Hump Day?

I know Wednesday is technically Hump Day, but today feels like Hump Day -- that blah point in the middle of the week. We just learned Ellie's school is cancelled *again* tomorrow. She hasn't been in school since January 23 and I'm forgetting what our schedule used to be like. Ellie is getting bored and I'm getting ancy to have those few precious hours back in my afternoon to work uninterrupted (was I spoiled?). For example, it took me 10 minutes to put together a simple deposit for Nathan to take to the bank in between rescuing receipts from Ellie who was searching high and low for papers for me to run through the shredder.

Camera phone pic of Ellie waiting to go down the tubing run Saturday

My feelings are probably exacerbated by the fact that we just had our big retreat of the semester last weekend and so everything else had been on hold while we prepared for that (it went really well!) ... as well as did things atypical of our schedule like shovel sidewalks & parking lots, scrape icy vehicles, made appointments with insurance inspectors, repeatedly mop floors stained with sidewalk salt, and pick up limbs in our yard. Yeah, I'm a 'type A' and don't take well to unplanned deviations from my schedule. Can you tell? Lest you think I'm a stick in the mud, I DO like surprises.

Between snow and ice storms and another good snowfall, things melted enough for us to discover that our van didn't exactly escape the falling limb unscathed as we initially reported. We got a good ol' dent or two. I'll try to post some photos. Also, our chainsaw decided last week that it didn't want to work anymore. I called our local Ace Hardware store that services the brand we own and they said that (naturally) they are experiencing a backlog on chain saw repairs. So, if you live locally and see the abominable pile of limbs in our front yard (and another couple in our backyard... and more on our deck), we're not procrastinating in doing our share of the clean up.

In other news, Ellie continues to surprise us daily with new words and sentences (today one new sentence was, "I can't open it!" and "Just one minute!"). Her new pretend play today was to be a 'doggie' and do all of the tricks and commands that Reagan knows (come, sit, stay, shake, chase your tail). I humored her and talked to her like she was our new puppy, even petting her head when she did all of her tricks correctly. Our poor REAL dog is so confused. [editor's insertion: I forgot to write originally that she starts the game by getting on all fours and saying, "Come here, Doggie." But she blends the first two words and so to the untrained ear she says, "Corndoggie!" Corndoggie"!] It beats the game she invented on Sunday when she would 'throw' pretend items on the floor and say, "Mommy get it!" Ha! I'm glad for her emerging imagination and can't wait for it to translate to playing with things like baby dolls or her tubs of amazing play food that have been waiting since her arrival in our family for such a time.

Because my dad is in Albania and especially loves to see new blog pics when he's away, these pics are for him (since we couldn't work at our desks tonight while Ellie was still awake, we decided to test out a fun new backdrop I got in December -- still perfecting the art of lighting).

Not much else to report from the Waggoner household today. Thanks for checking in!