23 February 2014

 It was a very nice week, for the most part.  We ended up getting the yuck that was going around.  Weren’t we just sick?  Since it was rodeo week, I had planned on taking Thursday off and it was already my off Friday.  Well, I ended up working from home on Monday, going into the office on Tuesday, and being home with Arlo and Helen, both sick, on Wednesday.  Did I really only go into work one day last week? 

Arlo home sick-- needed all his buddies on the couch with him

Wednesday evening the kids went to spend the night with Nana and Papa.  I went for a run in the evening and enjoyed some quiet time.  I got up early on Thursday and went to the Mesa temple and enjoyed myself.  I received some comfort over something that’s been bothering me; I love to have a place to find solace and inspiration.  I stopped at In N’ Out for a burger on my way home (my after temple trip tradition).  Because I left so early, I got home in plenty of time to get some things done around the house too.  I stopped at Home Despot on the way home and picked up a couple of things for the garden.  I played in the garden and cleaned out the chicken coop when I got home.  I picked Arlo up on Thursday evening, but Helen and Felicity stayed one more night.

Arlo and I had a great day together on Friday.  We planted in the garden, played with the train set, watched Toy Story, and had a picnic lunch.  While he napped I made and decorated some cookies.  I love to do that.  It made quite the mess, but when the girls came home from Nana’s house Friday night, there were left over cookies for them to decorate.  After cookie decorating, the girls and I cross-stitched and watched a movie.  I made a couple of little cross stitch things this week and the girls were interested in trying it.  I got out a large piece of plastic canvas and an upholstery needle and they practiced cross-stitching on that.  Helen did pretty well, but the pattern evaded her and she got bored with it after a little while.  Felicity, however, really enjoyed it and followed a butterfly pattern.  After some initial guidance, she was off and stitching on her own.  I was proud at how well she picked it up.

 Because we did a lot of playing Thursday and Friday, there were some chores that needed attention on Saturday.  We went grocery shopping, made lunches for the week, and cleaned house.  This week I had the girls help me with the cleaning, just one on one.  I had one of the help me for 20 minutes while the other watched Arlo and then we switched.  It actually worked out really well.  I did a little yard clean up and pulled a few weeds in the front as well as adjust the bougainvillea, which has almost made it over the archway!

We had family movie night with pizza and some candy; Felicity picked Tangled.  It’s so nice to relax together in a clean house with the whole week planned out ahead of us.  Now I just have to keep it clean and stick to the plan!  I’m hoping I can, so that next weekend we can do something fun instead of cleaning all weekend!

 We’ve been working on memorizing The Family: A Proclamation to the World as a family and the girls have been doing a great job, we’re on paragraph two.  They finished the Articles of Faith, and I was so proud of both of them.  I want so much happiness for my children.  I want them to know who they are and how loved they are.  I want them to make good choices and know the blessings that come to us as we love and serve others.  I worry about what they are exposed to in the world, I worry about how they interpret the things they see and hear.  I’m trying hard to help them feel how much I love them and teach them the things they need to know.  I worry about things I have little control over.  I'm trying to have faith that they'll be protected when they leave the safety of our home.  That’s all any parent can do, right?  Anyway, I hope that we all have peace and happiness in our homes this week!

16 February 2014

It was such a great week, and the weather was so beautiful!  On Monday night we went with my parents to Red Lobster to celebrate my dad's birthday.  It was delicious, as always, although I was distracted by keeping kids happy; mostly Arlo.  When I asked Felicity what she wanted, she said "I want the popcorn shrimp, but have them leave off the popcorn".  I got a chuckle out of that.  She really loved it, once she got past the concept that they didn't have tails that she needed to manage.  Arlo had fish and predictable Helen chose chicken nuggets.

We had a pretty quiet week, and I am finally starting to find it a little easier to get up so early in the morning.  On Thursday evening, the girl's put together their Valentine's for their classmates.  I would have liked to have hand made them for them again this year, but it just wasn't in the cards.  Maybe next year.  My visiting teachers very lovingly taped paper hearts to my front door in honor of Valentine's Day.  It was a very nice surprise. I was also elated to find a beautiful boquet of flowers on the porch when I got home Thursday afternoon.  I've developed a very special relationship with a man I met online a few months ago.  We've enjoyed many long and meaningful telephone conversations as well as pages and pages of emails and text messages.  It was very considerate of him to send me flowers and they were perfect; they made me feel very appreciated and special.  I'm anxiously looking forward to his visit to Arizona in March and I have a lot of fun things planned!

The kids got to spend an extra weekend with their dad since their Aunt, Uncle, and cousins were visiting from out of state.  They left around 5 o'clock on Friday night, and I missed them almost immediately.  I cleaned the house and did the laundry and then at 7 o'clock I went over to the Bryson's house for a fondue dinner and chatting.  It was  a very nice time.  When I got home, I finished putting away the laundry and worked on a little craft project.  Saturday morning I went grocery shopping, made lunches for the week, and spent time in my garden.  I refilled some of the beds, planted 5 new rose bushes, and got all the seeds I need for this years garden.  I planted all of my herbs and moved them in the yard, so I'm hoping for more success this year.  I also filled my whimsical topsy-turvey planter with pretty annuals.  I also bought a new gardenia (I'm such a sucker for gardenias).  It was a lot of hard work, but I enjoyed every minute of it and got a nice tan in the process.

 In the evening after doing some household shopping, I sat down with a couple of movies and started making Felicity's baptism dresses.  I'm sewing her a dress to be actually baptized in, in lue of the unflattering jumpsuit, and one to wear after her baptism and for her confirmation.  I got them cut out and got the bodice and sleeves of one of the dresses completed, before heading off to bed.  It was a very quiet Sabbath without the kiddos, but I enjoyed my meetings and was excited to pick up the kids and hear about their fun weekend in the evening.

I'm going to be working out my detailed seed planting plan in the next couple of days so the kids can help me plant the rest of the garden next weekend.  The kids have rodeo break this week and will be spending some time with Nana and Papa.  I'm hoping to make it to the temple this week and get some more done on Felicity's dress.

This week I'm loving the fact that Arlo has found that he likes Monsters, Inc and Toy Story in addition to Wreck It Ralph (which is all we seem to watch) which has added five new movies to our repetoir!  I'm also loving that my chickens are laying again, and in full force.  This week I'm hating that the popped-eye cat has resurfaced and it up to his antics again, namely peeing on my front door and yowling loudly outside at 2am.  He stealth-fully avoids my attempts to douse him with water, which just further fans the flames of my rage.

I hope that everyone had a nice Valentine's Day.  I think that its a great day to reflect not only on romantic love, but all the love we experience throughout our lives.  I'm grateful for the seemingly endless love of my children, the understanding love of my family, the supportive love of my friends, the unconditional love of my Savior, and the possibility for a second chance at eternal love.  I hope that this week and always we spend more time trying harder to love one another.

11 February 2014

 By all accounts we had a nice and quiet week here at Casa de Davidson. Everyone was healthy and I made a concerted effort to get plenty of sleep and stay on top of the house work such that when Friday morning rolled around, there wasn’t a lot of stuff to do.

Felicity is learning about money and time in class and is doing really well with that. I now remember the challenge of trying to figure out what coins are being depicted in cartoon form when I’ve been helping her with her homework. She has the added test of the new state quarters. Not only does she have to memorize what the front and back of each coin looks like, but now there are fifty variations to the back of quarters. She’s doing great and I love to see her learn and master new tasks. Helen is learning to construct math sentences. The other day she came home and was telling me what she was doing at school, talking about what she’s learning in math and then said, “Mom, I love math!” Oh, now that made my heart happy! I want the kids to have a passion for learning, I want them to be confident and feel good about the things they are learning and mastering.

I was off on Friday, and so after I got the girls off to school Arlo and started laundry and cleaning. We got done pretty early and went for a run together. He seems to enjoy riding in the jogging stroller, although he is starting to get pretty heavy. He likes to wave to the dogs we pass and loves to see birds and bunnies as we go, and it’s good for me to, I love to run outside. After our run, we went to the Primary school and helped with centers in Kindergarten; I love to be able to do that. We stopped by the grocery store on way home and got our groceries for the week. We had lunch when we got home and I finished folding and putting laundry away as Arlo napped.

Jeff came by around 2PM to move his bug and pick up the kids for the weekend. We got the car loaded up with only a little bit of effort and then loaded everyone up for the drive into Tucson. We got stuck behind a car accident on Nogales Highway, so we had to turn around, but we did make it into Tucson eventually and got the car unloaded at his brother’s house. I had plans to go to the movies since I was already in Tucson, but I ended up having to take the trailer back to Green Valley for Jeff. After a struggle to get the trailer unhitched from the truck I decided to go back into Tucson and go to the movies anyway, so I had popcorn for dinner and saw the second installment of The Hobbit. I enjoyed it, although it was pretty violent, I spent a good portion of the movie watching through my fingers.

Saturday morning I replaced the headlight bulb in the truck and then spent a few hours cleaning up and trimming in the front yard. I love doing that in February because it means spring is on its way. Spring is my favorite time of year! This week I’m going to plan my garden so I can get it in next weekend. So exciting. Because the weather has been warmer, my chickens are up and laying again. I’ve been getting 5-6 eggs per day and I love that!

I went to the fabric store in the afternoon and got a pattern, notions, and fabric to make Felicity’s baptism dress, so that was fun. I made lunches for the week and stocked the lunch/snack drawer. It was a great, productive day.

I picked the kids up at 12 on Sunday and we went to church. I was recently called as our ward single adult representative, so I went to the stake single adult meeting after church and didn’t get home until 6:30. We had breakfast for dinner and then it was pretty much bed time for the kids. It was a great weekend!

So as you can tell, I didn't take any pictures this week=mamma fail.  So enjoy above a photo collage of all the kids when they were Arlo's age.  I’m looking forward to having dinner with my parents on Monday night and putting my garden together this week.

02 February 2014

It was a nice, but busy week.  I worked from home on Monday because I felt like I needed just one more day to really rest and recuperate and then we were back on schedule again.  I had a new adventure this week.  Last week I accepted a new position working with a new software team at work.  I started with them on Wednesday.   I'm looking forward to learning some new things, and while I adore the people I work with, it will be nice to get to know some new people too.  The change puts me in a new building at a new location, so it's a little more of a commute. 

We got a special surprise in the mail this week, a copy of the Frozen sound track.  The girls have wanted to listen to it pretty much non-stop all week.  Lucky for me, I really enjoy the music, so its been fun.  Its neat to see how Felicity's ability to sing has progressed as she's gotten older.  I secretly hope that all of the children will love to sing and will be naturally talented at it since its a talent I don't have and wish that I did.

I've felt some stress over the past couple of weeks as things at work were slightly uncertain.  There's always the lingering stress of running the house and trying to maintain some level of order while making sure we have good meals and a clean home to live in.  Since I've been sick, I haven't been able to exercise which is my way of working through my stress.  So, that being said, I had some set backs with my healthy lifestyle over the past couple of weeks.  I've been eating some things in quantities that I shouldn't have.  Luckily, my body took it in stride and I only gained a couple of pounds.  I feel that I'm ready to pick up my exercise routine starting Monday and things with life should be quieting down a bit, so I'm hoping to get back on track.  I have only 28 pounds to lose before I reach my goal, so I really have a great incentive to work hard.  I think the tricky part will be to not see getting to goal as an end point because I'll always have a problem with food, it's not like you get to some magic number and then you're "fixed".  I will never be fixed and it will be something I always have to work on, but getting this far has shown me that I can and that its worth it.  I'm grateful for that!

Felicity and I reading together

I was so happy to see the weekend come around, even though we didn't have anything really fun planned.  I cleaned house, took care of the laundry, made the kids' lunches for the week, cleaned out the truck, cleaned out the chicken coop, went grocery shopping, and took care of the weeds in the front yard.  I was pretty tired by the time evening came, but we had a nice movie night and watched "Babe" while having movie theater candy.  I tried to sleep in Sunday morning, but the kids had other plans, so I didn't get to.  We enjoyed our Sunday meetings and after church we went to my parents for dinner.  We had a nice time and it was time to go far too soon. 

The year is off to a good start so far and I'm very optimistic and hopeful for what it has in store for us.  I openly admit that sometimes I feel overwhelmed and inadequate as a mother.   Sometimes the homework and the lunches and the housework feel insurmountable and that's the way I feel about it while I'm making dinner, dinner that, lets face it, my kids may or may not even eat.  I always seem to forget what a challenge a two year old is on ones patience and calm and Arlo has been no exception lately.  But when I sit alone in the evening after the kids have gone to sleep I know that I'm lifted and supported.  I know that it will all work out in the end.  I have faith and hope and am over come with feelings of gratitude for all that I have and how incredibly blessed I am.