Baking, Service and Bunnies

Friday morning I went to the Rec Center and was able to walk the track with Dad, Laverne, and Melissa. It was good to be able to talk to my sister again since that doesn't happen much anymore with our busy lives....and of course Covid! I didn't really have a plan on how much I was going to walk but it ended up being about 4.5 miles by the time we were done. 

I had mentioned to Garrett the day before that if he felt like baking anything that I found 2 cans of pumpkin that could be baked into something. He decided on Friday that he was going to bake some mini pumpkin pies. He started off working on his own but I had to step in and help, especially with the pie crust. They didn't take long to bake but we had to wait a long time for them to cool. It wasn't until after dinner that they were finally ready for eating. They turned out to be a yummy little treat. We only used half a can of pumpkin and half a can of evaporated milk, so we may have to make more soon to use them up. I love that Garrett likes to bake now.

He prefers his without the whipped topping so I had him hold mine for the picture.

I finally got a trio picture of my oldest kids and their braces. They are purposefully standing under that picture on the wall because I thought it would be fun and they are standing in the same order as they were in the picture. The braces buddies!

Unfortunately I ended up being too tired to go play tennis with Jack on Friday like I had planned but I don't think he really cared. I kept saying that we were going to play tennis during spring break and alas it didn't happen....not even on Saturday. However, we were blessed to be able to participate in a ward service day. I wasn't sure if I should bring the little girls but I decided to go ahead and try and figured I could take them home early if necessary. I'm so glad I did! All of my kids helped do service and it was great! Some people started by cleaning the church building. It went quickly with so many people there to help. Charlotte, Alice, and I helped clean windows. I know Nikki did some vacuuming but not sure what the boys did. When we finished we headed over to a Angela Haldeman's house to help remove some gravel, weeds and the weed barrier to get ready for new rocks. She is a single mom in our ward. Curtis used to work with her brother years ago at Lee's Plumbing. Technically he's in our ward also but he's not an active member. Anyway, it was great to see all of my kids working hard. The girls worked well for awhile and then they went inside to play with Angela's little girl, Sydney, who is 8 years old. It really helped that we brought our radio. Nikki enjoyed having everyone listen to her Spotify playlists, the first list being the Beach Boys. Then later it was other oldies from the 70's and 80's. It's nice that she likes music that we like also.

The project turned out being a bigger job than we thought. The funny thing was that this was probably the most difficult job assigned and there weren't any men when we started. It was 3 women and their kids, mostly teenagers. Fortunately when others finished at their first projects they came to our rescue and helped us, including a couple of missionaries. After we finished piling up the gravel into a pile we were told to go to the church for ice cream and that later others would come load up the pile into a trailer and take it to the dump.

This was the backyard portion. Thankfully Garrett had his best friend Austin in our group.

Jack enjoyed having Austin's younger brother Luke there also. Luke is a year older than Jack.

Here's the side of the house. It was a lot of work!

The girls had their little shovels and helped move the gravel to the pile.

I was working on digging out weeds that were close to the bricks.

Our pile of gravel and weeds. Later we added some bush trimmings that Angela trimmed. So she was out there working also.

The side all cleared out.

Kids enjoying popsicles and ice cream at the church afterwards.

That same afternoon after we got back home I saw that something was happening at our neighbor's house. Our friends the Wallace family were busy scraping out their whole back yard and I had to go see for myself. Their back yard was full of goat heads and their little girl stepped on them several times with her bare feet. They finally were able to afford to pay off their irrigation tax of 10 years and are redoing their whole back yard and will be laying some sod. I can't wait to see what else they do with it.  Their son Tyler, who is friends with Jack, brought over one of their baby bunnies for us to see. I guess they recently bought 3 rabbits thinking they were all the same sex. Well, they were surprised and soon found out that one must be ready to have babies because she started pulling out her own hair to build a nest. They have 5 baby bunnies now. So cute!

Of course now Charlotte is begging to have a bunny and I have to admit it was a little harder to say no now that I had seen the bunny in person. I told her I would think about it and talk to dad. Of course she brought it up on the phone when Curtis called to say he was coming home. At first he was quick to say no but then thought about it and told her that mom and dad will talk about it on their date tonight. Well, we went to Applebee's for dinner and talked about it and thought it would be fun for the little girls to learn responsibility taking care of a pet. And at least it's easier than a puppy or a horse! The bunny is not quite ready to leave it's mom yet so that will give us time to get a cage and everything ready before it's time. It will be our literal Easter bunny this year. Today is Ashlie's birthday and when I took over a little gift to her after church she said we could bring the bunny to our house for a little while. Curtis told the kids that this would be Charlotte's and Alice's bunny and to let Charlotte pick the name. As of right now, she has picked Marshmallow, to keep the tradition of having a food name for our pets (except the birds, which were space names). We'll see if she changes her mind later though.

After we took the bunny back yesterday the girls got to play and eat popsicles with the Wallace's little girl Sidney.

Waiting to go in to eat at Applebee's. We haven't been here in years. It was weird though that when Curtis asked for a 2nd menu after they only gave us one, the waitress said she wasn't supposed to but that she would give him one. Why is it so hard to give everyone a menu? I don't get it. Do they expect people to look at the menu upside down while the other person looks?

Catching Up

Our weather can't make up it's mind. It starts to get warm and then it gets cold again. Well, a week and a half ago we had some nice warm weather so I took the girls to the park for some play time. Alice sure enjoyed getting out after being sick for a few days. They insisted that we go to the "Farm" park, which is a fairly new park out on Midway. It happened to be the same day I was taking Nikki to the Nampa Bowl to finally hang out with some friends. I dropped her off and we headed straight to the park and played for an hour. There were lots of kids and parents there all with the same idea. The girls had a great time!

That looks really uncomfortable to me but she was having fun!

A nice big cow to climb on.

The next day we went to church as usual and the girls got to bring home these crowns  to color and cut out. They were just a little too short in length so I had to print an extra off so we could lengthen the band. It's their "Crown of Righteousness".

On Monday the 15th I decided to try a new hair style on Alice while she was watching a movie. This was a style I did on Nikki when she was little. Alice loved it so much that she had me do it on her every day last week. Once I tried to do it on Charlotte. She wore it for about a minute and didn't like it. She settled for a ponytail instead.

See how thrilled Charlotte looks.

It was kind of nice again so we went to West Park. (Notice that Charlotte's hair is  now in a ponytail with her hair falling out of it.) 

Last Friday was a busy day. We had just found out the previous night that the boys Garrett's age (the Teachers) were going on a campout to Bruneau Sand Dunes from Friday to Saturday. Garrett was asked if he could go up early to help set up camp so we scrambled to get him packed that night. Bright and early the next morning at 8am I took Nikki to her orthodontist appointment where she would be getting her braces on. It was going to take about an hour and a half so I took Garrett to Walmart to get him a fishing license because they said they would be doing some fishing on the campout. We also picked up some snacks for him. Then we went back home for him to load up his gear and take him over to the leader's house. Right after dropping him off I went and picked up Nikki. Now all 3 of my oldest have their braces on and the appointments will be about every 5 to 6 weeks so I can breathe a little. We had so many appointments at the beginning to get things going.

The leader's wife sent me some pictures. She went along since they brought their camper.

I don't think I've been here since I was a kid. It's looks so pretty!

After 2 1/2 years from her initial ortho exam we're finally making it happen! The good thing about having waited to do her teeth is that since we're doing multiple kids they are giving us a family discount on each of them.

Later that morning I dropped Nikki off at a friend's birthday party and then in the afternoon I took Alice to have her speech checked a little more thoroughly. It was nice because the gal who did part of her screening and then the speech test happened to be our primary president from church. Alice did very well on speaking loudly and repeating when asked. I told her it's a good thing she didn't have to do Garrett because it's so hard to get him to talk, even now, because he's so shy and quiet. Alice definitely needs help with speech so I will be waiting for them to schedule a weekly time to start coming in for therapy. It will probably be Fridays.

Sunday was another day for me to try and do something a little different on the girls' hair since most of the time all they have me do is brush it. Alice actually told me while I was brushing her hair to make her look beautiful. It wasn't much but she did like what I did. Charlotte didn't want me to do her hair but I did anyway and this time she kept it in.

To help keep their hair from falling into their faces I braided the side that had more hair and then pulled it into the ponytail. 

It was a fairly nice day again on Sunday so Curtis and I took Charlotte and Alice down the road to the dam at Lake Lowell and walked across it. The girls brought their bikes while we walked.

At one point we stopped and looked over the edge and saw this little brown colored animal sitting on the rocks. I'm not exactly sure what he is, maybe a rock chuck?

Curtis ran into an old high school friend while coming back across the dam. The girls took off way ahead of us so I had to go catch them and then I took them down to the water.

While we were gone Garrett and Jack were busy baking some chocolate chip cookies. For fun they decided to bake them in muffin cups to see how they would turn out. They were yummy as usual! Kind of a fun way to do them though.

That evening we did a come follow me lesson. We seem to only do those once or twice a week now with Curtis studying. This week was about putting on the armor of God. The girls got to put on some armor. Charlotte was so excited about it because she had heard about this lesson earlier that day in primary. 

Alice

Charlotte

Finally we're in Spring break this week! Well, technically it started on Friday since the kids didn't have school that day. Monday was a lazy day for all of us. I spent most of my time looking online trying to find a car to buy for Nikki to drive. I almost got scammed. I finally decided that I just need to wait until Curtis is done with his test so that he can help me with car hunting. However, because I have been looking now Nikki has been a little more proactive about practicing driving again. She will drive to work and then I'll drive the van home. She also drove to and from the library when I took her. She had homework to work on still. 

I was happy that later that evening Charlotte discovered the hat looms in the office so she got Nikki to help her learn how to do it. 

This is as far as she got after working on it Monday night and Tuesday morning. She hasn't worked on it since so we'll see if she finishes.

Yesterday was better because I went to the Rec Center with Jack and walked but then after we came home we got busy doing chores. Nikki said that it was good that we did chores in the morning because that woke her up and got her motivated to do work at the library.

Today was a little relaxed again since I had to take Jack in for his allergy check up. It had been 2 1/2 years since he was last seen so I figured I better do it before they consider him a new patient again. His condition has pretty much stayed the same for his dairy allergy so that's one reason I waited so long. I knew he wasn't ready to take a milk challenge. He can have dairy in things but not straight yet.

Later I took the boys and the two little girls to go clothes shopping. Sometimes I take the time to go thrifting but today I just went to Walmart. Our main objective was to look for swim suits but I also picked out some other clothes for the girls. I love getting them matching outfits!

Charlotte really wanted this outfit so I got one for both girls. Alice wanted it too because Charlotte wanted it. She's in that phase where she wants to do whatever her big sister is doing.

I told the girls I didn't want them getting a swim suit that showed their belly. I was a little surprised after Charlotte looked at lots of other types she decided she wanted this one and of course Alice had to match her big sister. It will be nice not having to put so much sunscreen on!

Whew! I think that's all I'm going to write about for tonight. It's hard trying to catch up from the last two weeks.

Is It the Weekend Yet?

Garrett came home on Monday with his score from the band festival. I was so worried about him not warming up with his ensemble but I guess I didn't need to be because he scored a Superior! I seriously can't wait to see him in marching band next year.

Charlotte also came home with some fun projects that she did on Monday at school. It's so great to hear her read more and more words. She's learning so much faster now that she's been in school 4 days a week. And even though Alice isn't doing school stuff at home every day I can still see her improving as well. She can already count to 10 and knows many letters of the alphabet. She's going to be so ready for Kindergarten in a year and a half!

The last two days have been a little hectic. I had to take Jack to an orthodontist appt in the morning. Then I dropped Nikki off at the Rec Center so she could exercise (Tues is an online learning day). Jack is going to play tennis this spring and so I needed to take him to get a sports physical. We started to drive over there after dropping off Nikki but Jack said he needed something to get the yucky taste out of his mouth from getting a teeth impression done at his appointment. Curtis still owed him a slushy so I took him to Sonic. I looked up Swaim Chiropractic to double check their hours and it's a good thing I did because on Tuesdays they're only open from 3-6pm and it was close to 1:00 at the time. That is the place where I took Garrett to get his physical two years ago so that's where I was taking Jack. Since we were headed the same direction anyway I took a bill to the post office. If I send money I take it straight to the post office instead of my mailbox. After that we headed back home. A couple minutes after getting home Nikki texts and says she's done, so I'm off again to pick her up. 

I ended up taking Jack back to get his physical after I dropped Nikki off at work around 5pm. It was nice because the sign on the door actually said "Masks NOT required". I walked in with a mask on anyway and asked the doctor when we went in. Nope, no masks in here. Surprisingly he said I looked familiar like he remembered me from coming two years ago. Fortunately nobody else was there and since I already had the form filled out and brought it with me he took Jack back right away. No waiting and the exam took maybe 5-10 min. Getting the physical done was smooth sailing but getting Jack registered through the school to play tennis was such a headache! I get that people want to do things online but sometimes it is so frustrating and there's no one to ask questions. Long story short, it took over an hour to figure it out and hopefully I did it right.  

I finally got to work on dinner and then I hear Jack say that Alice has thrown up in her room on the carpet. Seriously?!! I was already in a bad mood from the whole tennis sign up and now I have to clean up the carpet. Some days I just really want to get rid of all of our carpet. Such a pain! Then later in the middle of the night Alice wakes me up around 3:45 I think. I ask her if she's feeling okay and she says yes. I get her to go back to bed but then I have a hard time falling asleep and can feel it in my body this morning. Fortunately it was a day I could sleep in a little since no kids go to school. I had to go drop off my van to Mike's Auto Clinic to have them check out the coolant leak they had fixed last fall but I had to drop off Garrett to his school first (to get extra help on science again). My mother in law met me at the auto place and then we drove back to her house since I'm borrowing her truck again. We have some other things to get done on the van as well that last fall we had decided to wait on getting done. It turns out that the leak was easy to fix. Just needed to clamp it up better but because we're doing the other stuff I won't have my van back until Friday most likely.

Only about 20 min after I got home from dropping off the van I had to drive Jack to another orthodontist appointment. He finally got wire put on. Then I had to race over and pick up Garrett at the school. Before Jack's appointment though I decided to check Alice's temperature since she hasn't been acting quite like herself. She had a low fever so I gave her some medicine. She felt better later so I put a movie on for her to watch and I didn't even think about the fact that she was wearing long sleeves and pants. She also grabbed herself a warm fuzzy blanket. I check her temp around 4:30 or so and she was at 103.2! Yikes! Got rid of the blanket and got those warm clothes off. I got her into a t-shirt and skirt then put her in bed without any covers. She ate half of a Pedialyte popsicle and after I gave her some Advil and then she went to sleep. I also turned on the diffuser and the air purifier. That helped to cool down the room. I let her sleep for a couple of hours to see if we could get her temp down before deeming it necessary to go to the doctor or hospital. I went and did some grocery shopping to get some stuff for dinner, etc. I checked her when I got back and she was back down to 99.5. So thankful! I prayed that it would come down and my prayers were answered. Alice continued to sleep through the evening. I only woke her to give her more medicine and a drink. Then she went right back to sleep. Hopefully she'll sleep the whole night tonight and get the much needed rest to get better. And hopefully nobody else gets sick either. 

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that Curtis flew out of town again yesterday for work and won't be back until Friday. Whew! Is it the weekend yet?

Week 1 of March

The last day of February was on Sunday and now we're one week into March! We went to church again and some of us had to nap afterwards but later that evening we were able to watch a new episode of Relative Race on BYUtv. I love watching that show because of the family they find and how important family is to everyone. I think I cry on almost every episode. 

All ready for church on Sunday.

 Monday did not start out like I thought it would. Nikki was feeling sick again with light headedness, nausea, and feeling energy drained. She felt this way on Saturday as well before going to work but this time Nikki actually threw up. So no school for her and I was worried about her being like this off and on during the past week so I decided to call the doctor. Then Charlotte woke up with a headache. She didn't have a fever but I kept her home anyway. I had to have my mother in law come watch the two younger girls so that I could take Nikki in to the pediatrician. The doctor said he didn't think it was anything serious and that it could either be a weird virus or this could be caused from stress. We're all thinking it's the stress because she's been very stressed out with her school work. It seems like all she does these days is school, homework and her job. Never time for a social life. However, she has been procrastinating at times and gets distracted looking at her phone a lot because she's avoiding homework. I have started taking her phone away more so that it won't distract her. She realizes that and usually has no problem handing it over. I did have a parent teacher conference with her math teacher and even her teacher can tell she's stressed out but she's offered to give extra help when needed but needs to schedule to come in.

By the afternoon both girls were feeling better. Nikki's spirits were lifted when a package she had ordered came in the mail with a whole new clothes outfit and she loves it! It was ordered through Stitch Fix where you let them know some info and they try to send you an outfit you will like. They send a bag to send anything back you don't want and you don't pay until you decided whether you want the items or not. I forgot to have her send me a picture but maybe one of these days I'll get one when she's wearing everything again. The very same day I also received a package in the mail, a cute apron that my niece Aubrey made for me. It was her way to say thank you for helping watch her kids while her youngest was in the hospital.

On Tuesday everyone was feeling better and the weather was warming up and nice. Garrett got in the mood to bake some bread after he finished his school work and Alice road her bike. After Charlotte got home from school I took the girls to the park for a little while before Nikki had to go to work.

Wednesday was really busy with dropping Jack off to the school at 8am for a work completion session that he was required to do since he's behind on his school work. He went from 8am-12pm. He said he got a lot more done than he does at home. There are too many distractions at home. Then an hour later it was Garrett's turn to get braces put on at the orthodontist. I got a picture right after we got home before the pain starts so he looks fairly happy in the picture. I can't wait until all three kids get them on and I can get a sibling picture. I love that they get to do this together so they'll be able to empathize with each other. Because Garrett's appointment was going to take a long time and since we live so close I actually went back home during his appointment to help Charlotte do some make up school work from missing Monday. It took about 1 1/2 hours to get his braces on. Jack also had an ortho appointment later that day but his was super quick since they just needed to replace a spacing rubber band that fell out from between his teeth. They have to create a little space in two spots before putting his wires on. I managed to squeeze in a little grocery shopping in also before Jack's appointment. By the end of the day Garrett was hurting and a little miserable. I remember those days since I myself had to go through it at the same age.

Thursday was so nice outside that when the girls I babysit came over they spent most of their time outside playing. Yay, we're so excited for spring and the warmer weather! They played on our playhouse and swings. Then later I went out front with them to ride bikes, scooters, skates and get out some bubbles.  Our next door neighbor also showed the girls their new puppies that are only 3 weeks old. They're cute now but if they're anything like the dad dog they'll be annoying as adults. 😂

I started off Friday morning with getting several bills and other items ready to be dropped off at the post office as well as paying some bills. Alice had an appointment at 10:30am to get tested to see if she would need help with speech or anything else. I was mostly concerned about speech. It turns out that they also think she needs help with speech so they will make another appointment to meet with an actual speech therapist and do some more testing and see if she'll qualify to get speech therapy like Garrett did. I think it really helps though that she doesn't have a hearing issue like Garrett or tied tongue like her sisters.  I have already seen improvement with her speech in the last couple of months since I made that appointment so hopefully they can help get her where she needs to be before she starts Kindergarten in 2022. After her appointment we went home for lunch and then I left her at home with the older siblings while I drove to the post office, Costco and the bank. The traffic was terrible by the time I left Costco around 3pm. It took a long time to get from Costco to the bank. Then the line at the drive thru banking took a long time. I was sweating it because Charlotte gets out of school at 3:35 and I still needed to take a few frozen items home. Fortunately I made it in time!

After school I spent some time outside watching the girls play because I was very ready to take a break. Charlotte didn't get to see the puppies yet so she asked her friend Brooklyn to bring one out. She got to walk around with it for a little bit. Of course she keeps asking if we can get a dog. That's a big NO. After spending time out front I had to send the girls to the back yard so I could prep dinner. They were outside as long as I would let them but when you start running out of daylight it's time to come in because it's too cold by then. 

Curtis has been doing some research and listening to podcasts about intermediate fasting. He says his stomach feels better and he's felt more alert in the past few days and able to get much more work done He's starting to lose weight as well. He felt so good he decided to take the night off from studying and work to watch some movies. Our whole family ended up watching Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel for the first time. We enjoyed them and now some things from the ride at Disneyland California Adventure make more sense. Now that we've seen the movies I want to go back and ride the ride again! Some day we'll go back so that Alice can experience it too.

This morning Garrett had a band festival where he played in an ensemble (with two other kids) on the bells. They have a person there to watch and critique them and give advice to help them get better. His group did pretty well.

I am going to slow down a bit today now because we went to bed at midnight and I don't really have any other plans anyway, hence me being able to sit down and blog finally! 😂