No one ever said it would be easy

And they were right. S's friend drove her home the other day... he's had his license for a week and is supposed to wait six months before driving a non-family member around. Now I'm scrambling to develop a carpool for all of the rule-breakers (might also add law-breakers, here). It's much less stressful keeping the toddler out of the knives. I do think, though, I have a triple carpool worked out with two other moms. Just chatted with one of them about how it’s good to let the kids know we’re a community looking out for not only rule-breaking, but for them as people. Ha!

Take that, teenagers.

Suburban housewife takes kids skiing

Last Sunday was everyone's first ski lesson of the year. Me, 8-yr-old and 5-yr-old were scheduled for 10am lessons; we brought along 12-yr-old and 15-yr-old, plus two 15-yr-old friends. Left at 6:30am in the pouring rain, feeling fairly pessimistic about the day but not wanting to ruin it for O's first time on skis. Made it almost all the way up the mountain, as usual, but had to stop and chain up -- my first solo attempt, and an immediately successful one, much to my great appreciation.

The day was my worst ever... I got soaked putting the chains on... freezing rain and sleet fell the entire day (of course when we left it started to turn to snow)... by the time I got the kids (including crying O) into their lessons, I missed mine... we were soaking wet in the first 30 minutes... when I took my coat off for lunch I inverted the sleeves to let them dry a bit, and as I put it down the sleeves fell into a 1 inch puddle on the floor (which I of course didn't notice until we left lunch)... I actually rang out the water before I put it back on... needless to say, everyone was thrilled to leave at 2pm. Here's hoping the next one is a bit better : )

Thank whoever

That someone else recognizes reality. From a Seattle P-I article about an anti-anticlutter movement:

"It's a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands." (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/athome/298282_messy06.html)

Phew, I feel better already.

Looking forward to cooking

So the holidays are over, the folks are gone, the kids are back in school... and I'm not cooking anything. I may try to keep track of my new recipes this year, at least the exciting ones (good or bad). I may not. We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, I'm trying to recover the house from the acquisitions.

I've been trying once again to find some kind of group of people who are young, with young kids, who have taken in older nices/nephews to raise. Nothing turns up -- and when I read that less than 200,000 (and I seem to think it was closer to 140,000) families are taking care of their kin -- most of those grandparents -- I understand why we're hard to find. It's just been on my mind a lot as I consider making this brood even larger than we already are, right when it's seeming more manageable than the last two years were.

Ah, well. Shouldn't make plans anyway, since they always go awry.

New Year's Eve

This is pretty much what New Year's Eve looked like around here. The latest anyone over 15 was awake was 11:15, and that was a fluke -- everyone else was out by 9:30 or so. Party on.