Use a fireplace? Please have it inspected for me.

What do you do when your neighbor's house is on fire?  You stare out the window.....


And you get sufficiently freaked out to swear off using your fireplace ever again (as if you had ever used it in all the time you've lived in your current house because you were already unreasonably afraid of house fires).

You then realize your son had been over at said house probably no less than 30 minutes before because he'd left his sleds in their garage earlier when playing with his friend who lives there.  And you wonder (somewhere in the back of your mind) if opening the front door to let him in / out somehow send a burst of oxygen up through the chimney in such a way as to ignite the smoldering creosote even though you know it's an irrational thought.  You worry more that he might have just as easily been playing in the basement with them.  Your eyes tear up a little when he runs to to window and his voice cracks when he asks if everyone got out.

And then you feel very deep sympathy for having to move a family of 7 into a rental home while "extensive water damage" is cleaned up and the chimney, roof, and baby's room are repaired.  Your thankful for an alert passerby, everyone's safety, and the fact that the damage can be repaired.

Finally, you sortof marvel at the combination of sympathy, fear, morbid curiosity, and relief of everyone else - from the crowds that gathered to watch the fire trucks to the increased traffic on the street the next day, to the informal conversations with other neighbors as news trickles out.  And everyone feels a bit helpless with the need to DO something when there really isn't a lot that can be done.

Jacob's Piano Recital

He wasn't too thrilled, but Jacob had a piano recital today.  He played two songs, and here's the first one.  The second was a duet with his teacher.

I hoped seeing the older kids playing their advanced pieces might sway his decision to quit piano at the end of the school year; or seeing some kids he knew (at least 4 kids were there from the neighborhood) might increase his interest.  He thought about it, and then said that piano was still down on his list of things he wanted to stick with.  So - this may be the last piano recital. 

JC Our L&S

Most people know that we are not a particularly religious family.  I don't really want to go into it here, but let's just say we sum it up like the facebook relationship status "it's complicated."

To that end, we don't pass along any particular beliefs to the kids, nor say too much about the pros and cons of other people's religions - which around us range from lapsed Catholic, to Catholic, to normal Lutheran, to crazy Lutheran.  So we've basically relegated our children's religious education to their peers.  Thumbs up.  I hope it works this well with sex ed too.

So, over the weekend Allison had to write an opinion essay titled "Why Christmas is My Favorite Holiday."  We actually had a big hurdle to pass over first because Allison insisted she could not write the essay because Christmas was NOT her favorite holiday.  I actually think she was just trying to get out of the assignment.  So, we changed it slightly to be titled "Why Christmas is My Third Favorite Holiday."

It was a standard five paragraph essay and we tackled the three middle paragraphs first.  Topic 1 - Santa.  Topic 2 - Giving gifts.  Topic 3 - Seeing family.  Then we circled back to the introduction and conclusion paragraphs.

Other than the fact that 5 paragraph writing assignments make me want to bang my head against the wall - it was going OK.  We did have three topics, sentences almost all related to those topics in paragraph form, and all related to things Allison likes about Christmas.  And all completely.... secular.

So - imagine my surprise - when Allison insisted on the following as her lead-in introductory essay sentence:

"I love Christmas because it is a holiday to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior."

Uh..... OK.  Well, technically, it's true.  That is, in fact, the definition of Christmas.  How it came to be that Allison insisted on it as the first sentence of her essay, I'll have to blame on the fact that she stole my Christmas piano book to play sing-along the other week.  So, teachers, have fun with that one.