For Christmas, Grandma Susan sent the most awesome winter accessories ever! They are displayed proudly in our "heads" at the top of the blog. The Mighty Tuttie rules over us all.

We are currently in the process of finding a new tenant to occupy one of the two downstairs apartments. People keep not showing up. It's just like Freecycle. Part of me really hopes that one of these days they'll up'n bulldoze this town.

We finally taught the kids to wash their own durn poopy dipes.

And to sing while they do it.

I knitted Tuttie's longies. Rad, huh? B is wishing he could jump in and have a good spin. This photo gives a nice view of his mohawk. It grew because that's what happens to babies who live too close to the Mohawk River. Both of our kids have Levi's butt. Where is my butt in all this, huh?! Come to think of it, where is any part of me? I swear these are my kids....I'm pretty confident that I saw them come out of me! Just kidding, B actually has Knecht hammertoes. I'm actually just fine if all our kids turn out to be Mini-Levis.

It snowed, finally, this one day last week. It's all gone now. It's just raining today.
Something funny about gas pumps in New York: You know how there's that little thingy on the gas pump handle that you can flip to make it hold the handle down, so you don't have to hold down the handle yourself the whole time? The first time we pumped gas at a gas station in this state, we were like, "Hey, the little thingy is broken!" It was as though somebody had taken that little piece off! Then a few weeks later, we filled up again, someplace else, and guess what? No little thingy on that pump handle, either! So, basically, none of the gas pumps anywhere up here have that little thingy. This afternoon, Levi was pumping gas and saw a little sticker on the pump that read, "Please do not use gas cap to hold down handle while pumping." He put two and two together, and realized they must have made some kind of law against those handy little thingamabops, and when they took them all out, people started using their gas caps instead. For some reason, the State of New York is bound and determined that we all hold down the gas pump handles OURSELVES! NO CHEATING ALLOWED! What a weird state.

Our ward has switched starting times. Instead of starting at 1pm, we're starting at 9am. YAY! OH BOY! YIPPEEEEE!

A couple weeks, or a month ago, Levi got frustrated with me implementing random changes in our household, all willy-nilly without warning or pattern or plan, and we realized it might be good if we made specific goals for our family each week, together. We're trying to do one little goal per category, in each of five categories. Last week's goals were:

FOOD: Transfer all recipes from computer to index cards, so that we don't have to keep running back and forth from the kitchen to the family room every time we want to make something.

CLOTHES: Sew tie nappies from this funky early-90s knit fabric I found at the Salvation Army.

ENERGY: Turn the heat down 1/2 a notch and bundle up more instead. (Our heater doesn't have a temperature gauge. It has this colored gauge without any numbers, but it's got these notch-type things.)

HEALTH: Clean off, and find hardware for, the highchair we found on Craigslist. (Last week we bought a green wooden highchair for $7. It's in good condition, except the hardware is all rusty and partly broken, and the whole thing needed a good cleaning. This goes in the health category because we are trying to phase out plastic, to lessen exposure to Satan; besides, we like wood. It's real woody.)

SPIRITUAL: Have family devotional BEFORE breakfast instead of during/after, so that we can kneel together and have prayers, instead of having prayers in the middle of the kids eating, when it's sometimes not that reverent, and so that the kids will pay attention to Alma or Nephi instead of their crust and the water pitcher.

This week’s goals are:

FOOD: Calculate amounts and find sources for basic food storage items to get a 6-month supply.

CLOTHES: Find a slipper pattern for Levi. (His slippers have been duct taped a few times, and that worked for a while, but it’s time for some new ones.)

HEALTH: Find lids for all those gallon glass jugs we acquired last week.

ENERGY: Find a timer, made of renewable materials, made in this country, that isn’t battery-operated. (We had a timer we were using to time our showers, but it got ruined by the humidity in the bathroom.)

SPIRITUAL: Plan a trip to the temple for sometime in January before school starts again. (We have gotten brave, and decided that even if our car doesn’t make it to Boston, it’ll be better than if we never tried at all.)