Part Deux and a Pep Talk

I have declared 2013 "Year of the Cat, Part Deux".

More organizing to happen this year.

Closets to clean.

Basement to organize.

Junk to be tossed.

Enjoy my first post about Year of the Cat from last February.

Yesterday I had nothing planned.

So I tackled our front hall closet.

It is part coat closet, part arts/crafts closet, part misc. closet.

And it was a disaster.

Everything is just jumbled up here.

Crafts are a disaster.

I have used it as a catchall and there are items that have no business being in this closet.

Like the mason jars.  Don't belong.

And all the arts/crafts needed to be gone through.

Lots needed to be tossed.

Here is the finished product.

Not perfect by any means.

But way better than it was.

I really think I need to move more of the girls crafts.

But, I am not sure where yet.

I will call it my work in progress.

And I really want better shelves.

Hubby will need to be involved.

I love "Year of the Cat, Part Deux".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now onto the pep talk.

Have you seen the "Pep Talk from Kid President" video that has been circulating on Facebook?

Thank you Aunt Donna for posting it on your blog a couple days ago!

It is just great stuff.

Don't delay.  Watch it now.

I.love.this.kid.

His delivery is just fantastic.

I also love how the pep talk quotes Robert Frost's poem which I wrote about a couple weeks ago in my Snowy Road post.

My favorite quote from this is, "If life is a game, aren't we all on the same team? I mean, right.  I'm on your team.  Be on my team."

And I love when he says, "This is life people, we got air coming through our nose."

Really.  Watch the video.

You will love it.  I promise.

And it brings life into perspective.

What happens matters.

Moments

Shower time is a great music moments time for the girls.

Lots of nights we are playing different music on Hubby's iPod.

Wide range of music.

Buena Vista Social Club.  Beastie Boys.  The Beatles.  Blondie.  Elton John.  Stevie Wonder.  Norah Jones.

Those are our staples.

Clearly we like the "B's".

And lots of nights Hubby plays his guitar for the girls.

Anyhoo.

Tonight,  Hubby was playing his guitar.

He was enjoying teaching himself Stevie Nick's "Edge of Seventeen".

D went up for her shower first.

And asked casually if Hubby could come upstairs too.

Hubby didn't realize it was because D wanted him to play guitar for her.

So after a few minutes I prodded Hubby to go upstairs.

Which he did quite easily.

And worked on his rendition of the song.

It was quite good.

It really is a great song.

D seemed to enjoy it as well.

Once E was in the shower, Hubby had stopped playing guitar and was playing the music on his iPhone.

Of course, with E, Beastie Boys was played.

And then Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity".

That's a great one to play.

After the girls were ready for bed we got to talking about the video for "Virtual Insanity".

So, of course we watched it.

Great, great song.  Video is neat too.

And as a rabbit trail will do, seeing that video reminded me of Ok Go's video for "Here It Goes Again".

Such a great video.  And worthy of watching again.

I love this video.

Such a simple concept.  But, wow.  Super fun to watch.

And the tune is pretty catchy too.

I love our music moments with the girls.

It's a great way to introduce them to all different kinds of music.

And I haven't even mentioned that we listened to The Sound of Music's "Do-Re-Mi" while E was brushing her teeth.

Such a variety of music tonight.

Great music moments.

That makes me happy.

It was a Grande 5 pump, nonfat, light water Chai kind of day.  It made me very happy on a snowy, slushy, icky afternoon.

Still Life

E took to drawing last night after dinner.

She did quite well.

She drew my wine glass, a mug, the tea kettle, and Hubby's espresso pot.

D did her own drawing too.

She also drew a wine glass, a mug, a flower, and she drew a picture of me.

They were quite happy to be drawing at the counter.

And I was quite happy to watch while I cleaned up after dinner.

E's drawing of my wine glass.

D chose to draw my glass that has my initial on it.

I just love E's rendition of the espresso pot.

She did a great job.

It's a keeper, for sure.

Warmth

It is cold out tonight.

Very cold.

Very, very cold.

I think the low is supposed to be somewhere around -3.

Windchill about -15 or even colder.

Yikes.

I feel very thankful to have a warm house tonight.

And I am praying for those that have little heat.

And for those that have no home, I hope they have found somewhere to be inside tonight.

With the cold today and tonight, my mind has wandered to thoughts of warmer days.

Hazy, hot, humid days of summer.

Sounds glorious right now.

Warm Lake Michigan last July

Sun-kissed D

Lucy loves swimming

Sweet sissies

Fishing fun this past summer with friends.  We fished a lot.  Fun for all.

Ahhhh.  The Cape.  It's one of the places that makes me most happy.

E flying a kite in August 2011.

Eating a donut during early morning fishing at the Cape.  Perfect.

Warm hike in Arizona.

Ahhhh.  This was such a nice warm day in Arizona.

There.  That's better.

I feel warmer already.

I want to be there.  Right now.

Warm summer day in Wisconsin.

I.love.this.picture.

My family.  Warm and happy.

Perfect.

146 days until the start of summer.

Hot, hazy, lazy days for summer.

Can't wait.

Struck

D tested positive for the flu yeserday.

I definitely wasn't expecting that to happen.

She woke up fine, no complaints not feeling well.

Then at about 1:30 I got a phone call from the school nurse.

She told me D's throat was red and she had a temp of 100.5.

The nurse was funny because she said D was surprised to hear she had a slight fever.

See, she was feeling fine except that her throat hurt.

The nurse and I thought for sure it would be strep.

Off I went to school to pick D up and head to the doctor for 2:30.

Once at the doctor, the nurse said that she would do the test for strep, but if it came back negative then they would do the flu test on D.

I never once thought that the strep test would come back negative.

How wrong I was.

Strep test was negative.

So they tested for the flu.

We actually had to leave the office to go get E from school before the results of the flu test were ready.

The doctor made sure to get my cell so they could call me when they had the results.

And sure enough as we were walking out of school with E as well as with my friend R and her kids, the doctor's office called me.

Bingo.

We have a winner.

Flu test was positive.

Boo.

A prescription for Tamiflu was D's prize.

And I must say Tamiflu is wonderful.

It is lessening the symptoms for D.

Her fever is down and actually non-existent at this point.

She is stuffy and she has started a bit of a cough.

I have also started her on her nebulizer medicine.

That should help keep her lungs clear and help lessen the cough.

Tonight when hubby got home she was so chatty with him.

Very chatty.  And funny.

She will be staying home again tomorrow to get some more rest.

But, if she is doing ok at the end of tomorrow then I will send her back to school on Friday.

And I only hope that the rest of us don't get sick with the flu.

D struck with the flu.

D spent the day on the couch.

Lucy was a good snuggler throughout the day.

42

42 is a good number.

When it's the temperature of the room you are sleeping in on the first night of your weekend away with friends, it's not such a great number.

So this past weekend was the weekend in which I was away with my friends J, R, C, and S scrapbooking in a neighboring state up north.

We left on Friday afternoon and came home Monday afternoon.

We had a great time.

Aside from the fact that the heat did not work the 1st night in our condo unit.

And we didn't know this until close to 12:30 in the morning when we were going to bed.

The room temp was 42 degrees.

That's cold.

Very, very cold.

Cold as in can almost see my breath cold.

There may or may not have been a little bit of whining from all of us about how cold the room was at that point.

But, we turned the heater on and were all optimistic that the room would warm up.

So we readied ourselves for bed.

And not long after shutting off all the lights, the heater shut off.

I got up.  Turned it back on.

Minutes later it shut off again.  Up I went and hit the on button again.

And climbed back into a cold bed.

It was at that point 56 degrees in the room.

Well, I should say it was 56 degrees in the 2 square feet around the heater.

None of us slept well.

At another point in the night, R got up to turn the heater on.

By 5, C&J were up trying to get the heater going too.

To no avail.

And it was cold.

By 7am, I was very tired from not sleeping well and very cold.

I was happy to get up and get in a hot shower.

That felt good.

Phone calls were made and maintenance came.

Nothing the maintenance guy told us made us happy.

Especially J.

We discovered that the heaters were run on propane and none of the units have CO detectors.

That's bad.

J's worry all night was that we would die from CO poisoning.

So she didn't hardly sleep at all.

There may or may not have been a bit more whining about how cold we all were through the night.

And there were some laughs too.

I myself had rationalized that we would not die of hypothermia through the night.

42 was cold, but not that cold.  And we all had good blankets on our beds to help keep us warm.

All good rationalizations.

And true.

We decided quickly that we would be moving our things to a different unit.  And definitely not staying in the same unit with space heaters.

I must say that where we stay is a quaint Christian camp on a lake.

It's beautiful, but the accommodations are basic and not luxurious.

And that's good for a weekend when you are hardly in your room.

But, heat is important.

So we moved to a different unit that day after lunch.

Thankfully a fellow scrapbooker(and R's sis-in-law) was staying in a unit identical to ours all by herself.

She gave us her unit and took a room in the main lodge.

All's well that ends well.

And the rest of the weekend was great.

We had lots of fun.

And we laughed a lot.

By Sunday night we were very silly.

Laughing at just about anything.

Let's just say there was a lot of laughing as we were all trying to help R sing this song.

Well, actually just sing one word from this song, "Trouble".

It was great fun.

And I will not be able to hear this song without laughing and thinking about how much fun we had with this song that Sunday night.

Such a great way to spend a weekend with friends.

And I got a lot of scrapbooking done.

Because I really only do it this one time a year.

Who knows?  Maybe I will get some more done through this year.

Maybe.

Here is an oldie but goodie of D&E with J and K.

Sissy and I were telling them to pretend to be tigers while we were taking their pictures.

I just love E's face.

And I love that J and K are getting into it as well.

Such good cousins.

I love covered bridges.

Especially red covered bridges.

J & I ventured out on Sunday afternoon to a Michael's.

There were a few supplies that were needed.

So off we went.

And in our travels out and back we traveled over 3 covered bridges.

Fantastic.

A great weekend indeed.

Snowy Road

It was a beautiful ride to school this morning with the girls.

There were blue skies.

And snow clinging to the trees.

Picture perfect winter morning.

As much as I don't enjoy winter all the time, mornings like today help get me through the icky part of winter.

I very much enjoyed my ride on our country roads today.

And it feels good to appreciate the beauty.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
~~Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~~Robert Frost