Coming out of the sickness and other winter happenings

Well, there hasn't been too much to report lately.  We've had sickness off and on which is typical for us this time of year.  Johnny was pretty sick last weekend.  The fever was the worst part but I already was armed with children's Tylenol so I was covered.  Sunday morning he woke up at 4:30 am needing another dose.  He wanted to get up and cried hard when we didn't let him.  After a half hour of that and the medicine had kicked in, I was able to sing him back down to sleep.  I got everyone up at 8:00 am.  By then, Johnny was just a little sweat ball.  His pajamas were soaked in sweat and he was not happy to get stripped right then.  His little hands were even pruney, even more so than at bath time.  But because he was able to sweat his fever out, it broke and he improved quickly after that.  There's been lots of coughing from everybody (except me).  I did feel pressure on my chest for a couple days which did seem weird that I didn't cough.  But that might be because I hate coughing so much that I will myself not to do it.  Hate hearing people cough, hate coughing myself because it gives me headaches.  I guess we all have our qwirks.  David's done with the boat show, with the overtime in-person part at least.  We all went to the boat show Sunday evening.  The kids explored a couple boats and played in the kids section.  They built (mommy helped a lot) a couple boats, jumped on a huge trampoline and puttered around in a couple of paddle boats.  That took Johnny a few minutes to figure out.  Every time Holiday crashed into him they'd both laugh really hard.  It was all good though, those boats were built with crashing in mind.  I'm starting to evaluate my yard again.  I'll need to replace that greenhouse, the old one is disintegrating slowly.  We'll need to use some moss killer this year and will likely need to re-seed as a result of that.  Now that the dead leaves are finally gone I can move on to the weeds and bushes.  The candytuft and crocuses are starting the bloom and the roses are getting little buds on them.  I made applesauce a couple weeks ago and it turned out really well.  Next time I'll cut back a little more on the sugar and make sure I budget for 4 hours of time.  My recipe for 8 jars needed 18 apples and it takes a long time to peel, core and chop up that many.  It didn't take too long to cook it down.  Using the food processor to bring the cooked apples down to sauce did take some time too just not as long as the prep did.  David was talking about chutneys so maybe I'll look at those recipes next.

Getting back on track after the holidays

Well, we had a terrific Christmas.  The kids got a lot of stuff and plenty of activities to do.  The Tuesday before Christmas we went downtown and Johnny had his turn to see Santa.  It was funny.  When he was told it was his turn he broke out into a run onto Santa's lap.  It surprised everybody but, hey, keeps us on our toes, right?  The got to ride the carousel and check out the big Christmas tree and the Macy's Star and the Macy's trains.  On Christmas Eve we went to my brother Chris's house and got to see the extended family that lives in the area.  The cousins always like to play together.  The kids went to bed late that night but they slept in till 8 am (which is a record by the way).  Both got lots of cool stuff.  We took down the tree two days later partly because we put everything up early this year and we needed the room to get the new stuff settled.  We moved the play kitchen back into the living room and put all Holiday's 'Bunny House' stuff in her room so she can keep it together.  I still need to go through the toys and their bedrooms to purge out anything we don't need anymore.  I'm kind of in the middle of several projects.  One of which is deep cleaning the kitchen.  I just didn't realize how much it needed it until I was on a ladder inches away.  Thank God for Mr. Clean erasers. I'll be marching from room to room as needed till it's done.  I'm starting to set up again for another round of canning, this time applesauce.  I'm also planning my garden, what to plant from seed in the greenhouse, what I want to start as seedlings, when to replace the greenhouse, etc.  It changes every year.  Johnny had a cold but he's better.  Holly's been a little sniffly but it doesn't seem bad.  I've had a touch of something since last Wednesday but I think I'm on the downhill side of it now.  It's not bad except for the congestion.  I'm trying to establish a committed schedule for working out, it's all about balancing everything.  But we're all back in the swing of work/school/daycare again, getting back into a rhythm before the Boat Show starts (ack!).  Unfortunately we've had a loss for David's side of the family.  John Hack, dad to David's best friend Dan growing up, passed away over the Christmas break.  David drove back to his home town of Goldendale for the memorial service.  The journey went well enough for him, but funerals can be kind of tough to get through, especially when they play Taps (John was a Viet Nam war vet).  The kids and I stayed home and rode the bus for dance class.