Catching Up

This week has been a fairly low-key week for us. It's Friday and I don't have a lot on my to do list for today (although I do need to clean, there's nothing pressing that must be done today) and we don't have anything planned for tomorrow, which hopefully means we can just enjoy our weekend together and start off our Saturday morning with our big breakfast tradition.

Our phones are still not working properly and my patience is pretty much gone! We have had almost every call we make "drop" for the past 3 weeks. I am tired of not being able to carry on a normal conversation without having to call the person I'm talking to back 3 or more times just to say the little thing I called to say. It is extremely frustrating and although I am thankful for the "credit" AT&T gave us due to the problem and the new phones we got (which didn't fix the problem), I don't want another credit. I want properly working service!! I called Kane's mom this morning to ask her a quick question and about 4 call backs later we finally were able to finish our conversation. Hopefully we can call AT&T from a land line soon and try to get a real answer as to when the problem will be fixed. It's just getting ridiculous!

I did a load of laundry earlier in the week and something in the load turned all my whites blue! I know I should probably separate whites and colors in the first place, but normally when I wash using cold water I have no problems throwing everything in together. But, I did have a problem this week. I didn't realize that everything white had turned blue until everything was dry. Oh no---I wasn't sure that I could fix the problem. I took everything that was affected and rewashed it in hot water, soap and about 3/4 cup of bleach. Everything came out as white as white can be! I was relieved and happy to learn that bleach can work this well.

On Wednesday I was in the mood to make a hearty soup for supper to help warm us up since it's been so cold. I got home from Bible study to find that we had no water. I called the office and they were aware of it and said they had to turn off all the water in the building due to an emergency in another apartment. I had to come up with another plan for my soup since without water I couldn't boil my chicken I was planning on using. I ended up just throwing a bunch of random things in my crock pot to make a mexican, taco-ish soup. I used some ground turkey too which I had in my freezer and I decided later I didn't like it that much. The soup was OK, but not one I'll try to re-create again. When the water finally came back on it was a dark brown color. Yuck! It took awhile to get all the dirt-y water out of the pipes.

As I mentioned in my last post, Mara Kate and I are doing "school" a few times a week together. This is a practice run for real homeschooling and we are just trying it out to see how she (and I) do when she is still young enough that there is time and room for mistakes. She is really enjoying it and just the mention of "school" thrills her! Yesterday we worked on rhyming words and although she sometimes thought words rhymed that didn't, when she got a pair that DID match, she KNEW it was right and her little face would light up! So sweet and fun to see your child learning!

Next week Mara Kate has her 3 yr. check up. When I called to get her in back in November (which is when she was turning 3) the earliest date they had available was the end of January. I guess I should have called a few months before her birthday to make an appointment, but oh well, you live and learn. She's still 3, so I guess it's not that big of a deal.

I guess that's about all the news from around here. I'm looking forward to the weekend and time with Kane. I hope everyone else has a wonderful weekend as well!