The real post

It's a two post day. There's so much going on that I decided that I needed to do two!

Church news: The steeple is being delivered today. It's a miracle. The church is coming along so quickly. The mild KY winters make it possible to start a building project in January (well, actually December). If you want to see progress, you can start by going here and viewing the progress. There will be steeple pictures soon, I'm sure!

Boy news: The boys went fishing today. All of them. They didn't catch any fish, but they did have a good time. I did not go. I do believe that fishing is the most boring activity known to humankind.

Cycling news: I went for a ride today. It's the first real ride of the season. I was a bit slow, but I made the entire 12.52 mile ride at 13.5 mph in 55 minutes and 41 seconds. I only lost a bit of time since last fall. I guess the trainer helped me stay in shape after all. My hope is that I can average by summer 15 miles an hour. I'm still having some wheezing now after 2 hours, but that will pass. (I'll just drink more coffee!)

Knitting news: I finished my Norwegian Socks! I started them on the 12 of March and finished them on the 4th of April. Yes, it took three weeks. However, I finished a pair of socks in that time, ripped out 6" of vest, and these are knee socks! The pattern was from Nancy Bush's Folk Socks and the book and yarn came from my secret pal, Valerie. I am definitely going to make more socks from this book. There are only two real projects on the needles right now: B's sweater (which I keep telling myself doesn't need to be finished until October or so) and a pair of socks for L out of left over yarn. I am probably going to start another pair of socks for me and I want to buy some yarn for socks for B and M. Socks are easier to work on when it's hot, and I know that they will be worn.

M took this picture of the very fancy socks for me. I quite like them!

Next week will be busy--it's Holy Week and L has his appointment with the hematologist. He's still coughing and today is his last day on antibiotics. I guess we could go to his pediatrician, but it won't hurt to have the hematologist listen to how L's doing.

Portraits

We had our family portrait taken not long ago. Here we are:
M is 8 in this picture and L is 5. There are also pictures of the boys and of just B and I.
So this is what we look like now. Note the matching sweaters on the boys. This was not my idea. But they look very handsome anyway!

Spring Break

The boys are on spring break.

No, you don't understand, The boys are on spring break!

Grocery shopping with them is not fun.
Listening to them annoy each other all day long is not fun.
Telling them to clean their rooms 50 million times (+/- 3) is not fun.

However,
seeing M really ride his bike is fun.
watching L use M's scooter is also fun.

And finally, sleeping until 7:00 am for (almost) the whole week is also fun.

In other news: M's soccer game went extremely well, even though both teams technically forfeited. They wound up playing 4 v 4 with M playing fullback. After the first quarter, the other team had another player show up so they had a sub. The Tidal Waves won anyway: 8-1.

L and I got sunburned (first one of the year!).

The church is moving along quite quickly. The steeple is coming. The bricks are going on the exterior walls. There are rooms inside the church building.

See you--I must finish making dinner.

Happy Spring!

At 3:30 pm today, both boys are officially on spring break.
Spring is most definitely here.

Quiet morning

It's a nice quiet morning here at home. The dogs are snoozing, the birds are quiet, and the guinea pigs aren't even oinking. It's restful to not have L talking constantly all the time.

This has been a busy, yet (so far) uneventful week. The biggest news is L has bronchitis, yet again. The weirdest part is it sounded really awful to Dr. W, but he is not running a fever, or letting it slow him down in any way. How can one kid be so sick and not even let it phase him?

The end of the semester is coming like a train wreck (really fast, and really messy). Next week I'll have papers to grade, hands to hold, and lots of students showing up for tutoring. I can always tell when the end of the semester is in sight to the students because all of a sudden they ask how many points they have, what are they missing, and beg for more extra credit. Since one of the things I'm trying to convince my students is that biology is everywhere and relates to their lives, I let them turn in biology related articles from the popular press for points. They also get 2 points when they recycle the scantron sheets from other exams (I'm trying to reduce the number of dead trees). But they want more, more, more! If they'd just do all of the assignments and study for their exams, they could easily pass. To quote Hogarth from the movie The Iron Giant, "Anyone can do well if they'd just do the freaking homework!" I suppose that's the lesson they might learn from my class.

On subjects that I can control (i.e not L's health or my students' effort levels), knitting has been both good and bad. Good in that I'm 1/3 done with the second Norwegian sock. Bad in the way that I had to rip MIL's vest because it was just too big. It's also not fun to knit with the yarn right now. It's itchy and it's been bothering my hands. Stockinette is also boring. I might ask her if she'd consider a shell for summer instead. Then she could wear it now and I'll work on the vest later, after I've found a way to make it more fun to knit. Another good thing is that I've started L a pair of socks from leftover yarn. It's nice to use up those little odds and ends.

On to working on my sock. I'd like to get through the decrease round and start the rest of the leg. These are going to be some very warm, very cushiony socks. Too bad we're heading into summer! (Ha! Not really. I could handle have these socks relegated to opening the drawer and admiring them for awhile.)