Did you feel it?
Last week the energy in my life shifted. I'm not a believer in astrology or new age energy stuff, but I can't deny that last week I felt distinct shifts in my mind and my body as well as certain aspects of my life.
Maybe it's because we had a couple sunny days, maybe it's because my kids are getting older, maybe its because I have a birthday coming up.
I don't know what caused it, but I do know that many things in my life improved this week.
I'm really glad I did that place holder blog post last Sunday because now we don't have to waste time talking about that week. We can just dive into this one.
And what a week it was. The last time I felt a shift this profound was almost exactly 5 years ago. That's back when we were living with Brandon's parents and things were not going well. Brandon had just been told that he wasn't getting a job at an airport and it looked like we'd never get out of that house. At that low point I felt/heard something say, "Miracles have not ceased." Later that day Brandon and I decided he needed to go back to school and started the process of applying for the Aircraft Maintenance Program at ISU. That's also the week that I applied to work in Yellowstone. Both those things, Yellowstone and ISU, would turn out to be amazing, positive experiences that are still impacting our lives.
In fact, here's a painting I did last Sunday. The girls wanted to paint and I sat down to play around with the paints too. I didn't really have a plan for what I was doing, but after I added the trees I said, "This looks like Yellowstone!" The girls told me to add some geysers so I did. I'm so pleased with how this turned out. We have it hanging up in the kitchen and it's a reminder of a very special place.
Okay, so enough about the past. Let's talk about this week and those shifts I've been talking about.
Shift Number 1: Monday January 31st - I vacuumed the living room.
Okay that may not seem like a very big deal. But let me tell you why it is. I don't remember the last time I vacuumed the living room - or any room on a week day. Over the years we've gotten into the habit of just letting the house's cleanliness deteriorate all week long and then we dig out on Saturday. We usually spend a couple hours each Saturday getting the living room, family room, the kids bedrooms, and the bathrooms cleaned up.
Well, last Saturday we realized that maybe it's time to spend a few minutes cleaning up the house each night before sending the kids to bed. You may be thinking, "Well duh, Valerie. That's what you should have been doing all along." And technically you are right, but that just didn't work for us for the last decade. After a long day with little kids I was never in the mood to try to clean up the house in addition to trying to get them to bed.
But I realized that bedtime isn't a horrendous undertaking anymore. The kids aren't falling apart at bedtime anymore either. They actually still had some energy and wits about them to spend a few minutes cleaning up the house.
So we decided that we'd all spend 15 minutes each night cleaning up the day's mess.
Turns out we didn't even need 15 minutes. After about 8 minutes the house was back to looking pretty good. And I was just trying to come up with stuff to do. Hence why I vacuumed the living room on Monday night.
And that's not all, earlier in the day I'd washed the wall leading down into the basement. I'd been walking up the stairs while someone had the back door open. Sunlight was streaming in and I could see how dirty the wall was. Everyone touches that wall as they walk up and down the stairs so it had a whole layer of grime. Normally I would walk past that and think, "I'll have to take care of that later." But this time I realized that I had the time AND energy to take care of it now. I grabbed a microfiber cloth and wiped the wall down really well.
And that brings us to Shift Number 2: I have more energy for mundane things.
You read this blog, so you know that I'm pretty good at DOING things. But I like to do BIG things. The small, repetitive things are harder for me. It's like I get buried under a pile of tiny little tasks and I can't handle the pressure of all of them so I don't do them.
It doesn't help that for the past two years there's been a highly unpredictable pandemic that has been taking up a lot of my mental space. Dealing with the pandemic hasn't left much mental capacity for those smaller, mundane tasks.
But things are seeming to finally calm down with the pandemic. The Omnicom wave is on it's way out and my family is apparently immune to COVID anyway so I'm not as worried about the pandemic as I once was. And suddenly I'm looking at a dirty wall and thinking, "Yeah, I can clean that. It's not a big deal."
If those two shifts had been it for the week it would have been a pretty good week. But there's more to come. But first lets look at some pictures and talk about other things happening in the week.
Veronica finished her Zoo. She added cardboard dividers between the animals so they all have little cages. She is so excited with how this turned out.
So after school we had 6 kids in the house. It actually works out really well to have the other twins over. One is in Lydia's class and the other is in Charlotte's so they each have a home work buddy. The kids all sat down and did their homework together.
Brandon hadn't been able to get a substitute teacher job for that day so he'd stayed home and worked on the Jeep Engine. When the girls were stumped on their math one of the other twins wanted Brandon to explain it to her. So he came in and sat with her and explained the problem and how to solve it. Brandon is such a good math tutor because he struggled with math when he was a kid. He is so patient at explaining every step and he knows how to make it make sense. I honestly foresee a future when all of Charlotte and Lydia's friends want to study over here because Brandon is so good at explaining math.
Oh and speaking of the Jeep, that brings us to Shift Number 3: The jeep is finally getting put back together. Taking the engine apart resulted in multiple side quests for specific tools to take things off. When it finally looked like it was time to put things together Brandon realized that the car part company had only sent him 5 gasket rings instead of 6. So he had to wait for another ring to arrive. It finally arrived on Saturday and he went right to work. There are still 1000 things he has to do before the Jeep is running again, but at least we've moved onto the putting together phase rather than the taking apart phase.
Tuesday was a noteworthy day for a few reasons.
1. Brandon had a substitute job for a 7th Grade Language Arts class.
2. I passed a test for my Intermediate Accounting Class. I'd studied hard on Monday and Tuesday and took the test on Tuesday evening. Its always fun when I know that I've actually learned something. When I'd taken the pre-test on Saturday I'd been like, "What the heck does any of this mean?" But by the time I took the test I'd figured it out and I was like, "Oh I know exactly how to do this."
This accounting class is different than any of the other classes I've taken up to this point. The other classes just had one big test at the end. This class is split into two parts and each of them has a test. So when I passed this test I passed part one of the class. Now I have to move onto part two.
3. The third notable thing that happened is that I found a shelf I've been trying to find for at least a year. Let me back up and explain. Way back when we lived in Alabama, Brandon made two shelves for the kids bathroom. We took the shelves with us when we moved and eventually put them up in the craft area of our Pocatello house. We took them with us when we moved to Twin Falls.
About a year ago I decided I needed shelves in my bathroom and after looking at a bunch of options online, I remembered that we had those two shelves . . . somewhere. Brandon was able to find one and I stained it dark brown and Brandon hung it up. But we couldn't find the other shelf. I checked the craft room in the basement. Brandon looked all over the garage. It wasn't anywhere.
The disappearance of that second shelf has bugged me. I just couldn't figure out how we managed to lose a whole shelf.
Well on Tuesday morning I was taking a DVD out of our DVD player downstairs. We have a very jerry-rigged entertainment system and have been thinking about maybe switching to a real TV in the near future. I was thinking about that as I took the DVD out. I thought, "When we switch to a TV we wont need this shelf to hold all this stuff. I wonder what we can do with this shelf when we have a TV. Then I took a long look at the shelf and realized IT WAS THE MISSING SHELF. It's been here the whole time. I've looked at it every day.
I took a picture and texted it to Brandon. He was surprised as well. He'd thought he'd made a new shelf for the projector. But no, he'd just modified the one we already had.
Wednesday was a busy day. As a PTO we are doing a Candy Gram fund raiser. Liz had set up a time when we'd get together and put the candy into little pouches. She hosted it at her house Wednesday morning. and we had 3 other moms join us.
Brandon had to give me a ride over to Liz's because he had a job interview scheduled for that morning. (More about that in a minute.) I figured he could come get me when he was done or I'd just catch a ride with Liz when she went to pick up her kindergartener.
Everything went great with the candy grams. But we ran out of candy before we ran out of pouches. So we needed more Candy. Liz had a lot on her plate for the week so I told her, "Brandon's going grocery shopping today. He can pick up more candy." So we figured out the bulk candy we needed to buy.
I went to get my phone to call Brandon and have him pick me up, and I saw that I had missed calls from the school. My first thought was "What did Derrick do?" Followed by, "Who chipped a tooth now?"
But it was neither of those things. Charlotte was feeling faint and felt like she was going to throw up. So then I thought, "I think COVID finally found us." and "Oh shoot, I can't get to the school to pick her up." Liz lives on the edge of the school boundaries so I wasn't close enough I could just walk over and get Charlotte. And I wasn't able to get ahold of Brandon.
But it wasn't much longer until Liz had to get her kindergartener so I caught a ride with her and went into the school to get Charlotte. Charlotte wasn't exactly happy about the long wait, but I told her everything and I think she understood.
We walked home and when we got home she changed into pajamas and laid on the couch. Marsha was so sweet and laid down on her to help her feel better. After a while Charlotte started feeling a little better. She'd started feeling faint in music class and we guessed that maybe she'd locked her knees or something like that.
Eventually Brandon came home and told me all about this company where he'd interviewed. He'd first learned about the company at a job fair he'd gone to the previous Thursday. They had CNC machines (kind of metal carving machines) and Brandon went up to the guy at the booth and basically said, "I know what a CNC Machine is, but I don't know how to operate them. I would be willing to learn though." They had a good talk and Brandon gave the guy his resume and made a mental note to maybe follow up with him later.
Really he didn't think much of it.
So he was pleasantly surprised to get a phone call on Tuesday inviting him to an interview on Wednesday.
Brandon has been doing a lot of research on the maintenance mechanic jobs at various companies around Twin Falls. He's interviewed at a place that manufactures plastic silverware and cups, he's applied at several of the food production places, and he's talked to people that work in the maintenance departments at other places. So he went into this interview with the attitude of "let's see what this company is all about."
He came out of the interview with the attitude of "I'd be stupid not to work here."
The job checked a lot of the boxes for what we wanted in his next job. Here are some of them:
- A regular work schedule- Many of the maintenance positions around town require you to work 12 hour shifts on a rotating schedule. We didn't like how unpredictable that kind of schedule would be. But this company only had shifts from 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM on week days.
- Competitive Pay - Brandon has been underpaid at the RV place. I've known that he was worth more, but he's had a hard time believing me. That changed a few weeks ago when he had an interview at another company. The interview person told him what the starting wage was for Maintenance Mechanics AND that he was qualified for that job. That really helped boost his confidence. So when this job told him what the starting pay was he was very happy to hear the amount.
- A positive work environment - The man who interviewed Brandon was hired 9 day earlier to come in and improve the maintenance department. One of his goals is to improve the way that the department interacts with the machinery workers. (It sounds like it was pretty hostile before.)
- An HR Department - Of Brandon's last 4 jobs, 3 of them have been for "Mom and Pop" type companies that really haven't had great internal departments. This has led to a variety of problems. I can't tell you how many times I've said, "I wish you worked for a company with an actual HR Department." This company is a large company headquartered in Twin Falls. They definitely have an HR Department.
- Actual Employment Benefits - None of the last four places Brandon worked offered benefits so anything is better than nothing.
- Location close to home - The RV place was a mile and a half from home and that was pretty cool. This place is even closer. It's about a mile away.
Brandon felt like the interview had gone really well and he was expecting to hear back about it the next day.
I had to get to work so Brandon dropped me off there while he went grocery shopping. (We left Charlotte home because she just wanted to rest.) A few hours later Brandon called me and said, "Guess what happened while I was bagging groceries? I got offered a job." Then he made some joke about starting to work at Winco. But I knew he was joking. He'd been offered the job with the company where he'd interviewed!
The whole thing was kind of surreal. Just that morning I'd told the other PTO moms that Brandon was taking some time off from working to figure out what he really wanted to do. And 4 hours later he had a job.
Brandon accepted the job (because he'd be stupid not to), but then he immediately started second guessing himself. We talked about it and it basically boiled down to it seemed strange to get a job without stressing about it before hand.
I said, "normally we get dangerously low on our savings and start feeling scared. It's weird to skip that step this time."
We also agreed that it was better to accept the job and then have it not work out later, than to turn it down because he was worried it wont work out later. There weren't any red flags with this job so he might as well give it a try.
In other news, the other set of twins came home with us again after school. Their mom was stuck in a meeting so she texted me and asked if they could come over again. I told her Charlotte was sick, but they were welcome anyway. She said, "Well they've all been exposed to the same germs at school so I'm not worried about your house."
The girls all ran into the house after school, but Derrick took his sweet time. He wanted to break ice in our neighbor's driveway. Look at the snow that is still lining the streets. Despite some sunny days the temperature is barely making it above freezing most days. So we still have snow lining the streets. It's been there since Christmas Day. I really hope it melts soon.
Charlotte was feeling better that evening, but she wasn't feeling well enough to want to go to Young Women's and Lydia didn't want to go without her. So they both stayed home. Veronica had ordered some palmers clay from Amazon with money she'd earned and that had arrived on Tuesday. They spent the evening making lots of things with the clay. They made a lot of dragons and they said they were the dragon club.
Here are two of the many dragons that they made.
On Thursday we walked to school with Brandon for the last time. All six of us have walked to school together nearly every day this school year. So it's kind of sad that this will end with Brandon's new job, but we also knew that this was probably temporary anyway. I took pictures to document the end of this little era. Here's Veronica and me with Brandon in the background.
And here are the other three kids.
Derrick had Behavioral therapy so he went with Mr Kelly at 5:00 and the rest of us just hung out. I had all the stuff for our taxes and so I decided to start those because logging in always seems to be the hardest part of doing taxes. And once I was logged in I just went ahead and started doing the taxes. Everything went really well and I finished up pretty fast.
Brandon had to go into work just for paperwork on Thursday. He sat down with the HR department (YAY) and they went over the benefits (YAY). In hindsight I really should have been there for this part. Brandon started getting really overwhelmed as they explained the different benefit options. His brain was swimming with all the paperwork and benefit tiers. He bought the paperwork home and tried to explain it all to me. I could tell he was stressed. He felt like it was all his responsibility to understand this. I told him, "Hey I got this."
Later I told him, "remember when we were buying the house and the appraisal came back with a bunch of things that needed to be fixed. I was worried because they seemed like big issues. And you told me that everything on that list was something you could fix in a weekend. That what this is to me. I've been taking care of the kids' insurance since Charlotte and Lydia were born. Plus half my job is working with insurance. This is like a weekend project for me."
That made him feel better.
Liz had been texting me about the Candy Grams. She'd ben able to finish stuffing the pouches with candy, but realized that we've greatly overestimated the number of chocolates we'd need. There was at least $80 of individually wrapped bulk chocolates that had not been used. She was trying to figure out what to do with it. I said I'd call Winco and see if they'd take it back and refund it.
Winco was AMAZING and approved the return. I was so grateful. So Liz dropped the chocolate off at our house and Brandon took it back to Winco that afternoon. I sent Winco a thank you card later because they really saved the profit margins on our fundraiser.
In the afternoon I took Derrick to his speech therapy and occupational therapy appts. This was his second time with his occupational therapist and she wanted to work on tying his shoes. I was like, "Well I've completely given up on that, but yeah sure you can try."
I was so impressed by how she worked with him. She had him take off his boots and up them on her table. One boot was in front of her and the other was in front of Derrick. Then she showed him what to do and he followed along. I've never seen anyone teach a child how to tie shoes like this, but I can see how it helped.
When it was time for Derrick to go she had him sit on the floor and try to tie his boots. She was so patient with him and would show him and then have him try. I was pretty impressed.
But the real amazing part came the next morning. When it was time for Derrick to put his shoes on he sat on the floor and started tying his shoes the way he'd been taught. That in itself was a big deal. Normally he just sits and waits for me to come tie them. So the fact that he was even trying was a HUGE improvement.
He did a great job and only needed my help to tie the loops together. I was so proud of him. I gave him huge high fives. Later I emailed his team at school to let them know. And I also called the therapy office and had them relay a message to his therapist that Derrick had tied his shoes almost completely by himself that morning.
And on Saturday he tied his shoes 100% by himself. I never thought I'd see the day. So this definitely counts as Shift Number 4: Derrick can tie his own shoes.
Brandon started work on Friday at 6:00 AM. Yes, a whole 8 days after he even heard about the company he started working there. He has so much PTSD from bad jobs that he was super worried about this job. I was anxious to hear how it went. I breathed a sigh of relief that afternoon when he told me, "Well, I didn't hate it."
When he told me about his day he shared funny things his coworkers had said. He made like 4 jokes. He talked about what needed to be done to get the shop in good shape (another goal of the new maintenance manager.) Overall it seemed like he was happy.
One of the things he's been looking for is a job that is a "good enough" job. Since he has so many interests he'll never have a job that feels fulfilling 100% of the time. So he's been looking for a job that is doable, while leaving time and energy for his other interests. And that's what this job is.
So that brings us to Shift Number 5 - Brandon is finally working at a company that values him as an employee AND pays him what he's worth. (He's very rarely had those two things combined.)
My Friday had been pretty busy. I'd lied to myself and thought, "Oh I'll go into work early and get off early and then I'll study." This has never worked, but I still believed the lie.
So I went into work at 10:30 and 3 hours and 45 minutes later I panicked when I realized it was 2:15 and I needed to be at the school at 2:30 for a PTO thing. I hurried and shut my laptop and rushed out the door so I could run over to the school. I didn't even have time to call Brandon and see if he could come pick me up. I just rushed over to the school which is about a 10 minute walk from work.
I made it there in time and met with another mom who is interested in doing the social media for our PTO. It will be good to have help. Then I went into the office and heard all the fun reports from the office people about Derrick and the other kids. And then I went outside and met up with the kids to walk home with them.
I never did get that studying done.
Brandon was at the corner and walked home with us. When we got home he went to Wendy's and picked up a celebration dinner for us all.
Meanwhile Brandon had set up a little picture studio and was taking pictures of the kids for their Lagoon Season Passes. He had two bright shop lights set up and was using white cardboard to reflect the light. Here's what it looked like when Derrick came home.
We soaked them in the sink with borax and washing soda. Then I rinsed them out.
And then spread them out on the table to dry. This picture is of about half the legos. They were so clean and shiny when they were all done.
When Brandon came home I took the kids to Smiths to buy valentines. The kids already knew what they wanted so we walked in and bought the things and checked out really quick. I was expecting this to take a lot longer than it did so when we were back at the car 5 minutes after we went in I said, "Well what else should we do?"
On Saturday I woke up and laid in bed stressing about work. I'd had to leave in such a hurry that I hadn't been able to finish everything. Monday was my birthday and I didn't want to walk into my office and have to pick up where I left off on Friday.
So after I woke up a little bit more I decided to just go to work for about an hour and get things straightened up. I'm so glad I did that. It was so nice to know things will be organized on Monday.
Meanwhile, Brandon had been helping the kids clean their rooms. They didn't need to clean up the living room and family room because we'd been keeping them clean all week.
Brandon had to go help a friend move. While he was gone I decided it was time to clean the legos. We'd recently moved the legos from one big bin to several smaller ones. Seeing all the debris at the bottom of the bin made me want to clean all the legos.
What else ended up being the park. The kids had fun playing on the frozen stream that ran through the park and I talked on the phone with my sister Lindsey.
After the park I could have taken the kids to a Basket Ball game at the College. The kids all had t-shirts that got them into the game for free. When they'd first brought home the shirts all the kids wanted to go, but that number kept decreasing. Finally it was just one kid who wanted to go. And she was on the fence about it. Then she decided she didn't want to go.
I had a handful of errands to run and I asked if anyone wanted to go with me. Brandon volunteered so we made it a date. When we were done with the errands Brandon didn't want to go home yet. So we went to Kneaders for desserts.
We got a Chocolate Mousse Dome and a Fruit Tart. They were delicious.
John Hafen's Girl among the Hollyhocks: No way! That print is only sold at the Church History Museum! It costs $90 for an 18 x 20, and $175 for a 25 x 28. It isn't sold at Deseret Book. Are you sure you want to give it to the church? Maybe it's damaged a little and that's why you're willing to part with it?
We also stopped at DI to see if we could find a love seat for the living room. While we were there we looked for a painting for my secret mission to put up something pretty in the Mother's Room of the church building.
We looked through the paintings and found a few contenders. And then we found one that I recognized. It's one my mom has mentioned several times. I bought it thinking, "My mom loves this painting so other moms will appreciate it too."
I sent her this picture in a text saying that I'd found the perfect painting for the mothers room.
This is what she wrote back soon after:
At the same time, we'd brought the painting into the house and I was realizing how well it matched the colors in my living room.
And I re thought my plan. I was like, "My mom loves this painting. I'd be crazy to give it away." Plus her knowledge of the prices helped me realize that I'd got an amazing bargain.
So now it's up in my living room.
That night we decided to rent Ghostbusters Afterlife from Redbox. We'd all been anxiously waiting for this move ever since we watched the trailer about 2 years ago. The movie was good (though I think the trailer promised more than what was delivered.)
The kids loved it. When it was over Derrick said, "That movie was PERFECT!"
We'd all enjoyed the call backs to the first movie and it was definitely worth the rental.
Veronica had loved the movie, but when Brandon and I got back from our late night walk that night I found Veronica laying in her bed with the light on. She said, "I'm afraid I'm going to have bad dreams."
She wanted to sleep in my bed. I told her I'd stay with her until she fell asleep. So I turned off the light and sat on her bed. After a while her breath seemed to deepen and I thought she was asleep, but as soon as I got up to leave she said, "No! Don't go!"
So I sat with her again. I thought she fell asleep, but when I got up to leave she told me to stay again.
At this point it was near midnight and I just gave up. I went and got my pillow from my room and then laid down in Veronica's bed. I thought I might be able to sneak away later, but that never happened. At one point I tried to roll over and Veronica said, "Don't leave me!"
So yeah, that was an eventful night.
But still she loved the movie. All during church today she drew pictures of things from the Ghostbusters movies.
And that gets us caught up to today once again.
Today is February 6th. Tomorrow is my 37th birthday. As usual, I keep forgetting that my birthday is coming up and so I didn't plan much birthday stuff for tomorrow. But I'm still excited for the day anyway. Last year on my birthday I made the decision to go back to school. I don't think I'll make any decisions that big tomorrow. But with all this shifting energy anything could happen.
Thanks for reading.
And I'm hoping you felt some positive energy shifts in your life too.
I'm so glad your life is going so well! It sounds like you have some exciting things happening and I can't wait to see where things go.
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