Today was such a good day. Sarah is finally home from the hospital and feeling well again. I've decided to keep her home from school tomorrow - I wish I could keep her home all the time! She is so torn; loving having friends her age again and having teachers, etc., yet wanting to be home and spend her time how she wants to and feeling so frustrated with make-up work, home work, etc. It reminds me of me - never fully fitting in anywhere. Poor thing!
Anyway, I got to read the paper today and visit with Zachary about his evening at Mayhem. Drank my two cups of coffee, too. By then it was almost 11 a.m. and the rest of the tribe was stirring, so I mixed up waffles and blueberry sauce. "Whipping-up" as applied to waffles is somewhat of a misnomer - each waffle takes 3 minutes to cook, so a double batch can take close to an hour to make!
Stephen arrived home before everyone had eaten, so all my kiddos were home and we had a fun breakfast together. Zachary volunteered to wash up after breakfast while I finished cooking the waffles; the girls took off to play WoW. Stephen and Zach then went out and shoveled the entire driveway and all the sidewalk surrounding our house. This way Michael could come home from work and not have to face all that shoveling.
I finally got ready for the day at about 2 p.m., after starting a huge pot of beans to quick soak. Michael got home with the much-need cat door so we can finally keep the dog from eating cat poop!! While I made the ham and bean soup, Michael cut the hole for the cat door and installed it, and finally got some towel bars up in the bathroom.
Sarah, despite some tears, got quite a bit of her make-up work done today. Most of her time was spent playing warcraft. Zachary was thrilled with his early birthday gift of the WOW Burning Crusade. He suffered quite a lot of frustration trying to install it on the upstairs computer - our wireless hook-up is somewhat less than reliable. He moved to the downstairs computer and got it up and running and had a great afternoon.
Stephen headed back to Drake at about 3 today. I'm so glad he goes to school in Des Moines - it makes it easy to say goodbye to him when I know I'll see him again soon.
I read more of the "book that never ends," Inkspell. We think maybe the book is under an inkspell and that's why, despite seemingly reading it all the time, we never finish! It's a great story and we both love it - made a fair amount of progress reading it today and I didn't even get sleepy. Well, I did leave to use up the organic pears that were a little past their prime by making a pear pie - Michael made the crust. It wasn't the best, in fact, I don't think I"ll use that recipe again, but with some vanilla ice cream it made a passable dessert. The pie-making break helped me be awake enough to read for another hour or so!
I even had a little time to read my book club book "The Strange Case of the Dog in the Night."
After supper, we tried out a few craft activities for our girl scout meeting on Tuesday. I searched the entire Des Moines Metro looking for Ivory Snow powder and no one carries it! Instead, we tried grating up a bar of Ivory Soap and adding the water to it to make fake snow. It worked great! Both girls made absolutely adorable snow men with it - it's kind of messy, but it should be a lot of fun for Tuesday. We're also trying out an experiment to make a snowflake in a super-saturated solution of hot water and Borax. We made a framework out of pipecleaners and dangled it down into the solution from a pencil across the top of the jar. Supposedly, as the water cools, the borax will cling to the pipe cleaner, forming a hexagonal snowflake. I hope it works! I'm not sure how practical it will be for our meeting, though. Tomorrow, the girls and I will try it by placing the jar outside to see how fast the snowflake will form.
So, what made it such a good day? I think it was just being home, with everyone safe and sound, knowing I've fed my family well, everyone is happy and enjoying what they're doing. I even had some time to myself!
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