Korea 2014: Week 13 - I get by with a little help from my friends

No matter what, it's important to have a good support system of people you can call on when you need them.  But if you are planning on being the sole adult in charge of 4 small children a support system is vital.  

I used my support system a lot this week.  Sometimes it was because I needed help.  Most of the time it was because I needed someone to hang out with. And every time I did I was so glad that I took the time to establish friendships with these wonderful people in my life.  

So lets talk about the things that happened and the people who helped me this week.  

Derrick woke up with a fever early Monday morning.  The fever was so high that even his fingers were hot.  He cooled off after I gave him medicine.  I turned on Cars and we both fell asleep while watching it.  He didn't feel well all day long.  We watched Cars over and over and over.  Charlotte constructed Radiator Springs in our living room out of diaper boxes.  

It was one of those days where we all just kind of did our own thing.  The kids each took a turn napping.  It seems like someone was asleep during the whole day.  Lydia tried to convince me to let her take a nap with "Wanika."

Derrick seemed to be doing better by the evening so I planned to send the kids to pre-school.  That meant I had to buckle down and get the laundry sorted out so I could find enough socks for all of them.  I piled all the laundry on my bed and sorted it while watching Frasier, Skyping with Brandon, and then watching more Frasier.

The kids all did well at Pre-school.  Derrick started crying as soon as we pulled up in the parking lot.  But he calmed down once he realized that they were starting out on the play ground.  I came home and spent the whole 4 hours doing a whole bunch of little things.  I didn't do anything spectacular, but my to-do list shrunk considerably.  Plus it was so nice to get things done without worrying about getting interrupted.  I'm so glad I took the time to get the kids signed up for hourly care.

I thought Derrick would sleep when we got back home, but instead he just spent the day doing Derrick things like playing in the dirt.

That night he woke up in the middle of the night with a fever again.  His bed was soaking wet so I cleaned him up and brought him into bed with me.  That was a big mistake.  He wanted me to hold him, but he's a twitchy sleeper.  I didn't get any quality sleep with him in the bed.

The next day Derrick was fine, but I felt off.  I was tired.  And I felt depressed.  Derrick's speech therapy appointment was cancelled.  At first I thought we could all go to the store.  But I couldn't even help the kids get dressed without wanting to scream at them.  Going to the park across the street was about all I could do.

I sent out an SOS text to Elder and Sister Coombs.  I told them I was depressed and needed a blessing.  They came over as soon as they could.

Elder Coombs gave me a blessing and then I took a nap while they cleaned up my house.  By the time they left my house was clean and I was feeling a lot more like myself.

I'm glad I was feeling better because we had something really fun planned.  I'd heard about the Mounted Weapons Demonstration from my friend Kelly.  She was planning on taking her kids to see it.  I wanted to take mine, but I figured Derrick would get scared.  Fortunately, the demonstration is held at the same time as our standing appointment with Elder and Sister Coombs.  So they came along to help with the kids.

We all enjoyed watching the horses and riders practice different drills.  The weather was perfect and it felt so good to be out of the house and enjoying something.  

Veronica was happy as usual.

Lydia has wanted to sit on stairs (bleachers) for a long time. She wanted to sit at the very top.

Charlotte was kind of tired, but she had a good time anyway.

Derrick wasn't very happy about the gun shots.  He cried pretty much the whole time.

But I could deal with that because I was feeling so much better.  Plus I had curly hair, I always feel better about myself when I have curly hair.

The demonstration was really fun. I plan to write about it in more detail on my travel blog.  My poor travel blog.  Veronica's sleep patterns have changed so my original plan of working in it in the early morning has gone out the window.  I think I'm going to have to make some changes to my routine to find time to work on it.

After the demo we were able to see the horses.  My kids were fascinated with the dirt.

Veronica turned 7 months old this week.  She has started crawling on her hands and knees.  On Friday she pulled herself up for the first time.  Here is a video of that.    

She's pretty happy about what she can do.  She loves crawling and likes to chase after things.

On Friday morning we all went to my friend Camie's house for a play date for all the mom's - I mean kids - in the ward.  I wish I had a picture of all of us in Camie's living room. We had like 6 mom and 12 kids there.  It was really fun, and I was really happy with the turn out because it was kind of my idea to revive the play group.  

On Friday night the USO kicked off their monthly movie on the lawn with Frozen.  I've seen it, but the kids haven't so I decided we should go.  I asked my neighbor Ange if she could watch Veronica and she quickly agreed.  (Everyone loves Veronica.)  When we went to drop off Veronica, Derrick walked into Ange's house and made himself at home.  I'd expected him to cry so I hadn't even thought to leave him there.  But he seemed so happy that I decided he'd have more fun with Ange and Jason than with me and the girls at the movie.  So the evening turned into a girls night with just me and the twins.  

We had a lot of fun together.  For once I didn't have to bring a stroller with me.  We were able to wait in line for snacks for 30 minutes (that would have been impossible to do with Derrick).  We met up with my friend Ashley and her baby Oakley.  We all had a good time watching the movie.  I liked it better this time through, but I still don't think its the masterpiece that everyone makes it out to be.

I do have this to say about the song Let It Go.  A lot has been said about the lyrics and the message the song conveys to young girls and blah blah blah.  I found it very inspiring to be surrounded by a bunch of young girls as they sang along with the movie.  They all put so much feeling into it. You have to understand, these girls are the daughters of soldiers.  They live with uncertainty.  They've seen their mothers take on hard challenges without a husband around,  They've had to be brave.  So they fully understand the meaning to lyrics like:

Let it go, let it go
I am one with the wind and sky
Let it go, let it go
You'll never see me cry
Here I stand
And here I'll stay
Let the storm rage on

The cold never bothered me anyway!

Derrick and Veronica had a great time with Ange and Jason.  Jason rough housed with Derrick a lot which Derrick LOVED.  Here is a super cute video of them together.      

Derrick even TALKED for them.  Ange says he said "Thank you" twice, "I did it" several times, and he even said, "Jason."  I was shocked when she told me that.

Saturday was another great day.  Usually we lay pretty low on Saturdays.  I don't like taking all the kids out to places where there will be a lot of people, and that's kind of how everywhere is on Saturday.  But then I heard about a Turtle Festival at a park in Belton.  There were lots of free things to do so I decided that even if we had to leave in a hurry it would be worth it.

First we had to go grocery shopping.  That's another thing I avoid on Saturday's, but we were out of cereal which is a problem because Derrick and I live off of Cheerios.  So we went to the store.  It actually went pretty well.  Then we come home and I hurried to put stuff away in the fridge.  Then I packed some stuff for the day, and then we were on our way.

The first thing we did was eat lunch.  I realized that it's pointless to go to the trouble of making sandwiches for the kids.  They don't eat them. So I just brought snack foods.

This was either my greatest or worst parenting moment.  I let the girls pick out pint size ice cream and then we ate those at the park.  (They were a whole lot cheaper than the little cups of ice cream that I was planning to buy.)

We sat by the play ground so the kids could play when they were done eating.

Derrick ended up getting in a pretty bad swing accident with a kid who crashed into him THREE times and then just walked away like nothing had happened.  Derrick's nose and mouth were bleeding or else I would have chased that kid down and found his mother.  But by the time I got Derrick taken care of the kid had disappeared.  Derrick was content to spent the rest of the time in the stroller.

Ashley and Oakley met up with us again.  Ashley's husband is deployed too so we're in the habit of randomly meeting up and hanging out with each other.

One of the reasons I wanted to come to this festival was because Derrick loves turtles.  He loved watching the live turtle race.  Yeah - a turtle race.  It was cute.  They'd put the turtles in the middle of the basket ball court and the first one to crawl out of the large circle won.    

I was impressed by all the things to do.  The kids all got a free book at the library booth.  And there was a petting zoo.  (Charlotte was upset about something when I took this picture.)

And there was a free little train ride.  The girls waited really patiently for their turn to ride.

They were so cute in the little car.  They were so excited to ride.

The ride took 5 minutes.  Derrick and I looked at a fire truck while the girls were gone.

He had fun playing with his car on the fire truck.

And then the girls came back.  They'd had a great time and saw a lot of the park.

Then we went and waited in a long line to get a turtle painted on the kids cheeks for free.  We got some candy from a fishing game so the kids were happy to eat their candy while we were in line.  Charlotte and Lydia entertained themselves by watching people  and running around in circles.  

After we'd been in line for about 20 minutes I realized we were going to be there forever.  There was only one face painter and she was going slow.  Veronica had been asleep for most of the afternoon.  When she woke up I used that as an excuse to get the girls out of that line.  It was just as well anyway since the turtle race was going to start.

This race was with plastic turtles.  We'd "adopted" a turtle for $5.  Our turtle along with 1999 other was set free in the river.  Everyone lined the bank of the river to watch the race. Derrick thought it was really funny.  He pointed and jabbered on with lots of excitement.    

The first turtle to make it into the turtle trap won $1000 dollars.  We didn't win, but considering all the free things we'd done that day I feel like it was $5 well spent.

It was 3:00 by this point and Derrick was a tired and sticky mess.  So we went back to the car.  The kids all fell asleep on the way home.  I was pretty proud of the kids and myself for how well we did going to the festival by ourselves.  I thought about how much Brandon would have loved to be there with us.

I miss him terribly.  Nobody can replace him.  I look forward to when he is home and we can do things as a family again.  But in the meantime, I'm glad I have this opportunity to develop friendships with other people.