Just Thursday - 2

Spark, with his fine young elephant Jeffery watching, finished up the year end review in his math book. Monday he will start the new grade level!

The mailman rang the doorbell with a nice surprise - a box of Valentine gifts from Grandma. What a better way to start the day than to get mail that isn't a bill and then it be a gift as well. She sent jammies, shirts and sweatpants. Thanks Grandma! Dancer made Valentine's for her team on Saturday. She cut hearts out of orange paper, drew lines on them to make them look like basketballs and the taped them to a pencil. She was a bit disappointed in the pencils. Last week we bought pens for Spark to make valentines with (he cut out hearts, put a sticker on the heart and taped them to pens) for 4-H and a few other friends. This week we went to the same display, saw the pattern on the pencils, thought they were pens and didn't look any further at the package. Teach us not to assume things always stay the same. Dancer had an extra basketball practice today so Spark and I took her up the school and then went back and got her. It doesn't seem like such a big chore anymore when it is still light out at 5:30. Some how when we had to go out in the dark it seemed a much more daunting and cold task. Two trips to town is over 30 miles so we are only home about an hour in between but there isn't even a grocery store in the town the school is in so we have no where to go but home. In the summer we could go on the bike trail, but in the winter it is a snowmobile trail and not conducive to anything else. While Dancer was at basketball practice, Spark and I got a few chores done. We collected eggs, filled rabbit water bottles, gave hay to everyone and water to the chickens. On the way into the house the cat, Kacheekers, was winding around us and telling us he was out of food. He was happy to have his dish refilled. Yes, it is a sand toy. We have found them to be the sturdiest in our cold weather. A lot of plastic dishes just crack if they get bumped around a bit in the cold. If you are old enough, remember the plastic vinyl book bags before backpacks became popular for school. Every year I think I broke at least three of them because they were cold and I knocked them on something.

Took the never ending pile of laundry down a few inches today by doing a couple of loads. I try to do one load a day but it still seems to get away from me if I don't have a couple of days a week when I do more than one. Who is wearing all these clothes when it seems the kids are in lounge pants and t-shirts most of the time? This is just part of one of the loads.