Today was a major orthodontist day. Glorianna and Nathaniel both had appointments in the morning and late afternoon. Christopher wasn't feeling well so it was good that Mark came home and stayed with Christianna and Christopher and made dinner. We were finally done after 6:30pm and then had to rush off the AHG. I ended up bringing dinner in a box and wolfed it down in under 10 minutes. What an interesting day. At least it ended well. The girls had fun in AHG and Christopher seemed much better now. We'll see how well Nathaniel would keep his teeth clean.

We were going over to a friend's house for dinner yesterday and told Christopher in the morning that we'll leave right after his nap so he immediately pipes up "I'm tired" Certainly can't accuse him of being stupid or subtle.

Today's lessons went pretty well. I now have three more piano students from the same family for group lesson. They are really nice homeschooled kids. Very polite and was a real delight to interact with. I think I'll have a great time teaching them. Also earlier my other student who's been with me now about one and half years (wow!) has lately seemed to be getting more into practicing and I showed her some of the music that she's been playing and she was absolutely amazed that she's been playing such advanced looking music (well, they are quite advanced). I need to remember to take the music out more often especially now that she and Nathaniel are starting the reading program. Unfortunately I was not very strict about getting her to practice as much as I should have. Otherwise I think she could be doing super, but even with spotty practice, it's amazing how far she's come with Simply Music. I guess I need to stop and really remember that. Sometimes I can be so caught up in what is possible that I seem to forget to be thankful for what has already been accomplished.

We are reading a book about Jake DeShazer during devotion time. Mark started looking for some video about the Doolittle raid. Anyway, I found this page
http://www.dod.org/Products/DOD2045.aspx with a great video about DeShazer and this first part is a great documentary on the Doolittle raid. It's interesting how much more history I've learned since graduating from school or perhaps it's how sad it is that so little was taught in school. I still run into that whenever I'm teaching Sunday school, I'd mention some historical event and get blank looks.

Mark had a meeting after church today so we ended up hanging around until 4ish. Apparently the nearby church had a concert in the afternoon so people were parking in our lot. Unfortunately, they were parking in the part that we usually lock after everyone leaves. I was a bit late realizing what was happening before I went "chasing" people to the other lot. I hated doing that, but otherwise we'd be in a bind trying figure out a way to lock up without locking people in. No one needed to come back later since the meeting went loooonnnnnnnngggggggggggggggg.

It was a REALLY busy weekend. Christianna had her play-a-thon for orchestra, we had a Chinese New Year celebration at church (I made the glutenous rice sausage and they turned out fine, except we only had dark soy sauce so some people couldn't recognize them). I helped with the kitchen work unfortunately two of the people who were there had shoulder injuries so for the most part I was being the gopher and later cleaning up. Then this morning I didn't realize that I had to translate for the whole service and also teach Sunday school. I was not thinking and wore heels argh and of course there was the usual clean up afterwards. Then we had a Super Bowl party at home. Hum I had not even had a chance to stop and think about how many people came 20 maybe, oh well, we fed them and they had fun. The amazing thing is that we are now practically back to normal except for a big pot of oil which I used for deep frying wings and things that I still need to figure out what to do with. I first tried frying outside but there's still much snow on the ground and the oil was just not heating up. I ended up deep frying on a balcony outside of our guest room. People started asking if we had another kitchen upstairs

I think everyone had fun including the kids.

PS Mark took a head count right before we went to bed. We actually had 36 people in the house for the super bowl party.

We were doing so well just couple of days ago with close to 60 degree weather. But a winter storm hit and we've got some serious blowing snow today. I think with windchill we were well below zero. Our back porch is completely covered. All the kids' toys are under a thick layer of snow. Even the dog didn't care to go out for too long. The kids did go out for a bit today. I had to bundle Christopher up. I couldn't find his hood so he ended up wearing a very warm winter hat of mine and I just pinned it together. He reminded me of the younger brother from Christmas Story--quite a ball. I think we may have had constant wind gusts all day. Poor Mark did go to work but none of my piano students came due to weather which I'm glad for. I don't want to be responsible for any accidents.