Cleaning

I gave each boy a spray bottle with some watered-down Antibacterial cleaner. It's the stuff that says you can use on the countertop near food, so it can't be too poisonous. So I gave them each a rag and let them loose in the basement. Of course most of the stuff in the basement is permanent marker or white board marker or scuffs or chips in the paint/drywall, so I don't imagine that it will improve the looks down here too much. Oh, but they are having fun and keeping busy.

Connell is a helper...

My French contest is quickly approaching (the actual contest is April 21st). This Friday the registrations are all due so I will have a week of processing about 700 students' names and categories to print out certificates and assign them all to time slots. Whew! It's a huge task.

I was wanting to do some misc. tasks this week before the "deluge" and so I thought to get the little gifts for the volunteer judges together --- I give them a $5. Barnes and Noble gift card with a little "thank you" tag and a granola bar to snack on mid-morning if desired. (We pay for a continental breakfast for them as well as a lunch on-site, but I always think the extra snack is a plus!) So I enlisted Connell's help to put the 30 gift packs together --- he is helping with stringing the ribbon (feeding the little tags and gift cards on to it!) I have to tie the knots (his strength is not tying knots -- he failed that part of his preschool screening and he still can't do it after nearly a year of coaching - UGH!) I also have been curling the ribbon with the scissors.

Anyway, long story short --- I could do all of it myself but figured that it would occupy him for about an hour and so I asked him to help!

Just Plugging Along...

Nothing major came from the suspected colds that I blogged about last week. Connell went to swimming lessons on Saturday as normal and we haven't noticed any real illnesses. Hooray.

Saturday afternoon Ray took the boys over to the Wisconsin/Minnesota border and they hiked in a park. They all had a blast. When they arrived home at 3 pm, they didn't have any idea that I had turned all the clocks ahead an hour. We did everything the rest of Saturday on the new time schedule and it seemed to be the smoothest transition ever. Everyone was still up to go to 8 am Mass in the morning. It's still light when the boys go to bed at 7 pm, so I have already put the cardboard pieces in their windows. Unfortunately, last night was SO windy that the air between the cracks blew Connell's piece of cardboard down about 10 pm startling him. He doesn't remember it, but Ray was in there to see what had happened.

Our church has had a retreat the last three nights and so I have been going to that. It's been well-worth the time. Monday I took the boys to my parents' house in Owatonna for the day and so that was fun.

Our digital camera doesn't seem to be working so right now I have no pictures to post. We might need to look into getting a new one.

Colds Again?!!?!?!?

Both boys are again snorting and sniffling and so we can only assume they both have colds again. For those of you doing the math, it has probably been a week or two symptom-free. That is pretty much how the winters go around here - from cold to cold all winter long. Although they don't attend daycare (which I hear can be a breeding ground for germs), they do go to the church nursery, ECFE class and preschool and all of those places are full of coughing/sneezing children.