Listing Through Life

Abbie and I came to Gramma's house yesterday.
We are here for a variety of reasons and purposes.

One of the great things for me in coming to my Mom's house is that I get to sit and talk with her.

We talk about pretty much anything we want-need-feel like talking about.
Sometimes it is big.
Sometimes it is small.
It's just what we do.

While we were talking away last night Abbie was busy in the basement working on her future career as a clothing designer.

I woke up this morning and added to my growing "to-do" list.
It now goes 1/2 way down the back side of the list.
My list has lists (ie: "Costco-see list", "Kohl's-see list", etc).

Of the 33 things on the list so far, exactly 2 of them are checked as done.

Ya'think I'll get it all done?!

Color My Brain

I'm not able to "play" Sudoku. All those black numbers in little boxes gets my brain too frazzled. I've tried to do it because I think it is a great way to exercise one's brain.

But it just doesn't work for me.

A few years ago I was looking through an homeschool catalogue and saw the game "ColorKu" and I immediately felt a rush of excitement. It was full of color!  My brain Got It. I could see how this worked.

I am an amazingly visual learner.

So I bought two of the games to give to our parents for Christmas.

My Mom has hers sitting on the trunk-table she has in front of her couch in her family room, ready to be played. And the game is constantly being played. Anyone who sits on the couch gets enticed by the colors and the lure of a little bit of mental gymnastics. Nothing too hard, but just enough. And an added benefit? You get to exercise your manual dexterity, fine tune your small motor skills as you pick up those little wooden balls and put them in the proper place.

Nick played ColorKu a lot while we were at Gramma's this past weekend. At first he was skeptical of the game but it quickly drew him in and he informed me that we needed to get one for us, too.

Bright colors for your eyes.

The feel of smooth wood for your hands.

Patterns for your brain.

Yep. We know how to have fun.

FascinEGGtion

A curious thing happened this weekend.

I planned for the dying-of-the-eggs to take place because we won't be at Gramma's next weekend for Easter. I also planned an early-Easter dinner for Sunday (which was Palm Sunday) with Gramma and the boys, since we won't be together on Easter.

So I bought eggs to dye. Two dozen. But I needed 8 for the rolls (which I would make for Palm Sunday dinner). That left 16 for dying. That would be enough, I thought. Based on last year--it would pretty much be only Abbie who would be interested, I thought.

And she got right to work dying eggs during the first session of conference on Saturday.

And because the colors were so pretty and hard-to-resist, Jake joined in the process.

And then Gramma was drawn in to the colorful fun.

And they convinced me to boil the other 8 eggs (for the rolls) and buy more eggs (for the rolls).

So I did.

And Saturday afternoon, after conference was over, I went to Costco (of course) and bought what was on the list plus 24 MORE EGGS!

And I boiled all of those, except for 8, which I needed for the rolls.

And we left the cups of dye out over night and Sunday everyone finished dying the 16 new eggs.

We've never dyed this many eggs before.

And yesterday we ate eggs.

And we'll be eating eggs for the next few days.

And they sure are pretty. 

And we sure had fun.

To Grandmother's House

Over the river
and through the woods

To Grandmother's house we go

The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh

Through the white and drifted snow-oh!

Over the river and through the woods...

Huh?
What?
What do you mean it isn't November?

It's APRIL?

But.
But.
Look at this-

I thought April was,
you know,
green and flowery.

*sigh*

Well, we ARE going to Gramma's for the weekend
and we're going to listen to and watch this.

And maybe April will come back
all green and flowery.