Is It Naptime Yet

So, I just realized I hadn’t written a post about the details of how my weekend away went. I guess I’ve been pretty preoccupied by homeschooling and using Linux this week.

We wanted the trip to have a lot more woman on it, but since it was the weekend right before school a few mom’s decided to stay home with their soon to enter kindergarten children and one had to cancel because her husband got asked to go on a Scout trip and she felt he needed to go. So it was my dear friend Sam and her dear friend Julie who went and they both brought their nursing children. So we had three mom’s and two young children.

Just a funny note: I have never spoken to Julie that much, but my mother made her wedding cake, I had an English class with her husband in college and she and Andrea were friends back in the day. She’s also visit taught my sister Carolyn, and she now lives in my parent’s ward and receives sewing lessons from my mom on a weekly basis. So even though Julie and I had only seen each other at Britta’s birthday parties, we know of one another and she knows my family. Oh, she also lived in the ward we’re currently in, but moved during the housing boom a few years ago.

Friday afternoon Sam and I dropped our girls off at her in-laws house. I needed a sitter for about 3 hours that afternoon since Jon couldn’t take any time off and Sam asked them if they’d be willing to take my two rambunctious girls with her crazy daughter. (Ha, all of our children are pretty mellow for other people so this is such an exaggeration.) They said yes and in one afternoon they were bombarded with 3 times the normal number of young girls they’re use to. Jackie, Sam’s mother-in-law, said that none of the girls spoke to them and just played until they came out to tell her they were hungry. She then fed them some biscuits and chicken nuggets and Jon arrived some time soon after.

We left a little later than normal due to nursing kids and me waiting outside the wrong house to drop my kids off at, but we all eventually piled into Julie’s van and got on the road to Pine Valley.

Riding in one car was so nice. I was in the back because Sam gets car sick, but both of the kids were pretty good for most of the time. We did have one throw up and one cry for the last 30 minutes of the drive, but eh, that’s all in the day of a mother.

We got to the cabin and settled in. We had Navajo tacos for dinner. Sam had brought bread dough to make the scones and I brought the rest of the ingredients. We had homemade guacamole and I made the taco meat a little more delicious by adding a can of pork and beans. (I had it at an activity and it just added a sweetness to it that was so good.)

We ate till we were far too full and  then relaxed and just sat and talked some more since that’s all we did for the drive too.

It was so nice to be with other woman and to talk like woman and not have to worry about little ears and little hands, though Dallin, Julie’s son, was walking around but he was pretty low key in the getting into things area.

Julie, who knows so many of my the women in my family, got a kick out of hearing and watching me talk. Since many of us Harvey girls have similar traits in how we carry ourselves and talk she said how she could see my mom’s, Andrea’s, and Carolyn’s mannerism in me.

We had strawberries and banana’s dipped in chocolate for a desert and then continued to talk till about 2 am.

Really our weekend consisted of food and talking the whole time.

Sam made some delicious chocolate ginger pancakes for breakfast and we enjoyed our food outside on the deck. It was a beautiful day and we sat outside for most of the time we were there.

Julie made quesadilla‘s with pico de gallo for lunch, which we also ate outside.

As we sat on the porch we watched the hummingbirds feed off the feeder. We also saw them dueling and I got scared a couple times because they came dueling towards my head. Sam got a kick out of me being afraid of the hummingbirds but I didn’t want those beaks coming towards me. I’m sure at a high speed they can hurt you pretty badly.

As afternoon approached so did some rain. Julie had been wandering around the yard and found the blackberry bushes which were in season. So despite the fact that I already had done my hair and make-up and do not enjoy playing in the rain I ran quickly and gathered just a small amount for my girls to enjoy, which they loved.

We then packed up the van and made a delicious stop at Chuck ‘A Rama, my favorite buffet in St. George, though it gets pricey at dinnertime.  After that we were all so full and tired that it was quiet in the car for about 5 minutes before we started talking again.

We got back into town around 9:00 pm and I was able to kiss my girls hello before I sent them off to bed and then stayed up till 1 am talking to Jon and checking e-mails and blogs.

It was so beautiful that I’m going there again, but this time with Sam and her daughters and me and mine. Britta and my girls and good friends and we think they’re at the perfect age to begin creating fun sleepover memories and enjoy time at the cabin together.

I’m so excited.

So Lilah just took her fingerprint. It was an idea that she got out of Little National Geographic. You rub pencil on a paper, then you rub your finger around in the pencil, then take tape and remove the fingerprint and put it on a piece of paper.

It was cool and Lilah has a loop imprint, though I admit my first instinct was to tell her to go wash her dirty finger when she was asking for tape.

We then did Eden’s and Eden has a whorl. So cool, I’ve always wanted a whorl fingerprint, loop is soo common. Just think, half of her DNA that made that whorl came from me, so it almost makes me have a whorl fingerprint too, kinda, but not really.

I would totally post pictures but Jon recently changed us to Linux and I have no idea how to import pictures and then edit. Our scanner is also disconnected because we had to plug something more important in and so the scanner got unplugged, though I can’t use it in Linux either. To think of it I have no idea what we plugged in and why and I’m not sure why I’m using Linux besides that Jon is making me ’cause it’s faster and more secure, or something like that. I may have to reboot into windows just because I’m also unsure of how to open photo’s to edit. Sure he showed me but it’s hard to teach an old dog a new web program and I’m am totally slacking on posting a picture post a week.

I’m also a little worried that someone might try to still my children’s identity if I post their fingerprints, not really, but you never know what wacko’s are reading your blog, or if the wacko is really the one writing it. Don’t answer that.

Also, it was totally a random homeschooling moment. We went online to compare the prints to tell us what each one was. I think next time I’ll have Lilah type in what we’re looking for. I’ll just need an ounce or two more of patience for slow typing.

So I’ve been back on the home-schooling wagon for two days. I think it helps to have my car in the shop and not to be able to go anywhere. It’s like the old days when we had just one car and I had to plan ahead, and it had to really be worth it, and I’d take Jon to work if I wanted to go anywhere that day or I’d just stayed home and do things in the neighborhood or at the house.

I’ve decided that the afternoon, right after lunch, is the best time for me to home-school. I’ve done my chores and other things  that distract me in the morning while the girls play, then I have them clean up while I make lunch, then after lunch we clear the table off and bring the work there. I stay at the table writing down what we’ve done and what I want to do, partially in effort to show what we’ve done and partially to work on my penmanship, something I want to improve. I give the girls different tasks to do and modify when needed. At the end of our work day we read, do a fun activity, play a learning game, or all three. I don’t say I need to fill two or three hours with work, I just work with them a little and as time progresses I’ll add more where I see they need it.

Eden’s work ends much sooner than Lilah’s so she usually draws and does what she wants until we’re ready to do our group activity. Lilah works quickly and mostly happily. I’m hoping we can introduce things that she wants to know more about and have a library day where we go and check out books on the topic of her choice. This is something I’ll add as we get more into our routine and one of the reasons we homeschool, so they can learn about what they want to learn, when they want to.

My goals for them at this time are the following:

Eden (four years old): Teach to read with Bob books. She’s really very good at sounding out words and recognizes some. It’s sounding it out and then remembering it for the next time. I think she’s ready to learn to read because I’ve caught her trying to sound out words when she’s trying to read books. I don’t expect a lot from her but since it seems like she wants to read I figure I’ll teach her to read. I’ll also be working on simple math with her and working on her writing her name more clearly.

Lilah (six years old): Math, penmanship, spelling, geography, and history. I have a lot of things for Lilah this year. I’m not yet set on a curriculum, but we do have work books, flash cards, and other learning materials to learn with. Lilah reads very well so I’ll think I’ll be reading chapter books with her, where she reads them to me and I help her slow down and sound out words she reads incorrectly. She has a tendency to read quickly and thus read some words incorrectly.

We’re also in a co-op starting in September where the girls will be taking different classes and I’ll be helping and teaching some classes too. My sister Kristi is home-schooling her children but using K-12 where they provide the lessons and many cool things to teach with. We’ll be sitting in on some of their science lessons on Mondays or Fridays.

I’ve decided that Mondays are co-op and science days, Wednesdays are park, library, or errand running days and Tuesday, Thursday and Friday are school days. Most things that I do are in the morning, so as long as I’m home by the afternoon we should be fine if something does happen to come up.

I’m hoping this works well for us as I try to be a little more concrete in my home-schooling schedule.

It’s been fun to sit down and see how much the girls know already. They’re amazingly smart and really want to learn. I’m hoping as we do work I can find interesting things to introduce, like sign language or Spanish, though I don’t know if I’d be the best Spanish teacher.

1. Husbands who watch your children so you can get away with friends.
2. Notes from your daughter when you return home.
3. Friends who stay up late to talk and  meeting new friends who help you feel completely open and yourself.
4. Running in the rain to collect yummy blackberries for your daughters.
5. Cuddling with babies while on the girls weekend.

I’m also excited to go back with my girls for a girls weekend with their best friend in a couple weeks. I know they’ll love it there.

August apparently is our most expensive month yet.

New tires for the Toyota: too much money.
Repairing the Toyota from the small accident Lacey was in: too much money.
Buying a staff parking permit for Jon because they made a rule that staff could no longer just buy student parking: twice as much as student parking, AKA too much money.
Paying for Jon’s class: too much, at least until they reimburse us 80% of the costs of credits, Holla at discount tuition!
Paying the regular bills that we need: too much money.

Life is so expensive. In two months we will have spent around $1,500 on our cars, since Jon needed new tires last month, and this does not include the car payment or insurance.

Money stinks sometimes.

As I make my last minute preparations for leaving my family tonight to go to Pine Valley for one night with some girl friends, my craziness surfaces.

This is the first time I’ve left my girls or Jon and I worry about not returning. You see I worry about death a lot in some ways. If Jon becomes more than 15 minutes late I just know that he’s been in a car accident. If he’s 30 I just know he’s dead. I’ve never been right and I always breath a sigh of relief when I see his car pull into the drive way or hear him open the front door.  I also hate when he goes on business trips. I just know his will be the plane that goes down. I’m strange that way.

With me leaving and driving 3 hours away with friends I just know that this will be my death. I can hear Nina Raditich announcing the tragedy of three young mothers and two children who were just trying to get away being hit by a semi and dying. I know I’m crazy. But here’s the really crazy part. I cleaned my toilets and mopped my floors just so people wouldn’t come to help Jon and the girls and see what a disaster those places are. Though, it’s also to help Jon out so he doesn’t have to to worry about cleaning those areas for a while. I’m really just trying to be a nice wife before I leave for a mini vacation.

Really I know I’m strange, and I’m pretty sure that I will safely return from my weekend, hence why I feel fine posting this. I just needed to kill a little time while my bathroom floor dried before I took my shower.

I’m just neurotic that way.

Since this is mostly my family blog and Jon and I mostly have things figured out about our marriage, I don’t blog too much about his change of beliefs and how it affects us, but one thing on my mind lately is children.

When we were engaged and an early happily married, and both Mormon, couple we wanted six kids two years apart. (Just a note that we are now and still a happily married couple.) We had our first child right after he graduated because we felt he would be done with school and able to provide for the family, at least hypothetically. In the following 15 months we had around 5 months of employment with 4 months of unemployment and 6 months of underemployment. It was a sucky time in our financial life and hard on our marriage, but luckily we were pretty use to being poor students and didn’t have a very expensive lifestyle. No car payments, no house payments, one child whom I  breastfeed and made the baby food for not only ’cause it was cheap but because we felt it was the best for her. I was also able to get student loans and grants to help our poor circumstances, though we never had to use the loans at that time.

As the months of underemployment stretched on we realized it was around the time we had wanted to start preparing for another child if we were to stay on our “one every two years” plan. Instead of praying for employment we started praying about our family and whether we should have another baby. I think Heavenly Father answered our prayers by providing Jon his employment at UNLV. Not only did he have gainful employment, at just less than twice what we had ever made in a year combined, though we were very poor so it wasn’t much by some standards, Jon received health benefits immediately, which allowed me to get pregnant nearly immediately and have Eden in the summer so I could do Fall on-line courses after I had her. It was a miracle to me, and one of the few times I’ve felt very guided by the Lord.

Fast forward two years. In the Fall of 2006 it was time to start thinking about another child. I was just finishing my degree so it wasn’t necessary for us to have a child before August and we weren’t sure if we were ready for another one at the time since two seemed like a lot, then Jon dropped the bomb that he no longer believed in the teachings of the Church. It was a shaky time in our marriage and even now, nearly three years later, we’re still figuring things out, though it’s with more love and compassion, rather than anger at the betrayal.

Which finally brings me to my recent thoughts.

Jon and I have be discussing whether we want another child. We both agree that we don’t want one while living in our current house. I feel overwhelmed with the things we have here and the four of us, to bring another child into it would be no doubt very overwhelming and difficult. Plus I worry that if we stayed here too long Jon would actually give the three children the master bedroom because we can’t fit another regular sized bed in there with the bunk beds. 😉

Then there’s the fact that the reason why Jon wanted so many children has changed. I don’t want to completely speak for him, but I can say that the belief that we need to multiply and replenish the Earth and bring as many spirits into this world is not something he believes in now, so the reason why to have a lot of children is not there, besides the fact that we like our big families.

Jon’s not sure if he wants another child and though I know I want another child, I’m just not sure I want to bring one knowingly into a religiously divided home. Some might say that I still can insist that they be raised in the church and only give Jon his one Sunday a month with them, two when there are five in a month, just like I do with our girls, but I can’t. I feel like the situation is different. It’s more like I’ve knowingly married a nonmember who does not agree with my beliefs and want a child with them. Wouldn’t that nonmember be entitled to a full 50% of that child’s Sundays and religious teachings, not just 25%? Granted together we’re trying to raise free-thinkers and children who choose their own religious identity, but I know that they are influenced more by the fact that they attend my church on a regular basis. I know Jon would like 50% of the Sundays, but I just can’t, and I know it hurts him that I don’t let him have 50% of the Sundays.

The rules would change for this third child.

Last week I went through our baby clothes. I’m giving half of them away because we simply can’t store them all for the what if’s. What if we have another baby and what if we have a girl?
It’s more like, what if we never have another baby and what if we never get out of this house?

I’m contemplating long term, less hormonal, birth control because I don’t like taking a pill every day and I’ve decided I don’t like having hormones in my body that don’t need to be there. It’s the long term part that scares me. I haven’t had a child in 4 years, but I don’t want to say I won’t have another child in 4 more years. What I’m contemplating can be removed so as to allow me to get pregnant sooner, but to make that choice is still hard.

I long for a baby in some ways. I’m so young and able, something I know some woman  aren’t, yet here I am not giving birth to any more beautiful children, watching and holding my friend’s children and not enjoying those first couple years of my own infant and toddler.

I will say I am happy with my two girls. I’m not sure how I would home school if I had one or two little ones to take care of also, life seems so overwhelming without adding others to the mix.

A part of me wants to write this down just so it’s been said and there is no wondering why I’m not having more children, and possibly why I may never have more. Some might already understand, most, if not all, would hate to be in my position of a “lost” husband, but I love him and he is one of the most important people in my life and I know he loves me.We both want the best for one another and our children, even if that best might be different in our own, individual eyes.

I happy with my little family, and even though it may never be bigger, I’ll try to glory in the children I have.

1. A helpful and supportive husband in my crazy candy making adventures. He puts up with the children I’m neglecting, the messy house and helps when he can.
2.Little girls who also put up with a crazy  mommy, I’m not always a crazy mommy, but they put up with me when I am.
3. Insurance. I’m grateful for auto insurance.
4. Understanding husbands when you need to use that auto insurance.
5. I’m grateful for the talents Heavenly Father gave me. I often wish they were better or don’t think they’re enough, but I’m trying hard to excel and better them when the opportunities arise.

Earlier last week my friend Beth asked if I could make chocolate covered strawberries for her daughter’s wedding which was Saturday. I had told her I’d never made them, but she had faith that I could if I said yes since I’ve made truffles. I told her I’d talk with Jon because I didn’t want to burden him or interrupt his plans since this would be our first Saturday where for most of the day we would be home in three weeks. At first he said he wasn’t comfortable with it, since he had a long list of things to do, so I told Beth I couldn’t. Then that night as I talked to Jon I guess he heard the excitement in my voice as I talked about the bride and groom berries that I had envisioned making for them before he had said he wasn’t comfortable with it. So he said that he thought I probably could make the chocolate covered strawberries for them. So I called Beth and asked if she had asked anyone else to make strawberries. She said no because she felt that I was the one person who would pay attention to the little details in such a way that only Lacey does. I was very flattered by the comment, especially since I do these things as a hobby and not professionally.

I did a little more research and made a sample plate just so they could decide if they really wanted me to make strawberries for the wedding since it was to be my first time working with berries. I thought they turned out alright, but I was working off of a very professional picture that was perfection, so I considered my amateur attempt so under par. They loved the berries I made for them. Since I made bride and groom berries without them asking Beth later told me that Kate had wanted bride and groom, but they had forgotten about them until right before they asked me and she didn’t want to ask me to make them since it was a favor, so when I brought over bride and groom berries it was just what Kate had wanted and they all loved them.

I think the faith and compliments that Beth gave me allowed me to see how cute the berries were that I had made. I was only looking at the imperfections and how amateurish they looked to me, but they loved them and appreciated my hard work. I do pay attention to detail, though I don’t profess to be good at all the little details. I try and over all it works out well.

So Saturday, after spending too much time at the temple after the wedding, I came home and started working on strawberries. It took me around 8 hours to produce the 80-90 bride and groom berries and around 100 of the regular decorated berries. I had to choose only the nicest berries, then rinse and dry them individually. Then the hard work of dipping and decorating began.

The girls were on their own for most of the day and I got the berries to the reception just half an hour before it started only because Jon helped me get half the strawberries in their paper holders and box. He was a good sport, even if I was “The crazy strawberry lady.” 😉

It was lots of fun making them and it was great to hear how much the guest loved them, but the only people I wanted to please was my good friend, her daughter the bride, and the groom.

I am pretty pleased with them myself, but I’m more pleased that they made them happy.

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I took these pictures towards the end to the night. The tuxedo ones went rather quickly.

I just want to note that it’s best to blog right after an event and not 3 months later. A mind becomes very foggy.

Jon had his birthday at the beginning of May. We celebrated by making homemade pizza and eating watermelon for dessert, though I think the girls and I enjoyed some ice cream after the watermelon. He is always striving to be healthy and isn’t the biggest fan of cake so that’s why we had no cake.

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My birthday was pretty regular. Jon had to work since we had just gone camping with Andrea and Brien and it was a three day weekend. I had a little meeting with someone on my birthday so I dropped the girls off with Jon at  his work then he picked up a frozen pizza, but it was a California Kitchen BBQ chicken pizza which we had never had and it was tasty, and frosting for the cake he had baked the day before. Lilah had play practice that night and I was going to go home and sew on the costumes, but decided to just hang out with Jon and Eden while we watched Lilah. Eden fell asleep on the way home so I was sung to the day after my birthday, but before Jon went to work.

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Also, I just wanted to include this picture of Lilah churning ice cream on Memorial Day. My dad has a cool ice cream maker that can be hand cranked, or cranked by a motor. It brought back lots of memories of watching my dad and brothers crank our old ice cream maker, which was very hard to crank. I tried but was always too weak.