An alternate title for this post would be, "All the stuff I did while procrastinating doing school work." Because A LOT of stuff happened in the last three weeks, but the main constant through all of it was that I really should have been doing something for school while I was doing all that other stuff.
School is definitely harder now that I've entered the Intermediate Accounting Courses. Usually my courses just have one test at the end. But the Intermediate ones have two tests. I'll study 2 or 3 units and then take a test on those units. Then I study 2 or 3 more units and take a test on those. In some ways this is easier because I don't have to try to hold as much information in my head, but it's also harder because I'm expected to really know and understand the subject matter.
I made it through the first half of Intermediate 1 in good time. But that second half . . . well, you'll see.
So let's rewind ALL the way back to Sunday February 6th. Because not only was I procrastinating school work I was also procrastinating this blog. We've got 3 weeks to catch up on here. Buckle up.
Week 1 Feb 6-13
The kids played in the basement all day on Sunday. After church they showed us a magic show they'd cooked up all by themselves. Derrick was the magician and the girls were his assistants. It was ADRORABLE.
I only filmed one trick . . . and I was paying more attention to the trick than filming it well, but you stil get the idea of what the show was like.
Another thing that had been happening the last few days was that the three girls had been making lots of dragons with palmers clay. I never took good pictures of all of the dragons. But here's one that I saw while putting Veronica to bed.
Monday was my birthday. And true to form I kept forgetting about it. Weekday birthdays are tricky anyway and Monday birthdays are just not that special.
Also, Brandon left for work at 6:00 and so he wasn't there to wish me happy birthday when I woke up.
But Charlotte and Lydia made it special. Here's a card Lydia gave me.
It says she wished I was a bird and could fly away from all my stresses.
After I dropped the kids off at school I found this card stuck to my bathroom mirror. It was from Charlotte. It says:
Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue,
and you are a flower too!
After I got dressed for the morning I went to the school to help Liz with our first round of Candy Gram Sales. I could only stay to help with the Kindergarten sale because then I had to hurry over to work to prep for a meeting with the Admin Team.
We have this meeting every other week, but we'd skipped it the last time because of illness. So even though it was my birthday I felt like I had to attend the meeting. Also we had like 10 agenda items and most of them were mine. So yeah, I needed to be at that meeting.
It was a LONG meeting of going over various past due accounts and what to do about them. Sounds boring, but it was really productive because we got a lot of stuff figured out.
Then I went back to the school to help with more Candy Gram sales during the kids' lunch recess time. Oh and important note here. Brandon and I still only have one car and I'd let him take it that morning. So all that travel back and forth between work and school was WALKING. Once again I'm glad most of my life is set up like a medieval peasant and the kids school and my work are within a mile of eachother.
Liz told me that my twins had tricked her. They'd both worn their school hoodies. She'd talked to one while she filled out her candy gram. A little later the other one came over and filled out her gram. Liz had been like, "Oh you came back Charlotte." And "Charlotte" had said, "I'm Lydia."
We cleaned up, I got the money totaled, and said goodbye to the other ladies. Then I waited around the school for a few minutes for the kids to be let out of school. The other set of twins comes home with us on Monday's so when the kids did show up there were SIX of them.
Brandon got home from work shortly after we got home. And then I took the car and went to the bank to drop off the deposit for PTO.
After that. . . shoot, I don't remember what I did. Maybe homework. Yeah, let's say that. I finally got some time to do some home work. (In reality I probably took a nap.)
After the other twins left we had dinner. Brandon made 7 layer dip like he always does for my birthday.
There were no big revelations on this birthday. Basically, just an acknowledgement that I'm 37 and I'm also super busy.
Tuesday was a less busy day. I still had candy gram sales, but I didn't have an admin meeting so I could stay at the school and help longer. I did go to work, but I didn't have an admin meeting so I could just do the deposit and then get out of there.
I walked back to the school and helped out with the last sales there. Then I counted the money and put that deposit into my shoulder bag. My biggest fear was that I would get the work deposit mixed up with the PTO deposit so I had them in separate money bags that were completely different colors.
Brandon texted me when I was done at the school. He thought I was at work and told me "I'll get the kids." I called him and told him, "Well that's great, but what I really need right now is a ride. Can you pick me up at the school." He picked me up and we both went to the bank to drop off the deposits. They did not get mixed up.
Then it was back home. And soon after that it was time to pick the kids up. I'm hoping I did school work in here, but probably not.
Derrick had boys activity at the church that afternoon so I took him. One of the things was making Valentines. We made one for my mom.
On Wednesday I had yet another PTO event. This was the day we were addressing the candy grams. Liz hosted this at her house. A week earlier she'd hosted the project where we stuffed candy's into little plastic pouches. That activity had been so much fun. There'd been 3 or 4 other moms there and we'd just sat around chatting while stuffing chocolate.
This time we were labeling the candy grams. There were a little over 300 candy grams that had been ordered. We had enough to make 1200 candy grams so we had enough to give each student and staff member two candy grams. It was easy to label and sort the generic grams as from the PTO, but the ones that had been specifically ordered took up the most effort.
This activity was still fun, but also super hard! We had to take each child's order form, fill out a to/from tag, find the kind of candy they'd ordered, put the tag on, AND THEN put the candy into the correct child's bag, AND THEN make sure that bag ended up in the right bin for their class.
I can't even explain the whole process clearly in writing. It wasn't very clear in real life either.
Thankfully Liz had done A LOT of prep work behind the scenes to make it go smoother. It was still a task of epic proportions, but it wasn't chaos.
I got to Liz's house at 8:45 and didn't leave until 12:45. I took half the totes with me to finish sealing up the pouches for each student. (I'd dropped Brandon off at work at 6:00 so I had the car this day.)
I didn't get any pictures on this day, but I took this one on Valentine's Day when Lydia brought her candy grams home from school. So much work!
Oh and here's a little story to show how fast life can change. When I'd been at Liz's house on February 2nd I'd been talking with the other ladies about how Brandon had done some substitute teaching while he was between jobs. So on Feb 9th one of those ladies asked, "How's substituting been for your husband?" And I said, "Well funny story. He actually found a new job. He had an interview while we were stuffing candy last week and he was offered that job later the day. He started on Friday."
I went to work after candy grams, which was kind of a mistake because my brain was GONE. I did what I had to do and then was like, "If I stay here any longer I'm going to mess things up." So I went home.
I didn't even try to squeeze in school.
That evening was one of our triple header Wednesdays. Veronica had Girls Activity from 4:30 to 5:30. Derrick had behavioral therapy from 5:00 to 7:00, and Charlotte and Lydia had Young Women's from 7:00 to 8:00.
I have no idea when we ate dinner.
The activity for Young Women's was line dancing. Charlotte and Lydia weren't so sure about that so I agreed to come with them and wait in the foyer in case they wanted to leave early. They made it through about 30 minutes before they came out and asked to leave.
Thursday was the ONLY day of the week that I didn't see Liz. I spent the whole morning studying and then the whole afternoon at work. It was nice to get caught up.
All week Lydia and Charlotte had been working hard to redo their Valentine's mail boxes. They'd made them last year during homeschool, but wanted to change them slightly this year. Lydia was heart broken when her teacher told the class that they couldn't bring any boxes to school on Valentine's Day. I took this picture and emailed it to her teacher. Her teacher put it up on the big screen for the class to see. That made Lydia feel better, she really just wanted her hard work acknowledged.
Veronica had also been adding things to her lama box. She wanted me to take a picture.
Here she is with her handy work.
I went to work in the morning and then headed over to the school for the Mustang Day sale. The first thing I did was get the candy gram totes out of my car. Here they are with the other half of the totes in the PTO closet. They were all ready to be given out on Monday.
I really need to take pictures of the next Mustang Day Sale because these are really cute. Liz does a great job of ordering fun things for the kids to buy. Everything is a dollar so it's like a little dollar store for the kids. In January we had 3 parent volunteers. This time we had like 6 or 7! Our PTO is growing!
On Thursday night Brandon and I went grocery shopping for a date. When we got home I sealed up the last of the pouches for Candy Grams.
I took this picture when the kids walked to school on Friday, but really this ice-lake had been in this spot for weeks. Every morning the kids would stop here and skate around for a few seconds. We also had our share of ice sidewalks on Friday morning. First Lydia slipped. Then Veronica slipped. And on the way home I slipped. I was getting very done with winter.
I did get a picture of Charlotte doing her Safety Patrol Job. She's a hall monitor during lunch.
After we were done with the Mustang Sale I totaled up all the money. We'd kind of undercut our sale by also selling candy grams that week so the numbers were lower than they were in January. Liz was a little disheartened by that, but I told her I could adjust the accounting numbers to show a profit. (I'm not getting a bachelors degree in accounting for nothing.)
It's so fun to be at the school and see my kids going about their days. When Derrick walks by he looks so TALL. I'm like, "who is this big kid? Oh it's my big kid." And Veronica is a head taller than the other second graders.
Half the reason I'm doing PTO is because I work with the teachers and staff in so many different ways anyway. Veronica's teacher came over and talked to me about something with Veronica. Derrick's SPED teacher had me sign a form for his IEP. I'd have been at the school for these things anyway. So I might as well do PTO too.
All week long Veronica and I had been plotting our Valentine's Day party. For YEARS she and I have set up a little party while the other kids were in school. At first we did it in Alabama when she and I were both home and the other kids went to Pre-K3. Then we did it on my day off in Utah when the older kids were at school and she was home. For two years we did it on my day off in Pocatello when the older kids were at school and she was home from Pre-school. Then we did it in Twin Falls when she and I were home in the afternoons after Kindergarten. Last year was a little different because of homeschool, so she didn't help, but we still had our little party.
This was the first time she'd been in school all day and I just couldn't imagine setting up the party without her. So she and I cooked up a plan to check her out early. The best day to do that was Friday right after Mustang Day. So after I was all done with Mustang Day I had the front office call down for Veronica and she happily came down so we could go do our party.
We had the car so our first stop was the bank. I'd been there earlier to drop off the deposit for work. When I do that I usually use the drive through. The lady that helped me said, "Have a good weekend." I said, "Well I'll be back with PTO money later." So when I walked into the bank with all the PTO money she said, "Welcome back!"
Veronica had fun watching all the currency go through the counting machine. And she liked watching the coin machine count all the coin. I'd been dead on with the count - even with over $20 in coin - which was a good feeling.
Then we went home and I started pulling out all the candy and other things out of their hiding places. Earlier in the week I'd showed Veronica the stuffed animals I'd bought. She literally spent the next 10 minutes in her room screaming with excitement. So she was super excited to see the stuffed animals again. We had a Monkey for Derrick, A Leopard for Charlotte, a Zebra for Lydia, and a Lion for Veronica.
We also had cinnamon lips, valentine's M&M's, conversations hearts, Hershey's kisses, and truffles. I'd bought balloons at the Dollar store when Brandon and I had gone grocery shopping the night before. Veronica was super excited about those too.
Here's Veronica posing with her handy work. She made a heart with her hands.
And because we had the time and the supplies we put up some streamers.
I call this a "party" but really it's just all of us sitting around eating candy.
Here are the girls playing with their new little lego sets that they bought at the Mustang Day Sale.
Here's Brandon showing why we really need a second couch in the living room.
The only game we played was "Don't Eat Pete" with a game board that my sister Lindsey shared with my two years ago.
And here are the kids with their balloons.
Brandon and Veronica worked together to make pizza for dinner. Here's the heart shaped pizza they made.
Lydia thought it would be cuter with the plate in the middle.
Veronica spelled out "I LOVE YOU" in Pepperoni's on this pizza. I said it looked like it was written in braille.
Here's the stream. But we never did find the minnows. I'm not sure where they went.
We followed the stream and Derrick wanted to walk under the road through this culvert. The one on the right was mostly dry so he went through that one. I missed getting a picture, but when he popped out he yelled. "That was incredible!" And turned around to walk through it again."
Here he is after he came out the other side.
Then we found another stream that was mostly empty. It was full of ice. Derrick walked on that stream and broke Ice the whole way. He had a great afternoon.
In the middle of setting everything up I got a call from Derrick's behavioral therapy company. At first I thought it was just going to be a satisfaction survey that they do every few months. So I ignored the call. But then they called back.
I answered it and it was the scheduler on the phone she said, "I'm here with ____ and ____ and we have some news for you." This is when I realized it wasn't a regular phone call. They were calling to let me know that they'd made the hard decision to close down the Twin Falls Office. This was heart breaking news, but not entirely unexpected.
We'd been with this company since August of 2018. When I told them that we were moving to Twin Falls, I assumed we'd have to find a new company. But they said, "Oh we are opening an office there." They already were running adult care, but Derrick was their first child client in Twin Falls. The company was still finding their footing in Twin Falls when Covid hit and changed everything. They managed to hang on for almost 2 years, but I knew things were never running as smoothly as they did in Pocatello. It's always been a struggle to have staff available.
Still I didn't realize how bad it had become. They'd already sold off the adult side of the company and were just trying to hang onto the child. Derrick's therapist was the only one still in Twin. They just couldn't keep the company going in Twin Falls.
They were still doing fine in Pocatello, which was good to hear. I've loved this company and I'd hate to have it close for good.
But all this boiled down to the fact that I'd have to find a new therapy provider for Derrick. Later that day Derrick's Case Worker with the Department of Health and Welfare emailed me to see if I'd heard the news. I told her the company had called me to tell me. I said, "I'm in denial right now, but I'll work on this next week."
Okay, back to the party. Normally the day of the party is supposed to be a surprise, but Veronica had completely blown it by at least Tuesday. Still, the older kids were so excited to come home and see the table set up.
On Saturday I spent something like 6 hours working on the accounting for PTO. The first thing I had to do was account for the Candy Grams that had been purchased and the ones that had been donated as two separate entities. I turned the donated ones into an expense and pulled their numbers out from the total candy grams. After doing that I was able to show profit on the candy grams that we actually sold.
Then I did something similar with the numbers for the Mustang Days. We still had a lot of left over inventory from our February Sale so I pulled out the cost of the left over inventory. Once I did that our February sale showed a profit on the items that were actually sold.
These were simple enough to do, but I had to document everything which included writing two super long emails explaining my process.
After that I had to take care of the accounting for the items purchases for our upcoming sales and to get Liz reimbursed for purchasing those. Once again - lots of paperwork.
A week or so earlier I'd finally sat down with all the documents and things I had and got them organized into one binder. So on this day I updated the binder with all the things that had accumulated over the last week. I had deposit records and receipts, invoices, and some random stuff.
I was a LOT of work, but it was so worth it. Everything should be a lot more routine from here on out. I don't think I'll have to spend this much time on PTO for a long time.
On Saturday afternoon Derrick wanted to go find Minnows in the stream at CSI. When he'd gone to behavioral therapy earlier in the week he'd been able to pick up the minnows in the stream. He wanted to show me how he did that.
So we went to CSI and walked over to the stream. He's the sledding hill that is still melting.
When I got home Lydia reminded me that she had an orange leaf coupon for doing well on her Istation or something. I'd promised to take her. So we went to Orange Leaf and then walked around Smiths.
When we got home I went outside to look at some things in the back yard. I was seeing if the area around the raspberries had melted enough for me to get back there and prune. What I found instead were little tulip buds in a flower bed up against a south facing wall. This made me SO HAPPY. After a long and snowy winter it was nice to see evidence of spring.
There's still a lot of snow covering the garden beds.
But in a few weeks, I'll be able to get out here and start playing again.
At church I sang in a special small group women's choir. I don't have time to be in choir every week, but the choir director put together a group that would just sing one song and invited me to be in it with several other women. We just rehearsed for 15 minutes the week before and 10 minutes the day of and then sang in Sacrament Meeting. I was glad to be part of singing something.
Week 2 February 13- 20
On Sunday Charlotte and Lydia showed off this sign they made for their door. Charlotte said that the plan had been to make letters that said, "Charlotte and Lydia's Room." But that took too long. So they changed it to Twins Room. They said that the "W" was originally an "E" and one of the "O"s is a Christmas Wreath.
After church I was so happy to see that all the snow had melted off the street in front of our house. We haven't been able to see the sides of our road since before Christmas. So yes, I did take a picture to commemorate this special day.
All the grassy parts of the yard still had a lot of snow.
And then we frosted them.
They look so fun! But what's not pictured in this picture are all the tense moments that came from trying to frost mini cupcakes with four excited kids at 6:00 PM. Note to self - frosting is best done in the morning or after a nap. Not after a long Sunday.
Monday was Valentine's Day AKA the day Liz and I could finally stop worrying about the Candy Grams. We met up at the school after dropping our kids off and started taking the totes to classrooms. In some classes we just dropped off the totes so we didn't interrupt the learning. But in other classes the teachers were like, "Hey, Let's hand these out right now." In one class the teacher even let her students eat them right away.
Brandon and the kids worked on making mini cupcakes all afternoon.
My FAVORITE thing was seeing the kids faces light up when they realized that everyone was getting a candy gram. You could see the kids that didn't expect to get anything just beaming when they were handed a candy gram. All the effort was worth it for those moments.
Then I had to go home and get serious about doing school work. I was hoping to have the class finished by that weekend and I had quite the up hill climb to get to that point.
But first I had to make a few phone calls. The first call was too the dentist. Veronica was complaining about her tooth hurting and when I looked at it I saw a white spot on her gum. So I called the dentist to get that looked at.
I also began the process of switching Derrick's behavioral therapy company. On Sunday I'd messaged one of Derrick's old therapists. She worked for another company and had told me a few times that if we ever wanted to switch companies we should go to the one where she worked. So I messaged her and confirmed that she still worked them and got a number to call. On Monday I called and got Derrick all set up for an intake there. I also put in a good word for his current therapist because he was looking for a new company too.
And then I got to work with school stuff.
The kids came home from school with goodies and treats and happy stories. Here's Lydia showing off the bag that she had to make instead of bringing in her giant box.
And those are the pretty much the only pictures I took for the week. But I was busy in many non visual ways.
Tuesday is a particular example of the three ring circus I'm running on a daily basis. Let's break it down by hour.
5:00 AM - wake up with Brandon's alarm. I'm up against a writing deadline for an article in conjunction with East Idaho Moms and Idaho Falls Magazine. So I work on that a little bit.
5:45 - Take Brandon to work so I can have the car that day.
6:00 - Come back home and write a little bit more.
6:30 - Wake Charlotte up and sit on the couch with her while writing. She likes this "soft wake up" as opposed to one where I barge in her room and tell her she has to get up.
7:00 - Barge into everyone else's rooms and tell everyone else it's time to get up.
7:00-7:30 Use various cajoling techniques to get everyone up. Serve Breakfast, keep everyone on task with getting dressed and presentable for the day.
7:30 - Lydia has a melt down because she is super stressed out by doing bus duty for Safety Patrol. It is a complicated job that has been stressful for a while, but today is the breaking point.
7:35 - Write an email to the School Counselor about how Lydia is not enjoying Safety Patrol and that Bus Duty is not a good fit for her.
7:40 - Walk to school with the kids and drop them off.
8:00 - Get home and see email from School Counselor saying that she's happy I brought this up and will take Lydia off bus duty. She agrees that this is not supposed to be a stressful thing.
8:15 - Veronica has a dentist appointment today so she didn't go to school with the others. We get in the car to go to the dentist.
8:30 - Veronica and I get to the dentist office. After waiting for a while the dentist came in and took a look at her tooth. He looked at the area behind her front tooth and said, "Well there's something stuck in here between her tooth and her gum." He had his staff numb it up and then he got out his pick and dug around. His guess was that it was a popcorn kernel. My guess was that it was a corn chip. It turned out to be a FINGER NAIL!!!!!
Veronica isn't much of a nail biter, but here it was anyway.
9:30 - I drop Veronica off at school and then head to Smiths so I can fill her prescription for some strong mouthwash. Also buy Veronica her very own fingernail clippers. Also spend some time editing my article on my phone while waiting for the prescription.
12:00 - Head to work and get stuff done there.
2:00 - Pick Brandon up at work, go back to work.
2:45 - Leave work to get a good parking spot at the school for a meeting after school. Realize there are no parking spots left so I just go home and walk to the school with Brandon.
3:00 - Go into the school for a meeting with Veronica's teacher. On my way to her classroom I talk to the School Counselor about Lydia and the school social worker about Derrick. I pop into the Teachers Lounge and get the empty Candy Gram totes and put them into back into the PTO closet.
3:05 - Meet with Veronica's teacher about Veronica's low reading scores. She gives me some tips on how to work with struggling readers. These tips are super helpful for me because I was never a struggling reader so I have no idea what to do to help one.
3:30 - Walk home from the school and call my mom. Help her with her insurance questions.
4:30 - Go in the house and disappear in the basement to study some more school stuff. It's boring. Probably take a nap somewhere in here too.
5:30 - Have dinner with kids and Brandon (I think, I'm not sure when this happened.)
6:30 - Head back over to work to get ready for our monthly staff meeting.
7:00 - Staff meeting. We had like 5 birthdays in the last month so we have cake. It is Yummy.
8:00 - Back home and help put the kids to bed.
8:30 - In bed and watching Frasier with Brandon.
9:30 - Asleep.
Yeah, my life is a lot.
Brandon likes his work schedule, but it's been a BIG adjustment to get up at 5:00 every day. Back when we homeschooled we often slept in until 8:00. So there is some serious jet lag happening in our house. We are more adjusted now, but those first two weeks were ROUGH.
Okay, Wednesday was a much simpler day compared to Tuesday.
It was the first time in a long time that I didn't have to do anything at the kids school so I was able to focus on my school in the morning. Then I went to work. I got there around 12:00 and ended up staying until 5:00! This is one of the nice things about Brandon getting off work at 2:00. He can pick up the kids and that means I can stay at work as long as I need to. Usually I don't have to work 5 hours in a day, but there was a lot I needed to do and so I just stayed and worked and worked and worked.
It's a good thing I did that because Thursday ended up being a very strange day. Derrick had some sort of incident on the playground on Wednesday (I never did get all the details) and it made him not want to go to school on Thursday. It was really out of the ordinary for him so I agreed to let him have a late start to his day.
My plan was that he would hang around the house a little bit and realize how utterly boring it is to lay on the couch with no TV or youtube while mom does homework.
And really this was a great plan except for one not so tiny detail.
It was picture day.
Class picture day.
And I really wanted Derrick to be in his class picture.
So I kept dropping little hints to Derrick like, "Do you want to go get your picture taken?" and "It's more fun at school than here. It's Picture Day!"
And Derrick would say "no, thanks."
So I kept waiting and hoping that he got bored.
Meanwhile Marcia wanted to be let out. Normally she is good about walking to the area by her chain and waiting while I hook her up. But this time she took off running for the backyard. And she wouldn't come no matter how many times I called. I was wearing socks and the backyard was a soupy mess of grass and melting snow and dog poop so I wasn't about to go chasing after her.
I thought, "I'm doing homework on the kitchen table. I'll be able to see her out the window when she comes back by the house."
So I sat at the table and went back to doing my homework. A few minutes later Derrick told me, "Alright, let's go for picture day."
I completely forgot about Marcia and hurried to finish getting ready for the day. Then I helped Derrick get his shoes on. About this time my friend Kaymie called and said, "Um I think Marcia is getting picked up by animal control." And I said, "Well they can have her. She needs to spend some time in Doggy Jail and learn not to run away from me."
Derrick and I walked over to the school and checked in at the office. I explained that Derrick just wanted to be there for picture day. The office people told me that 4th graders would have their turn after the kindergarteners were done. So we just sat outside the office and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And talked to Derrick's teacher when his class was at recess. And talked to Derrick's occupational therapist. And looked at the new sensory classroom with the social worker. And talked to the music teacher about how Derrick hates the recorder, but is actually pretty good at it. And talked to the SPED teacher about how Derrick normally loves school.
Seriously, it was a strange morning, but also oddly productive. If you want to really get to know your kids' school, just hang out in the hall for a few hours.
I was able to get on the WGU app on my phone so between conversations with teachers I just studied. Derrick kept asking to leave and I told him, "this is exactly what we would be doing at home."
Meanwhile the kindergarteners finished up, but for some reason 4th grade was not next. I think they were shuffling around due to lunch times, but I'm not sure. One hour turned into two hours and eventually it was Derrick's classes' turn for . . . . Lunch.
Derrick was hungry so he agreed to go with his class to lunch. I was hungry too so I said I'd go home and eat and the school could just call me when Derrick was done with his class picture.
So I went home and made lunch and sent an email to my boss saying that I'd be working from home that day. I'm so glad I have that option.
At 1:00 the school called me and told me that Derrick was done with pictures and wanted to go home. So I went back over and picked him up. He was pretty upset that I'd left him. But he calmed down.
We went back home and I did some work stuff and then went back to studying. Brandon came home and at 3:00 he took Derrick to speech and occupational therapy while I picked the kids up. We had the other set of twins come home with us. All the girls played in the back yard.
When Brandon was done at therapy he and Derrick went to get the tires rotated on the Honda. Earlier in the week he'd taken the car for an oil change and now it was time to get the tires rotated.
Oh and Marcia. You are probably wondering what the heck happened to Marcia. Well Brandon ran out of time to get her that day. We figured a night at the pound would remind Marcia how good of a life she has at home. So we didn't feel bad about leaving her there at all.
That night the stake was holding a Standards' Night. Charlotte, Lydia, and I were all a little skeptical of how good this night would be. I'm still convinced that 11 is pretty young to be in Young Womens and I just wasn't sure that there would be anything relevant discussed at the meeting. BUT I wanted Charlotte and Lydia to try it out.
Our deal was they had to stay for the first speaker and then if it was still boring we could leave. So we went and sat in the back. The night ended up being one of those things with 9 classes where we could pick 3. The people in charge talked about their classes and why the kids should pick their class. I could tell that Charlotte and Lydia were not interested in any of it. Maybe in a few years, but not this year.
So when it was time to spilt up for classes we headed out and went to Walmart. We had a handful of things we needed like a new belt for Charlotte, a new backpack for Lydia, and an alarm clock. We had a lot of fun funding those things at Walmart.
Okay, we've made it to Friday March 18th. This was the beginning of Presidents Day Weekend. The kids had school that day, but then they were off for a 4 day weekend and we were planning to go to Utah to spend time with family.
But there were about a billion different versions of that plan. Here's the plan as I originally conceived it in the middle of January.
Plan A: Go to Utah on Friday Night, spend the night at my sister Hillary's, get together on Saturday with Emily and Hillary for some thrift shopping and also go out to lunch, go to Brandon's parents house that night. Have dinner with his family on Sunday. Do something with Family on Monday. Maybe do more stuff with family on Tuesday and then drive home in the afternoon so we could have some time to recover before school started again on Wednesday.
Then Brandon had to go and get a job and that messed up the plan for a full four day weekend in Utah. So we moved to:
Plan B: Still go down on Friday night and spend the night with Hillary. Spend Saturday with Emily and Hillary. Have dinner with Brandon's family on Sunday afternoon. Drive back Sunday night so Brandon could be at work on Monday.
Then Emily had some people in her family test positive for COVID so that changed this to:
Plan C: Still go down to Hillary's on Friday night, but skip the lunch and shopping with Emily and Hillary on Saturday. Have dinner with Brandon's family on Sunday afternoon. Drive back Sunday night so Brandon could be at work on Monday.
At this point we considered maybe just cancelling the trip. Which I guess would have been:
Plan D: Don't go to Utah and stay in Idaho.
But when Brandon checked in with his family they were all still planning on doing the Sunday Dinner. So we kept the plan as it was.
But somewhere in here Hillary and I had a miscommunication. She thought I was not coming to her house on Friday night so she made plans to have other company over. So we changed the plan to:
Plan E: Go down to Utah on Saturday afternoon. Spend some time with Hillary and my parents. Then go to Brandon's parents. Have dinner with his family on Sunday and drive back to Idaho that night.
Then on Thursday Brandon texted me that he did, in fact, have President's Day off of work. So we changed the plan to:
Plan F: Go down to Utah on Saturday morning/afternoon. Spend time with Hillary and my parents. Then drive up to Brandon's parents. Have dinner at their house on Sunday afternoon. Stay there Sunday night and then drive home sometime on Monday.
This plan was pretty great because it meant I had some extra time in the week to take my test for school. I could take it Saturday if I didn't feel ready to take in on Friday.
But on Thursday night Hillary texted me that the company they were planning to have over on Friday night had to cancel. We were free to come down on Friday night if we wanted. So we changed the plan yet again to:
Plan G: Go down to Utah on Friday night. Spend the night at Hillary's. On Saturday hang out with Hillary and my parents. On Saturday night head up to Brandon's parents house and stay there. Have dinner with his family on Sunday. Sleep over night at his parents again. Drive home on Monday.
This was a great plan and very close to the original plan. But there were two problems.
1. I HAD to take my test on Friday.
2. We hadn't packed at all.
But we charged ahead anyway.
On Friday morning I scheduled my test and went to work to take it. I wasn't sure what to expect going into the test. I'd done okay on the pre-test, and I'd done a bunch of practice problems. But I didn't feel 100% solid on the material. But I wanted to get the test over with before the long weekend so that it wouldn't be hanging over my head the whole time.
The test was HARD. I know I've said that a lot, but this really was the hardest test so far. On some of the questions I was like, "I have no idea what we are talking about here." Also my dry erase marker was running out of ink and that made it hard to do a lot of the complicated math for the inventory calculations.
But somehow, somehow I passed!!!! Oh it was a good feeling to see that class move to the completed list.
When I was done with the test I took a mini break and then clocked in for work. I was hoping to be done with work by 2:00 when it was time to get Brandon for work. But I wasn't done. He dropped me off at work and I went back in to get finished. He went home and started cleaning out the car and getting it packed.
I made it home from work about the same time the kids did. The kids ran around grabbing their clothes and helping me pack. I was able to get all my stuff packed too. The only problem was that Brandon and I had jeans that were still in the washer. We didn't want to wait for them to dry. So Brandon just packed them wet in a garbage bag.
We were pretty impressed with our mad dash packing skills. We were heading out the door a little before 4:00. Our next stop was the pound to pick up Marcia. I was hoping it closed at 4:00 and then we could be like, "Oh darn, we tried." and she'd have to stay there all weekend. But no, they closed at 5:00.
Brandon went in to bail her out and soon all 7 of us were on the road to Utah.
We stopped for hamburgers in Utah and ate them in the car while driving to Hillary's. We made it to Hillary's around 7:30. She'd had a crazy week and so I'd told her, "When we get there you just go on a date with Joe. We'll watch your kids. And if you want to get a hotel and come back at 2:00 in the afternoon that's cool too." So as soon as we showed up she and Joe were out the door for a date. They weren't planning on being away overnight, but I reminded them that was an option.
Penny and Walter were really easy to babysit because my kids love playing with them. After a while Penny got sleepy and so I went into her room and rocked her to sleep.
I really like when I have a chance to hang out with ONE baby. I never had just one baby so I'm always kind of in awe of how nice it is to rock a baby or feed a baby without worrying about the other one(s). This was also one of the first time's I'd really had a chance to take breath since starting school again in January. I kept thinking, "Oh it's nice to be 37 and to just rock in this chair with my niece."
Penny fell asleep really easy and then transferred to the crib without any problems. (Even when I knocked her ankles on the railing.) I was prepared to get up with her if she cried during the night, but she didn't.
Brandon got all the other kids put to bed and then we stayed up a little bit. I cleaned up the house a little. (Why is it always more fun to clean someone else's house?) Brandon had put our jeans into the dryer and we got those out. Then I went to bed and Brandon stayed up. He was awake when Hillary and Joe got home.
We had breakfast and then Hillary opened up Hillary's Salon and started cranking out haircuts. While she cut Brandon's hair I went over to my parents apartment and picked them up. I brought them back to Hillary's and we all had a nice time hanging out.
I got my haircut next. I wanted some sort of Shag and Hillary delivered. For some reason though I haven't taken a picture. I'll have to do that this week.
She also gave Derrick a nice cut. (His hair had been over his ears.)
And Veronica got her usual A-Line.
She even made little crayons out of fuse beads.
The back had a little sharpener.
She also made a marker box, but she's a little embarrased by it because she put all the logos on upsidedown. So she didn't let me take a picture of it.
Lydia had spent some time making a wedding dress for her lego girl.
On Tuesday night I tapped out and left Brandon in charge after dinner. I went in our room and just watched Inventing Anna for like 3 hours. I'd read the book about part of the story of Anna Delvy, but I had no idea about some of the other bonkers stuff that happened.
We had a great time at Hillary's.
Around 2:00 we said goodbye and drove to the Front Runner station in Murray. Derrick has been begging to ride on the Front Runner Train so when we found out that UTA was offering Free Fair February we decided to add that to the plan for the weekend. (I don't know which version of the plan originally had the Front Runner Ride on it, but it was probably around Plan E.)
I've ridden on Front Runner with the kids before so I told Brandon it was his turn. I walked over to the platform with the kids and him and made sure they got on the train. The kids were SO EXCITED! They were jumping all over the place when the train pulled up. They got on and I waved goodbye.
Here's a picture Brandon took on the train.
I walked back to the car and started driving north to meet them in Ogden. Along the way I detoured to drop off a storage shelf at my sister Emily's house. She wasn't there so I just left it by her garage.
I thought for sure the kids and Brandon would have beat me to Ogden, but we actually arrived at pretty much the exact same time. I drove into the parking lot just as they were walking onto the sidewalk from the platform.
They got in the car and told me all about how cool the trip had been. I thought this would satiate Derrick's need for trains but instead he told me, "Mom I saw an AMTRAK!!!!!! I want to ride on Amtrak!"
So later we had to google Amtrak routes and prices.
We drove up to Brandon's parents house in the Ogden Valley. While we were driving Brandon said, "Do my parents know we are coming tonight?" And I said, "I lost complete track of who knows what about our plans for this weekend."
As it turns out Steve and Jacque were sitting in their house and one had just asked the other, "Do you think Brandon will be here tonight?" when Veronica walked into their house. So that answered that question.
We had a nice visit at Brandon's parents house. This was the first time we'd been there since Christmas Eve. The kids watched Peter Pan and I just relaxed.
The next morning I was going to update this blog. I really really was. But I couldn't get the words to flow. And then I realized that this was a good time to work on the slide show for the upcoming Magic Valley Symphony concert. So I worked on that.
One of the slides always has the name of the "celebrity ushers." Amy Toft usually sends me the names for those people and half the time they are people in our ward. This time I didn't have any names yet. So I just added my and Brandon's names and then emailed Amy to let her know that we were willing to usher.
A little later I had Brandon look at the slide show. He was like, "Oh I guess we are ushering." I was like, "Well, I'm bummed I don't have time to be in the concert, but I still want to see it."
We watched the zoom broadcast for Steve and Jacque's ward. I love doing that because we don't have to get ready for church and it's so easy to pack for a trip if we don't have to worry about bringing Sunday clothes.
Then I laid down and took a super long nap. Our church starts at 1:30 this year. Which is awesome for many reasons, but one draw back is that there's no time for a long Sunday afternoon nap. So this was much needed.
I'd get close to waking up and then feel sleep drag me back down.
I woke up a little bit before Brandon's sister started arriving. When they did show up I was in the BEST mood. Usually they get "tired traveling Valerie" but this time they got to hang out with "Well rested Valerie" And she is SUPER fun.
I was also happy that we didn't have to drive back to Twin Falls that night.
Week 3 February 21-27
On Monday we woke up and had a lazy morning. I was 95% certain that I'd emailed my boss that I wouldn't be at work that day, but I wasn't sure. So I logged into my work email and well that was a mistake. There were like 5 fairly important emails. None of them were urgent. But they nagged at the back of my mind the rest of the day.
We took our time packing up and had lunch before we left. We eventually left and started driving home. This was a completely different drive than on Christmas eve. We didn't have to worry about driving in a blizzard at night this time.
We made it home and Brandon was going to make pizza for dinner. But that felt hard. So we ordered pizza instead. Veronica and I went to pick it up. We also stopped at Smiths to buy things for root beer floats.
Saturday had been the two and a half year anniversary of moving into our house. It's significant because this is now the longest Brandon and I have lived anywhere in our entire married life. (And really in my whole adult life.) So I figured we should celebrate this accomplishment.
Veronica and I got the pizza and we came home and everyone devoured it.
Then I went to work because I really didn't want to deal with those emails on Tuesday. The kids were also out of school on Tuesday so it made sense to get some work done while Brandon was still home on Monday evening. .
I worked for about an hour and then went home and we had the root beer floats.
Tuesday was another day off for the kids. Brandon took the car to work which was fine because I only needed to go to two places and they were both close to home. What I didn't factor in was how awfully cold and windy the day would be.
Derrick and I had to walk just a short distance to his new therapy office for the intake appointment. It's close enough that we could probably see the office from our house if there weren't other houses in the way. But oh it was a cold walk!
The intake went well and I'm really happy we found a new company so quick.
Then later I had to walk to work. That was also a quick walk, but the cold and the wind made it worse.
I was only at work for about an hour. I'm glad I came in on Monday so I didn't have to stay as long.
Charlotte spent most of the day working on making an itty bitty crayon box.
It was a nice diversion, but the problem was there were like 10 episodes and I only made it through three. So the rest of the week I was trying to sneak in time to watch Inventing Anna. I literally woke up with Brandon one morning, did all my homework, and then watched Inventing Anna until it was time to get the kids up.
Wednesday was a full day of school and work. It was nice to be back in the swing of things.
That night was another triple header with Girls Activity, Derrick Therapy, and Young Womens. I took Veronica to girls activity and studied in the foyer. I ended up falling asleep on the couch.
On Thursday I "had" to go to a PTA/O meeting for all the Presidents in the district. Liz was out of town so she asked me to go. I loved it. It's so fun to be in a room full of women who know how to get things done.
Friday was Derrick's last day of therapy with the company he's been with since August of 2018. That's 3 and half years! It was sad to say good bye to his therapist, because he's taken a job with a different therapy company than the one I picked. But it's not like he's moving. We'll still see him around.
After Derrick came home from Therapy we put a movie on for the kids and then Brandon and I went to the college to be ushers for the concert.
When we got there my slide show was playing for a nearly empty concert hall. But soon people started filling in.
The concert was really good. The last number was the debut of new music by the guest conductor, Colin J Brien. He called it "Adventure Suite" and it was influenced by super hero movie sound tracks. They had some electronic sounds that were really cool sounding paired up with the live orchestra. Brandon whispered to me, "This is AMAZING!"
We were at the college for 3 hours and I was a little worried about the state of the house when we got home. But we found all four kids playing happily with Legos. It made me really happy to see that.
And here is the after. It doesn't look too different, but it feels different. I threw away four garbage bags of "Fabric." Most of it was just old clothes and cloth remnants that I was hanging onto in case I thought of something to do with it. But I've had that fabric a long time and I never thought of anything to do with it. So it was time to toss it.
After I got rid of all those "maybe" projects I was able to do two simple projects that I actually wanted to do.
Charlotte and Lydia had been working for days on what I called The Villa. When it was done they did a Marco Polo for their cousins. Here's that so you can see all the details they'd put into this 3 story master piece.
I spent most of Saturday dejunking the craft room. Here's the before picture. Note the piles of things on the bed.
And look here we are all caught up to Sunday 2/27/2022. We had a relaxing day today and a good day at church.
And tomorrow I'm going to buckle down and get started on school and have absolutely no distractions.
Just kidding. I have the school PTO meeting first thing in the morning.
Thanks for reading!
