This little baby is my new Best Friend. 

It is a bag full of dried lavender and some grainy substance (wheat, rice, I can't tell) that stays hot when you heat it in the microwave.  I use it to warm my poor freezing feet during the cold, cold winter.

We have a stupid, archaic heating system in our house that once on, never turns off.  So, that means our house just keeps getting hotter and hotter and hotter until we turn off the furnace manually.  It also means that we are paying a ton of money on heating oil every winter.  So, we try to off-set this by turning off the furnace at night before we go to bed, which makes our house really cold during the night and in the morning.

And that's where my little green bag comes in.  I often heat it up and put it in my bed down by my feet, and it usually stays warm all through the night.  It also used to smell nice - like dried lavender - but after many, many uses, it now just smells like burnt grain.

This is a common sight at our house - Adam jumping to try to touch the top of the archway.  Just about every time he passes here, he makes a jump for it.  His goal is to be able to touch it before his birthday at the end of the month.  He is actually much closer than this picture shows (try as I might, I couldn't get my timing right to snap the photo at his highest point). 

Today I was looking at Jessica's hair, which falls nearly to her waist in almost perfect waves, and I remembered a time when I didn't know if she'd ever have hair at all.

This is Jess's first set of pigtails.  It took quite a lot of doing to scrape together enough hair for those two little squiggles on either side of her head.

Of course, with a mother's bias, I thought she looked beyond adorable in her scrawny, little pigtails.  And now, with that same mother's bias, I think she is stunningly beautiful with her long, shiny hair.   

Sometimes, I really love living in my Mom's World.  Nobody pop my bubble.

“One of the very few reasons I had any respect for my mother when I was thirteen was because she would reach into the sink with her bare hands - bare hands - and pick up that lethal gunk and drop it into the garbage. To top that, I saw her reach into the wet garbage bag and fish around in there looking for a lost teaspoon. Bare hands - a kind of mad courage.”

― Robert Fulghum

 After nearly 3 years here in the Land of No Garbage Disposals, I believe I have achieved super hero status.

Before Brad left 3 weeks ago for his business trip to Toronto, one of his hometeaching families gave him this remote control helicopter.  It sat in the box, in plain sight of the boys, the whole time Brad was gone, torturing them with the promise of remote-control fun.

So when the boys got home from school today and saw that Dad was home, that box was promptly ripped open and the helicopter took its maiden voyage (I'm not sure if helicopters take voyages, but it sounded good in my mind.  Let's just go with it).  At first it kind of freaked out Pepper and Luke; it makes a high-pitched whiny sound, and it's pretty small, so it resembles a very large, vicious mosquito when it gets going.  But it wasn't long before all three (four) boys were fighting over whose turn it was to control it.

Tonight after dinner, Adam had some math homework he needed to finish.  It wasn't easy, and he wasn't too happy about it.  So, he tried yawning and making exaggerated tired noises so I'd take pity on him and send him to bed.  This is him acting like he is just too exhausted to go on.

Two words:  Drama King.

Despite an Oscar-worthy performance, Adam still had to finish the homework.  Somehow, he perked right up when he was done and I let him play his DS for a few minutes before bedtime.

Today I went through Adam and Lukie's clothes, pulling out things that don't fit and basically reorganizing their closet and drawers.  When I was done, I had three garbage bags full of clothes to give away.  It felt amazing.

Because I rearranged their dresser, I put sticky notes on the the drawers so the boys would know where their clothes go.  Adam's drawer notes are boring - I just wrote the words.  But, since Lukie can't really read yet, I drew pictures of what kind of clothes go in each drawer.

My artistic ability is staggering, I know.  But, Lukie thinks I am amazing.  He ooohed and aaaahed over each of my drawings, and giggled with glee at the thought of putting his laundry away tomorrow.

We'll see how long this lasts.