Pet Day

Today my children all have to stay home for about the millionth day in a row (Natalie has pneumonia, Leah has pink eye, Becca is just a victim of circumstance) and we have to miss a birthday party so I thought I'd make up a festival for us to celebrate. We skipped H-day (although we carved pumpkins) so today is Pet Day. After rest time today we are going to think of something special to do to celebrate each of our pets. This began because I need to clean the guinea pig's cage and the birdcage, and the dog needs his heartworm medicine and Frontline, so I was making a to-do list and then I thought: how about a Pet Day! So when I get the kids up for snack we can brainstorm a list of special things to do for them and the practical stuff can get done as well. Special treats, a bath for the dog, who knows what we can come up with! I think it will be a lot of fun.

For Erik's birthday we made him a book called "Going to the Zoo." I put in a bunch of photographs from our last trip to the zoo and Natalie used alphabet stickers to write the names of each animal below. This was a good chance for her to practice her spelling. Then the children all signed the last page and we put 2008 on the back. It came out super-cute and didn't cost me a thing since I had all the scrapbooking supplies on hand.

This week... let's see. Monday - nothing. Tuesday - I have to vote. Wednesday - nothing. Thursday is storytime and I'll do a repeat of "The Little Red Hen" since nobody came to that one last time and I still have the finger puppets. Need to make up some bread dough for us to knead, though, and maybe a selection of different kinds of flours for the children to smell. I have bleached white flour, whole wheat flour, oat flour, buckwheat flour, and soy flour. I guess I could also take in cornmeal. Friday - nothing. Saturday is the second week of the mommy and me toddler program and so I have to prep that. Looks like I'll be getting a lot of housework done! I have decided to unpack the house since MD law is that you can't get evicted during the Winter and spend my time actually organizing instead of hunting through boxes to find things. If the house is organized it will be easier to pack anyway. And the children were running out of toys, I couldn't find any of my teaching books, the craft supplies were all put away and it's time to make Christmas presents -- in short, the system was broken. I like the culling before you pack the boxes, culling after you unpack the boxes process too. You throw away twice as much stuff. By throw away, of course, I mean give to the thrift store or give away on Freecyle. I have a strict rule to take nothing from freecycle but houseplants but go on every day to see what people want that I can give away. Got rid of the baby's exersaucer recently -- whew!

Yesterday I fixed my dishwasher so I will briefly share. It wasn't broken, per se, just disgusting. The dishes always came out dirtier than they went in, with bits of food caked on them all over. So I got fed up and ran the stupid thing with nothing in it except a bunch of apple cider vinegar in the dishsoap dispenser and now it cleans like dream. Hurrah!