Journal Pages and Family

Both of my kids brought home their school journals thus far for the year last week. I could eat up their adorableness. You should be able to click on them to enlarge and read them. I love the Jackson recreated Harrison's Root Beer explosion. That drawing is pretty spot on.

Lincoln also had an "Autobiography" project due this week. He was supposed to use word and pictures all about himself. For the section about "things I like to do..." I asked him kind of picture he wanted... skiing, video games, board games, chess? He said, "it doesn't matter what I'm doing in the picture... I just want to make sure that I am doing it with my family... everyone needs to be in the picture."

100th Day of School

Yesterday Jackson's class celebrated the 100th day of school. He was so excited to glue 100 legos to his shirt. The each brought 100 snack items that they counted out themselves and mixed as a giant trail mix.

This was Jackson's first experience with the glue gun. I did the first batch with him one afternoon and told him that it was very dangerous and we'd have to always work on it together. He got too excited and started on it again the next day. He actually glued quite a few on there before finding out just how hot glue guns can be. He wanted nothing to do with it after that!

Cub Scouts

I have been a scout leader for a few months now and I feel like I'm finally starting to get into the groove of it. It is a very small group of scouts and we meet at our house after school twice a month and at the church one week a month. The most challenging part is keeping all of the little ones (the other leader has two small kids as well) entertained. My own children get so excited that we have friends over and it is a real challenge to get them to sit down for the formal introduction of the meeting. They suddenly need a snack and a bathroom break and "I just want to show them..." Once we begin we can usually involve the little guys in whatever activity we are doing. Harrison was kind enough to add an extra pouring of Baking Soda when we made our Christmas cookies (yuck!)

The kids loved this bird house activity and I had a couple of extra houses on hand. Jackson was sweet and let Harrison paint one side of his house. I love watching how excited they are to try new things - like nailing boards together!

Vitamin D

Moving to Wisconsin has been great in many ways. The first few months while it was sunny and warm I kept questioning what would happen to mess up this great thing we have going... I found out about the hard part!

Living so far north and at the wrong end of the time zone makes the days far too short in the winter. I have also been working out of the basement, so I wasn't getting enough sunlight during the day. I had slowly been getting more and more tired all of the time, just run down and exhausted. I didn't feel sad or depressed, just tired. I have always been an early to bed kind of person, but going to bed with the sun doesn't make sense when it gets dark at 4:30. It means that your family has to scrounge for their own dinner! I haven't felt that tired since early pregnancy.

I finally went to the doctor and asked him what was wrong with me. It turns out, I just need more Vitamin D... my levels had dropped very low. Before my test results came back I started taking a Vitamin D supplement and it seemed to help a little. It was 2000 Vitamin D increments (can't remember right now). The doctor suggest 5000 after he saw my numbers. I've been taking that for about a week and a half now and it is a.maz.ing. how much better I feel. I've been staying up until 10 or 11 (crazy, I know) with no problem. I'm dancing all around and active - feeling like myself again. I'm so grateful to have such a simple solution to the sluggish winter blues.

Hooray for Vitamin D!