Mommathon

The coats have started to arrive! We got three today with more on the way! Woohoo!

Last night I went to a cookie exchange. I took five dozen oatmeal scotchies and came back with five dozen different cookies. Let’s just say my family thinks I am some kind of genius.

Liam had a friend over for the first day of winter break. I’d like to say they spent a lot of their time working on this project in the picture, but most of the time was spent discussing Pokemon.

*Yes, this is a different picture than what was originally here. It was brought to my attention that I had already posted that picture. Clearly I am losing my mind if I managed to post the same picture twice and not remember. (Thanks, Chris)

The boys had their winter parties today. It’s so funny how different a second grade party is from a fourth grade party. The second graders had games and crafts and snacks that were all planned by the parents. The fourth graders ended up organizing themselves to play their own games. They wanted to play Twister and Apple to Apple. So basically, the parents brought the food and the kids just hung out which is exactly what they wanted to do.

I love these things. I love them so much I bought two of them in the fall and they have already paid for themselves. I have used them to save money on groceries, restaurants and tickets to plays.

It started off as a pretty typical day. I went and helped at the local clothes closet in the afternoon and stayed a little bit later than I was supposed to because it was so busy. I did eventually have to leave though or I was going to be late to pick up the boys from school. (This is where things get interesting.)

A girl (probably in her late teens/early twenties) flags me down on the side of the road. She is kneeling beside a man of about the same age who is face down on the sidewalk and she is clearly distressed. I pull over, as do a couple of other people, and there is so much blood coming out of this guy on the sidewalk that it’s scary, really scary. She tells us that she saw him fall and maybe have a seizure.

There are people on the phone with 911 while me and two other people stand in front of the guy on the sidewalk so the elementary school kids driving passed on the the school busses can’t see all the blood.

Then the local high school gets out, but by the time the kids start exiting the high school, someone has alerted the school that there’s something going on and for some reason everyone now thinks he’s a gunshot victim so the high school teachers come poring out of the building trying to redirect the kids to safety. There was also a TriMet station by where I was, so there’s all of those people to deal with, too.

Let me just say, you have never seen police until they think there’a gunshot victim. It was SURREAL! There were police everywhere and they didn’t wait for cars to get out of their way at the stoplights either, they just drove over the medians. It was CRAZY! Even the police chaplain showed up.

Anyways, the ambulance came, the police realized there were no gunshots and I was late picking up the boys.

Liam and some of his fellow violinists went and played at a retirement home/nursing home this evening. They did a beautiful job and they got rave reviews from the residents.

Colm and I are still working our way through the Little House series. He is still loving it. In this book Laura is older, closer to 13, Mary is blind and Ma has had Baby Grace.