Weekly update - January 12, 2024

At least I think it's Friday. There was some confusion at dinner over what day it actually was. Two days in the same week where life has been cancelled due to snow will do that. 

• And yes, we have snow. K. got some pictures earlier.

• J. made scones for breakfast since his school was closed again. K., in keeping with the dinosaur theme, decided to buy dinosaur cookie cutters, so J. used them to cut out the scones. 

• When I went out to the barn this morning, everyone had calmed down and Major was looking a bit contrite. They got their grain and I opened up the dry lot and then Major's Dutch door. He went and touched noses with Emmy and then left her alone. They managed to eat their hay in peace. 

Well, mostly in peace. Every so often Emmy felt the need to scream for a moment and hop her back legs up and down. You know, just in case Major was getting any ideas about coming near her... which he wasn't. 

• On our previous snow day all the back three days ago on Tuesday, J. and L. took Kenzie on a walk in the forest preserve.

• I renewed a bunch of prescriptions earlier in the week, and if you can believe it, they were all waiting at the pharmacy. Not a single one of them required me to make additional phone calls. It feels almost miraculous. 
• I have fired yet another doctor. Psychiatrists have now edged out speech therapists for frequency of being fired. 
• The new hens are laying eggs! In January even!! J. collected eleven eggs from the coop today. I know we have three or four Easter eggers out there, but they seem to be lagging in the egg laying department because we've only found white eggs and brown eggs. They have not figured out that we have supplied them with handy nesting boxes preferring to lay them wherever they happen to be. 
• I have just one tablecloth yet to iron and I will have all the table linens from the holidays washed, ironed, and put away. It's not even Valentine's Day.
• We are liking Lonesome Dove so far, though there is a lot of character development at the beginning. It is most definitely PG-13. I actually wouldn't be surprised if it was on some school book ban lists in states like Florida or Texas. Which is ironic because it's set in Texas. I'll keep you updated if I have caused irreparable harm to my children by reading them inappropriate content. 
• Earlier this week I made yet another attempt to do something vaguely academic with R. during school. In this instance we were working on counting and recognizing the numbers one and two. Or we were attempting to do this. Attempting unsuccessfully that is. I think I just need to take this expectation off my plate. I decided we would go back to reading picture books for R.'s school. Then at the library yesterday (because we had a big snowstorm coming), I happened across a Seymour Simon picture book about whales on the sale table. I decided on the spur of the moment what I would do with R. We're going to have themes where we learn a lot about one thing for a couple of weeks. And we're going to start with whales.
• Tomorrow the temperature plummets and we'll be heading into the negative digits. This means there is a very good chance I will be spending the weekend carrying buckets of water out to the barn because everything will be frozen. I actually don't mind the cold weather but I dislike frozen hydrants.