Fluffy goes to North Pole

Jon was taking his own sweet time with his homework, and still working on the same "boring" (according to him) worksheet after dinner.

It was getting difficult to distract Ben, so he wouldn't be distracting Jon. I had read three stories to him, and also not so successfully tried to interest him in a few other things. Clearly, Jon wasn't the only one who was "bored"!

Finally, Ben himself asked for some paint, and as Jon plodded on, Ben did this picture of his beloved plush penguin, Fluffy, right next to the stick figure that's a self-portrait.

The extra "appendages" on the stick-man are parts of his skeleton! Sort of like an x-ray view?

What about that pathway? "It's the road to the North Pole, " explained Ben. And he didn't care if penguins lived there or not.

The blobs of white represents the ice, from all the freezing rain we've been getting on and off, since last weekend. It's still just ice, no snow, so a white Christmas is highly unlikely.

We're doing what we can to stay warm in a number of ways, including the edible kind, like this simple chicken soup, my grandmother's style! This is the soup the boys will do a "Slurp, slurp!", and there, I finally took a picture of it!



The vegetables aren't part of the "standard" soup, but together, makes for a fairly complete meal, when this meat-veg combo is served with noodles or rice.