Pierced Ears & Tobogganing ToBLOGganing Monkeys

Apparently for no other reason to than drive us completely batty, the smoke detector in our bedroom upstairs has decided to make itself heard.

I checked. There is no smoke. Didn't see any. Didn't smell any.

But there is a loud, piercing, contant siren. And I definitely hear that. The alarm has been echoing through the house for several hours. And it will continue to until either Monkey Daddy gets home from work or the batteries in the stinkin' thing go dead. I lugged the big ladder from the garage, into the house, up the staircase, down the hallway, and into our room. I set it up in the middle of the bedroom floor. I climbed the wobbly thing and s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d my arm up as high as I could. Unfortunately, we have a vaulted ceiling in our room, and the detector just happens to be way up at the top. So, after all that effort, the best thing I got was just having my ears within several feet of the shrilling thing. My fingertips could just barely graze the surface of it, but there was absolutely no way I'd be able to twist off the cover. Trying to disguise the noise, or maybe more of just trying to distract us all from it, I put on a video and turned up the volume a little louder than usual.

It's not working.

Except for Blessing #5, that is. He has slept through the entire thing. Upstairs, no less.

We weren't surprised by the cold temperatures, but we were surprised by the snow. Figuring it wouldn't last, I took a picture of the backyard a little after lunchtime. It didn't stop snowing, so after we had picked up the girls from school and met Monkey Daddy at work, we came home and dug out the snowsuits and then headed to the local middle school to go sledding on its great hills. It was a lot of fun! But Blessing #5 tuckered out, so we came back home for some hot chocolate and a whole bunch of spaghetti. (In fact, we only quit eating because we ran out of pasta. The little monkeys gobbled it up... all that hill climbing worked up some hearty appetites!)

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