How Did This Happen?

I remember before school started, I was thinking, "maybe when some of the kids go back to school, and things calm down, maybe we'll try potty training with Bridget." Ha. Ha ha ha. Since school started, my days have gotten SO busy. It's true that sometimes things are quieter at home, with the girls both in regular school and Reilly at Prenda from 8-12 every weekday, but things have not calmed down. I feel like I spend SO much time in the car. Even though Jeremy takes and picks Reilly up maybe half of the time, that is a 10-15 minute drive twice a day some days, plus Jaina has to go early (7:30) on Tuesdays and Thursdays for orchestra, and stays after for an hour+ on those same days because of band. Jaina and Katy both have Activity Days twice a month, as well as musical theater on Thursday evenings. Reilly has piano lessons once a week. I have scouts Wednesday nights. Shawn is going to pre-school M-W, (which he LOVES) and until very recently, it's been too warm to want to walk him over, so that's two more car trips. Bridget is getting slightly better at riding around in her seat, but she's still not a fan. On top of all that, Reilly just turned 12 (what???) and went to Mutual for the first time Wednesday. He didn't get home until like 9 o'clock! (He's usually in bed before then) He had a great time, of course. I don't feel like anyone is over-scheduled (except maybe Jaina with her double music involvement) but that is a whole lot of stuff! How did this happen? It's just a little crazy...

Since I last wrote, lots of fun things have gone on. Most notably, I went to Hawaii for just over a week, and spent time with my parents, and Phil and Emily and their spouses. That was amazing, and Jeremy is completely awesome for pushing me to do it and keeping all the kids (as well as trying to work some) as I was gone. Jeremy took Reilly (and then also Jaina and Katy the next day, after they'd been at Bearizona for a cousin's birthday) to the Grand Canyon. They had a great time doing that! I forgot to mention that earlier, in July, we went to the cabin for the 4th of July, which was crazy. It was so nice to be up there again though, and see it safe with my own eyes after all the crazy fires last summer. Also, Jaina and I just got back from a really fun mother/daughter trip to Disneyland for Mickey's Halloween Party.

Jeremy and Katy are currently gone to Utah, where they will be attending two sessions of conference. Katy has been pretty excited for this trip! They won't be back until Monday or Tuesday. October Break starts on Monday, and we don't have any plans... I guess we'll see what happens! (My kids aren't very impressed with my lack of activities lined up for them, or whatever they think I should have done...) Here's a picture of Bridget, just because she's super cute, and talking like crazy these days, just a few months over 2. :)

Summer wrap-up and School Start

The last few weeks of summer weren't boring. We had a huge rainstorm or two right at the first of August, which were really fun, but weren't good for all the repairs happening on our house. There had also been a handyman restoring some wood stuff on the back of the addition recently. He finished a few days before the big storm, but when it happened, the whole back addition started leaking like crazy! I was actually at the store when it happened, and when I walked in the door, water was streaming off the top of our built in storage cupboards under the window. And the older kids were there watching TV, and totally oblivious. Nothing much was ruined, but it was really a mess. I had to call the handyman that had done the work and ask "what the heck happened?" He had finished it that week! He said sometimes the sealant just doesn't seal, and promised to be there the next day to fix it. Slight eyeroll, but I'm grateful for that way-more-than-usual storm that pointed out the problem so impressively, because a slow leak from normal rain might not have been detected so easily. We haven't had any issue with it yet, thankfully. However, with that same rain, we also had a lot more leaking in the bathroom that we could see. We were thankful we hadn't had someone come to redo the drywall and texturing already! We might not have seen the leaking there, or it might have been ruined. Little blessings in disguise. The roof people came back to try again too, and decided maybe it was leaking around the drainpipe. Fun times!

At the same time as they were trying to work on our kids' bathroom, our toilet suddenly stopped working. The drain in the shower /toilet had been randomly backing up for months, but always worked itself out eventually. Not this time. At which time our other toilet was sitting out back, completely disconnected. More fun times! We ended up using the bathrooms over at the church a couple times that day, (thankfully Jeremy had a key) while two plumbers worked for like 5 hours. And they couldn't fix it. They put the other toilet back on for us to use over the weekend and had to come back Monday. But we had no shower during that time period. Thankfully Phil and Sophie were kind enough to let us shower at their house. It took another 6-8 hours (and a $1200 bill) and a bunch of different snakes and router things before they finally got it working again. They didn't know what the problem was, except maybe the cast iron plumbing had built up a lot of corrosion and things were getting stuck on their way through. They also discovered one of the copper pipes behind the toilet (they had opened up the wall to try to figure out what was up) basically fell apart when the pushed on it. Here's hoping if it has lots of friends, that they don't give up the ghost until after we're out of this house... Every once in a while the shower/toilet still backs up a little. I pray it continues to work itself out, because I don't want it to cost our landlady any more hundreds of dollars, and I don't want us to have to deal with it again!

The bathroom did eventually get drywalled, taped, and textured, and I spent a lot of a week (I'm not very fast, since I've never done it before) painting both bathrooms. It's not perfect, but it looks a whole lot better than it did, and it's so nice to have two working bathrooms.

School started on the 9th, which was a little crazy. Reilly is homeschooling again this year, and going to Eagleridge (a homeschool enrichment program) on Wednesdays. It's kind of nice to have him home for the most part, since it gives me a touch more flexiblity if I need to run somewhere for a few minutes while Bridget is asleep, or leave him and Shawn watching a movie for a bit while Bridget and I run somewhere. He loves Eagleridge and enjoys going there. The girls are still at Franklin and enjoying it. We have been lucky to get great teachers so far! (Shawn's sign lies - he hasn't actually been interested in almost any preschool work so far, though he already knows his alphabet and most of his numbers somehow...

And a few more pictures, just for fun.

Is School Starting Yet?

I don't remember feeling this way last year. Maybe I did, who knows. All I know is that I'm really looking forward to the kids all getting to go to their own separate classrooms and have someone else answer their questions for part of the day. I feel bad even saying that, but there has been so much sibling rivalry around here the last few weeks, and I feel like I'm constantly refereeing. So I'm excited to get a bit more of a break from that. And I think they'll be excited, too. We've done quite a few things this summer, and they've had a lot of fun. It's okay to get back to the school schedule. Did I mention this little angel is starting half-day kindergarten?

I'm not sure which of us is more excited. :) Hopefully she'll be good and love it. Reilly will be going into 3rd grade, and Jaina into 2nd. So for a few hours each morning, Shawn and I will be on our own! A little bit crazy...

We got a trial run of it this weekend. After all the traveling last week, Shawn kind of started hating to be in his car seat (though he still likes to -go- places and always gets in happily). After about 10-15 minutes he starts fussing, and then crying, and won't sleep more than 20 minutes in the car, and basically is super difficult and refuses to be distracted by snacks, movies, or toys. So our Colorado trip which we had planned was starting to sound a little more like torture and stress than fun and excitement to me. Jeremy pointed out that I could actually stay home with Shawn, and it would save us all some stress (and some money, since one hotel room would work, and since they could take the little hybrid instead of our van). And I fought the idea, because I wanted to go, but then it started sounding really good to not spend 16 hours (round trip) in the car so soon after all the other traveling.
So they left Thursday, and Shawn and I didn't. He missed his siblings a lot, and I had to entertain him a lot more than I usually did. We had to get out of the house a lot. There were moments I wondered if it was actually a break for me or not. But then we'd drive somewhere and he'd start his fussing thing, and I was so grateful I wasn't on that trip! I only had to listen to it for 5 and 10 minutes at a time instead of hours...
And we did have fun. We went to the mall at the same time everyone else left (because he was upset everyone was getting ready to leave and he wasn't - he was unimpressed when I put him in a different car than them, though!) and he had a blast at the play area, playing on the "rides," and then sharing Panda Express with me. He loves Panda Express. :)

Friday we mostly hung out at home in the morning, then in the late afternoon went to see our friends' new house. I helped a little tiny bit with the unpacking and Shawn explored all their toys and yard and new rooms. And their furniture.

That evening I had a couple friends over for a craft/project/movie night, which was fun, and which motivated me to do some cleaning and picking up after a couple days of Shawn and I roughing it. :)
Saturday morning we went to Walmart to play with the toys and pick up some pictures I wanted for my painting endeavor, then we went to IHOP to use my birthday coupon for free pancakes. We split a stack of Harvest Grain 'n Nut, 2 eggs and 2 sausages, and Shawn ate every bit of his half. He loves breakfast foods, and especially when we're at restaurants. It was like a 20 minute wait, which he was not impressed with that close to naptime. Thankfully my server took our order very quickly and brought out the eggs and sausage within just a few minutes when I asked, so we didn't have any meltdowns. Once we got seated, we were in and out in like 25 minutes I think. A far cry from our experience at another IHOP a couple weeks ago! Saturday evening after dinner we hit the Goodwill (it was half off day) and found a few new toys for Shawn (he had been obsessed with this popper at Wal-mart earlier that day), a few jeans and shirts for the girls, and a gymnastics leotard for Jaina. (She has decided to take a break from dance and see what she thinks of tumbling this year.)

Over all, it was really nice to have a break from my normal life. I got to work on a family scrapbook I'm trying to get done, and also a painting I want to get done in the next month or two, and I didn't have to cook for the better part of 4 days. There was still way more that needed to be done around the house than one would hope for on a "vacation," and I had to get pretty creative trying to entertain Shawn, but even the break from constantly having to play referee with our older 3, and be on top of them before they drive each other crazy was nice.

They had a great time too, both in Colorado (Cortez/Mancos area) and stopping in Joseph City at Jason and Emily's house both ways. It was a great little road trip for them to do with their dad, and I understand that they listened to the entirety of "The Phantom Tollbooth" during their trip, as well. :)

But today, when they were back, it took me some time to re-adjust to the constant arguing, and discussing, and tattling, and just noise that accompanies children of their age and temperament. Thankfully we were meeting up with some people at the Riverview Splashpad, which helped to break up the morning. But when we got back, after we managed to feed everyone lunch, I said we were going to have "Quiet Time" (which we often use more as a consequence for children who are continually difficult and seem like they "need more rest") while Shawn napped. But since it was more because I needed it than I did, I told them they could watch a movie while they did it, as long as they lay down and pretended they were asleep. It says a lot about my mental state that I searched "longest Disney movies" when I was trying to pick what they were going to watch. My search was inconclusive, but a quick comparison of the times helped me settle on "The Incredibles" as today's winner. Weighing in at 115 minutes, it did lead to some needed calm in our house this afternoon.