Just Another Manic...

Tuesday!
You were going to say Monday, weren't you?!

If you have kids you probably know how busy life gets when the school bell rings. Most of our busy stuff comes on Tuesday (well, Thursday sometimes but not as bad) which makes for a busy day. Let me just share if you care. If not, feel free to stop reading. I won't know.

Here's how it goes:
3:30 Grab Veronica and pick up Sam from School
3:45 drop Veronica off to violin lesson
3:50 drop Sam off to piano lessons
4:20 Pick up Sam from piano and wait until
4:45 pick up Veronica from violin
4:55 get home and wake up Joe and start family eating dinner that was waiting in the crock pot (my most used kitchen appliance)
5:25 drop Tyler off at football practice then
5:30 drop Sam off at Center Stage Music
6:00 kiss handsome hubby goodbye on his way to work
6:30 pick up Sam from Center Stage
7:00 drop off Veronica to young women's and pick up Tyler from football practice.
Rest of the evening: orchestrate spelling, homework, dinner clean up, reading, baths, bedtime, etc.
Good thing that with the exception of violin and piano we live a few minutes drive from all those activities. It is a busy day but in the end there is always a sense of accomplishment and gratitude that I have a car that runs (Well, mostly. Sometimes the speedometer doesn't work and a few other random issues.) and a healthy body that allows me to do the things I need to do

What about you? What is your busy day? Or is every day crazy-busy? I would love to hear.

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

All Gone

While most of the kids started school a few weeks ago, I put off posting about back to school until all of the kids were in school
During back to school week, I realized how incredibly busy having 5 kids in 4 different schools could be.
Veronica entered high school this year and with that started Success Academy. It is an accelerated program where she will have her associates degree by the time she finishes high school. She goes for half the day at the college and then the other half at the high school. I have to admit, I worry about that on all different levels. The biggest one is that I want her to have fun in this time in her life and to have fond memories of it and not remember being stressed out and too busy to enjoy it. We tried to make sure she made this decision on her own and not from pressure from others. Of course, after a while I started to doubt myself and wonder if it was the right thing for her to have done this and of course, Joe stepped in and was my voice of reason. We have to trust her judgment, be supportive, and help her where we can. She would most likely be bored in high school, etc.
Tyler started middle school this year with his usual trepidation and not excited about it. He is really liking it. More than he expected.
Samantha started 5th grade and is doing well.
Brenna and Braelynn started kindergarten today. It is a new phase of life for me. I have always been home taking care of kids. I have struggled the last few weeks with feeling like it is ok to be home without them for a few hours. For some reason I always feel like I need to be busy, accomplishing things. For years I have battled being busy and productive which is when I feel the happiest but also taking time to be still, which I believe is important. Just because of my personality, I am sure I will still be busy and productive but now without kids at home the whole time.
I love this time of year because I love the excitement of all the things my kids will learn and do, especially when they reach a new stage, kindergarten, middle school, high school. They will learn much, meet new friends, have difficulties and hopefully learn from those things.
I included a picture of our cousins that get to come hang out with us before school every day and Brenna is the one in the pink/grey shirt and Braelynn is the one posing. She is incapable of taking a picture, especially by herself, without posing!

I heart Colorado!

For years we have made the (mostly) yearly trek to Denver, Colorado to see Joe's maternal grandparents and aunts/uncles/cousins. I have fallen more and more in love with Colorado and the people there every year.
We made a little trip to Grand Junction and Hotchkiss, Colorado this weekend to attend a memorial service for his Grandma Connors (his dad's mom)that just passed away. While there we had the great experience of seeing most of his extended family on his dad's side. It was an amazing experience of joy and sadness. Joy of being with them and enjoying their company and forming friendships that have never been. Sadness because all these years of him not really knowing them and knowing how great they are. I mentioned in a previous post about how we were able to get to know some of them better the last few years when they would stay with us when they came to visit Grandma after she moved here. It was so good, though to meet the rest of them and spend some more time with them.
Although I had my camera close by the whole time, I only took pictures once. Aunt Geri and Uncle Don have two horses. She told the kids about her horses and told them they could ride the horses when we came out to visit. They did not forget her promise so after the memorial service we went to her home and rode Magoo. He is the most easy going horse but has plenty of attitude. Don told us that he loved girls and only tolerated boys. Sure enough, the girls took turns riding him and he did great, but when Tyler hopped on, he would just stand there. It took a lot to get him to move when Tyler was on him. After that, a few more girls took turns and then a boy cousin got on to ride and he did the same thing.
After that we met up with some more cousins and went swimming then out to dinner afterwards. We knew we had a long drive home but wanted to spend as much time with them when we could so we stayed until evening then headed home, getting home about 2:30 am.