Stop the crazy

This week has been awful. Really awful. One not-so-sweet daughter spent a considerable amount of time in her room screaming. On 2 separate days. And I'm talking full out screaming. Her 2 younger sisters also did a lot of crying. Some of it for no apparent reason. The teasing was incessant as well. The kids just kept picking on each other. And they kept picking on me. I really felt like I was being pecked to death by chickens! I don't know if it is the move catching up with us, or Dan's trip to Utah, or all the fast food we ate while Dan was in Utah, or if it was this:

Yep, school started this week. One of the things the kids are not thrilled about is the uniforms. Uniforms which must be tucked in and worn with a belt. And they were issued identical navy mesh backpacks. Just to make sure they are not smuggling contraband, I suppose. Those little first graders, you gotta watch out for them, you never know what they might sneak into school in their backpack.

But I digress. It was a rough week for everyone. Okay, maybe not Dan. I think he had a great week. I did not though. I was grumpy and cranky and starting to lose it by the time the weekend arrived. All that fighting and crying and demanding and neediness was wearing me out. And Friday is Delaney's day to say the prayer. When I asked her to say the prayer, she said no. Normally, I'd say tough noogies, say the prayer, but I wondered if there was some underlying reason she was so grumpy and I said a little prayer that I could be a more helpful and understanding mother. And then, a most surprising thing came out of my mouth.

Again, normally I would just tell her to say the prayer, or I would just do it myself, but that evening, I looked into Delaney's eyes and told her that we pray to talk to Heavenly Father and that he loves to hear from us. That when Daddy is away from us, he loves to hear us on the phone. Heavenly Father is also our Father and he also loves to hear from us. Just like we talk on the phone to Daddy, we pray to Heavenly Father and that's how we talk to Him. He loves it when we tell him about our day and he loves to hear from Delaney. Delaney looked at me and said, "okay", and folded her arms. When I started to help her with her prayer, she held up her little hand, shook her head emphatically, and said, "No, I do it myself!" and she did! She gave the sweetest, most loving prayer, and she did it all by herself! It really was a little girl speaking to her Heavenly Father. It was so touching and melted my heart.

I think how I could have missed that moment, and Delaney would have missed that opportunity too. I am so glad I didn't hurry her in getting the prayer said. It was a tender moment in an otherwise crazy week.

Waiting

What do you do when you get to wait? We went to a new chiropractor this week, and this is how the kids spent the wait.....

They enjoyed the wall art.

They checked their height and weight. They also had a marvelous time weighing me and then loudly announcing my (over)weight to everyone in earshot.

They used the doctor's "toys".

And Rylee was ready for her adjustment!

Dan went on a trip and all I got was pictures

These are the pictures Dan took. Joshua took a lot more, but I have not downloaded them yet. Dan took Joshua and Callie on his work-trip to Utah over the weekend. The kids got to hang out with Grandma and Grandpa while Dan did his thing, and then they went out to play together.

Grandpa is the best!

Dan was cross that the MTC sign has been removed. How can you take a traditional picture when the sign is gone?!! The kids were cooperative with his photo-ops.

Provo Temple....

Dan is a sentimental man. This, my friends is the apartment I was living in when I met Dan. This historic place is the site of where he first asked me out, first kissed me, and where he proposed to me.

This is where Dan was living when we met. It is not quite so historic.

Dan took the kids on a Temple tour. They drove around to all the temples they could in one afternoon. Here is the Jordan River Temple.

Oquirrh Mountain Temple. Yeah, you try pronouncing that one! I had enough trouble spelling it!

Draper temple

And as an added bonus, Joshua and Callie got to spend some time with Dan's grandmother (their Great Grandma). They said they had a great trip and everyone was happy.

Making the best of it

I tried to take the kids to the pool today. Unfortunately, today was the first day of their new, not-friendly hours. They were not open at all today for swimming. The children were bitterly disappointed. I was grumpy because I had gotten them all ready and sunscreened and we'd walked through the sweltering heat to get there. And then we walked back home. Not wanting to waste all that effort, I unpacked the last 3 boxes of outside stuff and located the hose. It was at the bottom of the last box. I hooked up the hose and sent the kids out.

They decided to create their own pool!

Yep, it is just big enough for 2.

Oh no! There's a breach! Water is escaping through the corner!

Don't worry, Delaney has a plan to fix the hole.

Rylee was downright territorial. It was HER box and HER hose. And she had a fabulous time.

And then it suddenly wasn't fun any more.

And I realized I had forgotten to post a picture of the front of the house. We're #2 in a row of 5 town homes, and yes, I have a balcony out my bedroom.
The mess is 200 boxes, after the children demolished them. The moving van will come tomorrow and haul them all away. Thank goodness! It is starting to be less fun and more eyesore than I like. I'm relieved that Housing hasn't cited us for it yet! (Living here is like living in a really strict HOA, without the fees or voice.)

A Tour of the new House!

Hello, and welcome to our new house. It is still pretty awful, but I know my folks would like to see our new digs. I do want to tell you that I had all the boxes neatly stacked according to size on the front porch. It was a vision of organization. Then the kids asked their dad if they could play in them and he said Yes! Aack! Now my porch looks like this:

I will admit that my children and half the neighborhood kids have had a marvelous time playing in the boxes, and they have done a fairly decent job of piling them back on the porch each evening.

This is the view from my porch. It almost makes up for the horrid back yard. Now, let's turn around and go inside the house. Just inside is the living room.

Here is the little living room. Yeah, I know. It is a disaster. You are suppose to be impressed with the fact that you can actually walk through it and you can sit on the couch if you want. 2 weeks ago it was nothing but boxes. I choose to focus on the positive!

A slightly better angle. The kids have been messy in there and I have had my focus elsewhere. I think this is going to be the very last room that gets put together! You may notice I got 2 of my batiks from Africa put up, but I have not gotten any other pictures up. I am not sure where I want to put everything yet.

So, if you stand at the front door with the living room on your right, you are looking down the hall. There is a half bathroom on the left. That is Joshua's bedroom door at the very end. On the right, at the end of that hallway are the kitchen and dining room. The stairs right there go up to 2 small bedrooms, a full bathroom, a nice laundry room, and a good sized master bedroom with a bathroom. Let's walk down the hall and turn right at the kitchen...

The kitchen is lovely and clean because my fabulous husband stepped up and did it yesterday. I had reached the too-overwhelmed feeling and had no desire to deal with the clutter all over the kitchen. Dan is my super-hero for doing it! May I point out that it is a one- butt kitchen. There really is only room for one. If you open the pantry, fridge, dishwasher or oven, there is no room for anyone else in there and you cannot walk by. On the plus side, the counter space isn't too bad.

This is me standing in the kitchen, in front of the stove. I LOVE that it has this open window into the dining room. Love it! It makes the kitchen feel a little bit bigger. The kids like the bar area and want to know when we'll get bar stools so they can sit there. No, I am not planning for the electric skillet to stay up there forever. I just have to find a good place to put it first.

This is the dining room, as viewed from the hall entryway. Since it is big enough, this is where the computer goes. The dining room is a great size and it may be my favorite part of the house. I promptly used most of the space for shelves to fit more stuff.

Yep, them's my shelves! I know, they look frightful. I admit, they are one of those things that I plan to get back to and organize so they look nice, but I never quite get around to doing it. I DO mean to get them looking decent though! (Oh, and that's our back door.)

This is my teensy-tiny backyard. I'm standing in the back doorway. We do have the garage, but to me, there's little point to a garage if you have to walk outside in the rain to get into it. It is big enough to store some things and fit a car inside. Right now my elliptical machine is in there alongside Dan's car. We need to get it up to the bedroom, now that I have cleared a space.

And here's what the back porch looks like! It will look better once we deal with the boxes. Give me a month. Really!

So now you have had the grand tour. Don't you feel special?! Now you know why I have no space to put anything. I have no basement! No attic either. Just a basic house. This means it is time to purge. If I don't need it, it needs to go. Wish me luck on that!

Taking a Break!

I'm tired of unpacking. I'm tired of trying to figure out where to put stuff. So I quit. Well, I quit for 2 days. One of my break days was yesterday. I had planned to take the kids to the aquarium, but I got an email from a lady from church who asked if we wanted to go to the Zoo's Splash Park that day. Um... yes!

We met up with her and followed her there. It was not the way the GPS would have gone, so I'm sure we got there faster. The splash park was awesome! It was packed as well. It was also fully contained, so if I was missing a child, I at least knew they were all inside the fence. And I promptly lost most of the children. They had a marvelous time.

Delaney went down all 3 slides over and over and over. Callie hauled Rylee around and forced her to go on the slides till she cried. I took custody of Rylee's adventures after that. Delaney is at the bottom of the slide and Callie and Rylee are at the top here.

Callie is dragging Rylee through the sprayers. Rylee was less traumatized than I expected.

Rylee enjoyed this part a lot more.

Joshua told me he was bored after 30 minutes. Funny thing though, he was the last one to leave.

Marian was like a ghost. I'd see her and then she would disappear. She would just slip from one thing to another. Very hard to get pictures of her.

Delaney was skipping from the slide to go on it again. Did I mention she went on it over and over and over?! She did!

Joshua was a good brother. He played with Rylee and she got so mad at him for using "her" water. She's becoming quite the little tyrant!

Rylee, dancing in the spray. The water sprayed everywhere, so it was very dangerous territory to take the camera into!

After 2 hours of fun, it was time to head home, but we got distracted by the little play area they had. So we played for 10 minutes.

Then we got distracted by something else...

And we ended up at the petting zoo for a little while. The animals were lethargic. I didn't blame them 95 degrees and nasty humidity makes me lethargic too.

It also meant the animals let Rylee come and pet them and she felt brave.

Here's my gang. All hot and cranky and hungry and tired. It was time to head home!

Yep, distracted again!

Fortunately, the flamingos were right by the entrance and we made it out with only a minor meltdown by Delaney and grumping by Callie, who wanted to see more animals.

So, I survived our first encounter with going into the city. Since I got year passes, I expect we'll be going again. Today I have unpacked some more boxes and am condensing the "Aack!" stuff. I'll eventually have to deal with it, but not today!

If you give a kid a cookie....

I gave Delaney a cookie. It was a kind she hadn't had in a while. She looked at it, then nibbled it. She beamed up at me and exclaimed, "It tatses better than a mouse!"

One Week!

Well, it has actually been a full week that we have been here. Wow, it is a whole 'nother world! Right now it is pouring down rain and nearly everyone else is outside playing in it. Dan is impressed with how fast the canals rise from nothing to overflowing.

To report on our progress: there were 32 boxes downstairs on Friday that needed unpacking, and 11 upstairs. Currently there are a few boxes in my room (all Dans!) and 2 boxes of toys that I gotta figure out where to put in the girls room. There are only 25 boxes downstairs now. See... progress!! The problem is that we had about 50+ boxes labeled "basement" and we no longer have a basement. So I have opened most of them and thrown up my hands and decided to deal with those boxes last. Unfortunately, I think I'm down to those 25 boxes of "last"!

On the positive side, Dan miraculously found the box of bed hardware yesterday! I was out dropping 5 (yes, 5!) big boxes off at the thrift store and when I came home, I was surprised to see I had a bedframe put together! Dan and Joshua did a great job and I was so pleased. I was less pleased to discover that when they (the movers, not Dan and Joshua) broke the crib foot board, it dropped off the rail rods and I'm now missing one rail rod. No rail rod- no crib. I am grumpy that we had to put the beds together. I much prefer it when the movers do all that for us. But all the beds (other than the crib) are together. All the bookshelves have pegs and can be used now. Hooray for that!

Biggest grumpy-maker of the week is the telephone. We got phone, tv and internet in a cable bundle on Wednesday. It wasn't till Thursday or Friday that we realized the phone wasn't ringing in. We couldn't find the box to unpack our main phone, so were working off an old corded phone (which is such a pain!). The phone people said it must be our phone line. As I said, we have cable service. If my phone is plugged directly into the cable box, it will work fine, but no outlets in the house will work, just that one phone. If I plug the modem into the phone lines of the house, I can use 5 phones, but none of them ring if someone calls. Dan and I finally got a new phone, found the old phone and got a splitter, and the phones ring... mostly. It seems that the voice mail system likes to randomly turn our phone to "Privacy" setting, which means it will go directly to voice mail. So we have to check that each day. AND to make things even better, the line stinks. It is so staticky it sounds like you have a really terrible cell connection. I am so not happy about all this phone stuff. Any ideas on what to do? Is it the house lines or the cable? Could it be the wireless for the internet causing the issue? Oh, and just because it's not already bad enough, there are only 2 spots in the house where we can get cell reception either. Yay... not! So, my family, you may get random, unintelligible calls from us as we see if we have been able to correct the problem.

What nearly makes up for that was church today. They have been expecting us. It was flattering and quite intimidating to be so welcomed and anticipated. We were very warmly received and people were incredibly friendly and excited to see us. It was really nice. We have several families who live within a mile of us, which I find very exciting as well. Now we have the thrill of awaiting callings. I always get excited about that and once they call me to something, I think "What? That?!". I always end up loving what I do, but I don't usually start out that way, so we'll see what is in store for us.

Wow, I have been quite rambly. I should have saved all that for the family letter, which I have yet to write. See, this is what happens to me when I have no friends to talk to!

See Charlotte Fly!

We went to the pool while at Andy's house. Kera may blog these pictures, but I thought this was just about the best series of shots ever! I particularly love Charlotte's huge grin, the way she just keeps going higher, and the way her legs flip out. It makes me smile each time I see these.