Winding Down.

It has been a busy day! The children came into my bedroom this morning to snuggle a bit, then we were off and running. I fixed blueberry pancakes for breakfast, then the children fell into watching television. (I don't think they watch much at home.) Along about 10:00 AM, it occurred to me that tomorrow is the Colts championship playoff game, and the children don't have any Colts garb. Oh, no! Off we went to Walmart.

Well...there was virtually NO Colts wear in children's sizes. Robin found a pink short-sleeved NFL jersey with #18 on it that she wanted (and it would have worked)--but it was $30! We looked around trying to find other things. Nothing was happening. Finally, one of my former students who works at Walmart clued me in to another area with Colts gear. There were a couple of shirts that might work and were "only" $15 apiece, so that's what we got. Wish I would have thought about this earlier when the merchandise wasn't so picked over!

Came home, let the kids talk to their mother on Skype, fixed lunch, got the beef Stroganoff started in the slow cooker, and then it was JACK TIME. Yay! As it happened, Ryan ended up over at Jack's house for a couple of hours, and Robin and Jack's little sister Grace were here. Emphasis on "were". The girls were playing hide-and-seek in the house until Robin got bored with 5-year-old Grace and just ditched her! She went over to Jack's and left his sister here. (Grace had no intention of going home, so she stayed and played with the kids' stuff all by herself for awhile.) When we finally made the supper kid-trade, everyone was happy...I guess.

While everyone was at play, I tackled a couple of household problems. Finally got the gum out of Robin's Christmas skirt and snowman sweater, then got all of that washed. And I noticed that the the bathtub drain had been running slower and slower. Time to work on that (again). Took the strainer off and could see immediately that there was a lot of hair on top. Got some tweezers and started yanking the stuff out...and when I began to probe deeper, I got the mother lode. Pulled out a big long snake of hair and gunk. Ewwwww! It's a wonder the water was going down at all!! Treated the drain with some Drano crystals after that and put everything back together. That felt good!

Ryan hasn't looked good to me today. Pale. Dark circles under his eyes. He complained of a headache last night but said he felt fine today. At supper, he told me that he thought he should go to a doctor because he hadn't felt all that good. Said his throat hurt. Hmmm... I thought he felt warm, but two thermometers showed no fever, and he perked back up after supper long enough to play with Jack for a few more minutes before everyone got called in. We'll see how he feels tomorrow.

This evening, we baked some pre-formed Valentine cookies and the kids watched "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" with popcorn. Robin is in the bathtub. Ryan needs to be hitting the sack...and I won't be far behind him! We've been busy!