19 February 2023

What a really weird week!  Phil got home from work on Monday morning and he went one way and I went the other.  He took Jude to music class and I guess they didn't last long before Jude was too disruptive to stay.  Ugh, that kid!  I met Leona in Tucson and we walked about three miles around Reid Park.  My first week of eating well went well and the exercise is getting easier.

The girls had plans on Monday night so even though Phil wanted to go out for dinner for Valentine's day (since he was working on the 14th) we really couldn't because there wasn't anyone to watch Jude.  In case you're wondering, Arlo's not a very suitable babysitter.  We decided to go get dinner and bring it back home, but when we arrived Phil thought maybe Jude would be OK in the restaurant.  He was not.  Climbing on things, under things, shouting, banging the art on the walls...it was enough to give anyone indigestion and I refuse to let him be unruly in public while people are trying to enjoy a meal.  About halfway through I noticed that he took his diaper off under his coveralls...I don't know how he managed to do that, but a small part of his diaper was hanging out of the bottom of his pant leg.  Seconds later he starts grunting and I'm done, get him out of this restaurant.  We went home.  We ate our slightly cold (expensive) dinner at home after putting the little tyrant to bed.  I love him.  I promise. 

Phil was back to work on Tuesday and it wasn't until mid morning that I realized that I totally spaced sending valentines for Arlo to hand out to his classmates; I could have run them over to the school except I had never bought/made them in the fist place.  The wind was horrendous all day, I'm glad the roof stayed on the house.  In the afternoon things in our area of town came to a bit of a halt as there was an acid spill on I-10 from a roll-over wreck.  All of the girls' afterschool activities and rehearsals were cancelled and it took them A LONG time to get home as all the freeway traffic was being rerouted to Sahuarita road while they tried to clean up the spill.  I was stupid enough to decide to take the kids to MOD pizza in Sahuarita in the evening to avoid cooking dinner.  Jude was terrible and traffic was insane trying to get home, a drive home that should have taken 20 minutes was almost an hour.  

I woke up on Wednesday to snow.  It was so weird, I wasn't expecting snow at all, heck it was seventy five degrees last week.  We got about 1/2" that stuck so the ranch was covered in a thin blanket of white.  Phil worked overtime so he wasn't home in the morning and it was me holding down the ranch.  The school district told us that they were moving school back two hours since they were anticipating traffic problems because of the acid spill, so at 8:45AM I put Arlo on the bus.  There was then another accident on the freeway that basically shut it down from Craycroft to Houghton.  Then the school said that they were cancelling school all together since incident command at the spill site said events had changed (aka they moved the truck and more acid spilled) .  OK.  Arlo called me from someone's cell phone on the bus to say they were dropping him back off at the bus stop and I confirmed that with the school, but then they sent a text that the buses were returning to the school and we needed to pick them up from there.  I sent Felicity to get him from the school and while she was gone I got another message saying if they were already at school they could stay.  What I mess.  I told Felicity just to grab him and come home.  Our school district is great, they were doing the best the could with so much changing information from public safety, but it was a challenging morning.  We enjoyed having a day home together and Arlo was really glad he got to play in the snow.  So it was a snow day/ toxic acid cloud day.  Weird, right? 

Phil was back at work on Thursday and we missed him.  I started a new project at work, I'm the Scrum Master for one of our new hire/awaiting assignment development teams.  It's been a long time since I did project management.  It's taking a lot of time while I work to get a disorganized mess cleaned up a bit for the team, it also includes a 7AM daily standup...I don't like mornings.  My twenty hour weeks are going to look more like 30 hours. 

Jude loves his toothbrush, and anyone elses that he can get his hands on.  I put him down for his nap on Thursday afternoon and shortly thereafter heard a really weird buzzing noise from the baby monitor.  I went in to check on him and he had fallen asleep with his electric toothbrush.  The kids had a half day on Friday and I spent time running errands which included grocery shopping for us and the neighbors.  Arlo is getting really good at helping me grocery shop!  Phil worked overtime again on Friday, but he was home in the evening and we enjoyed having dinner as a family and we played a game before bed.

Helen worked with my mom on Saturday and Felicity stayed home to do homework and to study, she needs to get her chemistry grade back up.  Phil and Jude and I went to visit my grandma.  Her health has declined significantly in the past few weeks and we wanted to spend some time with her.  It was really hard, I'm not even sure she recognized us.  She was napping in the living room when we got there and I woke her up, but she didn't have her hearing aids in and so I know she couldn't hear us, but she also didn't seem to know who we were.  We only stayed for half an hour or so and then left to go have lunch.  Ugh, its hard!

I was able to attend church with my family on Sunday which was nice, although I missed pretty much all of sacrament meeting.  Before the meeting even started Jude threw himself prostrate in the middle aisle and screamed.  Nobody was even touching him or making him sit in the pew, he just got it in his head that he was unhappy.  I took him out of the chapel and he pretty much did the same thing in the hallway.  He really tries me.  I took him in an empty class room and he cried for the better part of thirty minutes while I read on my phone.  Without any warning he stopped crying, stood up, and climbed into my lap.  We were able to catch the last five minutes of the meeting once he was ready to go back in the chapel.  He did enjoy nursery second hour, so that was good.  I had a ward conference to attend after we were done.  I enjoyed a quiet evening after I got home.  Here's to hoping next week is less weird!

12 February 2023

What a week!  Phil continues to try and work as much overtime as is available which means he wasn't home as much as he normally would be; we held down the ranch though.  On Monday night I went to have dinner with some of my girlfriends, we had a great time catching up and didn't leave until the restaurant closed.  I also decided to get back on track this week, specifically getting exercise and eating better.  Its amazing how quickly I can get off track and since having Jude my weight has been higher than its ever been; I'm looking forward to feeling better in my own skin as I take better care of myself.  I did 30 minutes of yoga and it was so stinkin' hard (yoga has never been hard for me) and in the afternoon I went for a walk.  One day at a time.

Phil was at work on Tuesday and in the morning I had the carpet cleaners come out and clean the carpet in the family room and dining room.  Every time I have them cleaned I say to myself that I'm not going to have them cleaned again because the kids just mess it up again, but I can't help myself, I hate to have dirty carpet.  Jude and I hung out in the kitchen while the guy worked and watched The Little Mermaid, one of Jude's new favorites while enjoying a green protein shake.  I was also able to finish a little side quilt that I started last week.  I was feeling overwhelmed by all the hand stitching that needed to happen on my bedroom quilt, so I took a break and finished a baby quilt.  I kinda love it, now I just have to drop it off to be quilted.

I walked up and down Harrison on Wednesday morning with my friend Leona.  I was pretty tired by the time we were done, but it was a good tired.  Phil was working an overtime shift so we were without him.  On Thursday I started a new project.  I set a goal to pick a room every month and do a  purge and reorganize it; first up, the most annoying room in the house, the pantry.  After work I spent several hours pulling everything out of the pantry into the kitchen and categorizing it.  Phil and I took a trip to Home Depot where we bought an additional shelf to put at the top of the pantry for some less used items.  We spent the better part of the evening installing the new shelving along with a new spice rack and some addition storage I've been collecting for several months now.  

Phil worked overtime on Friday so it was just Jude and I during the day.  I continued to work on the pantry, this time putting everything back and labeling my new containers.  I'm going to only keep three of each of my canned items in the pantry at a time and I took the extra stuff out to the shop with the rest of our food storage.  The pantry looks AMAZING, I wish I had a before picture, but if you've seen my pantry before, you know.  I'm so happy with the result.  My kitchen, however, is now a disaster.  Part of the project was to remove all the cleaning supplies as I don't want to store them in the pantry any more.  So my kitchen has a bunch of random cleaning supplies as well as a fine layer of powdered sugar which got everywhere while I was transferring my baking supplies to new contains.  I also have a variety of mismatched containers that need to be cleaned and taken to Goodwill...the pantry is perfect, but my kitchen is a chaotic mess.

Felicity left for Flagstaff with her choir on Friday for a Jazz festival.  She was gone until late Saturday night, but they received a Superior rating; she was super proud.  On Saturday Helen worked with my mom at an estate sale and then went to a birthday party in the evening.  I think she had a good time, although I didn't much care for driving 35 minutes to pick her up at 10PM.  Parenting teenagers, ugh!

Phil worked his normal shift on Sunday and I had two ward conferences to attend.  I taught the Relief Society lesson in one and I think it went fairly well.  In the evening we went over to my parent's house to bring a cake for my dad's birthday and to watch Super Bowl...OK I think I was the only one that really watched the game.  My mom took the boys to the park and Jude had a great time.  I was ready for bed when we finally go home.  It was a long day and a long week.  I'm looking forward to cleaning up my kitchen on Monday and I am going to repurpose our coat closet into a linen closet/cleaning closet which will take care of all the orphaned cleaning stuff in my kitchen; but of course it will then displace our coats, hats, and purses...hmmm...sounds like I'll have another room to clean when I'm done with it.  Oh well, I'm glad to be getting things organized.

05 February 2023

 I am tired at the end of the week!  The older Jude gets the more trouble he gets into.  He's CONSTANTLY into something.  I clean up his mess and while I'm doing that he finds something else to destroy and if he's not destroying, he's got his diaper off pooping on the floor.  Its worse than having a puppy!  The older kids are busy and always going their own way.  Phil had his last paramedic refresher class on Monday morning after getting off of work at 8AM.  I went to Reid Park in Tucson and walked around the track with my friend Leona.  Jude refused to keep the shade pulled down on his stroller so he got a little sunburned.

All three kids went to young women/young men activities on Tuesday evening.  Phil went with them since he was teaching a first aid class to the Teachers Quorum.  He had a good time and I hope the boys enjoyed it too.  Phil was home on Wednesday as well and he played with Jude most of the day so I could work.  For the last few weeks he have had some friends living on our property in their fifth wheel, he has been working in Green Valley temporarily and since they normally live in Benson it has been more convenient for them.  Jude really likes to visit Grandma Bernal both in her trailer and when she comes over to spoil him in the house.  

The big project of the week was Arlo's annual science fair project.  We decided to test what the minimum distance your toothbrush needs to be from the toilet as to not get germs on it.  We had a fun time flushing the toilet 1,000 times and swabbing the head.  We cultured the bacteria for 48 hours in our incubator and got some great results.  I love science fair time, I know I'm in the minority there, but I really do, its totally my wheelhouse.  We got it all finished up and turned in on Thursday night before the Friday due date.  

Phil went back to work on Friday and picked up an overtime shift on Saturday and then had his regular shift on Sunday so he'll have been gone from Friday morning until Monday morning.  It's only been a couple moths of working extra overtime and I'm already exhausted for him!  We have a ten year plan so we just have to stick with it!  I'm grateful for him.  Jude ran errands with me on Friday morning.  I had to go to a couple of stores and then do our grocery shopping.  We came home and he had lunch and a nap and then we needed to go back out and do the grocery shopping for our neighbors...he was far less cooperative.  We survived.  Friday evening my mom came over for about an hour so my niece could play with Jude.  He loved the extra attention and it wore him out so he went to bed right away!

Felicity had a late practice for her upcoming musical, she didn't get home until after ten on Friday night and then she was back at school on Saturday morning to help paint sets.  Leona and Jude and I walked around Reid Park again on Saturday morning, except this time Jude cried the whole time...it was less than enjoyable.  I did remember the sunscreen though! Jude and I cleaned house when we got home.  Well, I cleaned and he made messes behind me.  Here he is trying to "feed" the kitty.

 Our Sunday was quiet. The kids trickled in on Sunday evening since Felicity went to pick them up from visiting their dad, as each one came in Jude excitedly called out their name and gave them a hug.  He misses them when they're gone.