Snow! And doctor!

We finally got snow, and Zane is extraordinarily thrilled. He spent hours outside building a little snow fort in our front yard, and then when i got home from work, he begged to go sledding, so we went to the park near our house. He gleefully went up and down the hill while i watched until i was freezing and went to read in the car, and after another 15 minutes, he came and said, "I'm just not having fun...." And so we were just getting ready to leave when Katrina texted and said, "I'm coming sledding!" So then we stayed for another hour or so. And as we were leaving, Zane was all, "Can we go sledding again tomorrow?!" Such a weird kid. Snow is cold!

They already called (and texted and emailed and called two more phones) to say that Zane's school is cancelled for tomorrow, for a giant snowfall that we're expected to get overnight. I half expect us to get no snow at all now, because that would be par for the course, snow-day-wise. (Terrible roads? Have school. No problem at all? Snow day.) Houston and Katrina are keeping their fingers crossed that they'll have a snow day as well.

Oh! I never wrote about Houston and Katrina's doctor visit! I mean, it wasn't anything mind-blowingly interesting for the most part. Except a couple of notes.

1. Katrina and needles. Guys. She has developed herself a full-blown phobia of needles. I intentionally didn't tell her about the doctor's appointment until the day before, because as soon as i told her, he asked, "Do i need any shots?!?" I didn't know, and so for the next 20-ish hours, she worried and freaked out and annoyed everyone around her with her worries. My friend Linda sent me a screen shot of a text conversation between Katrina and Linda's daughter Ella that went like this:

Katrina - I'M KINDA FREAKING OUT
ELLA WHAT IF I NEED A FLU SHOT?
I'M NOT EVEN THERE YET AND I'M SHAKING
HELP ME
I'M IN THE FREAKING LUNCH LINE

And so when we got to the doctor's office, i immediately asked the nurse if Katrina was going to need a shot, and if so, if she could get that first, before seeing the doctor, which is one of the very best parenting decisions i've ever made. She was an absolute disaster until the shot was finished, and the entire appointment would have been horrible if she needed to wait until the end.

On the bright side, she didn't have a full-blown panic attack like she did last time she got shots, so...yay!

2. My kids are tall. Houston is 6'2" and still growing. Katrina is 5'7" and still growing.

3. Both Houston and Katrina have phenomenal eyesight. They could both read the bottom line of the eye chart without even squinting.

4. Both kids are super healthy and completely awesome. Yay!

Winter Camp!

So after having school on the incredibly icy Tuesday last week, the kids all had a snow day on Wednesday, when the roads were completely not bad at all. I'm pretty sure that the schools all got yelled at on Tuesday, so they over-reacted on Wednesday and called it when it wasn't actually necessary. The upshot of it was that the high school's exams got moved one day back, which means that their last exams are tomorrow, which kind of sucks, because instead of having the long weekend to relax, the kids have to study.

But! It was also winter camp weekend! Houston never wants to go to winter camp, so he stayed home with Juanito while Katrina, Zane, and i headed off to Camp Geneva. Katrina was over in the high school side this year, which meant that i almost never saw her, but she had fun and was sad to leave her life group. Zane had fun too - he said that he spent almost the entire Saturday outside in the snow, which is pretty much his perfect winter day. (It snowed for the first time all winter! And Zane forgot his snowpants and boots! But he didn't care!)

Beth and my group of girls are definitely getting older and more mature, which is awesome! They're also getting more drama-filled, which is ... not as awesome. But we had a fun and exhausting time.

We got home on Sunday, and Katrina, Zane, and i all immediately took naps. I slept 3 hours. Katrina slept almost 5. I'm not sure exactly how long Zane slept, but at least a couple of hours. So yes. Fun! But exhausting!

Ice and exams

Juanito called this morning and the first thing he asked was, "Do the kids have school?!" I was all, "Um, yes. It's Tuesday?" But what i didn't know was that the roads were all icy and horrible, so it was totally a legitimate question. The did, and so Katrina and Houston headed off to school and i woke up Zane and he got all ready, and just before we were going to leave for school, we got a phone call that, "Due to inclement weather, school has been closed for today." Zane was super happy, obviously.

So the first time i went outside, it was when i was on my way to work. I knew it had been icy, but everything looked normal, so i walked down the steps, stepped onto the sidewalk, and immediately my foot slid straight down the sidewalk and i almost did the splits. And then, when i tried to get up, i totally couldn't! I tried 2-3 times, but my feet just couldn't get any purchase until finally i'd slid far enough down that i was on level ground and could get up. (If there was a video of THAT, it would be hilarious. I was totally laughing at myself.) So yeah. This was the slipperiest ice i have ever, ever experienced. I'm the girl who always mocks people on movies who can't walk on ice, because it's not THAT hard, but today? Oh yeah. Two of my coworkers also wiped out, so that makes me feel better.

Exams are this week, and with Houston, that means that I am doing a LOT of studying. I don't know why he's SO BAD at studying, but he really is! I just totally taught him a semester's worth of biology. To add to the fun, Zane has a giant math interim that counts for a giant part of his trimester grade, so i am also trying to study with him.

Here is the difference between studying with each of my kids:

Houston - Swears that he's never learned any of this in class, totally pays attention as i teach him as well as i can, goofs off in spurts, but learns quickly and tries hard.

Zane - Is miserable that he has to do work, so he does the absolutely bare minimum. Seriously - if the answer is $3.50, he will write 3.5, so yes, technically he did the math right, but DUDE. It takes an additional 1 second to add the rest of that answer! He knows math and kind of likes math, but doesn't want to actually have to WRITE anything, so he does all of the work in his head, which makes it impossible to know where mistakes are made when he gets one wrong. And did i mention that he spends 3/4 of the time being distracted so that everything takes longer? BUT he knows how to do most of it, and when he didn't understand something, he did focus really well on learning how to do it. So it's not all bad.

Katrina - Carefully spends days recopying notes and filling out study guides. Studies for everything on her own, and just has me quiz her when she already basically knows all of the answers and all i have to do is say, "Yep. Good."

I know i've said it many times before, but i hate exams. 

Books and stuff

 

The awesome thing about working at the library is that i am constantly surrounded by books, so i am constantly finding books that i want to read. For the past year and a half, i have constantly had a pile of books that i've been working my way through. I read fairly quickly, but i find new books to read even more quickly. And it's GREAT! I never have that, "What should i read now?" problem, unless it's "Which of these 8 books should i read next?"

The downside of this constant stream of books is that i haven't re-read any of my books for the past year and a half. And that's not a huge problem or anything, except that i miss reading my old books. There are certain books that i have a habit of reading every year or two - "Pride and Prejudice," "Les Miserables," the Harry Potter series - and i haven't read most of them for 3 or 4 years now. I miss my friends! (I am a dork!)

So i'm not checking out any books during January. (Except for 2 - one that i've had on hold for a long time, that just came in and if i don't check it out i'll have to wait for a long time again, and the book club book for this month.) This month - and maybe next month too - is dedicated to re-reading books in my house. So far i've been re-reading the Gallagher Girls series, and i've been completely enjoying it again.

And besides that, it's mostly been homework here. Homework, homework, and more homework. 

2019!

Happy 2019! So far it's been a fairly introvert-friendly year, and therefore has so far been a pretty great year. We rang in the new year with my parents, my sister Chellie and her kids, and Beth. We played a couple of games, ending with Catch Phrase, which was absolutely hilarious and left us all laughing like crazy, which is a pretty good way to start a new year.

Beth found an app that lets you make a movie of 1-second/day videos. And so i am going to at least try to do that this year. I am positive i'll miss days, but at the very least, this makes me take more videos of my kids, which i always mean to do and which i always forget to do. PLUS i have a better phone with a better camera now, so i can actually take video!

2018 wrap-up

Hi there! Here we are, at the end of 2018, after a year filled with my failing to blog regularly AT ALL. There's no way to actually catch up, but i WILL attempt to sum up the past year as best i can.

January: Katrina and i started making sky scarves, whereby we did one row of crochet every day, to match the color of the sky. We did pretty well, too, for half of the year, then did sort of okay for a couple of months, and then fell into "Crap...weeks have gone by and we haven't done anything...." So the second half of the scarf will not be as accurate as the first half, but it's honestly a pretty accurate representation of us.

My last living grandparent, my dad's dad, died on the 16th. It wasn't shocking, and he was 98, but it was still sad. His funeral happened to be on the same weekend that Katrina, Zane, and i were at Winter Camp with the youth group from church, but it also happened to be not terribly far away from the camp we were at, so we dashed up there for the funeral, which was kind of a weird way to do the funeral. There just wasn't as much time to think about it as i'd normally have before and afterwards. So that was...good? Bad?

February: We celebrated Katrina's 14th (!) birthday and Juanito's 46th. (How is everyone getting so old around here?!) Everyone got very tired of the cold and the snow and winter in general.

March: We celebrated Houston's 16th (!!) birthday. Katrina got her letter of acceptance into City. She also received the "Be Nice" award, because she is super nice. Houston finished building his computer made of old random computer scraps and presented it at the school's ... thing. One of the other students' project was learning how to do henna, and Katrina decided that that was the best thing ever, and she's been drawing henna-ish designs on herself ever since.

April: We celebrated Easter with the family at my parents' house. Spring break happened, and we went nowhere, but we did do a few fun things in town, including Meijer Gardens for the butterflies and the Public Museum for the Unicorns and Dragons.

May: I had my birthday and turned super old. Katrina and i (with a bit of help from others) painted the bathroom. It hadn't been painted since we painted it when we first moved in 19 years ago, and while i liked the yellow, i love the new color. Beth and i went to see U2 in Chicago, and they were amazing (as always) and it was a super fun weekend. We spent Memorial Day at my grandpa's beach, wanting to use it as much as possible before it was no longer ours to use.

June: Katrina graduated from 8th grade, which was fantastic but also super sad for her. She left behind the only school she'd ever known, along with almost all of her friends that she'd had there, some of them friends since kindergarten. The kids spent the first few weeks of summer vacation collapsed around the house, sleeping and reading and generally doing nothing much. There were days i'd come home from work at 2:00 and would have to wake Houston up.

July: My brother Rick's family came to visit for the first week, and during that week, we spent a few days at my grandparents' beach - the last days we'd ever spend there, since it stopped being "ours" near the end of July. When we weren't at the beach that week, we were all together playing cards or hanging out or shooting off fireworks.

We went to Pittsburgh for a week to spend time with our friends Travis and Brooke, who just moved there from New Zealand, and with with Karen and Amiya, who we hadn't really spent more than a few hours with since Amiya was a tiny baby.

August: We celebrated Zane's 12th birthday. Juanito's sister Phoebe and her husband Dan came to visit us for a week, along with Juanito's mother, who came for a few days. It was fun to get to spend time with Dan and Phoebe especially, because we don't get to see them much, what with them living in England and all. The kids really enjoyed getting to know their aunt and uncle better.

School started at the end of August. Katrina started high school, and somehow managed to get what i am pretty sure are the very worst teachers at City. She loves the people, but this year has not convinced her to like the school. She immediately (like, the first day) started getting loads of homework, and it has not abated one bit. Houston is a junior now, which is insane. And Zane is in 7th grade.

September: We went camping for a weekend with my parents, which was really fun except for the thirty billion mosquitoes that decided to all come out that very weekend. (It was seriously the most mosquito-y weekend of the entire year. Even people who weren't camping were exclaiming over it.)

The city came and cut down our huge, beautiful maple tree in our front yard for absolutely no reason and with no warning, and yes, i'm still a little bit bitter about that. We now have a stump, just to sit there and remind us of the tree that we used to have.

And then ArtPrize started and that was pretty much the rest of September and some of October.

October: Our cute little Kia Rio, which Juanito and i bought new back when i was pregnant with Houston, finally died completely. Juanito declared it unfixable. We were all very sad to see it go, and it was especially sad that, since it didn't run, we sold it to the junk yard, where it would just be getting smashed to bits.

Juanito, Katrina, and Houston were zombies for the zombie dash again, along with a group of friends. It was freezing and rainy, and so Zane and i were smart and stayed home and watched a movie instead, where it was warm and dry.

Halloween happened, and this year our kids were a weird horse guy (Houston), the Greatest Showman (Katrina), and a glowing stick man (Zane).

November: The second Fantastic Beasts movie came out, and we had a giant party at our house before we all went to watch the movie. Beth and Katrina did nearly all of the planning and creating, and they did a fantastic job - everything was amazing.

My parents were off on a cruise on Thanksgiving, so for the first time ever, we just did our own private Thanksgiving here at our house. It was delicious and quiet and ... kind of nice to have it be so relaxing.

December: We did lots of Christmas-y type things. My brother Rick's family spontaneously decided to come for Christmas, and so we spent the week before Christmas with family. Every day, from Monday to Thursday, we went to a different person's house - Jill, Jim, Jackie, and us - for dinner and to hang out, and then on Friday we went to my parents' house and had an early Christmas party. It was super fun and we loved seeing everyone, and by Saturday, the kids and i just completely collapsed and didn't do a single thing all day.

We opened our own presents on Christmas, and since then, Katrina (who got a ton of new books) has spent every single minute reading, and i have been begging everyone to play a game with me (mostly Ticket to Ride, which we just got and i love). The boys have spent a lot of time on screens so far, which...

ArtPrize Wrap Up

After three (long) weeks, too much of which i spent walking all over town, ArtPrize officially ended today. I love ArtPrize - mostly i love the excitement of finding something really amazing that i love, but i also kind of enjoy the joy of something just remarkably terrible. But by the end of it, when i'm down to only 10 more places left to see (out of 166), it becomes a bit of a chore, and yes i KNOW i could just quit because nobody else actually cares, but i'm so close. So anyhow, yesterday Beth and i both went to our last venue together, which just happened to be a frozen yogurt place, so we celebrated finishing with a treat. 

Today i would have completely collapsed on the couch and not moved all day, but i had to bring Katrina to her youth group's get-together, so instead i dropped her off and then sat at McD's and ate some fries and finished one book and started the next. And THEN we came home and collapsed - or rather, i collapsed and read while Katrina worked and worked on homework.

SO. I always disagree with the public (and the jury) about what the actual best things were - and i fully admit that this is only my opinion and everyone might hate what i love - but i present here what i would have put in the top of each category.

2-D

This had by far the largest number of favorite things, so i'm doing 7 instead of 5. Because it's my blog and i get to make the rules. 

This artist interviewed 20 kids and asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up and then painted them doing that. The little girl in the middle wants to be a motivational speaker, which is just the best. All of the paintings were just beautiful.

This is the solar system, with each of the planets painted to comparative size. Which is cool, but the paintings themselves were just really pretty
too.

Okay, so this guy drew the bees, crows, and goats on white paper, and they're fine, but as soon as you make it negative-ed they're amazing. And i don't even know how you figure out how to do that.

This series. Katrina and i were both like, "Hm. Those are interesting photographs," and then started walking away. And Beth was like, "Those are painted with watercolor!" And dude. They are amazing.

This is embroidery. Embroidery. It looks like a painting, and i'm sure most people were just like, "Cool painting of a panther." But WOW.

There isn't really anything particularly special about these, except that they were the first thing i saw this year that i really liked, and by the end, i still think it's just good.

I saw this on almost the last day. It's pencil and really, really detailed and just ... beautiful.

3D

I'm a little bit surprised at how many 3D things i really liked this year. Or rather - there weren't a LOT of things i really liked, but the things i did like, i really liked. And since there are 6 of them, i'm just leaving it at 6. 

This is made of porcelain. I can't even imagine how hard it was to make. But it's just really, really pretty. And it had meaning and blah blah blah. :)

This was actually the thing i would probably have chosen to win the grand prize this year. It's five life-sized wooden "Champions" - carved insanely detailed and lifelike. Floyd Mayweather has the vein showing in his temple. And the crazy wrestler dude has tiny braids intricately carved in his hair. AND the artist has only been carving anything for 10 years, and these are the first people he's ever carved. Amazing.

This is just a gorgeous wooden dress.

And this is a gorgeous cloth dress.

"Dare to Dream Big." This is absolutely what cats think they look like. It's cute and really well made.

And finally, this is just really cool both by day and by night (it lights up in different colors at night). It's interesting and different and i just liked it.

Installation

Okay, so i don't know who decides what's an installation and what's just 3D or 2D, so i'm just going by what the official ArtPrize classification was. And honestly, there's only a few of these that i actually really, really like, and in a good year, some of these would definitely not have made the grade.

These were pretty cool - by day they're reflective and by night they light up, and they make noise. The really cool thing about them was that as you walk, they change colors - not if you're standing still. Only as you move. So yeah. Interesting. But....

This i actually really liked. AND it won for its category. So yay! They're all different pieces of clothes, and each one has a snippet of overheard conversation on it. My favorite is, "Oh you said far? I thought you were saying fire with a southern accent."

What does this mean? I don't know. But it's kind of fun.

I'm not fully sure what makes this an installation, but since i'm hard-up for candidates, i guess i'm glad it is. The photographs are, well, photographs, and then the building behind it is drawn in pencil directly onto the wall.

And this is just kind of fun and happy.

Time-based

Yeah. There's just not much in this category this year. 

This guy's been doing the same thing for several years now, so it's not particularly surprising or innovative, but it IS cute and fun and makes us all stop every time we walk by (because he keeps adding new ones) and it makes us happy. So sure. It's in the top 5 in this category.

I'm sort of torn on this one. I like it? It's pretty. But most years it would be something that i'd be like, "I like that!" and then not put in my list of favorites because it would have more competition.

We actually went to most of the ArtPrize movies this year. This one - "Love, Gilda" - was our first one and also turned out to be the best one.

Aaaaand i have no idea why Blogger has suddenly decided it hates me, but FINE. I'll just put my last bit all the way down here. The machine - i wouldn't have included it, except Juanito loved it and the kids all enjoyed it, so. And the guy - he was really well done, and fun, and he put a lot of time into walking around downtown (which totally paid off for him, because he won his category). So.