The holiday season

On Tuesday poor mom succumbed to that earache that has been plaguing her since Thanksgiving. She went to the ER and got some antibiotics and some codeine thing and some super cough medicine...possibly that was the codeine thing.

Both of her eardrums are ruptured and she is def as a post. 

As she was out of commission fighting off the fever that came with her double ear infection and cough. I got to spend the day with Meg's.

We went to the doughnuts.

We also went to my work where she behaved herself and colored while I finished up a few small jobs and then we spend a great mommy Megan day.

When mom got up and about she got the kids activity presents to give herself some breathing space. Kiernan got a very noisy suction cub bow and arrow set.

Megan got an Elsa doll that she keeps saying, "This is Queen Elsa, Nana says she is expensive." about.

We have been playing lots of Candyland and a little World of Warcraft.

We put up the external lights (with awesome outdoor timer) and wreathes and the house looks very Christmas-y.

I forgot how David had to lean out of the windows to do this.

Yikes!

After putting up the decorations on Saturday, I took a bunch of play stuff that the kids have out grown over to my cousins house for her sweet little boy while David went to Scearce's with the kids to fix their computer and add a wireless card to it. 

Then we went ice skating at Wheaton again. This time Uncle Chris and Aunt Pammy and Cousin Kaleb came to check out the rink and cheer on our wobbly selves.

This time too David was able to join us. He is a much better skater than I am and it was so much fun to see the kids impressed by his speed.

After skating we went back to play with Kaleb's toys.

And to dazzle him with reading skillz.

And even to show him hilarious pickle head whacking.

I was more impressed by the variety of hot drinks prepared by the talented Aunt Pammy.

Yum

After a too late and too short but essential nap for Megan we all headed out to Brookside Gardens Festival of Lights.

We were hoping the kids would love the lights.Last year the light show got canceled but the year before they were crazy about it.

Unfortunately Kiernan got car sick on the way over and we didn't stay very long.

Megan loved it immensely and has been asking over and over to go back.

It is stupid expensive. We payed 30 bucks to walk around for about 15 minutes.

Look at poor sick Kiernan here.

On Sunday morning we got going with all the stuff you need to do before the week starts like laundry.

Then we got going with our long overdue leaf issue.

We have a lot of trees and a lot of leaves and we decided to wait until they were all down this year due to a combination of bad weather and sick days during prime leaf clearing weather.

I was determined to try a burn barrel this year and hadn't used one for years and years. In West Virginia when we burned rubbish we sometimes used a bin and sometimes used the kiln under the hot tub and sometimes a brush pile but I had the idea of using a barrel mostly from Kathryn's family in Oklahoma.

So I called Kathryn's mom for advice and watched a few YouTube videos.

The long and the short is that we moved the barrel away from the house and the trees then we brought the hose to it.

We started a small regular stick fire in the bottom and got a mesh cover for the top (from our fire-pit).

These are only the leaves from in front of the cars!!!

Then we started adding leaves and pallet trash and blackberry canes.

It was far too slow to be useful of the amount of leaves we have.

A) The leaves were wet. B) I kept putting in too many and semi smothering the fire and having to wait until it heated up again.

But

It smelled great and kept sharp stuff out of the kids jumping pile.

It gave me something to tend to while taking a break for my hands...my poor weak city girl hands.

I worked on a farm in High School. I baled heavy heavy Timothy alfalfa and had these amazing callous' from the baling twine.Now a few hours with a rake and its blister time.

Thank God for David or we would not have finished in 1 day.

He thinks we get better at this each year. I hope he is right.

We put the un-burned leaves from the front into a low spot in the back in the hopes that they will breakdown and help level the lawn. We mowed a bunch into the mulch and will let them breakdown in the back yard to over the slate filled wasteland in hopes of attaining some topsoil.

We shall see.

Its not pretty just yet but this year the yard was much softer than last year and when the next set of trees go down we will have more mulch to play with.

Of special note during this super busy weekend David also managed to knock 4 side projects off his Honey Do list!

Go David!