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.

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.

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.

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.

October 21, 2014

Life is so busy.  I keep trying to figure out what to cut, but I can't find much.  There are just too many people in this house with activities they like and messes to clean up and food to buy and make.

Bob took the boys camping at Goblin Valley last weekend. They had a great time.  The girls stayed with me and we went to the fall festival on Friday night. It was fun and so much easier with only 2 kids. Rachel stayed home from camping to go to Stake Activity Days Camp on Saturday.  They do an amazing job with it.  Rachel had a good time.

Rachel and I went to see Wicked.  We had a great time.  She really liked it and it was nice to spend some time with just her.  We went on Thursday night and we didn't get home until 11. So she skipped her first 2 periods on Friday and slept in.

Sunday was Aaron's 9th birthday.  We got Krispy Kreme's the night before and he opened his presents in the morning.  Then we had white sauce and noodles and his funfetti birthday cake and ice cream after church.

My mom and maybe my dad are coming for Halloween weekend.  That will be fun.

September 28, 2014

The kids had a half day on Thursday and no school Friday so we decided it would be the perfect time to go camping.  It was still pretty hot so we couldn't go to our usual Valley of Fire camp spot (plus that place isn't so magical for us since Seth fell off the mountain).  So we went to Mt. Charleston.  That was the first time we camped there overnight.  We had a great time.  We enjoyed the fire quite a bit since it was colder there.  We made tinfoil dinners and s'mores in a cone, as well as the usual roasted marshmallows and starburst.

It was windy but we didn't really notice how windy until we went to bed.  In our family prayer Danny asked that the wind would stop.  I knew that prayer probably wouldn't be answered the way we wanted it.  So I suggested in everyone's personal prayers that we ask that people will sleep soundly. That prayer was definitely answered because it felt like we were sleeping in a walmart bag with a fan on it! The wind was insane.  Bob and I were up most of the night.  But the kids all slept perfectly! Aaron and Seth woke up once but went right back to sleep.  Ruby, who hasn't slept through the night in 2 weeks since her surgery, begged to go to bed and fell asleep first and was the last to wake up.

Ruby is doing so much better.  It was right about 2 weeks.  She's eating so much better and she's so fun and happy.  I hadn't realized how much I missed that.  She's such a fun little girl.  She had her follow up visit and the dr said she was healing well.  He gave us the report on her tonsils.  They were both about 3 x 2 x 1 cm.

September 21. 2014

Middle School basketball didn't work out.  In the end neither school was willing to work with me even though they say they are supposed to. Bummer.  But maybe it'll be better for Danny to be one of the really good players on his Somerset team.

Ruby is slowly getting better.  I felt impressed to put her name on the temple prayer roll when we were there Friday night and I think that's really helped her.  She was just getting tired of not feeling well, I think.  By Friday she was hardly eating or drinking and didn't want to take medicine and she was being a lot more grumpy and tired.  She's still talking funny and cries easily, but she's doing better.

I'm trying to get our family to eat healthier.  It started because I had a few minutes a few weeks ago so I watched the beginning of a documentary on netflix called Hungry for Change.  It talked about how industrialized and processed all our food is. So I started reading some things and researching.  One of the things that confused me was that a lot of the current trends and "clean eating" things say to stay away from wheat.  That must be wrong because the word of wisdom says wheat is for man.  So today I started reading the word of wisdom and praying about that.  Then I found several websites where other people have studied about it and tried living it and learned a lot.  I'm going to start working toward understanding and living it better.  We bought a wheat grinder on craigslist an I've made bread with it a few times.  Maybe I'll make that a regular thing.  I'm going to buy plain greek yogurt and have the kids mix honey or berries in it.  And I'm going to buy less chips and crackers and cereal and be better at making healthy after school snacks and more smoothies and have more fruits and vegetables available.  I've let me kids know my plans so hopefully they'll get on board and not fight it too much.  I like the feeling of being more in control and knowledgeable about what we're eating.

We're still discussing the possibility of buying Bob's grandparents house next fall.  There are just so many variables that would have to work out right for it to be a good fit for us.  But we keep thinking about it.  Maybe it's really a good option for us or maybe we just like the excitement of possibilities.