Birthday and Valentines Day

It's been like a week and a half long party at my house. We had my birthday on the 7th and then we had a bunch of valentines activities going on. This is one of my favorite times of the year. 

But actually it didn't start out that fun. 

I wrote my last post from two weeks ago from under a strange feeling of sadness. I don't know why, but I felt very sad on Sunday night. All I wanted to do was curl up on the couch and do nothing, but I knew if I didn't update my blog I'd be more than two weeks behind and I hate getting that far behind. So I wrote through the crappy feeling and by the end of it I was feeling a little better. 

I felt better on Monday.  A big storm was supposed to be hitting Utah and Idaho. My Facebook friends were posting lots of pictures of their snow, some places even had snow days. Brandon set his alarm early so he could shovel snow before going to work. But when the alarm went off we didn't have any snow outside. So we got ready for school and work like it was any other day.  

The kids and I headed out the door and were surprised to see snow falling! It was too late to change into snow boots so they all just went to school in their tennis shoes. We did grab gloves very fast.  

We got barely half and inch of snow and it melted pretty quick once the sun started shining again. That's probably been my favorite thing about winter in Twin Falls. It will snow, but the snow doesn't stick around and get dirty. 

Monday night after dinner we all kind of looked at each other and wondered what we were going to do.  We usually read Harry Potter, but we couldn't start the next book until we watched the movie and the movie hadn't come in at the library yet. We decided to play a few games. We played Candy Land and Go Fish. It was really fun. 

After the kids went to bed I had another case of the "the saddies." (Somehow infantilizing the name makes me feel better about how I feel.) I think I was suffering from a little bit of a vitamin D deficiency. I vowed that I'd spend time outside on the next sunny day. 

Tuesday was a productive day. Veronica and I went grocery shopping and then met up with a new friend at the library. Amy is very involved in the special needs community here in Twin Falls and we were trying to put together an Autism Awareness Event in April. We talked about a lot of ideas, but gradually realized that we don't have time or resources to pull off a large scale event.  So later we scaled down our idea - at least for this year. 

Derrick went to the boys activity at church in the evening. Brandon has been taking him and then hanging out in the foyer of the church just in case Derrick had any behavioral issues.  We'll this week the boys were taking thank you notes to the police officers and dogs that had visited them two weeks ago. Brandon and I decided to let Derrick go with the leaders and other boys without one of us tagging along. I was a little worried about how he would do, but I know he goes with his therapist all the time and follows her directions so I figured this wouldn't be any different. 

And guess what? It turned out just fine. I never got a full story of what happened, but this is the type of thing where no news is good news.  I'm assuming Derrick didn't do anything out of the ordinary. When the activity was over the leaders dropped him off at our house. He walked into the house and was in such a good mood from hanging out with all the boys his own age. This is very good for him. 

I'd felt a little achy all day and thought that I might be coming down with a cold. I'd bought nighttime cold medicine when I went grocery shopping so I took that before bedtime. This was the first time I took night time cold medicine since the kids were babies.  I'd realized then that I couldn't wake up and take care of them in the middle of the night so I've avoided night time cold medicine for years. But I figured I could start taking it again because they all sleep through the night.  

Big mistake. 

The kids did sleep through the night, but I didn't realized that I would still be sleepy in the morning.  Normally I'm out of bed by 6:45 at the latest. On Wednesday I got out of bed around 7:10. The kids and Brandon were already up and getting ready for the day. 

I got ready too and then took the kids to school. As I backed out of the driveway I thought, "am I awake enough to be driving?" I got the kids to school and made it to work okay, but I could tell I wasn't fully awake. Everything took my twice as long to do. I felt like my brain was foggy.  I ended up leaving work after only being there about an hour. 

I went home and went to sleep on the couch. I got Veronica from school and then slept on the couch some more. The other kids came home and I was still in a fog. I let them watch a movie almost as soon as they got home.  Brandon doesn't come home from work on Wednesday evenings because it's his free night to do what ever he wants.  So instead of making dinner I just let the kids eat cereal. I kept telling them I was sorry that I wasn't doing more for them. Charlotte was looking at me like, "What are you sorry about, we are having the time of our lives watching movies and eating cereal for dinner."

Somehow I did help everyone take baths and got them to bed at a decent time. I laid on the couch again after the kids were in bed. My brain finally cleared and I was able to take care of some things before Brandon got home. I was actually feeling much better by the time I went to bed. 

I never did get sick so I guess the cold medicine worked, but I'm not taking nighttime cold medicine on a week night ever again. 

Anyway, by Thursday I felt like I was finally feeling like myself again. I was awake, I was alert, and I was happy. 

When the kids came home from school we got out their valentines cards and candy and worked on putting everything together.  

I was surprised at the variety of the ways we could do valentines.  Charlotte and Lydia each had Blow Pop suckers.  The box the suckers came in was cardboard and the valentines were made by cutting out little cardboard squares from the side of the box. This was kind of a cool option for creating less waste. Though the individual Valentines were tiny.

Veronica's were airheads that slipped into two slots on a Valentine. These were relatively easy to put together. Derrick's were my favorite.  His were stickers that he just had to stick onto packages of skittles.  They were so easy.  I want to find ones like that every year.

When Brandon came home we had dinner. During dinner I got the sense that the kids and Brandon needed me out of the house so they could work on some Birthday stuff. I was planning to do a lot of thrift shopping on my birthday, and I decided I might as well get started now.  So I left and went to DI and started clothes shopping. I couldn't do much because I had to by at PTA meeting at 7:00 but I still found four shirts so it was a good start.

I went to PTA meeting and then went to Joanns and looked at fabric. Derrick wants me to make him a vest with whales on it to wear after he gets baptized. So I was looking to see what was available at the store.

Then I went and wandered around Fred Meyers. By about 9:00 I'd run out of places to wander so I headed home.

The next day was by BIRTHDAY!!!! The kids all wished me a happy birthday all morning long. I dropped them off at school and then went to DI and did some major thrift shopping. I found 7 new shirts, three pairs of pants, 2 cardigans, 4 undershirts, and a really pretty swim suit cover up/dress.

I picked up Veronica from school and we had a good afternoon at home. When I picked up Derrick from school he was so excited to see me and wish me happy birthday again. It was a nice day outside and we talked about how it felt like spring. When we got home he stood by our flower bed and yelled to the bulbs under the ground, "WAKE UP FLOWERS ITS SPRING!!!!"  I had to tell him it's not spring yet.

The kids played outside for a long time after they got home from school. I spent time out there too to get some vitamin D. When Brandon came home we had 7 layer dip and chips for dinner.  The flowers are ones that the kids picked out with Brandon at the dollar store the night before. 

Then we opened presents. Brandon did a good job picking things out. 

Then we had home made cherry cheesecake as my birthday cake. Brandon had worked on this for hours the night before.

We didn't have 35 candles so he just put three candles on one side and 5 on the other.

The cheesecake was delicious! Brandon had also bought ice cream because he was pretty certain the kids wouldn't like the cake. He was right.

Here's Derrick posing with me. See his shirt?  He wore it because he was anticipating out movie night movie - Captain Underpants.  Yes, that's what we watched on my birthday. Derrick had seen it with Miss Annie over the summer, but the other kids hadn't wanted to watch it until they saw a preview for it before another movie. Then they were really excited. So we checked it out from the library. I ended up falling asleep for most of the movie, but the kids all loved it.

The night wasn't very cold and so Brandon and I ended up sleeping with our bedroom window open. It was so relaxing to feel the cool air on me all night. Having a relaxing birthday ended up being one of the best gifts of all.

Saturday was a really laid back day too. We cleaned the house and then just hung around. Here are Charlotte and Lydia working on their valentines day boxes. They love to do craft projects on the living room floor. 

A local berry farm put a post on Facebook saying they would be teaching people how to prune raspberry bushes. It was a little Tom Sawyer-y in that they made it sound like a great opportunty in exchange for free labor.  But honestly it was something that I was super interested in.  I want to grow raspberries this year so I was excited about learning some tips. So I went out to the farm and had a two hour hands on lesson.  I learned a lot. And I feel a lot more confident in how to grow my own berries.

Saturday night was another night where we didn't quite know what to do with ourselves. The 4th Harry Potter movie hadn't come in at the library yet so we couldn't watch that nor could we start reading the 5th book.  And we didn't feel like watching another movie (which is kind of amazing since we usually LOVE watching movies.)  Instead I grabbed a puzzle and we started working on that. Charlotte and Lydia helped a lot and we got pretty far before bed time

In the morning we worked on the puzzle some more and finished it before leaving for church.  It had been really fun to do.

Here we are celebrating our victory.

After church Lydia wanted to make cookies. She'd put her roller skates on earlier and she didn't take them off. She made the cookies with her skates on. She skated all over the kitchen to grab different ingredients and things she needed.

I had my first class for the start your own small business class. It was MUCH better than the initial meeting had been. It was two hours long and we went over so many good things. I'm really enjoying it.

There was just one small thing I didn't like - we had to do a paperclip challenge.  And I really didn't want to do it.  I had some pretty strong feelings that worked their way into a blog post about how the Paperclip Challenge has a lot of Survivorship Bias built into it. I probably spent more time writing that post than anyone else spent trading their paperclip, but I had fun writing that post and got 50 page views and counting so I count that as a success.

On Monday after dinner we went to Winco and bought our reward for finishing out scripture reading chart for the last four weeks. Everyone got to pick out their own scoop of candy. Then we came home and sat around the table and traded candy with each other. We had a great time doing that.

Every day when I pick Veronica up from school she'll run to the car and then run right into the hood. She does it on purpose and thinks it is so funny.  So I took a picture of her doing it one day.

She loves doing it.

We were in the car a lot on Tuesday.  I took the kids to school in the morning and picked Veronica up before lunch.  We came home, but later ran to Smiths to pick up almond bark to make chocolate covered pretzels.  We came home and made a pan of pretzels and then later went in the car again to drop off treats to my ministering sisters. (My companion, Mary, took care of scheduling and most of the baking so I really can't take much credit.)  Then we picked up Derrick from school.  A few hours after the kids got home from school I took Charlotte and Lydia to the Girls Activity for church and an hour later I picked them up again.  I was feeling like quite the soccer mom.

At one point I glanced down and saw Antler napping in the cradle and I felt like she was living her best life.

Brandon was home for dinner, but later he went to the college for a free lecture on how scientists detect gravity waves from blackholes. He really liked it.  I'm not sure if he wants me to say anything about this, but he's been writing a science fiction novel for the past few months.  It's been a good hobby that is cheap and doesn't involve getting cold. He wants it to be as fact based as possible so he's had fun researching different things. When I read about this lecture I thought it sounded like something he'd enjoy.  I was right.

I stayed up making chocolate covered pretzels. They turned out really cute.

I love these things so much.

I liked these tri-color ones.

The girls have been playing with their horses a lot. On good weather days they'll head right out to the backyard and play as soon as they get home from school.

Brandon had his adventure on Wednesday night so he didn't come home. But I actually made dinner for the kids this week.  They were really good about taking baths and settling down. After the kids were in bed I went next door and talked to my neighbor Diantha for a little bit. 

On Thursday they thought it would be funny to dress "like twins."  For future reference Lydia has the side swept bangs.

My boss was out of town on Thursday so I didn't go into work. I spent the morning writing. (And I actually got a lot done instead of finding lots of things to do to avoid writing.)

When I picked Veronica up from school we went inside the school and had lunch with Derrick. He's been having a tough time lately and so I wanted to observe him. Veronica was super mad that she didn't get Mac'n'Cheese like she usually does, but she was happier when she realized she got to eat the same lunch as Derrick.

After we left the school I told Veronica that we were going to get ready for our Valentines Day party today instead of waiting until Valentines that the next day. So we went to the dollar store and picked up balloons that we'd pre-ordered on Tuesday. When I'd ordered the balloons on wednesday the staff had acted like I was crazy to order the balloons ahead of time.  They had to pull the order forms out of a drawer.  But when I picked up the balloons the lady who helped me said that it was a good thing I'd ordered them.  All the animal shaped balloons were already gone and she'd had to hide ours to keep other people from getting them.

When we got home we set up a table and decorated it like we always do. I'd been buying little things here and there for a month.  A few weeks earlier I'd found the stuffed dalmatians for $6 at Walmart. That was an amazing deal for plushes and the kids had really been into the 101 Dalmatian movies so I splurged and bought one for each kid.

And of course we had fun food. In addition to the pretzels we had rice crispy treats, and some candy. 

Veronica had a fun time setting everything out.  This is the last year she'll be home while the other kids are at school. I'm kind of sad when I think that she wont be home to help me set up for the party next year. I might just have to check her out early next year so we can continue our tradition.

Derrick gets out of school 10 minutes earlier than the girls. Usually he walks home super slow and there are even days the girls catch up to us while we are still walking home. Well, this day I said, "Derrick, I have a surprise for you at home." And he was off like a rocket. He even held my hand and made me run with him the last leg of the way home. He was so excited to walk inside and see all the fun things waiting for him. 

His love language is gifts so he loves this kind of stuff.

I've given him a frog balloon every year for 4 years. He'd been talking about getting one for a few weeks leading up to Valentine's Day. I was happy to keep the tradition going. 

Charlotte and Lydia came home and were so excited about the party too. Here's Charlotte running toward the table.

My mom had sent a letter to Lydia to reply to a letter she'd sent.  We had the letter on the table too and Lydia was trying to decide if she should grab the letter or a stuffed dog. The letter won.

Here are all the kids with their dogs.  The girls named theirs Spotty, Lucky, and Oddball.  Derrick named his Arnold.  (I'm not sure where Arnold came from. Maybe the Magic School Bus show?)

The kids grabbed treats and settled into spots to eat and play. They each had their dog and their balloon.  Derrick had the frog balloon, Veronica had a white dog balloon, Charlotte had the fox, and Lydia had the hedgehog.

The weather was super nice outside so everyone moved out side and played with their dogs out there for a while. Derrick took his balloon outside and let it go - even though I'd told him not to about 10 times. (Sigh)

We had homemade chili for dinner to counter act all the sugar.  After dinner I decided I needed a break from everyone so I drove over to the Canyon Edge and went for a walk on the trail there. The Snake River looked so pretty in the sunset light.

And here's the bridge.

More of the river.

The 4th Harry Potter movie had finally come in at the library so I went there to pick it up. I was hoping to get the 5th book too, but all four copies were checked out.  So I placed a hold on that so we can get a copy when it comes in.  (We own all the books except 4 and 5 so this won't be a problem going forward.)

On Friday I dropped all the kids off and went to work for a little bit. When I picked up Veronica after school she was full of stories about how fun the day had been. She showed me every valentine she got and told me exactly who gave it to her. 

I was super close to finishing a post about Bruneau Dunes State Park so I worked on that until it was time to go back to the school. I got it published just a few minutes before we had to leave. (I would have been done sooner, but I got distracted and booked a campsite at the state park while I was supposed to be researching some facts on the website - these are the hazards of travel writing.)

Way back on Back to School Night in August I'd signed up to help in Charlotte and Lydia's classes on Valentines Day.  I'm not sure what I was thinking when I did that.  Maybe I was hoping the classes would combine like they did in other school. Or maybe I was hoping they'd be at different times. What ever I was thinking was quickly pushed from my mind because right after Back to School Night ended I found out Brandon had been fired and my brain went into Emergency Mode. I literally didn't remember signing up to help with Valentines Day stuff until Charlotte's teacher emailed me a few weeks ago.

I was excited to help in Charlotte's class. Her teacher asked me to bring a game or two. As I started to think about what I could bring I got a message from Lydia's teacher.  Her class party was at the exact same time and I'd signed up to be a helper. At first I thought I'd just have to tell Lydia's teacher that I was double booked. They had other parents signed up in her class so I knew it wouldn't be that big of a problem for that class. But then I realized I should just ask Brandon to help. He was able to take a half day off work to come help out.

He went to Lydia's class and helped with the twister game that the other parents brought. I went to Charlotte's class. We played Don't Eat Pete with a board that my sister Lindsey e-mailed me. That's a game that my Aunt Vera taught us years ago.  Lindsey says she takes it to her kids' classes every year and the kids are always really excited to play it.  We also played a game where we shot q-tips out of straws and tried to hit a target. Charlotte had played that in kindergarten and had asked to do that.

Veronica was with me in Charlotte's class and she had fun playing all the games with the "big" kids. (She was as tall as half of the third graders.)

After the parties were over we met up with Derrick outside. He'd had a great day and had been really well behaved. The twins came out and we all went to the car.  This is what Valentines Day looks like with elementary aged kids.

Then we drove to Little Ceasers and picked up three pizzas that I'd pre-ordered. When we got back home Brandon had set out more treats on the table. He'd made brownies to take to work and there were left overs for us.  He also had Valentine's Day colored M&Ms.

We had a package by our door. It was the glasses I'd ordered from zennioptical last month.  I was so excited to wear my new glasses.

We opened up the pizzas and ate those really fast.

Then we went downstairs and watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. (Derrick says it Gobleck)  That movie is almost an improvement on the book. The story is definitely much tighter and the multitude of side characters is paired down quite a bit. But the pacing feels off in some places. Veronica was scared at the end and was very concerned about Harry for the whole graveyard scene, but afterward she didn't seem affected by it.

When the movie was over we watched the special features. That was really fun. The kids are just barely starting to understand special effects so it was fun for them to see how some things are done.

After we put the kids to bed Brandon and I tested out our downstairs fireplace for the first time. There is definitely some sort of venting problem and after a while our whole downstairs was full of smoke. But at least we know now.

This was the first year we bought chocolates for each other. That was fun.

Saturday was another laid back day. I slept in and Brandon and the kids cleaned the house. At noon I had my Autism Support Group. That went really well.  When that was over I met Brandon and the kids at the animal shelter.

A month ago Brandon told the kids that if they kept the house clean for a month then we would get a dog. Our house wasn't spotless during the last month, but the kids did clean up whenever we asked so we figured they'd earned the dog.

I follow the animal shelter on Facebook and saw that they were so full they were doing a half off special for Valentine's Day. That was good news.

Anyway, Brandon and the kids had narrowed it down to two dogs. One had a lot of applications for it already, but we were told the other one didn't have any other applications. That dog behaved well for us and didn't bark AT ALL (My main criteria) so we were all set on getting her.  But then the office lady discovered that there were in fact applications on that dog. She was going to have to call them first and see if they were still interested.  So we couldn't get the dog that day. 

Veronica was so sad when we had to leave without a dog.

Later Brandon was like, "Well no wonder they are full, they don't have anyone managing their applications!"

The animal shelter referred us over to Petco where another rescue place was having an adoption event. That ended up not working out either.  (And Veronica cried again.)

So we are still looking for a dog.

Overall I have not been impressed by the process. So far everyone has seemed super disorganized. Sure they love pets, but they don't seem to have a clue how to handle paperwork.  Also everyone says you should really think through the decision to get a dog, but then they expect you to decide in a stinky, crowded, loud room with dogs barking everywhere.

Ugh.

Hopefully the dog we liked at the animal shelter ends up working out for us. She was really cute and well behaved. Brandon will call them when they open again on Tuesday and see what the situation is.

Anyway, we came home, had dinner and then helped the kids take baths.  When everyone was in bed Brandon and I watched the movie RED. We've wanted to watch that for a while and we finally got the chance. It was really funny.

Today we had a good day at church. After church Brandon played a lot with the kids while I took a nap. In the evening I had my business class. It was good again. It's really forcing me to think about what I want to do with my writing career.

The kids are out of school the next two days so we are looking forward to some down time.

Well I think that gets us caught up. 

As always thanks for reading.

Trip Planning

My favorite way thing to do in January is to plan vacations for later in the year. I've spent a lot of happy time during the past few weeks thinking about vacations. 

We've been talking about going to the San Jaun Islands in northern Washington ever since Derrick developed a deep obsession with the movie Free Willy and everything Killer Whale related. (I googled the best place to see orcas and quickly decided that I must visit the San Juan Islands.) I was tentatively planning for us to go this summer.  A few months ago Brandon's siblings started talking about doing a family trip to the Washington Coast this summer as well. So with those two reasons in mind I've started pouring over guidebooks and sketching out an itinerary for a trip to Washington later this year..  It's going to be a fun trip. 

My siblings have also been trying to figure out a time to get together this summer.  We have a group Marco Polo video chat that is full of a lot a nonsense videos to each other about random things. We tried finding a time this summer that we all could get together. But with everyone's crazy schedules and the two babies that are due in May and then June we just couldn't find a time that worked.  I tossed out the idea that maybe we should just plan to get together around Christmas at my sister Lindsey's house in Houston. This has two big appeals.  1. It will be warm there. and 2. Lindsey has visited each of us at our homes countless times. It's way past time for us to travel to her for the holidays. Right now it looks like that's what we will be doing. 

I also wrote a post about how I handle anxiety while traveling. It's on my travel blog here. Brandon helped me with the picture for the post. We took the picture in the parked car. Brandon photo shopped the arrows on the speedometer and the RPM gauges to look like the car was driving.  

In non travel news I finally went to the eye doctor to get a new prescription. This is something I've been meaning to do for over a year. At first I put it off because I was hoping whatever post-graduation job Brandon got would have vision insurance. Then when we didn't have vision insurance I was waiting until after we moved. And then I was waiting til after life calmed down. And suddenly it had been a over year and I was starting to get headaches.

I called around to a few places and then ultimately decided Walmart Optical was going to be my best option price wise. I planned to order my glasses through Zenni optical so I didn't need to buy them from any particular place so Walmart would be perfect for my needs. Still I was a little nervous before my appointment. I wondered if the optometrist would lecture me on the importance of having an eye exam every year.

I shouldn't have worried.  Walmart Optical was super laid back and totally non judgmental.  They didn't even bat an eye when I asked for the pupillary distance to be written on my prescription (a sure sign I was going to order online.) Now I'm wishing there was a Walmart Dental that wouldn't judge me for my lack of flossing habits.

I ordered new glasses from Zenni and they should be arriving in time for my birthday.

I talked in my last post about how I really liked listening to political podcasts, but about the time the Impeachment Trial started in the Senate I decided I needed to scale back a bit. I decided to try out the Cold Podcast about Susan Powell's disappearance in 2009. My mom had raved about the podcast when it came out last year, but I just wasn't in the mood for it then. For some reason I was ready for it this week. I listened to one episode and was completely hooked.

It was really odd listening to Cold in the middle of also getting news about the Impeachment Trial. I couldn't help seeing a lot of similarities between Josh Powell and Donald Trump. (Narcissism, terrible treatment of women, inability to see themselves as wrong, etc.)  And to hear how Josh Powell avoided being arrested while hearing about how Donald Trump was probably going to be acquitted was frustrating.

On Thursday Charlotte and I had our writing club. We went to the library, and had a good time together, but I was pretty tapped out creatively.  I just wrote lists of ideas for future writing projects.

Friday morning at about 3:00 am Derrick came into my room crying about pain in his ear. I tried all the tricks I could think of, but he cried for a long time before falling asleep on the living room couch. I told him we'd go to the doctor in the morning.  (This exact same thing had happened over the summer and Derrick had had an ear infection then so I was willing to listen to him again.)

In the morning Derrick woke up in a happy mood because he knew he didn't have to go to school. I told Veronica to go get dressed and Derrick thought I was talking to him. He said, "OKAY!!" And happily ran downstairs to get dressed.  A few minutes later he was back upstairs with his roller blades on.  He was roller blading around the house like a maniac. If he hadn't been so miserable the night before I would have made him go to school.

My boss let me take the day off. (Honestly, I can't say enough about how awesome it is to have a flexible work schedule.) I took Derrick to the doctor and he did, in fact, have an ear infection. So we got a prescription for antibiotics. We picked it up at Smiths and Derrick charmed the pharmacist by listening carefully and asking questions as she explained how to take the medicine. He was so excited to take the medicine when we got home.

I'm glad we'd taken him to the doctor because we had big plans for Saturday that I didn't want to have to cancel. We were going to Sun Valley.

Sun Valley is about 80 miles almost directly north of Twin Falls. It has a higher elevation than Twin so it still had snow. All our snow had melted and so the kids were excited to go play in snow again. I was excited because this was our first trip out of the Twin Falls area that wasn't for an extended family get together. Seriously, we had gone to Utah for family related activities in August, in October, in November, and December.  I love our extended family, but it was nice to be going a direction other than south for a change.

We cleaned up the house a little bit and packed our stuff for the trip. Then we drove to Sun Valley.  The first place we went was the official Sun Valley Lodge.

And took this picture.

We looked around the lodge and the other buildings, but all that was too rich for our blood.  We'd packed a picnic lunch, but couldn't see any place to eat it. So we just ate in the car.  Then we parked near Penny Hill and got our sleds out to go sledding on Penny Hill.

My friend Sarah has been to Sun Valley a lot so I asked her for recommendations for what we should do. She recommended sledding on Penny Hill. If she hadn't recommended the hill I'm not sure we would have gone there. It was STEEP and looked HUGE.  No one was sledding on it when we got there. Even with Sarah's recommendation I was wondering if this was really a sledding hill.

As we got closer I could see that there was a smaller hill in front of the big hill. So we didn't have to climb quite as high as I'd first assumed. All the kids were really excited.  We went sledding in Pocatello several times and really liked the big hills there. Twin Falls is very flat and all the "sledding hills" in town were quite disappointing to look at. So I was happy that we could plan this trip.

Here are Brandon and me together.

The hill was much slicker than anything we'd ever been on before. Plus there were several small jumps to watch out for.  Each ride down the mountain usually ended in disaster.  But most of the kids liked it.

I think the kids just enjoyed being able to play in snow again.

Derrick had been the most excited to go sledding, but he didn't like the wild rides. So he and I went for a little walk.  Here's another look at Penny Hill.

Derrick liked kicking the deep snow.  That's Dollar Mountain in the back ground. It's has several ski slopes on it.

I took this video of Brandon sliding down with Lydia. By this point more people had joined us and were also sledding.

Charlotte came over and I took this picture of her. 

We decided it was about time to leave. Brandon started pulling some of the kids on the sleds.

I took this video of him pulling the kids.

One last look at the sledding hill. 

We went back to the car and the kids stripped off their wet snow pants.  I'd brought a laundry basket and so we just put all the wet things in there. Lydia and Veronica each had wet pants so they changed into dry clothes from my back up bag. (It's a good thing no one else needed to change their pants because I realized I hadn't switched out the clothes since this summer.  I had two pairs of long pants and two pairs of shorts in that bag.)  Everyone also changed their socks and gloves.

Sarah had also recommended going ice skating at a park in Ketchum that provided free skating. I wasn't sure how that worked (and I was feeling a bit of that familiar travel anxiety) so I didn't want to commit fully to skating.  I told the kids we'd just drive over there and see what it was like.

Well we found the park, saw the ice rink, saw the free skates and decided that of course we were going to skate. Here I am getting excited. 

Brandon said he didn't want to skate (he broke his arm slipping on ice when he was 12 and so he doesn't feel comfortable on slippery surfaces.)   He helped get everyone laced up and said he'd man the entrance and help the kids while I went out and tried to skate.  Veronica didn't want to wear skates either. This worked out pretty well for me.  I haven't ice skated in years. I do remember going skating at Murray Park with my Aunt Vera when I was a teenager.  I'd loved that day and so I wanted to skate again, but I knew I'd need help. The park had chairs out on the ice to support little kids. I got one of the chairs and had Veronica sit in it.  She acted like ballast to hold the chair steady while I pushed it around the ice.  She got a fun ride, and I got support.   Here we are on the ice.

Charlotte, Lydia, and Derrick all did great. Charlotte and Lydia were a little nervous at first, because they are used to roller skates, but they got the hang of ice skates very quickly.

Here's Lydia.

Close up of Lydia.

Charlotte.

And Derrick.  Derrick was a natural of course.

Brandon took this video of me and Veronica.

Lydia and Charlotte took turns pushing each other around. 

Veronica let me push her around for a long time. I thought that's all she would want. But after a while she said she wanted to try to skate.  Brandon helped get her all ready and she went out a little ways on the skates. I was so proud of her. 

Derrick had me push him around. At one point he dug his skates into the ice and he and the chair went one way while I went another.  I fell down pretty hard. I also twisted my car accident knee a little bin in the process. It hadn't hurt at all during all the treks up the sledding hill or while skating. But after that it hurt.  I went around the rink one more time, but then decided I was done. Then I slipped as I was trying to get off the ice. It like something from a cartoon. Both feet went up in the air and I think my body was suspended off the ground for a second or two before I crashed onto the ground. After that I was really done.

I bet you are wondering where all the skates were.  They were just in these racks right by the rink. Everything was basically on the honors system. The skates were labeled with the size and you picked them out yourself.

The building had offices and a large hall for gatherings.

Outside the kids decided to try hockey. They were pucks and sticks that they could use.

Here's all four kids on the ice.

Veronica was very cold so I helped her get her skates off and we went inside to warm up by the fire.  The other kids stayed outside and kept playing, but gradually they each came in to get warm. We ate the rest of the food we'd packed and got ready to go.

Sun Valley had been great and we were definitely be back again. We got home around 4:00 and everyone took baths.  Then, in honor of the kids new found interest in hockey, we watched the movie Miracle about the 1980 Hockey Team that beat the Russians in the Olympics.  That movie is LONG so I fast forwarded through a lot of the talking parts and we mostly just watched the hockey.  The kids loved it.

Sunday was a good day. I sang with the choir in Sacrament Meeting. We sang a really pretty arrangement of If the Savior Stood Beside Me. Oh and that reminds me,  I forgot to write this in my last few updates. Derrick has started asking me to sing him bedtime songs. This is a big deal. He hasn't wanted me to sing to him for years.  And lately he's started singing along to the songs!!!!!!  He knows the words to I am a Child of God and A Childs Prayer. It's super sweet and shows me that Derrick has been paying attention all these years.

In the evening on Sunday I went to the Fireside for the Self Reliance classes for our stake.  In some ways the evening felt like a meeting that could have been an email. I already knew I wanted to sign up for the "Start a business" course, but I had to sit through a whole bunch of talk for the personal finance, find a better job, and get an education courses. I was in a pretty bad mood by the end of the night, but I still am optimistic about the start a business course.

On Monday Veronica brought home a 100 days of school project.  She had to choose some small objects to glue into a giant picture of the gum ball machine.  We went grocery shopping and she picked out farfelli noodles while we were at the store. When Charlotte and Lydia came home from school they helped her glue the noodles on the gumball machine picture. It was a fun group picture.

Derrick was supposed to have a new therapist on Monday (the other one couldn't make therapy work around her 16 credits worth of classes that she was taking at school).  But that therapist had something come up on Monday.  So instead Miss Dana drove over from Pocatello.  I LOVE Dana and she's one of the reasons I wanted to stay with this company when we moved. She went with Derrick for two hours and then came back and talked with me for about half an hour.  It was so good to talk with her.  She is so encouraging.

On Tuesday something happened that I'd been hoping to avoid all month - Lydia got sick.  Every January for the last few years she's got sick for about a week.  I was really really really hoping that this time we could avoid that. I bought her a long coat to keep her warm outside and I made sure she was eating healthy.  But she still got sick on Tuesday.  She said her throat hurt and she had really swollen lymph nodes.

So she stayed home from school.  I went to work, but I left a little early so she wasn't home alone for very long.

Derrick's new therapist, Miss Emily, came on Tuesday.  I like her and Derrick did too.  They went to the park, but later had to leave because it started raining really hard.

Meanwhile I took Charlotte to her girls activity for Primary.  She had a good time.

I was hoping that after a day of rest Lydia would be feeling well again.  But she wasn't feeling well on Wednesday morning.  Charlotte was having a rough morning too. I let them stay home and then I took Lydia into the quick care for a strep test.  I was hoping it would just be a quick process like our office in Pocatello, but it took FOREVER.  And then the test turned out negative.

The only good thing that came out of the morning was that we stopped by Walmart and bought the kids Valentines Day Cards/candies and some little gifts for our family Valentines Day party.

We picked Veronica up from Kindergarten.  When we got home I was so tired.  I helped the kids get lunch and then I laid down and took a nap on the couch.  The girls set up a Mall in their Frozen doll house.

Here's the clothing area.

The shoe area.

The purse area.

The checkout counter.

And the dads' waiting area.

Wednesday nights are the night Brandon doesn't come home after work. I was doing okay with the kids, but I really wanted them to go to bed early.  (Especially since Charlotte and Lydia hadn't taken naps at all even though they'd stayed home from school.)  Usually I have an alarm go off at 7:30 to signal that it's bedtime.  But this night I set an alarm for 6:30.

We had dinner early at about 4:30.  Then we did bath time as usual.  After we sat down in the living room and read Harry Potter for about an hour.  I was worried that my plan for an early bedtime wouldn't work if Derrick wan't tired.  But at 6:20 he started asking to go to bed.  When my alarm went off at 6:30 he happily went downstairs and let me help him into his pajamas and tuck him in.  Veronica went to bed pretty easy too.

Then I went into Charlotte and Lydia's room and said, "You know, I want to keep reading.  Let's stay up an extra hour and read some more."  So we read for another hour while they were in bed.  At 7:30 the real bedtime alarm went off and I told the kids it was "way passed their bedtime and to go to sleep."

I can't believe I actually pulled it off.

On Thursday everyone went to school and I went to work for a little bit. My boss was out of town so technically we were closed, but I had a few things I needed to get done that I hadn't been able to do on Wednesday because I'd taken Lydia to the doctor.

That afternoon I took Veronica with me to an office for the Department of Health and Welfare. I was in the middle of trying to figure out something for Derrick's insurance and I'd been told to go to that office, but it ended up being a wild goose chase.  I'd eventually solve the problem on Friday (by calling Health and Welfare - go figure- but until then I was pretty frustrated.

That evening we read a lot of Harry Potter.  We made it through the Final Task and then started in on the scary stuff where Voldemort comes back.  I was worried about how the kids would handle it, but they did really well. Lydia sat by me and braided my hair the whole time.

She also braided her hair

On Friday I went into work to take care of processing some payments before the end of the month. We were still closed and my boss wasn't even there. I loved sitting in the quiet office doing things with money. The process was more complicated that usual and I had to make a spreadsheet to keep track of everything. I also got to use my new 10-key calculator to make sure everything balanced in the end.  Everything came out perfect and I was so proud of myself.  I love doing this kind of work.

A few weeks ago we signed up to participate in the SPARK autism research study. Part of the process was to send in DND samples from Derrick, me, and Charlotte.  The collection kits for me and Charlotte had arrived and Derrick was eagerly awaiting his.  I'd told him that we'd have to spit in the kits.  Derrick thought that was amazing and he talked about it a lot.  I even had to write an email to his teachers at school to give them a heads up in case they were wondering why Derrick was suddenly taking so much about spitting.

His kit showed up on Friday. Derrick, Charlotte, and I took care of spitting into the sample collection tubes.  Then Derrick went with me to drop the boxes off in a mail collection box by the store.  He had so much fun leaning out of the car window and putting the boxes into the mail box.

Friday night we read a little bit more of Harry Potter (So.Much.Exposition).  After that the kids had a dance party in the living room.  Lydia's ear started hurting so I took her to the store to buy ear drops.  Those ended up not helping so around 10:00 we asked our neighbor Adam to come help Brandon give Lydia a blessing.  After that she fell asleep.

On Saturday we had pretty much nothing planned. My biggest goal for the day was to straighten the living room rug that had been looking more and more crooked.  I ended up rolling up moving all the furniture and damp mopping the floor really well before rolling the rug back down.

Then I decluttered the book cases and decorated for Valentine's Day. I really like how it looks.

Charlotte and Lydia had another set of twins come over to play. Those girls brought their skates so all the kids were skating in the basement while I worked.  Brandon made everyone macaroni and cheese and hot dogs for lunch.  Then the kids all watched the Parent Trap - which was a pretty apt movie for two sets of twins to watch.  After the other twins went home we sat down and read the final 30 pages of Harry Potter.  Then we took it back to the library.

Meanwhile Brandon went to a free lecture by a Shawn Willsey.  He is a geology professor at the College of Southern Idaho. I saw his book Geology Underfoot in Southern Idaho at the gift shop at the science center when we were there a few weeks ago.  I checked the book out from the library and really liked it. I'd also listened to a podcast with him as a guest.  So when I saw he was doing a lecture at the Twin Falls County Museum I told Brandon that he should go.  Brandon really enjoyed the lecture.  Most (all) of the audience was retirees. Brandon and the professor were the only millennials there. 

Brandon bought the book and got it signed.  He got home about the same time I got back from the library.  He showed me the book and I laughed because I'd literally just returned my library copy. I'm glad he bought the book because it's going to come in handy a lot this summer.

After dinner the kids took quick baths and then we watched Ground Hog day for movie night.  That movie never gets old.  

When I helped Derrick get ready for bed he showed me the "Christmas Tree" that Veronica had helped him decorate that morning.

After we put the kids to bed we watched the movie Greenbook. It was excellent and I've been thinking about it ever since. 

Today we had Stake Conference. We went to the Stake Center and sat in the very back on the stage again.  The kids were pretty good.

After church I didn't have much to do.  We had a nice afternoon just hanging out.  Brandon and I went over some guide books about Washington that I'd picked up at the library and planned out a lot of our route of for our trip later this year.

I'm looking forward to that trip as well as other all the other little things that will happen this year.

Thanks for reading.

Student loan payoff update

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time will recognize this picture. This is the payment tracker that we used as a visual representation for how much of Brandon's student loans had been paid off. We took a square off every time we made a monthly payment. 

I haven't done anything with this tracker in nearly 3 years. I also haven't written any student loan updates since January of 2017. That's because paying off the student loans has been in a bit of a holding pattern as our lives changed a lot over the last 3 and a half years.  Now that things have stabilized a bit I've been able to take stock of the student loan situation.

First a bit of a recap for anyone who started reading in the last three years or who needs a refresher.

Brandon started flight school at Utah State University in 2004. He was encouraged to take out many student loans to pay for flight school. The majority of the loans were through private companies and the interest started accruing from day one. (I should note that I was not in the picture when this happened.)

Brandon paid quite a bit of money to the flight school. but after six years in school he'd only earned his Private Pilot Rating and his Instrument Rating. In my opinion the flight school was horribly mismanaged and couldn't be bothered to actually teach their students. Rather than continue to put money into that black hole Brandon decided to graduate with an Interdisciplinary Degree in 2010.

He had ten student loans in total. Five "small" loans. Four "giant" loans. And one "midsize."  Five were private loans and five were government loans.

Our original plan was to move to Bountiful and finish flight school at the private school there.  Twins and a bad economy sidelined that plan. Meanwhile we couldn't afford to pay the student loans so Brandon put them into forbearance (and interest continued to accrue).

In 2012 Brandon joined the Army and the loans started to come out of forbearance. We sat down and committed ourselves to paying the loans as fast as possible. (He joined the Army after the student loan payoff program ended so unfortunately we didn't qualify for that.) We put as much money as possible into paying the loans - including huge chunks of our tax refund money. When Brandon became a Warrant Officer in the Army in 2015 he started making more money each month and we were able to make double payments on the loans. In less than five years we succeeded in paying off the five smallest of the original ten loans. It looked like we might be out of debt by the end of 2020 if we kept up the momentum.

But then in 2016 Brandon had trouble sleeping which meant he couldn't finish Army flight school and ultimately led to him deciding to leave the Army. As of June 2016 I stopped making double payments on the loans and went back to minimum payments. Any extra money went into savings while we tried to figure out what was next.

Brandon officially left the Army at the end of 2016 and we temporarily moved in with his parents. I got a part time job at a ski resort while Brandon looked for a job. After a while we realized that our best career option would be for him to go back to school to be an Aircraft Mechanic. Meanwhile we took a 3 month detour for a job in Yellowstone.

Our savings, combined with an influx of cash from our tax refund, kept the student loans paid throughout 2017. But in the fall when we arrived in Pocatello for Brandon to start school we were running out of money.  Brandon received money from the Post 9-11 GI Bill for Tuition and Housing. And I eventually got a job to cover food, gas, and other necessities, but the monthly student loan payment was out of our reach financially. At first I thought we could put the loans back into forbearance, but we'd used up all the time when we'd done that when the twins were born.

So we literally had to take out student loans to pay for the student loans. Yeah. That was annoying. The only consolation was that these new loans were government ones so they had better terms than the private loans.

Those new loans helped us cover many expenses those first few uncertain months in Pocatello. They especially helped with continuing to make the minimum payments on the student loans each month. When tax time came around in 2018 and 2019 I put money from our tax refund into our savings to cover the loans for the next year. Brandon and I still weren't making enough money to pay for the minimum payments from our paychecks so it was good to know we had the money sitting in our savings account.

When Brandon graduated and started working in May of last year I was still very hesitant to pay anything other than the minimum payments on the loans. We knew we needed to buy a house (buying in Twin Falls was cheaper than renting) so we needed money for a down payment plus to cover emergencies.  And boy did we have an emergency.  Right as we bought the house Brandon lost his job. Things were pretty scary there for a bit.

Brandon got an emergency job pretty quickly, and then got a better job again within a few months.  Plus I started working part time.  So after a while our finances stabilized.

And with that stabilization I'm FINALLY able to take a look at where we are with the student loans.

We had the remaining 5 "giant" loans plus the two new "small" loans. I added up the remaining balances and divided by the new minimum monthly payment. I found I was able to take off three payment squares from our tracker.  I'd been worried that I'd have to add squares so I was pretty happy that we'd made even three squares of progress on this tracker.  Let's look at it again.

Basically if we do nothing but pay minimum payments we will be out of debt in less than 8 years. That's kind of depressing when you remember that Brandon graduated in 2010. But hey, at least we are making progress.

The picture behind the squares is a collage of pictures from the Island of Reunion where Brandon spent his mission. The original goal was that when we were out of debt we'd go on a long vacation to Reunion to celebrate. I'd still like to do that, we haven't really talked about it lately so I'm not sure if that's our "ultimate goal." Mostly I just want to be out of debt.

Eventually I'd like to get back to the point where we pay more than minimum payments, but that's not part of the plan for this year. All the scariness with job insecurity the last few years makes me want to build up our savings so that we have a good 3-6 months emergency fund before we start trying to tackle the debt.  I've learned that a few thousand dollars in the bank feels better than tossing a few thousand dollars into the ever hungry student loans.

I am also looking into refinancing the private loans. In theory we can get a better interest rate than we currently have. That should help the payoff go faster too.

Even though I haven't been doing blog updates about the student loans I have been keeping track of the numbers on my spreadsheets.  I like the visual story that the charts tell. I'm sure you are curious about them as well.

I don't feel comfortable sharing the exact amount we pay so I've blocked off the dollar amounts on the left hand side. Just imagine whatever amount makes your heart race and base the charts off that amount. 

This first chart shows the progress we've made on paying off the loans over the years.  You can see the loans grow from 2004 to 2010.  This data was a little incomplete so the growth wasn't really that drastic between 2008 and 2009, but the loans were definitely that big by 2010.  You can see the loans start to gradually decrease after 2012.  And you can see the two new loans join the bunch in 2017.  

This next chart could also be called why "Interest is the WORST." It shows the total amount we paid to the student loans each year. The depressing part of this chart is when you see how much of our payments went to interest.  In 2019 we paid a grand total of $0.99 to principle. AGH.  A lot of that interest was what accumulated while Brandon was in school at USU. It's also what accumulated when the loans were in Forbearance. And we are still paying it off. Yeah, Interest is the WORST.

This year I decided to make a new chart. This one shows a running total of what we paid each year.  So basically the total paid over all time. This was the first time I've ever added up how much we've paid total. It's a big amount. And a lot of it went to interest.

I was curious how the total amount we've paid compares to the total balance still due on the loans. So I made a chart comparing the two numbers over the life of the loans. I was happy to see that the two amounts actually met sometime in 2018. They would have met sometime in 2016 if we hadn't been thrown into a whole new life plan.

I was thinking about writing a list of things we did right verses things we did wrong with the loans. I'd love to pass on advise that we've learned from 8 years of trying to get out of debt. But this post is long enough. Maybe I'll write those things in another post in a few days. Let me know if you'd be interested in reading that.

I'm not sure how to sum this post up.  I guess I'll leave you on this note. 

Brandon and I have been very lucky that we've been able to make continuous payments on these loans for the past 8 years. Even though our progress has been slower than we'd like it has been continuous. The loans are getting smaller. We will eventually be out of debt.

But many people have not been as fortunate. Many people have not been able to pay their loans and the interest continues to accrue.  That very well could have been us if Brandon had not joined the military or if we didn't get large tax refunds due to having 4 children.

Maybe those people should have known better than to get into so much debt at such a young age. But remember, everyone was telling college kids to take out loans. And the student loan companies let them. Nobody stopped to consider that these kids had no life experience, no real collateral, many weren't even pursuing degrees that would lead to well paying jobs. Nobody stopped to say "hey this seems kind of risky. Maybe we shouldn't loan 20 year olds this kind of money."

The money was loaned and it has saddled an entire generation with a huge amount of debt - including Brandon. Every time I make a payment I can't help but wonder what else we could have done with that money.