I can't believe it is finally over. It is so bittersweet. I get my time back to devote to my kids and family again, but I will likely not work with these amazing sisters and young women again! They truly built me up and shared their hearts and soul with me (along with blood, sweat, and tears!) Camp was only 3 days, but our girls accomplished a lot in that short time. It was amazing to watch these 16-17 year olds serve and grow to love the younger girls. My life has been blessed through this calling and I am so grateful they asked me to do it. I LOVE the young women in the church and I hope that I inspire them to find their own testimonies and grow in the gospel as my own leaders did 10+ years ago.
There was a moment when they almost decided to not let me go after finding out that I was pregnant. I assured them that it was nothing to worry about, and my directors pleaded on my behalf to let me see it through. So Sister Fish with her cute prego belly and pigtail braids bounced around camp like one of the girls and joined in on all the fun! I even snuck a hike in there, too!! Shhhh! I wasn't supposed to, but I can't help it when the trees and birds are begging me to explore!
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
WOW!!! It has been a long time!! So many things have come and gone. We've missed putting it here on the family journal. But I'm hoping to get more back on here. I have been super busy with schooling the kids, primary callings, Let's Play Music and other piano students, and my girls camp assignments. Let's play music is done for the summer and some of my students will be taking the summer off, too. Camp is over in three weeks. Primary isn't really that time consuming, just thought consuming. And with those off my plate I have more time and effort to put into school for the girls, which is a great time since there is nothing else to do now that summer heat is upon us! Right now on May 15, it is 3:17 and and 102 outside. It's supposed to get up to 106 for the next few days and hopefully come back down. But it makes it hard to want to go anywhere or do anything that creates warmth when it's this hot! So inside school just got a remodeled schedule!
Here's some quick updates on the girls:
Kallyn is my super reader! She LOVES reading anything she can get her eyes on! Including this post as I type it!! She also loves to practice her cursive writing as well as her creative writing by making up stories and movie plots. Her best friend is Katie Lords. Together they imagine their world onto film with her older sister Kim who is Brielle's best friend!! Gotta love 13 yr olds!! Kallyn is my super helper around the house, too. She loves/thrives on order and neatness. She reorganizes her room quit frequently and insists on her clothes being folded prior to being placed in her basket after being washed. This makes it wasy on me as she is willing to fold her clothes as well as her sisters clothes. Her help in the kitchen is also very much apprecitated! She can make up a yummy dish of scrambled eggs, mac'n'cheese, ramen, grilled cheese sandwiches, potato soup, and this morning added Malt-o-Meal to the list! She also is great at getting lunches ready for the girls. She is so curious and asks LOTS of questions which sometimes drive me crazy!!! But, I love that she loves to learn new things and figure things out. Sometimes I just hope that she can figure them out on her own instead of asking someone else to do it for her! But I've not yet showed her how, so I guess school will be more focused towards how to find information. Kallyn loves to create and this makes my heart happy! We have fun painting, sewing, cutting and glueing, coloring, and anything she can think of. A few months ago she kicked up a huge duct tape movement where she did whatever she could with 5 rolls of colored duct tape. My favorite were the flowers and flip flops. Yup! She made her own flip-flops!!!
Allison is still my little lost angel! She is always in a world of her own and most often this world has a sound barrier which my voice cannot penetrate unless it's LOUD and in her face! Drives me crazy, but she gets so lost in her head that nothing else bothers her at the moment! I wish I could get inside her head sometimes so I can better understand her! She loves to draw and can draw for hours! She loves running and going fast. She is discovering how to read, although she has very little patience for it. However, she loves to write and her penmanship is very neat and precise. I think it's because she loves to draw and is used to being precise with a pencil. Now if only I can convince her to be so neat and precise with her room!! Haha!! That kid hates it when I clean her room and within 20 minutes it is a disaster again! I'm not the best example of keeping my bedroom tidy, but it's not because I LOVE living in a messy room like she does. She has little treasure troves hidden all over the house and her little treasures are often things that she finds in the garbage can, out burried in the sand, left behind at the playground, or even sometimes scraps of leftover stuff (like the plastic inserts that keep toys together in the packaging). She loves anything fairy like or miniature. Tiny things she can hide in her pockets, shoes, or even in her hair! She sneaks toys into the car without my notice on a regular basis. She is VERY good with words and has quite a special look at the world. The other day she was studying her Volcano book and she couldn't read what a certain camera looking machine was (I think it was spectrometer something or other) and when I told her it measured the gasses coming from the active Volcano she laughed and looked at me with this very ammusing look in her eyes and stated "So the volcano is when the earth FARTS???" hahahahaha!!!! Boy this girl makes me laugh! She came up to me all excited one afternoon and declared "I know how to tell where your ouchies are!!" I was thinking, Duh! It's where ever it hurts! But she goes on to say, "You can look super close at your hand and see where it looks different on your hand, or... (drum roll) use hand sanitizer!" then she turns with a little floury of brown hair and skips away all pleased with herself for discovering the true way of finding ouchies!
Brielle is my little whirlwind of terror! She is three and is moving too fast toward the 4 year old lying phase! Bummer. I think it's because she has 2 great examples to teach her how to lie. It really drives me crazy! Expecially since she just turned three!! She LOVES to play with little toys. She will line up all her princesses, and barbie dolls, and ponies, and Polly Pockets and seriously play for hours. It makes it noce for when we try to do school because she will occupy herself for nearly the whole time I'm heloing the older girls. She just started talking to herself and it reminds me so much of Allison when she used to play in front of Grammy's mirror and pretend her reflection was her best friend! Yesterday she was playing with the little mermaids we have. She announced that there was going to be a mermaid party and all of Allison's barbies were invited to come. Allison replied that they would not be attending because they are Fashion dolls and could only do fashiony stuff and mermaids were NOT fashiony. Brielle walks away and says that her dolls are not fashiony and She is not fashiony. She is a mom. Haha!! I love it!! She LOVES to be a mommy to her baby dolls. She sets up house and makes little beds for all the babies to take naps. Then she'll get dinner ready and wake them up, feed them, change their clothes (with someone's help) and puts them to bed with lulabies and snuggles! She is sooo cute when she is in mommy mode! Dress-ups is also another favorite activity of hers. But often it entails putting on a dress, getting all the other dresses, tutus. leotards, hats, gloves, shows, jewelry, and wings out of the bins and lining them up in neat little rows. Brielle is quite the little musician. She has LOVED Let's Play Music almost mor that the older 2! And she's not even old enough to be in a class yet! She can play the bells better than some of my students and she has transfered that skill to the piano already! She amazes me with the things she has discovered without my pushing her! I can't wait till she is old enough to start her Red Balloon semester!
Eric has been busy fighting dragons and bringing home the bacon. Really, he stops by Sam's club and buys a packet of pre-cooked bacon because my girls eat it all the time!! Work keeps him from home too long, but I know that it is a blessing that he has a job and that it takes care of our most essential needs. I sometimes get selfish and wish it would also take care of our most un-essential wants, too, but I'm learning to be happy with where we are at and that our girls are fed and clothed most of the time!! He had a little scare in the hospital a while ago that has brought his perspective of life back to prioritizing and it has been nice to see him leave work earlier than before. It wasn't anything serious, but it just made him think about taking care of himself better. He's been active at the gym and playing weekly basketball at the church. I hope he's been eating better. I've been trying to get easy foods for him to take to work and throw down for breakfast. Lately his favorite activity is taking the family GeoCaching. We've found some awesome treasures and had a lot of fun hunting for all the caches in the area!
Most recently we have been trying to play the "Buy A House" game, but I'm fed up with it and ready to toss it in the garbage! It seems so cut throat and contentious right now. We started looking last month and now it is impossible to even find a house in our range with our needs. As soon as we find one we go to take a look at it and end up viewing the property with 5 other interested parties. The last house we put on offer on we offered 17K over listing price only to find that they sold it for more than 32K over asking price, a cash offer, too!!! Man it seems like we'll never get into a house of our own!
I've been reading, trying to educate myself, and researching a lot about teaching, learning, school, family roles, and how to manage my family. I can look back and see Heavenly Fathers hand in my search for truth and willingness to seek out his will in regards to the upbringing of my girls. Homeschooling was such an easy decision to make on my own, but getting everyone else out of my head was more challenging. Especially when we moved to an awesome school district and many parents find my homeschooling decision unnatural and can't come to terms with why I would keep my kids out of the best school district. I have learned to keep my mouth shut and not share a lot of my heart and experiences of my journey. The backlash has been difficult to deal with in trying to make new friends and my girls seem to get most of it in their primary classes. It is sad and I don't always know how to comfort my daughters when they are being teased for their lack of interest in pop culture and popular things to do. But my girls have had the chance to make the most amazing friends in the ward who also homeschool and have the same family goals as I do. They have learned how to nurture and serve in these new friendships that return the service and love. Besides schooling I have also lost myself in gardening. I have loved the work and time I have spent watching seeds sprout life and sustenance for my family! right now we are waiting on three watermelons and a few tomatoes. I haven't had the best success, but the watermelons have done the best so far. This winter we had fresh lettuce, radishes, peas, and carrots! YUM!!!! The girls enjoy going out with me to water and check the progress of these plants that we started indoors in November. Such fun it has been to see their brians grasp life through gardening. We also got worm for a worm bin for composting our food scraps! The girls LOVE digging and looking for new worms!
Here's some quick updates on the girls:
Kallyn is my super reader! She LOVES reading anything she can get her eyes on! Including this post as I type it!! She also loves to practice her cursive writing as well as her creative writing by making up stories and movie plots. Her best friend is Katie Lords. Together they imagine their world onto film with her older sister Kim who is Brielle's best friend!! Gotta love 13 yr olds!! Kallyn is my super helper around the house, too. She loves/thrives on order and neatness. She reorganizes her room quit frequently and insists on her clothes being folded prior to being placed in her basket after being washed. This makes it wasy on me as she is willing to fold her clothes as well as her sisters clothes. Her help in the kitchen is also very much apprecitated! She can make up a yummy dish of scrambled eggs, mac'n'cheese, ramen, grilled cheese sandwiches, potato soup, and this morning added Malt-o-Meal to the list! She also is great at getting lunches ready for the girls. She is so curious and asks LOTS of questions which sometimes drive me crazy!!! But, I love that she loves to learn new things and figure things out. Sometimes I just hope that she can figure them out on her own instead of asking someone else to do it for her! But I've not yet showed her how, so I guess school will be more focused towards how to find information. Kallyn loves to create and this makes my heart happy! We have fun painting, sewing, cutting and glueing, coloring, and anything she can think of. A few months ago she kicked up a huge duct tape movement where she did whatever she could with 5 rolls of colored duct tape. My favorite were the flowers and flip flops. Yup! She made her own flip-flops!!!
Allison is still my little lost angel! She is always in a world of her own and most often this world has a sound barrier which my voice cannot penetrate unless it's LOUD and in her face! Drives me crazy, but she gets so lost in her head that nothing else bothers her at the moment! I wish I could get inside her head sometimes so I can better understand her! She loves to draw and can draw for hours! She loves running and going fast. She is discovering how to read, although she has very little patience for it. However, she loves to write and her penmanship is very neat and precise. I think it's because she loves to draw and is used to being precise with a pencil. Now if only I can convince her to be so neat and precise with her room!! Haha!! That kid hates it when I clean her room and within 20 minutes it is a disaster again! I'm not the best example of keeping my bedroom tidy, but it's not because I LOVE living in a messy room like she does. She has little treasure troves hidden all over the house and her little treasures are often things that she finds in the garbage can, out burried in the sand, left behind at the playground, or even sometimes scraps of leftover stuff (like the plastic inserts that keep toys together in the packaging). She loves anything fairy like or miniature. Tiny things she can hide in her pockets, shoes, or even in her hair! She sneaks toys into the car without my notice on a regular basis. She is VERY good with words and has quite a special look at the world. The other day she was studying her Volcano book and she couldn't read what a certain camera looking machine was (I think it was spectrometer something or other) and when I told her it measured the gasses coming from the active Volcano she laughed and looked at me with this very ammusing look in her eyes and stated "So the volcano is when the earth FARTS???" hahahahaha!!!! Boy this girl makes me laugh! She came up to me all excited one afternoon and declared "I know how to tell where your ouchies are!!" I was thinking, Duh! It's where ever it hurts! But she goes on to say, "You can look super close at your hand and see where it looks different on your hand, or... (drum roll) use hand sanitizer!" then she turns with a little floury of brown hair and skips away all pleased with herself for discovering the true way of finding ouchies!
Brielle is my little whirlwind of terror! She is three and is moving too fast toward the 4 year old lying phase! Bummer. I think it's because she has 2 great examples to teach her how to lie. It really drives me crazy! Expecially since she just turned three!! She LOVES to play with little toys. She will line up all her princesses, and barbie dolls, and ponies, and Polly Pockets and seriously play for hours. It makes it noce for when we try to do school because she will occupy herself for nearly the whole time I'm heloing the older girls. She just started talking to herself and it reminds me so much of Allison when she used to play in front of Grammy's mirror and pretend her reflection was her best friend! Yesterday she was playing with the little mermaids we have. She announced that there was going to be a mermaid party and all of Allison's barbies were invited to come. Allison replied that they would not be attending because they are Fashion dolls and could only do fashiony stuff and mermaids were NOT fashiony. Brielle walks away and says that her dolls are not fashiony and She is not fashiony. She is a mom. Haha!! I love it!! She LOVES to be a mommy to her baby dolls. She sets up house and makes little beds for all the babies to take naps. Then she'll get dinner ready and wake them up, feed them, change their clothes (with someone's help) and puts them to bed with lulabies and snuggles! She is sooo cute when she is in mommy mode! Dress-ups is also another favorite activity of hers. But often it entails putting on a dress, getting all the other dresses, tutus. leotards, hats, gloves, shows, jewelry, and wings out of the bins and lining them up in neat little rows. Brielle is quite the little musician. She has LOVED Let's Play Music almost mor that the older 2! And she's not even old enough to be in a class yet! She can play the bells better than some of my students and she has transfered that skill to the piano already! She amazes me with the things she has discovered without my pushing her! I can't wait till she is old enough to start her Red Balloon semester!
Eric has been busy fighting dragons and bringing home the bacon. Really, he stops by Sam's club and buys a packet of pre-cooked bacon because my girls eat it all the time!! Work keeps him from home too long, but I know that it is a blessing that he has a job and that it takes care of our most essential needs. I sometimes get selfish and wish it would also take care of our most un-essential wants, too, but I'm learning to be happy with where we are at and that our girls are fed and clothed most of the time!! He had a little scare in the hospital a while ago that has brought his perspective of life back to prioritizing and it has been nice to see him leave work earlier than before. It wasn't anything serious, but it just made him think about taking care of himself better. He's been active at the gym and playing weekly basketball at the church. I hope he's been eating better. I've been trying to get easy foods for him to take to work and throw down for breakfast. Lately his favorite activity is taking the family GeoCaching. We've found some awesome treasures and had a lot of fun hunting for all the caches in the area!
Most recently we have been trying to play the "Buy A House" game, but I'm fed up with it and ready to toss it in the garbage! It seems so cut throat and contentious right now. We started looking last month and now it is impossible to even find a house in our range with our needs. As soon as we find one we go to take a look at it and end up viewing the property with 5 other interested parties. The last house we put on offer on we offered 17K over listing price only to find that they sold it for more than 32K over asking price, a cash offer, too!!! Man it seems like we'll never get into a house of our own!
I've been reading, trying to educate myself, and researching a lot about teaching, learning, school, family roles, and how to manage my family. I can look back and see Heavenly Fathers hand in my search for truth and willingness to seek out his will in regards to the upbringing of my girls. Homeschooling was such an easy decision to make on my own, but getting everyone else out of my head was more challenging. Especially when we moved to an awesome school district and many parents find my homeschooling decision unnatural and can't come to terms with why I would keep my kids out of the best school district. I have learned to keep my mouth shut and not share a lot of my heart and experiences of my journey. The backlash has been difficult to deal with in trying to make new friends and my girls seem to get most of it in their primary classes. It is sad and I don't always know how to comfort my daughters when they are being teased for their lack of interest in pop culture and popular things to do. But my girls have had the chance to make the most amazing friends in the ward who also homeschool and have the same family goals as I do. They have learned how to nurture and serve in these new friendships that return the service and love. Besides schooling I have also lost myself in gardening. I have loved the work and time I have spent watching seeds sprout life and sustenance for my family! right now we are waiting on three watermelons and a few tomatoes. I haven't had the best success, but the watermelons have done the best so far. This winter we had fresh lettuce, radishes, peas, and carrots! YUM!!!! The girls enjoy going out with me to water and check the progress of these plants that we started indoors in November. Such fun it has been to see their brians grasp life through gardening. We also got worm for a worm bin for composting our food scraps! The girls LOVE digging and looking for new worms!
Thursday, July 14, 2011
To Urgent Cares, Emergency rooms, Orthopedic Surgeons, and Walgreens...
To Urgent Cares, Emergency rooms, Orthopedic Surgeons, and Walgreens...
I hope we never have to see you again!!! Although I really appreciate that you have worked with us pathetic cash only patients it really has been a bummer on our budgets.
We have been extremely blessed to have had insurance to pay for medical costs for the last 7 years. And thankfully nothing too dramatic has ever occured. But alas, Murphys Law has prevailed and in our first 2 months of attempting to stay alive without insurance we have had a broken arm, a lego shoved up a nose (same one who broke her arm), and strep throat. Seriously!!!! We haven't even been in our new house for a full month yet!! Let us get settled!!!!
Anyway, I hope our depleted savings is helping you to purchase yachts, pay for memberships at the spa and country clubs. I hope you forget us as quickly as I want to forget your bills. And please be kind to families coming in with 5 new patients all testing for strep throat and bill them for one office visit instead of 5. (Or when out of compassion you decide not to bill for one patient, let it be one of the 4 without insurance instead of the 1 who has insurance and wouldn't pay anything anyway?)
I hope we never have to see you again!!! Although I really appreciate that you have worked with us pathetic cash only patients it really has been a bummer on our budgets.
We have been extremely blessed to have had insurance to pay for medical costs for the last 7 years. And thankfully nothing too dramatic has ever occured. But alas, Murphys Law has prevailed and in our first 2 months of attempting to stay alive without insurance we have had a broken arm, a lego shoved up a nose (same one who broke her arm), and strep throat. Seriously!!!! We haven't even been in our new house for a full month yet!! Let us get settled!!!!
Anyway, I hope our depleted savings is helping you to purchase yachts, pay for memberships at the spa and country clubs. I hope you forget us as quickly as I want to forget your bills. And please be kind to families coming in with 5 new patients all testing for strep throat and bill them for one office visit instead of 5. (Or when out of compassion you decide not to bill for one patient, let it be one of the 4 without insurance instead of the 1 who has insurance and wouldn't pay anything anyway?)
Saturday, June 18, 2011
We finally moved!!!!!
Actually, we have moved, but our stuff is still somewhere between New Hampshire and Arizona. BUT, we have a house and we have our family back together again!!! So if you want our address leave your e-mail address in a comment and I'll get it to you!
It's a bigger house than what we've been in the last 12 months (camping RV is fun with three kids!!! NEVER doing that again!!!). It's big enough for us to not kill each other in the middle of summer when we're stuck inside for 3 months trying to keep cool our first summer here.
It has a big yard. Great space for a garden, a few turtles, and if Eric allows us, CHICKENS!!!! Ha Ha!!! I find my obsession for barnyard animals hilarious!!!
So far we love our new ward. It has a perfect size primary and an awesome choir with an awesome pianist, so I get to sing!!! Yippee!!
We are busy getting life together to start a new school year, make new friends, and this week I'm training for a new adventure! Let's Play Music! It's an awesome music program for young kids. I'm training to be a teacher this week and hopefully giving my kids (as well as other potential musicions) an opportunity to fall in love with music this fall.
Eric is loving work while the rest of us miss having him around. It's a harder transition than I thought it would be. Even with the 2 months without him!
It's a bigger house than what we've been in the last 12 months (camping RV is fun with three kids!!! NEVER doing that again!!!). It's big enough for us to not kill each other in the middle of summer when we're stuck inside for 3 months trying to keep cool our first summer here.
It has a big yard. Great space for a garden, a few turtles, and if Eric allows us, CHICKENS!!!! Ha Ha!!! I find my obsession for barnyard animals hilarious!!!
So far we love our new ward. It has a perfect size primary and an awesome choir with an awesome pianist, so I get to sing!!! Yippee!!
We are busy getting life together to start a new school year, make new friends, and this week I'm training for a new adventure! Let's Play Music! It's an awesome music program for young kids. I'm training to be a teacher this week and hopefully giving my kids (as well as other potential musicions) an opportunity to fall in love with music this fall.
Eric is loving work while the rest of us miss having him around. It's a harder transition than I thought it would be. Even with the 2 months without him!
Saturday, May 7, 2011
You Give Me "Fever"
Presenting Janalee and Kami
in their
Spring 2011 Dance Review
Jazz class "Fever"
Thanks again Kami for coercing me to dance again this semester!!
I also danced in one ballet number and another Jazz number with the college kids. They even got me on the floor doing cartwheels and splits!! I had no idea I still had it in me!
My college Jazz class ensemble. You can't tell too well from the picture, but my skirt is sparkly toole. Glitterific!
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Easter 2011
Half of the eggs, but the best part of the picture is Brielle's tongue!
Putting on lipstick using the blue robins eggs! Yummy and cute!
Grammy sewed the girls matching Easter dresses. Major ruffles!!! Super cute!!
The boots or the bum? I couldn't resist snapping this photo!
Allison found so many eggs her basket kept dropping them every time she bent over. She quickly found an alternative! Thanks Homer!
The expression as she discovers that some of the eggs had dollars in them!
Allison soon found this out, too!
The spoils of plunder! Cute easter baskets! Grammy sure made easter this year cute, fun, and memorable! Thanks Grammy!
PS I didn't get him into any pictures, but Eric was here with us this weekend as Sunday was also his birthday!! It made the Holiday extra special! We had to say goodbye again as he had to get back to work Monday morning.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Sweet Sisters...
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
New Sister-In-Law!!!! Yippee!!!!
Heather, Brian and their daughter Kiaya, who had a hard day with all the attention.
The Beautiful Bride!!! I am so glad that she's my sister-in-law. I can finally call her mine! All this time she's been my brother's girlfriend, fiance, and so on, but never mine. But now she's my sister!!!!!
Brian is the sweetest dad to his little Kiaya!
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Little Dancerella~
Isn't she so cute!
My little Tap Dancer!!!
Black Velvet
My friend, Kami, and my M.I.L., Valerie, talked me into taking a dance class at the college last semester. The girls Ballet teacher teaches adult ballet, tap, and jazz classes there. Valerie danced the Polar Express "Hot Chocolate" with the Tap class. We even got to dance in a number for the Holiday Dance Review!! Our dance number was to "Black Velvet" and was wickedly cool!! Maybe I'll figure out how to put it on youtube someday! It was so much fun to get all decked out for the stage again-like in High School but without the peer struggles!!! Kami had never performed like this before so she had a super fun blast!
Unfortunately I forgot my camera and didn't get a good picture of the whole class in our costumes, but this is me and Kami after the show in our elf hats we wore for the finale number.
After the show on the way home I had to immortalize the long lashes I wore. See the sparkles?? Thank goodness for post-Halloween costume sales!!! And thank you Valerie for the RED lipstick!! I can almost get away with it!
Allison sporting the other pair of lashes! She thought she was ready for a show, too! I wonder about that girl sometimes, but then this huge fashionista diva comes out and I know there is a girly girl in there somewhere!!
Unfortunately I forgot my camera and didn't get a good picture of the whole class in our costumes, but this is me and Kami after the show in our elf hats we wore for the finale number.
After the show on the way home I had to immortalize the long lashes I wore. See the sparkles?? Thank goodness for post-Halloween costume sales!!! And thank you Valerie for the RED lipstick!! I can almost get away with it!
Allison sporting the other pair of lashes! She thought she was ready for a show, too! I wonder about that girl sometimes, but then this huge fashionista diva comes out and I know there is a girly girl in there somewhere!!
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