Lutherans 101

I laughed, I cried, I watched it again and again!

Games

We were in Minnesota this weekend visiting Ben's family. My Facebook friends have been all aflutter since I mentioned that we spent an evening at Pinstripes bowling alley. It's high-end bowling: wine lists, bistro food and (my favorite!) Limoncello martinis delivered to your lane. We all had a great time. First time bowling for the boys and they LOVED it.

Minnesota had a nice snowstorm on Sunday, so Ben and his folks spent an hour digging out the snowbank at the end of the driveway so we could leave Monday. It was a loooooong drive. Around Milwaukee Ben played "I Spy" with the kids for a while. When that had run dry, Sam suggested Simon Says. He suggested it like this: "SIMON SAYS! SIMON SAYS! SIMON SAYS!"

Owen, verifying that he had correctly deciphered the name of this game, asked, "Do what Sam says?"

Anna Karenina

I am, at long last, reading Anna Karenina. I want to tell the world that this is a fantastic book and that there is nothing to fear.

Anna Karenina is an 800-page novel by the famous Russian author Leo Tolstoy. He also wrote War and Peace. Both novels seem to be among the list of books that well-read people know. I have aspired to read Karenina for a few years but have been put off by:

1. 800 pages!

2. My high school experience reading other Russian novels (Crime and Punishment, for one) in which it was a major challenge to even keep track of the characters, much less the plot, because Russian names/nicknames are confusing.

Considering its length, the cast in this novel is quite modest. I've had no trouble keeping track of people. The story is a love story like a million others I've read. It reminds me frequently of Jane Austen novels.

What I love most so far (I'm in the page 200s) is how aptly Tolstoy describes people's feelings and motives. We hear what is inside the mind of every major character and I recognize these people! They are like people I've met. It's brilliant.

Fear not, my friends. Anna Karenina is accessible, delightful, many-layered. And if you like ityou have a good friend for many weeks.

Learning to Read

Sam is starting to read. Sam really likes to run around. Sam is easily frustrated. So, I recently asked my Facebook friends for help thinking of activities that combine moving around and reading.

Several people suggested hopscotch with words, but I don't know how to play hopscotch so we haven't tried that. Other suggestions could be grouped under the heading of scavenger hunt. That's something I understand and plan to do.

Yesterday we accidentally bumped into a successful reading moment. Some friends came over to watch the Superbowl and, like millions of other football partygoers, brought some beer to share. As soon as they walked in Sam spotted the box and hollered "Bud Light!"

Lately we've been reading chapter books to Sam and Jude. They loved The Boxcar Children. It's a little saccharine for me, so we're taking a break. Nate the Great, a series of mysteries a la Encyclopedia Brown for the early-elementary set, is the hands-down favorite here. I tried little Tom Sawyer, but it requires a good bit of translation (the vocabulary is very advanced) and Tom is a sassy kid. We don't need to inspire more sass than we come by naturally.

What We're Eating

I've had a good time with some of our meals this week. We used our Groupon for Door to Door Organics, which brought a box of ripe organic produce straight to my door the day after the blizzard. It's unreasonably expensive for me to do again but I'm enjoying the one-time deal.

Turns out, this is good practice for our upcoming summer of CSA take-what-they-give-you produce.

Last night I had no plan but there was a roast in the freezer. I knew it was bound for the crock pot, so I browsed relevant recipes on a crock pot blog. I chose a cranberry pot roast because I had all the parts. A bag of cranberries has been snoozing in the freezer since late autumn.

Pot roast begs for mashed potatoes but alas! only two potatoes on the premises. The box o' produce included a big butternut squash, so we had roasted mashed squash instead. Waaaaay better than potatoes.

I also tried a new tuna salad recipe this week. I know, tuna salad - woo hoo. This one is not even a distant relative of the mayo & pickle relish version I've enjoyed for years. This one had lime juice (1 lime per 6 oz. can of tuna), cilantro, red onion. On a bun with lettuce and tomato (thank you box o' produce!), it gave me a few minutes' respite from my snowbound mid-winter blues. The cookbook I took it from praised the recipe's low-fatitude. I ate it with potato chips.

Snowprah, Day 2

Today is the first snow day for Sam's school. I grew up in Kentucky, where a snow day meant, "Hey, it snowed a couple inches last night so no one can drive anywhere for a couple hours. Hurry up and get the plastic produce bags on your tennis shoes, we have some sledding to do before the snow is gone at 10 a.m.!"

This is a different kind of snow day.

I was awake with Owen at about 2:00 a.m. and we spent an hour listening to people call into a radio show from their cars, where they were stranded on Lakeshore Drive and waiting for emergency responders to arrive on snowmobiles to rescue them.

All the roads in our county are closed. Only snowplows and emergency vehicles. And, apparently, the one SUV we saw pass our house this morning.

I'm not sure we can let the children outside. Like small dogs, they might disappear into the snowdrifts.

The compost bin before (3 p.m. Tuesday) and after (9 a.m. Wednesday).

Snowprah

This is mostly for our friends and family who are not in Chicago: Yes, the storm is here. It seems to be as big as predicted. We're all at home, all is well, school is already cancelled for tomorrow and I think work is mostly cancelled, too. Unless Ben decides to trudge to the other side of "the compound" (across the parking lot) to work on a sermon.

There are lots of great nicknames for the storm going around: Snowbowl (in honor of Sunday's game), snOwMG!, Snowtorious B.I.G. Snowprah is my favorite: it's all over the tv and it's taking over Chicago.

As long as the power stays on, we're set. I believe pancakes are on the menu for breakfast tomorrow. Then I'm hoping the boys will go to separate rooms and play quietly for 8 hours. More likely we will spend most of the day trying to be entertained enough to avoid bloodshed.

We're reading The Boxcar Children, which they love, so the last 50 pages of that might use up an hour. I'm hoping they'll start imitating the Boxcar foursome: such hardworking, polite, happy children. Unfortunately, my children are real people.