7 Quick Takes about Sledding Dangerously, Books That I Probably Won't Miss Not Reading, and the Plus Side of Slippery Driveways

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

One day I decided to take the kids sledding, and after much discussion we settled on a local hill nearby. Two of the kids wanted to go to a bigger, better hill that was farther away, but I explained that it had been melting and freezing a lot, and the big hill might be too icy.

“Besides, I want to check out the snow conditions at this hill," I said. "We're hoping to take the Young Women (church youth group) sledding here tomorrow and I want to make sure it's safe first."

“The Young Men never would think to do that beforehand,” my 16-year-old son mused. “I guess that’s why girls live longer than boys.”

Sister watching as son goes flying off his sled over a jump. Another reason why girls live longer.

—2—

This week a movie theater was playing Looney Tunes cartoons from the 1960s, and since my dad and stepmom are here visiting I thought they’d like watching their childhood shows on the big screen.

I've never seen so many characters shot by cannons and blown up by TNT in my entire life as I did in that 70 minutes. I guess I’m used to all the social-emotional learning they put in kids’ programming today, and trust me, there was none of that to be found here.

There was a preschooler there who belly-laughed through the entire thing, and it was too pure. I think everyone in the theater had a better time because of that kid.

—3—

With a little time to kill, I decided to pop into a nearby bookstore to browse. While I was looking around, I noticed that the "paranormal romance" section of the store was WAY too big for how many books should have been in that genre. What in the world, I wondered, could possibly be filling the shelves? 

I took a cursory survey of the covers: there were the usual vampires and werewolves, but on further examination I also found a merman, a Minotaur, and even a "humanoid spider." I'm sure all of them were wonderful works of literature that would've inspired, challenged, and changed me for the better, but I was just there to look and not to buy, so I guess I'll never know.

—4—

My dad was quizzing my kids on collective nouns for different types of animals. You know, like a pod of whales, a gaggle of geese, a parliament of owls, that kind of thing.

But I liked some that my kids made up better than the real ones. 

When my dad said "alligators" they guessed "chomp." And when he said "giraffes," they guessed "forest." I think those were pretty good.

—5—

Due to all the melting and re-freezing I mentioned in Take #1, our driveway is a thick sheet of ice. But with how weird the weather is, it will probably be 50 degrees next week, and I don't want to pay for ice melt when the sun will eventually do it for free.

In the meantime, it's not so bad. In fact, the other day I had some heavy packages to bring in so I just set them on the ground and kicked them to the front door. It was faster and easier than carrying them in would have been.

I should probably put up a danger sign to warn delivery drivers, though.

—6—

I completely forgot our annual Valentine's Day love bomb tradition last week, so I've been working on it all this week (because better late than never.) If you don't want to click the link, the quick summary is that every member of the family writes a love letter to every other member of the family. You can imagine that it takes a while.

But it's a lot less painful now that even the youngest kids are old enough to do theirs by themselves and keep track of who they still need to write to. When they were little, I literally had to walk around with a clipboard and spreadsheet to make sure they all got done.

—7—

Phillip took several days off work this week to work on our van and save us thousands of dollars. Actually, he saved us from buying an entirely new vehicle, because the dealer told us in June that it would be better financially speaking to trade in the van and buy a new one.

Smiling to humor me. He's amazing.

Now all we need to do is follow up with the dealer, because we have a major beef with them. The "problem" that we were told was going to be a major fix ended up being simply that THE DEALER FORGOT TO CONNECT A SENSOR LAST TIME THEY WORKED ON THE CAR. Once Phillip got the engine taken apart and connected it, the problem was solved.

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7 Quick Takes about Valentine Donuts, Reality Shows, and Pillows to Use When You're Feeling Melancholy

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

My 13-year-old got the idea to make donuts the other day, and decided to decorate them in Valentine's Day colors and give them out at school. 

I like how she clearly anticipated the "but I only had one" defense when writing this note.

She may have been partially inspired by a baking reality show we started watching as a family called Baking Impossible, where teams made up of an engineer and a baker collaborate to win challenges. In the episode we watched, they made fully functional dessert boats with a rudder that had to float through a channel in 45 seconds.

—2—

Speaking of reality shows, do you know what I would watch? A cleaning reality show. 

Hear me out: a professional organizer/home decorator/house cleaner/decluttering expert comes in and teams up with a homeowner, with something like 6 hours to whip the most trashed room in their house into showroom-ready shape. Maybe there could even be things hidden in the room that they have to find during the process to win prizes. 

Or maybe the show could be teams of cleaning experts that get eliminated one by one, and every week the challenges could be a different kind of room: a craft room, a kids' toy room, a messy garage, an attic.

All I can say is, I would totally watch either of those shows, and judging by the sheer number of sped-up "clean with me" videos on YouTube, I think a lot of other people would, too. Maybe I shouldn't even be giving this idea out for free. Oops, too late.

—3—

Bringing dinner to a sick neighbor this week was sort of a disaster. For those of you who don't know, I am not a confident baker so my stress level when making food for someone else goes through the roof. (Note to people who know me personally: if you need dinner, I'm 100% happy to make it anyway. But if what you really need is your bathroom cleaned and your dishes washed, then for the love of all that is holy, please ask me to do that. I would love to do that.)

But this time I was making dinner, and I was worried about all the things. I was worried they wouldn't like it. I was worried it would be undercooked. I was worried because dinner was running about 30 minutes behind so I was going to be late bringing it over. That was before the cheese started dripping and burning to the bottom of the oven, filling the kitchen with black smoke. I opened the window, set a big box fan on the counter to blow the smoke out, and when I turned around the fan fell off the counter and banged up the floor. And because I was running so late, I couldn't leave to pick up my 8-year-old from gymnastics and his newly-licensed brother had to do it (which is no small favor because it's an hour round-trip.)

Anyway, things turned out alright in the end. I brought half the dinner to my neighbor and my family ate the other half at home, and Phillip said it was really tasty. 

"Would you have said anything if it wasn't?" I laughed, because I had already told him about the circus show it had been to produce this dinner.

"I would've been silent on the matter," he answered.

—4—

It snowed recently so Phillip and I took the younger three kids to a playground. (If you haven't done that before after a big snowfall, I highly recommend it. It's so fun.)

Other kids had already beaten us to the playground and there wasn't a lot of snow left on the actual play structures, but the kids found plenty to do, just the same. The first thing they did was look at the gigantic wall of snow pushed up by the plows from the parking lot and yell "Let's play 'king of the mountain' like in 8-Bit Christmas!"

They'd never heard of that game before we watched that movie in December, which was set in the 80s and taught them an old-school classic that they're now bringing into real life. I love it.

It was fun and I'm happy to report that there were very few injuries.

—5—

My 5th grader got a new reading pillow. You know, the kind with arms and a high back so you can sit up and read in bed.

But I was a little confused about the product image. Why does the model look so depressed?

It's probably more realistic that she's using this pillow while zoning out in a pair of baggy sweatpants (do they have a hole in them or was that a speck of dirt on my camera?), but you don't usually see that depicted on the box.

Usually the people on the product image are having the time of their lives using it, regardless of what the product is. It could be a granola bar, it could be deodorant, it could be Turtle wax for your car. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that this product completes them and makes them the happiest they have ever been or ever will be in their entire lives. 

—6—

I started decluttering the house like crazy about 3 or 4 years ago, and at this point, the only place left is my bedroom closet. Besides clothes, it's where I keep all my sentimental stuff that I am too paralyzed to go through.

There's a 10" tall stack of photo albums from high school and college, a complete set of K-12 yearbooks with classmates' signatures, a huge box of journals starting at age 6, a decade of calendars with hand-drawn art from my kids (my annual Christmas gift when they were young), and worst of all, unfinished baby books for each of my children that I honestly don't really have the desire to complete.

Normally I'm a huge fan of the Minimal Mom and I embrace her ruthlessly no-nonsense decluttering style, but for this I needed Dana from A Slob Comes Clean in this video that was served to me on YouTube.

It used to be that every time I went in the closet rolling up my sleeves and thinking, "Okay, Jenny, this is the day you deal with all this stuff!" I would run out 20 minutes later looking like a character from a horror movie who barricades the door behind her and leans against it to hyperventilate now that they're safe from danger. I think Dana's advice may help me here.

—7—

Lastly, a short clip from SNL that lives rent-free in my head and I think about it every time I hear the word "yeet" or "skirt". 

I guess I've been thinking about it more often because my 8-year-old has started making a tire-screeching noise that sounds like "skkkrrrrrt!" while playing video games or roughhousing with his brother.

I made the giant mistake of showing it to my kids and word to the wise, don't do that. They'll memorize it instantly and be singing it all day long. You do not want that. 

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7 Quick Takes about Creative Budgeting, Dress Drama, and Hanging Up My Pancake Whisk for Good

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

Okay, I'm tired of winter now. A hundred years is enough, I'm ready for spring. Here is a shot of the 10-year-old going outside to play basketball in the driveway:

Not the correct way to play broomball.

And no, this isn't an action shot snapped at the precise moment the ball was going through the net. The ball was stuck in the frozen hoop until Phillip came over and knocked it out with a broom.

—2—

Since October, we've been tracking our money in a more detailed budget to be more on top of our finances. We record all our expenses in a spreadsheet, writing down the category of each purchase. 

Sometimes we aren't quite sure how to categorize them.

Recently, we bought a replacement stylus for a tablet that one of the kids had lost, and Phillip put it in the category for music and sports registrations called "Kids' Activities." BECAUSE OUR KIDS' FAVORITE ACTIVITY IS LOSING STUFF.

—3—

The 16-year-old got his driver's license! I'm so excited. He can get himself to and from school and work now, which is huge. I'm already breathing easier not having to plan around his work schedule, and sometimes he can even help chauffer around his siblings when I have conflicts.

It snowed the night before his test, but the instructor complimented him on how he handled the vehicle on the slick roads. (I like to think it's because of the valuable lessons he learned by sliding off the road with me a few weeks ago.)

—4—

Tonight there's a dance at the middle school that the 7th grader is really excited about. Two months in advance, she ordered a dress specifically for it and she's been saving it, not even wanting to wear it to church until after the dance.

Last week, she went to iron the dress, set the heat too high, and accidentally melted it. When we couldn't salvage it, she was disappointed. but undaunted, she ordered a second dress. 

When it arrived four days before the dance, it turned out to be way  shorter than we thought it was going to be. So with only a few days until the dance, we ordered a third dress that would get here the day before and crossed our fingers... SUCCESS!

But seriously, I never want to do that again. We cut it close and that was really stressful.

—5—

My 3rd grader's class has a "share day" once a week. If it's a physical object they can bring it in, but if it's a talent they can send a video of it to the teacher and she'll play it on the smartboard in the classroom.

We took a video of him doing a handstand for share day, but then when I listened to it I noticed something: you can clearly hear some unflattering background audio of someone using the restroom. So what to do? We muted it and put it to a soundtrack, and now it sounds like a hype video on TikTok.

—6—

I helped a friend who's in charge of a project at a local refugee family shelter. They're organizing a free clothing closet for the residents, and right now all of their inventory is thrown in huge storage bins with all the sizes and genders mixed up. The task is to sort the clothes and then figure out appropriate ways to hang or shelve it all.

As someone who used to basically do this in her attic when she was saving and handing down clothes for 6 children, you'd think I would be good at this.

But I'm not. In fact, I was having flashbacks to the sheer overwhelm I'd feel at the end of every season, trying to organize and sort my kids' outgrown clothes to store in the attic. So I can't say I swooped in and saved the day with my superior organization skills, but I tried to help as much as I could.

—7—

My kids had a snow day from school so I decided to be a super-fun mom and make them pancakes. What a mistake. You guys, I hate pancakes. Everyone says "just make pancakes!" like it's the world's easiest food to throw on the table but those people must be either (1) from another planet or (2) popping frozen pancakes in the toaster and just pretending.

Making pancakes is SO messy and time-consuming. It dirties multiple bowls, spatulas, and measuring cups (we don't use a boxed mix so that's part of the problem.) The batter gets burned onto the edges of the griddle and drips onto the counter where it hardens into cement and guess how many people want to help clean up. Then someone (me) needs to stand at the griddle for 10 years cooking enough pancakes to feed four kids. And to top it all off, the recipe we pulled from the Internet had too much applesauce to fully cook through and we ended up throwing 75% of them in the trash.

After ranting in frustration to no one in particular, I googled something like "I hate pancakes" and found this cathartic post on Reddit:

I, too, do not like the person I become when making pancakes.

The best part of the post, though, was when I scrolled down to read the comments and this was the first one:

That certainly made me laugh and feel a little better. Then I told the kids that I'm officially retiring from making pancakes, and that made me feel a lot better. 

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7 Quick Takes about Emotions Personified, Near Misses, and Unlikely Character Arcs for Me and Snoop Dogg

It's 7 Quick Takes! How was your week?

—1—

My 7th grader was assigned to make a hackeysack in art class, but she liked the yarn sticking out of the top and didn't cut it off. Then she thought it would be cute to add a little face:

Makes a good paperweight.

Her friends think it looks like Anxiety from Inside Out 2, but since it's blue instead of orange they named it Depression.

—2—

My kids are not pulling their weight during kitchen cleaning after dinner each night. Like all cleaning systems we've used, ours has worked for a while until it didn't anymore, so now I'm on the hunt for something new (I've been told the "something new" can't be the kids so it has to be the method.)

I did some online investigation, and here's what I found.

If you like The Monkees, this one wins the award for "most enjoyable musically":

This one was also cute:

This one was alright, and I cackled out loud at the indoctrination at 1:02 with the children hypnotically chanting BOOKS! PUT THE BOOKS AWAY!

I wonder if this one would be fun, or if it would just add to the chaos and I'd end up yelling over it at the kids to clean. 

A few others with visual timers that I considered were this pop-style one and this one with a Jackson 5 feel.

There were several hip-hop clean up songs that I liked, including this one (super-weird animation, though) and this one. Some of them even included a throwback to the O.G. Barney clean up song, like this one and this one ("errbody, errwhere." I'm dying.)

—3—

While sifting through the hip-hop clean up songs out there, I found one that was annoying and did not make my list, but it also taught me something that I think everyone needs to know: 

Snoop Dogg has an animated kids' channel about a group of puppies led by a mentor named Bow Wizzle who raps about values and kindergarten readiness skills.

In the '90s, I never imagined that one day I would be listening to a Snoop Dogg song that goes "Clean, clean, clean / That's how to be a good human being." But here we are. Getting older is wild.

—4—

It's been pretty cold lately so we took the kids out to a local trail and then walked across a frozen lake.

We made it almost all the way across without someone crying because they took a snowball to the face. So close. 

—5—

The 8-year-old is voraciously reading all the books in the Great Illustrated Classics series at his school library. When I picked him up from school, he had Phantom of the Opera in his hand.

"A phantom is a ghost, right?" he asked when I picked him up from school.

"Right," I said. 

"Why are there two words that mean the same thing?"

"Well, I learned on my Language Transfer podcast that when English has two words for something, the more formal one comes from Latin and the less formal one comes from German."

"Like what?"

"Like 'encounter' and 'find.' Or 'phantom' and 'ghost.'"

"What about 'smelly' and 'stinky'?"

Honestly, I wasn't sure how to determine which one was more formal.

—6—

There was a big windstorm here that left debris all over our driveway and took down two big branches. I watched one of them fall down so close to the car parked there that the little branches were touching it.

Maybe it's time to get that tree removed.

Luckily, the 13-year-old needs money so she was more than happy to clean up the small debris for an allowance chore, but I dragged the big stuff off to the side and Phillip will have to take care of it with the chainsaw this weekend. 

The day before the windstorm there was a small earthquake (but big enough to freak out our parakeet, Pringles) and the day afterward it snowed, so I feel like if a meteor landed in our backyard tomorrow I'd still be a little surprised but not too much. 

—7—

I'm a... plant person now, I guess? Which is weird because I don't do live plants. With the exception of a few plants as a birthday gift for Phillip's home office space during COVID, I've never bought a houseplant. They're just too hard to maintain.

But people have recently given us some plants, and having kept them alive for a few months I decided to incorporate them into our home decor and hope for the best. I spent my Christmas gift money on a new pot for the spider plant in the dining room and a plant stand for the snake plant in the bedroom, and they look amazing!

I never thought I'd be voluntarily spending money on plant accessories. That actually surprises me more than Snoop Dogg having an educational kids' channel.

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7 Quick Takes about Handling Laundry Like a Guy, Bunk Beds, and How to Get Out of Your Driveway

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

When you have boys, sometimes you walk by and see a pair of pants clamped to a dining room chair and you never quite know why:

Turns out that my 16-year-old's pants shrunk a little in the dryer and he was stretching them out. His method got the job done just fine, I'm just amused that he used woodworking tools to solve a laundry dilemma.

—2—

The big news around here is that the 8- and 10-year-old got bunk beds. Their oldest sisters had been using them separately as twin beds, but they're in college now and the boys' room was getting awfully crowded. It was time to officially hand them over to the 8- and 10-year-olds.

A few days later, a friend casually mentioned that her daughter had broken her elbow falling out of the top bunk trying to reach over to shut the door and I kid you not, that very same night I watched my 8-year-old doing the same thing. Except it was the light switch he was trying to reach. 

It's amazing that anyone survives childhood. 

—3—

My 20-year-old's raging ADHD sometimes causes her to incur late payment fees, miss deadlines, and so on. Sometimes she gets down on herself about it and we tell her, "Don't beat yourself up about it, just pay the ADHD tax and move on."

When I was cleaning up and doing some organizing after moving the bunk beds out of the 20-year-old's old room, guess what I found? Over $1,000 worth of uncashed paychecks from her part-time job in high school.

I texted her right away, and she said she would ask them to reissue the checks because of course they were expired.

"So is this the opposite of the ADHD tax?" I asked her.

"Yes, the random $1k ADHD bonus," she texted back.

(That one doesn't happen nearly as often.)

—4—

My daughter's experience gift for Christmas was a month of Disney+ Premium to watch all the Marvel movies and shows with her siblings, and she's been using it to the fullest. I've never seen her so motivated.

I continue to work at my Christmas gift, but with less enthusiasm. I'm trying to figure out how to use my new phone and it's kicking my butt. Instead of swiping up to see the menu, I have to swipe down. The volume and power buttons are on reverse sides, so I turn it off every time I try to turn it up. I'm too old for changes of this magnitude.

—5—

Our car got stuck in the driveway this week when we got a substantial snowfall. That actually happens a lot, so we keep a bucket full of salt sand in the garage for that exact reason.

Too bad no one had noticed that it was running low, though, because we opened it up and there was next to nothing inside. So Phillip improvised and used what we had on hand, which was potting soil. 

I can tell you from experience now that Miracle-Gro not only gives you healthy houseplants with a more colorful bloom, it's also good for traction in the winter!

—6—

Later that day, I took the 16-year-old out to practice driving in the snow. But by the time we went out, the city's taxpayer dollars had been put to work and the roads were completely clear. 

We drove around, hoping to find an icy parking lot, but no luck. On the way home, I recommended that we take a dirt road, since they're usually at least a little slick and maybe my son could get a feel for what it's like to slide a little and what to do when it happens. He understood the assignment and skidded right off the road when we went around a curve. 

Luckily, he got the car under control very quickly (great instincts, I was very proud of him) and then he got out and dug out the snow around the wheels so we could get back on the road and drive home! But more slowly this time.

—7—

It's been really, really cold here lately. My 10-year-old hates wearing a coat but I told him that he needs to wear one to the bus stop this week, or I will get arrested.

I still saw him sneakily opening the door and sticking out his arm to check the temperature to see if he could get away with it.

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7 Quick Takes about Reading with Pandas, Losing a Family Friend, and 1950s Budgeting Tips for Married Men

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

Phillip returned from two back-to-back work trips and I'm glad to have him home. Some nights required advanced logistical wizardry to get all 4 kids to work, school, and their activities (and back home afterward!) with only one licensed driver in the house. 

One of his trips was to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a trade show where entrepreneurs are showing off their newest products and technologies. He always sees cool stuff and brought home some cute metal bookmarks from one of the booths:

Put the temple in your book and the panda on a chain hangs out to mark your page.

I admired the cute little panda on the end and then paused. "Wait a minute. Does that panda have... a butthole?"

Yes. Yes, it does.

"The world is full of mysteries, Jenny," Phillip answered sagely.

—2—

The kids were outside playing in the snow on Saturday, and when they came in they asked for hot chocolate.

"Eehhhhmmm... not this time," I answered. "We're already having dessert tonight, and since it's not super-cold outside you guys probably aren't freezing enough to justify the extra sugar."

My 13-year-old said she knew I was going to say that, and confessed that when she was younger, she used to dunk her face in the snow before coming in to increase her odds of getting hot chocolate. Apparently it's not worth it anymore, but I admire the commitment. That's like an actor gaining 40 lbs or learning to play the cello for a movie role. Except with ice on your face.

—3—

This has felt like a long week, not only because Phillip was out of town but because my elderly friend Bev passed away unexpectedly. On Tuesday I got a call from her neighbor, who knows I'm over there often helping Bev with things around the house and wanted me to know. 

It wasn't completely out of the blue because Bev was 82 years old with a heart condition, but it was a shock anyway. She'd been slowing down a little, but last Thursday when I helped her do her shopping there was no indication that I wouldn't be seeing her again. 

—4—

We first met Bev four years ago, when we volunteered through the Rotary Community Corps to shovel an elderly couple's driveway for the winter. I only met her husband a few times before he went to live in a nursing home, and as I'm writing this I'm realizing that maybe God arranged us to meet Bev at that exact time so she didn't feel all alone when he left. 

She lived far away from her kids and as she came to depend on us, and I started to think of her as my friend. She was fun to talk to. We raked her yard in the fall, mowed her lawn in the summer, and helped her fix things around the house. She called us for help putting on her new mattress pad or getting rid of her old TV. Sometimes, she'd call me just to chat. After she had a bad fall at CVS, she'd ask me to come with her to do errands once a month and then take me out to lunch afterward. She never needed to repay us, but the kids knew that whenever they saw juice or popsicles in the fridge, it was Bev's way of saying thank you. Sometimes she wanted to pay us and we'd try to say no, but she'd shove the money in our hands and say "Take the kids to McDonald's, then! I don't care!"

Bev was stubborn and loved animals and was as sharp as a tack (I only wish I could pull a witty comeback out of thin air like she could). She was my friend and a wonderful force in our lives. She gave my kids constant opportunities for doing meaningful service for others and helped them feel good about themselves when they did. I don't know if they'll ever fully understand what a formative experience that was for them. I'll miss that, and I'll miss her.

—5—

After school, I pick up my daughter at the middle school first and then we go to pick up her brother at the high school. 

There are two possible places for pickup and I used to text him which place we're at each day, but now I ask my daughter to do it and she's starting to get creative.

Here was from another another day:

—6—

The other day my 5th grader asked me for help with his math homework. For those of you who are still new parents, I want you to know that for average people without a math background (i.e: you don't use math beyond balancing your checkbook and figuring out the cost of items with a "30% off" sticker), the age at which you can no longer help your kids with math homework is 4th grade. 

I'm sorry, it sounds wrong but it's true.

So I groaned inwardly as I went to go help him, thinking that this was not going to go well. But happy day, I was able to understand and help him solve the problem! I felt pretty good about that.

Later that day I also gave my teenager a tip on pouring liquid into a Thermos without spilling it, and I thought, "Look at me: helping my 5th grader with math and my 16-year-old with soup. Yep, I'm brilliant."

—7—

The other day I mentioned to Phillip, "Isn't that funny how housewives in the '50s used to stash away a little money, so they could spend it without having to explain it to their husbands?" 

I just couldn't imagine doing something like that now, not being able to make purchases without the express permission of my husband. I was not, however, prepared for his answer:

"Yeah, it's the other way around now," he said. "If I get change in cash for something, I'm like 'I can get whatever I want and Jenny will never know!'" 

I guess that's fair. I do scold him when I see on the credit card statement that he bought lunch at work instead of bringing it from home.

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7 Quick Takes about Ways Not to Serve Soup, a War Zone but with Gingerbread, and Making Peace with My Large Print and Reading Glasses

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

Phillip was on a work trip until last night, and I never seem to make good decisions regarding bedtime when he's out of town. I've been so tired I've been doing the dumbest things.

The other morning I meant to pack two Thermoses of soup in my boys' lunch boxes, and I don't even know how I did it but I somehow dumped my 10-year-old's soup in the sink and sent him to school with a Thermos full of water. 

—2—

We made the most of our weekend before the 20- and 18-year-old went back to college, including making gingerbread men cookies.

The cookies turned out a little crumbly, though, so when they came out of the oven the cookie cooling rack looked like an army field hospital.

But the girls worked with it.

Arr, matey.

—2—

For Christmas a few weeks ago, Phillip got me a new phone. Before, I used to complain constantly because my previous phone was a big phablet, with a heavy battery and a screen so huge it was inconvenient to even try to use with one hand because my thumb wasn't long enough to reach across the gigantor screen. So Phillip looked high and low until he found me a small one.

And you guys, I was in for a rude surprise. My eyesight has gotten worse in the last five years, and I actually needed that big old phone to read. However, I didn't want to accept it so I kept pretending it was fine squinting at the teeny-tiny little screen and not really being able to read more than a paragraph at a time without getting a headache.

But I came around after a few days. The tipping point was when I was chatting with an older guy at church and he pulled out his phone to look up something we were discussing, and I felt legitimate jealousy over his device's text magnification settings.

The next morning, I woke up, sent the kids to school, and figured out how to unlock geriatric mode on my phone, too. And it is so much better.

—3—

On Saturday, my 8-year-old competed in his first gymnastics meet. My daughter, husband, and I were there cheering him on. His team took first place and my son scored second on pommel horse and fifth all-around (full disclosure, there were only 15 boys in his division so they probably should've stopped giving awards at third place). I made everyone personally admire the cleanliness of the bleachers, because I'd come the day before and spent an hour and a half vacuuming chalk dust off of every inch of them in exchange for credit on next year's meet fees.

The rest of my son's team had already finished their first meet of the season, but unfortunately it had been a few weeks earlier on a Sunday, and my son doesn't compete on Sunday because that's our Sabbath. (See Chariots of Fire or here if you're confused.) I had actually been sitting in church when my phone started vibrating, the gym parents' group text filling up with smiling pictures of the boys' team posing together before their first meet... without my son. I felt a pang of sadness, but only until I looked down the pew at my son sitting between his dad and sister in his white shirt and tie, singing from the hymnbook in his lap. My job as a mom is to help him be in the places that will be best for his life in the long run, and I couldn't think of a better one right now.

—4—

My oldest two children's flight back to college meant driving right during rush hour going downtown, but there was a surprise I didn't know about: recently they started allowing people to drive in the breakdown lane of the freeway during rush hour to ease traffic congestion.

Do you know how fun it is to cross over that solid white line, and then just continuing to ignore all the other lines for the on-ramps and off-ramps as you nonchalantly off-road it to the airport at 70 MPH? It was like the Wild West out there.

—5—

Later that same day Phillip left on work trip, only he didn't get to drive on the shoulder because rush hour was over. Too bad.

He went to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Usually he comes home excited about all the cool things he's seen, but this time he didn't have a very positive experience. 

On his first night there, someone walked into his room at midnight (apparently the other guy was just as startled to see him, because the front desk had given this guy a key and told him that it was his room!) so it got off to a weird start, at least.

—6—

We've had our pet parakeet Pringles for almost two years now, and slowly but surely she's actually growing to like us. That's impressive if you knew how much she actively hated us all for her first year here. 

The other day Pringles was having some free time outside of her cage, and with no prompting she came over, hopped onto my shoulder, and then started walking all around checking out my neck and hair. 

I took a picture, but laughed when I saw that my camera's flash effect made it look like the poster for a horror movie.

The Birds 2.

But as much as Pringles likes to land on our shoulders and generally be with us, she still hates human hands, including ours. She will try to peck your finger off if you put it out for her to perch on. Instead you have to offer her your forearm, and then she'll get on it and you can carry her around like the world's lamest falconer. 

—7—

I'm starting to see a light waaaaaayyyy off in the distance at the end the tunnel when it comes to Spanish. That shouldn't surprise me since I've been learning for four years, but it's always felt so overwhelming that I seriously doubted I'd ever feel that way. 

Recently I picked up Spanish copies of a few YA books that I'd read years ago, and the difference was amazing. The first time, each page had taken half an hour to decode because I had to stop and look up so many words and grammatical structures. Now there are only a few things per page that I don't understand, and I can mostly work those out from context.

In the children's room at our public library, there's a sign telling kids about the "five finger rule." If they open up a book and there are more than 5 words on the page that they don't understand, the book is too hard. Do you understand what I'm saying? The books that I once barely slogged through are now passing the five-finger test for me. I AM LEARNING SOMETHING.

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