Can you feel the love?

Today I was pleasantly surprised by a visit from three of my older kids. They hung out in the music room for a while, played on the instruments like little kids, and took a tour of their old elementary school and shared some memories.

Imagine my surprise when I go outside to head towards home to change and go to a basketball game when I was greeted by this........

and this..........














and this.........













Can you feel the love??


They have already been warned that paybacks are hell.  I am not queen of the prank for nothing.  What to do, what to do, what to do..........(insert evil laugh here). 

The Simpsons meet the Muppets

Walking rulebook

My husband's knowledge of the basketball rulebook never ceases to amaze me.  He can quote specific rules word for word.  He can turn right to them in the book when need be.  At times I would think this would be annoying to the officials that call his games.  I mean, who wants the coach pointing out a mistake and quoting the rule from the book??  I wonder how he liked it when coaches did that when he was officiating?

At his last game, this freakish ability worked in his favor.  He is down to one timeout and there is less than a minute left in the game.  He needs the clock to stop so they can set up their press.  During a free throw he calls over one of his players and he tells him that if the other team scores, to step out of bounds, which is a violation.  He then pulls the official over and tells him what is up to make sure it is called and the clock stops.  I, of course, missed all of this due to my statistical duties.  The other team comes down and scores and our player steps out of bounds, official blows whistle, clock stops.  I now know that there is a delay of game call in the game of basketball.  Who knew??

I would like to add that quoting the basketball rulebook is only one of his many talents.  He has this bizarre human GPS thing going on too.  It doesn't matter where we go, he always knows where he is going.  St. Louis, Chicago, Phoenix.....it doesn't matter.  The only time he has been lost it was compliments of a Chicago cab driver who didn't know how to get to Wrigley Field. 

Not a Snow Day, Just a Late Start

No 4:30 phone calls today.  They called last night and said 2 hour late start.  I, however, had bus duty at school #1 so I could not go directly to school #2.  I was laying in bed listening to the cold weather advisory info on the radio and the fact that 5 minutes outside was enough to freeze your skin this morning.  Now bus duty is usually a 15 minute commitment so I was contemplating whether I could back my truck into the driveway by the bus stop so I could have protection from the elements.   Wouldn't you know it but my art teacher friend throughout the course of a few text messages suggested the exact same idea!  So I did my bus duty sitting in my truck (and I am frostbite free).

It was still kind of a long short day, but we survived.  The kids were excited that we got a hit from our 15th state on our school blog.  When I checked the traffic feed after school, I discovered we also had a look from Singapore today.  They are going to go absolutely insane tomorrow!  That makes our 4th international hit and it has given us a good chance to talk about where these countries are located.  I guess the social studies teacher in the house has worn off on me.

I didn't add this map to the school blog until November so some of our website hits aren't on here...........but still very COOL!!!!!!!!!

Snow Day #2

Today was a lot less productive.  There are, however, 5 trashbags sitting at the top of the back stairway and I can walk into Matt's room for the first time in I don't know when.  The comment of the day was "I've got stuff I didn't know I had." 

I think the high temperature today was a balmy 14 degrees.  I was incredibly happy to not be standing outside from 3:30-4:00 for bus duty.  Although assuming we have school tomorrow I don't know that morning bus duty will be any better. 

Snow Day #1

Ahh.....the first snow day of the school year.  I went to bed last night with the "I'll believe it when I see it" attitude because we've been burned on this snow thing before.  When the phone rang at 4:45 I immediately jumped up and looked out the window.   WOOHOO!!!!!!

So, after sleeping late, the ceremonial checking of Facebook, and watching Allie try to roll her half deflated basketball around in the snow, I contemplated what I should accomplish.  I vacuumed for a while until I discovered that one of the filters was plugged so I disassembled and washed the filter.  So much for that.  I then tackled the huge pile of papers that haven't magically filed themselves.  Got that organized.  Worked a little on the two small file cabinets that have the important papers and all the owner's manual.  Got that organized.  Then I tackled the desk.  I went through all the drawers and removed some unnecessary stuff.  Which, I have a really nice calendar/wallet thing if anyone wants it.

I went through some pictures and decided to tackle a large collage picture frame I bought a while ago.  I still need some up and down pictures to finish filling it.  Matt even got in the cleaning mood and started going through stuff in his room.  He filled at least 3 trash bags with stuff.  Anyway, the desk is looking pretty good and I'm thinking if I had another snow day I could maybe get the dining room table cleaned off, but I'm not holding my breath.

Saw this on Yahoo!

Yahoo did their top ten commercials of 2010. Some of them I had kind of forgotten about and one of my favorites was omitted. So here are a few of the commercials that make me chuckle, proof that I watch way too much television.









Well, that one is more of a favorite of the hubby's........but this one......how can you not love the Kevin Bacon commerical?



Forget the stupid e-Trade babies and the creepy, conceited Old Spice guy, this has Betty White AND Abe Vigoda. CLASSIC!!!