Winter Wednesday

[OKay]

coffee time!

pant
Pant
Pant

Caring for little ones is the best workout! bend, stretch, lift, run, squat, repeat repeat repeat 10000 times a day!

DGD11months is down for morning nap
DGS5 and LO are playing digital games. They have been running and playing full speed for 2 plus hours. I told them they need to sit down and play quietly for a bit so DGD can sleep (and so Nana can sit down a moment, relax, regroup and sip a cup of coffee!)

Weather here is warm (high 60's) and it is raining. NO complaining about receiving much needed rain, but just the fact that it means the backyard is not available to play in today. The boys are willing - they begged to play in the rain and said I could give them an umbrella to stay dry.

I managed to cook breakfast for everyone and get the dogs in/out without setting off any alarms today. PROGRESS!!

[blessedw2]

cheering on all!!!

my focus is moving towards working on the house.

[Elizabeth]

It's another crazy day in Elizabeth-land. This is my last morning with DD9 and we ran late, getting her to daycare only 5 minutes before the van left for school. I should have just taken DD to school and delivered the things in my car there, but I didn't think of it until too late. I got everything done on my crazy list from yesterday. I did not feed XDH's dog chinese food! Last night's rain removed all remaining snow and the ice on the road near my house. I had a nice surprise from payroll - a bonus! I still need to figure out the gifts for people in town. I wrote out my schedule for today. I have to deliver stuff to DD's school, get DD to the dentist and to a performance, and between those get her dinner. I want to sleep for about a week! At payroll, I need to read documentation and make a list of things I need to experiment with to understand better.

[Harriet]

Weather - A headline here today is that there will not be as much money available (from various sources) to help the poor with heat. So perhaps there is a blessing in this not-so-winter-yet. Were we to have a really devastatingly cold December, life could become very hard for some. Selfishly - I planned a long sleeve top for the party Sat and there's no time to change now, so come on cold. From learned wisdom - "without hard freezes that last the average for an area, insects come back unusually strong the next summer" - anyone think there's any truth to that? that from my dfirstmil93.

China - Sigh. My dear aunt who was my mom's twin set a lot of store by china and that's why my grandmother's few pieces grew at my aunt's insistence into a huge bunch (does china come in bunches - I think so) and why my own mother had so much of her pattern. I believe all this was done to impress others, not because of a love of the china. And so I've got all of it now. One, count'em, one meal on any of it in the last 2 if not 3 decades, and ya'll heard about that last Thanksgiving. But it sure does take up a lot of space. All our children ask us NOT to get it out - it does tend to be a party pooper and dd33 is nervous about her boys near it.

My glaring gift gaps are for the older grandboys, but I suppose I have time. We are struggling here with when to exchange gifts within close family. This weekend will be taken up by the HUGE responsibilities around dfirstil's party, an hour away, and dd33's family coming as houseguests because of that. They will drive 10 hours minimum within 24 hours, so want close family to postpone time together until later. Unfortunately, later probably means a couple days after Christmas, since they want to be at their own hearth Christmas day.

Up late and then up early to get dd13's nasty awful no-good very bad annual s-c-i-e-n-c-e f-a-i-r p-r-o-j-e-c-t (eeeewww, yuck) commitment done. I cannot STAND those things. Every year she works so hard, so hopefully, passes it by us as we squint at the syllabus for any "i"s to dot or "t"s to cross and still she gets a modest grade and an unclear explanation about not meeting the requirements on the... ... syllabus! Last year she didn't include photos, which she must not have had space for since there were so many photos covering up the tri-fold. I think science fairs are graded by leprechauns. They really deserve all volcanoes - at least a kid could go out with a bang.

[helia]

Good morning! I may work here today. I see we're not the only ones with different weather. We're having rain today too. Bleh. I'd rather have snow this time of year. It's not very Christmas-inspiring. We're supposed to get into the 50s tomorrow, but then back down into the 30s on Friday.

My Mom still has farmland in SW KS, and they need good freezes (or just 1?) and some significant snow for the winter wheat crop. I think last year wasn't great on these fronts, so here's to hoping for the farmers there that this winter is better.

I am enjoying a low-key week with my Hebrew done and my moms group done. I think I'm enjoying it a bit too much, to be honest. I should be working more on Cmas prep. BUT gifts are under control. Dh is done. Kids are in progress, but at least I have ideas for all of them. 2 sets of friends in California (kids only gifts) are done; I just need to wrap gifts and put in the mail for one of them. For the other CA family, I had their gifts shipped directly to them as they suggested. My parents' gifts are almost done- just need to buy photo frames and wait for an order to arrive. Dbro. is almost done too, waiting for a delivery. May add to his package a small item still to be purchased. Friends in Austin, TX - NO idea what to get them. There's the clencher. Packages should be in the mail Friday, Saturday at the latest. We have some ideas for dfriend R and dfriend A but still need to decide and purchase them. . . .

I spent yesterday morning playing on snapfish and creating our New Year photo card!! I also tried to create avatars from my own photos with no luck. So, I have a technical question: How do I compress photos down to 6 KiB?? I've tried this in programs on my computer (paint and MS 2010) and it doesn't work. MS 2010 will at least sometimes give me an estimated number less than 6 KiB but won't do it when I press "OK" or "compress photos." I am baffled. Someone at another site suggested I try Picnik, but I had the exact same problem - the photos won't compress below 15 or so KiB. The 100 pixels x 100 pixels(or 90x90 - whatever the limit to a website is) is easy to produce. I just can't get my photos compressed. Somehow, I managed with 2 of them ages ago -- I'm not sure how I did that. Anybody know how to do this?

OK, a.m. routine is done. I took dd16 to school since ds is home sick - day 2 of a tummy bug. I think he's on the mend, though. I took dd13 to school. I shopped online and ordered a book for each of my parents. Shopped online a bit more for dfriends in Texas. Did a.m. routine. Prepped a check for the mail. Am getting ready to pay our winter property taxes.

I'll post 3 specifics next:
-update laundry
-prep property taxes for the mail
-get hay down from the garage attic for g. pigs
-wrap gifts for children of dfriends in Cali.

Love the mental picture of the 2 little ones playing together, OK. Yes, they can keep you busy, can't they!

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Harriet: can you tell dd that the only way you'll not be passing all that china onto her is if you use it now and it suffers attrition by use?!

I used my special Christmas glasses and my bone china at lunch on Sunday and one plate did get badly chipped by me dropping a glass on it while loading the dishwasher (the glass was wet from my rinsing it and it slipped from my hand onto the edge of the plates on the lower shelf.)

And, in the past, my broken gravy boat was from my wrapping the phone cord around it while talking/pacing on the phone and sweeping it off the counter. I can't remember how I broke the tray to the other gravy boat, but I did.

In fact, the only piece that was not broken by me was the stem off a wine glass by ds and he wasn't being careless, it was just an accident, he was holding it carefully as he cleared the table for me, turned to answer a question from someone and the stem was below the top of the table and his hand above the table top and it was sliced off by the motion of his turn. I don't even like the pattern so the remaining ones are stored in the back of a cupboard and I bought cheap plain glass ones to use instead.

About 10% of my mom's precious things were chipped or patched back together so I come by this carelessness honestly. But I'd rather use things and have them break, than not use them and watch them be turned over to Goodwill when I have to downsize. If that's what is going to happen (and in 80% of the cases I know of, no family member has wanted the mother's precious china and crystal), then I can't see the use of hanging onto things now.

Use it or lose it. But don't store it.

The basement pantry cupboard is all done and looks lovely. I'm glad I took the time to go through everything, I had no idea of all the stuff that was stored there. I didn't toss much food (only some microwave popcorn) but I did get some tins I was storing out of there. No need to keep them since I'm not using them. I do have one extra cookie tin which I'll use for the cookie exchange.

I found 32 plastic Christmas glasses so I'll pull those out for the Boxing Day party and not have to wash as many glasses after. I tidied up enough that I made room for all the cases of soda I bought yesterday. Then I crossed everything I have on hand off my HGP grocery list. I need to buy some frozen juices, dip, cheezies and plum sauce but then I'm done the long-term shopping list. And we are close enough to Christmas that the short term list is partly done too.

Now to turn some of the ingredients there into Christmas baking!

[Nancy]

Breakfast is over.
Pumpkin smoothie & v-8
Dgd is happily watching the latest new to us Franklin video. =D She came prepared with snacks
and her favorite blanket today. No nap yesterday so it might be a nap day today here.
H. is resting after his hard day at the job site framing.
Snow is not in the forecast until tomorrow 1", air inversion is still in effect.

I'm feeling better found the source of mold and got that out of here some of the pumpkin seeds
were not drying so I spread them out and took out the offenders.

I am glad I got the Christmas dishes they will go in the microwave, I still use the china at Turkey day when the family is over as it matches we had mix and match silver & plastic ware this year.
I need more of the Christmas tree dishes have not found it so got plain plates to mix in as I'm 4 place setting sort of the 12 that we need.

[Elizabeth]

I just found out about one more activity that DD is supposed to be at tonight. A girl scout party. I have told them we can't make it.

My XMIL had an interesting idea with fine china. She has a set of unmatched china - no two pieces are alike. She can use them anytime, throw them in the dishwasher, etc. If one breaks, no one can tell.

[blessedw2]

hello, I got rid of my china (or it got rid of me. some broke). Now I have all white dishes no design as it is to find and I can add color where ever it is. my special pieces I love are on display and I no longer use them, some times. I only keep things I love now. If they break they break, I give kid plates to younger children. no worries for parents.

heading off to do an errand, dining room straightened.

[Sadie]

Hello Dear Ladies,

Didn't make it here in the morning.

Another gloomy day here, temps are actually warm, it's in the 50's but there is rain off and on and dark clouds.

Got my dailies done and then I vacuumed so can mark that off my weeklies.

No china here for me either. I find chinet (paper) works great for holiday dinners and other times we use corelle plates which can be used in the microwave or left in a warm oven and washed in the dishwasher.

Dmom lost her mother at the early age of 9 and she was shuffled from family member to family member so not much to pass down from any earlier generations.

Going to surf the net for awhile, then it is work day for me.

Have a wonderful Wednesday all!