Saturday, February 21, 2015

Spare Minutes

I've been a stay at home mom for 6+ years now.  For a good part of that time I've found myself being bored.  Not bored in the sense that there was nothing to do, but bored in that there were probably lots of things I should or could be doing, but I didn't.  I've played who knows how many hours of Words with Friends on my phone and I have an impressive list of movies and tv shows I've seen.  Once upon a time before kids started preschool and such we'd go to parks and walk around the mall or IKEA or meet up with friends.  As my schedule got more hectic between drop-offs and pick-ups, desperately trying to go to the grocery store with as few as children as possible, and the hurried chaos that usually happens between 3-5 every afternoon, I'm not so bored any more.  

In fact, I don't feel like I have many minutes to spare these days.  Which, is pretty self evident in the amount of blogging I've been doing.  (Which is pretty close to none, without actually being none, so I guess that's something).  

I don't really have these minutes I'm using right now either.  I'm in the middle of two projects, the kitchen is a mess, I'm preparing a lesson, and hoping to get to the grocery store and library before dinner.  But, maybe I just need a change of pace for 20 minutes, or the guilt has finally got to me.  

So... here's what we've been up to since Christmas

Justin- Spent two weeks in Mauritius.  What?  You've never heard of it?  Neither had we.  Here's their official website.  It was for the Navy.  I'm pretty sure he spent most of time in an airport hotel and at the port.  They did get a half a day or so at the end to do something tourist-y.  I think he went snorkeling.  He's still managing two auto shops and now a rental property adjacent to the Salt Lake shop.  The end of his first full quarter with the new sales position at Oracle is next week.  I'm not sure all of the places he's been for Oracle since Christmas, I know California has made the list a couple of times.  

Mel - Most of my time continues to be spent in the car.  Taking and picking kids up from school, dr's visits, music lessons.  Any time now I'm going to get a call or text telling me when baseball starts up, and we'll get to add Herriman to our commute again.  Most likely for the last year, so I'm going to try and have a better attitude about it.  

I'm doing my second round of Whole30.  To be honest... I really like it.  I like not eating sugar, and making all of my own meals.  I even added making my own Almond Milk this round.  I've been doing it with a lady in the ward, and she's noticed remarkable changes in her overall health, so that's been fun.  It's also been nice because we get together and cook once or twice a week.  I actually hit the 30 days sometime this past week, but Kate and I have something big going on in another 2 weeks, so I'm going to continue it until then. 

I started Operation Deep Clean and De-Junk at the house.  And not just, "clean the house because your in-laws are coming over" clean, but seriously clean and wipe down every surface in the entire house -even those crayon marks on the closet doors you've been pretending aren't there.   So, for the past 10 days or so I've spent every spare minute working on specific area's of the house.  You are more than welcome to come into the boys room, Kate's room, the upstairs bathroom and laundry room.  I finished the toilet part of our bathroom and one half of the kitchen as well.  Unfortunately, when I'm cleaning that one part of the house, the rest of it get's pretty trashed by the kids.  So, the house is actually a wreck, but in those 5 rooms you would see clean windows, doors, walls, baseboards, and everything the in closets are current and organized.  Unfortunately I've got 4 more days to get the rest of the house done, and at the rate I'm going, it's not going to happen.  

Hyrum - I was quite worried about how Hyrum would handle the change in his spanish class after the break.  But, he's surprised us all (including his teacher) and is doing amazing.  She said that he was really nervous when she told the class they couldn't speak english anymore, and for the first few days he didn't say a whole lot except for one word here or there and a lot of actions, but he's speaking full sentences and doing really well, it's been great.  I love that he's doing the dual immersion and hope that he'll be able to continue it.  He wants to play video games every day and still loves playing with our neighbor Max.  We dusted off his bike the other day and he rode it to music class.  I was worried he'd struggle with it, but I guess riding a bike is truly like riding a bike, because he did just fine.  

Kate - She still loves preschool, and has been writing her name every where she can.  We still spend many hours a day in princess dresses or her own unique blend of clothing choices, or just her underwear.  Her newest thing is pretending to be a dog, and we all know dogs don't wear clothes.  I guess I should be glad she's got underwear on still.  She loves Jessica, girls nights, and her blanket.  She loves to eat, but still won't eat a crust of bread or pizza.  She loves everything pink and purple and sparkly.  She's had a sleepover at Jessica's and got her nails painted.  

Milo - Poor Milo has had a rough month or so.   We switched him to a toddler bed, which he didn't love.  He had a hard time going to sleep at night and for naps, so he was pretty ornery because of lack of sleep.  Plus, around that time he had a cold as well.  The no sleep and wanting to be held all day, every day went on for probably two weeks.  I was at a loss on what to do.  I finally took him in to the doctors wondering if he might have an ear ache that was adding to the lack of sleep and over-all unbearableness.  Turns out he had a really bad ear infection in both ears.  I think they actually popped the next day because of some drainage.  It took 4 or 5 days on the antibiotic but it seemed to do the trick.  Then a whole week later he got another cold and fever.  I didn't wait that long this time, and took him this past week.  Another ear infection in both ears.  So, he's half way through a second antibiotic and yesterday seemed to be the turning point.  

That's about it.  There's a few more things coming up for our family shortly, but I'll leave that off for a while.  I think I've procrastinated enough.