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You know what’s a lot of fun, driving to town in the rain only to have it turn to ice on the wind shield. What’s even more fun is not being tall enough to see over all the ice that’s accumulating, being a chicken and pulling over so you husband can drive. I left my big girl underwear at home today. It barely got above freezing today and last week was full of fun too.

The cold began Wednesday morning when at 6am we lost power. We got the boys up, dressed and fed by candle light and little LED head lamps before we lost too much heat. Thursday the boys had a non uniform day so they could dress warm and as we pulled up to drop them off the teachers were going car to car saying the water froze at the main and school was canceled. Yeah! A fun day at the office with the boys. They were pretty good about it though and due to the repairs needed to the water lines school was also canceled for Friday. Good thing because when it got light enough to see Friday morning we had a nice blanket of white everywhere. That’s right folks, it snowed, right here in central Texas. I woke the boys up and helped them with jackets and out they went to play.

Big C decided he was still going to work and headed out in his Jeep for the 25 mile trip to town. The boys and I took pictures and came inside to warm up and eat breakfast, got clothes on and went back out to play. We found our green saucers from White Sands in New Mexico and did some fun sliding around. The boys played until their fingers froze and then we played games inside and I made some yummy broccoli cheese soup for lunch, we stayed warm by keeping the fire place stoked all day long.  By lunch any snow in the path of the sun was quickly melting away. It was all gone by the next day. We’ve had quite a long few days of cold and wind, the wind making it that much colder. I think most of my family likes the cold weather except when it forces us to spend many days stuck inside together! See all my photos here.

My boys and their crazy little body clocks are driving my crazy. I am sure other parents have similar issues but the only way I can feel better is to lament about it a bit. During the week (days they need to get up by 6:15am) they are slow to get up, cranky and whiny. They always ask to go back to sleep or sleep later. On the weekend however the little monsters are springing out of bed at the butt crack of dawn. We don’t have a super big house and the living room where they congregate first thing in the morning on a Saturday to wrestle and growl at each other in weird boy tones is right next to my room, where I am still trying to sleep in my cozy bed. Then there was today, a glorious day off which happened to be a weekday. Right on cue those funky little body clocks hit the snooze and they slept until after 9am! Absolutely amazing. We were fortunately able to take a much needed day off, have a late breakfast, hit the grocery store, work on some projects (school and pinewood derby). I actually feel rested, I’m sure 6am will still come about an hour too early for me tomorrow though!

The boys and I had a ripper of a weekend! Since daddy was away camping the boys and I headed south on I35 as soon as school was out on Friday. We had some plans to chill at a hotel and hit up the Dave and Buster’s arcade for a bit but we have an issue with the Jeep that after it get’s hot it won’t start for about 30-45 minutes. It has to be something to do with electronics but…. The folks at the hotel we had planned to stay at were really cool and let us cancel without being charged and we crashed my aunt’s floor instead. The boys were seriously excited about Dave and Busters and I loaded up their cards with credits and they went a little crazy trying to decide which games to play! The earned massive amounts of tickets and had a blast.

Saturday morning after breakfast with some family we headed to Lackland Air Force Base to see the Air Show. I followed advice and parked off base and we hopped on a bus which dropped us off right at the gate, the line was long but moved pretty quickly. No problems with the inhaler and the metal detector. More on why we have an inhaler later… As soon as we walked in the boys and I spotted the B-29 Super Fortress and then we were doubly surprised to see a B-17G. We took some pictures and hung around there until after they fired it up then walked around some more. The planes were awesome but my youngest guy is not a fan of unexpected loud sounds and as soon as the first jet flew by at low altitude his hands shot up to his ears and stayed there. We were off to find ear plugs, which helped a little. Big ear plugs and small ears….

I did get to take some photos and had a few come out nice. The boys did a little shopping (talk about theme park prices) and found their favorite thing was a bullet necklace we bought from a crew in a gun ship from Kansas (they sold the stuff as a fundraiser). Because I bought two necklaces they let the boys and I tour the plane for free (it was $2 per person or $5 for a family). Zach got a kick out of sitting in a seat near the front of the plane. We lasted a little longer than I thought we would and I know they liked it (they are still talking about it).

We headed home after that for a movie night with pizza and popcorn. We started watching Pee Wee’s Big Adventure which after about 30 minutes we all decided it was lame (lamer than I remember) and switched to the new “Alice in Wonderland” with Johnny Depp. We camped out in the living room and watched TV until we all fell asleep. The boys were so well behaved and I love getting to hang out with them and doing fun stuff!

First of all I spend WAY to much time in my local grocery store, it’s like I have two growing boys to feed or something.

I enjoy (so does the Big C) a nice glass of wine occasionally and while I certainly don’t spend high double or triple figures on a bottle I don’t necessarily look on the bottom shelf for the $5 bottle either. I had to laugh at the college age girls speeding down the wine isle “Let’s just get something cheap”, “Yeah, just a cheap bottle will be good”. They aren’t going for flavor are they? I suppose that the wine doesn’t really need to have any flavor to it if you are just going to chug it for the buzz. At least the college co-ed’s were looking at the reds. As I continued to browse for a specific red wine (and not finding it) moved onto the decision I would buy one with a fun name. I settled on Red Rock (a California wine) with a mid line pricing and proceeded to the checkout.The older gentleman behind me began to unload his basket (how I dread the cash register when my items fill the entire belt from end to end) and I couldn’t help but notice he had less than 20 things in his cart. Six of those items were identical bottles of white wine. At our local grocery if you buy six bottle you get a nifty carrying box and 15% off. He was either having a party or really liked that wine. After unloading his wine, he added his single bottle of water and select veggies. I couldn’t help but speculate as to what he was cooking.

Then I remembered the time I ran to the store to buy toilet paper (and only toilet paper) only to have Big C call and say “buy some more beans, we don’t have enough for everyone at home”. So I stood in line with a 6 pack of toilet paper and an economy sized can of baked beans. I immediately felt the need to defend my purchases to the clerk. She just shrugged her shoulders like she was at the end of a 12 hour shift and could care less about the irony of my two items.

I used to see the former owner of a business right next door to ours make a daily pilgrimage four doors down to the liquor store empty handed only to return a few moments later with his box of rose wine. I really hope he wasn’t drinking one a day. Maybe that’s how he kept the doctor away, well except the one time he had an ambulance called for him because he passed out. Too much of a good thing.

I’ll let you know how that experimental bottle of wine turns out.

Every now and then I get a little OCD and feel a bit like Tony Shalub’s character Monk, at other times I feel a lot like him. In this particular instance I find myself picky about pens, yes the type you write with. Although I do much of my work on the computer I still write a lot. I have little notebooks that I’ll fill up, move the important stuff to digital notes then file or trash the notebook. Everything from phone messages to lists, drawings for designs and more.

I like felt tip pens but was always hesitant to splurge on any at the local office supply store. Then by some chance I stumbled upon a link from another blog I read to Tokyo Pen Shop. Then I spent the next hour looking at all the lovely pens! In that hour I managed to add a few select choices to my shopping cart like this and a few of these and nabbed a few extras for an upcoming friends birthday gift. I waited just a short time until I received my order -

Let me just say that I absolutely love these pens! They write effortlessly and the gift recipient is quite happy with theirs as well. Tokyo Pen Shop also has a selection of notebooks, pencils, and tons of other pens and they offer free shipping on orders over $25. So why are you still here? Go get to Tokyo Pen Shop!

Note: This is not a paid for review I just really like these pens!!!

It’s official, I am the proud owner of a 7 and 8 year old boy. Jiminy Cricket! And yes, technically until they are 18 I own them.*Grin* We ended our birthday week with a trip to a local putt putt/go kart place (we had intended to take them on their actual birthday but the place was closed) after the boys football game. We bought our tickets and went to wait in line. The the clouds in the sky poured forth ALL their condensation and that folks is why they call it a rain check. Knowing it wasn’t going to dry up anytime soon we decided to come back another time and went across town to a laser tag spot. The boys have been begging to go since they attended a birthday party there last year. They decided to play teams, them against us. We kicked their butts! Oh Yeah. I have to give a bunch of credit to my big 8yr old though he let us shoot him more than his brother because if we shot Jelly (our 7yr old) he’d toss a fit. You aren’t supposed to run inside the arena but tell that to a 7 and 8yr old trying to shoot their mom and dad. Most of the time this is all I could see.

Then I’d hear *pew, pew, pew* “I shot you mom!!!” I was afraid the fifteen minutes would go on forever, turns out it wasn’t too bad. The boys played some video games before we headed to grab some BBQ and then called it a day.

With all the rain we’ve had lately (none of it really forecasted by the way) we haven’t made any more progress on painting the house (the outside). We did get all the cabling run for our home DVR system (both coax and networking) along the house this weekend, it’s replacing our satellite cable (which we had turned off last week). I’ll make a big post about it all including what we are saving per year by doing it.

The boys had their first flag football game this weekend and both did a  really good job! You can see a few photos from the game over on flickr.