Leap Day.

I know I'm behind. I have my reasons. :) I'll get to that soon, really. In the meantime, here are some leap day pictures we took earlier today...

Yup. Just had to "leap" for leap day. :) It's something I started four years ago. I find it hilarious, btw, that Noah put up the biggest fuss about not wanting to take pictures but then ended up insisting that I take photo after photo of him as he tried out different poses, lol. Heck, I even joined in:

(Incidentally, leaping from the deck is *not* as easy as it looks. The landings, in particular, were abrupt, lol.) Anyhow, I'm hoping to make more leap day layouts like before and need still to ask the boys for their predictions for next leap day. 

Oh, and I still contend that getting three boys to jump in unison is a darn difficult task:

(But, look at how adorable they were four years ago! Micah had some difficulties actually "leaping" last time, lol.) For the sake of adding something different this time, we even took some "froggie" pictures:

 
Here are my little froggies getting ready to leap. (Noah adamantly refused to join in, of course.)

So, what did you do with your "extra" twenty-four hours? ;)  

Update.

Finished rearranging the basement guest room closet. :) 

The first picture is about 25 boxes of stuff upstairs in the storage room (a normal bedroom closet with sliding doors). The next picture is the basement guest room closet "before" (emptied of the gazillion games but still with the old inefficient shelving). And, the last picture is the basement guest room closet now, having purged and consolidated the boxes from the upstairs closet and adding a few tubs of holiday decorations that were in a different closet. 

And, for those who are wondering, from my earlier post, I ended up keeping most of the papers. :) They fit in the box, so it's okay, right? ;) (and we just won't talk about those other couple crates of papers we discovered upstairs earlier today...lol!)

Woohoo! Now on to the next step...redoing the other basement closet so that we have someplace to put the stuff we sort out of the storage room (which is currently packed full again with stuff). Um, here's what that closet looks like right now:

(It's actually a decent sized space, roughly 9' x 5' with some more space to the left under the stairs...I think it was originally roughed in to be an additional bathroom.)

Yeah. It'll be awhile... ;)

February 14

1. Happy Valentine's Day (a little bit late but sincere nonetheless). :) We don't really celebrate it here lately...as my boys have decided that pink and hearts and all are for girls and think that exchanging Valentines is ridiculous. Sigh. It's okay. I'm not huge on pink and hearts and all, myself, anyhow. I have, though, done my duty and reminded the boys that they may some day need to actually remember and celebrate Valentine's Day for the sake of a girl who might like that. ;)

2. My morning today started off with a decent run. (Yay, me!) I'm done with winter, though. My run on Sunday was freakin' freezing...coldest I can remember being in ages. (It was about 8 degrees and moist enough that my eyelashes were freezing.)

3. So. I ordered a new headband to keep my ears warm (a different color of the one I already have and love). I figure that doing so will set spring in motion so that the headband is rendered unnecessary, right? (Using this same reasoning, I'm refusing to wash the van because then it will snow again, lol.) 

4. The rest of my morning wasn't great. Noah and I had words (argh...the beginnings of preteen angst...awesome) over my assignment to him for the morning. This ended in assigning him even more work, giving him a lovely lecture and eventually (finally) moving on. Meanwhile, I worked on math with Asher. By itself, this was fine and Asher was good. I just find teaching math to Asher more difficult than many things. It's got to do with very different learning styles and is something I'm aware of and able to deal with...just more frustrating some days than others. Sigh.

5. On a related note, does anyone have any recommendations for math curricula beyond 6th grade? The program we've been using for ages only goes through sixth, and Noah will finish that this spring. (Well, okay, the brand, itself, goes beyond 6th, but is a different program...I'll definitely be looking into that, but am still delighted to hear any suggestions.)

6. Yesterday, btw, the boys celebrated Valentines Day at Options. The Student Council made bags for everyone. The boys found this all silly. It didn't stop them, though, from enjoying the candy. ;) They refused to write out any individual Valentines or sign their names to anything, but I brought them a big bag of suckers to distribute among all the bags. Apparently, they put a few handfuls (definitely more than a dozen) in their PE teacher's bag...because they love her and because (in Noah's own words) "she's eating for two." ;) (She's due in about a month, lol.)

7. Fortunately, the afternoon went better than the morning (homeschool-wise). We did Latin, spelling, US geography and US history. (Loving this book. We've already read two others by the same author. Highly recommended!) All good...then we headed out to swim team and karate. :)

8. While Asher was at karate, I returned a purse that I bought earlier this week. I loved it. I *want* to be a smaller, cuter purse type of person. I do. Apparently, though, I am just not that person. I'm a large purse toting sort. I need to have all my "stuff" with me. Fine.

9. Oh. In my reorganization and all, I need to find a new way to store all my gift wrap materials. Any ideas?

10. And, dear husband of mine who commented on my last post, might I remind you that at least a few of those boxes still in the storage room are your own boxes of memorabilia and papers...a couple of which you lugged home from WA last summer to add to the pile? ;)

I need a nudge.

So. One of our goals for 2012 is to clean out our storage room. Completely, if possible. Here's what it currently looks like, though:

Yes. Really. It's gonna take a bit. ;) (Our apologies to my lovely father in law who once upon a time graciously helped me clean out and organize that room so nicely. It was mostly good until the last few months. Honest!)

We're tackling it in stages. The stages are complicated and involve lots of shuffling of stuff from the upstairs storage room, down the 27 steps to the basement, and back up again. ;) Right now, we're in the middle of redoing one of the basement closets to accommodate as much of the stuff from the storage closet as possible (that storage closet pictured on the left...with at least 25 of those boxes packed in there).

First, we had to empty that basement closet of the gazillion games that were inside (sorry, neglected to take a picture)...which left us with this:

Yes, it's nice that there are shelves inside and all. But. They're really quite inefficient. They're only half as deep as the closet and are an odd size, such that I couldn't fit any boxes in there well. Bleh.

So. We took that dealio out and Nathan installed some nice basic shelves:

Since then, I've been sorting and purging and reorganizing all the stuff in those boxes into new, longer boxes. I'm *almost* done and have *almost* managed to consolidate those 25 boxes into about 10. (I'll take a picture soon!)

But. Don't laugh. I'm a packrat. For all that I take pride in how much I've purged in the last couple years, I somehow still have pretty much every paper I've ever written. Literally. Okay, not from grade school. But I have binders and binders full of papers from middle school, high school, undergrad and graduate school.

PLEASE. Someone. Tell me that I can toss these. I need a nudge. ;)

Yesterday

Had our second JOAD tournament yesterday. It was down in Denver and we were fortunate enough to get the afternoon session (the morning session had to check in at 7:00 am). All three boys shot well and set new personal bests. :) Noah even managed a bullseye:

(He took this shot head on with my iphone.) And Micah brought home another third place medal:

(Yes, there are still only three boys in his division, lol.)

Yup. Still enjoying archery... ;)