May Is Almost Here or Countdown to the End of the School Year

I don't know if we are just getting to the end of the year, or what, but I ended up driving the kids to school four times this week. Four times! Yikes. I don't like doing it. They are on the bus for about the same amount of time that it takes me to drive them there, and then jacob is stuck in the car afterwards on the way home.

Still overall we had a fairly good week. The kids made a deal with me, and they have clear expectations of bedtime rules, and of morning rules. They were meeting most of their morning rules. The contract went into place because of late mornings. And bedtime is getting bit better each day. (Knock on wood, because I said that we will be in for a massive bedtime battle today.)

Getting homework done each night has been a lot better, especially for Miss Beth who is a night owl like her dad. She likes to start her homework at 9:00 or 9:30.  Rob and I always talk about how there are two types of people: morning people or night people. And the two will never understand each other. Before I met and married Rob you could put me in the morning people category. I had early classes in college, and generally I was in bed by no later than ten most nights, except the weekends. I liked it that way. My sister Ruthann was more of a night owl growing up, and I never understood her.

When Rob got married, I convinced him to sign up for an early class, in the hopes that he'd get up with me in the mornings, before I had to leave at 6:45. It didn't happen, and he almost failed the class, because he seldom made it. I learned that you can't change someone else, only yourself. Now I'm a night person. I stay up fairly late anyway, and I enjoy the quiet that night time brings. Rob sometimes wants me to go to bed earlier, since he does have days that he has to leave at 6:45. The tables have changed!

Our kids are all doing well. Jacob had a little trip to urgent care this week to have an object removed from his knee. He tripped outside on the pavement, and it's the worst scraped knee I've ever seen. The skin was all crinkled up and it looked like some kind of twig was in it. Once we got the bleeding stopped (there was a lot of blood, running down his leg, and spurting out for a little bit), we were at a loos with what to do with his leg. rob decided to remove the dead skin. I thought he needed stitches and then he had this shiny black piece of rock stuck in his leg. We couldn't get it out. So Rob carted him off to urgent care where they x-rayed it. (I think to see how deep the foreign object was embedded in the knee.) And then they gave him four shots and Rob said it broke his heart (to which I thought, it's about time you get to feel like what is like to hold a screaming child down to get blood drawn or to get a shot--My boys have had so much blood drawn over their life time, that they have given more than I had to through my three pregnancies. It's no fun to be there holding them while they are scared and angry. But Rob handled it like a champ, and so did Jacob.) They removed it and sent him home.

The kids are loving their bike rides, and we've been going for walks almost every day this week in the evening . The weather is great right now, not too hot to go out yet. This has been a nice few weeks. It has already gotten up in the high eighties this year, so the low seventies feels like heaven. They are already asking to swim and counting down to the end of the year.

Also you can check out news about my publishing journey for Dreaming Isis on this blog. Have a great week!

Turn Your Brain Into Mush

This weekend we went to the new wing of Museum of Natural Sciences. All I can say is wow. It is very well designed, and the exhibits are great, a lot of hands on stuff that you can really explore in depth. It's a great resource for science projects, and home schooled people, and I'm sure classes that get to visit.

The one downside to going this weekend was that it officially opened on Friday. And it was crowded. And hot. I'm sure that the heat had to do with the fact that there were way too many people in the museum. I'm excited to take the kids back on a different day and spend some time exploring the exhibits and the hands on stuff.

The coolest thing by far was that Beth got to try out an operating robot machine thing. She used the controls to manipulate the tools, and completed that task at a 100 percent accuracy. There were also some more displays about the human body, which she is super excited to go back and explore. I wanted to hang out in the weather center but it was too crowded. They boys had fun in the space exhibit and collecting things to put in their bags to bring home. I think Rob had a good time too.

The rest of the week has been pretty good. Beth discovered she likes taking long, very long showers. I'm not looking forward to seeing the water bill in the next month. We may need to have her on a timer. I remember when my dad installed low flow shower heads, and how hard it was to rinse off using them. I'm not entirely convinced they helped save money because the showers seemed to get longer. Still with three teenager girls in the house, you do have to take drastic steps. I don't think we are there yet.

Jacob was sitting upstairs with Rob and I today. Rob said something about his job and Jacob pipes up. "My job is turn my brain into mush."

Rob and I both looked at each other, and Rob said, "Did you say turn your brain into mush?"

Jacob "Yeah, I need to turn into a zombie."

Over and out, I'll let you know about Jacob's mush/zombie progress next week!

Carowinds

Wow! What a week. it flew by. We got home from the beach onTuesday and the kids went to school for three days and then we headed to Carowinds. For once, I was grateful that I hadn't quite gotten the suitcases put away, though I did manage to get the laundry done by the time we left again. I was tired before we left and I'm tired now that I'm home again. But the kids had a good time overall and that was the point.

Sadly no pictures. I need to get me one of those fancy camera phone things and catch up with the rest of the world technology wise. Then maybe I could add some pictures to my posts.

The kids had report cards this week. And they were almost identical. 3s and 3 stars in the same subjects. Caleb and Beth had different comments regarding their behavior. One teacher wanted my child to speak up more and the other one didn't quite have anything positive to say behavior wise. Parent teacher conferences are coming up and I'm making Rob go with me. I think I'm done being patient and nice and he's there so I don't fly off of the handle. Why would a child getting 3s and 3 Stars (These are equivalent to As and Bs) be cited for poor work habits? Obviously the said child is doing the stinking work. If the child is misbehaving then mark the child down in behavior, which didn't happen.

Okay done with my rant and on to the fun.

Carowinds was a blast for the kids. Beth and Caleb rode some crazy roller coasters and had some fun. Caleb was tall enough to add two new coasters to his regimen and Beth was short enough that she didn't have to talk her dad out of making her ride the really scary roller coasters. The look of relief on her face was comic. Jacob was not very brace this trip, but he had fun riding all of the kiddie rides throughout the park, and eating Skittles at the end of the day. He also got a Ninja sword as a souvenir and instantly went into Ninja Assassin mode. He can slink hide, and wield his sword like a pro. His imagination is awesome and half of the time he is playing a game or practicing his moves in his own little world.

Caleb got a ball from Carowinds, and he proved that he has mad ball handling skills as he showed how he can dribble under his leg. He is also an excellent jump roper. He can criss cross, jump really high and do other tricks I could only ever dream of doing. Beth had a grand time with Chloe as always.

Rob and I are both hanging in there being busy and being parents. I wish there were a few more hours in the day so I could fit in everything that I want to. I need to learn to find a better balance in my life.

Take Care!

Spring Break and Easter!

The kids have had a week off from school for Spring Break. Growing up our Spring Break was a day off on Friday, and maybe a day off on Monday. Having the kids off a week in the middle of the year was novel to me, but I like it. Plus it's a good precursor to summer. It helps me get motivated to sign them up for stuff and actually plan so that summer isn't miserable.

Bikes

We got Beth a bike a few years ago, and we've tried several times to teach her to ride. It has never stuck. As soon as she realized you let go, she stop pedaling and fall over. So imagine my consternation when I pick her up from a friend's house on Monday and she's riding her bike. Yes. All it took was a friend saying if you can ride a scooter you can ride a bike, and she was off and going. So Beth learned to ride a bike on Monday.

Caleb told me that he could ride a bike, and I asked him to show me at the same friend's house, but the bike he got on was a bit too big for him, and I thought he was boasting a bit. However, when we got home and took the training wheels off the bike he rode when he was Jacob's age, he hopped on and started riding like he's been riding for years. No one has ever worked with him. He taught himself completely. Wow! We need to get him a bike that fits his size, but it is awesome!

Bruises

Jacob ended up on the losing end of a bike accident and ended up with the biggest black eye ever. The bruise was actually on the side of face just below his temple, but it spread out to his eye and down the side of his face. We've told him that he has a zombie eye, and he seems quite happy with that description. This is our first black eye, and we can add it to our list of stitches and broken arms (and possibly noses). I always tell myself that it is better for my kids to be active and running around with bruises and scrapes then sitting inside doing nothing all day.

Beach

We headed to the beach for the last part of the week. We went with the cousins and grandma. Of course the kids loved it. Lots of time out on the sand and trips into the cold water. It's been cooler than we expected, not quite seventy, which is nice, but it means that the outside heat isn't canceling out the coldness of the water. We did our Easter egg hunt at the beach house on Saturday, and the kids loved it.

Hope you all have a great Easter and take some time to think about the true meaning of it!

Conference Weekend

Spring break started on Friday, which means that I've officially slept in three days in a row. I switched my tutoring to a 10:00 pm to 12:00 am shift which works much better for me. This has been nice. Spring break will be a good chance for me to see if I can keep up my current work schedule with the kids at home. Currently I tutor two hours a night five days a week, I work as a search engine evaluator between ten and twenty hours a week, and I write for two different websites and three different private clients (the amount of writing really varies depending on the client's current needs). It does mean that I haven't been working on my writing the way that I've been wanting to.

So far for Spring break we went to a park, which ended in a nothing fight in the car on the way home. Our last trip to the park, the fight happened in the park. I was embarrassed because other ward members were at the park and they got to witness my children utterly melt down, which came as a shock to me. Normally they are happy when we go to the park.

Yesterday was General Conference, and the kids played conference bingo and did great for the morning session. The afternoon session was okay, but by the end they were going stir crazy, so we went for a walk, and it worked. The boys both fell asleep about an hour after we got home.

Around midnight last night we had a killer thunderstorm blow through. Hail, and wind and some thunder, not much though. We looked outside and tree limbs (more like little branches) were blowing by, so we brought the kids downstairs as a precaution. I'd say we got about an inch of hail. The hail was bigger and there was more of it than when we had the tornado scare last year. I didn't think anything more about the storm once it was over, until this morning when we went out for a walk between conference. The roads are covered in leaves and debris from the hail storm. I think it may have damage a lot of the trees, and any fruit trees may not produce a lot this year.

Conference has been really good so far. Each session has had at least one talk that really hit home with me. I've managed to fight off the sleepy feeling that hits somewhere in the middle, but I don't know if I'll make it through the last session. I'm so grateful that the Internet makes it so much easier to access all of this information and review it.

The kids have grand plans for Spring break, which involve a birthday party for Jacob, reading a book for Beth and playing with water and painting by Caleb. It's going to be a fun week.

Hope you all have a great one!