Cultural Celebration

The February cub scout meeting was a cultural celebration that was held in the gym. Each of the boys did a table celebrating a country that they chose. Of course, Ben did Ukraine and we took an assortment of things that we had in the house. Ben told DeeDee she had to wear her whole Ukrainian dress even though I tried to persuade him to let her just wear her shirt!!! He even told her that she had to braid her hair & she very graciously did everything he asked (told) her to!!!!
It turned into a great evening. A lot of the families had brought food and we ate way more than we intended to. Honestly, I had forgotten just how much families here keep in touch with the Country that they originated from. It is amazing how wide the cultural diversity is in our community and it was a great opportunity for the boys to learn a little about it.

Funny conversations

Ben: Mum, how do they keep the ice on the rink when it's warm?
Me: I don't know, I guess there are chillers under the ice
Maggie: Hey, I want a chinchilla!!!!

Maggie: Tori says I need to get my big brother to pull out my wobbly tooth
Ben: Oh, I'll pull it out alright......

"lost control of the sled..."

Maggie was outside sledding in the back yard on Friday. When I was up in Ben's bedroom, I heard a commotion & looked out his window to see Maggie over by the fence. I thought "looks like Maggs lost control of the sled again, I wish she'd just put her feet down" and then thought no more about it. Later on, we were together and I said, "Maggie, what did you do to your face?" It was barely noticeable because her hair was covering it, but when I lifted up her hair, her whole forehead was grazed. I guess she went headfirst into the fence!!! I said I was amazed that she hadn't been crying & she said she was crying outside-why didn't she come inside?????

The crazy kid went right back outside yesterday after the new snow and still has no control. I guess the gains are worth the pain.....

Yet more snow.....

We woke up to snow this morning. Obviously the weathermen have no clue what is going on this Winter since they had not forecast snow for last night. It makes me want to ask, is this Wednesday's snow coming late or tomorrow's snow coming early? At least it's the weekend, so we won't have yet another snow day from school. Sam says it's going to be Spring before he ever gets to drive his new car!!! It is once again covered in the Wintry stuff!!! The ice on my tree has been replaced by snow....

Ben looked out on the patio this morning and exclaimed "WHAT? I just cleaned that off", Sam replied, "Now you know how I feel"

I can't remember ever having as many opportunities to take snow pictures!!!!

The "hot sauce mum"

I don't usually comment on the hype surrounding the challenges with adopting older children from orphanages in Eastern Europe, but every now & again, something touches a nerve & I feel like I cannot ignore the latest news. There has been a lot of talk in the media about the mother that appeared on the Dr Phil show recently. I saw the link to this video on another blog this morning and it made me cry, it's not easy to watch. I can tell you that I have been in similar situations before and know how frustrating it is to think you cannot get through to your children, but I know above anything else that treating children this way is never going to change them and will have the opposite effect to what you want. In this particular case, this family adopted two boys from Russia when they were five and so the Russian government is now involved and the International Adoption community is watching it carefully. Charges have been brought against the mother and who knows what the outcome will be. The whole situation is very sad and should never have happened, but how to avoid it? Nothing can prepare you for how to deal with these situations and no amount of research can predict what your situation will be. We read a lot before adopting, but I can admit that I thought "that won't happen to us". Most importantly, there is very little support for families that are in similar situations and unfortunately no-one can truly understand unless they have been in the same situation. I can sympathize with the mother, but can't condone what she was doing, this is just blatant cruelty to a child that clearly needs love and understanding. Most of all, what kind of person would go on National television and talk about this rather than asking for professional help?

Yet more ice pictures

I took some photos of the ice this afternoon & realized that we may not have any flowers on the dogwood this spring, the buds all appear to be encased in ice..... I love my Japanese maple on the front. Not only is it a really cool tree, but it affords me lots of photo opportunities throughout the year....

Hhhmmm.....hopefully this will be one of my lavender plants when spring rolls around

and this is one of my thyme plants

and this is my sage.....

Storm of the Century

Yes, it's only the 11th year of the Century and so I guess it is pretty easy to spread doom & gloom and call this the Storm of the Century!!! In all seriousness though, this is going to be pretty bad for St. Louis. We are forecast to have freezing rain laying down a nice sheet of ice, followed by several inches of snow. So far, we do have the ice. I am glad that I have filled up the bird feeders because my Cardinal friends are going to need all the nutrition they can get. There is ice on everything-the trees, outside furniture & (most importantly) all the power lines

I got Ben to take this picture of the grass as there was no way I was going out there!!!!

Ben & Maggie just had to go outside to see what was really going on. Of course, they think it's really cool and not that bad.

They checked out Sam's car status. He just got a new car yesterday and now can't drive it anywhere!!!!!