"snow on snow, snow on snow"
Since Christmas things have felt a little crazy. Kids have new activities - Matthew has started Boy Scouts. Our stake has already broken with scouts (they were chosen to pilot the new church program) and the scout troop is run by the community - one of the stake presidency has taken it over. Matthew likes it so far and they have a campout every month, so he's looking forward to that. But now Matthew has young men's every week AND Boy Scouts on a separate night. Same thing for Grant. He has activity boys in addition to cub scouts. And scouts is the same night and time as Aikido. Both boys chose scouts over Aikido and John has lost interest once a girl at Aikido started harassing him. So we might be done with Aikido for now. I'm ok with it. We've had a bunch of sick kids. The whole family got sick except Matthew and I. I think we both had a light version of the flu or cold that came through. Scott even got it and was sick during a work trip to California. Being sick at home is one thing - sick in a dreary hotel while you're traveling is another. Here I am with John, one early morning, at the doctor. He looks awfully perky for a sick boy! He had a double ear infection. So he went on antibiotics.
Later in the day (after the doc appointment) he got pink eye, so I rushed back in and the doctor helped us out and gave him a broader antibiotic and some probiotics. He got better and was able to go back to school after a few days. But he was miserable there for a while.
Anna also got sick and had trouble getting better. We ended up at the doctor for her when her cold symptoms just wouldn't go away. The docs best guess was that she had a sinus infection. He gave her an antibiotic also and she got better pretty quickly after she started on that. Here she is at the doctor having a breathing treatment/test. So she and John both went through a full round of antibiotics and probiotics and are feeling lots better.
I've had several doctors appointments and check ups as well lately. I had some blood tests and found that I had pretty low iron. My doctor said I had "a touch of anemia" so I've been taking iron supplements and feeling lots better. Noticing I don't feel quite so wiped out after a run. So that's good.
Valentine's Day came and went. The kids all had to decorate special boxes at home. Except Grant's class - they did theirs in school - which makes Grant's teacher my Valentine hero this year!! I am not too crafty - or rather I don't value doing crafts so I don't like to invest a lot of time and effort into it. Especially when I have a full schedule already. So John and I printed a bunch of Mario pictures from the internet and taped them to a yogurt box. We spelled his name with some stickers and I thought that was pretty good. Here is his Mario box.
Anna is crafty, but sometimes I feel exhausted by her craft ambitions. She made this hot air balloon Valentine container 100% on her own. I thought it was cute. Sometimes I have guilt that I don't do more crafty things - then I could have been more helpful with her projects. I'm trying to accept my limitations. Matthew made a mail box out of paper and boxes. It looked nice too but I didn't get a picture.
One day near Valentine's Day Anna came home sad from school so I tasked her with decorating this image of Scott from high school. I told her to digitally put hearts on it or something so we could send it Scott. I think the task did distract her and make her feel a little better. We all thought Scott looks a little like Matthew in this picture. Minus all the kissy lips of course.
Speaking of my limitations - I've been making the girls let me practice on their hair. Usually they are willing participants. Here's Anna with a fishtail braid.
And Emma with some crazy thing.
Maybe I can learn a few quick hairstyles.
Scott had to go out of town for work for a few days and it happened to coincide with a lot of craziness at home. I've been taking an electrical engineering class online - the class in on semiconductor physics. I'm testing the waters a little bit for taking more classes, but I felt like the first few weeks of class have lead to a full on crisis of confidence. I felt so rusty, particularly with the math part. I've been out of school for a while. I had to look up how to do Fourier transforms and some of the vector algebra. It took me A LONG TIME to do my first homework assignment, which was only one problem. And I took my first test. After spending so long on the assignment I almost didn't turn it in because I felt so rusty and the homework part was to be graded by other class members. Scott encouraged me to turn it in so I finally did.
Homework question - if you know much physics or engineering you can see that this is not even a very hard question. But I had to take a quick refresher on dot products and cross products.
I was almost too embarrassed to submit my answer (which was four pages long) for fear of being totally wrong, but I'm glad I did 'cause I ended up getting 6/6 on the assignment as graded by my peers. I also struggled through the first quiz of the class which was only about 10 questions long. The answers were mostly calculations of some kind. And some of them seemed deceptively straightforward, which always makes me second guess things. I was genuinely shocked when I got a 90% on the quiz! I only missed one question and it was one it seemed most of the class had missed. I spent a long afternoon working on this portion of the class and felt very emotionally taxed afterward. It was also weird to finish all that up and then go back to doing mom stuff. Like making dinner, admiring Lego creations and wiping noses. Definitely switching gears!
The kids all wanted to show me their Lego creations after I had been attempting physics all day.
And John wanted special toast. Being a stay at home mom is hard - and no one ever gives you a 90% on it. It is pretty much always self assessed and probably most moms think they are doing worse than they are. So I guess it was nice getting an A on something. I'm not even sure I want to continue with the class - I feel so rusty at all this. And even after doing well on the assessments I feel dumb 'cause it took me so long to figure some of it out. :( I don't know.
John did like his special toast though
Emma has been asking to play board games with me a lot. On this day we played headbands while I did some dinner prep. I try to stop what I'm doing and play with her, but other times I just can't take a break. This morning Scott was playing Candy Land with her (one of her favorites) so he's doing his part. :)
Scott finally came home from his trip just in time to see Grant in his special patriotic performance put on by all the 2nd graders. Grant was very cute. Can you spot him in the American flag shirt?
We got to go see his class after the performance and have a few cookies.
We got haircuts for all the kids except Anna. John is looking so grown up.
Progress on the basement is inching along. We have the drywall up and the walls are mudded (not shown in this picture). So we're getting closer.
We turned off the furnace in the basement while the workers were cutting drywall and mudding 'cause it was really dusty. One morning I came down to a very cold living room 'cause I had forgotten to turn the furnace on overnight. No one died, but it was cold. So I turned the furnace on and then it was warm and dusty. This is how cold the basement is when the furnace is on. Brr!!
We got to visit cute cousin Clark. Matthew thinks he is so cute! And he is!
He's growing so big!
I'm in winter denial. All my neighbors have decidedly wintery decorations up. But I've moved on to Easter/spring. Emma found this HUGE bunny decoration at the store - it's hard to miss. I can't begin to imagine where you would put this? Outside your house to scare passersby? And how would you store it? In you basement and every time you go down there you are startled by a monster bunny? So we didn't buy it, but we did get a nice sensible spring wreath for the front door. We've had a few balmy days in the mid 40s. Maybe spring is just around the corner. Fingers crossed!
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