Hibernation Beauties

The amaryllis is in full bloom now.  It’s extravagance is distracting in the most wonderful way.  Knut is still working on the farm, but the hours are less, and he usually fills his winter days with a big house project.  As we spent this year’s “home improvement money” that we saved, to reside our barn that desperately needed it last summer, he doesn’t have a big home project to do this winter.  I think he’s loving that, because I think it’s the first year out of the 6 years that we’ve lived here that he doesn’t have a huge project on his hands.

The good husband that he is, he pulled out my old dollhouse, again, and started going  through the 90 or so step process of putting it together.  My birthday is in March, and he has the goal of giving it to me as a gift.  I’ve had this unassembled dollhouse since my dad gave it to my sister in I when I was 8 or so.  When my sister was dividing up some of our stuff at my mom’s house during a move, I ended up with the treasure, as she wanted our old vanity.  (And the vanity was harder to ship cross-country.)

So I’ve had it for several years now.  I’ve bugged Knut about it for the last few years, but hopefully not enough to completely annoy him.  Last year, or the year before, he looked for the missing instruction booklet online, and found it.  To his dismay, the project was completely more work than he imagined, and put it away as there was no way he had time for a project of this magnitude at the time.

So this year, he pulled out the box, with lots of sighing and head scratching.  I’m not sure he’s looking forward to it, but I think he’s excited to have it done and off of his mind.  He spent a whole evening taking inventory of all the pieces, and saw that through the various moves, some pieces were missing.  I told him that a Hobby Lobby about an hour for us has a whole dollhouse section where you can get all sorts of parts.  So he made a detailed list of things that he needed, and now we just wait until we can get up there, which will likely be sometime this week.  The next section he’s on is the windows, and about half the window panes are missing.  I may pick up some more dollhouse furniture there while I’m there.  I’ve been picking up something for the dollhouse every time I’m there for the last few years, and have quite the “hope chest” for it built up.

In other news, Elias lost his first tooth, which he is pretty excited about.  The kids were astonished that the tooth fairy actually left a dollar on the first night.  Very often it can take weeks for the tooth fairy to visit, and she leaves notes, saying that she’s sorry, she was on vacation in Fiji, or some other exotic destination that the kids run to look up.  The tooth fairy is lazy AND educational like that.  Quite the world traveler.  Knut tells the kids that the tooth fairy was much more prompt when he was a kid, before she unionized with the Easter Bunny and Santa.

There has not been much outside playing, as the temperatures have been crazy low, with very little snow to comfort us with.  We’ve still been running around doing our regular activities in town.  I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning around the house, though I haven’t brought myself to take down the Christmas decorations yet.  I making myself do it next weekend, though.

I found a great App for my phone that one of my friends told me about.  I started doing the FlyLady cleaning system this year to help me stay on top of household things.  It’s REALLY working for me.  Actually, I think it’s working because of the app, and the fact that I can customize it in a way that makes sense for my homeschooling life.  It’s called “HomeRoutines” by Wunderbear.  It was the first app I ever paid money for, but it might be the best money I have ever spent.  I can’t remember a time when my house has ever been this clean, and I haven’t been stressed out about it.

Knut’s big race in Wisconsin is coming up, so he’s doing a lot of training.  My trip to Colorado is a short 10 days, 10 hours, and 3 minutes away.  I’m trying to load of the freezer with meals for Knut and the kids while I’m gone.  I’m just so excited for this little getaway, and feel completely spoiled by it.  (Thank you to anyone who buys my patterns!  You deliver sanity to this mother.)  Speaking of knitting patterns, I finally have time this week to get back to work.  The holiday season is over, my house is in order, and I have about 4 patterns that just need some technical writing time poured into them.  Watch out for a flood of patterns in the next month or so.