Day 21- 25 It's Almost a Habit...

It's been a busy weekend around our house.  I spent Thursday/Friday with a sick boy (Xander) but I did manage to get the rest of my doors/hardware down in my kitchen - yay!!  When Xander's sick he just likes to sit on my lap and cuddle.  It makes for unproductive days but at least I know how to make him feel better (I'm the same way when I'm sick.  I'm sure I annoyed my mom with constant requests for her just to sit on the couch with me when I was a child...).  Now Evan's getting sick but he doesn't like to be held or cuddled so I'm more at a loss with how to comfort him when he wakes up crying in the night and so on...  

Beyond the business of sick children, I also attended a Children's Ministry workshop at our church Saturday morning.  I teach 2 year olds so a lot of it doesn't apply but it was still interesting and I can even use some of it at home.  It was amusing to watch some of the leaders present various attention getting games/ideas.  Jen and Justine sure can ham it up!  

Saturday evening we went to Jason's office Christmas party.  It was just appetizers, door prizes and karaoke at a club in town.  We had a decent time and I even won a door prize.  I never win draws or things like that but I seem to have some luck at Jason's work functions.  However, the items I win are not particularly useful.  This summer at a golf function, we won some alcohol and a "party in a tub".  Now the party in a tub did come with some cups that I use but other than that it was not the most useful things.  At the Christmas party I also won a prize.  It is a dock so that you can network your printer and not have to have a computer on to use it.  This is useful in an office but not so useful at home (especially since it doesn't appear to work with USB printers, which most are now days).  However, Jason talked to the local computer salvage/building guy at church to see if he could use it and he mentioned that one of the pastors was looking for something like that.  Yay - I'm very happy that my useless door prize might actually have a useful life somewhere!  When we had desserts at the Christmas party, there were no clean forks or spoons to be found.  Jason had gotten me this really yummy chocolate mousse/ice cream thing and it was so good from my finger lick but I had no cutlery.  Jason offered to get me a knife to eat it with so I took him up on it.  It was a fairly solid dessert so it was pretty easy to eat with a table knife.  He thought that should be my picture for the day but I'd forgotten to put the little camera back in my purse so I guess it'll just have to be a story.

While I was out last night, one of the 2 year old workers from church called to say that she was sick so she couldn't work.  It was too late to call around for a sub when I got home so I just worked two services in with the two year olds.  I really don't mind but at this time of year it can be exhausting.  It's been so cold so everyone is more cooped up than usual.  Also, when spring is around the corner, you can sure tell it in little kids.  All of the kids were a little punchy today.  It was just a little louder and a little more rambunctious than usual.  However, it still went fairly well.  From there, we had a meeting at church this evening and now we are back home.  I can't believe that it's already time to go back to work tomorrow.

I have continued on with my picture taking.  A couple of days I almost forgot but so far I've gotten every day.  I think they say that if you do something 30 days in a row, it will become a habit so I've almost made a habit of picture taking!  It has been hard to come up with ideas some days but I'm happy with what I've been getting.  It's also fun to edit the pics in my software program and play around with them.  You can get some very interesting effects.  Anyway, here are my next pictures...

Day 21:

I love sleeping pictures of kids.  I think they are so sweet and adorable when they sleep.  I want to get at least one of both my kids for this project so hopefully I don't forget Xander's.  He goes to bed much later so there's less time when he's actually asleep.  Evan goes to bed pretty early so I can sneak up and get a cute picture like this pretty easily.  Both my boys have been really good sleepers, which is a good thing, because I don't function well on little sleep!

Day 22:

Thursday Evan had his check up at the doctor's office.  This is the boys playing with the toys there.  He is healthy (other than his cold) and growing well so that's good.  I love my doctor.  She's extremely blunt, which I think is a great thing when dealing with your health, but she's also very nice.  I'm kind of glad my old doctor left town and I had to find a new one!

Day 23:

This has been our weekend.   Cough syrup and kleenexes.  Xander even had a fever on Friday so we ended up skipping a birthday party.  We'll make up for it, though.  It's too bad that you can't get cough syrup for infants, though, because Evan is only 15 months but his cough is just as bad as Xander's.  Unfortunately, I can't give him anything for it.  Hopefully they will both be feeling better tomorrow and things will be back to normal.  Evan's woken up twice in the three hours he's been in bed, though, so it could be a long night.

Day 24:

The 24th was my Dad's birthday (Happy Birthday, Dad!) so I thought this would be an appropriate picture for that day.  My Dad loves flowers and he always has a huge garden full of them in the summer time.  They also have a lot of vegetables but the flowers are really the star of the garden to me.  I did not inherit my parents' love of gardening but I did inherit the love of flowers.  If only someone would take care of mine, they might live.  I got this tulip from the Children's Ministry Workshop.  They were used on the tables as centrepieces and at the end, anyone who did children's ministry and was a mom got to take them home.  I have yet to decide if a tulip, when it's -30C, encourages or taunts.  Anyway, I went to the gym afterwards and left it in the car.  I was thinking that the car retains heat and I'd only be gone less than an hour so it should be OK.  I neglected to remember that in driving about 2 minutes away, the car never had a chance to heat up to begin with.  The plant was frozen when I got back to the car.  It almost looked like glass.  We'll see if it comes back or not.  Oops.

Day 25:

This is another place that I spend a lot of time - my 2 year old Sunday School room.  You can obviously tell that I spliced two pictures together to give you a view.  I didn't think of that until I got home so the pics are at different angles (my camera even has a panoramic assist so I could have done it properly had I thought of it when I took the pictures!).  I love the mural that some ladies painted on the walls.  It's so bright and a great thing to distract sad children with.  I started teaching this class in the fall of 1998 (back then it was 2 and 3 year olds).  I've taken off 2 years when I had babies but I just love to teach these children.  They are so bright and full of energy and they are so smart if you just give them a chance.  Most people don't give kids enough credit.  They will amaze you with the things that they can learn and absorb and how fast they can do it.  They brighten my day, even when I've been having a bad morning.

Well that's been the weekend and I guess I'll go get ready for another crazy week!

Until next time...