22 July 2018

We had a fabulous first week back to school. Miraculously, my house has regained its order and cleanliness, which is great for my sanity.  On Monday morning everyone was up, dressed, and in the kitchen for breakfast early.  There wasn’t any fighting and we had plenty of time for first day pictures and to get to the bus stop on time.  It was a first day miracle!

Felicity is starting 7^th grade at Corona Foothills Middle School and was very excited to go back and see her friends and begin a new year.  Helen is entering her last year of elementary school as a 5^th grader at Copper Ridge Elementary School and was excited to go back, but apprehensive just the same; she’s not always as enthusiastic about school as her siblings.  Arlo seems to have grown several inches over our short summer and was elated to start school again.  He is now in 1^st grade at Copper Ridge which brought our family to a new milestone: all three kids are now in school full time and I have finally shaken off the shackles of child care expenses.  It also meant really squaring up to the reality that I completely missed the opportunity to ever be a stay at home mom for Arlo.  He spent his entire life up until now in some form of day care and now he’s a first grader.  Even though realistically I should have given up on the hope of staying home again a long time ago, I still clung to it, even if very loosely in the last couple of years; it was never my intention for him to always be in child care, but life, my life anyway, rarely goes according to plan!  

This year, instead of driving the kids to school and walking them to their classrooms, taking pictures on the playground, etc. I put them on the bus and waved from my car…they made it to school just fine!    I signed up to donate blood with the Red Cross on Monday and did that after work.  While I was there, I got to thinking about going back to donating plasma as a way to earn a little extra savings money (something I did eons ago when I first started working at Raytheon).  While doing a little research, I found that there is a database for stem cell donors/waiting recipients and that I might be a good donor candidate.  I went ahead and registered and sent away for a swab kit.  We had Family Home Evening after school, and we talked about the importance of gaining and maintaining our own testimonies of the Gospel and played Harry Potter Scene It as our activity. 

Felicity asked all summer to get her hair cut and I put it off and put it off, probably secretly (but not so secretly), hoping she would change her mind.  I could deter her no longer and so after school on Tuesday she and I drove into Tucson to see Jessa at Cutting Edge Salon.  I reasoned that if she wanted a haircut, I’d rather pay a little more to have it done at the salon so that I was confident she would get a good cut.  We weren’t disappointed!  I don’t know how many inches she cut, but it was a lot.  Felicity was just tickled with the results.  She is really transitioning away from being a little girl to a lovely young lady. 

Helen had a swim party for Activity Days and I picked her up when we got home from the salon and then I dropped Felicity off at a Young Women's swim party for mutual.  By the time we got everyone home and in bed, I was beat! 

I have continued to collect compost for my pigs and the arrangement I have with some of my friends who are collecting for me is working well. I am, of course, collecting it in my own kitchen as are my parents.  This was the first week I was able to give the pigs nothing but food scraps, they didn’t get an ounce of commercial feed.  I love making our ranch more sustainable, and the pigs love the variety!  Anything they don't eat gets raked up with their waste and put in my compost bins which decomposes down to soil which will go into the garden to grow food for us to eat and whose scraps will go back to the pigs and around it goes.

Back to school has meant that a lot of paperwork has been coming home.  Felicity needed to get her sports packet in by Friday including her physical in order to run cross country, so we made a trip to the north side of Tucson to pick up her sports physical paperwork from the pediatrician’s office on Wednesday afternoon.  While we were in town we stopped and had dinner at IHOP.  The kids really enjoyed it and we worked on our homework while we waited.  

Friday morning I was able to attend the temple.  It was nice to not feel rushed as I didn’t have to get back home to get anyone off the bus early.  I had a very nice experience and felt like I received answers to some questions that I’ve been pondering. 

I got a phone call Friday afternoon from Arlo’s new teacher.  She said he had a great first week back at school and that his behavior chart was green all week except for Thursday when he “clipped up” for doing such a great job at being on task.  He has never “clipped up”! He got off the bus with a little certificate saying he’d been especially good and we celebrated with an ice cream sandwich.  I’m hoping that the positive reinforcement will help him really try to be good at school, and I also think he’s matured a little over the past couple of months.  I’m just glad he’s off to a good start!

The kids went to their dad’s on Friday evening and I went to the movies.  I’ve been trying to do more reading this year and had finished reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline recently.  I had really enjoyed it and read it in just a couple of days.  I was excited to see the film adaptation and was in luck because it was playing at the cheap theater.  It was terrible.  The whole thing was terrible.  You almost always expect a “the book was better” reaction to a movie, but this was a “what book is this even based on?” reaction.  It was by far the worse book to film adaptation I have ever seen.  If it had any redeeming qualities outside of its relation (or lack thereof) to the book, I didn’t see them.  I’m so glad I only wasted $3, although it is 2 hours of my life I will never get back! As a side note, I finished reading Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach this week…I don’t think I’ll have to worry about a bad movie adaptation!

I worked in the yard for a little while on Saturday morning.  Mostly just cleaning animal pens and topping off water and food.  I watered my trees, but didn’t start any new projects.  I did, however, harvest my apples.  The trees started dropping apples a couple of weeks ago as the temperatures started to really climb, I held off harvesting, assuming that they’d be fine once the monsoon rains came and cooled things off.  The rains have come, but the trees are still dropping apples like crazy, and worse yet, the birds have started eating what is left on the trees.  I ended up only harvesting about 10-15 pounds of usable apples.  I learned a lot this year and think that I can increase the yield next summer.  I also learned that thinning the apples was by far the best thing I could have done.  The apples from the tree that had been property thinned produced much larger and higher quality fruit and the tree dropped fewer apples.  I cleaned and cut up my harvest and then cooked the apples down, saving the juice.  I made applesauce and then set 1/3 of it aside to use this week and then turned the remaining 2/3 into apple butter in the crockpot.  The house smelled so good!

I did my grocery shopping and then worked on a sewing/quilting project that I have been meaning to get to.  I cut fabric for two scripture bags and was able to assemble and quilt one of them before bed time.  I think it turned out pretty cute.  Hopefully I’ll have time to finish the other sometime this week.

I received my stem cell swab kit in the mail and completed it on Saturday, it will be interesting to see if it generates any matches.  I did some family history on Sunday morning and got ready for my church meetings.  The sister that I teach primary with called me around noon to let me know she wasn’t feeling well, so I had about 10 minutes to prepare a primary lesson before I left.  My meetings went well, including my impromptu primary lesson.  I came home for a little while after church before heading to Tucson to pick up the kids.  They had a fun weekend and told me all the neat things they got to do.  We made dinner together when we got home and then did scriptures and prayers before bed.  I didn’t make it much longer after that!  I got the house picked up and my own scriptures read before I was nodding off in my rocking chair so I turned in early.  I’m hoping that we have another successful week as we add homework, projects, and cross country to our agenda.

15 July 2018

We had a great last week of summer vacation.  The kids are getting excited to go back to school and I’m excited for them to go back to school too!  On Monday we all went out together to do our school supply shopping.  The lists were long this year and I found that the first grade list was expensive!  We did one stop shopping at Wal-Mart, lists in hand.  When we were done I challenged the kids to a game of "who can guess the price of everything in the buggy".  The person closest to the nearest dollar without going over wins.  Arlo won with a guess of $178, the total was about $20 more.

Yet another benefactor of Two Jack Ranch Composting

We had the oil changed and yet another tire fixed while we shopped.  When we were done with the school shopping we stopped and got Arlo a much needed haircut.  Felicity has been asking for a haircut as well, but seeing as this will be a big change for her, I’m waiting until I can get her an appointment at the salon; I’d hate to have her make such a dramatic decision and not have it turn out cute.

When we were done there we decided to peruse the car dealership in Green Valley to see if there was anything we wanted to test drive…just for fun!  For fun, but also motivated by the fact that I want to get a truck.  Not only for all the activities the kids and I enjoy, and doing chores around the ranch, and moving livestock, and hauling feed, and because I desperately miss driving a truck, but also for the simple frustration that I am replacing or repairing tires on my car every few weeks.  I love my place and am not complaining about the road, only that I want a more suitable vehicle.  I had decided that I wanted my next truck to be a Dodge, I have always had Chevy trucks (and loved them), but I remember when I saw the Paul Harvey-narrated Dodge commercial during the Super Bowl a few years ago saying to myself, I am going to applaud their advertising that spoke to my heart and brought a tear to my eye by buying a Dodge the next time I buy a truck (I know, I'm an advertiser’s dream). Of course I also have many more logical and practical reasons too!  
The dealer showed us a couple of 4x4s they had in the used section and then a Ram 2500 Laramie Longhorn 6.7L Cummings Diesel.  It was 5 years old, but only had 18k miles.  The Ram Longhorn is the top of line, fully loaded, all the bells and whistles (the leather seat coolers were amazing).  At $53,000 we decided to keep looking.  I test drove a brand new Ford, and didn’t like it at all and before we left asked to drive the Ram, just to satiate my curiosity.  It was amazing!  The kids loved it too.  Arlo asked the dealer during the test drive if we could trade.  Of course the dealer wanted to run the numbers when we were done and I laughed.  I humored him enough to let him tell me with 10% down I could finance it for 7 years for $800 per month.  We clearly, although a little lamentably, walked out of the dealership empty handed.  Although, I now have a much more clear idea of what I’m looking for and what I need to save up.  I tend to get what I set my mind to, it just might take me awhile on this one!

We had teacher meet and greets this week at both Copper Ridge and Corona Foothills.  Arlo and Helen’s were on Wednesday and we listened to the teacher presentations and filled out the stacks of paperwork.  We were also happy to unload all of our school supplies.  I think both kids will be happy with their teachers and classrooms.  We stopped and bought Copper Ridge tee shirts on the way out and then stopped at the food trucks and treated ourselves to some root beer floats!  I love the kids' schools and the sense of community here, I am so happy that we were led to buy where we did.

Felicity’s meet and greet was on Thursday and she went to her classrooms and met her teachers and familiarized herself with her schedule.  She is also excited to go back.  She is taking Honor’s Language Arts and is continuing in the Extended Learning Program (ELP) or gifted program this year which should be fun.  Her AZ Merit’s scores weren’t high enough to qualify her for Algebra, so her goal is to work hard in math this year so that she will be able to take High School Algebra in 8^th grade.  I’m proud of what a hard worker she is.

On Friday Helen and I went grocery shopping together and stopped to have lunch when we were done, one on one time was nice.  We all met Nana and Jaidyn at the movie theater later in the afternoon to see the new Hotel Transylvania movie.  I fell asleep, I never really liked those movies, but the kids enjoyed themselves and Arlo always looks forward to seeing his cousin.  In the evening I subbed for a Bunco game which was a lot of fun.  The food was great as was the company, and I had the most Bunco’s so I got my first choice of prizes (lucky me)!

We were outside early on Saturday morning getting our chores done.  The pigpen needed cleaning, the trees needed watering, and all the animals need food and water and fresh bedding.  I lost quite a few apples to the heat this last week, so we picked those up off the ground and the chickens and pigs were happy to oblige.  Next year I will definitely thin, as the tree that was thinned is producing far better fruit, and I will look into bird protection.  We will see what kind of rain/heat reprieve we get in the coming week and hope that they don’t drop anymore, if they do, I will probably harvest next weekend.  Helen had a play date in the morning with her friend Morgan and Felicity had a birthday party to attend, so Arlo and I had the afternoon to ourselves.

We have been staying up way too late in the evenings and I did not manage to change that much this week like I had hoped.  We slept in on Sunday morning and I prepared my Primary lesson and we had a pretty peaceful morning.  We enjoyed our church meetings and then after church went to Nana and Papa’s to have dinner and visit.  We didn’t stay as long since we needed to get to bed early for school.  When we got home everyone bathed, brushed and flossed, laid out their clothes and made their lunches.  We had a proper family scripture study and then everyone headed off to bed.  5:30 comes really early!

08 July 2018

Summer vacation is winding down at Two Jack Ranch with our first day of school approaching in a couple of weeks. As usual, I’ve enjoyed the freedom of summer break, but am starting to long for a reprieve from the chaos and a return to the comfort of schedule.  On Monday I worked from home and in the evening the kids and I played a game for Family Home Evening and talked about money and budgeting as our lesson.

I had my interim performance discussion with my manager at work this week and it went very well.  I am so grateful for the mentoring I’ve been receiving under my new boss and all the great career development opportunities she’s suggested and provided.  I will be attending a week long training in Texas later this year and a certification program in the next couple of months.  She is also working with HR to reclassify my job structure which, when completed, will provide a sizable increase in pay.  One of the suggestions she made was to consider pursuing a master’s degree.  Again, this would likely increase my earning potential significantly.  I have spent the week thinking about it and am researching my options for online masters programs in systems engineering.  Raytheon has a tuition reimbursement option as part of our corporate benefits, so depending on how many classes I took a year, it could be completely funded by Raytheon.  I need to pray about it, but I am strongly leaning to that end; even if I started with just a couple of classes.  As I’ve said before, I have to stop looking at my job as that, just a job--a temporary gig until life changes…heck, at this point, I’m already 8 ½ years into a career!  Last year I started seriously contributing to my 401K and planning for retirement, might as well treat my career path with more significance.

On Tuesday evening I joined some friends from church at the movies where we went to see Ocean’s 8 which was a fun movie.  I’m so grateful for opportunities to go out and enjoy interactions with other adults!  I'm also grateful I'm making more friends and connections in our new stake.

I had the holiday off and the kids and I spent the morning of the fourth cleaning and doing chores around the house.  We went out to lunch in the afternoon.  I had several invites for Independence Day activities (and am so grateful to everyone who invited us), but just did not feel like leaving the house.  We watched the Tucson and Sahuarita fireworks from our back porch and then really enjoyed our neighbor’s fireworks from our side porch!  We stayed up late and appreciated spending time together.

Since I had Wednesday off and this week was my “off Friday” I took time off on Thursday as well and turned it into a 5-day weekend.  In the morning I went to the church and played volleyball with some friends.  It was fun.  Even though it didn’t seem like much exercise, my booty was sore for a couple of days after!  In the afternoon I took the kids into Tucson and we went to Skate Country for some air conditioned exercise.  The kids skated for nearly three hours after which we went and had dinner in Tucson. 

When we were done with dinner I asked the kids if there was anything else they wanted to do in town before we headed home.  The girls wanted to go to Savers and look at clothes and shoes.  Ok!  So we went thrift store shopping and had fun finding things and trying on clothes.  The girls and I found a few pairs of shoes and the girls got some new outfits as well. 

The temple is closed for cleaning for the next few weeks, so I didn’t get to make my normal Friday trip.  Helen and I went out on Friday morning instead to do her back-to-school shopping.  She wanted to go to Walmart and we got pretty much everything she needed there.  When we were done we had lunch together and then did our grocery shopping and headed home.  In the evening Arlo and Helen went to visit their dad for the weekend and Felicity went to a friend’s house to hang out with some of the other girls in her young women’s class.  I picked her up at about 9 and then she and I watched a movie together before bed. 

Arlo decided he needed his Luigi hat in order to properly play Mario

I took Felicity to her dad’s on Saturday morning and then I headed home to get some chores done.  I deep watered all of the trees that are really struggling in the summer heat, come on monsoons!  My apples are coming along beautifully, although the birds have finally found them and I am starting to lose some to them.  I did a few other chores, but it was really too hot and humid to spend more than a couple of hours outside.  I did however get to see a couple of desert critters while I was out working, one being a good-sized tarantula.  Even better though, was when I came around the side of the house and saw what I thought was a toy scorpion.  I then realized that we don’t have a toy scorpion and that it was the real thing.  I had never seen one so big in the wild (also known as the porch off my bedroom).  It was, in actuality, dead.  I think Henry probably got a hold of it as he is my mighty hunter.  I had to take a picture though, look at the guy!

I worked on some projects in my craft room when I was done outside.  I am making some things to decorate the girls’ room with when I finally get it painted.  I’ve been planning to paint for over a year now, I already have the paint and supplies, I just haven’t gotten to it!  I have some shelves to hang, so I’ve been making some things to put on the shelves.  This little wooden “Be Brave” signed turned out cute, as did a sign I made for the kitchen.  Every time I see it, I can hear it in my grandma’s voice and it makes me happy!

Sunday morning I prepared a Relief Society lesson I had been asked to give.  They needed someone to fill in for the regular teacher; I was happy to help.  The lesson was based on Sister Reyna Aburto’s talk With One Accord.  My church meetings went well, and I think my lesson was alright.  After church I headed into Tucson to pick up the kids.  I was early and they weren’t back from their Sunday adventures just yet, so I enjoyed catching up with Chris and Emily for a few minutes while I waited for the kids to arrive.  We went to Nana and Papa’s and had dinner and visited before heading home.  I really need to start getting the kids back on a normal sleeping schedule in the coming week as they’ve been staying up way too late and sleeping in.  Those 5:30 mornings will be a rude awakening when school starts again!

01 July 2018

You really know its summer vacation when you get that June electric bill!  Whoa!  We had a really nice week and accomplished a lot.  Felicity has been diligently working on one of her ten hour Personal Progress projects teaching Arlo to read.  On Monday he got a post card from his new first grade teacher and he read it out loud to himself.  I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was pretty shocked at how effortlessly he read.   In the afternoon I went into Tucson to pick up a new piglet.  I found a person on Craigslist that had the same heritage breed of pig that I have and I wanted to get a boar from a different genetic line to keep.  My goal is to keep the gilt and this new boar for breeding and then harvest the other boar in the fall.  The lady had a nice little set up on a ½ acre directly under A Mountain.  We chatted for a while as we were both University of Arizona alumnus with similar educational backgrounds and both hobby farmers while maintaining a completely non-related career.  She had a neat aquaponics set up that I was interested in as I would like to put tilapia on the ranch eventually.  It’s great to make contacts with like-minded people.

I have been trying to do some physical activity with the kids each evening.  On Monday night the girls and I went for a run out by the state trust land to the south of our property.  I was so proud of them, we did about a mile and a half.  Felicity is looking forward to running cross country again this year and is excited to start training early.  We also did Just Dance a couple of nights this week.

I am trying a new project to collect compost and extra food scraps for my animals.  I got some food grade buckets and added our ranch logo, then I dropped them off with four families in our ward for them to fill with food waste; my plan is to pick them up once a week.  My hopes are that I can dump some of the scraps into the pig pen and chicken coop and then the rest into the compost pile.  The animal waste will eventually make it into the compost pile as well and the resulting compost I will be able to use in my garden next spring.  I’m always grateful for people who volunteer to help me with my grand schemes!  Tuesday evening the Massey’s came over to meet us as they have been assigned to minister to our family.  It was nice to get to know them better and to visit.

Since our summer is a little shorter we are getting ready to go back to school in a couple of weeks and that means back to school shopping.  The kids and I went through all of their clothes and school equipment and made a list of what we actually need.  I decided that this year I would take the kids back to school shopping individually instead of trying to get it all done together.  Felicity and I went out on Thursday after work and were able to get her everything she needed and really enjoyed our time together.  We even got to have dinner when we were done.

Arlo and I did his back to school shopping on Friday afternoon.  He needed the most new things as he has grown so much!  New sneakers, and jeans were on the top of the list.  My six year old is a size 8 in pants in order to get them long enough!  We had dinner when we were done and also stopped at Home Depot to pick up some hog wire for projects on Saturday. 

Saturday morning our family was assigned to help with cleaning the church building.  I got the deep watering at the house done early before it got too hot and then the whole family was at the church at 8:30 to clean.  We were done in about an hour and then had a lot of chores to get done at home.  We cleaned out the pen next to the pigs with the intention of eventually moving Hamilton, the boar we plan to harvest, when he gets a little bigger.  There was an industrial wooden spool in the pen that we rolled out, uncovering several hiding geckos, a tarantula nest, and some scorpions.  The kids were pretty interested in all the fun stuff living under the spool and learned the importance of being careful when you move stuff in the desert.  We also replaced the tarp over the chicken coop in preparation for monsoon season; I really need to extend the permanent roof, I hate using tarps as they don’t last long enough.  We did our grocery shopping and then cleaned the house when we were done outside.

We enjoyed our church meetings on Sunday.  Helen took the opportunity to bear her testimony during Sacrament meeting, I love it when my kids share their developing testimonies of the Gospel.  I taught Sunday school and I have been increasingly impressed with my class’s eagerness to learn.  They are asking great questions, coming up with insightful comments, and I don’t have to nag them to bring their scriptures to class.  I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve in the Primary.  I’m also grateful that I get to participate in Relief Society since I am also called to be the music leader.  Our Relief Society discussion was about strengthening our testimonies.  When we were done with church we went to my parent’s house and enjoyed dinner and visiting until it was bedtime.  The kids got to play in the blow up pool with their cousin and have ice cream cones.  Fun was had by all.