Getting back in the groove

We are going to forgo the usual day by day format this week. It was a very uneventful week - as evidenced by the fact that I took like 6 pictures. 

We are just going to do this by topic. 

1. This flower

Our church doesn't start until 12:00 this year. Which is great, but it meant I was ready and bored by like 11:15 last week. So I went for a little walk around my yard. There were a few green things that were still growing. The Larkspur shoots are like immune to snow and I think I have spinach coming up from seed that were dropped last year.  But I was still SHOCKED to see this violet with an actual flower bloom on it. I was very impressed by it and made everyone come look at it. 

2. Oathbringer. I've been reading this book. It has over 1200 pages. I'm on like page 1100. This is what I've been doing every night from 7:00 PM until about 10:30. I love it so much. 

Also I'm super glad I read Warbreaker before reading this book. I knew that the sword was in both books, but I was surprised to find other characters popping up too. 

3. Brandon's new job. Brandon started work on Monday. He was still a little sick so that first day he kind of white knuckled through the day and then didn't say much to us after work. 

Tuesday was better and Wednesday was also better. On Thursday he came home and actually TALKED to me when he came home. Then dinner was really fun and everyone was joking and I was like FINALLY. It was like I'd been married to a ghost for a week and a half. It was nice for him to finally have a personality again. 

And he's liking his job. On Thursday they needed to make sure a heart rate monitor machine was working and so he attached leads to himself to test it. 

The craziest thing about the job is that it's Business Casual dress. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that he doesn't wear steel toed shoes to work. He's working with just little machinery that doesn't get dirty so it's a whole different maintenance job than he's ever done. 

4. Godzilla and King Kong.  Derrick is still obsessed with Godzilla and King Kong. He even DREW A PICTURE. This is of the Hollow Earth so there are palm trees on the ground and up where the sky would be.  The little thing on the right of the picture is Mothra and a HEAV is following her. 

5. Lydia's dress. The kids didn't have school on Monday.  Lydia had spend most of the winter break reading all the Fable Have books. (She and Charlotte got a hard back set for Christmas.) Then on Monday she decided to make a dress. Jacque had given her a bunch of fabric so she used that and our old green couch cover. 

She worked on the dress all day Monday and then every evening. Here's a picture she finally let me take on Thursday. 

She did all this without a pattern. This may or may not be her costume for Cinderella. 

Here's the sketch she based it off of. 

Oh and she also ordered a mannequin from Amazon. She put the dress on it and even though I knew it was there it constantly scared me whenever I went into the basement. 

6. Veronica's rock collection. We gave Veronica this rock display case for Christmas. Brandon finally felt well enough on Saturday to mount it on her wall. It looks so good!

7. A Veronica story I forgot to tell. When we drove down to Utah for Christmas we stopped at the Maverick in Tremonton. Veronica and I went into the bathroom. She finished ahead of me and started walking to a car. On her way out of the building an older guy called out to her and asked, "Are you from Twin Falls?"  She was like, "Yeah?"  This is when I showed up. He explained that he recognized her from her basketball game. His granddaughter played her team one week. He recognized her because she was tall and walked on her toes. Brandon and I talked to him for a while. He was really nice. 

8. A Derrick tidbit I don't want to forget. Derrick pronounces Christmas with a heavy pronunciation on the end. He says it Christ-MUS. It's cute. 

9. Scripture Study group - My scripture study group started again this week. We are studying Restoration by Patrick Mason. We went over Chapter One. In that chapter he talks about how Jesus has called us to be like Light, Salt, and Yeast. They are small things that do a lot of big things. So I made bread. Jori and I ate like a whole loaf by ourselves. (Diantha was there too, but she only had one piece.)

10. The kitchen. We had big plans for getting all the drywall patching done this Saturday. I even wrote "Drywall school" on the calendar because the kids were going to learn how to drywall from Brandon. Derrick wanted to know if there would be a test. 

 We were able to buy the drywall and supplies. But that kind of took it all out of Brandon for a while. So now we have two giant drywall sheets leaning up against the wall in our kitchen. 

10. School started again. The kids went back to school on Tuesday morning. I celebrated by taking a nap. But then I went to work and felt like I finally had my brain again. 

11. All the kids are in the youth program now. Wednesday would have been the kids first combined youth activity where they could all go. But they were just watching some sort of broadcast and none of my kids were excited about that. So they didn't go. But there will be plenty other opportunities. 

12. I feel like we need a story about Charlotte. She got up this morning to feed the chickens and realized they were out of feed. I'm pretty certain someone mentioned they were close to running out a few weeks ago - but I completely forgot. So I took her to D&B this morning to buy more feed. Charlotte is my child that doesn't ask for ANYTHING so when that kid actually needs something I make sure to help her out. I didn't want to get mad at her the one time she expressed a need. 

It was a good little trip and she was so good about filling up all the buckets and the feeder. 

And that's about it. We don't start Cinderella rehearsals until the 20th so this week should be another chill week. Though I'm hoping that Brandon feels better. Maybe we'll even get some drywall up. 

Thanks for reading.