It's been like a week and a half long party at my house. We had my birthday on the 7th and then we had a bunch of valentines activities going on. This is one of my favorite times of the year.
But actually it didn't start out that fun.
I wrote my last post from two weeks ago from under a strange feeling of sadness. I don't know why, but I felt very sad on Sunday night. All I wanted to do was curl up on the couch and do nothing, but I knew if I didn't update my blog I'd be more than two weeks behind and I hate getting that far behind. So I wrote through the crappy feeling and by the end of it I was feeling a little better.
I felt better on Monday. A big storm was supposed to be hitting Utah and Idaho. My Facebook friends were posting lots of pictures of their snow, some places even had snow days. Brandon set his alarm early so he could shovel snow before going to work. But when the alarm went off we didn't have any snow outside. So we got ready for school and work like it was any other day.
The kids and I headed out the door and were surprised to see snow falling! It was too late to change into snow boots so they all just went to school in their tennis shoes. We did grab gloves very fast.
We got barely half and inch of snow and it melted pretty quick once the sun started shining again. That's probably been my favorite thing about winter in Twin Falls. It will snow, but the snow doesn't stick around and get dirty.
Monday night after dinner we all kind of looked at each other and wondered what we were going to do. We usually read Harry Potter, but we couldn't start the next book until we watched the movie and the movie hadn't come in at the library yet. We decided to play a few games. We played Candy Land and Go Fish. It was really fun.
After the kids went to bed I had another case of the "the saddies." (Somehow infantilizing the name makes me feel better about how I feel.) I think I was suffering from a little bit of a vitamin D deficiency. I vowed that I'd spend time outside on the next sunny day.
Tuesday was a productive day. Veronica and I went grocery shopping and then met up with a new friend at the library. Amy is very involved in the special needs community here in Twin Falls and we were trying to put together an Autism Awareness Event in April. We talked about a lot of ideas, but gradually realized that we don't have time or resources to pull off a large scale event. So later we scaled down our idea - at least for this year.
Derrick went to the boys activity at church in the evening. Brandon has been taking him and then hanging out in the foyer of the church just in case Derrick had any behavioral issues. We'll this week the boys were taking thank you notes to the police officers and dogs that had visited them two weeks ago. Brandon and I decided to let Derrick go with the leaders and other boys without one of us tagging along. I was a little worried about how he would do, but I know he goes with his therapist all the time and follows her directions so I figured this wouldn't be any different.
And guess what? It turned out just fine. I never got a full story of what happened, but this is the type of thing where no news is good news. I'm assuming Derrick didn't do anything out of the ordinary. When the activity was over the leaders dropped him off at our house. He walked into the house and was in such a good mood from hanging out with all the boys his own age. This is very good for him.
I'd felt a little achy all day and thought that I might be coming down with a cold. I'd bought nighttime cold medicine when I went grocery shopping so I took that before bedtime. This was the first time I took night time cold medicine since the kids were babies. I'd realized then that I couldn't wake up and take care of them in the middle of the night so I've avoided night time cold medicine for years. But I figured I could start taking it again because they all sleep through the night.
Big mistake.
The kids did sleep through the night, but I didn't realized that I would still be sleepy in the morning. Normally I'm out of bed by 6:45 at the latest. On Wednesday I got out of bed around 7:10. The kids and Brandon were already up and getting ready for the day.
I got ready too and then took the kids to school. As I backed out of the driveway I thought, "am I awake enough to be driving?" I got the kids to school and made it to work okay, but I could tell I wasn't fully awake. Everything took my twice as long to do. I felt like my brain was foggy. I ended up leaving work after only being there about an hour.
I went home and went to sleep on the couch. I got Veronica from school and then slept on the couch some more. The other kids came home and I was still in a fog. I let them watch a movie almost as soon as they got home. Brandon doesn't come home from work on Wednesday evenings because it's his free night to do what ever he wants. So instead of making dinner I just let the kids eat cereal. I kept telling them I was sorry that I wasn't doing more for them. Charlotte was looking at me like, "What are you sorry about, we are having the time of our lives watching movies and eating cereal for dinner."
Somehow I did help everyone take baths and got them to bed at a decent time. I laid on the couch again after the kids were in bed. My brain finally cleared and I was able to take care of some things before Brandon got home. I was actually feeling much better by the time I went to bed.
I never did get sick so I guess the cold medicine worked, but I'm not taking nighttime cold medicine on a week night ever again.
Anyway, by Thursday I felt like I was finally feeling like myself again. I was awake, I was alert, and I was happy.
When the kids came home from school we got out their valentines cards and candy and worked on putting everything together.
Veronica's were airheads that slipped into two slots on a Valentine. These were relatively easy to put together. Derrick's were my favorite. His were stickers that he just had to stick onto packages of skittles. They were so easy. I want to find ones like that every year.
I went to PTA meeting and then went to Joanns and looked at fabric. Derrick wants me to make him a vest with whales on it to wear after he gets baptized. So I was looking to see what was available at the store.
The next day was by BIRTHDAY!!!! The kids all wished me a happy birthday all morning long. I dropped them off at school and then went to DI and did some major thrift shopping. I found 7 new shirts, three pairs of pants, 2 cardigans, 4 undershirts, and a really pretty swim suit cover up/dress.
Then we opened presents. Brandon did a good job picking things out.
Then we had home made cherry cheesecake as my birthday cake. Brandon had worked on this for hours the night before.
Saturday was a really laid back day too. We cleaned the house and then just hung around. Here are Charlotte and Lydia working on their valentines day boxes. They love to do craft projects on the living room floor.
Saturday night was another night where we didn't quite know what to do with ourselves. The 4th Harry Potter movie hadn't come in at the library yet so we couldn't watch that nor could we start reading the 5th book. And we didn't feel like watching another movie (which is kind of amazing since we usually LOVE watching movies.) Instead I grabbed a puzzle and we started working on that. Charlotte and Lydia helped a lot and we got pretty far before bed time
In the morning we worked on the puzzle some more and finished it before leaving for church. It had been really fun to do.
There was just one small thing I didn't like - we had to do a paperclip challenge. And I really didn't want to do it. I had some pretty strong feelings that worked their way into a blog post about how the Paperclip Challenge has a lot of Survivorship Bias built into it. I probably spent more time writing that post than anyone else spent trading their paperclip, but I had fun writing that post and got 50 page views and counting so I count that as a success.
On Monday after dinner we went to Winco and bought our reward for finishing out scripture reading chart for the last four weeks. Everyone got to pick out their own scoop of candy. Then we came home and sat around the table and traded candy with each other. We had a great time doing that.
At one point I glanced down and saw Antler napping in the cradle and I felt like she was living her best life.
I stayed up making chocolate covered pretzels. They turned out really cute.
Brandon had his adventure on Wednesday night so he didn't come home. But I actually made dinner for the kids this week. They were really good about taking baths and settling down. After the kids were in bed I went next door and talked to my neighbor Diantha for a little bit.
When I picked Veronica up from school we went inside the school and had lunch with Derrick. He's been having a tough time lately and so I wanted to observe him. Veronica was super mad that she didn't get Mac'n'Cheese like she usually does, but she was happier when she realized she got to eat the same lunch as Derrick.
After we left the school I told Veronica that we were going to get ready for our Valentines Day party today instead of waiting until Valentines that the next day. So we went to the dollar store and picked up balloons that we'd pre-ordered on Tuesday. When I'd ordered the balloons on wednesday the staff had acted like I was crazy to order the balloons ahead of time. They had to pull the order forms out of a drawer. But when I picked up the balloons the lady who helped me said that it was a good thing I'd ordered them. All the animal shaped balloons were already gone and she'd had to hide ours to keep other people from getting them.
Derrick gets out of school 10 minutes earlier than the girls. Usually he walks home super slow and there are even days the girls catch up to us while we are still walking home. Well, this day I said, "Derrick, I have a surprise for you at home." And he was off like a rocket. He even held my hand and made me run with him the last leg of the way home. He was so excited to walk inside and see all the fun things waiting for him.
I've given him a frog balloon every year for 4 years. He'd been talking about getting one for a few weeks leading up to Valentine's Day. I was happy to keep the tradition going.
The 4th Harry Potter movie had finally come in at the library so I went there to pick it up. I was hoping to get the 5th book too, but all four copies were checked out. So I placed a hold on that so we can get a copy when it comes in. (We own all the books except 4 and 5 so this won't be a problem going forward.)
On Friday I dropped all the kids off and went to work for a little bit. When I picked up Veronica after school she was full of stories about how fun the day had been. She showed me every valentine she got and told me exactly who gave it to her.
I was super close to finishing a post about Bruneau Dunes State Park so I worked on that until it was time to go back to the school. I got it published just a few minutes before we had to leave. (I would have been done sooner, but I got distracted and booked a campsite at the state park while I was supposed to be researching some facts on the website - these are the hazards of travel writing.)
I was excited to help in Charlotte's class. Her teacher asked me to bring a game or two. As I started to think about what I could bring I got a message from Lydia's teacher. Her class party was at the exact same time and I'd signed up to be a helper. At first I thought I'd just have to tell Lydia's teacher that I was double booked. They had other parents signed up in her class so I knew it wouldn't be that big of a problem for that class. But then I realized I should just ask Brandon to help. He was able to take a half day off work to come help out.
He went to Lydia's class and helped with the twister game that the other parents brought. I went to Charlotte's class. We played Don't Eat Pete with a board that my sister Lindsey e-mailed me. That's a game that my Aunt Vera taught us years ago. Lindsey says she takes it to her kids' classes every year and the kids are always really excited to play it. We also played a game where we shot q-tips out of straws and tried to hit a target. Charlotte had played that in kindergarten and had asked to do that.
Veronica was with me in Charlotte's class and she had fun playing all the games with the "big" kids. (She was as tall as half of the third graders.)
When the movie was over we watched the special features. That was really fun. The kids are just barely starting to understand special effects so it was fun for them to see how some things are done.
After we put the kids to bed Brandon and I tested out our downstairs fireplace for the first time. There is definitely some sort of venting problem and after a while our whole downstairs was full of smoke. But at least we know now.
A month ago Brandon told the kids that if they kept the house clean for a month then we would get a dog. Our house wasn't spotless during the last month, but the kids did clean up whenever we asked so we figured they'd earned the dog.
I follow the animal shelter on Facebook and saw that they were so full they were doing a half off special for Valentine's Day. That was good news.
Anyway, Brandon and the kids had narrowed it down to two dogs. One had a lot of applications for it already, but we were told the other one didn't have any other applications. That dog behaved well for us and didn't bark AT ALL (My main criteria) so we were all set on getting her. But then the office lady discovered that there were in fact applications on that dog. She was going to have to call them first and see if they were still interested. So we couldn't get the dog that day.
Veronica was so sad when we had to leave without a dog.
Later Brandon was like, "Well no wonder they are full, they don't have anyone managing their applications!"
The animal shelter referred us over to Petco where another rescue place was having an adoption event. That ended up not working out either. (And Veronica cried again.)
So we are still looking for a dog.
Overall I have not been impressed by the process. So far everyone has seemed super disorganized. Sure they love pets, but they don't seem to have a clue how to handle paperwork. Also everyone says you should really think through the decision to get a dog, but then they expect you to decide in a stinky, crowded, loud room with dogs barking everywhere.
Ugh.
Hopefully the dog we liked at the animal shelter ends up working out for us. She was really cute and well behaved. Brandon will call them when they open again on Tuesday and see what the situation is.
Anyway, we came home, had dinner and then helped the kids take baths. When everyone was in bed Brandon and I watched the movie RED. We've wanted to watch that for a while and we finally got the chance. It was really funny.
Today we had a good day at church. After church Brandon played a lot with the kids while I took a nap. In the evening I had my business class. It was good again. It's really forcing me to think about what I want to do with my writing career.
The kids are out of school the next two days so we are looking forward to some down time.
Well I think that gets us caught up.
As always thanks for reading.
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