow. She gets to dress up like an angel. Gage will be dressed like a shepherd. Unfortunately I have to usher and will be seated up in the balcony so I'm not sure how good my pictures will be. Maybe I can talk Scott into ushering for me while I sit down front and take pictures? We'll see. If the weather is REALLY bad, it may end up being cancelled, or postponed. I'm not sure which.

I'm gathering up my baking goods for a Christmas cookie baking marathon on Wednesday with Kara. I'm going to head out to her place Wednesday morning and see what we can accomplish before the kids get out of school. Hopefully Kya won't be placing any more butterfly beads up her nose causing another trip to the walk-in clinic!!! :-) Kara called me last night as she was on her way to the walk-in clinic. Apparently those recycled tin can lid ornaments with beads hot glued to them aren't 3-year-old proof? Or at least not if they're wanting to experiment by sticking the beads up their nose! Poor Kya! I'm betting she won't do that again! It was kind of funny, because it happened to be a green butterfly bead and Kara just thought it was a really hard booger that she was trying to pick. Finally, when they discovered it was a green bead in the shape of a butterfly, they tried to get her to blow it out, but she's too little yet to do that. Kara decided while they had her held down, with her needle-nosed jewelry pliars in her hand, that maybe she better take her to the walk-in clinic instead? Probably a good choice!

Kara stopped by today telling me she wanted me to have that butterfly bead because she was tired of looking at it. Instead she brought me a Lucy gift card for helping her out at her show last weekend! Lucy is one of my new favorite places to shop online, thanks to Kara! :-) I also got to go out to her house the other day and make some jewelry with her supplies. It was alot of fun and I can definitely see that there is a lot of work that goes into each of her pieces. Being a jewelry-maker, I know it takes alot of time, but she has some detail work with her metal pieces that take a lot longer to make. Thanks a ton Kara! You were too generous, however. All I wanted was to get out of the house after a long week at home by myself with the kids!

I best head upstairs. Scott just texted me from his cell phone telling me to come up and watch "It's a Wonderful Life" with him. What a dork!

Blizzard #2 coming our way!

They are forecasting a big blizzard for North Dakota coming our way tomorrow afternoon! I haven't yet been to the grocery store to stock up, like I should. I didn't do it last time and wished that I had before it was all said and done. Like last time, Scott left to go hunting. He left just before 1pm today, after we finished delivering meals on wheels. Having his help delivering the meals today cut 15 minutes off of my time from last Friday! It also helped that it wasn't snowing like crazy today, like it was last week. Anyway, he's gone hunting and I hope he doesn't get caught in the blizzard. They are advising no travel for any reason, unless an emergency. I don't think it was an emergency that he go hunting, but I suppose he might disagree. The high temperature for Monday is supposed to be -8 degrees, with the low of -20 with the windchill around -40 below. Anyone want to come up and visit?

As promised, here are some pictures of Gage's den meeting from Tuesday night. The boys made the flag that we were assigned last month and birdhouses.


Last month at the pack meeting, when the cubmaster announced he wanted every den to make a flag, I wanted to cry. I'm thinking, "Like we don't have enough to do already!" Toby, one of the other "Scout Moms" said it would be a "piece of cake". I totally let her run with that! We gathered the boys after school a couple of weeks ago to take their picture together, then Toby made it into an iron-on transfer, along with a few other Cub Scout symbols. It really turned out cute and I can't believe I didn't get a picture of the actual flag! Gage is ironing on the picture in the center of the flag in the picture above.

Emma took the last turn and ironed on a picture of the Progress Towards Rank badge. She is doing double Scout duty as a Cub Scout and a Daisy Scout!

Here are the boys getting ready to start working on their birdhouses. Unfortunately when I went to the store that carries Scout supplies, they didn't have enough bird houses for all 5 boys, so I had to get one bird feeder, which was all they had of those as well! I pretty much cleaned them out of any bird kits.

Gage attempting to hammer on the perch, under the door. It's alot easier if you use one hand to hang onto the nail Gage! I think the hammers were a little too heavy for them to manage with one hand. We ended up with a lot of bent nails!

Dad finally helps out. Our project took longer than it needed to because we only had 3 hammers for the 5 boys to use. We'll have to plan a little better next time! We would probably have had enough if a couple of my hammers haven't been misplaced. They never seem to be where they are supposed to be.

The finished product! They turned out pretty good. It was very difficult to get them lined up to take this picture since Scott gave them all a duck call at the end of the meeting. Not a smart thing to do, when you're in an enclosed garage! He should have given them out as they were walking out the door, so they could torture their own parents in the comfort of their own car!

We have church program rehearsal tomorrow afternoon from 1:30-3:30. I was kind of hoping they would just cancel it with this big blizzard coming. That hasn't happened yet. I think I am going to skip my S-A B job and let someone else do it tomorrow. I'm sure I'll come up with a couple of errands I should run, like to the grocery store before the big blizzard hits! Yeah, right. You know me too well. I'll end up sitting right there in the front pew again, with my b**** look on my face glaring at the naughty kids! Sounds like alot of fun, huh?

Guilty

I've been feeling very guilty about my short posts lately. When things slow down just a bit, I promise I'll be better!

Emma had her Daisy meeting after school today. I think it went pretty well. We ran out of time, however, and had to speed through some things quicker than I wanted. Our topic was "Use resources wisely" and "Make the world a better place". Basically, we talked about recycling. For our craft we made junk jewelry (necklaces made out of twine and a plastic bottle cap) which the kids seemed to enjoy and we made Christmas ornaments made from tops of tin cans that were in my recycling bin. Because of my handy dandy Pampered Chef can opener, there are no sharp edges on the tin lids at all and are completely safe. They hot glued beads all over the tin lid and they turned out pretty cute. I hope to post some pictures later, along with some pictures from Gage's den meeting the other night (I know I said I was going to do that, and haven't gotten it done yet).

I had panicked a little this afternoon after school. I had told Gage this morning that Emma had a Daisy meeting after school and to meet us in the library. When Emma, IsaBelle and I got to the school, Gage was not in the library. I started to panic, as I figured he must have forgotten and walked home. I went upstairs to the office and called Scott at work to see if he could call home and find Gage, but he wasn't in his office. When I was getting ready to hang up, one of the secretaries asked me if I was trying to call Corpus Christi, and I said that I wasn't. She said that Gage was at Corpus Christi. Thank goodness!!!! He misunderstood and thought I told him to meet me at the Corpus Christi library. I am so fortunate to have such wonderful people at the school looking out for us. Mrs. Sand said she would bring Gage back to the school with her (she's the one who took Emma to school for me the other day when I was working at the book fair). Mrs. Hocking was on her way out the door to walk back to Northridge and asked Gage if he would like to walk with her to the school and he decided that since Emma got to ride with Mrs. Sand in her car, that she couldn't be one up, so he declined the walk with Mrs. Hocking so he could have a ride in Mrs. Sand's car. Thanks for the offer Juanita, and sorry you rated second to Mrs. Sand's car! You'd think she was driving a VW bug, or something fun like that.

S-A B

Today I spent most of the day working on our Christmas letter. It's nearly done, but I seem to have troubles coming up with things to write about? Hmmm........that's a shocker, huh? Maybe it's because I write on my blog every day and trying to come up with something I haven't talked about is nearly impossible!

Tonight was the first evening of practice for the Christmas musical program that is on Sunday. I was just going to have Scott take the kids and drop them off, but my nagging conscience wouldn't allow it. When I take my kids to their different activities, I typically don't drop them off and leave, because I feel like it is my responsibility to make sure they behave, not the people who are kind enough to give their time to help them learn what they are there to learn. Gage had already had a meltdown prior to supper because he didn't want to do a homework assignment that we have had at home since Monday. He's on day 3 of getting to bed later than 6:30-7:00, so I was expecting it. We did half of the homeword Monday and I thought we should just get the second half of it finished this afternoon after school, but Gage didn't like that idea. Anyway, after we got to the church, Scott dropped the kids and I off while he ran a couple of errands. I sat near the middle of the church sanctuary, hoping to look through my calendar and make a few "to-do" lists. After the rehearsal got started, and after I watched the kids misbehaving and then not doing what they were told to do, I decided I needed to move closer. I gave Gage the evil eye one time and he knew I meant business. He did very well the rest of the time. Emma was doing okay, but was having a hard time because she was being distracted by another little girl, who has entirely too much energy, or maybe she has ants in her pants? Anyway, Emma was attempting to copy the other little girl until she made eye contact with me, and then she straightened up a little. The girls were not standing when they were supposed to be standing and Emma was just dying to do what they were doing. She came over to me and said she was really tired and needed to sit down. I told her if she was too tired to stand up, then we needed to just go home and go to bed. She did pretty good the rest of the time. There were MANY who just WOULD NOT behave! I finally had enough and went up to one of the little boys and told him that he could either sit with me in the pew, or he could stand where he was supposed to stand and behave. He chose the latter (that was a good choice!). I think I had to get up 4 or 5 different times to tell 4 or 5 different kids that they were going to sit with me if they didn't start listening and behaving. Juanita was playing the music for the kids to sing to and when it was time for her to go, she asked me if I was the "Self-appointed B****". I thought that was the perfect title, hence my blog title S-A B, because I'm sure that's what each of those kids thought I was. I had several of them watching me and when I would make eye contact, I shook my head and gave them the evil eye. I think, for the most part, I had every one of them scared of me. I'm sure they'll run the other way when they see me in the halls of the church. I think all of those parents should be required to sit in the front pew and make sure their children are behaving, or else take them home and deal with them there. I'm betting that if I hadn't been there, in the front pew, mine would have been messing around as well. I can't wait until Saturday, when we have our next practice! NOT!

Check it out!

What a huge sense of accomplishment I felt this afternoon when I FINISHED Emma's Christmas stocking! She was so excited when she got home from school and saw it hanging from the mantel!

Finally! Emma has a Christmas stocking! It's nearly 6 years overdue!

Here's a closer view so you can see the details. I found these star buttons at Hobby Lobby and I love them! They added that "finishing touch".

Finally, I can look at the stockings hanging from the mantel and not feel guilty about Emma not having one!

We had our Cub Scout den meeting tonight and we built birdhouses! I'm too tired to stay up any longer, so I'll try to post them tomorrow. I HAD to share the stocking photos, no matter what!

Feeling the crunch!

I'm getting close to panic mode! I have so many things to do (or the things I normally do) and I am worried I'm not going to get them done! I don't think I've ever put off writing our Christmas letter this late before? I went to the post office this morning to mail a package (the Snowmen necklaces are on their way Kysa!) and decided to buy the 5 books of stamps we need to mail out our Christmas letter. I thought that might light a fire underneath me so I would actually start writing it! I did get some pictures on it, but now I just need to fill in the blank spots with words. I think my regular blog readers will be quite disappointed as it will be nothing new for them. Just a recap of what you've been reading on my blog, is what it will be. Scott tells me that many of the people we send the letter to are not reading my blog, so it will be news to them. He's probably right.

Today I picked Scott up from work to take him with me to Target over the lunch hour to get a few things and to get my Biolife money out of the ATM machine. I couldn't remember my pin number and tried 3 different numbers that didn't work. I used Scott's cell phone to call the 800 number on the back of the card to see if they could tell me. I was quite surprised at how easy that was! I just had to enter the card number, the last 4 digits of my SSN and it recited my pin number right then and there! Thankfully it worked! It was a nice little "lunch date" that I enjoyed.

Tonight was Gage's school Christmas concert. If you can even believe it, I forgot to take my camera! UGH! Scott took a few photos and video with his cell phone camera, but they aren't very good and I'm not even going to take the time to upload them to my blog. I could just kick myself for not taking my camera, especially since we were in the front row and could have gotten great pictures! Oh well, I guess that will save me some time when I get to this point in Gage's school scrapbook. The concert was really good and was put on by all 5 2nd grade classes. Gage mentioned either today or last night that he wished he had been given a speaking part or a solo to sing!? I can't believe he would have gotten up in front of the 100's of people that were there watching to sing a solo? There were a few that did; however, and they did a wonderful job. Emma was singing the songs on our ride home and Scott asked her how she knew the words. She replied, "Well, I was listening Dad!" DUH! :-) She was singing several of the songs and they aren't any that we've ever heard before. They weren't your typical Christmas songs, so I was quite amazed that she had that many words memorized already! I hope she will be brave enough to want to sing in front of all those people, because she really can carry a tune pretty well and I love listening to her sing.

I worked on Emma's Christmas stocking tonight and I am getting close to being done with it. I had to run to Hobby Lobby today to pick up some buttons and metallic gold DMC floss. I found the cutest star buttons to sew onto her stocking. I'll post a picture of it when I get it completed. I had to break out the new sewing machine that I bought last year on Black Friday! It worked great! I knew I needed that thing! :-) (It just happened to be a year later, however.)

I'm worried that I'm not going to get any Christmas cookies baked this year. Last year Emily and I got together and baked lots of goodies and I just don't see a whole lot of time coming my way to get them done? I will HAVE to make the Santa Surprises no matter what. Those are the BEST COOKIES EVER and Santa would be quite disappointed to stop by on Christmas Eve and see there were no Santa Surprises for him! He might leave me a lump of coal in my stocking if I don't get them baked!

Sorry it's so short tonight, but I want to go see if I can get a little bit more done on Emma's stocking before I hit the bed. Good night!