Crazy Week!

We have had an eventful week.  Ruth was excited last Wednesday to go to Activity Days.  They had a change in leadership and haven’t had an activity since the first week of December.  She had lots of fun with her friends.  Thursday morning we had a storm come through.  It was interesting how everything got dark and then the rain just poured down.  It was like we were being dumped on, it came so fast it just ran off the roof, the gutters were too full.  Then it was over.  It only lasted about 10 minutes.  Then the sun came out and it was a beautiful day.

Friday morning it was cool and cloudy.  Caleb had been invited to a birthday party at the park.  We went but it was too cold.  They had the party, but the kids didn’t play much because they were cold.  We ate cake and then left.  As I was buckling Caleb in his seat he said “that was a great party.”  That made me laugh.  But I guess he just enjoyed being with his friends.  Caleb has been waking up a lot at night.  He cries and doesn’t want to be in his bed.  Sunday night I was up with him for over an hour and finally gave in and let him sleep by me in my bed.  Last night he came in to me, no cries, and said very loudly “mommy I had a bad dream.” I was thankful I got him to stay in his own bed, but was still up for over 30 minutes with him.  It is wearing on me to be up in the night.  I guess it has been hard on him too because yesterday afternoon he slept for 3 hours.  

Friday Neal came home at lunch time.  It was fun to have him home early.  He worked on our water heater.  It hasn’t been working right for a few months and he took time to look at it more.  As he drained it and took out the elements he decided we really should just get a new one (what my vote was all along.)  He went to the store and bought a new water heater, the same kind and size as our old one.  Then that evening after the kids were in bed Neal and I had the fun of installing it.  The biggest issue was that our water heater is in a small closet in our garage.  The door way is only 17 inches across.  The new model we bought is 17 1/2 inches wide.  So we were trying to decide what we would need to do to get it in.  I noticed screws on the door frame.  Neal took the screws out and found that the entire frame and door jam just lifted out of the door way!  Someone else had this problem.  With the door frame out of the way we have a 20 inch opening, so no problem getting the new one in.  Neal was able to get it all connected up and it has been nice to have hot water regularly now!

Saturday Neal spent most the day looking for a car.  He ended up going to Killeen and then onto a dealership just north of Austin.  He didn’t get home until the kids bed time.  He was excited about what he had seen.  We talked about cars and made the decision to buy a 2009 Mazda 6.  We drove back to Austin Monday morning after dropping off the school kids.  We were able to buy the car and get it back home, although it took longer than we had hoped.  I was late to my RS presidency meeting by an hour!  They were understanding about it though.  I am so thankful we got a nice car that should work well for a long time.  It is nice to have that stress taken care of.  Now we just need to sell or get rid of the Dodge!

Saturday I had gone to get my Bountiful Basket food and talked to a friend there that said they were putting in a garden and taking out sod in their yard.  I asked if we could have the sod.  It ended up that Neal went over at 10:00 pm and got the sod and spread it out in our yard.  It wasn’t much, but at least it filled in a little bit of the dead grass area in the side yard.  

One more thing that happened on Saturday.  I decided that we really needed to get the garden planted.  With the kids help we spread out the compost and dug it up.  Andrew helped a lot getting it all smoothed out.  I had to do the digging because he couldn’t get the shovel in very well.  I was thankful for the kids help.  It took me all afternoon but I was able to dig it all up.  We expanded the garden into the area where we had the compost pile.  We moved the compost to outside of the garden wood border.  The grass had died there anyway, so we moved it so I could have more space to grow a garden.  Our garden looks nice all dug up, it is 16 by 24 feet.  After taking a break I went out with the kids and planted seeds.  Now we wait and see if they will grow.  I am thankful we got it in.

Sunday I attended a baptism for a family the missionaries taught.  I was asked to go to fellowship the mother.  The mother wasn’t being baptized but four of her children were.  It was a sweet meeting and the spirit was there.  I was able to talk to the mother and hope that she can feel the desires to be baptized too.  Her children were very attentive and excited about it all.

Tuesday was a very busy day for me.  With being gone all day Monday I was trying to get laundry (my Monday chore) done and my Tuesday shopping done too.  Today feels so quiet.  I took Caleb to the library this morning and it is nice to not feel rushed to do things.  I am thankful for the sun shine, although it is cool, around 50 degrees right now.  I hope for the sunshine to continue so we can get our roses and other plants bought and planted soon.  I am glad that I am feeling well enough to do all this yard work.  I have been sore, but not too bad.  

Last night I went to a book club meeting.  We have combined our group with one from the Waco 1^st ward.  I was able to meet some new ladies and had a great discussion.  Only five us of came, so I can see why we needed to combine groups.  I guess people get busy and can’t always come.  I enjoy going to a book club because it gets me to read interesting books and I get to talk about something with other women besides our kids. 

The kids are having fun in school.  All of us have had a slight cold, stuffy and tired.  Neal and Andrew have sore throats too.  I hope we can all rest and get over all the stresses and find more peaceful relaxing time soon!

The kids have fun playing in the dirt under the trees, they like to build little houses out of sticks.  

The garden all planted.  The green tuff is lettuce that was still growing from the fall garden that I just went around.

A view of the house from across the street.

Yard Work

Did everyone have a nice Valentine’s Day?  It is a fun day to celebrate love and friendship with family and friends.  My kids had lots of fun with their school activities.  They were so hyper to go to school and came home even more excited to look through all their Valentines and candy!  It was fun.  It was a different day for me because Neal was at work all day.  They have started a schedule where they are required to have one engineer in their group available until 8:00 pm for the people working the swing shift.  Thursday will be Neal’s late day for now.  So he worked all day and didn’t get home until the kids were asleep.  That was hard on them.  Neal brought home flowers for me and a nice card.  He was worn out and ate dinner and went to bed.  

Friday was nice because Neal only went to work for a couple of hours.  Then he spent time looking at cars, he is still looking for one to buy.  He came home about 2:30 and the kids were so excited to see him when they came home from school.  We did a lot of yard work over the week end.  We bought a load of compost and a load of wood mulch.  Andrew went with Neal when he bought it and thought it was neat to go to the nursery with all the plants.

Saturday Neal did some of the hard work I hadn’t been able to do.  He cut out two flower bed areas for me.  He got the grass out and put it in a bare spot on the side yard.  I planted my iris bulbs I got from Mom and hope they grow.  It is a sunny location so I am hopeful.  We will also buy some roses and a flowering bush.  I have my landscape plan all drawn out, so I hope it all comes together.  We did that before the garden because we added dirt from the garden to the flower beds, then mixed in the wood mulch.  In the front yard I removed the dead bushes and cut off all the dead wood out of the bushes still living.  It looks a little sparse but at least it isn’t brown any more.  Monday I spent a lot of time adding dirt and mulch to all the flower beds around the yard.  We still don’t have the garden tilled up, but hopefully that will get done soon.  We will still do a border on the new flower beds, but that can wait a few weeks.

Friday morning I went with Caleb to the childrens museum.  We had fun because we met up with some friends in our ward. We had fun playing and talking.  Caleb is having lots of fun with trains.  It is fun to listen to him play with them.  He is getting good at building tracks and tells stories with the engines.

Saturday morning I took Ruth and Andrew to the baptism of Tyler.  Tyler is Andrew’s best friend and he was excited to be there.  It was a beautiful service.  It was also special that they blessed their new baby after the baptism.  What a wonderful day for their family.  

This week end was also Stake Conference.  Neal attended a priesthood meeting Saturday afternoon.  Then I went to the adult session Saturday evening.  The family all went to the Sunday morning meeting. It was a broadcast for all of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico.  It was a good meeting.  Ruth was listening and had questions afterwards.  I had a nice visit with her in the afternoon about life.  (She had asked what pornography is.)  I feel bad that she has to deal with things at such a young age.  Yesterday at school she read some incorrect information about the church in a book.  Some other kids also had read it and teased her about polygamy.  She talked to her teacher and she was a help to the situation.  It was another blow to Ruth about how evil the world really is.

Saturday we had fun talking to Dallin and May Bo on the computer.  They are in Ireland and having many adventures.  They found out that their baby is a boy.  May Bo had to have additional tests to check on the baby and it looks like all will be well.  She has great faith.

Andrew had his school music program last night.  They did a jungle safari theme and he really had some fun with it.  Sunday, Andrew helped me make cookies.  With our rotation on Family Home Evening assignments is treat.  I have let the kids pick what we make Sunday afternoon for our treat of the week.  Andrew wanted to make sugar cookies, since I hadn’t made them for Valentine’s Day like I usually do.  He did so well rolling them out and cutting them.  He wanted to do it all himself.  So I just did the oven part. 

I am thinking about what Spencer has done this week.  He has been excited and happy about life!  He can’t sit still and likes to chatter.  Sometimes at dinner he has to be reminded multiple times to eat.  He likes to talk about Kindergarten and all the wonderful things they are doing there.  He is learning to read and can read simple sight word books. 

I guess all my yard work wore me down.  I caught a cold and haven’t felt well yesterday and today.  I am thankful for a nice home to rest in.  Yesterday I found a great deal on strawberries, they were on sale for 98 cents for a pound.  I haven’t seen a price that low in a very long time.  I bought 12 pounds.  Now I need to go make some jam!

My experiment of growing cabbage in our garden.  It has been really good and we have enjoyed eating so much.
We got about 3 large heads and 5 small ones. 

Pretty flowers by the dinning room window that have grown all winter. 

My Valentine Day flowers from Neal

Andrew at the school music program.  He was dressed as a giraffe. 

The dinning room window.  We have lost bushes, but I guess we will see how it all works out.  I decided to plant my poinsettia and just see what it does. 

The front yard.  Most the grass has died, we will deal with that another time!  But I took out all the dead bushes and it looks better than it was. 

A bright spot by the mail box, the flowers have grown all winter and have been pretty.  I trimmed the bushes and they look neater now too.

The front of the house

On the back of the house, I moved the little plants from the front yard where they were struggling.  I also planted iris bulbs.  We will get a small flowering bush to put my the hose.  

The back flower bed.  The petunias have done well back there.  I will try planting more of them around the corner this spring.  This is a sunny place in the yard.  I made sure I didn't cover up the broken sprinkler when adding dirt.  Now Neal just needs to figure out how to get our sprinkler system working again before things get hot. 

The other new flower bed on the side of the garage where we will plant roses.   I also want to put in some stepping stones to make a path from the gate to the porch.  That will come later. 

Musical Kids

Today we had Stake Conference.  It was a great meeting.  It also meant that we had more time as a family since Neal didn't have extra meetings to attend.  We had enjoyed a nice afternoon.  I decided to film the kids doing their piano to share with our family how they are doing.  I hope that you can see these videos and enjoy hearing their talents.  I am not that great with editing video, so forgive that part.

Andrew playing the piano

Caleb singing and playing the piano

Ruth playing the piano

Spencer playing the piano

Spring is coming

Time just keeps ticking.  Thursday afternoon the kids got out of school early for a teacher inservice time.  The weather was perfect, about 80 degrees and they played outside all afternoon.  That evening we had the missionaries over for dinner.  It was fun to have them here.  Later that evening I went to a friends home for a gender revealing party for her baby.  I hadn’t heard of that before.  She had her ultrasound that morning and wanted to have friends over for the big announcement.  She had cupcakes that were frosted white and then inside was blue, so it is a boy.  I had a fun evening with friends.

The kids are enjoying school and doing well with their studies.  Ruth is feeling a bit bored with elementary school and looks forward to more challenging classes next year.  For GT this week she was in a group that did a skit on women suffrage.  

Andrew was excited to pass off two levels of his timed math facts.  He has been complaining about his eyes hurting and does little ticks with rolling his eyes.  I took him to the eye doctor this morning and he checked out fine.  His eyes are seeing well and nothing medically wrong with them.  

Spencer has been talking a lot.  He just has so much to say, mostly silly jokes or nonsense.  He enjoys going to school each day.  He is excited about Valentines day.  He carefully wrote cards for everyone in his class and made a cute “mail box” to receive Valentines in.

Caleb is my smart little guy.  I had fun doing puzzles with him the other day.  He is learning his letters.  He held up the letter C and said “this is  my letter.”  Then he pointed to S and said “this is Spencer’s letter.”  He likes to count too.  Sunday he counted to 19 with only skipping 13.  He can count to 10 fast and likes to sing the ABC song as fast as he can.  It is fun to listen to his chatter.

Saturday was cold outside and a bit rainy so we worked on Valentines.  Sunday we had a nice day and the kids went outside to play after church.  They tried to play a form of baseball and it was fun to listen to them running and laughing.

Yesterday was a busy day with going visiting teaching in the morning.  Then last night I went to a Relief Society activity about relationships.  It was a nice activity.  I gave rides to two young women who live close to me.  They were going to help with the child care during the activity.  It was fun for me because these girls chattered the whole drive.  They seemed so comfortable talking to me and telling me things about how school was going, about their families and just what ever.  I am glad that they felt comfortable with me.

Today is sunny but cooler.  Oh, Monday and Tuesday we got rain.  Things are very wet out in the yard.  I see signs of spring as the grass is starting to green up.  I will need to get out and work in the yard and start getting things looking better.  I hope we can plant a garden soon too.

Rainy Day

We are getting a little rain this morning which is great.  I feel like life gets so busy that I don’t even know where the time goes.  Last week our printer finally gave out.  I looked on line and found one I liked.  We checked prices and ended up ordering it on Amazon.  I hope it comes today.  It will be nice to be able to print things again.  It is interesting how dependent we can feel on machines.  

Last Friday when Neal was driving home from work the car had some transmission problems again.  That is another big frustration.  We had it checked and found that it really is an internal transmission problem.  We don’t want to put more money into this car.  It is frustrating because Neal has been so busy at work he hasn’t had time to hunt for the right car to buy.  He was hoping to have a different car by now and try to sell this one before another problem came up.  Now we are stuck with a car that doesn’t work.  Neal is blessed to have a good friend who has let him borrow their little truck again.  We are thankful he has a way to work.  He is looking at cars more and hopefully will find one to buy soon!  

Saturday I took Spencer to a birthday party for a friend. The family is in our ward and the boys are in the same school class too.  It was fun to go to the park and watch the kids play and visit with the people there. 

Caleb is having a hard time being left alone each day.  He wishes he could go to school.  This week he has switched his tune.  For awhile he was crying that he couldn’t go to school.  Now he says things like “I wish Spencer was little.  Then he stay home with me” or “I need my Spencer brother home with me.”  Today it was “Spencer needs to play trains with me.”  He does fine during the day once we get back from the school, he just misses his brothers, especially Spencer.

Saturday evening Neal and I were able to go out on a date.  Thursday I saw an advertisement in the paper about a piano duo, Anderson and Roe, performing a live concert and it was free.  I showed it to Neal and he was able to find a babysitter for us. It was a wonderful concert.  I enjoyed the music and was amazed at their talent.  It was nice to get out and think of something else besides all the work that needs to be done!

Ruth and Andrew are doing well too.  Andrew likes me to read chapter books to him at night now.  He isn’t as interested in picture books.  We have fun reading books together.  I hope that sometime he will try reading one on his own.  Sometimes he gets Ruth to read to him too.

Sunday I was able to teach my first Relief Society lesson at church.  It went well.  I am thankful for the spirit that guides me in what to say.  

Caleb having fun playing in the toys.