Is It Naptime Yet

So with visiting graves after the reunion we tried to explain to Lilah that dead people are buried under the ground, and that’s where their bodies are. Well what stuck was, we visit dead people. (I will mention that for the rest of the trip any grassy area we passed Lilah would say that dead people are buried there, but of course we had to correct her many times.)
Today she decided to pack up her little grocery cart and take her friends to visit dead people.
Lilah: “Come on Mommy lets visit the dead people.”
Me: “Okay.”
We walk down the hall to the living room.
Lilah: “Here are the dead people.”
She points her foot to different spots on the carpet as she says
“Here’s my cousin Shauntae and here’s daddy.”
Me: “They aren’t dead we visited grandpa’s daddy.”
Lilah: “Here’s grandpa, here’s daddy.”

I just thought it was funny. We try to be plain with her. No frills, but as simple as possible.
At least we know that Shautae and her boys left an impression on her. 😉

So we went to Idaho Falls this weekend. My Father’s side had a family reunion. Our first stop was in Logan Utah. It took us ten hours to get there, instead of nine, because we missed exits and had to backtrack to fill up gas tanks. We got there at 10:00 pm Utah time. We stayed at Jon’s niece’s house, Shauntae. We didn’t get any pictures of us or her family, but here is one with Matthew, her youngest.

Lilah sliding, she didn’t want to leave, and Matthew.

He’s the baby and he kept saying how he didn’t like babies. He was cute though…it’s hard when you’re two to have a family invade your house.
It snowed the night we were there, at least in the mountains around us

The mountains outside Shauntae’s house.

It was a nice sunny 85 degrees on Wednesday then Thursday the temperature dropped and a cold front moved in. Utah and Idaho were freezing…well really cold. We also had a lot of rain driving up. All through Provo until we got out of Salt Lake it rained.

We drove by the Logan temple.

It was stormy on our way out of Logan to Idaho Falls.

We had the reunion at my Uncle Don’s motel. Luckily one of my cousins brought cars for her boys to play with. Lilah had fun, and so did Eden…we just don’t have a picture of her.

Dakota is the boy, my cousin Don Jr’s step son.

Here is my father with four of his five siblings.

(Larry-my dad, Marsha- half sister, Don-brother, Mary- half sister, Mike- half brother.)

Here is a picture of my father’s mother.

After the reunion we visited the graves of family. My great grandparents and my father’s father.
I learned that Dad hung out a lot at his grandparents, the Harvey’s, house.

This is my grandfather’s grave. I also learned that he was a Marine in WWII.

Eden helping us pack.

On Sunday we visited several sites. The first stop was at the trailer park my father was raised in.

The neighbor man brought out his trash and my father recognized him. So even though he hasn’t seen this person in at least 30 years, he went over and introduced himself. (This is just like my dad…he talks to everyone, and anyone he remembers.)

Jon and Lilah in front of the trailer park my father was raised in.

Next we visited the school that my Father went to.

Dad, Uncle Mike, Uncle Don.

Lilah and Alona and a stray dog.

(Alona is my uncle Mike’s granddaughter.)

Alona and the dog.

Lilah on a bench in front of the school.

Our little family visited the Idaho Falls temple next.

Idaho Falls, Idaho Temple

I took the following picture…I’m very proud of it. 🙂

Angel Moroni through the trees.

The falls of the Snake river. These are on the other side of the temple.

We went from Idaho falls to Twin Falls, to Ely. We passed many farm fields. They were so beatiful. We’re just not use to seeing so much farm land.

A field.

Some dairy cows.

Eden being silly in the back seat.

Brien and Andrea told us about Snake River. Andrea was driving so she couldn’t look, but Brien mentioned how amazing the cliffs were and rubbed it in that Andrea couldn’t get a good look. Jon was driving so I teased him as we went over, so he decided to pull over and take pictures.
Pictures do not give it justice.

Snake River, outside of Twin Falls, or Kimberly Idaho, maybe both?

The Hansen Bridge over Snake River

It was beautiful driving through the desert at Sunset. The mountains had a purple hue and you could see so far in the distance. I truly love the desert. I love trees and mountains of other climates, but I love seeing so far onto the horizon and layers upon layers of rolling hills. Jon took this picture at the very end of the sunset.

Sunset outside of Ely Nevada.

We drove through Northern Nevada to Ely on Sunday. Stayed with Andrea and Brien, and on Monday we came home. We had to pick our car from the shop and drop my parents car off at their house. We got home just in time for me to do my assignments for my music class. It was a hectic schedule. It was a fun trip. I think we spent around 27 hours in the car. The girls were quite well behaved. We had one of us in the back seat for the end of certain stretches.

I hope I don’t have to go on a car trip for a while. We’ve done three in the last three months. We haven’t gone on one in two years. I’m glad summer travels are over.

My girls have been in their room for two hours. I’m going crazy!!! It’s nap time and they have not slept a wink. They were doing sooo well and then the week school started they decided to not take naps until 4 of 5 o’clock. I’m just so tired of it. Eden gets overly tired and then I have to be right next to her and lull her to sleep. Lilah falls asleep at 5 and then doesn’t wake up until 7 or 8, so she goes to bed at 9:30 or 10. I know daylight savings is coming in which we’ll be falling forward an hour and that will throw there no sleep charade even further out of whack.
I need them to take afternoon naps.
I like to take my showers in the afternoon so I’m freshly showered for my evening classes. I have side swept bangs that drive me crazy when I’m just at home dealing with the girls, so if I were to get up and do my shower before they awoke, or even when Eden takes her morning nap, I would end up pulling my bangs back, but I want to avoid that. It just drives me nuts when they go through these phases and won’t sleep. I’ve just let Lilah up. (It’s just after five) She is getting older and possible doesn’t need a nap. I try to run them around and get them tired out, it just doesn’t seem to work. There are days where Lilah gets soo moody and I can’t stand to have her around because she’s not sharing, she  bosses Eden around, or doesn’t listen to anything I say. She has a melt down whenever you ask her to do something, and so I figure she needs a nap…and then she’s awake for three hours before she falls asleep. ARG! Eden is still making plenty of noise. I’m debating getting her up. maybe a 7 o’clock bedtime, but I’m afraid how early she’ll wake up. it’s just frustrating. I try to spend time with them but I have so much work I have to get done for school, or just around the house. I feel like they want my attention all day long, unless they’re watching TV. I hate letting them watch so much TV. I try to limit it to 1 hour during the day. But lately it’s been whole movies or 2- 2 1/2 hours of PBS. I do break up the PBS, but I still feel terrible. I just feel stretched. I feel like they’re not being self sufficient. The afternoon is my time. I usually try to do more school, or house work. I also feel like I deserve to relax a little while I eat my afternoon snack, but I also feel guilty that I’m not doing work. I have a trip we’re taking this weekend, so since I won’t be home I have tons to do. ( two test this Friday before we leave, which means I have lectures to watch plus I have to study, and two short papers to write for my music class, and those will need reading.) I also have to get laundry done and pack, get my parents car and drop ours off in the shop. There’s just so much. I wish I had a second me to entertain the girls or at least regulate them. Some days are great. Lilah plays with Eden and they’re both happy, but those days or moments are few lately. I just need relief. I can’t wait for the weekend, because I know I’ll be able to relax most of the time(except the reading I’ll need to do for my sex offenders class because I won’t have time to do it this week). But to prepare for it is going to be crazy. Sorry I just had to vent.
(I’m also kinda beginning to ween Eden. Jon doesn’t want to keep her up at night just so I can feed her, so he thinks I should ween her. I’m not ready yet. Or should I say my breast don’t feel ready yet. I went one night without the night time feeding, she only eats twice now, and my breast wanted to explode at 3 am. Then my mammary glands were sore the whole day. I just hate weening. I believe going from two to one feeding a day is the hardest. After you get rid of the second one, the last feeding, I think, just gets smaller to where they lose interest and then I just have to pump a little for a few days and be in a little discomfort. I just fear mastitis like the plague, and I always worry that I’ll get it while weening. So I think that piles on more emotions to my already unorganized, an chaotic life.)

I teach Relief Society once a month. This week our lesson was on Temple Work: Turning Our Hearts to Our Families and the Lord.
Now it went well relatively speaking. It was only a little frustrating. I only had 20 minutes. Which is somewhat normal after we have announcements and song practice. (I usually have 25-30) I wish they would have chosen a shorter song though. It was four verses. Why not a two verse song for song practice?
Well I pretty much just got my introduction in, and parts about family history. Mostly I would make a short comments and people would have something to say or contribute. or they would have something to say in response to another comment. I wish on days like this I was a mind reader, or psychic. Then I could chose the comments that would be relevant and short, and maybe move-on in a polite way past the comments that would be off topic, or less relevant, and edit those which are long to that which is really needed to be said. It was such a good lesson that I wish I could have gotten more in. Just telling the women to read it doesn’t do it, because I know those who have not already read it, probably will not read it. Granted most of what was said was very uplifting, and they were wonderful experiences. Just what I look for. I just wish I would have had more time. 20 minutes is never enough.

So I have 11 blogs that I read. I had most of them bookmarked, but for some I would just go from other pages to get to the ones I wanted. Jon told me use bloglines, then you don’t have to visit ones that haven’t been updated. I said I liked the suspense of waiting and then seeing if they had been updated. He laughed at me. Well I eventually decided to do  a blogline account. It’s so much easier. I just go there and it shows me whose been updated and then I can just click on them and see the  posts I haven’t read. It usually doesn’t show pictures, but it’s easy to access the post on the original site. Anyways. I highly recommend bloglines if you have several blogs you like to read. it makes the disappointment easier when sites haven’t been updated.

www.bloglines.com

They call it a three day weekend so you can relax right?
We did so much house stuff, and granted it has paid off because I have hardly anything I have to do today besides the little stuff, but man housework is never done.
Miraculously we were able to keep our sink pretty empty. We did at least a load of dishes a day, some days two. We got errands run, such as one trip to Target, and two small trips to the grocery store.  One gospel Doctrine Lesson was planned. Some laundry got washed…three loads washed, two loads folded. Jon made tons of  food this weekend. Including one large batch of coleslaw, he loves coleslaw. On Saturday he made fish sticks for lunch and pasta. More pasta on Sunday. (He saw a recipe on the bag he wanted to try.) I made three batches of granola. One on Friday, which reminded us all how much we love granola, and then I did a double batch yesterday. I also made brownies for FHE. We had lots of family time. Including running through the sprinklers and chasing the girls around on Monday.
I’ve done lots of sweeping and wiping down counters. Things get dirty so fast. I have become a sweep-oholic. I sweep at least once a day. I also wipe down the counters throughout the day. They are just nicer that way, especially when your cooking, doing dishes then cooking some more. I also scrubbed out our kitchen sink this weekend. It was gross. Since it was finally completely empty and staying that way I decided to get out the orange clean and spray it down. It’s nice to have a clean sink.
There’s just so much constant cleaning and laundering. I just did a load of clothes for the girls this morning and they need to be folded. I really hate folding. Things get put in the laundry basket and set for days waiting to be folded, or we just get what we need out of the dryer.  It’s horrible, but at least we have clean clothes. I feel good that we did so much and just kept the house up this weekend. (Usually we relax and get caught up in everything else, and the house goes to pot, or part of it gets done, like laundry, but the dishes stay in the sink the whole weekend.) Jon did outside stuff and I relaxed, watched the girls, or did school stuff. He helped so much, and even did dishes, though he derserves..say…three weeks off….if not more since he did so much while I was recovering. It helps to have his support. It feels good to have a clean kitchen.  We have too many dishes so it was hard at times to empty the dishwasher and put away all the clean ones. Oh well. We found room for them all.
It was a good weekend. Productive and fun. Thanks honey

Lilah got ready for church yesterday while sitting on the couch watching The Incredibles. I noticed that she hadn’t taken off her pajama bottoms, blue bottoms with sharks in them, but I figured once Jon has her go potty she’ll put her pull-ups on and it won’t matter. We got to church and she’s upset because we won’t let her sit in between us. I get her on my lap and I realized…hey it doesn’t feel like she has a pull-up on. I lift her dress a little and what do I see… the blue shark bottoms to her pajamas. Jon had gotten Lilah to get her shoes on, but forgot to have her go potty before church. My next thought…she’s wearing panties,

‘please just don’t go pee in your panties during sacrament.’

My other worry was her getting emotional.

‘Please don’t get emotional and lose control of your bladder.’

Sacrament went well. I got pull-ups on her for Nursery and had her go to the bathroom. She’s doing pretty well in panties. She even left the table during lunch one day to go to the bathroom, and she only went pee. Which was a big leap because just having to go pee doesn’t mean Lilah goes to the toilet. Usually she has to go poop before she’ll rush to the bathroom, or we have ro remind her. She actually hasn’t had a wet pull-up for a while, but every once in a while she does go in her panties while at home. Which makes the pull-up in public a must for me.

The other funny thing happened after church. Jon and I were in the bedroom talking and changing or something. Lilah comes in all excited. “Mommy come here, I have to show you something.” She takes me by the hand and starts dragging me down the hall. I’m thinking what has she done, and Jon follows because of the bubbling excitement Lilah has. We get to the kitchen and she stops and points.
“What’s that Mommy?”
I reply “It’s Ovaltine”
“Is that to make chocolate milk?”
“Why yes it is.”
“Can we have chocolate milk?”

It was just funny. I suppose to had to be there, but she was dang cute. Her excitement was almost too much.
I suppose we should have chocolate milk more often. But hey I figure if you have things sparingly then they will think it’s such a treat to have it. So ovaltine once a month it is. J/K

So I’ve mostly completed my first week of school. I still have a couple of lectures I need to watch, but I’ll do those while the girls are taking their nap.
My music class was cancelled so I had to change my schedule a little bit. I do plan for these things and I register for one more class than I plan on taking. My extra class was Social Work 101, but the professor wanted “several hours of discussion weekly”, and their would be one paper along with the three tests. I was not wanting to do “several hours of discussion” which included responding to the lectures and then responding to other students responses, so I decided to register for SWK 315. Now this sounds strange, aren’t upper division classes harder?…well not always. I had some pretty easy psych courses that were 400 level. My main motivation was it was being taught by a different professor, so my hope was there would be different guidelines for the class and discussions particularly. Anyways, it was exactly the same guidelines plus two papers. I think both 101 and 315 were developed by the same professor, but one is just being “taught” by a different one. I say this because while I worked at Distance Education we did have teachers that just took over for another one, and they used the previous lectures and guidelines, and they just do the grading and answering of questions throughout the semester. Anyways I dropped the 101 and I picked up the 315 on Friday, and since it’s Internet I was not able to see the material until the next day, Saturday. Then I was like no way am I doing this. I just couldn’t handle a third class online that would be so demanding. I hoped my music class would go through, but on Tuesday they cancelled it, only ten of us had registered. I decided to register late for a different music class that I knew would be going through. MUS 133- History of the Beatles, on Monday night. I registered Tuesday so I have not attended this class, plus the teacher does not appear to be on UNLV’s employee list. Which tells me he’s new, or a grad student possibly. Since Monday is a holiday I actually won’t go to the class until the 12th of September. I figure I’ll read though the book, an anthology written by the Beatles, and try to get in touch with him through the department. I’m hoping I haven’t messed up completely and that the class will be more fun with tests or papers, maybe a little time intensive, but not as much as the SWK ones would have been. So that’s my strange life. My sex offenders class was interesting. I probably won’t talk about it too much because the public is often misguided on certain things, or just plain judgemental. I also don’t want to traumatize whoever reads this.

The semester looks hopeful. I’ve done okay managing my time, though my sex offending course has a ton of reading each week, plus so much vocabulary that I’ll need to learn just so I can understand the material and be able to use it. I’ve been tired this whole week and I’ve taken naps in the morning. I’m trying to get past that, because it wastes time.
The semester is a starting and now there is no looking back.

On a side note. The first day I have to take a shower, so I can go to class, both girls decide to stay awake until 4:09….Well that’s when I decided to get in my shower because I couldn’t wait any longer…they were both sound asleep at 4:27 when I went to check on them.

Also we’re getting high speed Internet. My phone line won’t be busy while I’m on-line and overall my Internet connection should be mush faster! I’m so excited!!! It’s costing us much more a month, but I think it’ll be worth it because of the upgrades we’re getting on out phone line and the fact that I will not have such slow connection. Yay!!
(I’ve done six semesters of Internet courses with horribly slow connections, not always able to see the videos clearly for the powerpoint’s, but I always had sound, and on my seventh and final semester we finally get high speed. Go figure.)

Today is the first day of my last semester. Now it seems strange to say that. I know for the past 8 months I’ve been worried about school and it coming to an end but, as of today, I’m excited to say that I will be done in just a mere 15 weeks. It will have taken five and a half years. I write that out so it will be read and it will be clear. I want my last semester to go out with a bang. It’s my last chance to recover from last semesters madness and get awesome grades and my last opportunity to fell like I’ve learned something. okay. I know it sounds strange. I know half way through, and especially the final weeks, I will feel tired and worn down and I will want to put the minimal effort into completely my last semester of courses. I’m hoping that by writing this down, and having those of you who read this, my wonderful family and close friends, obviously those who care enough to bookmark and comeback anyways, help me and keep me to my word. Goals are more likely to be obtained if written down, and for me goals are more likely to be done if I have someone else to remind me, or at least to be proud of me when I accomplish them. (do I sound co-dependant or what?) Anyways. I’m hoping by writing it down this will give me the motivation to actually do it. I know I can do well. I just need to apply myself and stay on task.
One thing I hate about school is how much time it takes away from my kids
I admit, my children watch a little more TV during my school semesters, especially when I have tests approaching. I try to balance that with some quality time. Like we played outside this morning while it was still cool. The grass actually had dew on it. I haven’t experienced dew on our grass yet because of the heat, so it was a new thing and Lilah enjoyed it. I try to read and play with them in the afternoon before their nap, but there is plenty of time in the morning where they just entertain themselves, or the watch a movie or PBS. We also have a DVD of the best of the Electric company…at least then I feel like Lilah is learning something while being entertained.
Anyways. my schedule is as followed.
JOUR 101–Internet— it seems like there will be weekly assignments and lectures to watch..a little time intensive, but not bad.
CRJ 302—Internet—it’s a stats course for criminal justice. I am actually looking forward to it because I did well in my psy stats and I’d rather do hours of studying math, than hours of reading and writing this semester.
MUS 137- British invasion music of the 60’s– I believe it deals mostly with the Beatles. I’ll be taking this course Wednesday nights. I’m hoping it’s fun, so even if there is papers or hard work, at least it will be interesting.
CRJ 450- seminar on Sex offenders. I’ve never taken a seminar course. I imagine that it’s just like a regular course, but the content has not been approved as a course that should be given each semester. I find sex offenders interesting because they usually have sexual addictions, and it seems that everything goes in this world..until you break the law, or make someone else uncomfortable. I wanted at one time to be a criminal psychologist, but I decided it would probably take too much out of me as a mother, or really a woman.  Certain things just harden your spirit. I hope the course turns out to be interesting.
I’m looking forward to my semester..and to my graduation.

So as of today my tagline is: enjoyment is what happens when you let go of expectations.

I just wanted to write a little about why I’ve chosen that as this time. Now I as far as I know I came up with that thought, but it may have subconsciously come from somewhere else. I may have read or heard it, but I’m unsure where or from whom. All I know it that as I have let go of expectations I’ve been able to enjoy life a little more. Not that expectations are bad, but it’s when we set unrealistic expectations that they’re bad, plus we often set unrealistic expectations of others, and we can’t control them, so when they are not met, we can become disappointed. My prime example would be with Lilah. I was having such a hard time with her earlier this year. With my school, potty training, and her new opinion I just wasn’t happy and we were not always getting along. I’m sure overall I had fun with her, but the negative times and problems are what sticks out. I had high expectations of her. I felt she should understand her body well enough to go potty, but apparently she didn’t. I felt that she should be less demanding and better behaved, but she wasn’t. I wanted her to be the perfect child, so I didn’t enjoy her as much as I should have. Now as I try to let go of those expectations of her, and some of mine own as a mother, I am able to enjoy her. I am happier being at home with her. I let her throw her tantrums and I just try to ignore them. She sometimes pees in her panties, and gets very upset when it happens, but I try to stay calm….well calmer than I use to.

Like I said earlier expectations aren’t bad. Often they go hand in hand with goals. I’m trying to set realistic expectations of my children, husband, and self. That way I can have more joy in the accomplishments rather then the failures, and be pleasantly surprised when they exceed my expectations of them.

I suppose it’s just something I’ve learned, and is my little bit of wisdom at this time.