Is It Naptime Yet

1. I hate drinking cold, like really cold, water. I like room temperature to cool.
2. I have to take off my wedding ring and dry it after I wash my hands. I can’t stand the feel of a wet wedding ring on my finger.
3. I still bite my nails, but that’s a little more gross than weird.
4. I wash dishes in a specific order and I prep them. I’m really annal about it and never just go and dive into washing dishes for the dishwasher.
5.  I hate taking baths. Bathtubs are gross, unless they are brand new and have never been used. Even right after they’ve been clean I find them gross ’cause there’s usually some residue of the cleaner left in it.
6. I have a vivid imagination about really crazy things. If Jon is ever late I get really worried and think of all the horrible things that might have happened to him.
7. I’m very fair skinned and proud of it. I hope to keep younger less wrinkled skin because I don’t try to tan.

I tag Anna, Elizabeth, Fallon, and Bethany.

I think I’m suppose to tag seven people, but many of my readers have already done this, or were tagged.

Yesterday was a day of errands. I picked up the correct prescription of contacts and my glasses. Though I feel like one of the lenses is not quite at the right angle so things just look a little off.  I’m happy with my new frames and Jon calls them ‘geek chic’.
My errands went as ordered:

Picked up contacts.
Waited at Carolyn’s office while she took forever to run a “ten minute” errand and then we saw her for like ten minutes.
Went to Target.
Ate lunch with Anna.
Went to Jo Ann’s and spent money on the most perfect apron fabric.
Lastly, stopped by Costco to get glasses and buy food.

It was a fun day and the girls were relatively well behaved. Since Lilah will be in girls sizes I bought a few things on clearance and hopefully she’ll be able to wear them in the appropriate season and they won’t be too big next year.

Today we ran to Smith’s to pick up mason jars. Then onto Beth’s for class and then to Sam’s. We wanted to prepare and get the jars into the dishwasher to sterilize them for canning. While they ran through the dishwasher we went to ‘home on the range’ where Sis. Burns taught us a little about canning. They made some fabulous apple pie filling so we decided to make a batch with our apples, rather than making just applesauce.

After home on the Range Sam and I went to her house to start the canning process. We both worked on the apple sauce and then the pie filling doing different jobs and keeping one another company. I left her house a little before 6. She had all the dishes done, we had canned everything, and we had just one batch of jars to put into the steamer. I did a lot of prep work and she did a lot of cleaning.

My jars of homemade applesauce and apple pie filling are still at Sam’s house so the jars can cool, but from the taste test of left over applesauce the girls loved the final product.

It was fun canning, but is is definitely time intensive and not any cheaper than buying it at the store.
With being at Sam’s house the girls had lots of toys to play with and they acted and behaved wonderfully. We hardly noticed they were there. Britta was coming home from California with her grandparents, so sadly it was just my girls.

I picked up a pizza for dinner and now the girls are playing Go Fish with Jon and he’s trying to teach them not to show one another their cards.

Last night we played Domino’s, the Blake way, and Eden won two games, Lilah won one, and Jon won one of the four. I think it ironic, the youngest person, who had no game strategy, won the most games. Eden was doing a pretty good job matching the numbers on her own and saying pass when she couldn’t make a move. I don’t know if she was counting or just going by the colors, though I think it was a little of both.

Later this night… Eden fell asleep on the couch with me while I chatted with my sister, Jon fell asleep on our bed, and Lilah fell asleep on him.

I guess it was a long day for us all.

I’m not sure why I’m titling this post “Monkeys”, but I had a couple thoughts I wanted to jot down.

The first thought is something I overheard Lilah say to Eden this morning.

“That’s my throw-up bowl, don’t play with it!”

Thankfully it was never used, nor do I think Lilah really needed it, but she said her stomach hurt.

Something I said:

“Let her play with the bowl, you never threw-up in it. It’s fine.”

Also Eden takes after me in a silly way, besides looking just like me.

She is obsessed with tickling us. At home, at the store. She likes to take her hair and tickle you with her hair and once she decides to tickle you she keeps tickling you, for like a long time, at any place and at random times. I have to tell her not to bend down on the dirty store floor and tickle my feet at times. I think she starts playing with her hair and just decides it would be fun to tickle someone and whatever part of you which is easiest to reach, she tickles.

I also like to tickle my family members, but I don’t use my hair, nor do I tickle feet, unless you’re a member of my little family. I think they have cute feet to tickle, and eat, but I only “eat” their feet after a bath, ’cause it’s just gross any other time. ( Just for clarification, I will tickle Jon’s feet, but I will never play “eat” his feet, they are way to big and have hair, and that’s just gross to eat feet on anyone older than like…seven, or whatever age I decide to stop eating my girls feet. Their feet may be forever cute, but once they’re bigger than my 6 1/2 sized feet I’d definitely stop. )

So there are some random fun memories and an insight to my craziness.

Remind me not to write blogs after being awake for 17 hours and only getting 5 hours of sleep the night before. I know some might call this motherhood, I call it torture.  I need 8 hours of sleep.

Jon and I were enjoying a nice quiet night at home. We had popped the Netflix movie in, Bridge to Terabithia, and we were watching the story unfold.

Then the phone rings.

It’s 9:54 pm.

Who’s calling us at 9:54? I wonder if it’s your parents?

It’s not a number I recognized and I fully expected to hear, “Sorry I have the wrong number.” after I picked up the phone.
Instead I heard “Hello, Sis. Blake this is Bro. Moe*. We have chapel cleaning duty tomorrow and I’m going through the names for it. Can you be there at 9?”

“Uh, I’m not able to make that.”

“You have something going on around  9 am tomorrow?”

“Yes, I do. I won’t be able to make it.”

“Alright I’ll put your name down for the next time.”

I wish I could convey my confusion and the exact conversation. I felt like I should know that I was assigned to clean the chapel, or even that I had volunteered, but I had no idea that it was our turn this month and no idea I was up to clean the chapel this Saturday.

In our old ward it went by auxiliaries and people volunteered. Of course it usually ended up being the presidency members from each auxiliary, and not many families or other members volunteered. They also liked to clean at ungodly hours of 7:30 am. 😉
But you knew ahead of time that you had volunteered to clean the chapel.

Now I have no qualms with being assigned to clean the chapel, in fact it might be a better way to get members to come and clean the chapel.  I  also find 9 am to be a much more agreeable time, especially if I wanted to bring my children to help. What I have qualms with is not knowing I’m assigned to clean the chapel until the night before, and especially not knowing until 9:54 pm the night before.

I felt like he was trying to sneak up on me. ‘You’re assigned and nobody has morning engagements on Saturdays, so you must be available and can’t say no.’

I do have a morning engagement, it’s at 10 o’clock, but I like to take my shower after I clean the chapel and I wouldn’t have time to do that before my blood donor appointment. I also want to save my energy and not exert myself right before I give blood because I already have a difficult time donating.  Now I could cancel, but I really don’t want to.  Especially when you call me at 9:54 the night before. It just brings out my annoyed side, not my give service side.

Would you be as annoyed by this too?

*Names have been changed to protect the identity of a brethren I haven’t met yet.

In my homeschooling quest I’ve joined two online groups that have regular meet ups. One group, Life Learners, got back to me right away and have regular meet ups at parks every Wednesday. They take more of the learn what you want how you want and just live life. The other group I’ve joined is a little more of the traditional homeschooling, with parents using curriculum to teach their children.

The second group, or the Las Vegas homeschool meetup group, just got back to me about signing up this week. It turns out they were having a local weatherperson do a small assembly this week.  A station in town does these assemblies regularly around the valley’s school’s. I thought it would be fun for the girls since Lilah has a fascination with television and I would be able to meet some of the other parents and families in the group.

Wrong. It turns out it was a number of homeschooling groups, which lead to no good way to find out who was in the group I had joined. The girls still had fun and there’s a chance they’ll be on the news Saturday or Sunday morning, though they were kinda behind some bigger boys for the short tapping.

So I’m not sure if this was useful or useless, though I think it was a little of both.

The next two errands I ran came about this morning. Before we left I received two separate phone calls telling me my contacts had come in and my glasses were ready to be picked up also. I thought score, I get to run all the necessary Henderson errands in one day.

I went to my doctor’s office first. I picked up the contacts and the prescription and got the girls right back into the car. I headed towards Costco and at the first light I had the thought that I should check the prescription. It turned out to be -4.75, but I need -5.00. The doctor had tried the lesser strength but after wearing -5.00 for a year or two, my eyes were not handling it when I drove and that’s when I need my contacts the most. So, I turned around to correct the mistake. The doctor wasn’t there so I just left and had the receptionist call me since I knew I was correct. So they’re ordering more contacts which will be ready to be picked up next week sometime.

Useful or useless? I think useless.

I then headed to Carolyn’s work. I saw her car wasn’t there but decided to go in anyways. She was gone. So that was definitely useless.

I then packed the girls into the car for the fourth time in twenty minutes and headed to Costco. I got there and a woman adjusted the glasses to fit my face. While she was cleaning them she noticed some streaks. The anti glare had been put on improperly. Ugh. So those too will be ordered again.
Also useless.

I am happy that the doctors office and Costco happened on a day I was already heading out to Henderson and I hadn’t gone out there specifically to pick up the contacts or glasses.

The day started so well. Now I’m just blogging to keep awake and avoid doing dishes.

I realized I hadn’t done any posts about what we’ve been up to this week, and it’s Friday…wait now it’s Saturday.

Monday I cleaned all day long. It was mostly de-cluttering and getting places for random things. I even organized my hall closet. It looks really nice in there now, maybe I’ll post an after picture since you’ve seen the before. After the girls were in bed I swept and mopped.

Tuesday morning I folded clothes, washed sheets, and did the regular kitchen chores.

Why did I go through every room and make them presentable, along with cleaning my dirty floors? It’s really quite simple.

We had our house sprayed by our bug guy and he goes in every room, thus every room had to be presentable, or at least clean enough that he could actually do his job and spray in them. I’d hate for him to get caught on the boxes for Jon’s solar oven or our shred pile.

We don’t regularly have the bug guy out. In fact this is may be the fourth time we’ve had them come out in three years. All the previous visits were for invasions of ants. We’re also not big fans of pesticide in our home, but now that the kids are older and I don’t have infants I feel a little more comfortable, though we don’t have a big bug problem in the house.

I wanted to mop only the day before he came to make sure I didn’t need to mop for at least a week, probably more with my track record, and  mop around pesticide.

I haven’t seen any dead bugs in the house, but we had a roach die by our front porch doormat and the spider that was making webs in our front dirt area was a black widow that died right next to our front door. I mean right next to it. And it was big. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate black widows?

It makes me want to have him spray the outside once a month to prevent these lovely creatures from coming into my house. Which is likely since we don’t have an airtight seal on the bottom of our front door.

I also had Britta Tuesday morning so Sam could study. Then Sam came over at lunch time and we made granola. I have a very easy recipe and she likes it so she may continue to use it if I were to e-mail it to her.

The girls were fascinated with the bug guy and silently followed him around. Well, they were silent until they got outside and Lilah started chatting about our cat cage. (We had another one pooping in our yard and caught it Sunday night.)

I clean for visitors and apparently our bug guy.

Who do you clean for?

I have too many pictures to look through so that’s gonna wait, but so I can remember parts of the trip I’m doing the journal post now.

Saturday was the day of the actual reunion. We got to my Aunt Pat and Uncle Don’s house fairly early, or around noon. My father has one whole brother and three half sisters and one half brother. I met a lot of my cousins, many of whom I never knew existed. Most of them are a little older than I, by at least eight years. Some have children just seven years younger than me. Most of them grew up in Idaho, Oregon, or Washington. Places we never visited since they’re so far, and for other reasons such as by the third day of traveling my father would be completely annoyed with all of us kids, there are six of us. I’m sure the thought of being in a car for that long was probably too much. I am slightly grateful because trips to Utah were hard enough on me. I had to sit up front between my parents in our station wagon, since I was the youngest and smallest, until I was around twelve.

Sharma, my cousin Don Jr.’s wife, kept the kids occupied with different crafts. They decorated a folder to put the crafts in, made bookmarks, necklaces, etc. After we ate she gave the kids bubbles and side walk chalk to occupy them. Then even later in the day she organized the egg run races for the kids and adults.
I lost.
Lilah participated in two races. One with all the kids and one with the six and younger children, since the older kids were winning a lot. For the first race they had to run the whole length of the yard. For the second race they only had to run half the length of the yard. She ran the whole length and one of the cousin’s child suggested she get an award for the extra effort, so she got a pen that had both blue and red ink to it.

Eden was doing her own thing for most of the day. She also hung out with Amarah, my Uncle Mike’s granddaughter who is just two weeks older than her. I have pictures of them trading bubbles. They were really cute. She did the second egg run and  lost like her mother.

Each family was in charge of a skit,  song, or some activity. My Uncle Don had a quiz which you matched the fact with a person from his family. We had the girls, and I helped, perform the Wheels on the Bus. (I was going to do Oh Hey Oh Hi Hello, but we needed the CD and the wheels song had actions and more people could join in so I thought it would take the pressure off. ) The girls did really well. I wish I would have had someone record it, but I forgot.
My aunt Mary’s family dance to the Village People’s YMCA. Aunt Marcia’s family did a little skit where a cousin was placing their family members pretending to be trees, birds, the sun etc, and called it the gathering of the nuts. My Aunt Cheryl and her daughter sang to a Judd’s song and Uncle Mike did karate, while two of his grandchildren were to shy to demonstrate with him.

We had Christmas in August so everyone brought an age and gender appropriate gift. My Uncle Don was in charge of that and wasn’t taking any initiative on what or how to trade gifts, so I took the initiative and got them organized for the different ages and genders. He says he’s a good supervisor, but I think he needs to work on how to motivate his workers.

I liked meeting all these new family members and the girls had fun, despite some clinginess they had towards me. I’m sure all the people didn’t help. We had around 26 adults and about 25 children under the age of 18. It was busy.

I felt a little like the odd one out. My cousins that are my age didn’t come up, and everyone else was older than me or younger by at least seven years.

Sunday morning we ate breakfast at my Uncle Don’s house and then headed over to the cemetery where my grandma is buried. It was wet from a morning rain and the mosquitoes were out so after a few pictures  my mom and I packed us and the girls back into the car. I had to keep swatting mosquitoes off of Eden’s legs and Lilah had one land on her finger. I got two out of my three bites that morning and luckily the girls were never bit enough to get a bug bite.

We traveled back to Ely on Sunday. We followed my Uncle Mike to Twin Falls, ID and ate Taco Bell with him, my Aunt Robin, and their three grand kids. My Aunt Robin had a new puppy, some very small breed so it was only 4-6 lbs. Lilah adored the dog and since they shared a balcony with us at the hotel so we snuck over there and held the puppy at night. Eden warmed up to the puppy, but since it still liked to nip and chew on people she was weary of her.

My dad hurt his ankle as we were leaving the hotel Sunday morning so we stayed at Andrea’s house while my parents got a ground floor room at the motel in Ely, our original room was upstairs and the only room that had three beds to it.  Eden was not happy and wanted to  go to the hotel. She eventually got over it and was fine sharing a room with Zarina and Lilah.

I stayed up talking with Andrea and Brien till nearly midnight and then slept on their couch. We all got up a little after 8 am, or when Zarina started making noises, and my parents showed up shortly after that.

After getting fed and ready to go we stopped and fed the ducks, geese and swan at a fountain area in Ely. The girls love feeding the ducks.

We took the long way home through Caliente, opposed to going through Lund. We stopped and ate lunch and then let the girls watch another movie for the drive home.

We got in around 4:30 and Eden fell asleep right as we got to town. The little stinker did not want to take a nap. I had her wait 20 minutes before she could draw after the movie was done and since she stayed awake I gave her the items to draw with and then magazines to look at. She was being stubborn, but maybe it was because she missed daddy.

Lilah told Jon lots of things that happened and then once Eden was awake she also told Daddy what we did on the trip.

I think I’m good for any long car rides for a while.

Lilah stuck a plastic confetti from her pencil holder up her nose. Ya know, the hole punch you have to remove yourself for some pencil holders to put them in a binder.

Jon’s taken her to the Quick Care  because I am not fit to be seen in public. Sure I’ve taken a shower today, it’s just I just pulled my hair back and do not look as nice as I would like. He said I was better with this insurance stuff and I had the “sexy housewife look.”
I’m sure I’m just sexy to him and he for whatever reason didn’t want to fill out insurance stuff. Plus I needed to supervise dinner. Jon doesn’t know how to tell when meat is done and I have a turkey loaf in the oven

I guess it has been a year since Eden stuck stuff up her nose so it makes sense that Lilah has to learn not to stick things in her nose at the ripe ol’ age of five.

And it’s a new deductible year too. I wonder if I’ll have any more moles that need to be operated on? We should get full use when we pay off our deductible and I’m not having a child before June 30, 2009.

Children. So curious.

UPDATE

The nurse didn’t see anything so she sent us to Sunrise, as in I took Lilah to Sunrise Hospital’s ER so Jon could get some stuff done, and since it specializes in pediatric care .
That doctor didn’t see anything and tried using a balloon device, as input the tube down the throat, inflate a small balloon at the tip and pull up to see if anything would come out.
Nothing came out and he still didn’t see anything so he said more than likely it just went down her throat into her stomach with the normal snot.
It’s still a waiting game to make sure everything is alright. If she gets a runny nose then we need to take her into a specialist, or if she gets a really bad cough, then we go back to the ER ’cause it’s in the lungs.
Better safe than sorry.

I just hope if any complications happen they manifest them self in the next 24 hours because the girls and I are going to Idaho with my parents on Thursday and out of state hospitals are no fun when it comes to insurance.

So this is my long journal post about the day to day of the last couple weeks.

Last week, as in Thursday July 31, 2008 I spent all day sewing. I was making an apron for a friend. I’ll post pictures once I get the pocket on. When Jon asked Lilah what she did all day she said “Mommy sewed for a serious long time.”
I just get into projects and like to finish them.

Friday I went over to help my MIL. They’re trying to get the house fixed up and have found a very nice handyman. She’s also trying to downsize, and they have a lot. I would take more of their books, except we have no where to put any and I’m not going to add another bookcase to my house. It’s already overrun with books. I think we need a bigger house, which ain’t happening anytime soon,  or we need to get rid of books we have.  The neighborhood kids called our house a library for crying out loud, which makes Jon proud I’m sure.
It was a pretty progressive day and I just hope my MIL can continue to let go. They’re very big pack rats and in some ways it’s good, other ways it just gets in the way of living more comfortably.
That night Jon and I saw “The Dark Knight.” I enjoyed it, I love Christian Bale, but it was also a little long for me.

Saturday Jon went on a field trip with the girls to his work. They visited his new office, mostly to see if he left his thumb drive, something he can’t live without, and to visit the Natural History building there.  They have different exhibits and some animals. After that they went to his parents to install the computer for his mom.

I stayed home on Saturday. I was asked on Thursday to give the lesson for Sunday but was so busy that Saturday was the first opportunity I got. I also cleaned the house while the others were gone.

Sunday was church day.

Monday I went back over to my in-laws. I had forgotten my blueberries there and figured I could try to help my MIL more. With all the changes she wasn’t up to making any decisions on getting rid of stuff, so we mostly talked about different things and I encouraged to to get rid of certain stuff.  I went shopping for her and the girls stayed with my in-laws. My MIL told me later that even though we didn’t clean or get anything done she still enjoyed having the girls there and the time she spent talking with them, rocking with them, and listening to them lifted her spirit.

Tuesday the girls had swimming lessons. I’m not sure what else we did that day.

Wednesday I went to Henderson. We visited my sister Carolyn’s work, went to Target, had lunch with Anna, and stopped at the park for the unschooling group. We had cloud coverage while at the park, so it made it a little more bearable and it rained lightly for a short period of time. Then it got hot as the sun came out again and it was time for Eden’s nap, so we left.

Thursday we had a birthday party in the morning. I had a headache that afternoon, which I rarely get so I’m a baby anytime I have a headache that lasts, so I didn’t get much done.
That night I went back to Target and Mervyn’s to check out clearances for Lilah’s cloths next summer. Neither store had very much and I realized that girl clothing is twice as much as toddler. If only she could stay a 5T. I was also looking for clothes for family pictures. I found what I was looking for for the girls, but I it still doesn’t go with the shirt I planned for me, so I may need to find a cute navy blue shirt, cause my regular blue just looks dingy, even though it’s not dingy, just regular, next to the navy blue of their shirts.

I also got an antenna for our TV. It helped bring in the stations that are digital, except NBC. I guess once everything goes digital we won’t get NBC. Since the Olympics officially start tonight we’re using regular analog TV signal, but after that it’s back to digital.

Today I dyed my hair back to it’s regular darkness. I tried to over a month ago, but I was worried and didn’t leave the dye in long enough. Now I have lovely dark hair to contrast my fair skin. Hopefully it works and keeps the highlights dark.

Now I should go clean the many areas of my house that are bothering me including the dishes.

See the following. (I promise it’s not usually this bad, but it gets this bad when I’m lazy.)

The girls closet. Those clothes were at one time in the box that they’re covering, though it has looked like this for a while.

We ordered sleeping bags from Amazon. Jon’s planning on making a solar over with the boxes so I can’t get rid of them.

Our shred pile. That trashcan is full of papers to be shredded.

A corner in the front room. which holds my sewing machine, the apron I’m working, stuff from Jon’s old office, but it’s supposedly toxic form mold that the building held, the pizza box is holding paper his parents gave us, then random papers I don’t know what to do with.

My, it looks organized but really isn’t, hall closet.

Lets see what gets done.

For one of the the first times in my life, I’m really busy, or at least a lot busier than I would like to be and on a regular basis, at least for the time being.

Last week was a little crazy. We had swimming lessons, visiting Jon’s parents, a new class for Lilah, shopping for Eden’s friend party, Eden’s friend party, Eden Day at Chuck E’ Cheese and then Saturday, which was spent doing random things while I waited for the thunderstorm to pass so I could turn on the computer to work on my lesson for Sunday and the FHE lesson for my family, which was Sunday afternoon.

It’s been a little chaotic around here.

Yesterday was the climax of everything and today I decided to do the things that have been driving me up the wall.

Our house has been super cluttered lately with the new gifts coming in, stuff we buy, and then the regular papers and things that are already piled up. Worst of all my floors were so gross that I, myself, had just stopped sweeping because what’s the point when cupcake or bread crumbs will just continue to flow to the floor after each meal and the spots on the floor just match the crumbs. It wasn’t totally disgusting, but it was really bothering me. Jon could have cared less, or he said it wasn’t that bad.

So today I did stuff. Lots of stuff. I cleaned my kitchen, mostly, which included really cleaning the sink, not just a wipe down after doing dishes. Cleaning my stove top and wiping down counters. I got the crayon that had transferred from Britta’s seat out of the head rest and now I just have to clean the seat and my drivers side mat from when I stepped in gum.
I organized some bookshelves so I could find a place to store the puzzles Eden got from Carolyn and I organized the girls toy shelves to make room for new things. I read stories, got  Eden down for her nap, I got a short nap, Lilah no nap even though she’s been up since 5:30 am.

I’ve also vacuumed my living room rug and mopped my floors. Lilah said I shouldn’t wear dirty shoes on the clean floor, but I’m pretty sure her feet are just has dirty as my shoes. Having dirty floors and piles of books and toys waiting for a spot was really stressful on me. Especially the dirty floors.

Now that I’ve had a good day of cleaning I feel prepared for the busy week ahead with more swimming lessons, a class for Lilah, a trip to the mechanic, and needing to go help my in-laws, which will be on a regular basis, or should be.

Luckily gymnastics is done till September. I’m hoping I get get Eden poop trained by the time it starts.

Where does the time go?