illguthlife: Where did that month go?

Okay, here is part two of my attempts to get this blog updated after more than a month of being super busy.

Part one is about Veronica's birthday and baptism.

This part is about EVERYTHING else. And because there is so much this is going to be organized more by topic than chronologically.

Let's start with the 2 things that were happening the same week as Veronica's baptism. 1. A Magic Valley Symphony concert and 2. My school stuff.

Symphony Concert

There are a lot of things that have come back to me as I've started playing the string bass. I remembered how to read bass clef. I've remembered how to do the fingering and hand positions. I've remembered (some) of the major and minor keys.

This month I also remembered that I basically ALWAYS want to quit, but then I ALWAYS find a reason to stay. This was a cycle that repeated itself every year between 5th and 12 grade and has started up again.

I almost quit the Symphony in September. I didn't have time to practice and the weekly rehearsals felt like a big commitment when I was already so busy. Would anyone really miss the 4th bass player anyway?

But I decided to give it one more rehearsal and see how I was feeling by the end of it. And it ended up being a fabulous rehearsal. I'm still mediocre at best, but everyone around me is so talented. It's an honor to be on that stage making music with everyone.

For example, one of the songs we are playing is the Finale from The Pines of Rome. My part is literally plucking 8th notes of B over and over again. At the big key change I switch to B flat. It's not fancy, it's not technical, and actually it's a little painful after a while. But oh my goodness there are some amazing things happening with the horns and trumpets while I'm playing. I'm within a few feet of the English Horn during it's solo. I get chills every time.

The other songs were fun to play too. We were playing a long Beethoven piece with the Monarch Trio from ISU. There were a lot of parts where the first bass player was the only one who needed to play and the rest of the section just came in at certain parts. I seriously considered not playing that song at all because it seemed so pointless to be on stage for 17 minutes and only play for a total of 5. But at rehearsal I'd had fun with the parts that I did play and I realized if I sat on a stool I didn't feel like I was standing on the stage bored when I wasn't playing.

Our third song was Conga del Fuego Nuevo. The rhythm had seemed really complicated at previous rehearsals, but at this one I finally figured it out. And it was so fun to play.

A while ago I saw a quote that says, "You don't have to be good at something for it to be good for you." And that perfectly sums up what the heck I'm doing in the Magic Valley Symphony.

So I walked away from that rehearsal still wanting to play. But I also still had a lot to do.

Namely the pre-concert slide show. Yes, I'm still in charge of that. I tried to get out of it, but realized that it would be easier to do this season because the audience would actually be in the auditorium and would have the program in front of them. So I didn't have to stress about putting ALL the program info into the slide show.

I worked on it a bit here and there and then sent it over to Ted (the director) for approval. He and Amy Toft had some suggestions and I put those in. Then I told them I had my daughter's baptism coming up and I would only do little edits after that point. Boundaries are good because 2 days before the concert when Ted cc'd me on an email with a ton of info and said that maybe I could put it in the slideshow I just ignored it. And the slide show was just fine without all the info.

The week leading up to the concert was also the week leading up to Veronica's baptism. This is what our rehearsal schedule looked like:

Tuesday Oct 5 - optional rehearsal

Thursday Oct 7 - rehearsal on stage

Saturday Oct 9 - dress rehearsal

Sunday Oct 10 - Concert

I opted to not go to the option rehearsal (I worked on the slideshow instead) but I went to all the others. Brandon and the kids came to the dress rehearsal. They liked hearing the songs. Charlotte and Lydia asked when they can come to a real concert. I told them they can when they can sit through the whole rehearsal without going to the bathroom.

My parents were still in town on Sunday so they were able to go to the concert. I used the comp tickets that would have gone to my family and used them for my parents. It was fun to have them there. They haven't seen me live in a concert since my Sr year of high school.

The concert went really well. Was I great? No. Did I need to be? Also No. Did I enjoy myself. Yes.

Here's a video of the La Conga del Fuego Nuevo. This song has been in my head for DAYS.

My parents would always say "that deserves ice cream" after my school concerts, so they made sure that we already had ice cream waiting back at the house.

There wasn't much downtime after the concert though. We had our next rehearsal on Tuesday Oct 12. We are getting ready for our November concert when we play a Gershwin Piece that is back to haunt me. So I'm back to wondering if I should quit. (I won't, but I'm going to think about it anyway.)

School Stuff

Okay, now let's talk about what's going on with school because that is a huge backdrop to everything else I'm doing.

I finished Financial Accounting before we went to Yellowstone and when we came home it was time for me to start Taxation 1. This class is basically an overview of how to do personal taxes. And so, in theory, this should have been an easy class for me. I worked for H&R Block doing taxes for people way back in 2006. In fact, if I'd taken the H&R Tax course in the last decade it would have counted as credit for this class. So this class should have been easy for me.

But it wasn't easy. It actually was really hard to get through. The problem was that I already knew that I never wanted to do personal taxes professionally. I'd liked working for H&R Block. But I didn't like being that involved in people's personal finances. So the whole time I was taking the class I kept thinking, "I'm NEVER going to use this. I don't want to go over this."

Plus I didn't like the layout of the class. I felt like a lot of concepts were backward from the order that I learned them in when I took the H&R Class. It felt needlessly confusing.

I'd given myself 3 weeks to get through the class. In retrospect I probably could have made it through in half that time, but my lack of motivation slowed me down. I finally muscled my way though the course material and took the test the morning of Veronica's birthday. I was so happy to pass and be done.

The next Monday I started Operations Management. This is a subject I like and I often say that if I get a Masters it will be in Supply Chain and Operations Management. Plus the course was supposed to be easy. And it was. I'd mapped out three weeks for the course, but I was able to get through it in two. I took the test and passed the Friday before Veronica's baptism.

Now I'm in Managerial Accounting and liking it very much. I've finally figured out a good daily routine now that the kids are in school. I spend the morning working on school stuff and then go into work around 12:00. (That may sound like a very simple schedule, but it took a lot of trial and error to figure out that it was the best schedule.)

Oh also I earned a Scholarship. I get $650 each semester. That's pretty nice to have.

Going out to eat

I mentioned in a previous post that Brandon's student loans are basically paid off now. It's a huge deal. Now that the loans are gone we have so much more discretionary income. Most of it is going to other important priorities, but some of it is going toward going out to eat. I've never really been a restaurant person because we've had so much debt to deal with, but with breathing room in the budget Brandon and I can finally relax a little.

We want to go out to lunch together at least once a week. But so far Brandon has been super busy with work. So instead it's been me going out to lunch with various people.

The first time I went was when my Aunt Diane came into town.

Wait, back up, I don't think I've talked about my Aunt Diane's visit yet. Diane is my mom's sister. She and her husband Sean live in Denver, but have thought about retiring to Twin Falls since before I lived here. They decided to come out to Twin to get a feel for the area. They stayed in a hotel and came over for pizza the first night they were in town. Then the next day Diane, Sean, and I went to lunch at the Twin Falls Sandwich Company in Down Town Twin. It was really fun to sit and talk with them.

The next time I went out to lunch was later that week. I was invited by some of the ladies in my ward to go out to lunch. (They'd been making plans and I'd just happened to be in the right place at the right time.) We went out to Red Robin. Two of the ladies happen to be in Relief Society Presidency.

At some point in the conversation the fact that I don't have a calling came up. Justine is the counselor over Activities and immediately asked me if I wanted to be on that committee. I really, really, really should have said no. I mean, are you reading this blog? I do not have time for one more thing.

But.

I LOVE the Relief Society Activity Committee. I have served in that calling in one way or another in nearly every ward I've ever lived in. I always go to the activities anyway, and Justine assured me it wasn't a big commitment. She just needed someone to give her ideas. Well I can do ideas. I'm made of ideas.

We decided this didn't have to wait for this to be an official thing. We could just get together sometime to talk about ideas.

So a few weeks later, Justine and I met up at Noodles and Company and had a great time getting to know each other and talking about ideas. Only there was just one problem. I didn't have any ideas. At all!

We hammered out a rough plan for the next few months, but I started feeling like maybe this was not the season of my life to worry about Relief Society.

Then last week the Bishop called and asked if I could meet with a member of the Bishopric on Tuesday. And on Tuesday they officially asked me to be on the RS Activity Committee. And then the ideas came. So many ideas. It was like the revelation was just waiting for this to be official.

I was set apart for the calling today. The bishop gave me a beautiful blessing that involved phrases like "Think outside the box," "help women develop connection," and "we bless you with determination." (Brandon said I didn't need to be blessed with that last one, I already have enough.) The whole blessing felt like God saying, "You already know what to do. You have permission to go do it." So I'm really excited for this opportunity to do my favorite calling in my favorite ward.

Anyway, we've digressed from what we were talking about which was going out to eat.

My bible study group has started meeting at a Java which is a local coffee house. The first morning we met there I was a little uncertain about what I should order. I mean, I knew I wasn't going to order coffee, but if I ordered hot chocolate it would be in a container that looked like it could have been coffee. I don't really care what people think I'm drinking, but I'm possibly the first "Mormon" some of the women in my bible study have ever met. (Several of them grew up back East and only recently moved to Idaho.) I don't want them finding out later that Mormons don't drink coffee and then being confused because they saw Valerie drinking coffee a bunch of times at Bible Study.

So I thought about ordering orange juice or something like that. But the orange juice was like $3.50 and if I was going to pay that kind of money I wanted something warm. So I decided to not worry about appearances and just order a White Hot Cocoa. But when I sat down to drink it I realized that the lady had given me a white mocha. (I don't blamer her, I mean it was 6:30 in the morning, everyone else in line was ordering caffeine.)

So then I had a whole new dilemma. Do I just politely sip my wrong order, or go back to the counter and correct the lady. I went back to the counter and got my drink corrected. And that took care of letting everyone at the table know that Valerie was definitely not drinking coffee.

Bible Study has continued to be fabulous. We finished the book of Titus and I also finished reading the book Women of the Word that Liz, the lady in charge of Bible Study, lent me. It was a fabulous book that completely changed my approach to scripture. I highly recommend it.

We are going to study another book during the holidays and then do another book of scripture in the New Year. And we'll be meeting at Java each time.

I really like Java. It's has a fun vibe to it. I liked it so much that Brandon and I went there for Hot Chocolate one morning before he went to work. Here we are waiting for our order.

We still haven't made it on a lunch date yet, but we did go out to eat for a dinner date last week. We left the kids home watching a movie on Friday evening and went to O'Dunkins on Main Street. We both had really yummy sandwiches. Then we walked around Main Street.

Okay, let's move onto some kids stuff.

Charlotte's story

A few weeks ago the Elementary School had Author Gary Hogg come do some writing workshops with the kids. He went to each classroom and had the children think about something they could write about a potato. It could be fiction, personal narrative, non-fiction. What ever they wanted. He gave them a few minutes to write and collected their responses.

All week long my kids were coming home and telling me about this guy and what he'd done in their classroom. Charlotte brought home her potato story because she wanted to keep working on it. She read it to me and I thought it was really clever, but I didn't think too much about it. She and Lydia are always writing and drawing things.

Well she finished her story and took it back to school. She came home and told me that her teacher had taken the story and said something like, "Oh Gary will want to read this." We weren't sure if that meant he'd want to read it to himself or out loud at the family event that night.

Well that night we found out that it meant he wanted to read it out loud. Here's the video of him reading Charlotte's story. (Sorry about the background noise. Derrick was sitting in my lap and decided this was a perfect time to make some odd noises.)

I was so proud of Charlotte. I hadn't heard the second half of the story so I was genuinely laughing at the clever little things in her story. And she was quite proud of herself too. She was so flattered that another author had told her she had excellent "Authors Voice." She's comes from a long line of writers so it's not too surprising.

Speaking of things at the school let's do a quick update about . . .

PTA

I was put in as Treasurer, but since the previous president was stepping away, and we didn't have a new one yet I seemed to be doing a stint as the de facto president. At the Family Night I'd made an announcement asking anyone who was interested in volunteering to talk to me. I got contact info for a few people, but when asked, none of them were interested in a leadership role.

I also led the September PTA meeting where two other parents attended. But again, they weren't interested in a leadership role.

At this point I was like, "Well I tried. If the PTA dies this year it wasn't my fault."

Fortunately, Liz from Bible Study is also a parent at the elementary school. And when I texted every parent I knew asking them if they were interested in being one of the co-presidents she actually replied affirmatively.

She has a few commitments that are ramping down so we have plans to get this PTA thing going slowly for now but come in strong in January.

Okay, let's see what else is there to talk about. Let's look at some random pictures for a minute.

When we were in Yellowstone Derrick picked out a volcano model kit. It came with a mold, some plaster of paris, and some paint. Brandon helped Derrick work on the model a little bit every day. Derrick was so excited when it was finally time to see the Volcano explode.

Here's some cupcakes Brandon made one Sunday.

Brandon and I were chilling out on the couch one evening when the kids came up the stairs wearing funny hats and boxes on their heads.

Here's one of the books that Gary Hogg wrote. Each of the kids got free books from him.

When my Aunt Diane was in town we took her to see Twin Falls Falls. We have a super low water situation right now so the falls were mostly a trickle.

Tooth Adventures

Derrick had a loose tooth and wiggled it out. The tooth fairy came and he was exited to get money. A few days later he said he had another loose tooth. It didn't seem that loose to me, but he worked at it and pulled it out. I'm about 60% sure this was a baby tooth, but part of me is still wondering if it was an adult tooth that he somehow broke out of his mouth. Brandon had a long talk with Derrick about not pulling his teeth out until they are super wiggly.

Speaking of teeth we had quite a little tooth saga that I might as well talk about here.

One Friday after school Charlotte mentioned that she'd bonked her front tooth on a pole on the playground and it had chipped a little bit. She said it hurt when she bit down. So I called the dentist office. They were already closed so I just left a message.

On Monday they called me back and we made an appt to go in on Tuesday morning. I took her in and they x-rayed it. The chip was small and the dentist wasn't too concerned, but we decided to have it filled anyway. Charlotte wasn't in much pain so I wasn't in a rush to get an appt. We picked the earliest available morning appt which was like 3 weeks away.

They next day Lydia was making a big deal about how she didn't want to go to school. Her teacher was gone for a few days. Lydia hates substitutes under the best of circumstances and these were far from them. The school district had a massive substitute teacher shortage and so there wasn't a substitute available for Lydia's class. The Principal was forced to cover the time by rotating in the Librarian, Music Teacher, Computer Teacher, and PE Teacher during the times they didn't have classes in their rooms. Then she and other staff covered the remainder of the time. So basically Lydia's class was getting babysat by a rotating slate of teachers.

Plus Lydia didn't like the boys she sat by. Her best friend hadn't been in class on Tuesday and Charlotte had been at the dentist in the morning. So Tuesday had been a hard day. She did not want to go to school on Wednesday.

I tried to convince her that maybe it would be better on Wednesday. Maybe they'd have a sub the whole day. Charlotte would be back and maybe her best friend too. But Lydia was not swayed. We finally agreed that she should go to school and try it and then if it was terrible she could call me and I'd come get her.

Brandon and I always walk the kids to school in the morning. We mostly do it for Derrick because I need to see him enter the building. But we really like talking with the kids as we walk to school. So we dropped the kids off at the school and then walked home. It was barely 8:00 when we got home. We'd been in the house for maybe two seconds when I got a call from the school. I was like, "Lydia, at least give the day a chance."

It was the Assistant Principal. She explained that Lydia had tripped on the playground, skinned her knee, and chipped a tooth.

I thought, "Wow, she really committed to getting out of school today."

I drove right over to the school and picked up Lydia. Her chipped tooth was much bigger than Charlotte's had been. I called the dentist and got her an appt for about an hour later. When we arrived at the dentist's office I joked that it seemed like we'd just been there. And I said something about "there must be some sort of 5th Grade Fight Club happening on that playground."

The dentist looked at Lydia's tooth and then sent us to make an appt in order to get it filled. This was a much bigger priority for me than Charlotte's had been and I was willing to come it at any time to get it fixed. The had an opening in about two hours.

So then Lydia and I ran to my work so I could get some things done there. Lydia had fun chilling out on my couch. She was in a good mood and we took this picture to document her chip.

I realized that Lydia probably wouldn't want to eat after she was numb. So before we went to the dentist we stopped at McDonalds.

Then we went back to the dentist and got the chip filled. This is the only dentist office my kids have had where I've been in the room while they get worked on. It's very strange for me and I usually just play on my phone while the work gets done.

Here's the after picture of her tooth. As good as new.

Car Problems

Oh and I really should mention that it was a good thing the girls didn't chip their teeth the week before because we didn't have a working car for a couple days there.

The jeep is still in pieces and Brandon has been waiting on various parts.

So Brandon and I have been sharing the Honda. He took it to buy something or other at a tool store one Monday evening. And when he was in the parking lot he couldn't get the key to turn in the ignition.

He finally got it to work and drove home, but after that the key wouldn't turn again. Brandon ended up riding his bike to Auto zone to buy a new ignition cylinder and then there was some stuff with tumblers and chips and sensors and I really don't know what else. All I know is that it's a good thing I've set up my life like a medieval peasant - everywhere I needed to go was within one mile. I walked to work, and Derrick and I walked to his speech therapy appointment on Tuesday. And I had a work meeting instead of rehearsal on Tuesday night so getting to rehearsal was a non issue.

We did have to go to the church for Veronica's baptism interview and our church is a little beyond walking distance. But Brandon had his work truck so we all drove in that. And on Wednesday afternoon Brandon took the girls to their activity in the truck. Brandon was able to work whatever magic he needed to finish fixing the ignition and the Honda was working again by the time we had to pick the girls up from Girls activity. They were so excited to get in the Honda again.

Buying Stuff

Since we refinanced the house in September we didn't have to make a mortgage payment in October. And that meant we were able to take some of the money that would have gone to the mortgage and buy some things we've needed but just haven't bought for one reason or another.

Some of the things included new sheets for our bed, a large laundry basket - with wheels- for Charlotte and Lydia. and an over the door mirror for the hall.

My favorite purchase ended up being this behind the toilet shelf thing for the kids bathroom. The kids bathroom has always been something of an embarrassing room for me. I try to ignore it as much as possible. It's small and laid out weird and it always seems to be a mess. I really want to remodel it, but that's not happening at least until the jeep is done (and probably not for many months after that). So I decided we might as well try to fix the storage situation in the bathroom. One of the problems is it always seems to have towels on the floor so I bought an over the door towel rack to hang on the back of the door and this storage thing to hold other towels. It COMPLETELY changed the room. Just a few shelves, some decorations, and some artfully arranged bathroom items and suddenly this weird little bathroom looked kind of fancy. It definitely looked nicer. I also replaced to burned out light bulbs and the better lighting helped the room too. For the first time since we moved in, I like looking in this room. I even use it sometimes.

Garden stuff

What would a blog update be without a garden update? My garden has been producing a lot this fall.

Here's Charlotte with some of the raspberries. We've had so many. I keep thinking we've had the last of them and then a few days later I go outside and there are more. Even the few frosts we've had haven't stopped the berries yet.

Here are the girls on another day after harvesting cucumbers, beans, hot peppers, and the last of the onions.

My tomatoes had a rough start this year, but they eventually did what they needed to.

Here I am with the tomatoes. They are taller than me.

See! This was a goal of mine for a few years so I'm excited I finally did it.

Here's more raspberries.

Jalapeños.

And carrots! I've never grown these successfully so these were a surprise. I'm going to plan more in the exact same spot next year.

During Conference Weekend I spent all Saturday outside working on the font yard. My main goal was to divide the Tulip bulbs I planted two years ago and to add in Daffodils, Crocuses, and Hyacinths. A few other projects happened along the way.

In order to divide the bulbs I'd have to dig up a lot of the wild flowers that were growing on top of them. So I took pictures to document all the pretty flowers before I had to dig them up.

Look at this Gladiola. I didn't plan any Glads this year. And even if I did they usually bloom in July. But this one popped up out of nowhere and bloomed on Veronica's birthday.

I like all these little flowers.

Here's the Hollyhock still blooming.

I love these little pink and blue flowers, but I don't know what they are.

Okay now for some before and after pictures. Here's a before picture.

And here's the after. I dug out the cement that was holding the Times-News sign, moved a rose bush and moved the big rock that was covered up by one of the rose bushes.

You can see the rock and the rose bush better in this picture.

I also redid the little brick walkway.

And here's the other side of the garden bed. There are now lots of bulbs waiting under this whole garden bed. They are going to look amazing in the spring.

Doing all that yard work was fun, but it completely wore me out. I was so sore and so tired afterward. I spent a long time laying in bed.

On Conference Sunday I just sat on the couch and worked on uploading pictures for scheduled posts for the Family History Facebook and Instagram Pages that I created for my dad's family history book.

Brandon Adventures

Brandon's work schedule has changed. When we were homeschooling he wouldn't go into work until 10:30 and then would come home at 6:30. Now he goes into work around 8:30 and comes home around 4:30. It's nice to have him home earlier in the evenings. But I don't really count on him too much because sometimes he gets sent out on mobile calls that take him all over. He's go as far as Sun Valley on a regular basis.

He's also gone to Sun Valley two times for non work related stuff. One time was on a camping trip with his Brother in Law Justin. Justin is part of a drone search and rescue group that looks for remains of missing hikers. His group was going to be in the Sun Valley area. Brandon had a blast on the trip and came home talking all about how he wants to get a drone pilot rating.

The other time was to visit his friend from ISU.

My work

I'm still loving my job. It's been pretty steady lately and I've sort of been able to catch up on a lot of things. There were a few days that I had to cover front desk and those were a little nuts. But other than things have been pretty routine.

I realize this is a little tiny burb for something that takes up 15 hours each week, but really there's not much to tell about my job.

Last little bits

I think we are reaching the end of this recap. We did a lot of fun stuff over the weekend, but I think I'll save all that for the next post. (Which hopefully will be sooner than a month.)

Here are Veronica and Lydia playing with the hot wheels track. I think they did this during conference.

And here is a picture of one of my favorite parts of each day. I love when the kids come home from school. We have a snack and they sit down to do home work. I'm glad I'm able to be home for them at this time.