First day hiccups

After a delightful New Years Day, it was back to work for me yesterday. Lucky for the kids, they still had one more day until they headed back to the classroom... or so I thought. As I was backing out of the driveway, I looked down the street and thought, why is the school bus here? Uh oh...

Turned out, John was back to school yesterday; it was Caroline who had one more day off. The occasional differences between the public school calendar and the Xavier private school calendar catch me off guard! Thankfully, Justin was able to get him to school in time for second period to start, but the poor kid was exhausted by the end of the day. We'd let him stay up until almost midnight on the 1st, watching football, because we thought he could sleep in the next day! Mom of the Year, and it only took two days...

After a mostly unproductive first day back at work for me - it's always hard to get the brain back in gear after ten days of vacation - I came home to the best part of everyday, being around Justin and the kids. When I called down to the kids to come up for dinner, Caroline came right up, but John didn't hear me. I went down to give him the word and found him out cold in bed! Clearly that late night caught up with him! It's a few nights of leftovers after all of the cooking over the holidays, but I don't mind. I wish leftovers meant fewer dishes, but for some reason, it never does! Justin and I have gotten into a good routine of doing the dishes together most nights, though, so while it's not soulful gazing into each other's eyes, I still count it as quality time.

After the kitchen was cleaned up, Justin, John and I spent a little bit of time working on the puzzle. it's pretty funny to see the intensity with which Justin is working on it, but he's obviously really enjoying it, too. He goes with the "match the colors" approach, while John and are more in the "match the shapes" camp. It's a challenging, 1000 piece puzzle; after about an hour, I don't think we'd gotten more than 20 pieces fitted collectively, so I would expect this to be a sustained project for a while.

I also finished one of the best books I've read in a while this week; I was reading Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin, an absolutely terrific historian and author. I have a huge stack of books sitting by the bed that I checked out to read over the holidays, and naturally didn't get nearly as much reading done as I would've liked! With due dates looming, I'm hoping to race through a few of the lighter reads before I have to turn everything in.

After a more productive day at work today and both kids back at school, we're once again sitting in the quiet living room, me writing while Justin works on his puzzle. The kids are practicing the piano and showering, and I expect John will make an appearance shortly to help with the puzzle while simultaneously avoiding bedtime. I didn't have as much time at home this evening as usual, since I worked a little bit late to try and get caught up. After 5:30, I can pretty much count on peace and quiet as the office empties out. By 6:30, when I left tonight, it's a ghost town. I secured the dubious honor of being the very last car in the parking lot tonight.
I walked in the door to everyone around the table, having leftovers tacos and homemade papusas for dinner tonight. Thought my weekly new recipe task is complete, I still very much intend to keep cooking new things! I thought the papusas turned out really well, though my homemade corn tortillas didn't survive Justin heating them up in the oven. They went from tortillas to homemade chips!

I think I might pass on the puzzle tonight, so I can read for a bit. After a run on snowy streets a couple of times this week, I think I'm going to flex my running schedule and ride the bike indoors tomorrow morning instead. The weather is warming up a bit (it's all relative, it's still stupid cold in the mornings at 5:30am), but with snow pack on the streets it's a frustrating, slow go of it on foot. I figure it will mostly melt on the streets this weekend with temperatures looking to be well above freezing, but of course, that means the skiing conditions will deteriorate while I'm away for the weekend with Caroline for a Girl Scout troop cabin camping trip. Ah, well - hopefully next weekend I'll get back out in the snow!

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