January 25, 2015

We bought our tickets for our Europe trip. We were getting ready to buy our tickets when we got back from Visalia, but on the way home I checked my feed reader and a blog posted a deal for flights from NY to Italy for $400 per person.  We were going to pay $2600 for tickets.  So we still had to get tickets to NY and those were $300 per person, but it still was almost half what we were expecting to pay.  That was really exciting. The flight goes into Milan so now we are going there for a day and a half and then Paris for 4-5 days and Venice for 3 days.  And we'll have a day in NY on either side of our trip so we're hoping to go to the statue of liberty and walk around central park.

I went on a field trip with Aaron's class this week.  It was so great to go with him and it made him so happy.  He hugged me at least 20 times during the trip.  And it was fun to watch him interact with his friends.  They all are just drawn to him.  He didn't even seem to notice, but they all were clamoring for his attention all the time.  He's also amazing at working out food trades with his friends.  From my point of view they are hardly fair with Aaron getting the way better deal, but they seem happy and keep doing it.  He should really be a business man someday.

January 18, 2015

Here are my goals:

1. Make a plan for scripture time and stick to it. 2:30 weekdays
2. Make a plan for mom school and make sure we do it every month.
3. Keep to my new monthly budget system every month
4. Schedule and follow through with playtime every week with family
5. Earn at least $400 every month
6. Have a family over for dinner every month.  Reach out to one person every week
7. Be kind, do not yell, don't say anything bad about anyone
8. Follow the Word of Wisdom as closely as I can

My goals are going pretty well.  This week I had a few less motivated days, but until then I'd been doing really well.  And I think I'll be able to get back on track quickly when we get back.  I love how I feel when I'm on top of all these things.  Especially making my scriptures the priority and then being proactive about planning my time and focusing on the things that are most important.

We're in Visalia for MLK weekend.  Gma and Gpa Barnhart are here so we decided to come see them.  Yesterday we went over to our old house on Paradise because they are in between renters and needed some help cleaning and doing yard work.  They also took down their whole fence. Bob and Danny helped for a long time; after they got up early to play basketball with my dad.

My dad gave Bob a father's blessing this morning.  He said he'd had the feeling he needed to do it a few weeks ago when he was saying his prayer.  It was so nice.  About the middle of the blessing, my dad said that both Heavenly Father and Bob's earthly Father love him and they both started crying. I think that was the first time I've actually seen Bob cry.

I'm reading the Everyday Missionary by Christofferson right now.  It's awesome.  It's getting me more pumped up to share the gospel again.  I feel like I was working on fellowshipping several people about 6 months ago and it was great.  But they've all slowly stopped responding to me and I haven't been good at getting more going.  I'm excited to have more tools to use to get going.  It feels so good when I'm working on that stuff.

We're planning our trip to Paris and Versailles.  Bob is really into it.  He's doing most of the planning.  I'm so glad because I think I might have talked myself out of going by now, but he's doing a great job planning and it will be so great to go.

January 4, 2015

This year for Christmas, Grandma and Grandpa, Dustin and Sheila and Kristal came to visit us.  They got a great hotel room at the Trump.  We rode the High Roller, sat in their hot tub, ate at the Stratosphere and played lots of games, shopped, acted out the nativity, opened presents and ate a lot! It was fun to have them here.

We had been passing a cold around for a couple weeks before Christmas.  About the time everyone left, I got it.  But it turned out it was the flu and I was the only one who didn't get a flu shot this year. So they were all sick for a couple of days.  But I got it for a full week.  I was in bed the whole second week of Christmas break.  So disappointing.  The kids got to play a lot of electronics this break.  We did get to do kwanzaa, but Bob was in charge of most of it and it wasn't quite as thorough as usual.

Bob and I are doing a goal setting program I found from Power of Moms.  It's by Michael Hyatt.  I think it'll be really good to do it together.  I'll put my goals on here next week when I have them defined better.