Its The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

I just have to say how much I love this time of year. The nights and mornings are cool and the days warm but not hot. There is the excitement of the upcoming fall, Halloween and Thanksgiving but not the rush of Christmas yet. The garden is producing so we can reap the rewards of all the hard work. It is busy trying to juggle getting it all bottled up for the winter and everything else that I was busy with before but it is worth it. Can we just bottle this up and keep it?


This is a picture of Braelynn cutting our broccoli. The kids seem to like helping pick produce out of the garden and she asked if she could do it while I was picking something else. I didn't think she would get very far but she did it all by herself and didn't miss any. Of course, she hummed a little song to herself the whole time. That is my cute Braelynn.


One Sunday morning a few weeks ago Joe was working and I was late getting home from my meeting. I came home to find Brenna had gotten herself all "ready" for church, complete with one or....ten hair bows.

Experiment: Failed

Question: How to stop nagging at kids to clean their room and the subsequent action and reaction of them "cleaning" then Mom going in and seeing everything not clean and getting frustrated.

Experiment: Let kids' rooms get as messy as they want. If they left something in "My Space" ie, living room, bathroom, kitchen, my bedroom it would be deposited in that child's room.
Mom would do laundry on designated day and wash only what was in the hamper.

Hypothesis: They would get tired of the mess and learn to clean on their own.

Analysis: After two weeks, rooms could not be walked in without endangering ones self. Mom and Dad loose patience and ordered not only rooms cleaned and vacuumed but dressers, shelves, storage baskets, etc cleaned out.
Children would hurry and only pick up dirty clothes when they saw Mom starting laundry.

Conclusion: Possibly needed more than 2 weeks for the experiment to be complete. Charts with a positive or negative consequence might be beneficial. Designate a day or two a week as a day to have room cleaned and vacuumed is a possibility.

Further exploration: It is better to let children have rooms how they want or to insist that it be relatively clean?

Eye See You

Every time we take Veronica in for an eye appointment the same thing happens: Dr chats with her for a while, looks at her charts and says "Oh, wow, I forgot how 'incredible' your prescription was", does the exam, and gives us the bad news: its gotten worse.
At least its not as bad as the summer before she went to kindergarten and the subsequent year. It involved an eye patch, appointments every 6-8 weeks and then an ophthalmologist (eye specialist) instead of an optometrist.
Fast forward a few years. Last year the good news was that her prescription had stayed the same but she had developed an astigmatism. Just a slight one, not bad enough to warrant the extra expense of weighted contacts.
This year, like most years, we were prepared. She had complained more and more of not being able to see and having more frequent "Veronica moments". Again her power had not changed much but the astigmatism was really bad. However, we are grateful for weighted contacts so she can see and not have to wear glasses and insurance that helps with part of it.
I wonder sometimes how bad it will get. Only once since she started wearing glasses at age three have her eyes stayed about the same.

It Always Fits

I love my home.
It is small (like 7 people in 1100 sq feet small).
It is (usually) clean and (mostly) tidy.
It is perfect for us and holds so many memories.
Everything fits ok...unless there is a change that we have to make somewhere.
Last week we finally replaced or 10 yr old, huge, falling apart more each day computer desk. I had been on the search for THE perfect desk since the first of July.
It had to have storage and since it sits in the living room it had to be smaller than the previous one and look nice (as nice as a computer desk can look).
Oh, and don't forget there is a budget involved.
I found it! It was perfect! A computer desk armoire! With doors that close! Perfect for my issues with clutter.
It came! 3 parts were either broken or the wrong color. Called company. Waited. And waited. New parts came! 2 of 3 parts were still wrong. Returned desk and looked at the ugly falling apart too big for the room desk for 2 more months.
Finally had enough. Told husband that we were not coming home from St. George until we had a new desk in our car.
Settled on one. Not a ton of storage but it would work.
Put it together and in the process of putting everything away and getting rid of non-necessities realized that everything was just not going to fit. Have a meltdown. Wait and explorer every option for a few hours. Finally figure it out! It fits and living room still looks nice.
The End