03/08/12

1.  It rained today.  Not a whole lot, but enough to bring the snails out.  (And to get my clean floors absolutely filthy with mud and leaves and rain water tracked in and out of the house by Sandy and the boys...)  We don't get too many normal round-shelled snails around here.  The ones we get are smaller and have more conical, sea-shell shaped shells.  The boys went outside after lunch and collected a bunch of them.  Then Brigham had the bright idea of bringing two of them into the house, and putting them in my EARS!!  AAAAAGGGHHH!!!  At least he stuck them shell-side-in, so I didn't get any nasty snail slime on me, but STILL!  Sheesh.  Boys are weird.  :-)

2.  I gave the boys today and tomorrow off of music practicing, since next week is spring break and they won't have lessons until the week after that.  It was a nice change, but still took us until 3:30 to finish school work.  It is totally true that work expands to fit the time allotted.  I spent an hour or so tonight trying to work out a schedule so that each boy will know just what he is supposed to be doing at any given time in the morning.  It probably won't work, but my life would be so much simpler if I weren't constantly trying to herd the boys back to what they are *supposed* to be doing.  I don't love the idea of scheduling them up through the whole day, but the alternative is me going crazy keeping track of which boy has done what, what they're supposed to be doing now, which boy most needs my help at the moment, etc.  I'd dearly love for them to be self-sufficient, take responsibility for their own schoolwork, and get things done without me having to hover over them, but we're not quite there yet.

3.  In the evening, after our art group, Brigham and Joseph got an itch to make something in the kitchen.  Joseph made peppermint hot chocolate and Brigham made muffins.  Brigham likes to bake these little muffin mixes that require only water or milk.  He got creative tonight and made wild berry, apple cinnamon muffins (combined two mixes), swirled with blueberry syrup.  They were very good, and both boys had a great time working together.  I really love to see them enjoying each others company.  Now if only they were as good at cleaning up as they are of making yummy treats!  

4.  I drove my friend Desiree and her little 4 month old baby to a Relief Society event tonight.  On the way home, I ran out of gas.  I've only done that ONE other time in my life, about 13 years ago.  How embarrassing!  I felt really bad since Desiree's baby was very tired and very ready to go home.  Of course Ben was way out in Steiner Ranch doing Elders Quorum visits.  Luckily Desiree's husband happened to have a can of gas for their lawn-mower and brought it over to rescue us.  Meanwhile, it seemed like about half the Relief Society drove past (the car stopped right at a central intersection everyone had to get through to go home), recognized my car, stopped, and got out to see if I needed help.  So now the entire ward knows that I am an idiot and let my car run out of gas.  :-)  Yes, the "low fuel" light has been on for a couple of days, but it didn't look like the needle was *that* far past the red line!  And I was seriously planning to stop and get gas just as soon as I dropped Desiree off.  Oh well.  There was enough gas in the gas can to get me up to the gas station where Desiree's husband jumped out of this car to pump the gas for me.  What a gentleman!