If you give a kid a violin

We are BIG fans of the Give a Mouse a Cookie series here in this house. Last week someone gave my kids violins. Of course my first thought was to run screaming from the house. How on earth could this possibly end well - not just one violin, but two. Then they started playing, and it was a totally different experience than when my oldest was given a violin. When Max first started playing violin we really thought that he couldn't hear that he was playing the wrong notes (and we weren't too far off - but turns out he's a brilliant trumpet play and can hear those notes perfectly). But Ian and Sam are different. First day out of the case, they wrote some music and played a song for us. They only know how to pluck the strings, not even how to play anything but open strings, their violins weren't completely tuned when they first brought them home, but they created music. So apparently in my house, if you give a kid a violin...

...he'll make music.

Cookies! Yuk.

Would you eat these? They were well intentioned but totally burnt. Talk about crispy cookies. Obviously, Tom failed to remove the excess dough from around the edges. Then, he put them in for WAY too long. Needless to say they are hard as hockey pucks, but shaped much more like a rock tablet. But I really did appreciate the fact that he made these for me after a long day. ;)

It's Indoor Soccer Time Again!

After a long outdoor soccer season filled with rain and reschedules, it's nice to move back indoors. All of the games are at the same place, and unless we have a massive snowstorm here again, it most likely won't stack up all in the last few weeks of the season. The kids love indoor soccer, and Lucy likes to run around without being continually told to stay out of the mud, the street, and off the field. Winter soccer is a much easier thing for our family to pull off - three boys all playing travel soccer, Tom coaching one team and me managing another made for a crazy outdoor season. So, between now and about the end of March we'll be hanging at the indoor soccer place near here, hanging out int he warm, cheering the kids on as they take the field.

Missing again? OUCH!

I've been gone again, and this time it was for a pretty decent reason:

You'll notice that it's not my foot, but it is Tom's right foot, and up until this past weekend he wasn't driving, and wasn't walking on his foot at all. This happened almost three weeks ago, so needless to say we've been busy making sure that everyone got to the right places at the right times. My day has included the deposit of various children at various schools or bus stops, driving the littlest one to and from her activities, and getting the hubby to and from work when he couldn't work from home. He was able to catch a ride from a co-worker or two to get out to another work site, but for most of the last three weeks we were a one car family with no public transportation option. The super, crazy, five soccer games and two birthday party day came when Tom's foot looked like this:

Stuffed sausage anyone? Tom's foot spent a good part of the past three weeks swollen up and all kinds of colors (yellow, purple, blue, even a little green). It's a sprain, so the prescription is PT, Advil, and elevation. This past weekend he finally started walking on it, and finally started driving. Whew! We survived the super crazy day with the help of several friends. Now, we are back to being a two car family and Tom is off of crutches as of last Monday. So, all is back to our normal level of crazy in our little corner of the world.