24 January 2016

It was a nice week at our house.  Monday the kids were out of school for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, so they stayed an extra night at their dad’s.  I was able to be up early and put in a couple extra hours of work.  I picked them up after I got done and we went home and had dinner and family home evening.  I worked at home on Tuesday and the kids stayed home with me.  We had a really nice lazy day.

Wednesday was back to normal and we had Activity Days in the evening.  Helen and Arlo were much better this week about staying where they said they were going to be while I taught my class.  Thursday Helen came home off the bus with nine “Owl All-Star” awards proudly displayed on her shirt.  She said she had a really good day, I guess so!  I took Arlo to get a haircut after school, he was overdue.  He is starting to get pretty good at holding still and letting them cut his hair, I was impressed with how well he did.

I was home on Friday and did my cleaning and running around.  In the evening we had pizza and a movie and relaxed.  It really was a pretty quiet week.  Saturday morning I baked and the kids played and in the afternoon we went to the Elam’s to celebrate Kerry’s birthday (we also celebrated Arlo’s birthday late as he didn’t get to have a “ranch party”).  The kids had a lot of fun roaming the desert, riding quads, and playing at Melynda’s. 

Mindy and I went with Bruce and Troy up to some property further up the road and helped cut down some trees and haul the wood home.  I wish I had worn my boots and long sleeves, because I was pretty chewed up and cactus laden by the time we were finished, it was fun though.  Arlo got a scooter, and a rubber sword which was enthusiastically played with.  Quinn got his sword out and almost all of the kids were in the front yard playing together.  We stayed pretty much the whole day and when it came time to leave the girls wanted to stay with Melynda, so I let them.  They were ecstatic.

I am precariously perched on the bumper of a moving truck piled with mesquite...and Mindy is snapping a picture from the top of the pile where she was precariously perched.  We had fun!

The girls went to church with the Boveington’s in 4^th ward and Arlo and I attended church together.  It will be nice when Arlo can be more calm and reverent in church; we are still working on that.  

 I got to teach the fourth Sunday Relief Society lesson based on Elder Uchtdorf’s talk “A Summer with Great Aunt Rose”.  I would highly recommend reading or listening to it, it’s a great story.  I had listened to and remembered the talk from the general women’s meeting in October, and have heard it or read it a couple times since then.  I re-read it in the morning before church and took some notes in the margins and then decided to teach with the Spirit as a guide for what needed to be addressed.  I feel it went fairly well and hope that everyone else found it to be as edifying as I did.

After church I drove back up to the ranch to get my girls and then we had dinner at Mindy’s.  It was a great weekend and I’m so grateful to have such great friends.

17 January 2016

It was a quiet week with not much to report.  We’ve happily settled into the routine again and the kids are enjoying being back in school.  We had Family Home Evening on Monday and had a lesson surrounding Moroni10:4-5, specifically about being able to pray about any questions or concerns we may have with the assurance that our Father in Heaven hears our prayers and that we can know the truth of all things through the Holy Ghost.  We played a game before reading and bed time.

Arlo had some challenging behavior at school this week and sometimes he leaves me wondering what on earth I’m doing wrong.  I hope that he grows out of this willful stage where he doesn’t want to listen.  I will say, however, that while he tests my patience and those who have to care for him during the day, he’s the first to tell me he loves me and the first to give voluntary hugs.  It’s a good thing, because I think otherwise I might have to ring his little neck!

Thursday I had a girl’s night with friends and Friday the kids went to visit their dad.  I was up early Saturday morning to go grocery shopping and then Mindy and I went into Tucson to go to the estate sale and then we ended up at the mall after lunch and several other places just for the fun of it.  I am grateful I have her to help distract me on the quiet weekends.

Sunday was nice, I slept in and then attended my church meetings.  I had dinner over at the Grubb’s on Sunday night and stayed late visiting.  See, it was very slow and quiet week!  The kids are off for the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday on Monday, so they will be staying an extra night with their dad since I have to work.  I look forward to picking them up on my way home.

10 January 2016

Back to work and school this week...and it was hard!  I will have to admit that I was the one who was difficult to drag out of bed this week.  On Monday morning my alarm went off at 5:00 AM and I do not remember it going off nor do I remember turning it off which is in fact what I must have done.  I woke up again at about 6:30 and in some half asleep daze told myself we were taking one more day of break, and went back to sleep.  Then when I gingerly woke up at 7:30 to a fully dressed Helen brushing her hair in my room the adult in me realized we did actually have to go to work and school.  I had to sheepishly walk both girls into school and sign them in at 8:30, an hour late!

Monday night we had Family Home Evening and on Tuesday had plenty of time to read a lot of the new books that we got for Christmas.  It was cold and raining so it was nice to stay in all snuggled up.  We had activity days on Wednesday and Helen and Arlo gave me quite the scare.  They wanted to play together in the gym so I told them they could while I taught my class.  After class I got Felicity and we commenced looking for Arlo and Helen...who were not in the gym.  We looked for fifteen minutes searching bathrooms and every other room we could think of.  I went out to the pavilion in the back and shouted for Helen out into the desert.  Felicity became nervous and started to cry so I told her to say a prayer.  We went back into the building and walked toward the front and as I was passing by the door to the chapel I heard a noise of playing.  They had found their way into the narrow space between the chapel and the gym that serves as the overflow on busy Sundays.  I was irritated, but glad to have found them safe and happy. 

Thursday evening Nana picked the kids up after school and they went to the movies and to dinner.  When I got home from work I ran a couple of errands and did a couple projects I needed to finish. Friday morning I got to attend the Owl Assembly where Helen was awarded the Kindness Award.  She is such a sweet girl...most of the time!  I put in a few hours at work and then we had pizza and a movie.

Saturday, the kids helped me clean up and put the laundry away and then we watched movies, played Just Dance, crafted with our new crafting kits, and played in the backyard.  It was such a nice and relaxing day.  I caught Arlo cuddled up with one of the girl's new rag dolls Saturday night.  So he is a funny boy, from a very early age (earlier than he could the pediatrician assured me when I brought it up) Arlo has sucked his thumb.  Like a bad mama, I let him because it was self soothing and made him happy and I knew that I was trading a quiet and contented baby for a few months for years of battling a child to stop sucking his thumb...and yet I did it anyway!  He also is constantly putting things under his nose.  I don't know if its the smell or the texture, but he constantly has things under his nose, usually in conjuction with the thumb-sucking.  Sometimes its my skirt at church (or other people's skirts at church!), his blanket, I've caught him with chicken feathers, the teacher's scarf at school, and the latest compulsion is the yarn of the rag dolls hair.  Heaven help me!

 We had a nice Sunday and are enjoying the new one o'clock schedule.  After church on Sunday we went to Nana's for dinner and visiting.

03 January 2016

Welcome 2016!  I don't know what the year has in store for us, but I hope that it will be a good one!

Monday was quiet as  I packed up Christmas.  I took down the decorations and the lights, I carefully re-wrapped all the ornaments and labeled the new ornaments.  The tree went outside and the house finally started to look like normal again.  I am always so excited to put up the decorations and love the holiday season, but am usually ready after Christmas is over to pack it safely away until next year.

Tuesday morning I got up at a leisurely time and then drove to Gilbert to attend the temple.  It was a great time and I was grateful for the opportunity to do so.  I got home in the late afternoon and went for a run and then in evening I went to the movie theater and saw the new Star Wars movie.  It was pretty good.

My mom called me on Wednesday and wanted to go out, so we went and had lunch, did some shopping, had our nails done, and then stopped off at the Verizon store.  Cue Christmas present to myself.  My mom has finally made the jump to a smart phone which made it feasible for me to join their family plan, which in turn made it possible for me to replace my old and cracked phone.  Happy day!  Thursday I putted around the house, took the outside Christmas lights off the house and did some de-cluttering.  I went grocery shopping and prepped food for the week.  In the evening I was invited to Mindy's for New Year's Eve which was a very low key evening. 

I was excited to get the kids home on Friday and hear about their fun adventures.  Saturday was spent watching movies, playing games, and I spent a fair amount of time in the garage trying to install a new garage door opening.  I got pretty far, but will have to wait to finish it when I can get some help next week.  I am grateful for the new year and all that waits for us.  I am usually really big on goal setting and planning, but this year just did not get into.  I have some goals I'm still working toward both personally and financially.  I am also going to try, yet again, to finally get to my goal weight.  I have been struggling again since about late October and have paid a pretty hefty (pun very intended) price.  I didn't wait for the new year to start working toward that goal again, I woke up determined the day after Christmas.  I lost 3.4 pounds in the first week and hope that its a trend heading me in the right direction.  I have been at this seriously for the last three and half years, have lost 91% of the weight I want to lose and then have frustrating gained and lost and gained and lost and not made any more progress.  I'm going to be working hard to lose the negative progress and then finally tackle that last 9%; I can do it!  I hope that everyone else had a wonderful start to new year!

27 December 2015 - Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!  It was the perfect week.  We were all home this week and played games and spent time together and it was just so nice.  I diligently worked on completing the last of my Christmas gifts which this week included the last of the fourteen crocheted hats I made! 

I also made a beautiful temple passport book.  As I've talked about before, I made the goal to attend each of the temples in the United States, I have wanted to be able to keep track of the dates and add my pictures in something other than a spreadsheet.  Well this December I came up with the idea to create a passport that had information about each temple and a place to stamp the date I attended.  I wanted to have a place in the passport for me to put a picture of me in front of the temple also.  I hand formatted each page and when I had the book complete quickly realized that using any of the available book printing options wasn't going to work as my passport at 80+ temple pages and a blank page for my photograph for each temple page!  I then couldn't find a photo album that met the need either!  So I called on my very talented friend Jan and she and I made one.  I was so happy with the way it turned out, even if it wasn't exactly what I had originally envisioned.  I gave it away as a gift, but now I know how to make one for myself.

Wednesday morning Arlo went to school and the girls stayed with Papa so that my mom and I could take my grandma out to lunch and shopping for her birthday.  We had a very nice time.  We had lunch at Chipotle and then went to her favorite thrift store.  After Mom and I took her home we went back to one more thrift store and I ended up getting several (seven maybe) pairs of shoes, a skirt, a coat for Felicity, and five or six blouses.  It was a great time!

We spent Christmas eve with my parents and it was an interesting night.  Just as we were sitting down to our Mexican food feast, the electricity went out!  We ended up eating in the last of the sunlight and then sat in darkness waiting for the lights to come back on so that we could open presents.  It was out for about an hour.  The kids had such a nice time opening gifts and snacking.  We were very appreciative of all the nice things we received.  We went home around 8:30 and tucked right into bed. 

Christmas morning the girls came in to wake me up around seven and then we all had to coax Arlo out of bed (he does not like to get out of bed in the morning!).  We read the Luke account of the Christmas story from the scriptures, and then took our traditional "at the top of the stairs" picture before running downstairs and diving into the stockings and presents.  They were so excited, I love that part of Christmas as an adult, watching their elation.  We got everything opened and they modeled their new hats, we had cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate for breakfast and all too soon, their dad came to pick them up.  They spend the second half of Christmas break with him and leaves me with living room of wrapping paper and toys yet enjoyed. 

I spent my morning cleaning up a bit and making pies.  I was invited to spend Christmas day with the Elam's and I had volunteered to make a couple of pies.  I made from scratch a coconut crème, which was the first time I had done it, and a beautiful apple pie.  They were delicious I might add (obviously not humble pies).  I went over there at about 1.  All the kids seemed to really enjoy their silly crocheted hats and I enjoyed so much spending time with them.  It was a beautiful day.  I went over to Mindy's in the evening and visited and read to the kids and really, short of my own kids being with me, couldn't have asked for a nicer Christmas day.

Saturday was spent cleaning up from Christmas and organizing all the new treasures.  Sunday was quiet and peaceful.  I substituted in Primary again and in the afternoon went to Mindy's and spent time painting and reading with the kids.  It was a wonderful week and I love this time to reflect on the gift that is our Savior Jesus Christ.  I am grateful for a testimony that He lives, that He was born in lowly and humble circumstances and yet will one day return in majesty.  I love my family and so grateful for them and for all the opportunities afforded me.