Cold weather, colds, cable issues, cute boys

Well, I guess my life got really boring this week, because I hardly took any pictures.  I did take this screen shot on my phone one day, although I have no idea which day.  It seems like we've had these temps along with wind all week long.  Almost every day there's been snow flying, but rarely landing.  This morning there was snow covering everything again, but it all blew away I guess.

I had to laugh when I walked into Weis Markets this afternoon and saw this display.  I suppose they were trying to cheer us up!

Last Saturday I had a day at home and after I finished blogging and then copying it to send to Dick's parents (they do not have internet) I knew I really needed to clean my house.  My hair was driving me crazy and I didn't feel like spending time on it, so I decided to go for this cleaning lady look!

I cracked myself up and decided to post it on FB.  Oh the comments I got!  Three people said I looked like Rosie the Riveter.  I had to google that to see who they were talking about!  Of course, as soon as I saw the picture it looked familiar, but I never heard the name before.   Dick came inside a while later and I heard him chuckle quietly.  Next thing I knew he was taking a picture of me with his phone.  He said, "I have my own Russian woman!"  I said, "Don't worry, I already posted a picture of myself on Facebook!"  Which interpreted meant, "Don't even think about posting the picture you took!"

I did get my cleaning done and even made a new recipe for dinner.  I think it was called Hasselback Chicken.  I didn't have all the right ingredients, but it was still good.  Basically I cut deep slits all across several chicken breasts and stuffed those slits with sauteed spinach and Ranch dressing (didn't have the ricotta cheese).  I was out of shredded cheese too, so I tore up the last slice of Provolone we had and the last three cheese sticks and put them over the top, then sprinkled with paprika.  Then baked it for maybe 30 minutes and ate them with sweet potatoes.

On Sunday at GBRV the choir sang Jesus Messiah.  It's a really beautiful arrangement that we've done before at Fillmore, and they did a great job, even with a few people missing.  We went to Calvary's service then and brought the boys home with us.  This time we stopped at McDonalds and ate in.  Is this picture not the CUTEST!!!!  Such handsome boys!

Austin's project all afternoon was making spinners out of paper.  I can't believe I didn't get a picture of the beautiful one he made last.  He used tooth picks to twirl the small spinners, but he needed something bigger to twirl the big one.  I had just the thing.  Dowel rods from those cloth calendars I used to get every year - the ones that later became such wonderfully soft dish towels.  The rods had a second life too.  I would put them over top of a big bowl and hang freshly glazed homemade doughnuts on them to drip dry.  Now the rods have a third life!

By the way, I discovered a new tip.  Austin managed to get glue on my desk when he was making his spinners.  Later I was trying to scrape it off without scraping the finish.  Finally I googled it for suggestions.  Guess what worked!  I spread some real mayonnaise all over it, let it sit for about five minutes, then wiped it clean with a paper towel.  How easy is that?  Except that at first my desk smelled like mayo and it made me hungry for a sub!

Our cable connection has been giving us fits the past few months as it has become increasingly less reliable.  At first it would just be a distorted picture for a brief moment from time to time.  Then it started occasionally giving us an error message when we would try to change channels.  Sometimes it would just completely skitz.  Dick called for technical support on Saturday evening, and the person said he sent us a stronger signal.  But it was no better on Sunday or Monday.  WELL.  Monday evening is the Voice, and there was no way I was going to put up with not being able to see or hear.  I contacted technical support again, and while I waited for their callback I took this video.  It actually got worse later.

The support lady could see from her end that there was a problem and scheduled a person to come the next morning.  Thankfully it behaved pretty well the rest of the evening.

So the next morning the guy came, gave us a brand new cable box and remote.  Now let me tell you about this remote!  We can talk to it, and the TV goes to whatever we tell it to go to - channel number, name of show, whatever!  It has been behaving well ever since.

Hunter had a cold over the weekend and stayed home from daycare on Monday and Tuesday.  Lori took off Monday to be with him and Anthony on Tuesday.   We hoped that we had not gotten any of those cold germs from him on Sunday and tried to be pro-active this week.

However, when Dick got home from work on Wednesday evening he said he had been extremely exhausted that day.  He barely had the energy to play his bass guitar at Houserville that evening, less yet to carry it and his heavy amp in and out of the church.

When he got up to go to the gym for basketball on Thursday morning he hardly had the energy to walk.  His temp was over 101.  He called in sick, which is really rare for him.  He pretty much slept all day, drinking water, a bit of tea, some Emergen C.  I set up the humidifier to keep the air from being too dry.  I made chicken noodle soup, but he had no appetite for it.  Of course we were both thinking "flu."  When we went to bed his temp had come down to 99 and he was feeling better than he had all day.

He had a regularly scheduled doctor appointment this morning(Friday), so I got up early to get ready to take him.  But he woke up feeling so much better that he said there was no need for me to take him, he could take himself.  We took his temp and it was normal!  So he went to the doctor, she said she could hear that he was congested, but heard nothing to worry about in his chest, and told him he could go to work!  What a great turnaround!!!  Shortest flu ever!!  Thank you, Lord!  He does have a cold, so we'll work on that, but at least it's not the flu.

Besides taking care of him yesterday I also went to Bible study at Calvary in the morning, updated all of the choir notebooks in the afternoon, and had choir practice in the evening.  Today I got caught up on our bookwork and banking and made curried chicken soup for Anthony and Lori and took that over to them.

We have a fun weekend coming up.  Which is another reason we're so glad Dick doesn't have the flu. I'm sure there will be pictures.

Have a good weekend too!