Pixiemom

Yeah, I’m the sick one. No one to be sick with me. All my kids have recovered and are very active. I was well enough yesterday to do what I needed to do at church and then after lunch, I just started feeling kind of dizzy and yucky. I went to bed and have hardly left it since. I am drained of energy, my throat is on fire, and my head is stuffed full of anything but coherent thought. I keep sneezing and I don’t know where Jeremy hid the kleenexes with Vicks on them. I guess I’ll be okay with regular ones. I took some ibuprofen and it helped take care of my headache, but my throat doesn’t want to give up it’s fiery-ness.

In other news, the kids did very well with their special song yesterday. I love how young children are not afraid to sing out loud. I really got a kick out of one little boy who just turned 4. He couldn’t remember all the words, so he kind of slurred the first of the words and came in on the words he knew at the top of his voice. Noelle refused to sing, but she stood up there and swayed. No pushing. I know some kids will be like that and if they don’t want to get up in front of everyone, I’m not going to make them. The children’s Praise Dance team did fairly well too. My kids were kind of nervous about it because they hadn’t been able to practice on Wednesday since they were home sick, but they did good and I’m happy with it. Jeremy was happy to be at church again after missing a lot of last week and enjoyed the evening service Bible Study. I would have loved to have gone. I’m really enjoying our studies in the book of Joshua. I enjoyed reading it myself when I started my “read through the Bible” thing. (I’m through the old testament, just have new to go.) I learned a lot then, but reading it through again with others to share with really helps me to see more. It’s amazing how much more comes out with the perspective of others mixed in with my own. I really missed the time last night, but I doubt I would have enjoyed it with my head feeling like this.

That’s what I’m going to be doing for a little while… sewing. I went out and bought material for dresses for each of the girls. I found a pattern to make James a vest and a skirt pattern that I like for myself. I also found a capri and top pattern for the girls for summer. I plan on getting the material for those later. Amie found a quilt package that has ballerinas on some of the material that she liked, so she bought half of it. I am still in the process of washing the material I bought, but Amie’s came pre-washed with instructions to NOT wash before cutting and sewing, so we started on hers. We cut out all the pieces and sewed together a few strips. We’ll sew two more strips together today. I’m not sure when exactly we’ll get done, but she’s enjoying this even after getting her fingers pricked multiple times while pinning two pieces of material together. As soon as the dress material is out of the dryer, I’ll start on cutting them out. These are the first dresses I’m attempting. I hope I don’t have to pull out too many seams.

That was what Amie said when I said something about her doing her homemaking schoolwork. She made hotdogs for dinner. Jeremy cooked beanless chili and I made homemade french fries and chedderwurst. After dinner, she mixed up some brownies which are in the oven right now. She did these all herself including putting them in the oven which is something she has been fearful of. The only problem we have is that the nob on our oven is gone, so we have a bit of trouble figuring out if we have the correct temperature. I realized it was not high enough when we took a check just a minute ago, so I have adjusted it and we’ll see how it goes.

Jeremy and I have discussed that when the kids are old enough, they will have at least one day every other week in which they must plan and fix a meal. Because Amie is showing such an interest in cooking and baking, we are talking about letting her have one day a month right now to do this. She has learned how to make hotdogs, mac n cheese, tuna casserole, and is interested in learning more, so this will give her a chance.

EDIT: Yummy! They came out so delicious!

Please, melt the 8+ inches of snow still left outside here. I am tired of shoveling our sidewalk and having snow jackets, hats, mittens, scarves, and boots all over my living room drying out. My kids all have two pairs of hats and mittens, which is good because they would go out and play and then come in and take off the wet/cold stuff and then later when we needed to go somewhere, they would have a dry pair to put on. I made them use the store bought ones to play because they would get really dirty and the ones made by my mom for when we were going to church or the store or wherever. They would still throw snowballs and stuff when outside, but the mittens didn’t get all dirty and they helped keep hands warm until our van would heat up (if there was enough time for that, most stuff around here is within 5 miles of us and only takes up to 15 minutes at the most to get to.)

The kids have enjoyed the snow and aren’t wanting it to go away. They were excited last night when it was snowing again (5 inches came down in 3 hours on top of the 9 inches we already had). It is pretty when it’s coming down, but I just don’t like being stuck here at the house so much. This morning, I refused to drive Jeremy to the train station because I am not one who enjoys driving on snow. He drove himself, so I’m without the van, but we have only had one vehicle most of the time we’ve been married, so it is something I’m used to. Anyway, I had no where to go right now, unless I wanted to do the last of our grocery shopping with all five kids and that doesn’t appeal to me at the moment.

On a better note, Sunday was mostly a good day. I enjoyed some good discussion in Sunday School. I did better this time with leading the congregational singing and directing the choir special. I was more prepared this time than I had been a few weeks ago. The choir director had been sick, so I was ready in case she still was (she was feeling fine, but had no voice yet.) The pastor had a really great sermon on Luke 4:1-13 (Jesus in the desert being tempted by Satan) and Hebrews 4:15-16 which I wrote a post on a few weeks ago. Later, after a lunch at the Chinese restaurant and a rest time, we were back at church for another good feeding of Biblical teaching. We are studying Joshua on Sunday nights and a book on leadership (will have to find out the title for you.) We were in the book last night and talked about our motivation for being leaders in the church and how we handled different things that came up. We didn’t make it through the whole chapter we were on, but that was okay. The fellowship of talking about it was refreshing. It is good to get this. The down part of Sunday was the Patriots loss of the Super Bowl. *sigh* Oh well. It’s just football. I wish I could have seen the game. It sounded like a great game and since we don’t have TV, Jeremy pulled up a radio stream on the internet for me to listen to. James was trying to listen and figure out what was going on, but couldn’t follow it too much. After the game, I got on Facebook and did a bit of racing my (fluff)pet, Little Samson. He had won a bronze trophy now, so that made up for the Super Bowl disappointment.

Today, I’ve just done regular stuff, dishes, laundry, and so on. I also had to go out and shovel the walk of it’s snow with slush underneath, so the mail lady can walk up to our mailbox easily. The slush was heavy, so I guess this was my shoulder exercises for today. I can’t do my weights after that or my shoulders will be overworked. Anyway, there you are… an update to today.