illguthlife: A Very Full Week in May

Here we go with another belated recap of another action packed week in May. This one is about May 8 -14th. I kind of had a change of heart about May during this week. I follow a reporter named Molly Grantham on Facebook. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina and I started following her when she wrote a post about her infant son's bout with covid in the early days of the pandemic. I liked her writing and started following her and never regretted it.

She has three kids. A daughter who is ten-ish. A boy who is 6 or 7 and then the covid baby who is now three. That kid is adorable. There was a whole saga last year where he latched onto a green star shaped balloon and carried it with him for days.

Anyway, I like following Molly because she is juggling work and kids and life in general and she's super relatable about it all. She was talking about how she realized that as parents we have times that are "busy" and other times that are "full." May is a month that feels busy (and it is!), but a lot of the stuff that happens in May isn't just stuff to keep us occupied. It's the fulfillment of a lot of work.

I liked that a lot. There's a lot going on in May, and for the most part its a lot of really cool stuff. I tried to think of my week as full rather than busy and I think that helped.

So here we go.

Monday May 8th was a pretty simple day. I was supposed to go to Yoga after work, but I decided that I'd rather just conserve my energy for later in the week and relax while watching The Crown. That was probably a good idea because I ended up falling asleep during a boring talking part.

After I picked Derrick up from school I had a phone call with Liberty. Liberty is the 3rd party vendor that verifies eligibility for the Department of Health and Welfare. We do this every year for Derrick in order to keep him eligible for the services he receives. This was a pretty run of the mill phone call and the lady doing the interview was nice.

That evening we didn't have much going on so I spent a lot of time in the garden. Derrick came outside too and had a lot of fun in the mud. I like that the kids have this area to play in.

Veronica played in the kids other play area. As much as I'd love to have a perfectly pristine backyard I like that the kids have these areas to play and do what ever they want.

Here's my garden where I can do whatever I want.

I was doing an experiment. Last year I dug trenches down the middle of these garden beds. I would fill up the trenches and water the plants from the trench. It worked well, but the trenches ended up full of weeds. This year I decided to bury the buckets that the trees came in. They have holes in the bottom so water can seep into the ground and encourage deep roots. But since they are plastic they wont let weeds grow in them.

I also went to the store and bought weed barrier fabric that I put over the whole bed. When I planted pumpkins I cut small holes for the pumpkins. The idea is that the things that I want to grow will grow and everything else will be blocked.

And look here are the cherry trees blooming at the same time.

The evening was really nice. Brandon and Derrick spent some time working on the car for Derrick's pinewood demo derby. It was cute to hear them working together on that.

Tuesday was a big day for Charlotte and Lydia. They had their first Middle School Field Trip. They went to the Science Museum.

My day was pretty normal. Hanging out at home in the morning, work in the afternoon. Then Therapy and Tutoring for Veronica.

I inadvertently set off some text message drama within our Boys Activity text thread. Two weeks earlier the Boys activity leaders handed out pine wood derby cars and told the boys to get them ready for a primary aged demo derby for boys activity in 2 weeks. Boys activities have been bouncing around between Tuesday and Wednesday nights the last few months and I heard both nights discussed for the demo derby, but I didn't hear anything definite. I still hadn't heard anything definite on Tuesday morning. So I sent a text to the leader and asked. When he didn't respond I sent a text to the whole group to see if anyone knew when the activity was going to be.

NO ONE KNEW. The text message turned into a whole bunch of confused people trying to figure out when the activity would be.

Finally someone got on and said that guy in charge of Boys Activity was out of the country on a cruise and so there wouldn't be an activity.

I was so annoyed when I found that out. Like super annoyed. I couldn't believe that someone could hand out cars for an activity and tell everyone it was in two weeks and NEVER think "hmmm I have a cruise coming up, maybe I should check my calendar and make sure I don't plan an activity for the week I'm going to be gone."

I was going to send a mass text message saying something to that effect, but I stopped myself and just texted the RS president instead. I very nicely asked her if she could make sure that the Boys Activity leaders are better about communicating activity dates and times in the future. She said she would do that. She also has a son that in in Boys Activity and he'd been pretty disappointed there wouldn't be a demo derby that week.

There was a silver lining to all this that I didn't notice until Kaymie brought it up when I was complaining about everything later. She said, "I bet Derrick was super upset about the plans changing at the last minute." And when I thought about it I was like, "No, he didn't mind at all."

Derrick has actually been really chill with changes to things he was looking forward to. It's been an unintended consequence to all the therapy sessions that had to be cancelled at the last minute with Mr Mark. Like I don't think that was Mr Mark's plan, but it has helped Derrick get used to cancelled or rescheduled plans.

Anyway, the whole reason I needed to know when the boys activity would be happening is because we had something else going on that night. The middle school had a "Special Needs Meet and Greet" for incoming 6th graders. I took Derrick to that. He was able to walk around the middle school a little bit, meet his new SPED teachers, and sit in one of the SPED classes.

It was good, but it was kind of geared toward helping ease the kids' fears about middle school. It didn't do much for the parents' fears.

I know Derrick will like Middle School once he gets used to it. But its that transition to getting used to it that has me completely freaked out. And I don't think the school gets it. At one point I asked, "What does the first day of school look like for the SPED kids? Are they in the SPED class all day?" And the teachers nonchalantly said, "No, they are out there going from class to class with everyone else. All the new 6th graders are worried that first day. The teachers will be looking out for them."

And I was so shocked by that answer that I didn't know what to say next. Like, I'm all for inclusion and everything, but there is NO WAY that Derrick can just be expected to be out in the hall on his own on the first day. There are so many reasons that's a bad idea, but the biggest reason is that they school plays SUPER loud music between classes. And Derrick hates super loud music.

Another mom asked a follow up question to that and the teachers did say that some kids need noise cancelling headphones or get walked to class a little early. So that helped me feel a bit better. But I kept thinking, "You are going to need a plan like that in place DAY ONE for Derrick. This is not a thing we can just wait and see if he doesn't like it." In theory we are supposed to have one on one meetings with the SPED staff closer to the beginning of the school year and so hopefully we will get this all in place before the first day. But yeah, I didn't come away from the meet and greet feeling any sort of confidence about Derrick's transition to Middle School. (And spoiler warning, things didn't get better later in the week.)

That night I would have gone to Bible Study, but our neighbor had given Brandon and me tickets to an Arts on Tour concert that night. And Brandon and I really needed a date so I decided that was more important than Bible Study.

So we went to the Fine Arts Center at the college and settled in for the concert. It was a group called Deplessy and the Violins of the World. We went into the concert with no clue what to expect. It was really cool. Here's a video of kind of what it was like.

Wednesday was kind of a crazy day for me. As I was getting ready to take Charlotte and Lydia to school my phone rang. When I answered it a lady from the college introduced herself and said that we'd won one of the drawings from the Community Event back in April. We'd won the Tablet! This was surprising and yet not surprising. I'd had Super Lucky Derrick put the ticket into the drawing box after all.

I told the lady I'd come pick it up after noon yoga.

I also needed to buy a Styrofoam ball for Charlotte. One thing I hadn't realized about 6th grade is that there are a lot of projects at the end of the school year. I'd already bought a Styrofoam ball for Charlotte and Lydia's project about Mars for their science class. Lydia had created a diorama of the Cornucopia from the first Hunger Games for her language arts class. Charlotte was working on a poster about the layout of the arena from the second Hunger Games book. And now they were both working on projects for their Social Studies class. Lydia was making an Aztec Temple with Aroura and they needed a box. And Charlotte was making an igloo with Noah and needed a Styrofoam ball.

I should have picked on up on Tuesday, but it had slipped my mind. So I told her I'd get it after work on Wednesday and drop it off at the school before she needed it.

I'd hoped to be done with work by 10:30, but one thing lead to another and I was there until like 11:30. And I was starving. So when I got done with work I went home for lunch. That meant I missed the last Yoga class of the cycle. I went to Joann's and found a perfect Styrofoam shape for Charlotte. It was a dome shape and was basically already an igloo. She wouldn't have to carve it at all. Then since I was close to the college I picked up the tablet.

I made it to the school in time to drop off the Styrofoam thing for Charlotte. I was too late to drop off the box for Lydia. (She ended up just taking it herself the next day.)

The big story on Wednesday was that I went to the school to add some things to Veronica's 504 plan. But we need to do some back story on that first.

Several weeks ago I had Veronica's eyes checked by a pediatric optometrist. She had a regular eye exam and then he recommended she have a binocular vision evaluation. This measures how well her eye muscles are working together. So we did that exam. I received the results via email during lunch when I was with the IPUL Board in Boise. Wow, was that a cool group of people to be with when reading complicated eye exam results.

I read things like, "Veronica was found to have inadequate automaticity, inadequate fixation maintenance (ability to maintain steady and accurate fixation), inadequate pursuit eye movements (ability to accurately follow a moving target), and inadequate saccadic eye movements (ability to make accurate eye movements from one target to another, as in reading). This condition is called oculomotor dysfunction and poor automaticity." And one of the other board members was like, "Oh my son had that problem too. He did vision therapy and it helped him out a lot."

I was already pretty certain we'd be doing vision therapy, but hearing another mom talk about it was very encouraging.

Also, I know this is kind of odd, but I was super excited to see INADEQUATE so many times. Some people had just kind of said, "Well just read with her more, she'll get better at it if you practice more." And I was like, "But reading with her is the WORST. She just guesses the words. She isn't getting better." It made me feel vindicated to see that Veronica has a legitimate problem that makes reading hard for her. It wasn't that we weren't trying.

Veronica has issues with her Ocular motility (eye tracking), Accommodation (eye focusing), and Sensory and motor fusion (eye teaming). The doctor recommended Vision Therapy and also gave a bunch of recommendations for accommodations that can be put in place in school. So the day after I got home from Boise I emailed Veronica's teacher and some of the staff to let them know we needed to update Veronica's 504 to reflect those accommodations.

And then because that week was super busy, I COMPLETELY forgot the email. When I was in the school on Wednesday to get stuff ready for the Engage in Education event I'd run into the Assistant Principal. But she was with a little kid and I totally thought she was one of the kindergarten teachers. She said, "I haven't forgot your email." And I was like, "What email? I don't think I'm the parent you think I am."

She looked confused and said, "About the 504 plan?" And then I was like, "OOHHHHH THAT EMAIL." I just started laughing. I was so embarrassed. I apologized and told her that I was just super overwhelmed with May. Then we made plans to meet the next week.

So this was us finally meeting. We added a few accommodations, like letting Veronica sit closer to the board if needed. But my favorite accommodations is to limit time spent on homework. We are only going to do 10 minutes of homework. After that I will draw a line on the homework and sign it saying that's as far as we got in 10 minutes. This is going to be a life saver - especially as she goes into 4th and 5th grade.

While I was in the school for Veronica's meeting I also had an informal meeting about Derrick. One of the School District Social Workers was in the office. She has worked with Derrick since day one at that school four years ago. She says he's her best friend. I said to her "Dee, what are we going to do without you?" And she said, "Oh don't you know where my office is, it's at that middle school!" I knew she split her time at several different schools, but I'd assumed they were elementary schools. I didn't know we'd still have some access to her in middle school.

I told her about how I still had so many concerns for Derrick starting middle school. She validated my feelings. She said, "Yeah he is going to need a plan for those hallways right from the beginning." It made me so happy to have someone share my concerns. She volunteered to come to Derrick's IEP meeting in the fall and talk about his strengths and weaknesses for the team there. She'd also said that she'd made sure that he'd have a plan in place on the first day. That made me feel so much better.

Okay, let's look at some flowers. My tulips were at their peak this week.

Oh they are so pretty. (And in case you are wondering about the car in the background. That's Brandon's friend's. He's in the middle of a move so he parks his Jeep in our driveway.)

I love how pretty these are.

When winter was hard and long and cold, I'd imagine these flowers and they helped me feel better.

I love the sun shining through the petals.

Like isn't that just gorgeous!

This fluffy daffodil is one of my favorites. I need to get more of these.

More pretties.

And more. These blooms only really last about 2 weeks so I have to take so many pictures while they last.

Here are some hyacinths. These smelled so good. At one point I just sat on the porch with a hyacinth blossom by my nose. It was so nice.

One of my favorite things about tulips is how they multiply. This all started with I think 50 or maybe 80 bulbs that my Aunt Julie gave me as a housewarming gift when we moved in in 2019. Four springs later we have something 200 blooms.

Inside the house Derrick and Brandon kept working on Derrick's model airplane.

Charlotte and Lydia didn't have Young Women that night. (There was some sort of Pre-FSY activity that Saturday for kids 14 and older.) It was really nice not to have to take anyone anywhere that evening. I decided that it would be a good idea to go grocery shopping that night instead of Thursday morning. So I did that.

The reason I wanted to go grocery shopping early was so I could help out longer at Bounce House day on Thursday. This is what our elementary school does instead of Field Day. We rent three bounce houses and then let the kids come out by class and jump in them. This works really well for our school because we just don't have the parent volunteer base to run a field day. For bounce house day they just need one or two parents to help keep an eye on the kids for an hour.

I'd signed up for the 9:00-10:00 shift, but because I'd already gone grocery shopping I could stay until 11:00. I'd just signed up for what worked the best with my schedule. I didn't know when my kids would be jumping. They'd sent out the schedule the night before. Derrick would be jumping around noon on Thursday and Veronica would be jumping on Friday. So I didn't expect to see either kid.

When I got there a kindergarten class came out and jumped. They were so little that even getting into the bounce houses was a struggle.

Next up was a third grade class. I thought it would be Veronica's friend Parker's class. But instead it was Veronica's class! Their teachers had traded times. It was so fun to see Veronica.

She had a great time running around and jumping.

She was everywhere.

Here she is inside one of the bounce houses.

My wild and crazy girl.

Who is also a little clumsy.

Last year we only rented the bounce houses for one day. Each class had 20 minutes and we'd barely fit them all in. This year the school has more classes and so it just made sense to rent them for two days. This time each class had close to 40 minutes. The kids were so tired by the end of each session.

The next class that came out was a second grade class. I went home after they were done.

I went to work and got stuff done there. Veronica had tutoring at 3:00 so I had to pick her up early from school. I pick her up at 2:45, but I have to get there by 2:30 if I want a parking spot. So I was back at the school at 2:30.

This was during Brandon's shift at the bounce houses. He was out there with a 4th grade class. Veronica's 3rd grade class had been CRAZY as they jumped so I was thinking that the 4th graders would be even more intense. But when I went over there they all seemed more like the 2nd grade class had been. I was trying to figure out what would make them less wild than the 3rd graders and then I looked at Brandon. He was out there in a black shirt and sunglasses with his arms folded. He looked so tough and honestly a little mean. No wonder those kids were so well behaved.

I hung around with Brandon for a few minutes and then went into the school to check out Veronica. Brandon would get Derrick after school. Veronica and I went to her tutoring appointment and then came home.

I don't remember anything special about that evening. I did have the kids pack their suitcases because we were going to Utah on Friday.

On Friday morning I was walking into work and checking my email at the same time. I had an email from a blogger friend with a link to the Salt Lake Tribune's Mormonland Newsletter. - where I WAS QUOTED!!!! I'm a perma-blogger for the Mormon Feminist Blog the Exponent II. I keep it on the downlow and write under my middle name for a lot of reasons. It's been a really good outlet for me to have a space where I can write about my feelings about church. I'd written a post about how my dream calling is to be the Ward Financial Clerk. It was supposed to be published in June, but another blogger needed more time to work on her post so we traded days. So it was published May 9th. It got a lot of response on the blog, but I had no idea that Mormonland picked up on it and added it as their "Quote of the Week."

Those ellipses cover a lot of ground so if you want to read the whole thing you can click here.

I've suspected that Tribune Staff was reading my work for a little while. Jana Reiss shared info in one of her columns that I'd earlier shared in a post. But this was more than just a suspicion. It was proof. It's always nice to know that people are paying attention to what I'm saying. This was another reminder that my words have power.

Friday was another day with another thing at the school. First I went to work in the morning. Then I came home and had something to eat. Then I walked over to the school and met up with Derrick's class.

We were going on the Walking Fieldtrip to the middle school. I'd gone on this field trip last year with Charlotte and Lydia. Last year I went because they needed an extra adult and I was one of the only parents with a background check. This year I went exclusively to be with Derrick.

The middle school and elementary school are less than a mile a part. So it's not a long walk. The other elementary school that would be at the middle school had to be bussed over. We all went into a the auditorium and watched a video about what to expect in middle school.

Then the kids were split up into groups and went on a tour of the school. Last year I'd been so busy between school and work and kids activities, that when they took the kids on the tour I'd run over to my office across the street from the school and worked for an hour. This year I didn't do that. I stayed with Derrick and went on the tour.

But I had issues with the tour. There were two 7th graders acting as tour guides and ours didn't have much personality. Like we went into the lunch room and one of them just kind of mumbled, "this is the lunch room. You can eat in here."

Derrick wasn't paying attention AT ALL. I was thinking, "Come one guys. You need to really sell how cool this place is." But they kept mumbling their way through the tour.

Derrick was really focused on the lockers. The video had shown how to do them and there had been a basket of practice locks in the auditorium. He kept talking about those locks. So eventually I just gave up on the tour and took him back to the auditorium. We went down the 6th grade hall so he could see that. I was hoping we'd see one of the twins, and we did! We ran right into Charlotte as she was coming back from the bathroom.

Back in the auditorium we found a lock. It had the combination written with tape on the bottom. I showed Derrick how to spin the dial. It took a few tries but he figured it out and was able to open it. He was really proud of himself for that.

His group was going through the auditorium so we joined up with them for more of the tour. But Derrick lost interest again. Actually, by this point it was more like he was overwhelmed. The school was so big, and so different. We sat in the back of the auditorium and he started to cry. He kept asking to go home. Finally his teacher gently told me we could go back if we wanted. So Derrick and I started walking back to the elementary school.

Derrick was crying and yelling. He kept saying, "I'm not going to 6th grade!"

I kept thinking, "What are we going to do?"

When we made it back to the school we saw Dee the Social Worker. She asked how it went. I told her. "Well out of 200 prospective 6th graders Derrick was the only one audibly crying." She said, "We'll figure it out." That made me feel better.

We both agreed that what Derrick needs is a one on one tour of the school with an adult. We'll hopefully get that set up in August before school starts.

There was still like 45 minutes of school, but there was nothing for Derrick to do so we planned to just go home. I had the office lady call down to Veronica's class and get her so she could come home with us. Veronica was kind of like, "Why am I going home early." I asked her if she wanted to stay and she was like, "Nope!" So we all walked home.

Brandon was home from work so we just needed to wait for Charlotte and Lydia to come home and then we could drive to Utah. But I had a little nagging worry in my mind.

The front tire on the van was flat.

It had gone a little flat earlier in the week, but Brandon had pumped it up. Now it was a little flat again. Brandon wasn't worried about it, but I was. I said, "I'm just going to take this over to Les Schwab real fast and have them look at it."

So I drove over to Les Schwab. I told the lady at the counter. "I'd rather spend 30 minutes here than 3 hours on the side of the road on the way to Utah." So they looked it over and yes there was a nail in the tire. They got it all patched up. And it was free because we've bought tires for other cars from Les Schwab. I love that place!

While I was waiting I got a text from the mom who is in charge of the yearbook for the elementary school. She had sold all but 7 of the yearbooks and had the money ready for me. She lives one street over from me so I told her I'd pick it up when I was done with my tire.

So I went straight there and got the money and then brought it home. I get FREAKED out when I have any PTO money at home and this was nearly $2000 worth of checks and currency. So I hurried to count the money, enter it onto my spreadsheet, and then write up a deposit ticket.

I'd planned to clean out the car during this time, but Brandon was a champ and did it for me. Then I took the car to the bank so I could deposit the money. Usually I use the drive through, but this was the type of thing you go into the lobby for. My teller friend Tracy helped get it all counted and deposited. I'd been under by $50 when I counted the 5s so we actually had a little more money than I'd thought. I was like, "Yeah I did this super fast because I can't stand having all this money at my house." All the tellers nodded and smiled because they get it.

By the time I was back home Charlotte and Lydia were home from school. They ran over to our neighbors and took car of her cats. We finished packing the car. We had a quick dinner and then we were on our way to Utah.

The drive was nice and uneventful and we didn't get stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire. The kids were so excited to see their Bestemor and Besterfars house. We haven't been there since Christmas.

On Saturday I'd made plans to have lunch with my mom, my sister Emily, my sister-in-law Becca, and her mom Kim. We were all going to meet up at Letherby's in Taylorsville.

So in the morning I drove down to Emily's house in Layton. Somehow on Friday I'd also found time to dig up some strawberry and raspberry plants for her. So I dropped those off. She wasn't home, but David and the younger kids were. Little Juniper latched onto me super quick. She made hand motions for me to follow her into one of the bedrooms. She wanted me to jump on a mattress on the floor. Then she climbed up on a bunk bed and threw stuff down. We very quickly made up a game where she would throw stuff and I'd catch it and throw it back. She loved that. We played for like 20 minutes. When I tried to go into the kitchen to talk to David she came and found me and pulled me by my leg back into the bedroom. I was like, "Okay, I'll play with you." It was actually really fun to just play her simple games.

The whole time I was playing I was trying to figure out how old she was. I finally figured out she was 19 months old. And then I was just kind of in shock. Charlotte and Lydia were 17 months old when I had Derrick. HOW did I have a newborn with two kids this age? No wonder I cried so hard when I found out I was pregnant with Veronica.

Emily came home from her project and got ready for lunch. She rode with me down to Letherby's. Mom, Becca, and Kim had just got there ahead of us. We ordered sandwiches and then had ice cream. This was a new thing for me. I'd been to Letherbys before, but I'd never ordered real food and I'd never been there during the day. The food was good and the icecream better. But it was the conversation that was the best.

After lunch Emily and I drove across the street so I could pick something up for Brandon at West Valley Hobbies. He'd been so happy when he found out that I'd be in that area because he needed airplane dope for his project with Derrick and this was the best place to buy it. He even drew me a map of the store so I'd know where to go. I'd never heard of Airplane Dope before and had so much fun with the word. I kept teasing him by saying things like, "Let me get this straight, you need me to buy you dope when I'm in Taylorsville?"

Then we drove out to South Jordan to see Billy. He recently got a new job with a symphony in Vancouver (the one in British Columbia) and they are probably going to move before I'm in Utah again. So I wanted to see Billy. It was fun visiting with him. We played Baconsale and connected John Rhys-Davies to Adam Scott. That was HARD, but really fun.

Emily had to get back to her house so we left after being at Billy's for an hour or so. When I walked through the door at Emily's Juniper was like, "You came BACK!" She pulled me into the bedroom again and we played all the little games again.

She looks a lot like Charlotte did at this age.

I didn't really have anything else going on for the day so I just kind of hung around Emily's house for a while. I played with Juniper while Emily got a lot done.

At one point Bridger's friends came over and had a fire where they burned all their school work for the year. This was my 5th fire in 6 weeks.

I really did need to get going so I left while the fire was still happening.

I stopped at Smiths and picked up some things for dinner on Sunday and then I drove up the canyon to Steve and Jacque's house. I got there after all the kids were in bed.

Sunday was Mothers Day. We watched our church on the computer. (I'm beginning to realize that a lot of wards are cracking down on making their zoom links available. Ours still sends it out every week. I think one reason our ward hasn't made the link exclusive is because our bishop often needs to watch sacrament meeting remotely. He's a helicopter pilot for the hospital. There are weeks he's scheduled to work on Sunday's. He watches sacrament meeting from work. And since he needs the link I think he's made the decision to keep it available for everyone.)

After church the kids wanted to watch a movie. We picked the animated Cinderella. That was so much fun to watch with the kids. We used to watch it all the time when they were little, but it's been a while. We had a great time watching it together.

In the late afternoon we had a dinner with Brandon's sisters. Brandon had everything to make zero-proof Strawberry Mojitos. And I mean everything. He'd bought all the fun little tools for making cocktails and had even bought the glasses. The accessories were kind of my Mother's Day gift, but the real gift was the drink. It was so yummy.

Here I am enjoying it.

The kids went outside to play.

Here's Veronica enjoying the Blue Shoe (even though it was more purple). Brandon was making lots of the drinks from that Mocktail night at the library.

We also made the Ginger Gastric which is heavily vinegar based. Brandon's mom likes vinegar and so she liked that drink.

Here I am enjoying my drink some more. Brandon and I made these for the adults. It was fun to hand his sisters a drink right as they walked in and be like, "Happy Mothers Day."

We had lasagna for dinner and then it was time for the belated Easter Egg Hunt. Veronica and I were calling this day M-easter because it was a mix of Mother's Day and Easter.