Back to normal?

 This post should be pretty short because, for the first time in a long time, we had a really simple week.  

I mean we still had things like work and therapy and church activities, but those were just the routine things. There wasn't anything extra this week.  And THERE WAS NO PLAY. The Music Man has been a huge thing on our schedules since January 9th. Now that it's over life feels really calm and simple. 

Case in point, this picture of all the kids hanging out on the couch playing Shell Shocker. 

I wanted a way to spend some time with Charlotte and Lydia again. They've been so busy with the play that I really haven't seen much of them.  So we started reading The Hunger Games on Sunday night at bedtime. They got hooked on that book and beg me to read it every night. It's been a while since we read a book with them so it's been really fun to do that. 

The weather has been really dreary.  We've had like one sunny day in the last week. So I went outside hunting for signs of spring. 

There are daffodils growing behind the house. 

The new lilac bush is budding.  

These tulips on the west side of the house are getting big. 

Here's a daffodil at the front of the house. 

Tulips popping out in front of the house. 

Strawberries in a bed in the back. 

A little growth bud on the locust tree. 

Buds on the cherry tree.

Yep spring is trying. 

Our dumpster was supposed to be picked up on Monday morning.  But while I was at work I got a phone call from PSI.  They were unable to pick up the dumpster because the arm chairs were sticking out. The dumpster lids had to be able to shut. 

But because PSI is awesome they gave us a solution.  They'd reschedule the pick up for Tuesday and a bulk pick up for Wednesday.  

So we took the chairs out of the dumpster on Monday and it was picked up on Tuesday. They sent a truck to pick it up.  The driver just cinched the lids down with tie downs and then picked it up and drove off. 

Tuesday was actually a really nice day outside.  I made the kids go outside and play.  I gave the trees their first dose of iron for the year. I also fertilized the lawn.  The fertilizer needed to be watered in. I knew it was supposed to rain/snow on an off the next few days so I figured that would do the trick.  So on Wednesday when it started snowing I was like, "NO, oh wait I wanted this. Yes!"

Brandon spent a lot of time wiring the garage.  He was adding 10 LED lights and several plugs into the ceiling. I helped him string some of the wire. But I got lost when he started talking about wiring the switches.  I couldn't figure out how the input wires and output wires interacted with all those switches. 

Here's the bank of switches. I decided this was just magic. 

Here's Brandon wiring a light into place. 

Here's one of the outlets in the ceiling.  One is for the router, two are for garage door openers, and one is for the loft area. 

On Tuesday night I had Bible Study at PTO Liz's house. It was so good.  We are studying 1 Peter and I'm learning to love that little letter. 

When I got home on Tuesday night I moved the chairs out to the curb so they'd be out there for the bulk pick up on Wednesday. I'm sure our neighbors were pretty sick of looking at those chairs at this point. I cheered when they finally got picked up.

Charlotte and Lydia had a young womens activity at skateland on Wednesday night. When they got home Brandon was showing me that he had all the plugs wired in place and four of the lights. 

On Thursday Brandon finished wiring all the lights in the garage.  He took me out there that evening and showed me how bright it was. 

Here's an after picture of the lights. 

Here's the before picture to jog your memory. What a difference. 

Actually you can still see that incandescent lightbulb holder in this picture.  You can see that Brandon moved the position of the lights.  He also set them up in zones so you don't have to turn them all on if you are running into the garage for something really quick. 

Look at the whole thing.  Doesn't it look AMAZING?  

There is one more thing that needs to be done.  We bought a garage door opener so we can open the garage and get the bikes out easily. Last summer I was considering that we should build some sort of "bike garage" behind the house.  I wanted somewhere we could park the bikes easily.  But then I was like, "Um we already have a garage.  Let's just make it easy to get in and out of the garage with the bikes."  A garage door opener is a little expensive, but it's probably less expensive than building a bike garage. 

Oh and I guess that we do eventually need to reinsulate the garage. But that's not super urgent.  Brandon sealed all the cracks and honestly that's doing a decent job of keeping out the cold.  We'll want the insulation done before things get too hot this summer. But that's a few months away. 

On Friday night we went to a game night with Ivan (AKA Harold Hill AKA The fish man). His wife and kids were there too. It was really fun to get to know them all better. There were a lot of laughs. 

Saturday was April 1st. I'm pretty terrible at April Fools Day jokes, but Veronica had a good idea for one.  She wanted me to buy pistachio ice cream and switch it with mint ice cream. That was a great idea.  But when I went to the store on Friday the only pistachio ice cream was $6. And I wasn't about to spend $6 on a joke that my kids wouldn't actually eat.  So I bought coffee flavored cookies and cream ice cream and regular cookies and cream ice cream. When I got home I emptied the regular cookies and cream icecream into a bowl and then put the coffee flavored ice cream into the regular carton. 

On Saturday we cleaned the house really well and then I said we could have ice cream as a treat. I scooped everything out into bowls and gave it to everyone at the same time. Then I waited for the reactions.  NO ONE NOTICED! Like at all.  I was smerking so they asked me what was up.  I told them and everyone was like, "Oh it is a little different."  They kept eating and even asked for more.  

Well at least I tried. 

We listened to General Conference off and on all weekend. We listened while we cleaned on Saturday morning.  In the afternoon Brandon went with the twins to the other twins' house so he could help Macey with some wiring at her house.  Charlotte and Lydia ended up spending the whole day there and didn't get home until about 9:00.

I did a ton of laundry all day on Saturday.  During the first session of conference on Sunday I went through all the kids clothes. We pulled out things that don't fit anymore and figured out what they need more of.  Derrick is set for a while, but the girls all need more T-shirts and pajamas.  Everyone needs Easter outfits too. (I skipped doing that last year and so I really want to give them new outfits this year.)

Here's a picture of how conference looks this afternoon.  Everyone is playing various games on computers, but we are all together and mostly listening.  It works for us. 

And that gets us caught up.  I told you this was a simple week.  And guess what?  Next week looks pretty simple too. I think I could get used to this.