baby it's cold outside!

Notice how I always perk up and come blog when it's cold out? Well, it's cold out. Hasn't been cold in a good....[checking blog list and seeing when I was last active] 10 months or so. This is cold for real, people! Like the new little dog was shivering. Inside. In our house where we're living. In it! Shivering from the cold! Granted it's half chihuahua and Mexico isn't known for its snow, but come on! The dog is now wearing a sweater. I can't decide if he looks hilarious or ridiculous, but more importantly I'm wondering why I don't own a sweater.

Wow Mommy, this is awesome!

It was back to the old school grindstone this morning, complicated by the blustery cold and the fact that not only had we not worn jackets in the past 10 months, but that a couple of kids had grown so much in the past 10 months that said jackets, procured through a fifteen-minute search laced with colorful muttered-under-the-breath words, no longer fit. I was feeling rather resourceful and smug when I finally found a jacket (wait, or is it coat? Am I qualified to know the difference?) left over from the days of Alexei's toddlerhood years ago. I'm pretty sure he wore it exactly never because he, too, lived in Florida at the time and it was one of those ten months out of the year where we sweat to death instead of blog about how cold we are.

Tuesdays mean Creative Corner (aka toddler and preschool P.E.) at 10am, a mad dash home to squeeze in an hour of school and a quick lunch, and another sprint back to catch homeschool P.E. at 1pm. In other words, sheer mayhem. This was the first time this school year that the madness was encumbered by cold. Do you have any idea how long it takes to wrangle a two and four-year-old into warm clothes? Or how much Florida-bred grade schoolers whine and complain at the thought of donning long sleeves and socks? Apparently neither do I. I am chronically early to everything we do, but not today! We were *almost* late.

Anyway, back to the special jacket I had lovingly, caringly saved for years so Hobie could be warm and snug on this momentous day. We forged on to the Creative Corner class in the morning and I got the kids all unraveled and settled in the gym for playtime. Hobie ran off to play with blocks before I had a chance to remove his jacket, but came back in time for the class to begin. I nabbed a sleeve and pulled and off came the jacket, along with a hailstorm of black vinyl. It would seem that years of baking in the garage during Florida summers had turned the jacket's innards to flakes. We only managed to shed a few handfuls on the gym floor right there in front of everybody. I think I had a flashback to being laughed at in 7th grade in my brother's old worn out leather jacket. Alas, the jacket had to be reapplied after class and we made the trudge of shame back to the car, a trail of vinyl confetti following in our wake.

Wait, is this a hand-me-down??

Fast forward past Creative Corner, past school and lunch and almost being late for homeschool PE with Hobie now sporting last year's fleece pullover. We're finally home and in for the day and I get the brilliant idea to throw the jacket in the washing machine to see if the vinyl liner won't just come right off. I'm an awesome, frugal mom and this hand-me-down won't get the best of me. As a matter of fact, it worked like a charm! Might need a new washing machine now, and for a few minutes I thought the hubby might stop speaking to me, but the jacket's inside was stripped completely clean.

So stripped, in fact, that getting the now-vinyl-less jacket on and off would be physically impossible on a two-year-old. Guess who's getting a new jacket tomorrow!