Thanksgiving Week

Well, we weren't sure if we were going to have to rearrange our Thanksgiving Day plans because again Jack wasn't feeling good on Tuesday. He even had a mild fever. Thankfully, the fever was gone by the next morning and as the day continued he felt better and better. I let my family know about Jack and they said to still come on Thanksgiving. 

Wednesday morning I woke up early because my friend Whitney was coming by to get Cocoa and take to get fixed. We were surprised a few hours later when Whitney called to say that apparently Cocoa was a BOY! His male parts were just hiding under his fur and just not hanging out as far. All the boys wanted to change his name after finding out he was a boy but I think Cocoa is good for boy or girl. I think so far I have won the battle to keep the name of Cocoa. Either way, at least he is fixed and actually we lucked out because recovery for boys is easier than girls.

Everyone was feeling good on Thanksgiving Day. Curtis got up a little early to get the turkey cooking. Then I got out of bed but we decided to let the kids sleep in. Curtis had to sear the turkey for the first 30 min at 500 degrees but then turned it down to 350 to cook the remaining time. After he got the turkey cooking at 350 and after he cleaned up the kitchen from the turkey mess I got to work on making the frog eye salad. Melissa was the one that requested that I make it but unfortunately they decided to stay home on Thanksgiving, as did Tamara's family. 

While making the salad Curtis turned on the original Miracle on 34th Street movie on Disney+ on his laptop. He proceeded to do dishes as well. After I was done with the salad and the movie was over we moved to the front room to play some Mexican Train on the floor. By this time I think all of the kids were awake and watching TV in the family room. Our 2nd round of Mexican Train started out great for both of us but then we were both drawing tile after tile. We were getting close to picking up every domino when we decided to pause so I could go shower. We never finished the game 😆 In the last hour before going over to my grandma's while Curtis was carving the turkey up I pulled out our portable ping pong set and put it on our kitchen table. We bought it in the summer of 2019 but didn't use it much because our table was smaller then. Now that we have a longer and wider table I decided it would be fun to give it a try. And we certainly had fun with it! So much fun that the kids took it to grandma's house and set it up on the pool table downstairs also.

I didn't think to get a photo when he was carving the turkey but here's Curtis making the gravy.

We ended up having Thanksgiving with my grandma, my parents, my great aunt Joyce and my brother Stillman's family.  All of the food was great!

After eating dinner we watched some home videos that Curtis and I had transferred from the old video camera. We watched Christmas and other activities from 1990-1991. I love watching old family videos and I'm glad we were able to get them transferred. Later, we celebrated Stillman's birthday, the big 40. 

We ended the night with playing some Skip Bo, which I hadn't played in a long time. It was fun. Since we had plans to get together again on Saturday we left our food at grandma's. And then Laverne gave us our Christmas presents early. They were homemade ornaments. We had to open them early so that we can hang them on our tree.

Friday morning I got up before everyone else and decided to go do some Black Friday shopping. I bought a few things and took them to grandma's to hide. Most of our shopping has been done online this year. Curtis and the kids cleaned up the house while I was gone so that we could decorate for Christmas when I got back. We got all of our inside decor put up, including our tree. This year we put it in the family room.  Later that evening we all watched the latest episode of The Mandalorian (a Star Wars show on Disney+). Then we watched some Christmas episodes of America's Funniest Home Videos.

Saturday morning Nikki had to get up to go to work at 9:30. However, she learned that she didn't actually need to be there until 10:30. She was upset that she didn't get an extra hour of sleep. Oh well. Meanwhile Curtis and Garrett were outside hanging Christmas lights on the roof and I was trying to figure out what to wear to go shotgun shooting. Stillman decided to have a shotgun shooting party to help celebrate his 40th birthday. Curtis, Jack and I rode over with my parents to the shooting range at 10:30am to get there by 11:00. Garrett didn't want to go and stayed home to babysit the girls. All of Stillman's in laws came from Michelle's family except little kids. Nathan and his stepdad came as well. I was able to try Melissa's hand gun and that thing is very powerful. It kicks back so hard that it hurts our hand. Melissa wasn't there because she had a headache. I did try one shotgun and those were loud and powerful as well. I decided I wanted to just shoot the easier guns that don't kick back so I mostly shot my dad's rifles. Nathan also had a tiny handgun that all of us ladies liked shooting. It was fun but cold. We stayed mostly warm until about the last half hour. The wind picked up a little and we started to get cold. However, Stillman and all of Michelle's family stayed longer to shoot some more.

Nathan let me borrow these extra ear protectors. It was great for awhile but then it hurt my ears because I still had ear plugs in my ears and because of my sunglasses.

The original plan was to meet at grandma's after shooting was over and eat Thanksgiving day leftovers while watching the BSU game. Unfortunately the game got cancelled due to Covid. Stillman's family decided to go out to eat. After we went home and changed out of our layers of winter clothes, we took our family over to grandma's to eat with Dad, Laverne and grandma. We ended up watching the BSU game from 2007 when they were in the Fiesta Bowl. After Stillman and his two older boys came over I didn't feel like just sitting there watching the game so I pulled out Rummikub and several of us played. We later switched to Mexican Train while the kids watched Back to the Future downstairs. Michelle wanted to spend time with her brother so she and Stillman had split up for the evening. It was a fun day and evening! We didn't even leave to go home until 10pm. Thankfully, we had church at home the next day so we didn't have to wake up early.

Keeping up with kids and cats

 A few weeks ago I started babysitting once a week for a friend in our ward. She has 3 daughters close to the same ages as Charlotte and Alice. In fact, two of them are twins. Fun fact, her twins were born on the same day as my aunt Deb and Diane who are also twins! The twins are the same age as Alice. I was a little hesitant about saying yes when she first sent me a text message to ask me about babysitting but she was desperate and really didn't want to quit her job. It's time when she can get away from being a busy mom to do something she loves, working at a spa doing nails. So I told her I would go ahead and try it out and see how it goes. The nice thing is that she doesn't drop them off until 11:30am and they get picked up around 4pm. It's actually good for Alice to have someone to play with on the days my kids go to school and Alice doesn't, so it's like having a play date but I get paid for it. 

The week I had kids stay home from school I didn't babysit so the girls were really excited to get to come again this last Thursday. Their oldest is actually a 2nd grader but her mom is doing homeschool this year. Her name is Tessley and her sisters are Lochlyn and Shayla. I can't tell the twins apart yet so thankfully Shayla is usually wearing her favorite color pink. Anyway, when they came on Thursday they went and played outside for a little bit even though it was cold and Tessley found a bunch of fallen branches from our neighbor's willow tree and she built a little something with them under our play house and wanted to get pictures. I will just show the picture taken with Alice under it.

So far I'm enjoying watching the girls and I'm thankful that it's only once a week most of the time. She said about once a month she would probably work one Friday as well.

Cocoa is very curious and has discovered the dryer. After I take the clean clothes out and slide the basket over she decides to jump in. She's done this a couple times now. I have also seen Sage do it as well. Funny cats.

Thursday I also did a toy purge in the girl's room. They have way too many toys and I'm getting so tired of the huge messes. While I didn't get rid of quite as many as I was thinking I would, I still think it's a good amount to be donating. Our niece is going to take the car track toy for her little boy but the rest will probably just go to D.I. The boys also cleaned their room on Friday so they added a few more toys to the pile which are not pictured.

Charlotte had another learn to draw video assigned by her teacher so both of the girls did it together, a picture of a turkey. 

We are having so much fun with Cocoa. I think the girls drive her crazy with how often they pick her up but she doesn't hiss or scratch them so she's good. Cocoa and Sage are continually getting more comfortable with each other. Sage doesn't like it when Cocoa tries to play with her. She still hisses at Cocoa sometimes but considering the last picture where they are sleeping right by each other (on top of Curtis who is also sleeping) I think she's getting used to her.

On Friday while we were listening to President Nelson's message to the world about gratitude, Cocoa knocked over our big house plant. I was afraid of that happening because I had previously seen her batting her paw at the leaves of the plants. I would tell her no but curiosity killed the cat again, lol. So far, I haven't seen her near the plant ever since then. Maybe she has learned her lesson, I hope.

Garrett was scooping the litter boxes and Cocoa jumps on his back. She likes to climb on us sometimes, which is funny but can also hurt, lol. 

Sunday evening nap on Curtis. If this is progress with the cats then I don't know what is! I think Sage was sleeping first and then Cocoa joined her. As far as I know there wasn't any hissing either. Just Sage looking at Cocoa until finally both closed their eyes to sleep.

Nikki's friend Logan was over Sunday evening helping Curtis with a Christmas project for the ward. He took a video of our family saying "Merry Christmas!", something they're hoping to get as many people to do as possible. They want each family to take their own video and then they'll compile them into one big video and share it. Well, since we were all lined up on the couch for the video I decided to have Logan take some pictures on my phone for me.

Had to have a silly picture.

I don't remember if I mentioned this last week but the school my boys go to decided to go virtual only until at least after Thanksgiving break due to the increased number of covid related absences of both teachers and students. When someone is exposed to another person who had covid then they too have to quarantine for two weeks. So the boys started doing virtual last Thursday.  It was a little weird sending my girls to school yesterday but not the boys. I just found out a few minutes ago that the whole district will switch to virtual after Thanksgiving. Part of me just wants them to be virtual all the time but at the same time I know my kids learn better in person than virtually. The craziness of covid.

School, Cocoa's First Walk Outside, Leaf Fun

Everyone is feeling better this week so all the kids returned to school on Monday except Alice. We kept Alice home this week only because her teacher's husband was exposed to someone who had Covid so we decided to be on the cautious side.  I haven't decided yet if she'll go back next Monday. Since Alice stayed home this week I also decided to try and do some school with her here at home. My friend who is her teacher emailed me some stuff that they were doing. 

She did a few pages out of the preschool workbook I have.

This is the letter they did this week.

I did pretty good doing school with her at home but I don't think I could keep up with it for too long. She's learned a lot so far these past couple months. Nikki and Jack struggled to get caught up with their school work after missing school some days last week. Nikki spent the whole weekend doing homework. She's finally almost caught up and feeling much better about it. Her hardest class this year is Psychology, which is also a college credit course so she'll be able to get college credit for it as long as she passes. I'm sure she will though. She's a very hard worker and dedicated in trying to do her best in school. Sometimes she tries a little too hard though, being a little perfectionist. She gets that from both her parents I think.

We had spaghetti for dinner Monday night. Alice looked so cute trying to eat it. I also discovered a new easy French bread recipe that I made to go with our spaghetti and salad. I've made French bread before but hadn't made it in a long time. This recipe is simpler than the one I used to do and faster! It's a keeper!

I couldn't find the leash that came with the harness Colby had bought when he brought Stardust to us a year ago so I finally picked up a leash at Walmart Monday night. Yesterday Garrett and Jack put the harness and leash on Cocoa to take her outside for the first time. She did not like the harness and wiggled out of it a couple times but after a few minutes she finally started walking around in the backyard and sniffing around. It ended when the neighbor's dogs started barking and scaring her. Her tail puffed right up. We tried to take her around to the front but she was ready to go back inside. 

We tried again today and it was better. We started in the front yard and went around to the opposite side of the house into the backyard by the playhouse. She was a little scared but curious. Our other neighbors also have dogs and they didn't bark (surprisingly) but they started sticking their noses under the fence back under the playhouse and Cocoa got scared again. So we walked behind the house and over to the sliding door and patio. Any time someone would pull on the harness Cocoa would try to wiggle out of the harness so it was fun when she started going under the picnic table or behind things. We had to keep up with her and move our hands to a different part of the leash as she moved. Toward the end of being outside the girls were holding the leash and were trying to get her to move away from the BBQ grill but of course didn't listen to me and pulled on it and Cocoa wiggled out of the harness. I caught her just in time and took her back inside. One day she'll get to wander around outside without it but we want her to get used to this being her home first and get used to the outside surroundings first. I also want her to get fixed first. That is scheduled for next week. My friend Whitney was able to get some vouchers to get the kittens fixed free of charge so she'll be taking her in for us.

This was her first time out yesterday. She saw a dog sniffing through the hole and got curious. Curiosity killed the cat! LOL Next thing she knew the dog started barking and that's when she got really scared.

This was earlier today.

I had to retake Charlotte's picture because her eyes were closed in the first one. Not only were her eyes open for this one but she also had a big funny smile.

I also want to note that Sunday was the first day that Cocoa and Sage sniffed noses. That is big for Sage because she's usually hissing any time Cocoa comes too close. They sniffed noses twice that day without hissing! Yay! And every day close to bed time we feed all 3 cats wet food and they will eat right next to each other. Sage will only hiss if Cocoa finishes her food first and tries to come eat Sage's food. So, now we are letting the cats roam freely through the house and just letting Sage get used to her. We no longer have to feed them behind the door because they are doing so well. I had even borrowed a baby gate that I thought I would need to use for training them to eat by each other but since they are doing it with the wet food and they are mostly doing good around the house during the day we don't need to bother with the gate after all. 

Jack has been anxious to rake leaves to earn money and he finally felt good enough to get started on Grandma and Grandpa Butterfield's backyard yesterday. I helped him make a big pile and then took some videos of him jumping in them. It was fun! He only did a small portion of the yard because we ran out of time and energy. He worked for about an hour and a half with some of that time used to jump in his pile a few times. I will try to post one of the videos on here. Make sure to unmute it because I love the music that goes with it. I posted the same one and two others on Facebook. Today I dropped Jack off and left him on his own to rake leaves. By the time I came back to get him it was pouring rain so we didn't bother bagging them and I didn't see how much he got done.

This is the before picture. Lots of leaves to rake!

Having a little fun.

This is what we finished yesterday before we had to "leaf" 😆

Homemade guitar and sick kids

 On Tuesday Charlotte read a story for a school assignment on her iPad that included some kids making homemade guitars and drums to make a band. So Charlotte decided she really wanted to make her own guitar. I kept telling her she had to wait until she got her other school work done. It wasn't until after dinner that she got to work finding materials to build one. She found an empty Ramen Noodle box with the plastic still covering most of it and used that for her base with red construction paper taped on it. I was busy compiling a new playlist for some Christmas music on my phone so she just decided to do it herself. It wasn't until she was cutting out pieces for the neck that I started to help because her hands were getting tired of cutting through the thick cardboard. She basically designed it herself and I just helped with a few ideas for the string. We were out of box tape and clear scotch tape so we used duct tape, which is stronger anyway! We didn't get to bed until after 10pm that night but since she didn't have school the next day it was just fine. It was fun to watch her build this and to see how much she could do on her own. Sometimes I get a little too involved and sometimes take over too much so it was good that I was busy doing something else for awhile so that she could build her own crafting skills.

We used fishing line for the strings so they're really hard to see but there's four of them.

 She has since added more tape because the red construction paper kept tearing. Then I was having her practice some sight words yesterday and she started writing sight words on her guitar. Funny girl! Hopefully it helps her learn them!

Well, our van is still at the shop and it's been a big blessing to be able to use my in laws truck. They don't use it a lot. We're expecting the van to be done today but it's about an hour from closing and I have no idea how close they are to finishing. Crossing my fingers.

Jack had stayed home from school on Tuesday because he had the sniffles and a little cough. He was starting to feel better Tuesday evening and Wednesday but then he started playing around too much and started coughing and making it worse again. So today he stayed home again along with Nikki and Charlotte. Nikki had thrown up on Monday after getting home from school but she only did it once and slowly felt better. Tuesday she felt great and even went to work but then yesterday (Wednesday) she started getting the sniffles as well. Her friend Logan had come over and they made some chocolate mug cakes to eat. I told her that probably wasn't the best thing to be eating when she had the sniffles because of all the sugar in it but she didn't care. They also went on a walk afterwards in the cold air. I also warned her that she shouldn't be out very long because she has the sniffles (really shouldn't be outside at all). She slowly started feeling worse after that and when she woke up this morning she had a sinus headache. I've been giving her sinus congestion/headache medicine regularly today and let her sleep most of the day. That seemed to help since her headache is gone and she's feeling better. Hopefully she'll learn from this. There's reasons moms tell their kids not to do things, lol.

As for Charlotte, I debated on whether to send her to school or not. Last night Charlotte, Alice and I decided to go play in the garage after dinner to get some exercise since I had just swept it out earlier today. It was cold but not as cold as being outside and I did bring the heater out and turned it on full blast. Unfortunately the heater is one that is slow to heat up so it didn't do a lot of good but some. I rode Jack's scooter around while the girls switched from skates to scooters to bikes. We brought our radio out and listened to The Polar Express. It was a great time but I think maybe we overdid it a little because when we were putting the girls to bed Charlotte started coughing. This morning she was a little stuffy at first and coughed a little. I kept asking her how she felt and she said she felt like coughing but I think she was just saying that so that she could stay home. After breakfast I didn't hear her cough or even sniffle all day long but I figure it's better to be safe than sorry. Usually her asthma flares up when she gets a cough from a cold. She's been fine all day and acting totally normal, thankfully.  I was able to get her work from school that her teacher sent to the front office so she wouldn't be too far behind when she went back to school again, which will be Monday. 

Garrett was the only one that went to school today. He's one that would prefer going to school every day because band is so much more fun at school and I think he learns more when he's there. I think it also helps that he's in two band classes this year, concert band and jazz band. He has steadily improved on his drumming skills. I love listening to him play! 

Since Charlotte was doing some homework papers for school today I got a preschool workbook out for Alice to do a few pages in. I think I've had this workbook since Jack was in preschool. It just hardly gets used because most of the time the kids would not be interested, so I seized the opportunity while I could. Alice is loving preschool and I can see the difference. She's speaking more words and can count to 4 by herself. She'll even color more with crayons. She's also learning to memorize my phone number. Thankfully she has had no signs of sickness and hopefully it stays that way!

Kitty Success!

The past week slowed down a bit but was still busy enough. Last Tuesday was election day and Curtis got off early so he could avoid the long evening voting line. I had tried to go in that morning around 9:30 but the parking lot was packed! I drove right back home. I went back later with Curtis and it was nice to wait and vote together for a change. The parking lot was still really full around 3:45pm but fortunately it only took about 40 min total. The line was a lot longer by the time we finished. Although, we almost got stuck in the parking lot because people were parking along the curb that wasn't marked as parking and Curtis drove his big truck. He kept having to inch back and forth a little at a time while I was outside directing him until fortunately he was able to squeeze out. Whew!  

We have been having fun with our new kitten, Cocoa. One day the girls put a crown on Cocoa and then on Sage. The crown was small because it came from Charlotte's Rapunzel doll.

She doesn't looked amused.

Charlotte had tied a string on to the crown so it would stay better on both cats. I can't believe they kept it on longer than a minute. So funny!

The bathroom door was open so Cocoa decided to look around. Apparently the sink looked comfortable. It was so tempting to turn the water on with her in there but we didn't, ha ha.

Cuddling up on Sunday after church.

I did Charlotte's hair a little different one day and Charlotte liked it and wanted a picture. I'm slowly getting her to let me do her hair more often. She still prefers it down with nothing in it. I think I might try to get some headbands and see what she thinks of those.

Last Thursday evening I went over to grandma's house with Jack and the two little girls. Grandma had some yard work that she needed help with and she knew Jack was wanting to earn some money so she asked if he wanted to do it. He said yes and so we went over. Although, with the recent time change it was getting dark faster so I didn't think he'd be working very long since they were running out of daylight soon so I stayed. The girls tagged along so they could get out of the house. I watched for a bit at first but eventually I had to jump in there and help. I found grandma's electric trimmer in her tool room and trimmed a few bushes for her. It's the first time I ever used one of those and it was fun. Jack started out working a little slow but he picked up the pace after a bit of grandma and I encouraging him. I'm glad that he is getting these opportunities to learn how to work. I want that for all of my kids.

Saturday morning Curtis woke up early and drove to work so that he could do some studying and a practice test for his engineering license test he'll be taking in the spring. He was gone for about 6 hours. He didn't do too well and can now see why they recommend 6 months of studying before taking the actual test. When he got home I was in the middle of mowing up the leaves in our backyard. He ate some salad and then changed his clothes and came out to help me. I had started with the backyard and moved to the front. It felt good to get the yard cleaned up but then a little later the wind picked up and knocked more leaves off, making it look like we hadn't done a thing. Sheesh! But it was a good thing we still did it because we would've had double the amount of leaves on our grass and that evening and night it rained and then snowed! 

It was our first snow of the season and it got everyone excited for Christmas and we started listening to Christmas music on Sunday. It made us all feel happier. It was kind of a difficult and stressful week what with school for the kids, studying for Curtis, the election, and now some of us are getting the sniffles. I kept Jack home from church yesterday and school today because he's sniffling and coughing a little. At least it's easier for him to miss school with things being posted online for him to work on stuff at home. I too have had a little of the sniffles. I think he and I both got it from doing yard work at grandma's. It just kicked up our allergies. I'm feeling pretty good right now though. 

We actually had to take our van in to the auto shop this morning because it's been leaking a lot of coolant and making lots of noises when we ride on bumpy roads. Looks like we'll be getting a new radiator, water pump and getting the front shocks and strutts replaced. It's going to cost more than we'd like to spend on repairs right now but with our trip to Utah next month we want to make sure we're not going to have problems. It also looks like I'll be driving this van even longer than predicted. There will be a few more things to get fixed in a few months (that weren't as important to get done yet) then it will be in pretty good shape....again. I'm so thankful that my in laws had their truck that I can borrow while our van gets fixed. Hopefully, I'll have it back by tomorrow.

One more thing to add to this post before I'm done. So I've been separating Cocoa from our other two cats most of the time. Their was once last week where Stardust and Cocoa accidentally saw each other and we decided to watch and see what happened. They sniffed each other's noses and actually did really well. I think after a few minutes of Cocoa following Star she got a little annoyed and finally growled a little. Sage on the other hand hisses any time Cocoa accidentally gets close to her. Well, all of the cats really like when they get wet food from a can to eat. Two nights ago I had the bowls right up to the family room door when they were eating (Cocoa on one side of the door and Star and Sage on the other side). When we first got Cocoa, Sage wouldn't want to go near that door to eat. We started at about 3 feet on both sides of the door (6 feet apart total) and slowly moved the bowls closer and closer. We learned this technique from a youtube video a year ago when we got Stardust and had to introduce her and Sage. They are now buddies since Star will sometimes bring Sage some mice.

Anyway, during the day I give the cats dry food. The last meal of the day I give them wet food and since we were able to get the cats to eat right by the door and because Sage and Star were really anxious to eat the wet food, I last minute decide to experiment with all 3 cats eating together in the kitchen. It worked! And we had Cocoa right in the middle of the other two cats. They ate for several minutes with no problems. The only time Sage hissed was at the end when Sage was still finishing a few little pieces of food that fell off her plate onto the floor and Cocoa tried to come over and eat it. Star ate the quickest and got out of there as fast as she could. 

There also was one other incident a few days ago when all 3 cats accidentally ended up in the kitchen together. Stardust and Cocoa sniffed each other again but Star never growled or hissed. Sage did hiss several times but Nikki sprayed her with water and she'd run and hide. It was so funny because the first time she ran over by Stardust over by the sliding door and hid behind the curtain. She poked her head down toward the floor but didn't see Cocoa sitting nearby watching her. She came out from under the curtain and as soon as she turned her head and saw Cocoa she hissed but then Nikki sprayed her. We actually got it on video too and it's quite entertaining to watch. Stardust just acts like she's not part of this and takes off as soon as Sage came by her.

Stardust, Cocoa and Sage

I'm going to try feeding them together again tonight except this time make sure the kids aren't crowding around them. That's probably one reason Star took off so fast is because the girls kept getting close and Charlotte was petting them sometimes. Animals don't typically like to be touched while eating and want their space. But I'm happy! I feel like we're making faster progress than I thought we would.