Ruby's Mii

This is what you get when you let your four-year-old design her own Mii. Yes, that's a beard.

Merry Christmas!!!

The Halls are Decked

Well, the kids and I managed to get the tree decorated on Friday. Finally. We've only had the thing sitting in the living room since Monday. I love it. It's pretty.

Ruby and I draped a lighted garland across the mantle, we hung the stockings, and put up random other little decorative things here and there. We didn't put everything out. Just didn't feel like it. It looks nice the way it is. The kids each have a little miniature tree with miniature ornaments. That way they can mess with and rearrange their own tree without playing with the big tree.

Christmas shopping is done, just need to put a few things together, finish stuff, etc. and get it all shipped out.

Wednesday is baking day, when we'll make baked treats for the people on the baked treats list. I'd rather do it on the weekend, but the kids' teachers are on the baked treats list.

Saturday is the church Christmas party, Sunday is Christmas with Becah day and Tuesday the 23rd, Granny B and PapaJohn arrive. I'm hoping they'll want to attend the Broadway Christmas concert at the Oakland temple, but I don't know. I'm pushing for it.

We're also hoping to go ice skating in Yosemite when they're here. It will all depend on the weather and how the mountain roads are.

Should be a nice relaxing Christmas. Once I get all the projects finished!

Christmas Decorations

Well, things are going pretty slowly in terms of getting the house decorated for Christmas. I'm a big fan of getting the decorations out the day after Thanksgiving. I love Christmas decorations and love having them up. Makes the whole place more festive.

This year, John hung up icicle lights outside along the roof line. They look really nice. There were already hooks on the house when we moved in, so all he had to do was hang the lights. After getting the proper number of strings together, and getting the lights on a timer, they come on by themselves and turn themselves off. It's so nice. I hung wreaths on the gables of the house and one on the door. So, outside, the house looks great.

As for inside, all we have is a bare tree, which has been in the house since Monday night. We went after John got home and managed to pick one out quickly and everyone is happy with it. It's a Turkish Fir, and it's very pretty. Squig named it Robert Christopher, but Ruby didn't like that name, so she named it Aleena. They fought over it for a while until I threatened to feed it through a chipper and use it for mulch. Now they just each call it a different name. My kids are weird.

That's all. Just a bare tree. We've been so busy in the evenings with homework, piano and scouts that we haven't had time to do the decorations. I think tomorrow I'll get the lights out and do them myself. Then we can throw on the ornaments after the kids get home from school. If I get them all out and unwrapped it shouldn't take very long. It's all the unwrapping and finding that takes a while.

I wish the kids got out of school earlier in December so they could help get everything put up. We have a really long Christmas break (Dec. 19 is the last day of school and they go back Jan. 20th) but it's at the wrong time. They're so busy that they can't be a part of that until it's too late to do it. I hate it. Then we have most of the month of January with nothing to do. I think this weekend, even though John will be gone, that we'll just get everything put up and watch all the Christmas shows I've been recording because they're on after the kids should be in bed.

John misses out on decorating for Christmas every year. Sadly, it's his busy travel time. He takes off almost two weeks every year right around Christmas, so he can be home for Christmas. With four company holidays and two weekends, he can take three vacation days and be home for 11 days straight. It's great. Then he has to leave again right after the new year. But we manage. It will be a nice break.

When we eventually get everything decorated, I'll try and post some pictures.

Ice, ice, baby

Just sitting here with the news on in the background when I hear the weather and the lady says that it's going to drop below freezing tonight. Gah! This is the first I've heard of it! I need to pull my citrus trees in, which means I'll have to wake John up. He's not going to be happy.

Weather.com says it's only going to be 37 degrees tonight. What to do, what to do? 30 vs. 37. Doesn't seem like much, but it could be the difference between losing my oranges and lemons and not losing them.

I don't have any heaters, fans or smudge pots around. I should stop typing and figure out what I need to do.

High Expectations

So, every morning after we drop Sam off at school, we drive past the crosswalks with the crossing guard, who just happens to be the school librarian. It is the highlight of Ruby's morning to wave to Mrs. N. and blow kisses back and forth. Last week Mrs. N. was not there, and Mrs. S. was filling in.

The first day that Mrs. S. was out there, Ruby waved and Mrs. S. waved back, and Ruby said, "Well, that was different!"

This morning Mrs. N. was back and all was right with the world.

Some Pictures

I finally got the cables for the camera and I'm finally getting the pictures loaded off the camera and I'm finally posting the pictures. I'd write a big old thing about each of these, but I'm not going to. Here are the pictures. Enjoy them.

First up, Sam's first award at a Cub Scout Pack Meeting. He got his computer belt loop and a flag football belt loop. Now all he needs is a belt. Everyone is dressed up as a book character because that particular pack meeting was Book Character Day and they had a reading celebration and played book-themed games. Ruby won the award for best girl costume. She was The Strawberry from The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear. I dressed as the mom from Blueberries for Sal, Squig dressed as Sophie from The BFG, and Sam was Sam-I-Am from Green Eggs and Ham. I forgot to take a picture of all of us together.

Here's Ruby with the book:


Sam getting his awards:


Next up: Halloween. I'm not a big Halloween celebrater. Seems like a whole lot of work for just one day. So, generally I don't decorate. Last year I put out a couple of electric pumpkins someone gave us, but I couldn't find them this year (they were in a "safe" place in a cupboard, I found them a week after Halloween), so I just put out a little scarecrow I made years ago. Ruby was not satisfied with that and she made her own decoration. She made a monster's foot. Complete with toes. It's a sock over a bobble head soccer trophy with barrettes for toes. It was so cute. I put it in the window next to the front door.


We went with low-key costumes this year, too. Sam and Ruby wanted to be aliens. Ruby wanted to be a green alien and Sam wanted to be blue. I couldn't find a blue sweatsut, so he had to be green, too. A package of googly eyes, some green eyeshadow, a can of green hairspray, and we were good to go! They were happy.


Squig wanted to be a blonde vampire. Another low-key costume. I'm trying to think of a plan for next year that will avoid costumes all together. Bribery with lots of candy might work. Any ideas would be gratefully accepted.



Moving right along the holiday scale, next up is Thanksgiving. First we have a picture of the first turkey thermometer, which melted. I've had this thing for years. I tried a new recipe for the turkey and it had the turkey in for 1/2 hour at 500 degrees, which I think was too much for the thermometer. Thankfully, the grocery store was still open, so John found one made to go to 600 degrees oven temp.


Here's a picture of the finished product. Nice.



A photo of the table, all nicely set.


And a picture of the food spread. That wasn't everything, that was just what was ready when I took the picture.


And those are all the pictures for now. I'm still learning the ins and outs of this camera, so a lot of my pictures aren't as nice as I'd like. I'll post pictures of the lights on our house and some of our trip to the caves, most of which didn't turn out (pictures in low light are not working out well, I need to figure that out.)

This Picture Speaks For Itself

Best. Relief. Society. Activity. Ever.

We have a games activity group that gets together to play games. Board games, whatever.

Tonight we played Rock Band. And I was awesome.

It was so much fun. I Rocked!

Tutoring Update

Miss A., the girl I tutor in Chemistry, just called me to let me know that she got an 86 on her stoichiometry test. Woohoo! She said she would have gotten in the 90's except she made some calculator errors. It happens. She said her teacher said she went too fast, but her work was incredible! That's fantastic. I'm so happy.

A Proud Moment

As some of you know, I'm tutoring a high school student in Chemistry this year. She's not the most scientifically minded individual, and this kind of stuff does not come to her easily. She definitely struggles, and she does have to work hard.

We're doing Stoichometry, which is taking a whole bunch of skills that she's learned up until now and combining them and mixing them up. Balancing equations, significant figures, atomic mass, molar mass, moles, molar volumes, unit conversions, etc., etc.

Anyway, we met yesterday and it just wasn't going well. We worked until she was picked up and I told her that I'd meet with her while Meghan had her piano lesson the next day (today). Apparently, she went after school for more help from her teacher, and by the time I met with her this afternoon, she actually had the whole thing down!

I made up a few practice problems, which she flew through. Then I made it a little harder by adding a couple of extra factors to consider and she just laughed and did it right off!

I was amazed. I'm really proud of her. She was so happy. She called up one of her friends to come over and study with her because her friend is struggling and she knew she could teach it to her. They have a little test tomorrow with ten problems. I'm sure she'll be able to do it!

This just makes me happy. If you can master stoichiometry, you can pretty much do anything in chemistry. She might just pull off an A this semester! Next semester we do gas laws and such, so I anticipate some difficulties there, but I really feel we've gotten over the biggest hurdle.

Whew!

A Nice Little Hello

So, I guess a few people have found my blog. Hello to you. I've mostly been writing to myself, so don't expect too much out of my blog. It is what it is.

Pea Soup Fog

It was foggy all day today. Usually the sun comes out and the fog burns off. Today it just hovered all day. It was a soggy day with the mist just hanging around and dripping off of the trees. So annoying. Everything is wet and drippy. Not wet like when it rains and there's enough water for the water to sheet off, but everything is coated in a very fine, fine mist.

My tomatoes will probably rot now. It's just that time of the year. Tomorrow I'll go out and pull off any that look like they'll make it. As soon as I can after that, I'll pull up the plants. Poor tomatoes.

Some of the little groundcover plants around the pool equipment have started to go moldy. I hate that. I'm not sure if a good hot sunny day will take care of it, or if it's something more serious.

Here's hoping for some sun tomorrow!

Home Improvement Day

Today I did some work around the house. John put up Christmas lights this weekend, which said on the box to only put three sets together. He put four. There is a little fuse inside the plug of each one and it keeps blowing out. I replaced it once, but I'm going to have to split them and use another extension cord. I put them on a timer so they'll automatically come on and go off, but since they keep blowing the fuse, they don't really need the timer. Tomorrow I'll add the extra extension cord and replace the fuse again.

Then I put weatherstripping around the front door. It's the most leaky door ever. I pulled off the old, worn, useless stripping and put in new. Some spots needed a double thickness. Now the front door is pretty tight and hard to open. Along the bottom I put in a new sweep and discovered that the old one had been cut along the bottom edge, which is why it didn't work. Why they didn't just attach it higher, I will never know. The new one slides nicely along the threshold and then-pop, off the end of it, leaving a nice little gap. I need to get the kind that runs along the underside edge of the door to get a proper seal. I also made some progress toward sealing off the gap between the stationary part of the sliding glass doors and the wall. Big huge gap there. I found some foamy rope that I could stuff in there. I'll caulk around it and that should do the trick.

What we really need to do is replace the whole door. I think we'd save enough in utility bills to pay for the thing in one winter!

Figured out an excellent solution for the Squig's Christmas present. With Sam's big fancy present I won at the raffle, we have the dilemma of wanting to get the other two something nice, but obviously can't afford to spend what his present is worth. You'll just have to wait until Christmas to hear what we figured out. It's perfect and she'll be happy.