Sometimes it’s the more laid-back weekends that are the most pleasant of all.

On Saturday, we started things off with one of my favorite weekend traditions when George hit the kitchen and made us bacon and eggs for breakfast. We don’t do it every single weekend, but it’s pretty frequent. Hayley had asked if we could go for a family walk but when I checked the weather forecast, I saw it was pretty darn cold on Saturday and that Sunday was promising to be warmer so we decided to put it off until then.

Later in the day someone came over to work on music for a couple of hours so I hung out with the girls in the living room doing some drawing; Hayley is getting really good at it and Breanna likes to name all her doodles.

Unfortunately, Breanna was a little cranky because she’s dealing with a cold that is driving her crazy, especially since we can’t seem to turn off the tap inside her nose. She required a great deal of cuddling right at the time I needed to start supper so she sat on my hip with her head on my shoulder while I made the rice and vegetables to go with the butter chicken we were having.

I was on my own for part of the evening but I didn’t mind since I spent a great deal of it poking around on Flickr and catching up on a few things I wanted to do. I ended up getting to bed entirely too late, sometime after 1 am. Whoops!

I ended up sleeping until 9 am, so that helped with the late bedtime. Then, George and the kids ended up in the living room watching something or other, and I decided to do something I hadn’t done in an eternity – I made my coffee and retreated to the bedroom to read. I’m about 200 pages into The Other Boleyn Girl and I am *loving* it when I’m not busy being irate at the way things were in that era. I managed to lie in bed, reading about 75 pages which was awesome. (In fact, as soon as I finish this entry, I think I must go read some more!)

After a quick lunch, we held true to our promise to Hayley and we bundled up for our family walk. It was a beautiful day and wasn’t very cold at all. We were out for almost an hour and a half, and Breanna walked the entire way except for coming up the stairs when we got back home. We walked around our neighborhood and found an enormous snow bank where the plows had been pushing snow out of a parking lot. Hayley had a blast climbing up and sliding back down. Even Breanna went a few times, though we had to carry her up and position her properly before letting her go. Hell, even I went down the hill once, despite a lack of snowpants and I got a cold, wet butt for my efforts (hi, pervy Google searching people!), but it was fun so I didn’t care. We’re hoping to go sledding in a couple of weeks, that should be a blast.

The rest of today was just a typical Sunday where we try to keep things low-key and get ready for starting back into the week. Never mind that it’s 9:45 pm and Hayley’s still awake despite needing to be up at 6:30 tomorrow morning (I’m not looking forward to waking her up for breakfast!). Breanna’s snoring exceptionally loudly over the monitor, poor little thing, but at least she’s sleeping. George is watching “The Simpsons”. And now I’m going to do the tiniest bit of Flickr-ing before returning to England in the 16th century and see what lies ahead for Henry and Mary and Anne.

I hope your weekend was as pleasant as ours!

Sherry: Okay, give me some space here in the kitchen please. I’m going to make supper now.
Breanna: SUPPER!
Sherry: Yes! I have to get the fish ready to put in the oven.
Breanna: (Touching the oven door) Ouch! OW! OW! OUCH! Hot! Ow!
Sherry: … The oven isn’t on yet.
Breanna: Oh.

*******

This morning when Hayley woke up, there was no drama involved in trying to get her out of bed. She still didn’t eat much breakfast, but she was cheerful because she was looking forward to doing all their Valentine activities in class and getting her cards from her classmates. She had also filled out three of the leftover cards to give to George, myself, and Breanna. (Breanna’s had a little beetle driving a car and it said, “you’re as cute as a bug!” – Breanna loved it so much that she spent the morning saying “cute a bug!” and if she misplaced the card she would panic and ask, “where my bug?!”) It was nice but the biggest smile came later, after she was gone to school. While placing something on her dresser I found the envelope she had been using to hide the cards from us.

On it, she had written, “To me famele” with a big heart.

I love phonetic writing.

*******

On this 14th of February, I hope that everyone is having a very happy VD.

No, that joke never gets old.

I am swamped with work today, but if you’re looking for some meal planning ideas, I have a review up for a new meal planning website.

Awesome! Something good coming to Fox.

I have a piece of paper here on my desk with a bunch of scrawled notes about things I want to post to my blog, but in the meantime, I do have a book review up for a wonderful book called The Sky Isn’t Visible From Here – and if you haven’t read it, you really should (that goes for the review AND the book!).

It’s -17C without the wind, Hayley’s home sick from school, and Breanna’s nose is stuffed up as well. YAY! I think I need another coffee…

In the past five years and change, I have often read Hayley a book or two at bedtime. I’ve frequently read books to her during the day, especially when she comes home from school on library day or when we go to the public library ourselves.

Tonight, for the first time ever, Hayley sat down and read a book to me. She didn’t recite it from memory – we had never read it before. She read every word perfectly and needed no help. She paused at “zig zag” and looked at me, but rather than tell her, I asked her to try, to go ahead and sound it out. And she did.

My little girl read her first book for real tonight. I was so excited and so proud that I nearly cried.

Breanna isn’t reading yet, of course, she’s only two. However, she’s finally starting to enjoy having books read to her. For a long time, she wouldn’t tolerate it, preferring to simply look at the pictures on her own. Now she’s starting to learn her letters, a combination of my efforts, Hayley’s enthusiasm, and the PBS show Superwhy. She’s always ecstatic to point out letters in books, stores, anywhere. She’ll finally let me read to her, as though she finally understands that the words aren’t a distraction from the pictures, but rather tell the story itself. Several times a day I sit down as she asks, “story?” and plops a book in my lap.

I always hoped I would raise a little family of bookworms. I think we’re off to a good start.

I titled this “catching up” but I’m not all that sure there’s a whole lot of anything to catch up on, really. Not because I’m sitting here and staring into space, but nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Let’s see what I can think of though, because going days without blogging is not normal for me and I’d like to get back into the swing of things.

1. I’m still reading Wicked which is annoying because it’s so good that I should have finished it by now. Unfortunately, I had to put it aside from time to time to do things like work and whatnot. I’m less than a hundred pages from the end now, and so on top of things like life getting in the way of reading, I also hit that point where I want to finish it but I also don’t want it to end. It happens every single time I really love a book. It’s been interesting to read because in The Wizard of Oz you just automatically hate the Wicked Witch of the West, but the book tells you the whole story of her life and, well, she’s a really awesome character.
2. I hurt my back yesterday. I was trying to carry Breanna and her sled up the stairs and she was slipping. I went to heave her up with one arm onto my hip, just like I do all the time, but something in my back went *sproing* and now it hurts. Nothing makes you feel old quite like throwing out your back or (as I do once every six weeks) your neck.
3. Breanna has become obsessed with snakes and biting. She’s been interested in snakes for awhile but the biting factor is pretty new. I think it may have come from an episode of Diego or Dora. Every single day she’ll suddenly ask me, “Mommy? Snake a-bite me?!” I reassure her that I won’t let any snakes come and bite her. Then she’ll ask, “Mommy, snake a-bite you?” and I’ll tell her I’ll be careful not to let them bite me either. The other night George and I were watching Snakes on a Plane again on the movie channel and I said it would be really bad for Breanna to wake up and walk into the living room because she would have been traumatized for life.
4. In between work, I pop over to Facebook and obsessively check to see if it’s my turn in any of my numerous Scrabulous games. I am hooked. I am also discovering that I’m not as good at Scrabble as I used to be once upon a time. I don’t know if I lost part of my brain cells or what, but I am winning only one of nine games right now, and in the other eight I’m not only losing, but I am losing spectacularly. I want to blame it on the whole “my brain has never been the same since giving birth and being sleep deprived” but just about everyone that I’m playing right now is also a mother so I don’t think it’s much of an excuse. Bah.
5. A friend of mine posted this video of Harry Potter puppets and I nearly peed my pants because it was so funny.

   I have had “Snape, Snape, Severus Snape” stuck in my head since 10 pm last night.

6. It is -10C with some light snow this morning, but with the wind it feels like -525C with huge swirls of snow sweeping up into the air. Every year my tolerance for winter gets lower and lower.
7. I need another coffee.

If you have kids who need to be entertained or if you just want to be mesmerized for awhile, check out this cute and hilarious puppy who will clean your monitor from the inside by licking it.

Hayley and Breanna – especially Breanna – lost their minds over it.