We went to Niagara Falls for Thanksgiving. After 14+ hours in the car and three nights on a terrible mattress, I came home with a terribly aching back. I did lots of stretches and rolling and Advil, and by Christmas it was 90% better. Two weeks ago I got sciatica! Or at least I think it’s sciatica, based on my previous awful experience with it in 2008. Instead of months and months of physical therapy, I decided to go straight to the chiropractor, hoping for another miracle cure. After two appointments no miracles have occurred yet. :/ So far it is bad, but not emergency room bad, so I’ll keep stretching, going to the gym, going to the chiropractor, and downing the OTC drugs.
Meet Eve’s newest friends — hermit crabs! She has been talking about them for awhile, but I told her I maybe it’s not the best time to get a new pet since she’s going away this summer. Instead she talked to her bestie who offered to “babysit” the hermit crabs for a year while Eve’s away. LOL. What are besties for?!
So on Friday we went and bought some hermit crabs. She named them Herman, Sherman, and Jessica. Your guess is as good as mine as to who’s who. She’s pretty psyched though.
Lex applied to two colleges and this weekend we heard back from the first one — Worchester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). They sent him a “Welcome to the Class of 2027!” email! Things are different these days. They send an email and tell you to check the portal. The portal had the welcome letter. A few days later they sent another email directing him back to the portal for his financial aid package. I was hoping for a fat envelope with lots of information and pretty colors and stickers or something. But I guess it’s just email these days. All that aside – Lex got accepted to WPI!!!
I was really hoping he’d get in to at least one of the two schools so we didn’t have to start the whole process over again. Now we wait until February to hear back from Champlain College. 🤞🏻
https://youtube.com/shorts/BJb2wiN328Y (I just spent far too long trying to get this 7 second video to embed in this post. YouTube changed something and I can’t figure it out. So, click the link if you want to see her finding out her country assignment.)
Last fall Eve applied to be a Rotary Exchange student and today we went to a district meeting and found out her country assignment. Sweden! It was her second choice, but she is happy and already getting excited about it. She immediately started asking me lots of questions about the language (she loves languages) and I got to display my poor memory and lack of language skills. We might be relearning the language together. 😄
Tonight we went through my hope chest and found a few of my stuff from Sweden so many years ago. I have old journals I kept and my calendar book (pre digital calendar age!) and some photos and stuff.
We celebrated New Year’s Eve in the usual way, sort of. Cheetos (puffs and crunchy) and card games. B’Lake and his girlfriend wanted to play Cards Against Humanity instead of Apples to Apples, our usual NYE go-to. Eve was in for it, but Lex was not comfortable with the game (or the change, or both). We played a few rounds of CAH, then switched to A2A, but people got cranky and annoying, and we probably started too early, so we broke to our own corners for awhile. The kids plugged in to their screens and I finished a puzzle – my second this vacation! We regrouped at 11:45pm to watch the ball drop.
Then B’Lake walked his gf home and I took Huxley out for a walk, which Eve and Lex both decided to join me on. Weirdly it was a nice way to end the evening. The three of us talking and giggling and enjoying the warm evening.
Happy New Year! May 2023 bring joy, love, family, and new experiences for all. <3
Today is New Year’s Eve, so I thought I should get a Christmas update posted before we roll over into a whole new year. This year Christmas was a calm, quiet one. Covid-free. Thankfully.
We had delicious food and plenty of down time. Eve and her buddy went swimming at the hotel pool with Rose, Joyce, and Grandpa Tom. We played a round of Lex’s new Catan game. We watched a movie and did some reading. Holidays are more interesting and less chaotic as the average age in the household increases. Less childhood energy, but lovely in it’s own way. Merry Christmas y’all.
We had a pretty awesome snow storm on Friday. Started Thursday night. Snow day Friday. It snowed all Friday and into Saturday morning. Thick, heavy, wet snow. It was beautiful, but also took down TONS of trees!! Our power flickered a few times on Friday, then went out Friday night around 10:30. Our awesome Tesla Powerwall battery system kept us up and running for the rest of the night (when normal people would have just gone to bed) and all the way until noon the next day. Then it died. Sad. The internet went out sometime overnight as well. We roughed it, like in the olden days, with no video games, no Google Suite (the kids tried to do their homework), and eventually no lights. It was fun for awhile. Eve complained about being bored, then found something to do.
She’s shoveling! All on her own! I didn’t even ask her to do it. She’s also wearing the sweet new sweatshirt that Champlain College sent to Lex (and all other applicants).
Eve and I were going to go grocery shopping, but we got a mass text alert saying power was out in all of West Leb. Lex had to work so he spent some time deliberating about what to do, finally deciding to just go to work since there was nothing else to do here anyway. The power in West Leb came back mid-afternoon, so Eve and I spent some time shopping and enjoying our weekly Starbucks treats.
Home again, still no power, so we broke out all the candles we could find. Eve was in heaven! :) She and I played Uno for a long time, by candle light. Lex was at work and B’Lake talked to his girlfriend all afternoon. Good thing our cell phone batteries held out! :)
Candles, candles, everywhere. I fixed that green one post haste!
Uno by candle light.
Dog walks with the lantern. Eve was thrilled!
Lex got off work at 7pm, so we met him in West Leb for dinner at a restaurant. I was going to have him bring home take-out for us, then realized it would be more fun to eat with lights and heat. :) Halfway through dinner I got an alert that the power was back on. Yay!!
We got home and everyone retreated to their own devices. Lex and Eve realized at 10pm that they had homework due, so they are working on that now. Late night Saturday night homework. Sure to be successful. :)
When you’re stuck on your math homework but you have two math-happy big brothers eager to help.
The blog this year might be pretty Lex heavy. :) Enjoy!
Lex and B’Lake had their winter concert tonight.
The dress code is always “black on black” with kids in jazz band instructed to wear a “touch of blue.” I gave Lex an early Christmas present with a cool (IMHO) blue/gray Lego tie. He liked it well enough to wear it, which is all I can ask for. :)
Every year they honor the seniors who have been part of the music department for all four years. The band director made a really nice speech tonight about how this year’s seniors entered high school in 2019 when everything was easy breezy, then they proceeded to face every variation of band and choir imaginable. Singing/playing outdoors in the winters, performing with masks, social distancing, recording performances, live streaming, etc. Yet they stuck with it. She acknowledged how easy it would have been to quit when band/choir no longer looked/sounded the same and took a lot more work, but this year’s seniors stuck with it. It was a sweet and touching statement. Then she announced that all of these 4-yr seniors would get a snazzy fleecy zip-up!
Here is the jazz band’s final song, with many solos, including B’Lake on the flute and Lex on the vibes!
I picked Eve and Simon up from work and brought them to the concert. On the way out it was snowing and they started heel clicking. They were both doing really good heel clicks, so we thought it would be fun to get a picture of them clicking together. It didn’t go so well, but we had fun anyway. :)
I’m sitting in the waiting room of the doctor’s office while Lex has his well-child checkup. Once they hit the teen years the doctor kicks parents out for the exam portion. I’m bored and it dark out and it feels like it’s taking forever, but it occurred to me now that this might be the last time we do this. Next year he’ll be over 18 and not even here. He probably won’t need me to take him to doctor appointments any more, at least not scheduled appointments.
I can’t say I’ll miss it, but it’s interesting to think this might be the last.
