March 14th

On March 14th many school students chose to walk out of class for 17 minutes to show respect for those that died in Florida and to ask for better gun control.  Libby chose to walk out with her classmates and then return to class.  Ethan decided to join other students and march to the Capitol building.  He and several of his friends walked several miles to protest gun violence and ask for safety measures to be placed on guns.  Grace, Sam, and I also went downtown.  I am proud of my children for standing up for what they believe is good and right.

Way Back on Valentine's Day...

Ethan and Libby are both in choir this year.  Their big fundraiser for the year is the Valentine's Day dessert smorgasbord, raffle, silent auction and concert.  The kids sell tickets to the show and a dessert bar.  They also solicit local businesses for items to raffle.  Ethan and Libby truly got into the spirit.  They collected about eight different donations, sold tickets to about 15 people, and even performed a duet on the big night.

For their first time in front of a big audience, I think they did fabulously.

And as icing on the cake, the students are now selling lollipops to raise funds for the 8th and 9th graders to perform in Pocatello, especially for the students who didn't make as much for the Valentine's day concert.  When Ethan asked how many he needed to sell to pay for his portion of the trip, his teacher looked at him and said, "Ethan, you are golden!"  Yay for escaping at least one fundraiser this year!

The Danger of Saying Yes

The Tuesday of spring break started off normally.  Ethan found a job on Nextdoor (neighborhood Facebook) with a man who needed help cleaning out a crawl space and asked for the position.  As we didn't actually know the man, I suggested to Ethan I should be present for the initial meeting (I was having visions of my child buried in a random crawlspace).  Ethan agreed that would be prudent and suggested we longboard to the job.  I shouldn't have said yes.  I'm not good at longboarding.  The house was over a mile away.  I should have stuck with walking.  Thankfully, I didn't need stitches, but I probably stumbled off the board a dozen times.  And my legs ached.  And my hands hurt from carrying the board.  And...and I should have said no.  But I didn't, and I survived, and Ethan won a lucrative job.  So I guess it turned out okay.

Later the kids also found out that someone was giving away a free rabbit on Nextdoor.  They asked the pertinent questions of the owner and then started begging.  I don't know why I said yes.  Maybe I was just having a yes day.  In a moment of weakness though I agreed to go look at the rabbit.  As every mother knows, if you say yes to looking at the animal, the animal is coming home with you. 

Meet our newest addition.  Her name is Nutmeg or Lady Fluffernutter, depending on which child you ask.  As you can tell from the photo, she is a very chill bunny.  I think we got pretty lucky.

Dry Ice

Ethan begged me to buy dry ice, as you have to be 18 to buy it yourself.  I finally just gave up and bought it for him.  Strangely enough, I did not end up regretting that decision.

After New Years

After Ethan fell ill, the rest followed like dominoes.  This wasn't a stay in, watch movies, drink soup kind of sickness. This was a full body aches, high fevers, lay in bed and moan, type of sickness.  People were falling asleep all over the place.  One night I went to bed and woke up too miserable to go back to sleep, so I moved to the couch. After a few hours I moved back into my bed to find Sam and Michael in it.  I moved Sam to the floor.  When I next woke up Michael was on the couch and Sam was back in our bed.  It went like this for days.  Everyone was so uncomfortable we played roulette on the furniture.  My children, who are all old enough to find the toilet when sick, lost this skill; we did a lot of laundry.

Thankfully Libby was the last to fall, and she played Florence Nightingale to the rest of us.  When she finally succumbed, violently all of over the bathroom missing the toilet completely, I was starting to be able to move again.

Five days later, everyone was starting to mend, hence the food and mostly upright positions.  

We all survived, the kids lost a week of winter vacation, Michael lost three days of work, but fortunately they didn't miss any school.