The past couple of weeks have been pretty uneventful for us (which isn’t a bad thing). School started back up and the weather has been frigid so our activity opportunities have been limited. It’s almost relaxing (well, for me anyway).
Nothing like a hike up the “Y” on the first day of the year! Especially in the snow. Not me though- I decided to sleep instead.
Our kids are so cute. They spent almost all of Thursday afternoon/evening creating a museum. They started drawing money a few days ago and decided to put in on display. The had a “grand opening” at 7:00pm and Mike read a speech (written by Claire). Then they cut a piece of thread strung across the doorway and invited us in. The presented all the different kinds of money they had drawn (here’s an unencumbered view of the wall). While I don’t dig tape and thumbtacks on the wall I don’t think I would want to stifle this kind of creativity.
I finally got my car back! This whole project has taken much longer than I thought it would, and there’s still a lot of work to do. The weather has been so frigid that I got to drive the car home, take it for one quick spin and then had to park it in the garage. I’m really looking forward to spring.
Speaking of weather… the iPhone hasn’t been doing much to help me this winter. It seems like forecasts frequently change (even hour to hour) and a lot of the time it’s just plain wrong. The other day I woke up and checked the weather. Partly sunny! But when I looked out the window what did I see? Snow. It was overcast and snowy. And the rest of the week was pretty much the same.
This is one of the coldest winters that I can remember. Our gutters keep freezing and then when it melts a bit they overflow onto our driveway where they freeze again. This giant ice patch (right pic) makes it really hard to get into our garage. And it doesn’t help that our driveway is perpetually covered with snow either. Too cold.
We’re making progress on the office little by little. We ordered some wall art off Overstock. These particular pieces are actually pretty cool. It’s an image printed on sanded metal. The sanding causes different kind of reflections on the metallic surface.
Aesthetics aside, hanging this thing was a nightmare. It’s seven individual pieces. They each have two brackets welded on the back (first pic). They are not centered (left right, top or bottom), they are not accessible in any way from the front (for marking purposes) and it’s not possible to accurately measure where to make the holes in advance. Good luck! Hanging this took over an hour and my pieces didn’t end up spaced perfectly, but I’m pretending that’s part of the art.
After a brief hiatus our tradition of eating out each weekend has resumed. Sometimes we skip our outings to reallocate money to cover something the kids have damaged. Most recently we skipped a few weeks to pay for a new mini van battery (the kids often leave the mini van lights on which drains the battery and, over time, ruins it). This past Saturday we went to dinner at Asian Buffet (remember, the shrimp?!).
I’m trying to do a bit of dieting, but the siren song of the shrimp was just too much. More on my progress (or lack thereof) later this year.
Does anyone have anything to add? Hmm… maybe next time I’ll ask the kids if they want to write anything for the blog. That could be amusing.