A nice calm day

We had a quiet day today; not too much fighting, no major meltdowns. Seems like that's the best I can ask for these days.

I got a couple of loads of laundry done. The boys and I played some Blokus. E got upset that R always wins. But on the other hand I lost too, so he wasn't alone. Then they actually convinced me to put on my snow pants and sled down our hill a few times.

We ran out to the post office. I "found a place" that will take back a toy that Santa left which R didn't feel was well made. He is looking forward to getting the cash for it. That is if they give us cash and not a store credit. Since it came from Santa and not this online store, we are not sure what we will get in return ;-) We'll have to wait and see.

I let myself be talked into going down to the next town to get clothes for Fred. They even had free gift wrapping. So when we got home E sang Happy Birthday and let Fred open his gift. Then he immediately went online to use his code for a shirt for his cyberspace Fred too. He left all his Webkinz watching TV. Here's a screen shot (click on it to enlarge it) so you can see how cute they all look. He has Pip the penguin, Belle the reindeer, Fred the frog, and Pepe the chihuahua. The boys are both getting carried away with these things, but it is their money after all. And there are worse things they could be doing online. For Christmas we got Aunt Debbie a Webkinz too, and they spend lots of time playing online with her. It's been really great for them to spend that time together.

I managed to make dinner early today before heading out for R's soccer which was from 5:00 to 6:00 pm. After that I pretty much dumped them off at home and headed out for an organizational meeting for our homeschool support group, which is growing in leaps and bounds. Here's a photo of playgroup last week. Yowza! there were about 15 families there, which translates into at least 30 kids. R is really psyched that there are two new boys his age.

Anyhow there was an "organizational" meeting to check in on what people want to see happen with the group. Lots of people are envisioning classes and field trips; the typical stuff. I had asked R and E if they had any interest in me setting something up and they both agreed that they don't. They did ask me though, to request that events not be planned for during playgroup, and that that time be sacred for playing only. Not surprisingly people can't resist using an indoor space for "more" than just free play, so we're probably looking at a choice between a craft or some other project and free play. There was even some talk about using the space for some instructional sports (ack!). Hopefully the boys will be happy with how it turns out. We have another playgroup tomorrow, in our new indoor gym location, so we should find out soon enough.