I'm trying to think of something witty or profound to say to start this post. But honestly I've got nothing.
We've lived here in Twin Falls for three weeks. The house feels like home, but we are still working on establishing a routine for daily life. The last three weeks have felt a little directionless and chaotic. But they've also felt full of newness and possibilities.
Let's back up and do a pretty fast recap.
Veronica lost her other front tooth on one of the first days we were in the house. She was pretty excited.
The biggest thing I accomplished during the first few days in Twin Falls was to get a Doctors appointment for Derrick so we could get a new prescription for pullups to wear at night. We went to the doctor on Thursday after school and Derrick did such a good job talking to the doctor. The office is really close to our house which is basically the only research I ever do when it comes to finding a pediatrician. So I'm happy.
On our way home we stopped at Redbox so I could pick up Avengers Endgame. Brandon and I watched last night and enjoyed it. But wow, that movie has a lot of characters.
Well we made it through the week without any big emotional outbursts so the reunion was a go. All of Brandon's siblings would be there so we were all looking forward to some family time. Plus it was held at a campground and my family is always down for a camping trip. On Friday when the kids were done with school we drove all the way from Twin Falls to Little Cottonwood Canyon in Salt Lake.
The first night there weren't many people there. It was us, Steve and Jacque, one of Jacque's brothers and his family, and one of Jacque's cousins. We had hotdogs for dinner and the kids roasted marshmallows.
Veronica had been wearing pajama pants over her shorts because she'd been cold so I used her pajamas to stop the bleeding in Charlotte's knee until we could get back to the first aid kit in the car. But that one was pretty low on supplies so we had to drive back to the campsite where Brandon had left his backpack with his first aid kit. Wow we were really unprepared. So that was the end of the rock climbing adventure.
Charlotte was pretty sad so when we got back to camp I took her with me down the canyon to the store. We got gas and then we went into the store to buy some extra things. I'd also hoped to find a Redbox so I could return the Avengers movie (we'd forgot to return it on our way out of Twin on Friday.) But there wasn't a Redbox at the store. Before we drove off to find one, Charlotte looked at the Redbox case and asked, "Is it a see through disk?" And I realized we didn't even have the disk in the case. It was still in my laptop at home." So never mind on that.
Now it was time to hang out with Veronica. Charlotte and Lydia were playing with their cousin Oakley who had arrived by this point. They were kind of excluding Veronica. So I took Veronica and Derrick over to the sandy volley ball court and they had fun playing in the sand. I was reading John McCain's memoirs, "Faith of My Father's" so I read that while she played. The book was taking a long time to get interesting so I ended up laying down on the picnic blanket and taking a nap.
Occasionally the kids came over to show me the face painting that Melanie was doing. Here's Charlotte's.
Veronica had fun decorating her puppy.
In the morning we had breakfast with everyone and then cleaned up. I was very antsy to get going because I was ready to get back to work on the house. Plus I wanted the kids to have a chance to decompress from the trip before going to school on Monday. So I cleaned up our stuff while Brandon chitchatted and the kids played.
The next week was the last week of August, by I was already thinking it was September. The reunion had been our last event for the summer.
I spent most of the week finishing unpacking. My favorite part was when I started to put up pictures.
The next day Derrick found his old train hat and exclaimed, "I'm the train man."
On Wednesday we bought our first ever lawn mower. Brandon taught the kids how to mow the lawn and between the 4 of them they mowed the front and back yards. Brandon said he barely had to do anything other than supervise.
On Friday we got a dog - sort of.
My friend Sarah in Idaho Falls was going to Sun Valley for Labor Day weekend. She needed somewhere for her dog Lemon to go while they were gone. She asked us if we'd watch Lemon. She paid us, but honestly we might have done it for free because Lemon happens to be one of my favorite dogs.
Brandon said he couldn't believe how much I liked Lemon. Every time I petted the dog or talked to her Brandon looked at me like, "who are you?" He was very happy though because he's wanted me to want a dog for a long time. We even let her sleep in our bed on Sunday night.
Sarah came to pick up Lemon a little later. We were all sad to see her go. I joked that we'd just keep Lemon and Sarah could get another dog.
I've been on the fence about whether or not I want to work this year. There are a lot of factors to consider. I want to stay home with my kids, but I also really like working. I want to earn money, but I don't want to have to stress about childcare when the kids are out of school. It's a really delicate balance.
I considered going back to school to beef up my resume for when the kids are older. I looked into getting a book keeping certificate through the Pathways program or the College of Southern Idaho. But when I looked at the classes I'd have to take my main thought was "I've already taken half these classes." And honestly the thought of going back to school made me want to throw up.
So I decided to start applying for jobs just to see what would happen. If I got called for interviews then it meant my skills were up to par. If I didn't get interviews then maybe I'd think some more about going back to school.
One place I applied was with the county. I had to take a skills test for the job. One of the skills was a 10 key test. I had 15 minutes to complete several columns of numbers. I finished the first screen in less than 4 minutes. I thought I would have another screen of numbers pop up for me to do, but nope, that was the whole test. I have some pretty awesome 10 key skills.
I also had to do a proof reading test. As you can tell, my proof reading skills aren't as good. Especially when it came to the spelling questions. The test would have a sentence and I was supposed to find all the errors and then fill in a multiple choice answer with how many errors I found. I knew I was in trouble when I could only find one error, but the lowest option on the multiple choice list was four.
So I'm considering my scores on all the tests as a wash.
On Monday night I saw an open job for a secretary position at the middle school near our house. Working for the school district is my ultimate dream because I would have the same days off as the kids. So I applied for the job that night. It actually wasn't that hard because this school district uses the same system as the Pocatello/Chubbuck school district. I'd applied for some jobs there so all I had to do was import the info from that system and then add my Treasurer's Office stuff. I submitted the application and didn't think much about it.
On Tuesday I was minding my own business when I got a call from the Twin Falls School District. My first thought was, "oh no what did Derrick do?' But the call was actually from Human Resources. They asked me if I could interview for the secretary job that afternoon! Of course I said yes.
I was confident before the interview, but during the interview I had a hard time reading the reactions of the people that were interviewing me. I had no idea what they thought of my answers. I ended up feeling like I'd bombed. I was pretty sad at first, but I decided to be nice to myself. It was my first interview in almost two years, I'd done it with just a few hours notice, and I was also coming down with a cold. So it's okay if I bombed it. There will be other jobs.
The interview did help me with one thing though. I realized I needed to get some childcare in place in case I did get the job. On Wednesday I called the Boys and Girls Club and learned that they don't have a wait list for Kindergartners. They have a bus that would pick up Veronica from school. So that would take care of her. I also e-mailed Derrick's Medicaid case worker and asked her to adjust his therapy budget so we could do more therapy hours during the school year. And then I talked to his therapy company about possibly adding more hours so he can be with someone after school until I get off work. I would be home a little after the kids get out of school and so I was comfortable letting Charlotte and Lydia be home alone during that time. I was happy to have that all worked out in case I got the job.
Wednesday ended up being a rough day. I was still upset about how I'd done on the interview. And my cold was getting worse. Plus I was having some girl problems. I muddled through most of the day, but by the afternoon I was falling apart. Brandon told me it was just fine if I went to bed and stayed there the rest of the day. So I got in my pajamas and just wallowed in self pity for a few hours. After Brandon put the kids to bed he came in with a sure fire way to get me feeling better - An Action Movie. He picked out the first Mission Impossible movie and we watched that. When it was over I felt much better and slept really well that night.
On Thursday we had a girl from Veronica's class come over after school. Her parents are working on finding childcare for her and I offered to watch her while they get that sorted out. (I also told them that I was casually looking for a job so I wasn't a good long term plan.) She's an only child and Veronica is the youngest so they had some learning to do about how to play together, but over all it was fun to have her over.
When we got home from the library I saw Charlotte riding Veronica's bike. Then I realized it was Veronica and the bike didn't have training wheels! She was riding on her own. She'd learned how to ride without training wheels the same way Derrick had. The training wheels gradually bent up and so she was balancing on just the bike wheels as she rode. For the past few days Brandon and I had been trying to tell her that she was basically riding without training wheels, and to let Brandon take them off. But Veronica was really scared to have them off. I couldn't blame her, she had broken her collar bone while riding her bike. She wanted as much stability as she could get. Well on Thursday night she finally realized it was time. Brandon said she jumped right on the bike and was off again without any trouble.
He screamed and yelled about it all the way to school. When he got to school he was still mad. Brandon had gone ahead with Charlotte and Lydia and Derrick yelled at Brandon when he saw him. This was new territory for me. Derrick has been mad before school before, but I always just put him on the bus and then sent an e-mail to his teacher. A para professional always met him at the bus so I always knew that he had an adult with him no matter what his mood was. I didn't know what to do about it when I was dropping him off.
I did know that I didn't feel comfortable sending him into the school angry. So I went with him to make sure he was safe around the other kids. This would have been fine except I'd barely gotten dressed. I hadn't brushed my teeth and I wasn't wearing any make up. So there I was sitting in his classroom trying to look somewhat put together as I tried to calm Derrick down. After a few minutes his para helped me guide him out to the hall and she took him on a walk to calm him down. Whew.
Aside from that Derrick actually had a fabulous week at school. The first two weeks had been a little rough as he adjusted to everything, but things seem to be stabilizing. They have an aid for him during half the day and she is really helping him focus on his school work. I still miss our last school and all the support he had in place there, but this school is stepping up and doing a good job too.
On Friday night we watched Arthur Christmas for movie night. Derrick picked it out at the library. He calls it Otter Christmas. We haven't watched that movie since Alabama so we all had fun watching it again.
Saturday was a near perfect day. We spent the morning cleaning the house and doing yard work. Charlotte mowed the front yard all by herself and then I did the back yard. (Fun fact: somehow I have avoided mowing a lawn for 34 years. So this was my first time ever doing that.) I moved rocks and acted like it was a super fun thing to do so for a while all the kids were happily helping move rocks too.
Then after lunch we drove over to Niagara Spring so the kids could go fishing there.
It's hard to see in this picture, but Niagara spring was on the other side of those trees. We could hear the water rushing the whole time.
Brandon caught a fish and here are all the kids celebrating.
When we finished fishing we came home and had dinner. All the kids took much needed baths and then went to bed.
Brandon and I stayed up talking in the garage while he organized some things. He has it nearly the way he wants it. He's so excited to have a workshop.
And that gets us caught up to today. We went to church and had a such a good time. Our ward is so welcoming. Last week was our first official week there and Brandon turned to me and said, "I already feel like we've been in this ward forever."
And actually that's how we feel about the house and Twin Falls in general. We feel like we've been here forever. And I plan to stay for a long time.
No comments:
Post a Comment
What do you think?