Murphy's Law Hit Us!

This week was supposed to be one of those quiet, nothing much outside of the home, everything should get done, type of weeks. Yeah, well... nope. This week, starting Saturday the 8th, we got hit full force in the face with Murphy's Law almost all week long. 

Noun

• S: (n) Murphy's Law, Sod's Law (humorous axiom stating that anything that can go wrong will go wrong)

So, I'll be highlighting throughout the post the things that happened each day that "could" be attributed to Murphy's Law. It also means that I get to start from when I left off last week to tell you about this week. 

Over the weekend we had an incident of Murphy's Law each day. On Saturday, while mixing the potato mix for the homemade perogies, the engine of my kitchen mixer burned out. We improvised by using my husband's electric drill, which conveniently will accept a standard mixing wand into the drill bit spot. It's not every day you get to use a power tool for building in your cooking and we honestly spent a while chuckling over this fact. Sunday, sometime during the day, the pilot light on our hot water heater blew out only we didn't discover it until I was running a bath for the girls in the evening! What could have been a major problem turned out to be only the pilot light blowing out and we were able to restore hot water in a short time. Chalking it up to "just one of those things" we moved on with our evening and discussed purchasing a new hot water heater in the spring. (FYI: The hot water heater is still working, we just didn't know at the time how our week was going to continue to go.) Oh, and sometime on Sunday the dog put her foot through a weak spot in the floor, thankfully she wasn't injured and it was a quick fix.

Monday came, much as most other Mondays do for us. Lessons began, most of us were a little grumpy and the day seemed to drag along. A normal, for us, typical Monday. Or so we thought. Even a call early that afternoon from a neighbor wondering if Daddy would like to go somewhere with them wasn't unusual. We completed most of our lessons while Daddy was gone for those two hours. We also began our quick study on Abraham Lincoln with a couple of videos one YouTube (cartoons for the girls and a short documentary for ECJ).  When he returned I was informed of why he'd been gone so long. The driver side wheel bearing on the Durango had busted! We'd replaced that wheel bearing last February! Oh, my blood was boiling and I was instantly frustrated. Daddy called the parts shop we'd bought the part from (in KY) and discovered that the part was still under warranty. Since it's from a national chain we thought, "Hey, great. Pain in the bottom that it broke again but at least there's no out of pocket cost for the part and we know how to fix it." The campers stayed up later than normal on Monday night listening to music with Mommy and Daddy, and having a late night dance party. Mommy really needed to blow off some steam and relax. We'd also managed to work on some craft projects.


I woke up Tuesday morning still grumpy, but not as stressed out about broken parts on our only vehicle. Lessons began for the children. Daddy called the part store up here to make sure they had the part before beginning to work on the truck in the cold. I bounced between tasks pretty much as usual. Two more calls, one to KY and another back to the MI store and we were all set. Daddy went outside to begin work in the 15 degree temperature. Two layers of bottoms and sock along with three layers of tops. No gloves though because it's hard to feel what your doing while working on a vehicle if you're wearing gloves. ECJ even got to take a break from lessons and go out to try to help Daddy. ECJ returned to his studies while Daddy got a ride with his friend to the parts store. It wasn't until after Daddy had come home and repaired the truck that he informed me that he'd had to argue with the people at the parts store, after talking to them twice on the phone before going, about the part being under warranty. He eventually did get them to honor the warranty. And all lessons were finished by 4 PM. 

By the way, I did a lot of praying for patience and for things to settle down this week.


On Wednesday we'd shortened our school day slightly (by about two hours) though most of our lessons were actually finished when I called an end to lessons for the day. We'd planned on going to the library with one of our neighbors who has been so gracious as to allow us to use her library card until we get our old (old, old, old) library fines paid. Still not sure how we moved four years ago and forgot to return some books and pay our fines. When we moved back to this county last May those fines really were a shock! However, when I walked down to the neighbor's house to see when she'd want to go I found out she had a bad sinus headache and wasn't feeling up to it. I stayed to visit for a few minutes and talk to her. It was during that visit that Daddy showed up and asked me to come home to find some local heating and cooling company numbers because our furnace had quit running after he'd cleaned the filter! Several phone calls and ridiculous quotes later we got a hold of one wonderful gentleman who walked my husband through several check lists that my husband hadn't thought of and the situation was resolved and the heat was back on. Thank God that there are still some people out there who would rather be kind than charge out the wazoo. Somehow I remembered to finish up the study on Lincoln during all of this (probably to keep the campers out of our hair while we figured it out). And more crafting got done sometime after supper...

Thursday we took the day off. Noni came out to visit and spent about five hours with us. We chatted, ate pizza, the children were given chocolate heart boxes by Noni, and generally we relaxed. A few random things were built from Legos while she was here and we had an easy supper after she left. The children were amazingly well behaved that evening, watching some movies together quietly that Noni had brought from her house for them and went to bed without the million and one potty trips that seems to come with children and bedtime. Daddy and I were able to watch a whole season (and go to sleep way late) of Leverage on Netflix without any interruptions. 

We also took most of the day off on Friday, which actually had been mostly planned. YCJ did some spelling and sight word work, ECJ did his spelling and his math, while Peanut worked with her brother's Legos. We opened our mailboxes for our valentines from each other and the campers were surprised with some secret valentines that they'd received in the real mail. Which of course made them remember they'd yet to finish the secret valentines they'd be placing at certain neighbor's doors. There were doughnuts for breakfast, a fruit tray and leftover pizza for lunch, and bites of chocolate to go along with it. They still have some treats (conversation hearts) coming from us tonight for desert and I'm sure they'll be cropping up a lot next week during lessons (manipulative's).

In Preschool/Kindergarten news Peanut is moving right along at the pace she's kept up pretty much all year long. We threw in two new things this week online program wise for her that we're trying out. (Reviews to come shortly) She's liking one more than the other so far, but that was to be expected. She's learned a lot this week about using the computer more on her own because some of the lesson games in her new programs are much faster than she's used to and are providing concepts she hasn't tackled before. She also learned how to make her own cheese sandwich this week, she really enjoyed doing this.

In third grade news this week YCJ has yet to discover that she's reading without her green slips of paper most of the time. She is also doing the same two online programs that Peanut is doing, just at different levels. And she's super excited about multiplication, while making homemade perogies she was able to tell me what 12x6 was without paper and pencil! She'd actually done 12x2 and 12x4 both in her head just prior to that and we haven't gotten to the 12's yet on the times table! Super math girl here!

For sixth grade news there were a few surprises this week. ECJ actually did his chores twice without being asked! He finished his book report on Little Women and agreed to re-read it and write a more detailed report in May for my birthday. (I know it sounds like I'm torturing him with this book, but I deeply feel that just because one may not like a book that doesn't mean you can ignore it.) He's also chosen to read Stephen King's Pet Cemetery for his next book report. Yeah, super scary author and book but I think he just might be able to handle it. He's continuing on his accelerated path of English and Math. 

A video I found this week that I just had to share: What does the Mom say? It's a parody of the "What does the fox say" song that is oh so true and OK to listen to in front of your children. My kids seem to like this one almost more than the original. 

Posts you may have missed this week:   
Will Winter Never End
Organization = Simplified Life
Back to Normal Menu
Saint Valentine
More Valentine's Day Ideas
What Works for YCJ

Who I'm linking up with today:   
Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
Homegrown Learners
Great Peace Academy

Faithful Mom of 9

Update: Saturday morning we woke up to our water being frozen. We'd thought it was our pipes for most of the day while Daddy tried to figure out where the frozen spot was. It turned out it was under the ground just before our water crock!! A giant torpedo heater blowing on it for about 45 minutes finally thawed it out to where we have water now at 5 PM! Thank the Lord! And we did finally make it to the library!

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