Seven Things Sunday

Phew! This week has been exhausting. Here are 7 things we did this week:

1. Lilyanna went to her friend's birthday party. After 2 days of school being cancelled due to frigid temps, some playtime with friends on Saturday was a blessing. Getting her face painted like her beloved white tiger was a dream come true for her!

2. After 2 days of those aforementioned frigid temps we then got a large snow storm on  Saturday. The roads were awful Saturday morning, but alas, the school district's science day did not get cancelled. Nathaniel was not happy about having to slip and slide through the storm.

3. Friday night was the opening of  the high school's production of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying". Now the last time I saw this show was on Broadway, so I went in with very low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised, though, and enjoyed the show very much. Their Bud Frump was better than the Broadway version, IMO. Benjamin was one of the Junior Executives and in the chorus and had a great time dancing and singing his little heart out. And then Saturday's show was cancelled due to the snow. (NOT THE SCIENCE DAY, just the play. Grrrr.)

4. Earlier in the week, Nathaniel deigned to get his haircut before his audition for his school's production of "The Sound of Music". I took lots of pictures of the process and kept trying to convince him to stop at each phase, because he had kind of a cool emo thing going on. Alas, he didn't think it would be authentic to the period of the play.

5. Nathaniel was cast as one of the children in the Von Trapp family. I believe he was typecast, as Kurt is the incorrigible one after all! ;)

6. All of my careful trip planning for this summer fell apart this week. We were supposed to spend part of our trip this summer visiting our relatives in Spain, but they discovered this week that they have a conflict the only days that we can be there, so in a flurry of fb messages, phone calls, texts, and emails, we managed to purchase tickets for a few weeks from now so we can visit the Spanish relatives in the Western United States while they are visiting other relatives. We're really excited to see everyone, but figuring things out almost cured me of my omnipresent wanderlust for the week. (Almost. I was back at it today to try to figure out where to go for the days we would have been in Spain. I know. We should all have such "problems".)

7. Warren got not 1, but 2 jobs in the last couple of weeks! Fingers crossed and prayers said that all will go well for him.

BONUS:

8. I had my first mammogram yesterday. After the first couple of pictures, I wondered what all women were whining about. (Unless they are relatively flat chested women. That would be awful.) THEN they did the sideways pictures with the arm up and all manner of contortions and just OUCH!! The technician gave me chocolate afterwards, which did help assuage my shock at the whole thing. But still, I think at the very least a good dinner beforehand should have been warranted. Oy. This was also on the same morning of the icky, slippery roads. The upside of all of this was that everyone else had cancelled, so I was in and out of my appointment before my appointment was even supposed to begin. Silver linings, you know. 

Seven Things Sunday!

In the vein of last year's Ten Things Tuesday! I'm trying to get back into blogging on a more regular basis and Tuesdays are way too busy. Since we have morning church again this year (We switch morning and afternoon services every year with the other congregation that meets in the same building.), Sunday is the easiest time to do this. So, here are 7 things going on with me/us lately.

1. This past week we took everyone in our house to get passports. Apparently, the entire rest of the population in our town had the same idea because it was super crowded! So, crowded that we split it up in to two different days thinking that the next day might be better. It was actually worse. So, the kids got a lesson on why you should never let your passport expire.

2. We have loved this break from school/work/dance/piano teaching, etc. I'm aware of how busy our lives are, but not really aware until we actually have winter break. It worked out that the kids had two full weeks off from school, and Todd a week of vacation days plus holidays, so it was nearly 2 weeks. We were all mostly healthy the whole time, so it was simply a delightful gathering of playing games, reading books, getting more video game/movie watching time than usual. The kids getting to hang out more with friends, etc. Just nice.

3. I'm really enjoying the ages of my kids right now. Other than the 12 year old being a little too 12 sometimes, they are all at ages where they can really participate in a lot of family decisions and it's nice to hear their input on things. (Sometimes.)

4. When Lilyanna asked what I wanted for Christmas, I replied, "A clean house." She laughed and laughed like I'd told the funniest joke ever and then said, "Mom! It would take too much wrapping paper to wrap up a house!"

5. I have wanted for many, many years now to hike the Appalachian Trail.  About 5 years ago, I decided that when the kids were old enough, we could do it in 2 week chunks. However, now that the kids are at that magical age, there are no 2 weeks where that's feasible. Also, Lilyanna is coming with, and hiking for 2 weeks with a 5 year old is probably more fun than I'm prepared to have. Anyway, we've decided that for this spring, my 2 Boy Scouts and 1 Cub Scout (almost Boy Scout) AND my 5 year old and I will hike 2 states worth of the trail. The 2 easiest states, but still, it will take a little less than a week and we'll have Maryland and West Virginia crossed off the list. We may try to add NJ this year as well, but we'll see how this first hike goes. Did I mention that we're doing it in the spring? When it will likely be cold and wet? I may be a little bit crazy.

6.  I will do a whole post about this later, but in November, I took Nathaniel down to FL for his birthday/Christmas present to swim with his beloved manatees. To say he was a happy kid on that trip, would be seriously understating the situation. It was a delight to get some one on one time with him, too.

7. Benjamin, Nathaniel, and I sat down this afternoon to talk about college in earnest. We looked at how much things cost and where there were the best programs for the cost of the things they currently think they might want to study, and what other programs are out there. (Nathaniel was disappointed to learn there is no US school that offers a degree in parapsychology. But was enthusiastic that there are some classes offered in that field at the University of Edinburgh. Or was until he saw the price of said classes.) Benjamin is halfway through his Freshman year of high school and plans on serving a mission for our church for 2 years immediately after school. Because Nathaniel skipped so many grades, he'll be able to do a year of school before missionary work (boys have to be 18 before they go). It was sobering for us all to realize that their life outside of this home begins in 3 and 4 short years, respectively. But it got the boys really thinking about the things they are doing now and how it can affect THEN. I don't expect they'll always remember their revelations from this afternoon, but putting some hard data in front of them helped demystify some things.

Happy Sunday, everyone!