I found a rare day to escape to a local coffee shop to write a bit. This is a new coffee shop to our little mountain town, and local chatter swirls around me as I type. I can see my dad's shop out the window, snow covers the ground and low clouds threaten more. A little greenery brightens my table, a Chinese evergreen stem in an old glass bottle. My heart-topped latte is almost gone.
I already feel behind as February begins to run us over, but January was a good month. It started with a couple quiet weeks as I recovered from my gum surgery. I got my stitches out a couple weeks ago, and the periodontist admitted that this was a hard graft and she was worried it would fail - but alas, I healed just fine! I attribute my good results to God's grace. My ability to follow rules also came in handy. The only recovery rule I broke was to gently clean the nearby teeth with a rubber tip tool (without touching the gums), which I think could have only helped the healing process.
The second half of January somehow ended up being uncharacteristically busy, and we could barely get in two days of our normal homeschool routine together, but all for good reasons, like visiting with our dear out-of-town friends! I am very happy that I pushed a little hard on the bookwork last fall, because we have room in our schedule and curriculum to have some lighter days. The kids seem to have adjusted to our more rigorous schedule this year, and are actually getting through their subjects more easily than the did in the fall. I'm so happy that we are mostly past that little rough patch!
Our weekends have been full too. One weekend was filled with an 80th birthday party for my great-aunt, complete with an Elvis impersonator! He was actually very good, and even the kids asked to listen to Elvis music afterward. My sister and I went through about a year of being a die-hard Elvis fans as teenagers, and when I told my aunt this, she declared that everyone should go through an Elvis phase! I agree with that. If you want to have an Elvis phase, you can start with listening to this album and renting one of his movies - I like Blue Hawaii.
The next weekend my parents took us on our annual snowmobiling trip. My dad has quite a collection of snowmobiles, and it is so generous of my parents to share them with us! The snow has been a little weird this year - there have been several good snows to build a good snowmobiling "base" (the feet of snow above the ground on the trail), but instead of nice dry powder, the snow has been heavy and wet. My dad suspects that if the snow quality is any indication, spring may come early this year.
Our time has also been filled with taking a light school day to help Derek prepare for a nerf war for the 3rd-6th grade boys at our church (he helps lead events for that age group with some other guys from our Sunday school). Preparing for a nerf war might sound simple, but it's actually alot of work. We all spent a couple hours taping together and setting up box towers and barricades, and then taping them all to the floor. This event is THE event for the elementary boys in our church, and my middle son has been looking forward to it for months!
Next weekend will be my oldest son's birthday and a daddy-daughter dance at church (which is THE event for my girls). After that, perhaps things will slow down, but who is to say?
I'm also looking forward to Valentine's Day next week - I have been attempting to print up a little photo album for each of my kids to give to them each Valentine's Day, but I am running short on time this year. It may be an abbreviated album, but I am hoping to still get one together. It's always bittersweet for me to organize photos from the past year or two and see with fresh eyes how much my kids have grown. But it's a labor of love, and I think my kid appreciate it. I also found some adorable valentine printables that I am using from this blog, and we may try to grab a few books from our Valentine's favorites list.
January was a fairly good reading month for me - I made alot of progress in some of my books, but I finished fewer than I would like. I am going to attempt to do a quarterly book round up on the blog here, but you can keep up with some of the books I'm reading on Instagram too! I am still attempting to read one Puritan book a month (harder than it sounds), but would like to spend more time listening to audiobooks this year, and less listening to podcasts. We will see if that increases my book counts at all.
I have more photos of Dot coming up shortly, but our sweet little puppy is doing well! Lulu has mostly accepted her, and will even let her snuggle with her now, though their playing has gotten a little rough here and there and we have to break it up. They would play together all day if we let them, but I don't want their wrestling to turn into a grudge match! It's very mood-lifting though, to have both of them snuggle up together on my lap. If you have the winter blues, I recommend adding a puppy to the mix.
I'm going to attempt to re-instate these chatty posts bi-weekly, so we'll catch up again in a couple weeks! In the meanwhile, Happy (early) Valentine's Day!
Post a Comment