The last 2 weeks

Well, I had a great weekend visit with  my family in Utah.  We had a really nice gathering for Grandma & Grandpa's birthdays and I had a great time reminiscing with my cousins and aunts and uncles.  Unfortunately I didn't remember to take pictures through the whole thing, so I don't have very many photos.  I posted them all on facebook, so sorry if this is a repeat.  We had tons of food, shared many memories, and lots of laughs.

After that quick and busy weekend, I came home to my family, spent a few hours with Mike and then he headed off to Oklahoma for the week.  I started teaching a beginning course in Digital Scrpbooking using Photoshop Elements.  I will be teaching the course once a week for 6 weeks.  I have had two classes so far and I think it is going really well.  I just hope the people in my class get what they need out of it.  Depending on how this class goes and the feedback I get from it, I am considering offering another session of the beginning class and maybe a second class that would dig in even deeper with the fun things you can do for scrapbooking in Elements.  I will also start advertising more generally if I do it again and try to get a bigger class.  I guess we will see how it goes.  I guess the best part is that I am enjoying the process of preparing for my classes and then walking through everything with my "students".  Maybe that is in my blood a bit, afterall, my dad has been teaching dentistry for around 30 years I think, and my brother teaches a couple of classes for the State College of Southern Nevada on filmography and editing (I think that's what he teaches, I should really ask him sometime to be sure).

Kaylee had a second surgery on her little finger on the 17th.  I am so glad we decided to go ahead with the surgery.  We were having her screws removed, and a clean up of scar tissue with the goal of improving her range of motion, which had been very limited since her first surgery in September last year. (despite weeks and weeks of physical therapy).  What the surgeon found when he opened her up was that her tendon was completely tied down by the scar tissue that had formed and there was no way she ever would have gotten that motion back without the surgery.  So he removed the screws (which were bigger than I ever would have expected) and released her tendon. So we are very glad we did it.  Today in therapy she actually got to a 90 degree bend, and that is just 8 days after surgery, and a huge improvement.  She is getting ready for track season to start on March 8th.  We are hoping she is ready.

Last Thursday, Tiffany had her last regular season Basketball game.  Her team won the game by just one point.  It was an intense game, bu they pulled it off in the end.  That leaves them undefeated for the season with a record of 8-0.  The team they beat ended up 6-2.  They will have the conference championships next weekend.  If all goes well, they will be the city champs for 6th grade basketball.  MOst of the girls on the team were also on their champion voleyball team too.  So that is really cool.  Then the week after the basketball championships Track season starts.  Tiffany plans to run and do the long jump.  We will see how that goes too.

Ryan had a birthday this week.  He turned 10.  I can hardly believe it. He is having his birthday party today with a few of his friends.  They are playing dart tag and Wii, having pizza, and cake and ice cream.  It should be fun.

Jake is enjoying school.  It makes me so happy to go to parent teacher conferences and hear how well he is doing.  Apparently he listens to his teacher much better than he does to me.  But I guess that is good in mnay ways. 

Kyle is learning to rollerblade with his brothers and is doing great. All of the boys have been spending time in the basement every day roller blading or riding their ripsticks for the last month.  They are working on a "Schools on the Move"challenge where they are supposed to log all there physical activities for the month of February.  IF they do a certain amount they get a free t-shirt.  It is so fun to watch them get so into this challenge.  It makes me happy because it gets them active in the winter when they tend to be less active normally.

Mike has had a long week away this week.  He left on Sunday and will just get home tonight (Friday).   We are happy to have him home for the weekend.

Well, that's it for now.

I'm going on a TRIP!!

Yes, I said I am going on a trip.  Just me!!!  I have been blessed with a wonderful husband who so understood my desire to be at the birthday party for my grandparents (gma 80 years and gpa 85 years) in Utah that even when it was determined that the whole family would not be able to go (that's a story I will get to in a minute) he made it possible for me to still go.  And even better, my trip will be virtually free since he was able to use his frequent flyer miles, and car rental certificates to get me free travel and car rental.

I am sad that my family will not be able to be there for the big event. But I am so glad that I can still go.  My dad and my brothers will all be up for the weekend too.  So it is sure to be a fun time. 

I was asked to create the invitation for the party and I did that a couple of weeks ago.  Here is what it looks like.

I am real happy with how it turned out.  Anyway, I am heading off early on Friday morning and will get back home on Monday morning.  The hard part with taking a weekend trip by myself is that Mike will get home late Thursday night and I will leave Friday, return Monday, and he will leave again Monday night.  So we won't get to see much of eachother this weekend while he is home.  Hopefully he will have some quality time with the kids in my absence.

Now as for why the family couldn't go on this trip.  Originally our plan was for the whole family to head out for the weekend trip.  We would leave Friday and return on Monday which is a school holiday.  It was perfect since it is a 3 day weekend.  Then came the letter from the school that Tiffany has missed 11 (yes i said ELEVEN) days of school so far this year.  It said she cannot miss any more days without a doctor's note.  AND, Kaylee has missed even more school.  She is up to 16 days now between her surgery, swine flu, and whatever this nasty virus was they all just got over.  Kaylee will also miss some school for her surgery on the 17th.  So Mike and I decided we just can't take them out of school for the Friday to make the trip.  It was a tough decision, but it feels right anyway.  The good things coming from the decision to stay home are; the girls can go to the school dance on Friday, Kaylee can go to her friend's birthday party Friday night, Tiffany can play in the school basketball game on Saturday, Mike can go watch her play in a basketball game (he misses most of them because they are on Wednesdays while he is gone), and Ryan can get his award for a poem he wrote on Saturday.  So there is good in the midst of it all.

Well, I am looking for a little weekend getaway and a visit with my granparents and extended family up in Ogden.  I am sure it will be a nice weekend.

A Little Facelift and Home Organization

I gave my blog a little facelift today.  It was time for some change!! 

So, I have been working on a whole house reorganization project over the last few months.  I found a great book called "House of Order Handbook- The Best Way to An Organized Life".  It has some great tips in it, that are really helping me to make some changes in our home.

The biggest problem is convincing the kids to help keep things organized.  I am sure it will settle in some time that if they put things away when they are done with them, the house will stay much neater eliminating the constant need to clean up. (which they hate to do of course)

One of the biggest changes I have made in my life and home is with organizing myself and my time.  I made a great spreadsheet calendar for the week.  I have divided my weekly household chores up so that each day I have some work to do.  The nice thing about this is that if I follow my schedule for the week, I never have to spend a whole day cleaning house and when the weekend comes and Mike is home, we don't have to spend that valuable time doing housework.  This has been a huge change for me and for the last 5 weeks I have poretty much followed my schedule.  I simply add in any appontments for the week and print up a new calendar each week and hang it on the magnet board above my desk.

I am sure this will be an never-ending project, but it is fun to see some of it working. 

Last week I cleaned out and organized the kitchen pantry.  It is so wonderful to have it neat and tidy, but I have to tell you what sparked that job.  We have been having a bit of trouble keeping Jacob out of the food.  He is a little sneak and is constantly sneaking into the pantry and cupboards to get snacks.  He is starting to pack on a few extra pounds, and we need to do something to eliminate the in between meal snacking. So we decided to buy an alarm for the pantry door.  In order for this to be successful, I had to make sure all the food was in the pantry, so I had to reorganize, clean up and move extra stuff from the cupboards into the pantry.  The good news is, I think it is working.  I can hear anytime the pantry door is opened (the alarm is annoying too) and I can deter him from getting anything extra to eat.  I hope this works, because the next step is to actually put a lock on the pantry door and I really don't want to have to do that.

Anyway, I guess I better be going.  I'm not sure what the next project will be, probably organizing the food storage in the basement.  Yippee!

The month of January

This past month has been pretty rough for our family.  We have had so much sickness in our home.  It started off with Kyle the beginning of January.  (following his illnesses during the holidays) He had high fevers, and headache for about a week.  The next week was Kaylee's turn, she was home from school for 3.5 days with high fever and headache.  Then came Ryan, he had a little bit different time of it.  He still had the headaches and fever, but he also had stomache ache and vomiting.  He was home from school for 3 days. Next came Tiffany home for an entire week with headaches, fever, and vomitting.  Now, this week is Jacob's turn and he has been home for 2.5 days with headaches, fever, chills, and vomiting.  Yuck!!  I sure hope we are through with it and we don't start a second round through the kids.

Thankfully (knock on wood) I have not been sick.  I have cleaned carpets twice though and there has been plenty to do in the care of the kids when they have been home in addition to my whole house organization project that is moving forward, if rather slowly, and all the normal everyday household chores.  I am working towards teaching a digital scrapbooking class.  I am still working out all the details, but I am hoping to start it later this month if I can get enough ladies interested in taking the class.  It will be 6 weeks with one 1.5 hour class per week for $40.  I will teach the basics of how to create digital layouts along with some of the styles and techniques I have found useful over the years.  If you would be interested in taking my class, and live close by, let me know.

Mike continues to travel.  He has been leaving on Sunday afternoons and getting home on Thursday nights.  Last week he got caught in a bad ice storm down in Lawton.  His apartment lost power, his flight got cancelled for coming home, the airport remained closed the next day, and he ended up driving 3 hours to Dallas on Friday in order to get home.  He was home for less than 48 hours and was on his way back again.  He is working hard and the job is in full swing.  He is at least happy to be working even if it is far away.

Tiffany started playing basketball.  She missed her first game because she was sick, but she was able to play today and had a great game.  The team has won both of their games so far and is looking good for the city championships next month.  We will see how the rest of the season goes.  Tiff is pulling straight A's this year and is loving Middle School.

Kaylee has been working very hard.  She took an afterschool position to work as the school wrestling team manager.  She is in charge of the team equipment, records, weigh ins, etc.  She is doing a great job and the coach told me she is one of the best managers he has ever had.  She is still pulling straight A's despite missing tons of school this year.  I think she has missed almost 15 days.  Yikes.  Like I said this winter has been really rough on our family.  We found out this week that Kaylee will be having a second surgery on her pinky finger.  (more school to miss) She still has very limited range of motion so the surgeron is going to go in and remover her screws and scrape out the scar tissue.  The hope is that she will be able to start moving it sooner this time around since we don't have to worry so much about the bone healing so hopefully she won't form so much scar tissue.  This should increase her range of motion and hopefully get her back to 100% just in time for track season followed by conditioning for the high school volleyball team.

Ryan, Jacob, and Kyle just finished their wrestling club season.  They had a lot of fun and by the time the season was ending, they finally figured out what they were supposed to be doing.  Ryan and Jake had their pinewood derby last week.  They both designed and pretty much built their cars themselves.  They had a little bit of help from mom and dad, but they did the majority of the work.  The derby was so much fun.  They had a blast watching their cars run the races.  Ryan ended up taking 4th place and got the Blue Streal award and Jacob ended up in 6th place and took the Tricked out Truck award.  Here are a couple of pics of them with their cars.

The boys are all doing well and are loving school. 

So in the last 2 weeks I have taken on and pretty much completed a fun project.  I have redecorated Kaylee's room.  She had been complaining that her room was so "BORING".  I agree, it was, since we had done nothing to it since moving in to this house 2.5 years ago.  She had a very specific idea of what she wanted so I ended up making a quilt for her bed, since we couldn't find this color combo in any of the stores.  I also built a platform bed and headborad, made pillows, refinshed and painted her nightstand, covered a lamp shade, refinished a shelf to coordinate, and painted some decor items to match as well. We are still contemplating repainting her dresser and vanity/desk black to match. It was super fun.  Here are the results.

Next project (some time in the next couple of months) will be Tiffany's room .  Of course we also would like to get busy framing in some portions of the basement too.  I guess we will see how it goes.  Well, I guess that is about all for now. 

Jacob's Baptism

I am a little bit later than I had planned posting about this, but we had a very wonderful day on January 2nd.  Jacob was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  We had a wonderful service where talks were given by Kaylee, and by my dad.  And then, Jacob was baptized and confirmed a member of the church by his dad.  We were so happy to be joined by family and friends for his special day and we are so proud of Jacob for making the choice to be baptized. After the service we had a great lunch at our house with all the family members who were in town.  My dad and Kay came from Las Vegas for the weekend, and Mike's sister Teresa and her family were here from Utah for the weekend.  It was a very special day!!!  It is hard for me to believe that we will just have one more baptism in our family.  The children are all growing so fast!

Wow has it really been that long...

Since my last post...

-Mike moved in to his apartment in Oklahoma where he will be living Sunday night through Thursday night each week while he is working down there.

-Tiffany turned 12. I don't seem to have any pictures from that though.

-I had a NEW MOON Girls Night out with my friends.  It was a total blast!!!

-We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with Mike's parents, his sister Kari and her family and his sister Debbie and her family from California.

-Made candy with mom Sims, Kari and Tammy.  It was a full day with lots of chocolate and fun times for all.

-Kaylee had a birthday. She turned 14, had a big party and a great time!!

-The boys had their Holiday Concert for school.

-Mike's company party took the two of us to Colorado Springs for the party and a night away without the kids.  It was so relaxing!

-I turned 38...did I really just say that? Ugh I am sooo old!

-We attended the ward Christmas Party where we were asked to perform a skit as a family.  Each of us was given a character of some sort and had to act out the story as it was being told completely impromptu.  Jacob was a dog in the skit and true to his nature, he crawled around the stage lifting his leg as a dog would to pee on everything in sight.  Despite being completely humiliated as a mother I was quickly able to see the humor in the situation and was so glad when others from the audience told me how cute they thought it was. Once again I found myself saying "Oh Jacob!!"

-Tiffany made the 6th grade varsity basketball team. Practices start after the holiday break.  Go Wildcats!

-Kaylee, Ryan and Jacob went snowboarding for the first time. I wasn't there so there are unfortunately no pictures of this great day.  BUMMER!

-The girls had their middle school Choir concert.

-We had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day celebrations and big meals.  Christmas Eve we had Kari and Deron and Deron's parents Craig and Linda over for dinner and festivities.  We even had a special guest stop in with presents for everyone.  It was so much fun.  We had a big dinner of ham and potatoes with all the extra goodies.  On Christmas day we had a big fried turkey dinner with all the fixings.  We had a great Christmas!!

-We went sledding/practice snowboarding at the hill at the park.  All the kids got some fun practice snowboards for Christmas.  Even Kyle was snowboarding down the hill.  It was so much fun!!!

-We had Jacob's 8th birthday.  I can't believe he is 8 years old.  WOW the time flies!!

-And we rang in a new year with Mike's parents and his sister Teresa and her family and Pete and his family. Hooray for 2010.  Hopefully it will be a good year. ( and maybe I will be better about blogging than I have been the last few months)

-Mike spent almost two full weeks at home with us.  It was great!!!

Halloween and More

We had a big snow storm last week. On Wednesday it snowed about a foot here in Loveland. It was awesome. The kids had a couple days off of school for Parent Teacher Onferences and had lots of fun playing in the snow. We even went sledding on Friday. The temperatures have gone back up and it has been really nice this week. All of the snow has melted and for the first time in several years, we had great weather for Halloween. Usually it snows or rains and is very cold for Halloween. This year, I guess the snow just came a bit early.

Here are some pics of the kids from Halloween.

My Blue Man Group

Little Red Riding Hood

Pics of Kaylee coming soon.

The kids had a great time Trick-or-Treating. They got way more candy than we need. I am trying to spread it out so they don't rot their teeth out of their mouths. They only get a couple of pieces a day and they are handling that pretty well.

We woke up on Halloween to a mess in the front of our house. One of Kaylee's friends got us good!! Silly string, crepe paper streamers, toilet paper, paper shreds, confetti, post it notes, and so much more. Someone was very busy and I have no idea how we never heard them. I will say that I was very grateful the two boys came and washed off the residue from the silly string from my front door.

The boys all started wrestling last week. It is so fun to watch them. Kyle is doing great. He is such a little scrapper. This week, he was paired up with a little boy his size who was really mean. They were practicing take downs and Kyle did his take down and every time Kyle took him down, the other boy cried. Yet when it was the other boy's turn, he took Kyle down and beat the crap out of him (illegally) by punching him in the face, kicking him in the crotch, and jumping on him. Kyle was really good and did not retaliate, that made me proud. Jake is learning how it all works and because he is so strong he is often the last one left in the circle when they play a game called push out. They all try to push everyone else out of the circle. He's a tough guy. Ryan is doing well also. He is learning the moves and is doing quite well with his take downs too. I will have to get some pictures of them wrestling to post later.

The girls are staying really busy too. Tiffany just started a new session of Volleyball. SHe is excited to keep up her schools and work hard to prepare for next season. Kaylee is still doing physical therapy on her finger. It is healing nicely and hopefully soon she will have full range of motion again.

The kids brought home their report cards last week and it was so wonderful to see their grades. 4 of the kids get letter grades (Kyle doesn't in Kindergarten) and on those 4 report cards, it was all A's and only 3 B's. I was amazed and so proud of all their hard work. Kyle's marks were very good too and he is doing great in kindergarten.

Mike moved into his new apartment in Oklahoma this week. It is weird to think of the fact that my husband has a separate residence in another state. But it will be so nice for him to not have to stay in hotels all the time anymore. He will be working there for about a year so it makes sense for him to set up a more permanent residence, even if it is temporary. We sure miss him when he is away, but have settled into our own routine and we are managing okay without him. He makes it home every Friday and heads back to work on Monday mornings. He is hoping that it will be a Monday thru Thursday thing in Oklahome soon so he can have 3 days home with us.

As for me, I stay busy enough with the kids, house, homework, etc., etc., but I have opened up a new card shop online. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out here. I am doing custom photo cards. You choose from any of my card styles, send me your photos, pick your font and sentiment and I create your card for you. Then I send you the jpeg file and you take it to get printed. Here is a sample of one of my favorites.

Also for any Twilight fans, only 15 more days until New Moon. Yippee!! I can't wait. I am heading to see the movie with a bunch of my girlfriends. We are all getting special shirts for the occasion. Speaking of shirts, I have some new shirts in my t-shirt shop, you can check out my t-shirt shop here. There are some great Twilight and New Moon shirts for your movie night!

Well, I think that is about all for now.