Second Week of May-Cember

This is it guys, I'm only two weeks behind on this blog and I'm going to get all caught up. It's going to happen. So let's start zipping through this. 

This post will cover from Monday May 6 - Sunday May 12 

And lucky for us I can't think of anything out of the ordinary - nor did I take any pictures for Monday and Tuesday.

So let's just skip to Wednesday May 8th. 

Normally I take Wednesday's off of work. BUT I was starting to panic about how little time there was left until the summer. I was feeling behind on a few things. My scripture study group was on a break for the next two weeks so I realized it would be a good idea to go into work on Wednesday morning. 

But I was doing it on my terms. I didn't wear make up and I shut my office door. I told the receptionist, "I'm here, but I'm not here."  I just worked and worked on stuff without any interruptions. It was nice. 

That evening was Charlotte and Lydia's orchestra concert. And through some luck Brandon didn't have rehearsal that night. 

This was the big concert with two middle schools combined and the High School kids too. So it was at the Roper Auditorium. 

I took Charlotte and Lydia over there at 6:15 and Brandon met me there at 7:00.  Derrick and Veronica stayed home. 

Lydia is in the Beginner Orchestra so they were up first. The director had each of the middle school groups go on the stage before the concert so he could get them in tune. I went up there and took a picture of the kids while they were getting in tune. Here's Lydia with her stand partner. 

And here's Charlotte. This was Charlotte's third Orchestra thing in three weeks. She'd had festival at the end of April, the little performance the week before, and now this. 

Here's Lydia's song. I think this was called Legend of Dark Mountain. It was impressive to see how far this "baby orchestra" had come in one year. This was the group that basically played twinkle twinkle little start at their concert back in September. 

Here's Charlotte's Intermediate Group playing the "Cliffs of Moher." This was Charlotte's favorite song from the whole year. Also I'm pretty sure this group is better than my high school orchestra ever was. And if the melody of the song seems familiar it's because it's based on the folk tune from "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond." It drove me nuts for weeks before I figured that out. Brandon said the song reminded him of the Legends of the Fall soundtrack - which is probably also based on the folk song. 

After the beginner and intermediate groups were done it was time for the high school groups. They have a concert orchestra and a chamber orchestra. (I'm not sure of those are the right names.) So they each played some songs separately and together. 

The director had the Seniors get up so he could recognize them. These kids were freshmen during his first year teaching so he had a lot of say about them. He also had some tears. He tried to play them off by saying something like, "I think all the trauma from that first year is coming back."  But you could really tell that he loved teaching these kids. He really is a phenomenal teacher. Charlotte and Lydia are so happy that he'll be their teacher from Middle School all the way to High School. 

The last song the high school played was called Legend. It sounded a lot like the Mask of Zorro soundtrack. It was so pretty and a really good one to end on.

Brandon and I took the girls to MeDonalds for icecream cones because that's what my parents used to do after my concerts. 

I never expected my kids to follow in my orchestra footsteps, but I love that it's happening. 

In other news, the chicks were three weeks old. We wanted to move them out of the garage and into the coop, but the next few nights were supposed to be in the high 30s so we decided to move them on the weekend when temps were supposed to go up a lot higher. 

On Thursday Derrick was trying to get out of going to school. So I was like, "Okay, but you have to come with me to work today."  So he went with me to Castle Therapy and sat there really bored while I did an hour of work there. We left there and I told him. "Okay, I can either take you to school or you can go with me to Aspen Grove and sit on my couch for 3 hours."  He decided he'd rather go to school. So I dropped him off there. 

When Charlotte and Lydia were done with school they had a lot to do. They had to go down to our neighbor Cathy's house and feed her cats. Then they went to another neighbor Sydney's house to take care of her dog.  They had these overlapping duties for a few days. 

That night Brandon had rehearsal so the kids and I walked over to the school. I've wanted to do this for a while, but it had been really cold the past few days. Today was like the first warmish evening in like a week. 

Veronica brought her basketball and showed me how good she is at free throws. The school security officer has been giving Veronica tips at recess.   

I think I'm going to have to sign her up for girls basketball this fall. 

Derrick brough his stomp rocket and played with that for a long time. 

Oh and we can't forget to bring this up. Derrick decided he really really really had to have a UV flashlight. So we ordered one off Amazon and he paid me with the money he's been saving. It came on Thursday. He was so stinking happy about it and went all over the house looking for "evidence of ghosts."  He found this hand print on our wall and was convinced we had a ghost. I was like, "Derrick, it's more likely that we are really messy."

Friday was Bounce House day at the Elementary School. It's one of my favorite days because it's just so magical to see the bounce houses on the side of the building. I was planning to volunteer for an hour from 11:00 to 12:00, but I ended up with a couple unexpected things at work and I couldn't get away until about 11:45.

I was also signed up to help with a field trip for Veronica's class. And I was not missing that. But I'd planned to go home for lunch before meeting her class at the field trip location. I didn't have time to do that now. So I just went to Wendy's and got lunch and then drove out to the County Museum. 

This field trip was  . . . . interesting. 

On paper it made sense.  Let's take a bunch of 4th graders out to the County Museum to learn about the history of Twin Falls.  

But there were a lot of flaws in the plan. 

1. These kids had already been on an all day field trip to Boise to visit the capital and the state penitentiary. So they didn't really need another "history" field trip. All the other grades were doing things like visiting the planetarium, going swimming, or roller skating or bowling. I think that's what 4th grade should have done too. 

2. Veronica's teacher was sick so they had a substitute. A substitute who hadn't even known about the field trip when she'd taken the job for the day. 

3. The field trip was right after lunch. The kids had literally gone from the playground to the bus. They hadn't had anything to drink. Maybe this would have been fine any other day that week when the temperatures were like 48 for the high. But this day was a 70 degree day. The group I was with was assigned to be outside the museum for the first 20 minutes. Some of the kids were complaining about stomach aches. I started to worry we were going to have some cases of heat exhaustion happening. So I went to my car and brought back my case of disposable water bottles. That saved us.  

4. The museum staff was BORING. There was a really old man that kept saying things like, "You kids need to understand. When the pioneers got here, there was nothing."  Which is true, but I kept thinking, "then where did all this stuff come from?"

I really have no patience for looking at a bunch of old things. I wanted to hear stories. Twin Falls is actually really cool because a group of people just DECIDED to build it. They planned to build a canal so that people could farm the land on the south side of the snake river. And they knew the farmers would need a place to bank, buy things, and have social gatherings. So they planned Twin Falls. It's a cool story. But you wouldn't know that by looking at old tractors. 

I took a lot of pictures of the kids so I could send them to the teacher since she couldn't make it. But since those pictures have other kids in them, I won't put them here. Instead here's a picture of the city plats. I thought I got our section, but I was actually off. So I'll have to go back and take another picture. 

There were some good parts to the tour. We went into an old house and the kids liked seeing that. Another thing they liked was a phone booth. So much of the stuff was just too old to even really register for them. But they did understand that phone technology was different a while ago. 

And the inside of the building had some fun classroom displays. It used to be a school so that was fitting. I got a super cute picture of the students sitting at old timey desks.  

At the end of the tour the old guide asked me to do him a favor. He asked me to write a letter to the editor saying I visited this place and encouraging other people to visit too. He said hardly any people knew about this museum. I was kind of out of patience with the whole boring place so I said, "Well the problem is that the people who don't know about this place are also the people who don't read the newspaper. So that's not going to help." I don't think he liked that answer. 

I tried to explain that they needed an influencer like the lady who runs the "Idaho Bucket List" Facebook account to come visit. None of the museum staff understood what I was even talking about. 

So there's definitely a generational divide there. 

Anyway, we made it out of there without loosing any kids so we'll count that as a success. 

And look here are more flower pictures. 

Oh they looked so good this week. The cool weather had been really good for them. 

When all the kids were home we moved the chicks out to the coop. The plan was to use it as a larger brooder for a few more days before letting them down to the bottom area. But Saturday ended up being a warm enough day that we opened up the access to the bottom. 

The chicks had looked so big in the pack-n-play brooder. But now they looked small again. 

I'd ordered the game ladder toss so we could have something fun for Derrick and the other kids to play with in the back yard. Derrick was so excited to put it together and play. We played for a while. 

Then we decided to go inside and watch the Barbie Movie. I think I'm the last white women to watch that movie. I'd been to busy to see it when it came out last summer and then I just haven't got around to it. But I did want to see it. So I ordered it from the library. 

Derrick wasn't interested in the movie so he stayed upstairs. I expected him to just watch stuff on youtube like he usually does when he'd not interested in what we are watching. 

That's not what happened. I don't want to go through the whole thing again so here's what I wrote about that evening on Facebook. 

After the movie was over we realized he wasn't in the back yard or the house. I wasn't really panicking because Derrick occasionally will wander off without telling us. He always shows up again. It's frustrating, but I've gotten used to it.

This time was the first time he was gone in the dark though. I wondered if he went to the park while it was still light, but couldn't find his way home after dark. So Brandon and I walked over there looking for him. We also checked with a neighbor boy.

Nothing!

By this point it's 10:30 and I'm split on how to feel. Part of me thinks we are going to find him asleep in a closet or something. The other part of me is worried he fell in the canal, or was kidnapped, or was hit by a car.

Also it's freaking 10:30.

So I call the police. I go in the front yard because I didn't want to scare Veronica who was in the house. A very kind dispatch person starts taking my info and a description of Derrick. And then I hear Derrick's voice coming from the back yard!

Brandon found him in the tree house. Charlotte and Lydia had built a tent up there and no one thought to look in it.

He'd wanted to sleep out there and even had a pillow and sleeping bag. In his mind he wasn't leaving the house so he didn't need to tell us where he was.

He was lost, but not really.

So then we had a looooonnnnng conversation about how he wasn't in trouble, but we had been very scared.

And after that we were so wrung out we all just went to bed. (Derrick still wanted to sleep in the treehouse but Brandon told him not tonight. I told him I wanted to know he was safe in his own bed tonight.)

Saturday was a really nice day. We got the house cleaned up and then the kids helped me with one of my three Mother's Day requests. They helped me clean off the patio and make it all cute again. 

Then Brandon took care of another one of my requests. He took the kids fishing for like 3 hours. I was able to get so much yard work done while they were gone. 

Before the kids left they put the chicks down in the bottom area of the coop. The chicks were amazed by the outside world. 

I weeded the garden area. I took all these pictures the next morning. But I'll post them here. 

I was able to get so many weeds out of this strawberry bed. 

I got the weeds out of the brick paths. 

And I prepped this garden bed for tomatoes. (I should have bought tomatoes that day, but I figured I could do that Monday. It actually took me until FRIDAY.)

And just for fun here are my other beds. This one has spinach. It should also have some herbs, but those seeds aren't doing anything yet. 

And here's my carrots and onions bed. 

And here is the back garden bed. A lot of the cardboard is poking through, BUT it's doing a good job at keeping the weeds away so I'm fine with the cardboard showing. 

On Sunday I woke up to this cute bouquet on the table. 

Lydia had made each of these roses out of paper. 

We went to church and I basically disassociated through the whole thing. (I don't really like Mother's Day at church.)

After church Brandon took the kids fishing for another 5 hours.  This was his original plan. Saturday had just been a bonus. They went to Salmon Falls Dam which is an hour away. So they drove there, fished for 3 hours, and then drove back. 

And I had FIVE hours to myself. I took a nap, I watched two episodes of The Crown, I worked on my lesson plan for Mosiah Chapter 13, I talked to my parents, and I set the table for dinner. (Brandon had a roast in the crock pot.)

It was a WONDERFUL Mothers Day. 

After dinner I had my third and final request. We had lemon meringue pie. Brandon was willing to make this from scratch, but I realized that meant less time to take the kids fishing. So I told him to just get a store bought one. That worked out really well. 

And whew, that gets us through the second week of May-cember. Which honestly, looked at it from this view doesn't seem like it was very busy. But when I was in the thick of morning wake ups, and finding orchestra clothes, and remembering to checking on the twins to make sure they checked on their animals, and keeping the garden weed free - well it's a lot. 

Thanks for reading. 

3rd week back - The start of May-cember

AHHHHHHHHHH I'm determined to get caught up this blog before Summer Vacation starts. And that's a tall order because there has been so much going on. We are DEEP into May-cember. Like I literally  have 3 places I'm supposed to be at noon next Tuesday. 

But I'm also trying to get caught up at work before summer vacation starts distracting me. So I've spent a LOT of time staring at the computer for work and then I'm not really interested in staring at the computer to update this blog.  

But let's see what we can get through. This post is going to cover from Monday April 29 to Sunday May 5. 

Before we talk about my family life we need to talk about Taylor Swift because in 20 years that's what everyone is going to want to know - What did Valerie think about The Tortured  Poets Department?

Well. 

1. I really struggled spelling Tortured there.  

2. I wasn't sure what to think at first. The double album came out on April 19th and I kept trying to listen to it throughout the day, but I didn't really get much out of that first listen. 

It was really over the next week that I started to enjoy the songs.

And by the 10 day mark I'd developed something that I jokingly referred to as "Taylor Swift induced Tourette Syndrome."  I'd have a song running through my head and then I'd start singing out loud seemingly random phrases. 

The worst one is when I just randomly blurt out, "FLORIDA." (If you know, you know.)

Other common ones are "I cry a lot, but I am so productive. It's an art."  And "Who's afraid of Little Old Me?" 

Things really ramped up this week when The Eras Tour resumed in Paris with a whole new era for The Tortured Poets Department songs. (AKA Female Rage the Musical.)  I've seen so many videos of "Who is Afraid of Little Old Me" and I CAN'T get enough of it. I'm also obsessed with "I can do it with a broken heart." 

This Reel sums up my current Taylor Swift situation. (Also this is like a level three internet meme. There's a lot of layers to this one, so if you don't get it. Don't worry about it.)

So yes, I'm kind of obsessed with Taylor Swift right now and I'm not sorry at all. 

Okay, let's talk about the week. 

Monday I woke up feeling like I actually woke up. Every school day from the last two weeks had felt like a giant hill to climb up. But thanks to a restful weekend I actually felt like I could make it through the week. 

And that's good because Monday was also the first day that Brandon had rehearsal for Treasure Island. He would be gone from 7:00 to 10:00 nearly every night for the next month. Good thing the play has a super fun cast. 

In case you can't tell, I really have nothing to say about Monday. I don't have anything about Tuesday either.

So let's just skip to Wednesday. There was a lot on Wednesday. 

First it was the chicks 2 week birthday. They had grown up quite a bit in those two weeks. 

Charlotte and Lydia had put some of whiskers old things into the brooder. Things like his wheel and his little home igloo thing. It had been a big deal if the chicks could get on top of those things. Now they could jump up with no problems. 

Also this was the last Scripture Study group for the next few weeks. We studied Mosiah Chapter 12. It went really well. When I studied for it I ended up reading all the way to Chapter 17 because I wanted to understand the whole big picture of Abinadi's teachings. 

Okay, but the real story on Wednesday was the Engage in Education event for the Twin Falls School District. This was going to be the third year this event was held. It's one of my favorite community events. Each school has a display table and each school has some sort of performance. The two previous years were held at the city park and it's so fun to walk around and talk to everyone and see everything. 

This year the weather was looking very sketchy so the event was moved to the two gyms at Twin Falls High School. They still had a free hot dog dinner and all the displays and performances, but it wasn't as fun inside. 

This year we had not one, not two, but THREE children performing in the event. Charlotte and Lydia played with some other orchestra kids. And Veronica sang with the 4th grade. 

So when we got there I helped Charlotte and Lydia find the music room while Brandon took Derrick and Veronica to find the hot dogs.  

One of the things I like about this event is that its an opportunity to see teachers and staff that have moved to other places. We ran into the Principal of Harrison Elementary. She used to be the assistant principal at our Elementary. Derrick often yelled, "You're fired" at her when he was mad. She always thought that was funny. She'd also really helped out when we went through the first round of the SPED eval for Veronica.  I saw her and I was so happy to tell her that Veronica FINALLY had an IEP. She was thrilled to hear that.  She was also so surprised by how tall Derrick is. 

I think I've forgot to mention this, but Derrick has been eating eggs like crazy for the past few weeks. He makes an egg sandwich like every day. People were remarking to me how much he's grown and I was saying things like, "Well, he'd been eating a lot of eggs."  Derrick picked up on that. So now when people say, "Derrick! You are so tall!"  He replies with "I eat a lot of eggs!"

Charlotte and Lydia rehearsed for about half an hour and then came into the gym to play their song. 

Here's Charlotte walking by with her stand. (There's an elaborate paper airplane target in front of her.)

Here are the girls on the little stage with the other small group members. This was just a volunteer group that met in the morning before school, so there weren't a lot of them. All the kids were intermediate kids except Lydia. She was the only beginner orchestra member who was invited to do this. I still haven't figured out if it was because the teacher felt she was talented enough or if he knew that Charlotte would be coming so Lydia might as well come along too.

This was actually the first time Charlotte and Lydia have ever performed together. 

I recorded a video of them playing, but I can't seem to find it. Just imagine a pretty song. 

After Charlotte and Lydia were done Brandon helped them take their instruments to the car. Derrick went with too and stayed in the car. He was done with that noisy place. But he'd done really well.

I stayed in the gym so Veronica would know we hadn't abandoned her. She was with her group of 4th graders waiting for their turn to sing. She was nervous, but also excited. 

They put her on the back row. She's so much taller than most of the other kids she probably would blend in better if they put her on the second from top row. But whatever. 

I'm missing that recording too. They sang La Cucaracha and shook maracas. It was cute. 

Then we came home and Brandon went to rehearsal for Treasure Island. Have I mentioned he's been learning to sword fight for that. He had a bonus rehearsal on the previous Saturday to learn the basic moves. Now they were working hard on choreography. 

Brandon plays one of the "bad pirates" that take over the ship. He's part of the group that kills the First Mate. When all the other pirates go onto the island Brandon's character (O'Brian) stays behind to guard the ship with Israel Hans. They get drunk and then start having a drunken argument that leads to a sword fight. I've seen videos of the rehearsals of this fight and it is pretty cool to watch. 

Israel Hans kills O'Brian, but not before O'Brian wounds Israel. Then Jim Hawkins come back on the boat and is challenged by Israel. Jim has to fight him and ends up winning. So Brandon's character is the one who dies to show how serious the situation is. 

On Thursday my Aunt Karen and Uncle Bruce came to visit. It was funny because we'd randomly met up with them in Temple Texas for the eclipse and three weeks later they planned a random visit to Twin Falls. They were coming to see Shoshone Falls - specifically the Shoshone Falls after Dark show. 

They stopped by for a little bit in the afternoon and we showed them around the house and yard. They brought Popcorn and A&W Rootbeer for Derrick. Years ago we'd been on a video call with my extended family. Karen had been drinking rootbeer. Derrick saw that and somehow got Karen to promise that she would give Derrick rootbeer if he came to visit her. She made good on that promise last summer. But she didn't forget that Derrick loved rootbeer. So she brough him more on this trip. 

When Charlotte and Lydia came home they had Charlotte's art project with them. Charlotte's art teacher had put them into groups and told them to make something out of cardboard. 

Charlotte's whole life led up to this. 

She brough home the big sheets of cardboard and engineered wings. Wings that opened and closed when she pulled on strings. She had all the mechianism worked out when she took it back to school the next Monday. Then her group just helped fill in the orange webbing of the wings and paint the cardboard

Her group won first place for the project. 

Here she is wearing her wings. 

Friday was a day off school. I thought about doing something special. But the kids just wanted a break. So I went to work until 11:00 and then . . . . I literally have no memory of what we did. 

But look, here's a picture of Charlotte and Lydia with their phone. So this must be the day they got their phone. So far their main activity is watching instagram videos. They also figured out how to put their spotify account on their. And they have their school grade checking system on there. And they like taking pictures. 

My flowers were looking very pretty. 

Tulips make me so happy. I saw a reel with someone talking about why they don't grow tulips. Basically the reason was that they only bloom for like 2 weeks. I was like, "But what a joy they are during those two weeks."  I literally had a stranger pull up in front of my house while I was outside and tell me how much they love my tulips. 

On Saturday I spent the morning weeding this flower bed. It had a lot of grass in spots that didn't need grass - namely around the tree. It looked so much better when I was done. 

Here's Marcia wondering if she will ever be allowed to eat the chicks. 

The chicks were loving their brooder, but also almost too big for it. We were planning to move them out to the coop the next week. And that meant Brandon had a lot of little project to help the girls with to get the coop ready. They had to put a door on the bottom part and a few other things. (I have no idea what.)

Veronica went to a birthday party. Brandon was so helpful with that. He took her shopping for a gift in the morning so I didn't have to stop working on weeding. And he dropped her off at the pool. I picked her up later. She'd had a great time. 

I'm trying to think of anything specific about Sunday. The only thing I remember happened in Derrick's Sunday School class. I've been going to that class to help Derrick. (And also because I've been avoiding Adult Sunday School ever since the WILDLY out of context lesson on Hebrews.)  Veronica is over Primary so she comes with me to Derrick's class. 

Anyway, that week we walked into the Sunday School class and the kids were asking where the teacher was. I was like, "Do we have a teacher this week?" And then I was like, "We'll this lesson is on chapters from Mosiah and I happen to know those chapters VERY well."  

So I was trying to think about how to teach a bunch of 11-13 year olds about King Benjamin's speech. Then the real substitute teachers walked in. They did an okay job, but I'll admit I was thinking, "You put like an hour into this. I've literally spent HOURS studying and thinking about these chapters."

One of the good things the substitute teachers did was try to get to know the kids. They went around the room and asked everyone to tell what they liked to do. Veronica was sitting with the other girls (and totally blending in. You wouldn't know she was a year younger than anyone in that class.)  She said she was interested in basket ball. I was like, "Really?"  I knew she liked playing basketball at recess, but I didn't realize it would be the first thing she said. 

Derrick's answer was something like, "I like going on adventures outside with my family."  Again I was like, "REALLY?"  I mean, I know that kid is happy outside, but I wouldn't have guessed that would be what he said right away. 

Then they asked me what I liked to do and said "Study the Scriptures."

Anyway, that's what we did that week. Thanks for reading.  (And hopefully we get all caught up on this thing soon.)

Post Vacation Life - Second week Back

Here is my continuing quest to get this blog updated. I'm only like 2 and a half weeks behind at this point. [Edit, I wrote that sentence when I thought I'd actually get this post done in a timely manner.  Ha Ha Ha I'm finally ready to publish this and it's 3 and a half weeks behind.]This post will cover from Monday April 22- to Sunday April 28th. 

Again, my memory is a little fuzzy of all the details so this is based on my calendar, pictures I took, and some things I do remember. 

And really Monday April 22nd is completely lost to me. I went to work, the kids went to school. Brandon went to work. But I don't have any details. 

But I checked my calendar and it says that I had an IPUL board meeting. I do remember that - kind of. It was over zoom and I was participating, but there was a conversation that didn't involve me and I might have just turned off my camera and took a nap for about 5 minutes. 

That evening I went to my Bible Study small group for the first time since before Thanksgiving. It was so good to sit and discuss scriptures with my friends. I noticed I was commenting more than I used to. I think that leading my own scripture study group has made me more comfortable talking about scriptures with this other group.   

And I can't remember the exact date this happened so we'll just say it happened Monday night. I was making dinner and listening to a podcast. Charlotte's friend Aurora called me and asked to speak with Charlotte. So I took the phone out to the garage where Charlotte was looking at the chicks. 

Then I went back inside and went back to making dinner and I was like, "Well this sucks!  I need my phone so I can listen to my podcast."

And then I knew IT WAS TIME. 

We've been talking about getting Charlotte and Lydia their own phone for several months, but I haven't really committed to it. All it took was that one phone call from Aurora for me to tell Brandon that he HAD to order a phone for the twins. 

So he did. Actually he ordered a new phone for himself and they got his old phone. It arrived about 10 days later and the girls were so happy!

Charlotte and Lydia were participating in a small orchestra group so they had to go to the school about 10 minutes early for rehearsals with that group. It was really just supposed to be for the intermediate kids, but the teacher told Charlotte, "Your sister can come too."  

I don't know if that meant that Lydia was talented enough for the group or if he just knew that I'd already be bringing Charlotte and so Lydia might as well come along too. 

So anyway, instead of leaving the house at 8:20 we were leaving the house at 8:10. I'd drop off Charlotte and Lydia and then Derrick and I would park and hang out in the car until it was time to take him into the office. 

So that was happening all week. 

Anyway where are we in this? Tuesday? Yeah I think Tuesday. 

Nothing out of the ordinary happened on Tuesday. I think I spent a lot of the afternoon weeding the flower gardens. 

Here's a picture I took while I was sitting down. 

And here's another one of the path. 

And more flowers. 

And more (this is what I'd just finished weeding.) I am so happy I enlarged all the flower beds last fall.

Wednesday was a big day. For one it was the day that I campsites opened up for 6 months in the future. And I was hoping for a campsite in Canyonlands Needle's district. I was ready at my computer right at 8:00, but then I got slightly distracted and when I clicked on my first choice campground it was already GONE. So I hurried and clicked on the other and got it!  So yep, in 6 months we are going back down to the Canyonlands/Arches area.

The next big thing about Wednesday was that it both Charlotte and Veronica had field trips. Charlotte was going to Orchestra festival that afternoon. She took her orchestra clothes in a bag and changed into them at school. Then she was able to get out of 5th period and ride the bus to go to festival at Minco High school. She had a really good time. 

Veronica's field trip was the annual trip to see JIVE. She was a little worried about it because last year she'd had a HUGE panic attack from all the noise. She was willing to try again though. She ended up having a bunch of small panic attacks. Nothing as bad as last year, but she was completely overstimulated and done with the whole thing by the time she got back. So next year I think she'll skip the JIVE field trip.

Another big thing was that I had Veronica's IEP meeting after school. The meeting went so well and Veronica QUALIFIED for Special Education Services. She will be in her regular class most of the time, but will go to the SPED room for small group instruction in Reading and Math. It's going to be so helpful. 

This was literally YEARS in the making. After it was all over I went home and found the original parent concern letter that I'd sent the special ed teacher at the end of Veronica's first grade year. I'd sent it on May 14, 2021.

During the meeting there was a lady on zoom taking notes. I'd never met her before. At one point she asked me, "Valerie, are you a teacher or a para, because you know a lot about all this."

I laughed and said, "No, but my son has autism and has had an IEP since he was 3. So I've been in this world for almost a decade."

I left out the part where I showed up to Derrick's IEP meeting last fall with NOTHING- not even a pen.

Wednesday was also the chicks one week birthday. (Technically they were probably 2 days old when they came to us, but we just count from the day we got them.)

They had already changed in the week we had them. They had less fluff and more thick feathers. Oh and in my last post I totally got Lydia's chicken's name wrong. It's Clover.  

Oh and the weather had warmed up again so the tart cherry tree had decided to bloom.

Thursday morning was nice and normal. But the afternoon ended up being a little odd. Derrick and I came home from work and school at 1:25. Almost as soon as we pulled in the driveway I got a text from Idaho Power saying there was a power outage affecting our area. 

I didn't think anything of it really. We've had the power go out in our street and it's no big deal. 

I was getting ready to go pick up Veronica from school and take her to vision therapy. Then I got a call from Veronica's vision therapist. She told me, "The power is out over here. And since a lot of Veronica's stuff in on the computer there's really no point in having you come. Also all the traffic lights are out and so its a nightmare driving around right now."

I was like, "Oh this is a bigger outage than I thought." And I realized that since my work is on the same street as vision therapy then the power was out at Aspen Grove. 

So I tried to call the school to let them know that I wouldn't be picking up Veronica. But my call went to the district office instead of the school. 

That meant the power was out at the school too. 

I knew Veronica would be worried about me and I figured there wasn't any point in leaving her in the dark at the school so I went over there and checked her out. Everything was out at the school. The vice principal had to walk down and get Veronica because the phones weren't working. 

Veronica later told me that she wanted to act like she was in Jurassic Park and say, "Ms Galloway, the phones are working."

I was wondering if the power was out at the middle school. But when Charlotte and Lydia got home they said it had just flickered. So they must have been on a different grid than everyone else. 

The power outage lasted until about 3:15 then it came back on. 

When Charlotte and Lydia came home they both got their instruments out and started practicing. They were getting really good at the piece they would be playing the next week. 

Brandon was finishing his electrical job that night so he was gone all afternoon and evening. The kids and I had an early dinner and then went over to the Elementary School for the Family Stem Night. The Magic Valley Children's Museum exists as a traveling museum right now. So they brought a ton of fun stuff. The girls worked together to build this out of giant magnet block. 

Here are all the kids posing with the tower. 

The older kids had fun seeing some of their old teachers. (Well, everyone except Charlotte. All her teachers retired after she had them.)

I didn't plan on staying long, but there were really fun things for the kids to play with. This was a bunch of gears. 

And this was a tube that you could pack full of cloths and then turn on a fan and watch all the cloths shoot out. 

Derrick loved it. 

Anyway, we had a fun time there. 

That night Brandon got home late. I was already asleep when he got home. But I woke up when he got home, only I couldn't figure out what was going on. I was like, "Are you going to work? Is is morning?"

Brandon eventually helped me figure out what the heck was happening. 

On Friday I was able to plant some plants that I'd bought on Thursday. I had Salvia, Catmint, and Yarrow.

Charlotte and Lydia had unceremoniously taken their Barbie Tree Houses out of the big tree. I put them into the garden to act as little fairy houses. It will be fun to see the plants grown up around them.  

I also bought a hosta to test out the one spot in the yard that gets a lot of shade. If it does well here I want to add lots of other hostas. 

Oh and we need to look at the flowers in the front yard. I love these tulips.  

They were looking so good. 

Here's the lilac. 

And the strawberries growing in the front yard were starting to have flowers. 

And check this out.  I FINALLY remembered to put supports around the Peonies. I forget every year and the flowers get all floppy. But this year I bought two tomato cages and put those around the flowers. 

Here's the view of the whole front yard. 

It is so pretty. 

I would often just sit on the couch in the living room and look out the window at the flowers. 

I love this little group of hyacinths. 

That night we went to Jive - well 4 of us did. Derrick doesn't enjoy JIVE any more so he stayed home. And Veronica wasn't interested in seeing it again after her panic attacks earlier in the week. So it was just me and Brandon and the twins. 

It was really good as always. JIVE is so much more than a high school show choir. The level of costumes and other production value is on a whole other level. 

On Saturday I slept in. And I mean SLEPT IN. I didn't wake up until 10:30 and I didn't get out of bed until 12:00. I'd been making it through the last two weeks through sheer force of will and now it was time to actually rest. 

I did pull myself together enough for all of us to go to the Open House at the College of Southern Idaho. This was the second year they did this free event where they show off different parts of the school and it was better than last year. 

Just like last year we went to the Ropes Course first. 

The kids were so excited to put on their harnesses and their helmets. 

The zip line was the only option this year.  Derrick was the first one to go up. 

He was pretty fearless. 

Here's the video of him jumping.

There was a girl in front of us who had been a little scared to jump. She'd let Derrick take her turn, but then she got her courage. So we waited while she took her turn. I took this picure, but I'm not sure what happened - I thought I was in this picture. 

Then it was Veronica's turn. Last year Veronica had been really scared to go on the zipline. She had barely made it to the top of the ladder before coming down. 

But this year she went up the ladder super fast. 

And then she had barely any problems with the staples. 

And she was able to JUMP. I was so proud of her. What a way to face her fears. 

Then it was Lydia's turn. 

She made it up without any problems. 

And her jump went well too. 

Then it was time for Charlotte's turn. I'd moved farther down the hill so the pictures and video would be from a different angle. (I was actually slowly moving down the hill for each of the kids.) 

Here's her jump. 

I could have jumped too, but I didn't want to take a spot away from a kid. Brandon did jump because all our kids wanted him too. I filmed his jump on his family's marco polo chat so I don't have that video. 

After we did the ropes course we walked over to the petting zoo. I didn't take a picture of that, but I did take a picture of a map of where the events were being held around campus. 

We wanted to get the free icecream cones and fries at the technology building. It was a big of a walk so we were happy to see the campus shuttle bus pull up. It was fun to ride in that. 

Here are Derrick and Veronica in the back.

We went to the technology building. This year to get to the ice cream you had to walk past a whole bunch of displays about the different programs they offer. The good news is they were hands on displays. 

Here's a tredmill type ladder. This is used to train electrical linemen to climb tall poles and ladders. 

Derrick climbed it for a long time before he got tired. 

Here's a video of how it works. 

We made it through a whole maze of things and then found the fry area. This was also an area where you could solder a little key chain together. Charlotte and Lydia nonchalantly were like, "We are going to do that."  And just sat down and started soldering. They'd done this project at the Manufacturing Academy last year. They said their teacher from last year recognized them and asked if they were coming back this year. They were like, "Of course!"

Derrick wanted to make a tag with his name. "Making" it was kind of the wrong word. An instructor typed Derrick's name into a computer program and programed a little jump drive thing. Then Derrick held that until it was his turn to plug it into a machine that cut out his name. But he was so excited about that. Brandon waited in line with Derrick for that part. Brandon realized that he worked with the guy running the machine. Since Brandon teaches at the CSI campus in Burley it doesn't feel like he works for CSI. 

We got our free fries and our free soft serve ice cream cone. Then we went to the planetarium so we could look through the solar telescopes. We also saw the big telescope, but it wasn't running because it was too windy.

We walked up to the student center and got free hot dogs and chips at the tent up there.  Then we stopped at some smaller booths for some CSI swag. 

Oh and we'd been filling out a punch card type thing the whole time we were there. Every place we stopped had a spot on the card. They'd sign it. We just needed 5 and then we could enter it for a prize. Last year we'd won a tablet. So this year I did the same thing we did last year - I had lucky Derrick put the card into the drawing box. Unfortunately we didn't win anything this year. 

The kids wanted more cotton candy that had been near the fries so they all walked back there with Brandon. I walked over to the car and drove that over to the technology building. 

When we got home I was feeling super tired again. I laid down on the patio couch and fell asleep for something like THREE HOURS. It was wonderful.

Sunday was another relaxing day. We went to church, but I don't remember anything specific about it. In the afternoon we went to see Shoshone Falls because they are RAGING right now. 

Here I am. There was so much spray. My glasses were completely covered. 

Here are the kids getting sprayed by the mist. 

I love the rainbow. 

Then we went home and I think I took another nap. 

When I woke up on Monday I was surprised to feel ready to take on the week. It was nice to have had a weekend to relax. 

Anyway, that's the end of the second week back from our Trip from Texas. 

Thanks for reading.