where's the jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?

We spent the holiday weekend visiting family--my two remaining grandmas and John's parents.  It wasn't exactly a day of service, but it was still a good thing to do, we think.  Idaho is, as ever, entirely too cold.  I am amazed by my grandma, but I am thankful to not be a cattle rancher.  It is an unforgiving career. 

Grant's quest to fill every moment of his time (that he's not playing video games or teasing his siblings) with basketball and soccer continues apace.  I am trying to learn more about basketball so I can yell intelligent things at his games.  I now know what it means to set a pick, and can recognize when it is being done.  This is progress.  There is no mold growing on Grant's margarine and butter experiment, and we are feeling sad and disappointed. 

Emmett has discovered the Riordan universe and is happily plowing through them.  He loved the Benedict Society book I bought him for Christmas, and has tasked me (like that corporate-speak?) with reading it.  He loves piano and enjoys swimming, which we haven't paid for yet this month, so I guess we are squatters. 

Ike alternates between shaky compliance and sulky defiance.  He was sad the other day when he saw a picture of a wolf that had been hunted and killed, but what if the wolf had eaten one of his stuffed animals, maybe Sealie (a seal)?  What then? 

Willa is sucking her fingers again because I guess she wants buck teeth.  This makes me very angry.