This may or may not have an impact on the accessibility of my blog.

Which, fortunately, has very little activity, so it would not be an internet catastrophe if all were lost. Although there might be two or three confused readers, should that happen.

So now those potential confused readers have been warned.

If all goes seamlessly, I'll see you on the other side, to resume my sporadic random blogging.

Oh, yes, and I'll be turning off all commenting until we break on through to the other side. You'll have to just comment in your head.

Can't hurt to try, right?

I'm getting a late start, but still ... it can't hurt to try, right?

I'd put that over in my sidebar, too, in place of that long-defunct walking challenge, except that that would bring up the whole "my blog needs an overhaul" issue and we've already discussed that. Ughhhh.

We've been working on doing the puzzle we made a few posts back. Tonight we nearly finished it. Except for one piece. Missing. We looked all around. We talked about how the puzzle had been started and finished in the dining room, but had been moved several times and many days had passed between start and almost-finished. Too many floor sweepings in the dining room, what if we lost it that very first day, and hadn't realized it?

I was very sad.

I swept very carefully, although not very hopefully.

But there, upside down on the floor, was the last piece. I am thankful. I didn't want to lose part of our *family puzzle*.

In other news, I haven't been very productive this week. I just keep getting more and more behind. I know I need to regroup, restructure, recommit to some plan to getting it all done. Make sure I'm letting the *right* things go, when things don't get done. But being behind is wearying.

So I'm going to bed.

But today I remembered, because today was blogworthy: It's my birthday!

I had a wonderful day. The kids made me cards. Dale took me out to lunch. And I received many birthday well-wishes and felt loved.

Here's three pictures of the end of my evening, all capturing the fact that I make stupid faces when there's a camera pointed at me. Somehow choosing silly faces is better than candid. Judging from the candid pictures in the batch, I made the right call.

Mmmmm! Dark Chocolate with Chili!

Sense & Sensibility* - the Graphic Novel! (think: like a comic book only way cooler) - very fun!

And my new favorite shirt:

In summary:
I had a wonderful day. I am so blessed to have the undeserved love of my Savior, as well as a sweet and thoughtful husband who might just love me as much as I love him, and 7 beautiful, talented, awesome children, and a wonderful extended family. My life is filled with love, and I am humbled and thankful.

*corrected the book title - I had the wrong one, even though I knew what it was. D'oh!

Very cold.

So cold the ice hasn't really melted. It sublimates. Which leaves some funky, hard to photograph shapes. Icicles with skinny spots. Some exceedingly smooth, others ripply.

I liked the shapes here with the downspout...

And the sun coming through these...

My ice ornaments melted very little. There's a few drips on the ground. Mostly the water just vaporized, concentrating the pigments in curious ways ....

Leaving icy colored strings behind.

She was not only making patterns and pictures with the tiles (although the robot on the lower right was made by one of her brothers) ... she also stood them up on end. And *stacked* them on end.

Have you noticed?

There aren't enough children in the cartoon. And I wanted to change the name to *kimodified* but never redid the graphics. And all those "blogs I read" links are WAY out of date.

Who has time to keep those things up to date?

Plus, I don't have the time to learn the things I need to know to update it the way I *want* to ...

But one of these days I'm going to at least try.

But not tonight.

I just figured I'd mention it so that you knew I knew those things.

And today I'm tired and over-caffeinated and stressed. Which means I don't feel like talking (weird, I know!).

So I'm at a loss as to why you'd want an entry today. But for the sake of an entry-a-day February, here one is:

I enjoyed church, it gave me a lot to think about. I was very tired, so I had a short nap. Then our Life Group time was good, it gave me more to think about. Although I think I talk too much, I wish I didn't feel compelled to blab out my thoughts on almost EVERY question. I worry that there are quiet people wishing they could talk but never getting a chance because of me.

We didn't watch the super bowl. We did eat some junk.

And now I think I'll go to bed.

Anyway.

Today 'Seven' and I played with my camera that I got for Christmas - it has a front-facing LCD screen so you can do self portraits. I keep trying and keep hating them. But today I got a few I liked, I think because there was a cute toddler (and kindergartner) involved.

Here they are:

And there you go. An entry for today.

Next up: More laundry.

Was it already two years ago that we did our puzzle craft?

Three of the larger puzzles were left, sadly, undone. Well, four if you count the one that's missing two pieces since the great puzzle catastrophe. I'm not sure what to do about that one. Maybe I'll incorporate the two-piece-gap into the design. YEAH! Okay, I've got a plan. Back to my topic.

The reason I'd left them undone is because we discovered it was somewhat daunting to try to decorate the whole puzzle in such a way that made it easy to put back together. Filling the *inbetween* spaces in kids' art, in particular.

But my brilliant sister had the great idea to break the space into artistic zones - circles with colored borders - and let each person decorate one space at a time. It makes the puzzles more interesting and more manageable.

So yesterday we brought the plain puzzles that have been laid out carefully (it's unwise to disturb blank white puzzles!) (And I strongly recommend not dropping them down the stairs) for two years. And started making circles and decorating them.

These aren't done, this is the prep work:

My daughter's fractal space filling circles -- she needs to finish all the smaller and smaller and smaller circles:

My random sized and spaced circles, ready for kids to pick a zone and decorate:

Watch this blogspace for the finished products.

Eventually.

Hopefully not another two years.

My favorite picture of the day: 'Seven' looking out the window, wishing I'd taken her with me when I went out to photograph the snow.

Later the neighbors invited all the other neighbors sledding. Here's the parade of us on our way:

And here's me, with my obligatory "Take a picture of me to prove I was here and chose to be a fun mom for the day" picture:

The BEST part of the day, though, is that coming back from sledding I smelled natural gas. I called our gas company, who came out with their detectors and, after much careful detection efforts, we determined that our furnace was venting natural gas. We must've caught it pretty quick because, at the time, from *inside* the house, it SEEMED the furnace was working fine. It wasn't getting cold or anything, and seemed to be running. It turns out we needed a new igniter, and it was the pilot light gas that was being squirted in and vented out when it didn't ignite. A few hours (and a yet unknown emergency late night call rate later) we had heat for the night. The reason that's the BEST part of the day is because if I hadn't gone sledding I wouldn't have smelled gas and we probably wouldn't have known our furnace wasn't working right until we woke up freezing in the middle of the night. I thank the Lord that we had a heads up in time to get it repaired, and that we could go to bed safe and warm.

It's hard to tell how much snow we got, I'm guessing about a foot, but there's a lot of blowing and drifting out there. Seems a little on the slim side for a blizzard.

Here are the chairs on my back deck, and the snow drifted up against the xB ....

I'm guessing 6 more weeks of winter. Minimum. Then again, who needs a groundhog to tell you that. It IS Michigan, after all.

It's been suggested I attempt to blog my way through February.

And so it begins, with a late entry while under a blizzard warning.

I kimodified it for lunch and liked it very much. Kimodified it again for my dinner.

Okay, that probably qualifies me as a binge eater, but if the binge is a vegetable it can't be all bad, can it?

I envision myself making endless variations of this.

This picture is dinner:

What I did for dinner was:

Toasted some slivered almonds until they were golden brown, then dumped them in a big bowl. I used about 2 Tbsp.

Sliced the cauliflower in 1/4" slices and fried them (I didn't use oil) in a hot non-stick pan to brown them. It's best not to overcrowd the pan, so the slices lay flat, but I always overcrowd it. Oh well. I used about 2/3 of a head of cauliflower.

Chopped up some red onion while the cauliflower was browning. Maybe 1/3 of a cup. Green onions would've added some pretty green to the salad, but I didn't have any.

In lieu of dried cranberries (which I used up on the lunch variation) I considered diced apples or clementine sections, but then had a flash of inspiration, remembering we had fresh pomegranates. Mmmmm pomegranate seeds! I added maybe 1/2 a cup.

While the cauliflower was still browning (it takes time!) I mixed up the sauce. It was approximately 1/3 cup chicken stock, a splash of white wine, a splash... WAIT! I forgot the splash of rice vinegar. It should've been in there. I used some at lunch and I think it was a little better with that splash of tangy-ness. And about 1 Tbsp. of peanut butter, and 1 Tbsp. of honey. More or less. I don't measure. And then some garlic, ground cayenne (although red pepper flakes would've been prettier), turmeric, cumin, and paprika. Thickened with a little corn starch.

When the cauliflower was done (nice and browned on most pieces, and tender but not soggy) I dumped it into the bowl with the almonds, onions, and pomegranate seeds. Then I dumped the sauce mixture into the hot pan and let it mix, the pb melt in, and thicken. And then I poured it all on top and tossed it around. And ate it hot. So it's a hot salad.

Yum.

I think it would be good with the roasted cauliflower. And I like the way the original recipe looks with the cauliflower florets instead of slices.

Maybe I'll make yet a different kimodification tomorrow.

Yum.