Blizzard 2024

Snow Day Eve, January 7th:  School administrators call off school for the next day at 5 pm.  Awesome!  We'll eat comfort food and watch the first Hobbit movie and go to bed late!

Snow Day 1, January 8th:  Yay! Fun!  We will do all the snow day things, play, bake, update the blog, enjoy not driving anywhere and stay warm! (see earlier post)

Snow Day 2, January 9th:

Yay! Fun again!  We'll play some more and bake some more and dig tunnels and text old friends about whether they remember going to Les Mis in college and be grateful the roads and weather are good enough to make it to Les Mis with Julia! (see earlier post again)

School Day 1, January 10th:  But I have a sub because I knew Les Mis would make for a late night.

School Day 2, Jan 11th:  Oh, a normal day.  Nice.

Snow Day 3, Jan 12th:

(seemed appropriate)

  Oh, okay, yay!  This will be fun! we'll watch movies and start cleaning up Christmas!  Hobbit #2, here we come.

Wait.  It's really snowing a lot. Look at those drifts. (Well, these photos are technically after the snow stopped.  There was no seeing anything while the snow was coming down.)  All the roads and highways around are closed while they tow out cars that got stuck (like 30-40 between Wahoo and Mead alone) and try to plow while the wind still blows the drifts around.  Good thing we don't have to go anywhere!

 But what about my plan book?

Snowy Day but it's the weekend, January 13th:

Well, we're not going anywhere but we can get outside to play and blow snow and actually put the Christmas stuff away and we can finish up the Hobbit Trilogy and make more comfort food!

Snowy Day but it's still the weekend and it's Nick's birthday, January 14th:

Wind chill -22, too cold and drifty to make it to Mass or anywhere else.  Highways are starting to be passable if you really need to get out and mostly just need to go north or south.  East and west, still not great.

Snow Day...wait let me count...number 4, January 15th:

We've had so many snow days even the administration doesn't know what day it is when they send out the message that school on Monday Jan 14th is cancelled (Monday was the 15th).

Ok.  We can find stuff to do.  Let's dump out a puzzle. And Grandma Raleen dug out Grandma Vrana's kolache recipe over Christmas, it's been a long time since I've tried making kolaches with her recipe, that'll be fun!

Oh, and Thomas has to go back to school because classes start tomorrow.  We'll celebrate his birthday a little! (He made it just fine.  Hwy 77 and the interstate are okay by now.  The east/west state highways are iffy but he didn't have to take any of those.)

Mary of the drifts.

Call at 3:45 pm.  Two hour late start tomorrow.  Guess I should probably plan the rest of the week.  I think I'll just start over...

Anybody have any homework?

January 16 School Day 3.  Nope.  Nevermind.  Snow Day 5.

I was this much ready when the call came in at 7:30 that I didn't have school because not enough teachers can make it in.  The hilly highway between Valparaiso and Weston (which 5 of our 11 staff members take) is still closed.  The highway between Wahoo and Weston (which 4 of our 11 staff members take) was closed last night but marked as open this morning.  It's known for drifting so who knows what it's really like.

At 7:50 St. Wenceslaus and Bishop Neumann follow suit.  The busses can't make it on their routes and they have staffing issues too.

Sooo....what fun should we find for today????

Happy 11th Birthday Nicholas!

 We love you Nicholas!  Your 11th birthday might win for the snowiest of your life. (For sure up to now, and it is going to be hard to beat in the future!)

Thanks for making the cake Julia!

January Birthday boys!

 

Julia's First Broadway Musical

Julia and I got tickets to Les Miz for Christmas!  (Jeremy went too.  Why wasn't his ticket a Christmas present?!)

I'd seen it three times before.  Once in early high school at the Lied with the music program, once in college with friends at the Lied again (I have little memory of how or exactly when this happened.  Jeremy says he didn't go so probably early college.  I started a text thread with the likely suspects who might have gone too but although there was some fun old-friend banter, no one remembered any more than me) and once with Jeremy at the Orpheum.  That was probably late college or very early marriage, we didn't have kids yet.  So it had been 20-some years since I've seen it. They did restage it since then (for the 25th anniversary I think) and the rotating stage is gone.  Since that is so firmly in my memory I was a little sad but still, it did not disappoint. Julia even said it passed up Hamilton for her! (Although she's only ever seen the film version of that.)  We went out to dinner in the Haymarket and then headed to the Lied.  It was opening night and since it was a random Tuesday in January before spring semester started the Haymarket and campus were pretty quiet.  It was a fun evening!  Here's to more shows with Julia!  She enjoys them more than Jeremy! ;)

Snow Day! Snow Day! Snow Day!

Woo hoo for snow days!  I love them until I look at my plan book, which after two snow days is in shambles.  Oh well, totally worth the work of figuring out how to make up the time.

Nicholas had a HUGE Hot Wheels car race.  Pretty much every car in the house was involved.  I had to record the match ups then make the brackets.  Turns out I'm not very good a brackets but I got it figured out.  They compete in distance, not speed.  Hence the ruler.

  Julia built a podium for the  top four finishers.  

Even Jeremy joined in on a game of Taco vs Burrito!

Also, I feel like I'm winning the snow day comfort food game.

Since our kind administrators called school off Sunday at 5 (yay!) we had Philly Cheesesteak Sloppy Joes and Mac n Cheese bites on Snow Day Eve.  (Yes, Snow Day Eve is a thing I just made up.)

Homemade Runzas and onion rings on the first snow day.

Chili and cinnamon rolls on the second one!

I love not going anywhere when it snows!!

Girls Afternoon

The boys went to a Husker wrestling dual so Julia and I had girls afternoon.   We did facemasks and I finally relented and we watched the Barbie movie.  Julia said no to a facemask picture.  The movie was meh.  Basic idea good- Barbie asks who am I, what is my worth?  But without God there isn't a good answer.

(Side note.  The "mommy" blog label seems childish, just "mom" seems much more appropriate, but after 15 years of blogging I'm not changing it now!)

 

Time for Wrestling

I am thoroughly enjoying a high school wrestling-free year.  Philip manages for the team and I am struggling with having to pick him up due to the fact I haven't picked a kid up from high school practices and meets in years.  I think the very first year Samuel student managed I had to do pick up.  After that I paid Max Hohn to bring him home (and Thomas one year, I think).  Totally worth it.  Too bad NO high school wrestlers live north or I'd do that again.

Junior High wrestling doesn't start until after Christmas so that will start soon.  

Nicholas has been practicing all of December but meets don't start until this month either.  

Cavalry had their exhibition meet (team mates wrestle each other so new kids and parents get a taste of what a real meet is like).  Everyone got two matches.  Nick won one and lost one.

 

Thomas and Philip got to help at one of the tables.  PreK wrestling is hilarious.  Especially because there's a bunch of St. John's kids so I know them.  

It was a good start to the season.

New at School

We got new Newline touchscreen boards!  They've been in our rooms in boxes since September.  Then two days before Christmas break they were up.  Not the timing we would have liked, especially since we'd had zero training on them.  The learning curve isn't too steep (it's basically a HUGE tablet) but still, no warning is not cool and you have to at least know how to hook it to your laptop since they weren't connected to the internet until this week.  My Smartboard is on the wall perpendicular to my white board, which I've never liked.  So since this is on a stand (for now, it's a long story why) I decided to move it, which is a pretty big deal.  It totally changes the possibilities for how I arrange the desks!  The Newlines will most likely get hung on the wall over summer vacation so we'll see if I like it here.  To put it on the wall with my white board I'd need a smaller whiteboard and the two bulletin boards on either side of the white board would need to move.  I'm all for it, but I'm not the one who has to spend the money or do the work.  

Christmas Break!

Was stinky short this year.  Christmas on a Monday is not good for break.  I got done the 19th so mine was okay but the kids didn't get off until the 21st.  And that was after the teachers lobbied for an extra day- they were originally supposed to go until the 22nd! I went back for meetings on the 3rd!  Blech.  The kids came back the next day.  But we did still get in some fun!

A few board games.  They complain but then they have fun.

Time to make homemade French Onion meatballs!

And one more batch of balls!  Butterfinger.  They're made from melted candy corn.  They taste and have a texture amazingly like real Butterfingers.  In which case, I'll just buy Butterfinger bars, not go through all the trouble of making truffles.  They're fine but not make-again worthy.

Finished up my Crafternoon project when Julia *finally* found my white jute.  Used Lynn's pretty wrapping embellishment to finish it off.

I love the new shirt from my mom so much I was going to get another one but Amazon failed me.  Although there are 15 colors of it, they all have the same pattern.  I'm not really a same-shirt-in-a different-color person.  Different pattern, yes. Just different color, no.

Julia made these special Mexican rolls.  They have a special name I don't know.  After they're baked the top cracks and makes a pretty pattern.  They were tasty!

Nicholas also made a big blanket fort that is STILL up.  He's played in it almost everyday.  Maybe now that school is started again I'll have him take it down.

We were supposed to go to the Luminarium with the Burdas the week after Christmas but about an hour before we left Lynn discovered they are closed on Tuesdays!  Thank goodness.  Driving clear to east Omaha only to discover your adventure is a bust is no fun.  We've done it.  There aren't many on-the-spot kid friendly adventure possibilities in the Old Market. The Burdas came here instead for a Orbeez war, Lego fun and whatever else cousins do.  Lynn and I did some baking and chatting and had a great time!

Samuel was only home for a week, then he had to go back to work a day or two before heading to SEEK.  I haven't talked to him yet but I assume he had a wonderful time.

By the time Thomas heads back to Hastings he'll have been home a solid month.  He spent the first two weeks relaxing and hanging out with friends.  After Christmas he got set up to help our friend Jesse with some electrical jobs.  He'll have worked most of two weeks and Jesse works long days!   He's been looking for a job in Hastings but doesn't have one yet so a paycheck will be nice.

So even though I kept complaining about how short break was we had a good time!

Vrana Christmas

Samuel was at SEEK by the time we celebrated with Jeremy's family on New Year's Day.  He went to Grandma and Grandpa's before Christmas for brunch and celebrating.

We saved some treats for our last celebration!

Most of the grandkids.

Julia's eyes are closed in this one.

And Grandpa is talking in this one.  Oops.

Most of the family.

Lots of presents.

Grandpa was pretty excited about his new trail cam.  Like, about as excited as he ever gets!

And then they did the (now traditional?) cracker cheese houses.  Ew.  Canned spray cheese.  They all think it is great!

We had a great time wrapping up our Christmas celebrations!