Third week of Maycember - And our 17th Anniversary

It's happening. This blog will be updated BEFORE summer vacation starts. I wasn't sure that was going to happen. 

This will cover Monday May 13 to Sunday May 19.

Another good title for this post would be "Valerie's quest to buy tomato plants."  Because it literally took me FIVE days to get that done. I should have bought them on Saturday, but I decided I could just go on Monday. HA HA HA. What was I thinking?

I worked every day this week. And a lot of those work days were from as soon as I dropped the kids off at school until I picked up Derrick. And then I was kind of brain dead after work. 

Other days we had things going on in the afternoon or evening that made it so I couldn't just pop over to the store and get them. 

And one day I was literally at the store when Derrick called me from school and told me his shoes were broken and he needed me to pick him up early. 

I finally went to the store on Friday morning as soon as I dropped the kids off and I BOUGHT those dang plants. 

Anyway, let's look back over the things that were going on besides buying tomato plants.  

The strawberries in the front yard are doing so well. They are starting to flower. I'm so excited to have these doing so well. 

The peony is also doing well. 

And look at that inviting path. This corner of the front yard always looked so sad with bare patches and yellow spots. Now it's so interesting. 

I have a few random white tulips that bloom after the others. They are fun to spot. 

This one has a little bit of purple. 

On Monday afternoon I went over to the elementary school for the annual "Cream the Teacher" event. This is some sort of reward for completing ISAT testing. They creamed the test so now they get to cream the teacher. Four of the school staff dress up in ponchos, shower caps, and goggles, and then one student from each class gets to come up and throw a "pie" in their faces. Really the pie is just a pie pan full of whipped cream. It's hilarious. 

Parents are invited, but they only really let the parents know about it on the monthly newsletter, so I'm usually the only one there because I'm probably the only person that reads that newsletter with my calendar app open. 

Last year the event was held outside and I was able to just stand in the back. So this year I wandered over to the school with a camp chair over my shoulder. But the kids weren't outside. I went inside and the office lady told me they were out in the gym. 

So I went out there. I was hoping to just sneak in, but the kids were already all sitting down facing the front. There were also a lot of people in fancy clothes standing in front of me. I recognized the District PR person in the group. I could see into the gym and the District Superintendent was talking on the microphone. I was like, "What is going on?"

I was able to get through and then sit down along the wall near Veronica's class. She was excited to see me. 

Another man started talking into the microphone. I didn't recognize him. But then he started talking about his priorities for Idaho and how he works with the legislature. And I took another look at him. I starting thinking, "I think that's the governor."  One of the para's was next to me. She leaned over and asked, "Is that the governor?" And I was like, "I think so."

Someone was holding one of those giant checks. I thought it said $35,000 dollars. But I looked closer and realized it was $35,000,000 as in 35 MILLION DOLLARS. This was part of a 1.5 Billion dollar investment that the legislature passed this year. The money is going toward making physical improvements in aging schools. This was the check for Twin Falls School District's portion of the money.

They had two of the state reps and all of the school board come out and pose with the check as Governor Little signed it. 

Then all the fancy people left and it was time for fun. 

The people getting creamed this year were Robert the head custodian (and our neighbor), the principal, Mr H, and the assistant principal. Mr H was by far the favorite target. At the end he joked, "I'm going to get you ALL back."

I was able to check Veronica out early so we walked home together. 

When all the kids were home I took Derrick, Charlotte, and Lydia to their orthodontist appointment. Derrick is ready for bottom braces next month. Scheduling for next month nearly did me in. We have SO much happening in June. We haven't been to Utah all year, but we are going to Utah FOUR times in June. So it was kind of hard to find a time that worked for the orthodontist. We ended up splitting up the kids again. Charlotte and Lydia's appointment will be on a whole different week than Derrick's. 

For some reason that scheduling really did me in for the day. So even through I was hoping to buy tomato plants that evening I didn't. 

Brandon had rehearsal that evening and I think the kids and I played Green Thumb. That's a card game my siblings and I played as kids. Lindsey found it online and gave it to me several years ago. My kids really like playing it. 

Tuesday was a pretty regular day, but after school I went to the Middle School for Derrick's IEP meeting. His review isn't due until the fall, but it's was time for the big 3 year review and they wanted to get all the evaluations done before the end of the school year. Plus his SPED teacher is retiring and I think she wanted to tie up loose ends. 

The meeting had his SPED math teacher, the school vice principal, his Social Studies, and his Science teacher there. And while they all had positive things to say about Derrick the consensus was that he was really struggling this year. He wasn't understanding the material and since this school had a shortage of para's there really wasn't anyone to help him one on one. He didn't have any disruptive behaviors, but he did have problems engaging with anything. 

What he probably needed was to be in the Intermediate Resource Center at another Middle School. There the ratio of teachers and paras to students would be so much better. The classes would be more on his level. He'd still be able to go to gen ed classes for some electives, but he'd mostly be in the IRC classes for subjects like Social Studies and Science. 

At first I was a little hesitant about the idea. I didn't want Derrick to go to a different school. I wanted him at our neighborhood school with his sisters. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Derrick had been telling me that school was "hard and boring."  I'd asked him what his favorite class was - meaning out of his classes currently. He'd responded, "Kindergarten."

He was obviously struggling. And according to all his teachers 7th grade would only be harder. 

Also I realized that if he went to the IRC he would be there all day. I wouldn't have to pick him up at 1:15. I'd have my afternoons back. 

So I agreed to look into it. The next step was to contact the principal of the other school and ask for a tour. I took care of that on Wednesday and set up the tour for Thursday. Then I talked to Derrick about the possibility of switching schools. He didn't like the idea at first, but he warmed up to it when I told him the new school would be easier and more fun.

Wednesday was another day off work where I actually went to work. But I did the same thing where I worked with the door shut so I was able to get a lot done without interruptions. 

I tried to get off a little early and buy tomatoes. I made it to the store and was pushing a cart when Derrick called me and asked me to pick him up early. He'd been wearing his sandals and they "fell apart."  (Meaning he was bored in class and pulled on them until they broke.)

So I picked him up. Since we had a little extra time I decided we'd go drive by the prospective new middle school. I'd never actually seen it because it is on the very southern edge of town. We were literally driving by fields on our way out there. Derrick got very excited when he saw the school. It's one of the newer schools in the district so it was very fancy looking. He was like, "Yeah, I want to go there!"

That afternoon I had a dentist appointment. It was nice to get my teeth all cleaned and I don't have any cavities. 

Back at home I was happy to see that my lilac bush was blooming. 

And look, the chicks were 4 weeks old. They were loving their coop and the lower area. 

Charlotte and Lydia loved checking on them all the time. 

That evening we had our friend Payton come over. Payton's mom is my friend Kerri. Kerris is the attendance secretary at the middle school. And since I take Derrick into the school every morning I talk with Kerri every day. 

And honestly, Kerri is probably 75% of the reason Derrick did as well as he did at the middle school this year. She was there for him in the office any time he needed to call home. 

Kerri and her husband are also involved with the Magic Valley Repertory Theatre. They both made it into Treasure Island. At the beginning of the play I told Kerri that Payton is welcome to hang out at our house ANYTIME. 

Lately Payton has been bored sitting at rehearsals so Kerri asked if she could come to our house on Wednesday night. Of course I said yes. 

The kids were very nice to Payton. She is 8 so I was a little worried about the age dynamics, but she's done a lot of theatre stuff with older kids so she did just fine. She had fun seeing the chicks and then Charlotte and Lydia showed her a bunch of cool stuff. Then they all watched a movie together. And finally she colored with Veronica while I read them Indian in the Cupboard.  

 

Kerri told me that Payton fell asleep on the way home, which is something she never does. So I guess we did our job well. 

Thursday was the day that we had the tour of the new middle school scheduled. I took Derrick out there after school and Brandon met us there. 

The Principal and one of the SPED teachers gave us a tour. Derrick was really excited about all the amenities he could see.  Like a vending machine that had books in it. When we got to the SPED classroom he liked that it had a calm down area and a cupboard full of games. 

Out in the hall he saw trophies for the bowling team and asked how he could be on that team. 

I was happy to see lots of adults in the SPED classroom. That's been one of the hardest things at our current middle school. There just haven't been enough para's to go around. 

So I told the Principal that we were ready to have Derrick transferred to this school in the fall. She said she'd let the District Special Services Department know. 

Here's Derrick in front of the school because he was so excited about it. 

I was really going to buy tomato plants that evening. But I also needed to take Derrick and Veronica shopping for snacks. They were planning a sleepover in the treehouse and had a whole list of the snacks they were going to buy. 

I figured the best place to do that would be Fred Meyer. We could get food and plants at the same place. So we bought the snacks. But by the time we were done with that I was feeling a little over stimulated. And as we tried to walk to the garden center Veronica bumped into a display of hats and some fell off the shelf. It was a little thing, but I was like, "Nevermind, I want to buy my tomatoes when I don't have any distractions."  So we went home. 

Friday was our 17th Wedding Anniversary. I woke up with Brandon in the morning and talked with him while he got ready for work. Then I went back to bed. But I remembered an idea I had for a Facebook post. So I went through my blog and found pictures from over the years. It was fun to put that together. 

I got the kids all ready for school and dropped off and then I went and BOUGHT THOSE TOMATOES!!!!!!! I wasn't waiting any longer. I just put them in the back of my van and then parked it at work with the windows cracked. 

At work I realized I was actually really tired. I kept making dumb mistakes and things were taking longer than the should have. All I wanted was a nap. 

The schedule at the middle school was different because they were having a carnival that afternoon. So I picked Derrick up around 12:20. Then I took a nap!

I was planning to take Derrick back to the school for his grades carnival time. But he wasn't interested. But I did go there for Charlotte and Lydia's turn. I'd signed up to be a volunteer, but that ended up being the easiest volunteer gig ever. Nobody ever gave me a job. So I just stood and talked with another mom while we watched kids go in the dunk tank. 

Charlotte and Lydia had signed up to have a chance to do the dunk tank. 

Here's a video of Lydia going in.

And a short of Charlotte's turn. 

While I was out there the SPED teacher came out with another lady. The other lady was from the District Special Services department. We talked about the process to get Derrick transferred to the IRC. I found out that there were actually two Middle Schools with the program. So it was possible that Derrick was going to be at a different middle school than the one that we toured. That school is older so I was feeling a little bat and switched. But honestly, the program is what I'm interested in, not the building. 

I was happy to hear that they will probably have everything in place before the end of the school year. So at the end of the summer everything will be ready for Derrick to start there right away. That's good. 

After Charlotte and Lydia were done with the carnival we went to the office to check them out. Kerri had texted me to let me know there was something I needed to sign. So I made sure to do that. It was the paper saying I gave my permission for them to evaluate the transfer to the IRC.  

At home I went to work planting the tomatoes. It was a little compicated because I still had to add the soil amendments and then cover the soil with the ground cover. Then I could put in the tomatoes and the stakes. It felt good to have this all done. 

While I was doing all this Brandon was doing his own thing. He made reservations for dinner for us, picked up pizza for the kids, and bought me roses.  

I knew about the dinner stuff, but the roses were a surprise. 

I hurried to change my clothes and then we went out to dinner. We went to the Brick House which is a really nice restaurant. We were the very first people there at 5:30. I've never been in an empty restaurant before and honestly it was really really nice. I was so tired from everything it was nice to just enjoy the quiet. I was like, "This is GREAT! They need more sensory friendly restaurants."

The food was AMAZING too. I had a bacon cheese burger with fried green beans. 

Brandon had a swiss mushroom burger. 

And honestly the prices were pretty decent. This was only slightly more expensive than what we would have paid at Wendy's or Burger King. 

Here we are. 

After we finished dinner we walked around downtown a little bit. Then we decided to go to Culvers for dessert. Here we are waiting for our shakes.

And then we went to Target and Brandon bought me earings. (He's learned not to try to pick stuff out for me unless I'm there.)

Back at home Derrick and Veronica were getting everything ready for their treehouse sleep over. 

They had the tablet out there and stayed up late eating snacks and watching movies. 

Charlotte and Lydia had their own sleep over in the basement. 

Brandon and I were trying to stay up until the kids were all quiet. I had just started a new book and I was excited to get into it. I almost made it through one chapter. I fell asleep with like three paragraphs left. 

Despite all the late nights on Friday night everyone was up by 7:30 on Saturday. We were going on an adventure for our anniversary. 

When Brandon and I talked about what to do to celebrate our anniversary we'd considered going down to Utah and touring the Taylorsville Temple open house. That Temple is built on the same land that was once Brandon's stake Center.  (Technically the temple is built on the baseball fields while the parking lot is where the stake center was.)

But no one was really jazzed about that plan. I still haven't recovered from how stressful the Pocatello Temple Open House was. And driving three hours to Utah didn't sound fun for anyone. 

As I thought about the plan I realized we could just take the money that we would probably spend on gas and a hotel and use that to do something we'd all actually enjoy. 

I asked the kids if they wanted to go kayaking and they all enthusiastically said yes. They've wanted to go to Blue Heart Spring ever since Brandon and I went there for our anniversary last year. So I booked three tandem kayaks with Banbury Adventures for Saturday morning. 

We ate breakfast and packed lunches. Then we drove out to the Hagerman Area. We checked in at the office at Banbury Hot Springs and then they walked us down to the water. Our kayaks were waiting for us. I had the staff take our picture before we got in. 

Derrick and I were in a kayak together. He'd never been kayaking before, but he picked it up really fast. He told me, "I watched other people do it."

Here he is. He's like some sort of kinetic genius. 

Brandon and Veronica were together. I originally thought Veronica would be with me, but she told me she wanted some bonding time with Brandon. 

Charlotte and Lydia were together. They did a great job. I've wanted to have all of us go kayaking for like three years. But back when I first started considering this I was unsure about putting Charlotte and Lydia in their own kayak as 10 year olds. But now that they are 13 I had no problems. 

Here I am. I was having a great time. 

Derrick was in turbo mode on the way down to the spring. He wanted to win a race that was basically just going on in his head. So we made it down to the spring in like 30 minutes. And our kayak was the first to make it in.

The water was so pretty.

Here we are paddling around.

Me at the spring. 

Here are the others. 

We pulled our boats onto a small island and the kids got into the water. That water was incredibly cold. I don't know how they were in there at all. I just had my feet in the water and I was cold. 

Here I am. 

I had a plastic protector on my phone and the lens got a little dirty. But you can see the kids in the water. 

They went out deeper with their snorkel masks and dived under the water. Lydia immediately popped up. She was breathless from the cold, but said, "That was the most incredible thing I've ever seen."  She said it looked like a coral reef under the water. 

Brandon climbed up the rocks and took some pictures from a higher view. 

You can see how clear the spring water is. 

I like how the water looks like peacock feathers. 

Here's a Marco Polo video he took from up there. 

Lydia was shivering uncontrollably, and I was getting a little worried about hypothermia so I took her up on the island and had her snuggle up next to me. Her hands and feet were ice cold. But as her hair and swimsuit dried she warmed up. 

Charlotte had climbed up to be with Brandon, but she was shivering too so he brought her over to where me and Lydia were. 

Derrick and Veronica weren't as cold so they got into a kayak and paddled around. 

We had lunch around 11:00. Here are Derrick and Veronica eating on the kayak. 

And the girls eating with me. 

Derrick took the kayak around on his own. We'd had the place basically to ourselves for most of the time we were there. but around 11:30 more people started showing up. Derrick had fun talking to them.

Our rental lasted until 1:00 and we figured it would take us about an hour to get back so around 12:00 we packed everything up. We did one last loop around the spring. 

It really was so pretty. I'm so glad we were able to bring the kids here. 

Then we started back. This time Derrick was like, "It's not a race."  He was so laid back on the way back. It's not that he was tired - he still had a lot of power in his strokes. I think he just wanted to make it last as long as possible. He wanted to stop and see everything. Logs floating on the water, buoys, foam, large rocks - everything. 

Brandon tried to take this picture of me. 

Derrick and I ended up being the last ones to the dock by about 10 minutes. Here's a picture Brandon took of the girls waiting. 

We thanked the employees and then got back into the car. 

We drove home and made it home around 2:00. I told the kids they could have an hour to shower, snack, and take a break. Then we'd clean up the house around 3:00. I ended up falling asleep at 3:00, but Brandon made sure the kids all cleaned. He said it took like 30 minutes. 

I woke up around 4:30. I'd fallen asleep on the patio. (It's my favorite place for Saturday afternoon naps.)  Charlotte and Lydia had just come home. They'd walked to Smiths and bought drumstick ice cream cones as an anniversary present. In the house Brandon had just finished gettting pulled pork ready for dinner. (It had been cooking in the crock pot all day.)  I was like, "Wow, I woke up to a clean house, dinner, and dessert!"

It had been a great day. We really didn't get much done around the house, but I told everyone, "Well it was kind of like a holiday for our anniversary. Plus we wouldn't have been able to do any yardwork or anything like that if we'd gone to Utah anyway."

The kids and Brandon watched Star Wars Episode IV. I was going to watch it, but I was in a writing mood and so I caught this blog up. Veronica ended up falling asleep for half the movie. 

When it was over Derrick and Veronica wanted to have a sleep over in Derrick's room. I told them they needed some good sleep so they needed to sleep in their own rooms. Veronica said she fell asleep right away. 

Everyone was sleeping in the morning, but we made it to church at 10:30. I was feeling off for most of church so when we got home I took a really long nap. That seemed to help. 

We had been talking about doing the Pillar Falls Hike, but my need for a naps cancelled that. Instead Brandon made home made fries with Charlotte. 

In the evening we watched Star Wars Episode V. (I "watched" but also worked on this blog.)

Now it's 7:45 and we are starting Star Wars Episode VI. We only have 2 and a half more days of school so I'm not super worried about getting these kids to bed on time tonight. 

And with that, we are FINALLY caught up on this blog again.  And just in time too. Wednesday is the last day of school and then we transition to summer vacation mode. And guess what?  This summer is THERAPY FREE SUMMER. Veronica only has like four more sessions of vision therapy and then we are DONE with therapy. NOBODY has therapy this summer and it is going to be amazing. 

Anyway, thanks for reading!