Thursday, December 24, 2009

Christmas

As far as excitment goes, Christmas Eve is probably the most exciting day of the year. Every child has made multiple rounds past the Christmas tree to see if anything new has been layed out with the younger ones asking if Santa has already come (I put out a to Michelle from Santa present by accident). I can hear them downstairs talking about what they think they are getting. It really doesn't get much more exciting than that in the Clark house. Christmas day is usually the big anti-climax, when they realize that they got more of what they needed than what they wanted. I'll be happy if I get a couple of good books.

I also lit a fire in our fireplace for the first time. Our children were pretty happy about that. Jared curled up next to the fireplace with his Gameboy (whatever happened to books?) and was in heaven.

I hope everybody has a good Christmas. Ours has been very nice thus far.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Even More Dysfunction

So today I was grateful that the children went back to school since they had been home from Tuesday at 1p.m. (Early release because of the storm) until today, Friday. They needed to go back even though it's only a day so they wouldn't go absolutely crazy this weekend.

Well apparently Jared had way too much energy and took a Dare from another kid.

Jared called 911 from the Hall phone at school and then, AND THEN AND THEN . . .

LIED about it to the principal.

Nice. So now he has Saturday School. Jared didn't realize that he was on camera so he was totally busted.

So now Jared is outside scraping every single piece of ice off of our driveway with a fork.

Ha ha, just kidding, we did give him the shovel.

So much for Family Togetherness

On Wednesday was our SNOW DAY. I posted all about our plans and how great it would be to do all that baking. Especially since I had started all that baking the night before and wanted to finish.

Well so much for that.


We all woke around 7a.m., then within an hour, all the children wanted to go outside and play in the snow.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? SERIOUSLY, IT WAS COLD OUT.

But they did. Now granted it was only 8a.m. I insisted they have breakfast, do their jobs and chill a bit on the inside before majorly chilling on the outside. I think my having them inside together as a family lasted all of another hour and then by 9a.m. they all bolted. Except for Caleb who spent a good portion of his day on the computer.

It had continued to snow so all those pictures from the last post were nothing like what it ended up being, then it blew around and got super nasty out. Nasty enough that school was cancelled for a 2nd day.

Well back to Wednesday for a minute:

Brenden had gone to the basement and ran upstairs yelling, "There's a brown goo stuff coming out of the drain of the washer all over the floor and under the wall in the basement."

Oh the joyous words those are to hear.

So Jason, Caleb and I run to the basement to discover that our garbage disposal to the kitchen sink had somehow backed up into the downstairs washing machine drain and sink.

In fact there was brown goo, everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean UNDER the washing machine, UNDER the dryer, UNDER the wall into where the furnace is. UNDER the wall into where we store food and suitcases and other junk of no meaning.

YUCK. It was nasty. At least it wasn't sewage. Oh my am I ever grateful it wasn't that. Sick, Sick, Sick that would have been.

So we proceeded to run all over the house for our nasty and oldest towels so we could clean up the mess, then it was so bad that we had to get the good towels and continue cleaning up the mess.

Then Jason had to run to the local hardware store to get a SNAKE to snake out the drain from both upstairs and down for over 2 hours and then it backed up again and he snaked some more.

After a very long day and lots of cleaning and me pouring bleach under the wall and having many scrubbing moments of cleanser on the basement floor, I am grateful for the following:

1. That our basement is not yet finished or this mess would have been super worse
2. That all the towels in the house had been clean and dry so they could soak up the nastiness
3. That the mess was NOT sewage and no sewage pipes were involved
4. That Jason was home.
5. That Jason snaked it and finally got it unclogged.
6. That it's all cleaned up and over with
7. That I now have clean DRY towels once again.

So that was our Wednesday. How was yours?

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Snow Day

The best thing about lots of snow is the Snow Day that comes with it.
I love having the children home to

1. Sleep in. Today we all slept in till 7a.m. which is a new record in this house.

2. Bake cookies. That started last night, we made Russian Wedding cookies (you know the balls that are cooked and then covered in powdered sugar) love them. Then we made chocolate chip cookies and dipped a bunch of pretzels in chocolate. Today the plan is peanut butter cookies, sugar cookies, no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies and Oatmeal raisin cookies. They also want rice crispy treats and Muddy Buddies (chex cereal with the choc. peanut butter and powdered sugar)


Then we will make up at least 10 plates,pick out some families and deliver them all tomorrow night. I would say tonight, but we are under a huge blizzard right now, winds are expected to reach 35 to 50 m.p.h. by this afternoon and evening and travel is not advised. I'm hoping the power stays on because wind chills are expected to be 20 or more below zero. OUCH.

3. Everything is closed. Even the Mall.

4. We get to stay in our jammies all day.

5. No classes to teach. No plasma to donate. No places to shop at. No school to attend. No concerts to go to tonight. No work to go to. Nothing to attend to except for family togetherness and baking.


In fact last night we had a FHE. Yes on a Tuesday, but we were all together (a rarity these days with Caleb being in so many school activities) so we had a wonderful evening filled with a Christmas song, talking about traditions for our family. All the Children picked a name out of a bowl to see who they will purchase or make a gift for. Then we planned out what we will do for another family this year. There was a lot of Laughter, too much Fighting and complaining, but a lot of Love!
Best thing I learned from our family meeting last night is what each of my children like to see or do around Christmas time.
Caleb loves outdoor lights. I should have guessed this since his 3rd word he ever said was "IGHTS" meaning Lights. 1st word Ma, 2nd word NO.
Daniel loves everything to do with snow, building forts and snowboarding.
Jared said he likes having Real Pizza on Christmas Eve, where we order it and they bring it to us.
One year we tried to make it and the yeast was bad and the entire crust stunk and the pizza was a bomb. So we will go back to our tradition of ordering it from the Pizza Man (as Jared puts it) and then tipping the driver extra since it's Christmas!
Brenden like baking cookies with me and eating lots of different types of cookies.
Alyssa loves Snow stuff, like building the Snowman and sledding.
Scott said, "I love anything with SNOW!"
So much fun when there is lots of snow. Enough you can't go drive in it, but you can play in it. Here are a few pictures of our snow:






Jason doesn't look too impressed about going out to shovel it. I didn't realize he didn't have boots anymore, they have completely worn out and were thrown out a few years back.
So he's out in this in tennis shoes. Not fun. Predictions of snow for our area were 10 inches, looks like we only had 6-8, but that's just fine.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Snow

It snowed last night and stuck to the ground.

I'm not impressed.