Phil's 15 Minutes of Fame

As you know, Phil doesn't like to draw attention to himself, so I don't know how long it will be here, but I think he did a great job and I wanted to give him a pat on the back by allowing everyone to see how great he did. He's also had to do 2 radio interviews. He's in CO right now working on this. I don't know how to put a video up, so you'll just have to follow the link.
http://www.kenytv.com/video/cdc-researchers-conduct-salmonella-outbreak-surveys

Sweet Dreams

This is how I found Sophia when I went in to check on the girls and turn out the light. She must have fallen asleep like this, because she is usually pretty good about turning out the light at 9. Her hand is still in the book too. This explains why Clara was grumpier than usual (from what I could hear from downstairs). She usually falls asleep first, so having Sophia unresponsive probably irked her. I love that my kids are readers and have aquired the love of reading. Sophia is learning to love the "Little House" books and is just enraptured with how they lived back then. Ethan is all about Harry Potter right now. Even Clara has her favorites in bed with her (right now that's the books by Byron somebody--I can't think of his last name right now, but it starts with a 'b'-- with the bold illustrations and about things like "Airplanes", "Trains", etc). Jakob is kind of in limbo land right now. He goes back to re-read his favorites from years past, but is having a hard time finding something for his age and level. He's read all of the Sherlock Holmes that we can find because he really loves mysteries. I keep trying to get him to read some of the classics too. He's read the Jules Verne ones and liked those but refuses to read some of the other ones I suggest. Any suggestions out there? We hit this a couple of years ago and that's when he discovered the childhood biographies of famous Americans set of books. I'm hoping to find something again to get him excited about different books. He likes mystery, historical fiction, and spy stuff, so let me know what's out there.

Grab a Sweater, It's Chilly Today

Those were my words as we left the house this morning to hop in the van, which was sitting nice and snug in our garage. Ethan grabbed his sweater, but refused to put it on. To prove that he would in deed be cold today, I turned on the car and pointed to the little temperature reading, it said 54 degrees, to which I said, "See it's chilly and it's not going to get much warmer." However, I had forgotten (blame it on the fact that we've never had a garage since we've been married and I never had a garage growing up) that it's a little warmer inside the garage than outside. This was the temperature reading once we got out on the road:

Now imagine the looks that I got from the teachers helping at the drop off lane as my kids hopped out in their shorts and sweaters (Ethan still didn't have his on). The teachers had scarves and mittens. But can I just say that I love having a garage. I would have been scraping ice this morning if we didn't:)