Fun February

 I accompanied my friend Allyson Omdahl's daughter while she performed a solo for her orchestra teacher, and we spent some time practicing for it, so Allyson tried to pay me which I refused to accept. So the afternoon after the performance Ella (the violinist) brought me this pretty bouquet of purple flowers. I thought that was nice!

Weston and Jared got tickets to a monster truck rally a couple Friday's ago and said they had a good time watching the motorbike stunts and stuff. I personally can think of 100 things I'd rather be doing. In any case it was a great father and son bonding outing quality time etc etc.

 

 

 We took off Friday last week and headed down to st george to attend weston's 3rd gym meet of the season. We didn't compile a video of his events this time because its starting to all look the same. But if he ever gets a 10.00 or higher score on something we will be sure to share it.  I thought he looked really good on high bar this time so I added some pictures of him doing that. He consistently got 3rd or 4th place on every event at this meet, and usually the 2nd and 1st placers were people on his own team, so he is doing great. We had a parent/coach conference last week and Weston is excelling or meeting standards in every area. Pommel horse continues to be his weakest event.

 We had all the Barretts over for dinner last Sunday and Heidi made everyone jam and chocolate strawberries as a valentine gift, which was very nice of her. As we speak Jared is helping my parents move Grandma Rappleye's furniture from her house to their house. Just in the nick of time too, last week Grandma's plumbing was affected by overgrown tree roots and decay and her basement flooded. They have made a nice new place for grandma at their home and she will have privacy when she needs it and company when she needs it and round the clock supervision, which will be good for her, and easier there for my parents to be her caretaker.

For the past 3 months Fiora's vision has been declining, just like the eye doctor told us last May would happen, she has been complaining that can't see far through her glasses since November so I told her to wait til her birthday and we would go back to the eye doctor. The doctor stated that she still has rapid declining vision, for whatever reason the back of her eye is elongating to try and compensate for the myopia, so he talked me into doing Corneal Refractive Therapy, gas permeable  hard lenses you only wear at night that reshapes the cornea so the back of her eye stops thinking it has to compensate and holds its shape. She wears those at night and nothing in the daytime, its kind of amazing to me, like LASIK for kids. I'm a little nervous about her losing one of those $200 contact lenses someday though. They last for 2 years, if you can keep track of them...

Its the darndest thing, my kids have discovered they can do anything they want by looking up a "how to" video on youtube. Instead of watching TV programs, I catch the kids watching "how to paint your nails for prom" or "how to draw Olaf from Frozen" or "how to make a iPod valentines box." Fiora found this iPod box idea and created it almost all by herself, and so Weston found a minion box online and followed suit. I thought they turned out really cute, and since I'm really not crafty its nice they had initiative to do it themselves.

Fiora turned 11 on February 13th. She wanted chicken alfredo for her birthday breakfast. We always make time for a family breakfast and presents on the morning of someone's birthday around here. That day I checked her out of school so she and I could go to Pizza Pie cafe for lunch.  She mostly got craft items for her birthday, she is super crafty!!! must have gotten it from Grandma Sandy, cuz Jared and I can't claim that status. Fiora often has problems procrastinating her homework because she is working on a yarn covered headband, or crocheting and bow, or working on her rubberband loom, or sewing a beanbag out of old shirts, or making a boondoggle, or making jewelry with beads.  I even had to tell her teacher at parent teacher conference that the crafts have been getting out of hand, her teacher Dr. Welte has this "Welteville" business operation going where people order goods from each other to earn "weltebucks".  Its great for teaching business principles, but not good for motivating Fiora to work on social studies and math homework!  Her birthday party included 2 craft activities, making owls out of felt and valentines doilies, and making earrings and necklaces from materials she pre-ordered on Amazon for her birthday. She and her 8 friends also played a few games, "name that pop-star" and "spoons" and "Baby do you love me?" with lots of giggles and squeals. And she had an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins per her request. (spoiled) What a fun party she had!

Whiney post

January pushed me over my sanity cliff. I often tell my friends to go ahead and vent, it makes you more real, welcome to the human condition, I have those days all the time... but then I don't write about my hard times on the blog myself! I just write the good times, knowing that time will pass and negative days will be forgotten. In the course of a lifetime what does one stressful month matter anyway?  We just keep going, there's no other option. Well its February now and I'm in a better place, so I feel lucid enough to write about January stresses. If you don't want to hear about it you can skip this post.

I set myself up for it, last year January was a very calm stress-free month after a very crazy December, so I kept telling myself, "One of these days I'll just get to kick back and recover because its January!" But that day never happened, so resentment started to build. I felt like a heart beat, only resting in between beats, aka at night while sleeping. FIRSTLY, I hate the cold. Going outside is painful for me and even in the house is uncomfortably cold, and not having much sunshine to fuel my body with vitamin D affects me negatively. Secondly, for whatever reason, (stress cold age?) my monthly cycle was particularly vicious on me, giving me lovely mood swings ranging from anxious, to enraged to depressed to happy throughout the month. Thirdly, my client load almost doubled from December, which I had to keep reminding myself that was a good thing, that I love my job, and I'm here to serve and help, but even if all that is true it is still a time sucker and can be mentally draining. Fourthly, my parents were trying like crazy to get their basement finished for my elderly grandma to move in with them, and so every spare time I could get I would go visit them and clean or work on the basement, which was only 3 half days mind you, but I wanted to contribute to that endeavor and felt like I wasn't able to do anything to help. Fifthly, my husband's brother Chad has been battling cancer and got severe pneumonia and complications to that for 3 weeks, so we were praying fasting stressing and worrying about Chad, and spent a few days helping there which you read about in the last post. Sixthly, gym meet season, Weston only had 2 gym meets but they take almost the entire day to get through and he has had extra classes/clinics this month to attend as well, so more time sucking. Seventhly, sickness. My kids have all had coughs runny noses headaches and congestion all month. Savanna got a cough on new years day and she is still coughing, she told me today that she thinks its even worse than ever. I can't seem to find a spare hour anywhere to take her to the doctor unless I check her out of school, and I've been praying like crazy her body will just fight it off, I'm certain its bronchitis, or was, and Jared and I are both sick and tired of hearing her cough all night. I came down with a sinus infection this past week myself and just kept going to work like nothing was wrong, I hate to take sick days and cancel appointments, but maybe it would have been better than trying to analyze with half functioning brain.  Eighthly, Jared has been abnormally busy at work for a January, this is supposed to be his slow month but he has been working 6 days a week ALL month. Again, that is a good thing, he is doing great business and I don't want to complain about that, but the poor guy only got to attempt ice fishing once the whole month and got skunked, and it was almost too cold to even enjoy the trip. Ninethly, the kids are struggling for some reason to keep up on homework and assignments, probably because helping them with that sort of thing has been the last thing on my priority list lately, so I keep getting little progress report alerts saying Savanna has a D in this class, Weston got a 30% on this assignment, Fiora is missing this, Savanna is missing that, and every time I say "Oh well! Guess they will learn if they fail!" because I have no space to fit in you-are-failing-as-a parent-supporting-your-kids-academics into my already overflowing psyche.  Tenthly, I was called as the ward choir director last week, a calling to which I have already served 4 years in a previous ward and which I have struggled to feel my efforts are really doing much for the greater good of building the kingdom.  I guess the Lord wants me to change that attitude by giving me another go at it. At least I have lots of good ideas from being int he Orem Chorale for 1 year and 1/2.

So I have been tempted to say GOOD RIDDANCE JANUARY, but then I remember that all my problems are "first world problems," are really no big deal, and I get a nice side order of guilt to go with my ungrateful attitude. So I will write a list of 10 things that January blessed us with.
1. No financial stress
2. Our children have no disabilities/chronic illnesses/trauma
3. A healthy marital relationship
4. No addictions to overcome
5. Warm house,
6. Running vehicles,
7. Good food clean water every day
8. A month break from church calling
9. Progress on my parent's basement
10. Chad's recovery from pneumonia