Family 411

I'm patiently waiting for Spring.  Okay, patient may not be the right word.

In the meantime I've been finding a few things to do, besides lamenting the dirty step and brown grass that is slowly being exposed. Such as this:

Look! It looks like presents, and it looks like it could just be something fantastic inside too!  My mom gave me this nice little parcel.  Too bad all they contain are MORE pictures! Gah!  Thanks Mom.  On the upside she also gave me the most fabulous set of measuring spoons.  Probably to soften the blow of all those damn pictures she pawned off on me that need organizing and sorting into the kid's photo boxes.

Aren't they pretty!?  I said they were almost too pretty to use, but I quickly got disabused of that notion and was told to use them no matter what.  So the teaspoon one has found it's new home in my sugar bowl for my coffee.  Yes, I'm back on the crack.  I didn't miss the coffee, but I did miss the coffee ritual with Ryan.  Still off the pop though, so that's a big yay my way.

These kids:

have been doing extremely well with the meal planning and cooking of supper.  We've tried a few new recipes, some good ones, some meh, and now I just need to convince them that we should use up all the frozen meat I have in the freezer instead of thinking of fabulously interesting recipes that need to be made but of which we have none of the ingredients on hand!

Hunter went for his eye exam yesterday, and although the eye doctor says he still technically has 20/20 vision in both eyes, since the board at school is blurry and getting worse, he is getting glasses.  I'll update a picture for the family when they come in.

I just registered Clayton for driving lessons.  Whew, better them than me, that's all I have to say about that!  He doesn't start until next month, just in time for spring and hopefully he will get his driver's licence right after he takes the lessons.  In any event, this way I get to keep my hair gray-free and the floorboard of the van doesn't have my shoe permanently imprinted into it after trying to step on the brake on the passenger side!

I know spring is in the air though, because I'm back at the potato farm next week sorting seed potatoes for shipment to the states.  Which is a good thing, because there's glasses and lessons to be paid for!

Photo Boxes

I did it!

I can cross #21 off the list.  Hurray!

I put on my big girl panties, went back to Michael's and was prepared to buy ugly photo boxes.  Luckily for me, as I walked up to the store, I noticed they had a whole bunch more outside AND they had some plain black and white ones.  They may not be the red or orange I was looking for but they aren't pink stripes or airplanes either.  Hurray!

So I ended up with this:

From all of these:

I not only did the binders of pictures my mom had gave me, I also did the three neatly annotated Anne Geddes albums that I had organized quite a few years ago, before all my ambition died.  I'm sort of sad to see the colorful albums go, but I'll get over it.

And to be real, this is what it really looked like after I was done....

Ay caramba.

Let's just look at them like this:

Now I need to get the kid's albums all sorted out and into the extra boxes I bought.  And make labels for the boxes. And actually throw away all those empty albums that are still sitting on my dining room floor. 

So much to do, so little ambition. 

On a side note, I've been off the coffee and pop for four days now.  My muscles have stopped protesting, my brain no longer feels like it's about to implode, I've stopped yawning (finally!) and now I just need the pounds to magically melt away like all this damn snow outside.