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.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Sunday, January 18, 2015
January 18, 2015
Here are my goals:
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.
- Make a plan for scripture time and stick to it. 2:30 weekdays
- Make a plan for mom school and make sure we do it every month.
- Keep to my new monthly budget system every month
- Schedule and follow through with playtime every week with family
- Earn at least $400 every month
- Have a family over for dinner every month. Reach out to one person every week
- Be kind, do not yell, don't say anything bad about anyone
- Follow the Word of Wisdom as closely as I can
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.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
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.
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.
Sunday, December 21, 2014
December 21, 2014
For Thanksgiving we went to Visalia. Everyone was there except Casey. Wednesday my mom and I took Danny and Rachel shopping at the outlets. They were using their signing bonus for mom school. Thursday we ate and went to see the new Hunger Games movie. And the dads took the kids to the Penguins of Madagascar movie. Friday we went to the coast. We tried to go to Hearst Castle but all the tickets were sold out by the time we got there. So we played at a park and walked on a pier and went out to eat. Saturday we went to the Fresno zoo. We had a great time there.
The second week of December the Deans asked if they could stay at our house on their way to Disneyland. And then they asked if we'd come with them. They were going to Disneyland for one day and Knotts Berry Farm for the other. Bob hardly has any time off left and we had already gone to disneyland this year and it's so expensive. So Bob just took one day off and we met them at Knotts for a day. Everyone had a great time. The Deans stayed here on their way down and back. And we got to do Christmas trains with them.
I started Mom School with the kids. I've been wanting to do it for a while. I started at the beginning of the year but they fought me on it enough that I stopped. But then in General Conference there was a talk about a mom who made her kids read books because the successful people she worked for had lots of books in their home and her son went on to become a pediatric neurosurgeon. So that made me want to do it again and I came up with a signing bonus. They each had to write me a persuasive essay about what they wanted money for and then depending how good it was they could have up to $100 for it. But if they took that money it meant they were committed to doing what I told them for mom school. They all did it. Rachel wanted clothes, Danny wanted basketball shoes and Aaron got an amazon gift card. For school, they have to read at least a book a month and write one page about it. And I give them an assignment every week or so on their day of the week. I did some church lessons with them and I've had Rachel read a book about colored pencil animal drawings and draw them. Aaron is doing some mapping lessons with Bob. Danny is learning photoshop. I don't really have a grand plan right now for what I want them to learn, but I just don't want them to be so lazy after school. With the Deans gone, we haven't been able to find good replacements for the kids to play with so they've been watching lots of netflix.
It's Christmas break. I'm so glad. December is busy. My mom and Dad and dustin and Sheila are coming Tuesday night. And then Kristal comes after Christmas. They'll be here until Sunday.
I got a new computer. I only had my old one for a year and half, but it had problems the whole time. So Bob got me a new one and a new huge monitor. It's so much nicer to move all my stuff to a new computer while the old one is still working instead of trying to recover everything after it crashes. We're going to get the old one fixed and make it a kid computer.
We've had an issue with Danny and girls again. I had been checking his texts like I always do but he wasn't texting very much so I thought things were going fine. We had had a talk a while ago about deleting texts and I trusted him that he wasn't. I guess I shouldn't have but he had been doing well at it for months so I got lazy. I was checking my bill online and happened to notice he had 1600 texts this month but I'd only seen maybe 100. So I confronted him about it and he lost his phone for a month. I asked him about who all the texts were to and he said they were from this girl who really likes him. I knew a little about her because she'd been telling Rachel's friends to talk to him for her and she'd been talking to Aaron to try to get to Danny. Then this week, 2 weeks into the punishment, I turned on his phone mostly to see if that girl was still texting him. When I turned it on the texts were flashing and going crazy for about 5 minutes while it was miraculously loading all those deleted texts. He's deleted texts before. They never come back. I think there was some divine intervention here because there's no other reason those texts should have loaded. I was able to read them and see that Danny isn't doing well with peer pressure. He and his friends had some very inappropriate jokes and comments going on. Bob and I went to the temple yesterday and we have a plan to help him be ready for peer pressure better and work on hanging out with better friends.
The second week of December the Deans asked if they could stay at our house on their way to Disneyland. And then they asked if we'd come with them. They were going to Disneyland for one day and Knotts Berry Farm for the other. Bob hardly has any time off left and we had already gone to disneyland this year and it's so expensive. So Bob just took one day off and we met them at Knotts for a day. Everyone had a great time. The Deans stayed here on their way down and back. And we got to do Christmas trains with them.
I started Mom School with the kids. I've been wanting to do it for a while. I started at the beginning of the year but they fought me on it enough that I stopped. But then in General Conference there was a talk about a mom who made her kids read books because the successful people she worked for had lots of books in their home and her son went on to become a pediatric neurosurgeon. So that made me want to do it again and I came up with a signing bonus. They each had to write me a persuasive essay about what they wanted money for and then depending how good it was they could have up to $100 for it. But if they took that money it meant they were committed to doing what I told them for mom school. They all did it. Rachel wanted clothes, Danny wanted basketball shoes and Aaron got an amazon gift card. For school, they have to read at least a book a month and write one page about it. And I give them an assignment every week or so on their day of the week. I did some church lessons with them and I've had Rachel read a book about colored pencil animal drawings and draw them. Aaron is doing some mapping lessons with Bob. Danny is learning photoshop. I don't really have a grand plan right now for what I want them to learn, but I just don't want them to be so lazy after school. With the Deans gone, we haven't been able to find good replacements for the kids to play with so they've been watching lots of netflix.
It's Christmas break. I'm so glad. December is busy. My mom and Dad and dustin and Sheila are coming Tuesday night. And then Kristal comes after Christmas. They'll be here until Sunday.
I got a new computer. I only had my old one for a year and half, but it had problems the whole time. So Bob got me a new one and a new huge monitor. It's so much nicer to move all my stuff to a new computer while the old one is still working instead of trying to recover everything after it crashes. We're going to get the old one fixed and make it a kid computer.
We've had an issue with Danny and girls again. I had been checking his texts like I always do but he wasn't texting very much so I thought things were going fine. We had had a talk a while ago about deleting texts and I trusted him that he wasn't. I guess I shouldn't have but he had been doing well at it for months so I got lazy. I was checking my bill online and happened to notice he had 1600 texts this month but I'd only seen maybe 100. So I confronted him about it and he lost his phone for a month. I asked him about who all the texts were to and he said they were from this girl who really likes him. I knew a little about her because she'd been telling Rachel's friends to talk to him for her and she'd been talking to Aaron to try to get to Danny. Then this week, 2 weeks into the punishment, I turned on his phone mostly to see if that girl was still texting him. When I turned it on the texts were flashing and going crazy for about 5 minutes while it was miraculously loading all those deleted texts. He's deleted texts before. They never come back. I think there was some divine intervention here because there's no other reason those texts should have loaded. I was able to read them and see that Danny isn't doing well with peer pressure. He and his friends had some very inappropriate jokes and comments going on. Bob and I went to the temple yesterday and we have a plan to help him be ready for peer pressure better and work on hanging out with better friends.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
November 9, 2014
Seth stepped on a rusty nail this week. He and Ruby were playing on the side of the house with the air conditioners. They never play there, so we've never worried about some old bike ramps Danny made once and stored there. It got red and swollen. He's on some strong antibiotics.
The kids have a 5 day weekend. I forgot how messy the house gets when they're all home!
The kids had parent teacher conferences last week. All had great things to say. There were no complaints with Rachel, she's a delight and works hard. Aaron's teacher is impressed with him and asks him to explain things to other kids sometimes. Her only complaint was that he talks a lot! Somehow he still gets his work done while talking, but the kids around him aren't as good at that. Danny is doing well too. He is smart but doesn't always try as hard as he can and his teachers only complaint was his horrible hand writing.
The kids have a 5 day weekend. I forgot how messy the house gets when they're all home!
The kids had parent teacher conferences last week. All had great things to say. There were no complaints with Rachel, she's a delight and works hard. Aaron's teacher is impressed with him and asks him to explain things to other kids sometimes. Her only complaint was that he talks a lot! Somehow he still gets his work done while talking, but the kids around him aren't as good at that. Danny is doing well too. He is smart but doesn't always try as hard as he can and his teachers only complaint was his horrible hand writing.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
November 2, 2014
We had a fun Halloween week. Danny was a gorilla, Rachel was a black cat, Aaron was a werewolf, Seth was a knight, and Ruby was tinkerbell. We had trunk r treat on Wednesday and then our potluck with friends and trick or treating together Friday night. My mom got here during the Trunk or treat wednesday night. The kids were out of school on Thursday and Friday. Thursday we went to flip n out with some friends to celebrate Aaron's birthday. Friday my mom and I went to check out the new mall in summerlin. Saturday Seth got the stomach bug that had been passing around the ward all week. So we got chinese and brought it home and Danny and Rachel watched the first Hunger Games movie with us at night.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
October 26, 2014
Danny accidentally got another girlfriend. We've had good talks after the last one and since then and I think he really understood how and why that wasn't right. But I was checking his email a few weeks ago and one said "I broke up with her" and the thing that set me off was that he was emailing the girl I knew was his girlfriend last year. So we talked about it. He was defensive, but once he understood I just wanted to know what he was thinking he answered my questions. A girl liked him for a while. He admitted to his friend that he kind of liked her too, but he wasn't going to do anything about it because he knew what happened last time. But his friend told the girl and somehow, Danny doesn't really know, they were then boyfriend and girlfriend. So he had to tell the girl he didn't like her like that. But it was just so funny how he was totally confused about what happened.
Our Family Home Evenings have been going better. I've been putting more of an effort into them and praying about what I should teach. That makes such a big difference rather than just picking what I want to teach.
Our Family Home Evenings have been going better. I've been putting more of an effort into them and praying about what I should teach. That makes such a big difference rather than just picking what I want to teach.
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