Second week of school

Hey this is another quick recap. So no intro. 

Last week I was nearly done with the blog when Veronica came into my room to show me what she'd been working on. 

She'd taken her blocks and hot glued them together to make a castle.  

It was very impressive. She'd used clothes pins for torches on the top. Then she used the little metal spring parts of the pins to make a hinge for the door. 

She did a really great job. 

Monday was kind of a strange day for me. I was not feeling very motivated for work. I got everyone off to school okay, but when I made it to Castle Therapy to start working on things I was just not in the mood. Ivan has so weighted blankets to I took one and had it in my lap while I worked. That kind of helped me feel better. 

Then I went to Aspen Grove and continued to just not feel right. I pulled up the list of claims to submit and saw that it was super long. I was like, "Nope, I'm not getting though that without help."  I left work and walked over to Fred Meyer. I was originally just going to buy gum because chewing gum really helps me when I'm working. (It's a sensory thing I think.) But then I was like, "I need more than gum today!"  So I bought chocolate covered pretzels. 

I walked back to work. One of my coworkers was in the lobby. She casually asked me how I was doing. I said, "Well it's not even 10:00 and I'm eating chocolate covered pretzels so . . . . "

Those pretzels got me through the rest of the morning. Then I went home and took a nap on the couch that helped a lot. 

Brandon came home at 1:30. He was pretty worn down too. I was like, "Take a nap, I highly recommend it." So he went straight to our room and slept for like 3 hours. 

He had rehearsal that night so it's good he was able to sleep so much. 

At 6:30 I jumped on a zoom meeting for the PTO at the Elementary school. I had no intention of doing much with the PTO this year, but I like to know what's coming up. I also liked the zoom idea so I wanted to support that. 

The meeting was good, and I committed to nothing. So that was a victory.

Here's a picture I took of the hole that evening. For some reason the wider it gets the less deep it looks.  

The kids like going to the red park with Marcia. She is so excited to see all the kids. So we went there and the kids ran around with Marcia for a long time. 

On Tuesday morning Lydia woke up complaining of a sore throat. She's seemed to have a sore throat all summer, but for some reason today was the day I decided we needed to have it looked at. (I think I felt her throat and things felt harder and larger than usual. So I made an appointment with the doctor for a little later that morning. 

Lydia went to school, but I picked her up right after first period. Our doctors office is very close to the middle school so we were able to be in and out of the doctor before second period was even over. 

The doctor checked Lydia all over and figured she was probably dealing with allergies. So he prescribed something. I was actually kind of happy with that. I hadn't thought about allergies. 

Work went much better that afternoon. Whatever funk I'd been in on Monday had disappeared. 

Brandon was at CSI that night so we just had a quick dinner after everyone was home from school. Then we went to the pool for the last time. It was the our 30th visit. We've never made it to 30 visits before. 

Wednesday was a good day. Everyone got off to school just fine. (Things have normalized with Derrick's bus. It's usually at the house around 7:20 and that's been working well.) I worked at Castle Therapy for a bit and then came home to do the scripture study group. 

We were on Mosiah 23 - which I thought would be an easy chapter. It's a fairly well known story. The people of Alma are living happily in the wilderness. The lost Lamenites show up, basically trick them, and put them into captivity. To make things worse, Alma's old wicked priest buddy Amulon is put in charge of Alma's people.

It seemed simple enough so I put off reading the chapter until last Sunday. Normally I like to start reading these chapters about 3 weeks ahead of time, but I'd been busy with the lessons for Derrick's Sunday school class in August. 

When I finally read the chapter I came to a verse that I made me angry.

It's Mosiah 23 verse 21. Mormon is narrating and says, "Nevertheless the Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea he trieth their patience and their faith."

And I was like, "WHAT? These people are living righteously. They are keeping the commandments. They have created an equitable society. Why does the Lord need to mess this up?"

If I'd read this chapter 3 weeks earlier like I should have, I probably would have had time to chew on that question and come up with some good responses. But since I'd put it off I was stuck in the question phase. 

As I tried to figure out how to teach a lesson about a chapter that I was struggling with I realized, this is actually an important step in scripture study. So instead of pretending I had an answer I was just going to model the part where sometimes you don't have an answer yet.

The book "Women of the Word" has a whole chapter on studying scripture with patience. On page 85 the author says, "Contrary to our gut reaction, feeling lost or confused is not a bad sign for a student. It is actually a sign that our understanding is being challenged and that learning is about to take place. Embracing the dissonance of feeling lost, rather than avoiding it (giving up) or dulling it (looking for a short cut), will actually place us in the best possible position to learn. We must extend ourselves permission to get lost and patience to find our way to understanding."

So I talked about how I was feeling and how I was trying to be patient and not expecting an answer to this right away. I let myself sit with the discomfort of pondering over what does it mean that God is chastening the people who are following his commandments.

I've had a few thoughts and maybe I'll talk about them next week. But for now I'm still stewing over this. And that's okay.

At 12:30 I headed over to the elementary school to pick up Veronica. She'd been asking to see her therapist again for a check in and to maybe start going once a month. So I'd got her back onto the schedule. 

We met with her therapist and her therapists asked why she wanted to restart therapy. Veronica said, "Well I started my period." And her therapist said, "You are the THIRD client I've had who wanted to restart therapy for that reason alone. I think I need to start a support group."

After therapy we went grocery shopping and bought a lot of food. 

Brandon was home when we got home and he helped unload everything. 

I also had a list of things to talk to him about. I'd barely seen him in two days. He'd said goodbye to me when I was on the zoom call for the PTO meeting on Monday. Then because of rehearsals, and work schedules, and his CSI class, and more rehearsals, I hadn't seen him until like 9:30 on Tuesday night, and even that had been for a short time before going to bed. So this time on Wednesday was really nice. 

I have us signed up for a Social Dance class that starts after the play is over. I keep joking that it's to "save our marriage." Our marriage isn't really in danger, but there has been a lot of schedule nonsense like this and I just need to know that there is going to be time that is for me and Brandon. 

On Thursday I spent the morning juicing grapes. My friend had let me borrow her juicer - which I assumed was a steam juices. But it was really a different type of juicer. But I made it work. I was just trying to process the grapes that grow on my side of the fence. There aren't many, but every year we struggle with what to do with them. 

Anyway, I got everything processed, but in the end it might have been more work that it was worth. I'll definitely try to track down a steam juicer next year. That will make things easier. 

I went to work in the afternoon and stayed there until almost 5:00. Then I picked up Derrick from Robotics club and then came home. Brandon had already left for CSI. Charlotte, Lydia, and Veronica were home hanging out in the basement. 

I was heading to the Relief Society Progressive Dinner so I didn't plan a real dinner. I just told the kids they could eat cereal. Then I went to the first house on the list. 

The progressive dinner is always fun. I like talking with everyone there. But the dessert house was the best. We'd ended at this ladies house 2 years ago and that time a bunch of us moms just sat around and talked for a long time. The lady didn't mind. That's exactly what happened this year too. Six of us, Me, Chandler, Jori, Lindsey, Cori, and Megan sat in a circle and laughed and joked until like 9:10. It was great. At one point someone said we should just have a sleepover and I was like, "That's not a bad idea."  I seriously offered to plan a ladies night/retreat, but so far it's still in the idea stage.  

I'd started out the evening so tired from the day and the week. But by the end of the night I was almost hyper. It had been so fun to just eat and talk and laugh and not worry about kids. 

I came home and the kids didn't really care that I'd been gone for over three hours. In fact they were a little disappointed I was home because I made them go to bed. 

Friday was an early out so everyone was very willing to go to school because they knew it would just be for a few hours. 

Here's an elephant Lydia has been working on in her spare time. 

It's so cute. Apparently everyone at school is just in love with it. 

Brandon is usually home at 1:30, but some press or something at work got really complicated so he had to stay until like 4:00 to make sure it was all back together. 

When he did get home he and I went on a date to Walmart so I could help him pick out eye liner and tights. He had the idea to wear tights under the tunic that he wears as the French Taunter. I wanted to make sure he picked ones that wouldn't be to shear or too small. 

When we got back home he put the tights on and they fit perfectly - maybe a little too well. Brandon was like, "These are so comfy!"  He had fun prancing around the living room and showing off his legs. 

Brandon had a bonus rehearsal that evening so the kids and I didn't really have anything planned. We ended up just watching lot of episodes of Young Sheldon. 

We are really liking Young Sheldon. I've been looking for a show that we could all watch together and enjoy. A lot of things I like are either too mature for my kids, or too old fashioned (they don't like laugh tracks.) And the things they like don't interest me. 

But somehow we all like Young Sheldon. It's a prequel to The Big Bang Theory. It's about Sheldon growing up as a genius with just a regular family. The show starts with him going to high school as a 9 year old. He's in the same grade as his older brother. It's funny, and endearing, and somehow really relatable. 

I like that the house feels like a real house. The family eats dinner together every night and when they do dinner scenes they have real food on the table. (I literally planned a corn bread and chili night because the corn bread on their table looked so good.)

Anyway, we made it to Season 4 and have no plans to stop. 

Here's a painting Lydia was working on while watching TV. It's a city that was abandoned and plants started growing all over it. 

Saturday was a really good day. I'd thought about planning a trip for Labor Day weekend. But Brandon starts Tech week next week and I didn't want to be recovering from a trip during that week. So we decided to stay home and prepare emotionally and physically for tech week. 

But I still wanted to do something as a family. So we decided to stain the tree house. 

We got the house clean and then we went to Lowes and bought stain. (And then realized we bought the wrong kind and returned the original can and bought the right can.)

It recommended that we not apply the stain in the direct sun so we waited to start until around 5:00. We changed into old clothes and pajamas and everyone went to work. 

Here are some before pictures of the tree house. 

The wood was very sun bleached and weathered. 

It needed some love. 

Here's everyone working together. This was a really good project because we were outside and so little drips and spills didn't matter. Also it was a tree house - so technique wasn't really important. 

This was really satisfying too. Charlotte had been the one to suggest a dark color and it looked great. 

We did the bottom posts first and then moved up into the top. 

Brandon gave Charlotte this hand print. 

Here's the view of the garden and yard from the tree house. 

Things got a little crowded when we started the floor so Derrick and Veronica were excused to go inside and get cleaned up. 

Charlotte, Lydia, and I worked on the floor. Brandon worked on the outside of the railings. Things got squishy again so I climbed down. 

We ALMOST had enough stain. We ran out with the last bit of the floor to do. So we'll have to buy a small can on Monday and finish it up. 

Here are the after pictures. 

It looks SO GOOD. I keep walking outside and noticing it again and thinking, "Oh wow, what a difference!"

I'm so happy with how this turned out. And that it was basically done with in less than 2 hours. We still have so much work to do on the fire pit that it was nice to have a quick win with this project. 

Here it is from further away in the yard. 

After the kids were all clean they watched Back to the Future with Brandon. I took care of a few things and then took a shower and read a book. 

And that gets us to today. We all slept in and then made it to church on time. Church was . . . I don't know. I really like my ward. But there are just weeks where I'm leave feeling blah at best and angry at worst. This week was more of a blah week. 

It didn't help that Derrick and Veronica were basically glued to me the whole two hours. They sat by me in sacrament meeting and then all three of us went to Derrick's Sunday school class. I like them and they aren't as draining as it could be, but apparently there's a limit to how many of Veronica's whispered questions I can answer and how many times I can tell Derrick how much time is left. 

So when we got home I took some time for myself and that helped. 

Then we watched the Line Upon Line and the Book of Mormon videos for the week. 

And that pretty much gets us caught up to now. 

This next week is going to be a doosie - Tomorrow is a holiday - which is nice. But then Brandon has 4 days of tech week - those rehearsals start at 5:30. And then he goes into performances on Friday and Saturday. It's going to be like a long distance race. We have to pace ourselves to make sure we get through this week. 

But it's also going to be super fun. Brandon has been telling us some of the funny things happening in the play. We also listened to the sound track while cleaning the house on Saturday. (I've had the Lancelot song stuck in my head ever since.) So it's exciting to have this finally be ready for other people to come and enjoy it. 

I'll tell you all about it next week. 

Thanks for reading.