So, we feel bored, sluggish and dull. Seriously, it's been a weird month, and I think we are making each other crazy. Making it worse is the fact that we've only had contact with the outside world once a week or so' and for homeschoolers this is not good! Truly, we are all doing well, and are healthy and thriving, but this month was a doozy in terms of being home-bound.
We play solitaire games, uno, old maid, go fish and a few other family card games until our backsides are numb and our legs tingle.
Even Transformers and such hold no joy. (Actually he wasn't feeling 100% great in this picture so that's not really fair, but still, everything is so boring.)
We play hide-and-seek until all the good places are too easy. We run around with the cats until they are bored with their toys too. Reading "The Long Winter" while feeling dull like this helps a little, since they had it way worse than us. At least we eat good! Soup, chili, sausage gravy, warm chocolate pudding, winter veggies... yum!
Some interesting adventures happen whenever Todd has off work and does house projects -- a new hallway vent for the pellet stove, some furnace tinkering when it stopped working one COLD day (and night), tearing down a small wall portion in the kids' room to enlarge the closet... Evan is always up for a good project.
Todd and Evan also invented a game where they throw a small pom-pom (cat toy) at each other over and over until they are laughing so hard they have to stop. Usually it hits someone in the eye.
With the closet remodel project, the kids got to sleep in the living room for three nights again while paint dried. They really love having a giant bed to sleep on and bounce on all day. Too bad they played so hard on the mattresses one day, running and jumping and somersaulting, that they both ended up too sore to move the next day!
The kids have played with everything in the house that I thought they forgot about. Even the cootie collection got new life for about a week. Also, Chloe has been working her way through her bird coloring book, so she is usually on the floor like this. If not coloring, then puzzles.
There are painting projects and clay projects in the works at least once a week. We are trying to learn new things about mountains and oceans and jungle animals, but it's strange how pointless it all feels when all we want is to go somewhere and run around and feel the sun again.
Displayed all over the piano are Chloe's pipe-cleaner creations. She and Evan have made dozens more than they already had -- this is what they spend Christmas cash on -- they are making things like cockroaches and hermit crabs. They are really creative with this stuff and they actually play with what they make too!
The more white there is outside, the more I seem to let toys and clutter just sit around. It adds color and interest to our days, I think. On the coffee table is a robot lift-and-drop creation that Evan made.
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| This little card shark wins every game we play. |
The kids clothing choices are always mismatched and colorful and honestly I am tired of it. But their happiness and independence matters more to me, so I let them. I think they have each worn holes in the knees of three pairs of pants, and since they only have six pairs of pants this is not good. Do you know how hard it is to find soft pants for kids past the 5T size? I hate skinny jeans and tween-age clothes. Also why is there nothing tastefully colorful for older kids?
Our cats are both going insane. Maybe even more than us. We are planning an outing (yay!!) to the pet store to stock up on new cat toys. Our behemoth cat, Roy, lays on Evan's chair quite often so at each meal he has to decide to squish in or move the cat. I love when he shares his seat :-)
One day, the kids were so stir-crazy we forced them to go out and play. They lasted 10 minutes. You know it's super cold when Evan won't even stay out. I've never known a winter like this!
All four of the crabs have recently surfaced again so that's been truly fun to watch. Also, Kermit and Larry both changed shells so the kids were thrilled.
We "undecorated" the Christmas tree in a sort of ceremonial celebration this year. The kids love the tree so much and never want it to go away, so this seems a great way to close up the Christmas chapter each year. They took their job very seriously. We played the Christmas music for the last time and cleaned house. They both saved their most favorite ornaments, including the new ones they bought each other, and hung them in their bedroom.
Out of the whole month of January I probably took 20 pictures, (mostly to remember the crazy multicolored mismatched outfits that Evan and Chloe pick out each day). The kids have used the camera more than I have.
But there was one lovely sunny day when it was about 23 degrees out, we went for a long, but fast-paced walk. I took 8 pictures just of this day. The wind was super cold but it felt so good just to be out there.
We really need it to "warm" back up a bit to breathe new life into this tired bunch! Apologies for the complaining tone of this post -- hopefully things take a turn here soon -- I was trying to remember some of what we've done this month, but all that bubbles up is the overall blah feeling. We need the sun!!!
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