Douglas Has Arrived

Status Report: After four days delay for snow and a missed flight in Texas, Douglas has arrived. Heather is much quieter this morning: She's probably more talkative online than in person when it comes to Douglas. Alexie has not come downstairs yet. Since Douglas was lain over in Texas for a while, he bought Emily a Sheriff's Badge, which is really great since we got Bang for Christmas and Emily and Luke have been really loving it. Dad loves it and plays it whenever we have five players, but the older kids minus myself are uncooperative and unenthusiastic. The problem is that Bang is not a game for kids under the age of five and the subtle intrigue often proves elusive for kids with the mental capacity of Emily, Luke, and Andrew. Maybe Douglas would play...

Puzzle Addict

It has been really incredible having all this free time. Of course, all I've done is sit and home and do jigsaw puzzles. Here's the general run-down of how the McPhersons do puzzles:

1. We all open the puzzle together as a huge happy family and begin snapping pieces together. Someone does the spine, someone else does the huge title in the center, someone does an enormous face/country, etc. We all grab a huge project and do it.

2. After we've finished each of our huge projects we stick them into the middle of the spine and then have a tenuously square puzzle with a cross of pieces through the center.

3. Everyone leaves except me. Mom and Dad usually have a Netflix to watch, Heather goes upstairs to talk to her boyfriend who is either just getting up or just going to bed, and Alexie and the boys either have "intelligent conversation" in the living room or go to sleep. I continue to place pieces into the puzzle deep into the night.

4. Next morning I wake up and begin work on the puzzle. Dad, being off for an entire week for Christmas, helps too. When we get down to about fifty pieces, kids come out of the woodwork and begin stuffing pieces into their pockets so they can be the person to put the last piece into the puzzle.

5. The puzzle ends. I exhaustedly stare at it thinking how I would never like to do that again. Mom takes a picture of me and the puzzle and then promptly sweeps it into the box and gets out a new one. Then the whole thing starts all over again! Aah!

Somehow I can't stop. I guess this is what it is like to be addicted to something. At least it is something harmless like puzzles instead of something extremely deadly and dangerous like drugs, alcohol, or online gaming.

Too Many Breaks

Tomorrow is the first day of Thanksgiving Break. This means that I only have two days of school this week. Then when I come back to school I only have one day of class and then finals. What is up with that!? Not only that but every class is going to be doing "Test Review" because they don't want to cover anything new on the final. What's the point of even coming back? What we should do is combine Fall Break, Thanksgiving Break, and Christmas Break and just have an uber long advent.