Semester Honor Roll

Two Aho boys at the front of the list for the 8th grade!

He's going to be RICH!

My 13 year old son emailed me today, and told me he'd already earned $20,000 mining bitcoin.  He swears this is true, and said that he will use his earnings to pay for his college education, after spending a tiny fraction on a computer program.    I'll believe it when I see the cold, hard cash.  But wouldn't that just be par for the course?  I'd have to work several months to bring home that amount of money, and a 13 year old kid can hit a button on his computer and let it run.... WHAMMO.

If that's all it takes, then maybe we can retire to Bermuda by next month.  Sounds good to me!

A Miracle on a Snow Day

It doesn't happen often, but everyonceinawhile I catch the kids being nice to each other.  School was cancelled today, and I caught Colby teaching his sister how to read music.  Be still my heart!!

Anti-Valentine's Day

In subtle protest to the holiday of love, my 13 year old sons wore all BLACK to school today (which is actually more in keeping with Ash Wednesday.  But that wasn't why they wore black).
I did notice that Colby, however, wore RED SOCKS... which means he has a secret DESIRE for love, somewhere deep down near his toes.  Hope is not lost.

Solo and Ensemble Prep

Both boys will be participating in Solo and Ensemble competition next weekend - Colby will be doing a drum solo, and Quinn will be doing both a solo and a duet.  Here's a sneak peak of the practice session!  They're sounding good!

13 Year Old Stats

At 13 years and 6 months old, Quinn is 5'4" tall, and weighs 98.6 pounds.  I  know this because we had to take him to the doctor's office because of an infected wound that he got at Halloween, that took entirely too long to heal because he reopened it in gym class.  It went from this in October:

to THIS in January.  Not good.  

Luckily, after 10 days of antibiotics, we have this, which makes the mama feel MUCH better about things....

We may not have to amputate.  Good.  But there's going to be a big ol' scar to remember this episode by!

Sweepstakes

We've been watching a lot of HGTV as a family recently, now that we actually HAVE television.  ALL those channels, and there's really not much decent on, with the exception of home remodeling shows.  HGTV is doing their dream home sweepstakes at the moment, and this year's home is in Gig Harbor, Washington.  The kids are POSITIVE that this is OUR home, and that we're destined to win it.  They have their bedrooms picked out, they've done research on the area, they've looked into schools and colleges, and Quinn sends me 15 emails a day, reminding me to enter.

Mom: "Quinn, you know we're not REALLY going to win a $1.8 million house and move to Washington, right?"

Quinn: "You don't know that, Mom!  We have a really good chance!  Who watches HGTV anyway?  I don't know a single other person who watches that channel."

Dad: "Then you don't know many middle-aged women, Quinn."

Mom: "And there's ALOT of us!"

Quinn: "Do the math.  We get to enter TWICE A DAY!  No one else is going to make the effort to do that!" 

Reagan: "We NEED that house!"

Mom: "No, we WANT that house.  We don't need a house.  We have a house already."

Quinn: "This house is terrible.  I will never have my own bedroom.  We NEED a new house, on pavement, near a town where there are things to do.  I am sure that there are trampoline parks near Gig Harbor, Washington!"

Reagan: "We'll be close to Aunt Pat and Aunt Kathy, and closer to Grandma and Grandpa, and only 10 hours away from Aunt Kelli!!!  And we'll have neighbors, so I can have playdates EVERY DAY!"

Quinn: "Mom, we don't know how many entries there will be.  I can't imagine there will be that many, so we have an excellent chance."

And on and on and on it goes. 

Would I like to move into a beautiful house on the Puget Sound?  SURE.  I'm sure I could talk myself into it, if someone handed one to me.  But Rob's worried that the kids will be really disappointed when we DON'T win, because they're just SO POSITIVE that we will.  So, I decided to bring up some cold, hard facts.

We googled how many entries there were for LAST YEAR'S HGTV sweepstakes.

The answer?  100 million.

The odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 700,000. 
The odds of having identical quadruplets are 1 in 11 million.


So... north of there.  The odds of us winning a house and moving to Washington: 1 in 100 million.

I won't update my resume just yet.