Wind warning!

Last night the National Weather Service issued both a "tornado watch" and a "wind warning." Though I understand that both statements were warranted, I couldn't help but feel it was a little redundant. In fact, it made me snicker.

While watching for tornadoes, I usually expect things to be a bit windy—but thanks for the warning!

It was rather windy last night. The rain was coming at us in horizontal sheets. It was noisy and the trees were blowing like crazy.

When we woke up this morning I peeked out the window and saw a foreign object resting on the fence.

"Looks like a branch blew down," I said to Andrew.

I hadn't yet put my glasses on so he clarified the situation for me. "A whole tree fell over, not just a branch," he told me.

Yes, I see that now:

Verbose

Very rarely can I talk a lot—one on one I feel like I'm a decent conversationalist but if you throw even one more person into the mix I clam up. Writing though has always been a comforting outlet for me. Perhaps that's because no matter who my intended audience is, whether it be one person or tens of people, the actually writing is always one on one. Me and my keyboard (and in the past, me and my pen/cil).

Andrew's also a writer, and not a pithy one, either. Our biggest task each semester, it seems, is carving his papers down to fit within the word count or page number limits of any given assignment. Okay, so perhaps that's not his biggest job but it probably is one of my biggest jobs (at least as far as his PhD program goes...you know, aside from raising children all day).

Rachel has a journal that she writes in fairly regularly during the week. She hands it in on Friday and her teacher reads it and comments in it. I had a similar assignment all throughout elementary school and my entries were always relatively lengthy. They started out short, of course, when I was just learning how to put my thoughts onto paper but as soon as I figured out how to get the words out of my brain they just kept on coming. Last night, Rachel made a breakthrough. She started writing and filled up an entire page and a half in her journal, which is rather impressive for a five-and-a-half year old.

My favourite part, I think, is slogging through her creative sound-it-out spellings.

Talks in Primary

Way back in November (on the 25th) Rachel gave a talk in primary. She was asked last minute but eagerly accepted the task, running off to get a pencil and some paper the minute I told her about it. Her topic was "I can prepare now to serve a fulltime mission" and she knew exactly what she wanted to say.

Here's her cover page:

Rachel's talk

Babar & Bizet: Teething at the Symphony Orchestra

A few days ago we were offered tickets to attend a kid-friendly concert at a local high school. Naturally, I accepted them as quickly as I could. So late this afternoon when the girls had finished their afternoon ballet session we headed over to the high school to hear the Durham Symphony Orchestra perform their program called, "Babar and Bizet."

Before (and after) the show they had an "Instrument Petting Zoo," provided by a local music shop. A bunch of instruments were on display and the kids were allowed to try them out. The girls were rather interested in this pink ukelele...

Everything I need to know in life I learned from Laura Ingalls

This morning after the girls found out ballet was cancelled they had a "home lesson," led by Rachel, since they were already in their ballet clothes. They went over some of their positions and then remembered...snow! So they quickly got dressed and then bundled up to go outside, where the ice/snow we'd gotten was rapidly melting away.

Snowy stuff

When I was in a linguistics class in college, we began to discuss that myth that "Eskimo" languages have over 100 words for snow when in reality every culture/language/people who deal with a lot of snow tend to have a lot of words for it. The professor asked if anyone knew any other terms for snow and I scored mega points with the TA for suggesting "corn."

"You snowboard?" he asked.

"No."

"Ski?"

"No."

"How do you know corn then?"

"Canadian."

"Ahhhh..."

Canadians also have over 100 words for snow. I'm pretty sure that down south they have, like, three.

Okay, so I'm not actually sure where I picked up the term, though I do believe it was in science in grade nine—that Mr. Whatwashisname did some great lectures. (And seriously...what was his name? Also, where is my brain? I used to remember everything. Now it's a good memory day if I remember to buckle all three kids' seat belts).

I've dealt with a bit of snow in my life. Too much snow, really.

Today I saw something a bit different. We had an ice storm, sure—everything was covered with a thin layer of ice (see fig. 1—Andrew's motorcycle scooter cover, which wasn't blowing in the breeze because it was encased in ice).

fig. 1

Sharing is hard

So, this is kind of how my kids share:


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Miriam just can't let Benjamin do his thing with his toys. He has to do things her way. Even when they're not playing together.

I'm pretty sure she learned that from Rachel.

Anyway, here he is playing after I told Miriam to leave him alone (for crying out loud!). He's awesome at the shape sorter...when the lid's off.

Whoa! A pentagon! I'm the luckiest boy!

That Winter Weather

As pellets of ice begin to drop from the sky, I have to wonder about the sanity of whoever's calling the shots regarding snow days out here. Last week, if you recall, a snow day was called on Thursday night due to the possibility of snow. And snow it did, but the amount we got was laughable (and the roads were bone dry by mid-morning). Granted, things were pretty slick when we first got up at the crack of dawn to play in the "snow," so I gained a little understanding of how southern snowstorms could be dangerous—everything turns into ice.

Today school is still in session, though they'll be releasing the kids early, hopefully before the worst of it hits. It's not supposed to really start storming until between noon and two. They're letting kids out at 12:30. This storm is supposed to be a big one.

So I just wonder why on an actual stormy day the kids are still going to school, whereas on a sunny, calm, post-storm, de-iced day school was cancelled...all day. I don't know. It seems like a bad call to me. If I were the one making the shots I'd have done a two-hour delay for last week (which still leaves the option to cancel school) for sure. As for today, I'm thinking, for the most part, that having a half-day is a good call...but we'll see how stormy it gets before Rachel gets home.

It might be a little unfair for me to make these calls with hindsight before me. I imagine it's a difficult decision to make.

I'm not sure how this storm will be. They just had an ice storm in Utah and I saw videos of kids ice skating on the BYU campus sidewalks. I brought my ice skates out here (but I think we left the kid ice skates at my mom's house (if the roads are ice-skatable Rachel will never forgive me)) so that could be fun to try. We used to do that on icy roads when we lived in Canada—though usually just in our boots (I don't recall ever doing it in skates).

I'm interested to see what an ice storm is like...though the prospect of being without power for a week is daunting (our home teacher lives up the street and has a generator and has invited us to spend some time over there if needed though).

Will work for ice cream

I've been looking for a new way to motivate my dear children to pull their own weight around here. We had a way that worked...for a month a half...until the holidays kicked in and then we gave up trying for a while because there was too much going on. Last night I jumped on pinterest—something I haven't done in ages—and found some cute ideas for chore charts.

I took the ice cream idea from here (but I just made my own instead of printing it) and the chore cards from here. I put it together when the kids were in bed and showed it to Miriam first thing in the morning. One of her chores for today was "get dressed" and for the first time in a long time we didn't have to argue about it (she lived in her pyjamas when everyone was sick and apparently that wasn't a habit she wanted to break). After she got dressed she ran and grabbed the broom so that she could do another chore. She finished 5 out of her 6 chores before lunch!

Where the grickle grass grows

My friend Geri posted a little Valentine's Day craft she made and I thought we could make that! It's cute, elegant, colourful, festive, easy. Yes, we could totally do that!

So a couple of days ago after Rachel was home from school we sat down to make some pompoms together. And then we went out and collected some sticks and glued our pompoms on the ends of them (using white glue, which worked just as well as hot glue, I think). And then Rachel declared, "I know what we're making—we're making Truffula trees!"

And just like that my vision of a cute, elegant, colourful, festive, and easy craft lost the adjective 'elegant.' It was now just a cute, colourful, festive, and easy craft.

The girls turned it into a Dr. Seuss habitat—complete with Barbaloots, Humming Fish, Swomee Swans, and The Lorax, himself. (As well as some Harry Potter themed Truffula Trees (ra! ra! Gryffindor!))