February 22, 2015

Seth is sick AGAIN.  This is his 5th cold since Christmas. I guess his body is having a hard time getting adjusted to public school.

Things are just going on like usual.  Basketball season is almost over and we're trying to figure out what the 2 younger boys are going to do for the next season.

I got tear duct plugs in my upper ducts.  I've had them in my lower ducts for years.  At that time the doctor thought I'd get lots of eye infections if I got the upper ones plugged too.  But I go to a new dry eye specialist and he said that isn't much of an issue in Las Vegas.  I got 2 week plugs and loved them.  They dissolved and I got permanent ones put in on Friday.  I have so much tears! My eyes never feel like this.  I can wear my contacts as long as I want.  But there are a little too much tears.  Sometimes if I bend over the tears just fall out.  I'm going to wait and see if my eyes will adjust and if not the doctor said there are 3 month dissolving plugs that are not quite as tight of seal as the permanent ones so I might try that.

Valentines day was nice.  I gave Bob pictures of places we'll go on our trip every day with things I love about him on the back. And on Valentines day we did things we did when we were dating like ate at cafe rio and watched mission impossible 2 like we did on our first date.

February 8, 2015

I started a ballet class at the new dance studio the girls go to.  Stephanie and Suzanne are doing it with me.  So we switched from doing yoga tuesday and thursday mornings to doing ballet on the same days.  It was really fun to do it again.  That dance studio has been great for all of us.

All 7 of us went to church today.  It's been a long time since all of us were healthy at the same time to do that.

Mom school is going well.  One of the biggest successes so far is that Danny is liking reading again.  He used to be pretty good at it, but last year he decided it wasn't cool.  But now he's reading without me really pushing him and he's reading the books I pick for him just fine.  Rachel and I are going to start studying art in preparation for my trip to Paris.  I think we'll both enjoy that.  Aaron is still a little hard to motivate.  But he really wants to be homeschooled because his good friend Tyson just started it and he wants to play with him more.  So at least I have that to hold over his head.  I don't think I'd really consider homeschool, but I told Aaron I really won't consider it unless he can show me he'll do well at mom school. Ruby has not wanted to say her own prayers. But I finally put a chart together with a reward and she's doing awesome at it now.

I've been listening to a ton of audio books.  I'm loving it.  I've found that I have a lot of mindless cleaning jobs that are great for listening to books at the same time.  And I've gotten good at listening at double speed, so I can finish books pretty fast that way.

Ruby is so sweet.  Here are a few things she's said to me lately.  "Mom, you're a miracle." "You're the best in the west", "You're so cute, I could keep you," "You're such adorable."

February 1, 2014

We've had a horrible long cold going around our family lately.  Seth got it first, then Ruby and now Rachel.  This year has been bad for sicknesses for us.  Seth's turned into an ear infection and then his ear drum burst.  The night it burst he started saying his ear hurt at 5:00 pm.  Then he said it again at 7:30.  At that point his jaw on that side was a little swollen and I just new his eardrum would rupture.  It was too late to get into any semi-convenient urgent cares so I just decided to wait to go to his pediatrician the next mourning.  It ruptured in the middle of the night and when he got up we could see all the fluid that had come out.  I was feeling so bad because I knew it was a prompting that would happen.  And I thought it was telling me I should have made the effort to take him to urgent care.  But the Doctor said it was fine and doesn't cause problems if it is treated with antibiotics.  That made me feel so much better and I realized the prompting was just a tender mercy to let me know what would happen.  It wouldn't have made much difference to take him in that night, but it was nice to be ready for what would happen.

I started going to the main dry eye specialist in Las Vegas.  He recommended I get tear duct plugs in my upper tear ducts.  So I just had some temporary ones put in this week to try it out.  It doesn't completely solve the problem, but it does seem to help.  So that means I'll go have permanent ones put in in a few weeks.  He also has me coming back in 3 months because my eye pressures are going up, which is a sign of glaucoma.  That worries me because I've seen a lot of eye doctors and they've never said I had this issue, so it must have come up recently.  He said my cupping percentage or something was 55% and 60%. And that makes it worse that they aren't the same.  He has me on Lotomax drops that he says would never cause it even though the package says it is a risk.  And I've been having lots of muscle tension around and behind my eyes related to my squinting problem from dry eyes and from stress. I really pray they can figure this out and catch or fix whatever they need to.

Here's a snapshot of what life is like right now.

Danny- He is on 3 basketball teams right now.  We didn't mean for that to happen, but he's loving it. He is also loving basketball shoes.  He checks shoe websites daily to see new styles and colors.  And everyone in the family knows all about the brands, colors and release dates.  He's bought himself a few pairs of shoes this winter and has plans for many more.  He's also recognized his need to work since his allowance was cut off when he turned 12.  He cleans the bathrooms for me a few times a month and is always looking for more ways to make money.  He also loves to spend his money at 711 or circle K whenever he can.

Rachel- She just started a hip hop dance class at a studio that just opened close to us.  She's still taking piano. She loves to draw and is getting quite good.  She's doing great in Middle School. She stays right on top of her homework and gets excellent grades. I never have to remind her to do anything for school. She started shaving her legs and wearing mascara this year. She loves hugs whenever she can get them.

Aaron- He started on a club basketball team too this season.  He's doing really well. He's picking up a lot of new skills.  He does great at school.  The kids at school just adore him. He comes home most days with some new food from a trade or deal he worked at school.  He has amazing negotiating skills. He's taking piano lessons and doing well.  He loves to go play with Tyson whenever he gets his work done.  He's also a great friend with Rachel and he plays sports with Danny whenever Danny talks him into it. He loves to read Calvin and Hobbs, Big Nate and the Guiness Book of World Records.

Seth-  He's doing well in kindergarten.  Even tough, if you ask him he says he never has a good time at school and counts the days until the weekend.  He's starting to read. He has lots of friends at school. He plays great with Ruby and she misses him when he's at school.  He loves to have friends over as often as he can. He likes video games too much. He learned to ride a two-wheeler this year and he loves it. He's our best eater by far.  We've been eating more healthy this year and he eats it all. He loves to talk and will tell anyone a story.

Ruby- She thinks turning 4 was the best thing ever and loves to try more and more things by herself.  She loves to homeschool with me.  And she'll work in her workbooks for hours. She's so sweet and fun and loves to play with Seth. She has a couple of girlfriends she loves to play with.  She started ballet recently too and she loves it. She likes to draw. She loves to play with toys and asks me to play with her all the time. She loves juice boxes and fruit snacks. She loves to sit with BJ LeCates at church every sunday.

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.

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.