26 June 2022

 Another quiet week, can it be?  Helen and Arlo spent a second week with their dad and Felicity spent much of her week working on her Physics summer school class.  With fewer kids in the house Jude has enjoyed more one on one time.  We continued to work on practicing with our fork and spoon at meal time, he made a real mess feeding himself yogurt.  

We got all the paperwork turned in for our dairy goats and got around to disbudding Cottonwood this week.  It went pretty smoothly, she was a little easier to disbud since her little horn buds were smaller.  Both kids are doing great and I'm getting ready to reduce their milk to twice a day and increase their access to alfalfa.  I'm not entirely sure what we're going to do with them in the next couple of weeks.  I was assuming that once they were weaned they could go back in with the adult females, but I'm finding that common advice is to keep them apart from the herd for a year, otherwise they'll try to go back to nursing from the mamas.  Something that you don't find out until you really start breeding on your farm is you need like three enclosures for every type of animals.  The males, the females, and the babies.  We love our ranch though!

Phil decided that he wanted to try (again) to cut Jude's hair.  It was a little more successful this time.  I was surprised at how well he sat for his dad.  He did a pretty good job too...if you don't look too closely!

On Wednesday Phil's friend came out to pick up Hobo, our mustang.  I was a little sad to see him go, but it will really help free up our budget now that everything is so much more expensive.  I really felt sorry for our other horse Trotter who didn't understand what was going on and did some crying most of the day and into the evening wondering where his buddy went.  We have a new home lined up for Trotter too, but it will be another week or two.  Its frustrating, we have a long list of projects that we want to get done but after our expensive tax bill this spring, me dropping my work hours to part time, and inflation we are kind of at a standstill on new projects and other then elk hunting in the fall and girls' camp this summer we don't have plans for a vacation this year.  Phil worked a couple of extra shifts this month so that we can get a little ahead since next month we'll have back to school expenses.  I can hardly believe how expensive it will be for both girls to participate in marching band and choir.  Marching band alone will be $395 per kid.  Personally, I think that's sad.  I'm sure there are some families that will be "priced out" of having their kids participate in the arts.  I think I would prefer that they do less competitions and make it more affordable for families to participate.  Choir will be another couple hundred dollars per  girl on top of that.  Anyway, that's my whine for the week...I wonder what a kidney is going for on the black market these days?

Phil was back to work at the fire station on Thursday and Jude and I hung out for the morning.  Jude entertains himself by making messes and terrorizing the cat, otherwise he's under my feet while I'm working.  Sometimes insisting he sit on my lap while I try to type, other times pulling chords out of the computer router and throwing things into the duct work through the vent on the floor under my desk.  Life with a toddler is fun.  In the afternoon I took my neighbor to a doctor's appointment on the north side of town.

I worked a little on Friday since I had to take time off on Thursday to take the neighbor to her appointment.  I had my follow up dentist appointment at noon and the new dentist replaced the filling that had fallen out a few weeks ago and repaired another.  It didn't take very long and was virtually pain-free so I was very happy with that.  In the evening Phil and I decided to take advantage of a free evening and dropped Jude off with my mom and we went to dinner and a movie.  We saw Elvis and it was excellent.  I have never really been an Elvis fan per se, but the movie was so good!  Go see it.  Felicity also had a date.  She was asked to go out to the movies on a double date and had a good time.

It was just Jude and I again on Saturday as Phil was working at the fire station and Felicity went to work with my mom at an estate sale.  I tried to clean and get laundry done, but its kind of futile with Jude.  He wasn't feeling well the latter part of the day and was pretty cranky, he had a fever so I guess he and I are going to ride the weekend out together.  Phil got off Sunday morning and picked up Felicity and went straight to church for choir practice.  Jude and I stayed home.  Even though he didn't have a fever when he got up, I thought out of caution we wouldn't go spread germs in the nursery.  I found time to finish this week's quilt block.  It was a cute goat and bunny.  I love it!  

After church Phil took the sacrament to one of his ministering sisters and then had a missionary coordination meeting and then went to choir practice before picking up Helen and Arlo in Tucson.  We sure are grateful to have them home!  Only a couple more weeks till we go back to school.

19 June 2022

It was hot this week!  But its Arizona and we expect it.  Our chickens have slowed their laying considerably, but everyone else is doing well.  We're getting about a gallon of milk a day from our two dairy goats who are in milk and the babies are great too.  We'll be disbudding Cottonwood early next week.  It was quiet with the two middle kids still visiting their dad this week.  The plus side of that was that my house stayed more clean this week.  I was able to work on my newest quilt.  My goal is to complete a block a week and I was not quite done with last week's block so I finished that up first.  I was also able to add cute buttons to my previous blocks and finish this week's block, a cute little sheep.  I'm so happy with how they are turning out!

Phil was at the fire station on Tuesday and I worked and Felicity did summer school and Jude did what Jude does best...make messes and eat.  We made the decision to sell our horses this week.  Along with the significant increase in food and gas prices that everyone is experiencing, animal feed and specifically hay has increased sharply as well.  We just don't ride them enough to justify keeping them.  We may get horses again in the future when (if) prices return to normal.

Our week was quiet with very few activities.  It was actually really nice.  Phil worked on Thursday and Helen reached out to my mom and decided to spend some time with her.  Mom and Helen went shopping and to dinner.  She spent the night with her on Thursday and then on Friday Felicity joined them and they did some thrift shopping, went to the movies, and had lunch with Grandma Lo.  

Phil ordered a tool box, tool cabinet, and workbench from Home Depot for his birthday and Father's day and on Friday they were available for pick up so we went to lunch and had Red Robin and then picked up his stuff.  He spent much of the weekend putting his things together and organizing our tools in the shop.  Things are really coming along nicely out there and we were actually able to pull the vehicles into the shop again!

Both girls stayed the night at Nana's house on Friday night and then they worked at the estate sale with my Mom on Saturday.  It was a long hot day, but they were appreciative to have a job and to earn a little money.  Helen went back to her dad's on Saturday evening.

We enjoyed our church meetings on Sunday morning.  Jude got to go to nursery (he went last week, but I wasn't there to enjoy it).  He had a good time and we got to actually pay attention during Sunday School!  In the afternoon we went to my parent's house and enjoyed spending time with them for Father's day.  I'm grateful for the opportunity to celebrate Father's Day.  Phil is such a good dad.  He waited a long time to become a father and then jumped in with two teenage daughters and an Arlo.  No easy task!  He is patient and kind and actively parents with love and consistency.  He is a wonderful example of service and is a worthy priesthood holder, great provider and protector and we love him.  

12 June 2022

Happy second week of summer vacation!  We continued with our to-do list for the kiddos to keep them semi-productive this week.  It's still working.  On Monday after delivering eggs I got to have lunch with my friends and in the evening we discovered that our second baby goat had been born.  Another doe!  She is adorable.  We'll let her stay with mamma for a few days and then we'll move her to the separate pen with the other baby to bottle feed.  The other little baby is doing great as well, in fact we're almost ready to start weaning her.  I'm waiting on the ADGA paperwork so we can register them, but baby #1 who's mother's name is Mystic is going to be named Leota (as in Madam Leota from the Haunted Manion ride at Disneyland...ok, its weird, but I wanted to find something that worked with "Mystic"). Baby #2's mama is Cypress and her Grandma is Willow, so we're naming her Cottonwood; kinda perfect for that shock of white cotton-like fur on her forehead.  Goat milking is going really well too, by the end of this week we were getting a gallon a day.  

Phil was home sick on Tuesday and Jude and I ended up getting sick too later in the week.  Ugh, its the worst!  The girls went to the foodbank in the evening to volunteer for their church activity.  Phil was feeling better and able to go back to work on Thursday while Jude and I pretty much chilled and napped all day since we were not feeling better.   Jude is way more cuddly when he's not feeling good.

Thursday was Phil's 44th birthday.  I would have taken a cake to the fire station, but he and his crew are participating in a weight-loss challenge so I don't think they would have appreciated it.  Phil is such a blessing in our lives.  He's a great dad, wonderful husband, and all around good person.  I am grateful daily that he picked us.  Phil worked an overtime shift on Friday so we didn't see him until Saturday morning.  We made sure to celebrate his birthday with cake on Saturday morning when he got home.

We took Arlo to be fitted for his football uniform on Saturday morning and then we dropped him and Helen off at their dad's place for a two week visit.  We'll miss them.  We had three more turkey chicks hatch this weekend so we now have enough to raise a few to butchering weight and enough to sell as pullets.

Phil and the kids went to church Sunday morning and I went to church in Tucson for stake visits.  Our presidency wants to have a better connection with the sisters in our stake so we are visiting in different wards each month.  I got to enjoy Relief Society in the Valencia ward and then got to attend the Spanish-speaking ward for Sacrament meeting and Relief Society.  It was a great time, but I was happy to be back home in the evening.  

Luckily everyone is feeling better and we have a nice quiet week ahead of us.  I have a lot of plans for staying indoors and trying to stay cool.  Felicity has invented a new way to stay cool in the summer...we call it the AC Burrito...no matter how old she gets she's still a weirdo!  I did find a few hours to work on my new quilt, I didn't quite finish this week's block, but I'm close.  Isn't my horse cute?

05 June 2022

 Hello summer!  We had a great first week of summer. This year I told the kids they were each going to get a list of things they had to do in the morning before they could have screen time/ disappear into their room (this one is popular with the teenage girls).  There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth at first.  I also instituted a wake up/bed time.  It actually worked out really well.  They had a pick up chore, a clean chore, an animal chore, 30 minutes of reading, 20 minutes of instrument practice, and Arlo had spelling/writing since his ELA grade was so lousy in the last quarter.  Mid week Helen admitted that she liked the list so that she didn't feel "like a slug who did nothing all day" when the day was done.  Bed time was 10PM and they had to get up by 7AM.  I think its much better than letting them be feral which is usually what happens.  Its just too hard to rein that in at the end of the summer.

Last weekend Felicity and I went to see the new Dr. Strange movie.  Which I still haven't decided how I really feel about yet.  On Monday Phil took the girls to see it again since Helen didn't get to see it.  Arlo and Jude and I enjoyed our evening at home without the sisters.

Phil worked his last shift of his tour on Tuesday and I worked, the kids did their lists, and Jude did what Jude does best, made messes.  I had bought the kids some donuts as a treat and evidently Arlo left the box too close to the edge of the table and Jude grabbed it.  By the time we caught him he had licked all the chocolate frosting off the donut and was an absolute mess.  There wasn't anything I could really do at that point, so I picked him up and let him finish it in the bath tub and then he got a bath.  He's a joy.

I started a new quilt this week and I'm going to try to finish a block a week so it doesn't become all consuming...like so many of my projects do.  This one is an applique quilt so it will be quite different than the last one.  

Our stake put on a Primary Day Camp on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and Arlo really enjoyed attending that every day.  I'm sure it was quite the undertaking and completely planned and run by volunteers.   Phil worked 24 hours of overtime on Wednesday so we were without him from Tuesday morning until Thursday morning.  I miss him when he's gone!  Jude missed him too, by Thursday morning he was wondering through the house looking for him.

I did something I've been dreading for a long time this week.  I finally picked a new dentist and went for an appointment.  In September of 2019 I had the following experience:

" At my cleaning last week she found a little dark spot she wanted to fill before it became a bigger cavity.  I showed up 10 minutes early for my appointment and waited and waited.  They finally called me back over thirty minutes past my appointment time and then were very obviously rushing around. The hygienist did the initial shot of Novocain and it was really uncomfortable!  In response to my tense face she replied “if you don’t like it, don’t get cavities”.  Um, ok, that was a little rude.  So in comes the dentist a few moments later and at first she has the receptionist helping her, no joke, the lady that was moments earlier answering phones.  Now maybe she’s also a hygienist also, I don’t know.  The dentist tells her to step in until the other guy can show up.  If she’s a hygienist, she doesn’t know what she’s doing, and the two of them together can’t figure out how to get the water and the drill going at the same time.  In comes seasoned assistant guy, relieves the receptionist back to the phones, and shows the dentist how to operate the drill.  I’m pretty much anxious at this point and going to the dentist doesn’t usually make me anxious.  She starts drilling and it hurts, so I let her know it hurts.  She’s in a big hurry (presumably because they’re 30+ minutes behind), so she’s not pleased with the delay.  Maybe she didn’t wait long enough for it to get numb, so her response is to give me a more, I get a couple more shots (in a totally different place, actually near the tooth she’s working on, as opposed to the back corner where the hygienist was poking me).  She starts to drill again and again it hurts, so I try to politely stop her at which point she tries to convince me it’s just sensitivity to the cold water in another tooth, drilling commences; nope, what you are doing hurts.  Annoyed, her problem solving is limited and she proceeds to re-stick me with Novocain no less than six times all along my right jaw and then starts to drill again, finishing in only a few more seconds.  Thank heavens! She’s put in the amalgam and is using the file/drill to smooth it over when she breaks off the drill in my mouth.  Seriously, breaks the drill in pieces which then go flying around in my mouth (I’m pretty sure that’s the source of a later-found cut on my tongue and inside my cheek).  So now they’re desperately fishing around for all the metal pieces (hoping I won’t notice?).  Filling finished.  No apology, nothing.  My face from my ear lobe to my chin on the inside and outside is completely numb for the next 5 hours.  Saturday morning my jaw aches and my gums are bruised, like literally blue and tender."

I am a little ashamed that I haven't been back to the dentist since.  I have seriously developed anxiety about going to the dentist.  Two weeks ago I was chewing gum and I found all of a sudden that it was crunchy, that I had lost a filling in my upper left molar.  So that really forced my hand.  I went to Aeries Dental in Rita Ranch after a few recommendations and had x-rays, a cleaning, and an exam.  They were very nice and it went really well.  They're going to refill my tooth next week.  

On Friday I met two of my girlfriends for lunch at 12:30 in Tucson and I had a great time catching up and talking.  When I was done I went to my hair appointment where she touched up my color and cut my hair.  I let her do a bit more than a trim so my hair is a little below my shoulders in long layers, I'm really happy with it.  I like that I'm getting more and more comfortable with branching out with hair.  In the evening we were taking the ice cream machine to the Rita Ranch building for a wedding reception.  We were renting it to them, but they wanted someone to stay with the machine.  We thought it would be the perfect job for Felicity.  I swear, I don't think I want to rent it out anymore, it can be stressful!  They had the gym decorated with lights and fabric, it was lovely, then we plugged in the machine and all the lights went out.  We had plugged it in on the same circuit as the dozens of Christmas lights.  The GFI that popped wouldn't reset.  I went to Walmart to grab an extension cord and they were able to run the Christmas lights from the classroom and we plugged the machine in the hall.  Disaster was averted, but it made for an anxious hour.  We left Felicity with the machine and instructions and Phil and I went to dinner up the street.  The rest of the evening went smoothly.

Saturday morning was filled with chores and have-tos.  I went into Tucson to meet Leona for our Weight Watchers meeting.  She's doing great and I'm proud of her, I gained another 5 pounds...I just haven't gotten my head and heart on the same page with getting back on track.  Our baby goat is doing wonderfully.  She chases the chickens in her pen jumping and skipping, she cries for us when we come out, and she wags her tail.  She is a doll.  However, today was the day for disbudding.  The baby goat's little horn buds are starting to grow and in order to show her she'll have to be hornless.  It's also safer for her (so she doesn't get them stuck in a fence or gate and die) and safer for the other goats, animals, and people that don't want to be gored.  The process includes shaving the hair around her little horn buds and using a disbudding iron to burn around the base of the horn to kill the cells so they cease to grow.  She did really great and we had it over and done with pretty quickly.  I had a bottle all ready for her when we were done so she was pretty quick to forgive us.

Later Saturday evening we met our friends Amy and Jacob for a double date.  We went to see Top Gun: Maverick and I will be honest, I didn't expect much.  I was too young to find the first Top Gun movie amazing and I'm not a Tom Cruise fan, but I must say I was pleasantly surprised.  It was really good, I was thoroughly entertained the whole time.  Phil had already seen it with his brother and nephews earlier in the week and he was happy to see it again.  After the movie we went to dinner and really enjoyed visiting.  It was such a good time! 

The kids and I went to church on Sunday and we enjoyed our meetings.  The Primary President stopped me in the hall where I was walking with Jude since he was not enjoying being in adult Sunday School anymore and she let me know that I could start taking Jude to nursery whenever I was ready to help him acclimate.  Usually the kiddos start getting to go to a nursery class at 18 months for the second hour of church.  I'm pretty excited to take him to nursery next week, I'm sure he's going to love it.  And I know I'm going to love it.  We enjoyed the rest of our Sunday spending time together.  Our week went really well and I'm hopeful next will be just as good.