Still Looking . . .

So we went on Friday and met the girl from the dog rescue group in Temecula.  She brought the dog, "Rambler," that I wrote about last week.  He seemed like a nice dog, and he was very cute.  He and Brax got along great too.  And the kids liked him.  But he must have been abused by whoever owned him before he ended up at the shelter, because he was very fearful.  And we realized that he was very afraid of any loud noises or quick movements. So although it may have worked out in the long run, we decided that a dog with a fear of loud noises and sudden movements just wasn't the best idea for a home with five active young children.  We talked about it, and decided to keep looking for a different dog that would fit better with our family.  And we hope that that sweet dog finds a good, quiet home soon.  So, for now, we're still searching.

Speaking of phones . . .

So, Michael got his new phones.  You know what that means -- we get to get another dog now too.  We're looking at this one at a labrador rescue.  He was a stray, but they think he's a lab/mastiff mix.  We're going to go do a "meet and greet" with the person who is fostering him for the rescue group in about a week.  So we'll see, maybe he'll be the dog for us . . .

Test Post

Well, Michael finally got his iPhone that he's been waiting for for so long.  (About a year ago we had agreed that we should probably wait until we got moved into our new house before getting new phones and getting a second dog).  We got the new phones the other day and I have to admit that I am enjoying having a calendar on my phone (yeah- no more carrying around a planner in my purse).  

And although I thought that Siri (the voice recognition) was unnecessary, it happened to come with the phones that we got, and I've actually been using it a lot. It makes it a lot easier to compose emails and things than having to type everything out by hand. (Not that I'm complaining about the typing, because the keyboard on this new phone is so much easier than my old phone that I had to punch every number three times to get to each letter when typing a text).  The other nice thing about these phones is that the reception is great, on our old Virgin Mobile phones it was so bad that you often couldn't understand what people were saying which was a pain.

So I thought I'd try out the Google blog app on the phone and see how it works.  The reviews for the app said that it works pretty well for writing basic posts and adding photos. So this is my test post and I used Siri to "write" it.  

 And here are some random photos from my phone from the last couple of days:

(If this little blog app works well, then that would make it a lot more convenient to post things to the blog here and there.  Of course I still have quite a few posts to catch up on with photos and videos that I still need to upload from our digital camera, but once I get all caught up on those I can probably use the phone to add quick blog posts lots of the time.  Maybe that would help me to be better at keeping up on the blog more regularly too).

Who knows, maybe I could even get Michael to use his phone to add to the blog too.   :)

Moved In

Just a quick update: We moved, we love our new place and it’s starting to feel like home as we’re getting unpacked.  We have done quite a bit of unpacking, cleaning, and organizing so far, but we still have the living room and dining room piled with boxes, not to mention the garage and our bedroom.  But the “play room” (the downstairs bedroom) is clean and we’re getting all the toys organized as we continue to unpack them – it’s fun to see how excited the boys get as they rediscover their toys that they haven’t seen in about a year (because even before we moved from our house in New York I packed up most everything in an effort to de-clutter when we staged our house, so it’s been a while).  I found a cute, bright yellow shower curtain for the boys’ bathroom and happened to find matching towels, so I guess we can say the bathrooms are unpacked.  And we’ve gotten the boys’ bedrooms unpacked and organized – all we need is one more dresser and we’re all set for the kids’ furniture.  There is one average sized bedroom where Kolby and Lijah share a set of bunk beds, and the other larger kids’ bedroom has two bunk beds that we got for a good deal – and I think they turned out really cute.  And eventually we’ll get around to painting the bedrooms too, just so Kolby and Lijah don’t have to have a pink bedroom forever.

Thanks, Matthew, for helping Michael and me to assemble the bunk beds late the night before we moved everything into the house.  And a big thank you to Dad, Matthew, Aaron, and our friends from church who helped us move all the boxes from our storage unit and my parents’ house, and to Mom who watched the boys for us all day while we were moving things, and then came over and helped me do a deep clean of the kitchen at the new house!

On the down side, we were excited to find a full sized fridge on craigslist to use in our garage, until we bought it, brought it back here, spent a long time thoroughly cleaning it out, turned it on, and filled it with food, before we realized that it was actually a freezer and not a fridge.  Pretty frustrating, but fortunately the guy who sold it to use did take it back and refunded us our money so we can put that toward another attempt at a garage fridge.  On the up side, we got a couple of dog doors and had them installed on Friday, with the idea that now Brax can go outside when he needs to, although we’re still working on training him with the dog doors – Brax seems to think that he needs permission to go through the dog doors, so sometimes we find him sitting in the garage in front of the door waiting to come inside.  But he’ll get used to it, I’m sure.  The other thing I’ve had to adjust to is that fact that we have dark floors in this house.  I always wanted dark wood floors, and this house happens to also have dark brown carpet upstairs, which will be great for not showing up every little spot from the kids, but not so great with a yellow lab that sheds light-colored fur.  So, we made the decision that Brax doesn’t go upstairs in this house so we can spare the carpet.  And every piece of fur shows up on the dark wood floors, but I was able to fix our vacuum and I picked up a couple of things like swiffer sweepers, except they are Rubbermaid brand and they have a reusable cleaning pad that can be washed so you don’t have to throw away the cleaning pad every time.  I assigned the two oldest boys to use those sweepers on the entire downstairs each once a day as their chores (which they think is fun, at least for now), and has really helped with the dog fur in the house.  Fortunately for Brax we’re pretty attached to him, so we’ll just have to put up with the shedding.  

It’s been fun unpacking – finding places for things and getting organized.  Although we’re realizing it’s a lot harder to move during the school year than in the summer time, just because we still have so much stuff to do every day with getting the kids to and from school and activities that I’ve got less time to unpack than I’d like.  So it may take a little longer before all the boxes are gone, but we’re making progress.  And I think we’re starting to feel settled.  And the boys are really loving being able to walk to and from school, play with friends in the neighborhood, play in the back yard, go to the neighborhood pools and parks, and enjoy their toys and games in the play room.  And it’s been fun to be near family too.  Like last night after Aaron had his Eagle Scout Court of Honor, we went over to my parents’ house for dinner and I decided to take Brax and run over there from our house to meet up with everyone (Brax and I both needed the exercise).  It’s nice to be close enough to do that.  And we had Jennie and Dalin over last week for some swimming and pizza.  (We told Taelin that once we unpack and find the rest of the sheets, the extra bunk bed in Camden's, Isaac's, and Courtland's room can be for him to sleep over).  :)  So much fun!

Well, I’d better go get a few more boxes unpacked before dinner time.  More to come later – and some pictures too – maybe once we get some more of these boxes out of the way.

Little Runner

Lijah loves to run!  At school they have running club 2 days a week during recess, which means that the kids can choose to run laps around the track.  Every 4 laps equal a mile.  Then to motivate the kids each trimaester they have an assembly and award the kids with a little ribbon each time they pass the 5 mile mark. Kolby and Lijah both enjoy running club, and have fun comparing how many laps they each run on running club days.  But Lijah especially really seems to love running.  Here's a little clip from his teacher's weekly class newsletter e-mail:

Running Club Success!!!! I am so very proud of all my terrific runners in Room ___! On Friday afternoon every child was on stage with me earning a Running Ribbon! Together (including me and Miss Veihl) we have logged 1,074 miles since September!!! We had several students receive their 70 mile ribbon! I earned my 20 mile ribbon and can't wait to earn my marathon shirt! We have so many talented runners. I love seeing their enthusiasm as they jog with me around the track. A big pat on the back to Elijah B for logging the most miles so far at 78 miles!! I know there are several students right on his heels!

Dining Table

I have been trying to figure out what the best plan would be for a dining room table, because we decided we'd really like a table long enough to seat our family and have room for guests too, and our old table only seats 6 (Courtland was still in a high chair when we got that table) so it just doesn't really cut it anymore.  I've seen this table at a store called World Market, and I really like it a lot.  I love the idea of a long pedestal/trestle table with two benches for the long sides, and a couple of pretty chairs at either end:

Although this one is only about the same size as the table we have now, so it's not nearly as long as I'd like (yes, it does have two leafs that fit in on either end, although those still wouldn't make it as long as I'd like, plus I don't think leaves that stick out on the ends would hold up over time with kids leaning on them, plus the bench would only be the length of the table, not the table + the leaves -- so anyway, this table has the look I like, it just doesn't quite fit all our needs).

So then there's this table, from Restoration Hardware (I'm pretty sure this table is probably the inspiration for the other one from World Market).  This table comes in several different lengths that would be long enough for us, but there aren't matching benches and the finish of the reclaimed wood is really pretty, but it looks to be raw wood without a stain or any finish, so I can't imagine how you'd clean it if the kids ever spilled a glass of milk or anything on it.  Plus it's thousands of dollars, just for the table (and then you'd still have to find chairs/benches).

So I was just looking on Google Images for pictures of trestle tables to get some ideas, and I cam across this one that they built on This Old House, and it looks so cool:

It gives all the details about how to build it, step by step, on the website here: http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/how-to/intro/0,,20438427,00.html  And the coolest thing is this is something I could actually do.  The legs are made up of newel posts (like the post at the base of a hand rail on a stairway in a cool old house), with corbels at the bottom, and the support beam across the middle is just a hand rail like you might attach to a wall next to stairs.  I'm totally going to build us a dining room table!  Picture this one in their picture, except about 8 or 9 feet long and with a dark wood stain instead of paint.  I'm so excited!  Guess I'll wait until we actually get moved into the house first, but I'm so excited to do this.

Traffic School

So, I did it.  I got a speeding ticket a few weeks ago.  (Yes, this may be a shock to anyone who has driven with me and had to endure my usual slow driving).  It was in the morning, in between dropping Camden off at his school and taking the other boys to their school.  But I wasn’t even in a rush.  We had left the house and dropped of Camden in plenty of time, and we were just making our way to the other school.  The boys and I were listening to an audio book and I just didn’t pay attention.  So I was surprised and frustrated with myself when I saw a police officer signaling me over to the side of the road and I realized my mistake.  I had been driving 5 miles under the speed limit.  Unfortunately for me, it was on a road near a middle school, and even thought I was going under the speed limit, I wasn’t going slow enough for a school zone.  Aargh! 

Michael has taken advantage of this opportunity to give me a hard time about my speeding and the cost of the ticket (I guess he’s conveniently forgotten about the time that he rear-ended a car right after we moved here).   :)   But I figure it’s only a matter of time until I’ll have a chance to tease Michael about a speeding ticket someday too (we both know that I generally drive slower than he does) – and no one can spend too much time on the road and avoid getting a ticket forever.  [Although, in my defense, I’d say the more time you spend driving the more likely you are to have an accident.  And since I would guess I spend an average of about 11 hours driving per week (on the weekdays) and Michael only spends about 6 hours a week, then logically I should be allowed nearly double the traffic tickets he gets without any extra teasing, right?  Sure, that makes sense, just take my word for it].

Anyway, when I got the ticket I found out that you can pay a little more and take traffic school to avoid the ticket going on your driving record and increasing your insurance costs.  So today I finally decided to stop beating around the bush and get it over with.  I spent several hours today reading through the wordy text in the online traffic school courses (the DMV requires all traffic school courses to include a minimum word count, so apparently that means that the text needs to be excessively repetitive, use longer phrases than necessary to explain simple things, and occasionally even throw in extra random words that don’t fit in the sentences just for good measure).  And for some reason, the traffic school that I chose from the list of approved schools has text that mostly makes sense, but just doesn’t quite sound right, almost like it was translated from a foreign language or something.  It keeps using the word “learnt,” but don’t worry – I looked it up to make sure, and “learnt” is a real word, it’s just the British form of “learned.”

And then some of this stuff is just downright dumb.  For example, I learned that according to the traffic school course, “More children are killed in car collisions than in any other type of collision.”  [Really, ya think?  I would have guessed more children were killed in helicopter collisions.]  I’ve read entire sections about the difference between road rage and aggressive driving, I’ve seen the same picture of a car’s blind spots 4 different times so far (and I’m only on section 8 out of 11 so far), I’ve re-memorized the legal alcohol drinking limit just because I knew I’d be quizzed on that one – even though I’ve never had a drink in my life and I never will, and I’ve learned some very important facts that I didn’t know before.  For example, I learned that “sharrow” is the name for the markings on the roads that mean you need to share the traffic lane with bicyclists (this is different than a bike lane).  No, the incredibly helpful traffic school course did not show a picture so we would know what a sharrow is, but fortunately it told us the name of a sharrow and then quizzed us to make sure we never forget the name of this marking. 

By the way, these are what sharrow markings look like – thank you, Google Images.

Anyway, as you can probably tell, I’m actually just postponing finishing the last few sections of the traffic school by taking the time to write this, because if I don’t take a little break I might go crazy from reading for the 87^th time that the highest cause of collisions is speeding and the second highest cause is drunk driving (or if I didn’t take a break, at least I might have fallen asleep while reading the driving facts, again). 

I guess that’s one good reason never, ever, ever to break any traffic laws – besides the fact that it might not be safe, tickets cost money, it’s not a very good example for the kids to see their mom get a ticket, and apparently you can avoid being teased by your spouse if you have a perfect driving record – surely no one who has ever had to endure traffic school would do anything to have to go through that again. 

[Ok, seriously, it’s really not all that bad.  Just a waist of a perfectly good day that I actually didn’t have anything big planned except getting kids back and forth to school so I could have spent that time doing something, anything, more enjoyable than traffic school.]

Good News

Good news!  Camden hasn’t had any more stomach problems at all since I posted our concerns about a possible allergy a few days ago.  We contacted the pediatrician, she asked me to keep a running list of all the foods he ate, when he had stomach pain, when he had skin reactions, and when he used the restroom and then to come in for an appointment on Friday.  But since then his stomach hasn’t hurt at all, and he did have hives the following day, but no more skin problems since then.  So I’m just crossing my fingers that whatever it was, he is over it for good.  I think we dodged the bullet on this one – I really didn’t want to have to add cooking for a child with a food allergy to my ‘to do’ list.  Don’t know what caused the problems he was having last week and earlier this week, but hopefully whatever it was is done with (and luckily apparently whatever it was wasn’t contagious, knock on wood, since the other boys all seem fine).  We’re pretty blessed!

Food Allergy?

So, our 6 year old son, Camden, suddenly started having a bad pain in his stomach 4 or 5 days ago.  It comes and goes, so he will be acting totally fine, and then later he will be crying in pain for quite a while.  He says it hurts on the inside, and it's also sensitive to the touch.  Sometimes it is after he eats, and sometimes it's just in the middle of the day or he will wake up in the night crying.  And it’s pretty bad – the poor little guy just sits and cries, and refuses to eat or drink while this is happening (and for those of you who know Camden, you know that refusing to eat means he’s seriously not feeling well).  He hasn't thrown up, had a fever, or diarrhea – just the pain in his stomach.  Oh, and it’s just Camden – none of his brothers have been sick at all, so it’s not very likely that it’s something contagious.  

I would think it was just some GI bug, but on Saturday the front of his ankles and tops of his feet were bright red and looked like a bad sunburn (but he had previously had on jeans, socks, and shoes so we knew he wasn't burnt), then that went away.  Then Sunday his face looked puffy, especially his cheeks and under his eyes.  And this afternoon his face looks a little red with small dots, possibly like hives.  I asked Michael what could cause stomach pain and skin problems, and he said maybe it’s a food allergy.

We keep waiting to see if maybe he’s just sick and he’s going to get over it.  (And he had last week off of school for spring break and his school has this week off too, so we don’t have to worry about him missing out or anything).  I thought maybe he was getting better yesterday because last night he slept all night without crying or coming in to sleep in our room for the first time in 4 nights.  But then today I took Kolby for a doctor’s checkup and Camden went with my mom to institute and then they went out to lunch afterward, and after lunch my mom called to tell me he was crying and crying in the car.  They came home, and he calmed down after a while.  And now he’s acting totally fine again.  But now I’m wondering if it really is a food allergy.  The idea makes me sad for Camden – the idea that he may always have to be careful about finding out what ingredients are in foods at home, friends’ houses, and restaurants for the rest of his life.  And it could make it harder to plan meals for the family.  Of course we’ll do what we need to do to fix this problem for Camden, but I can still cross my fingers that maybe it’s not really a food allergy, right?  

None of our kids have ever had any allergies, and neither have we, so we’re new at this.  I’ve left a message for the pediatrician, but I’m wondering if we go in and he’s not having any of the symptoms at the time of an appointment if she will be able to make a good diagnosis.  (Do food allergies really come on all of a sudden like this?  I thought since our youngest is 4 years old the boys were all past the stage when an allergy would have shown up, and we were lucky enough to be allergy free).  And if she does think it might be a food allergy, are we just going to have to keep track of all the foods he eats every day and try a process of elimination to figure it out, or is there some kind of test that can tell us for sure what is causing it?  Or maybe we’ll go in and the doctor will think it’s something else entirely.  I guess we’ll just wait and see.  But hopefully we can get him over it before too long, poor little guy!

Spring Break

The boys have school off this week for spring break.  We have had playgroup at a park, gone to the fort (where Elijah saw a rattlesnake), we hit the library for bilingual story time, the boys swam for a little while yesterday afternoon in a cool jacuzzi (because we didn't think to heat it up before they thought of swimming), we gave Dad a ride to the airport this morning, we walked through an animal shelter and looked at the dogs for fun (lots more chihuahuas in shelters here than back in New York -- I'm not much of a small dog person), and we went to a meeting today for the Women-2-Women group [women-2-women.org] that I joined and learned about helping people in Guatemala (and I helped out with taking photos and videos at the meeting), and then we got some ice cream sandwiches to reward the boys for all being so good at the lady's house while we had that meeting for 2 1/2 hours.  

I also found time to work on a little more of our Czech genealogy research -- mostly just finishing translating some records and entering them into our genealogy software.  After being so blessed to find so much new family information about so many lines of my mom's dad's ancestry, now the big thing will be to get it all translated and enter the information into the computer so we can organize all the information we have and see where to go from there (it's just so tempting to keep searching through those old church books to try to find just one more record rather than working on translating and data entry, but we'll get it done eventually).  :)  I also found out that the FamilySearch.org website has facebook pages for genealogy research in different parts of the world, so I checked out the Czech page.  I asked a question about a record we had found, and had an answer within an hour -- I think that's going to be very helpful for the things we can't figure out on our own.  (The only problem is it also sent my research question out to lots of my "facebook friends," and I'd rather not inundate all the people I know on facebook with genealogy questions all the time, but I don't know if there's any way to change the settings so it only sends it to people on the Czech genealogy facebook page and not everyone else.  Oh well).  

The other thing we've worked on this week is reading through large packets of paper that have been delivered from the escrow company about the house.  Lots and lots of paperwork.  The pile of papers we got this week was probably 3 or 4 inches thick.  But we've learned more about the neighborhood association, and we're getting more paperwork signed and returned, so that just means we're getting closer and closer to getting into our new house.  Oh, and we've also started the process of choosing homeowner's insurance, yet another step in the right direction to getting a house.  :)

Oh, and besides fun with the boys and a little genealogy time, I also got to go to a mom's night out with other moms from Camden's school, which was fun.  That was on Tuesday night, which happens to be when Michael has Webelos cub scouts, so I got a babysitter so I could go to the mom's night out.  Michael had a great idea, and said we should go to a movie together afterwards since we already had a babysitter and we still have movie tickets from his anniversary gift to me.  So we went and saw that Wizard of Oz movie, which was pretty cute.  And it was fun to go on a little date with Michael.  We also have another date night to look forward to this weekend: we got a babysitter planning to go to the temple this weekend before we found out that the San Diego temple is closed for cleaning this week, so we'll just have to go out to dinner instead.  Luckily we still have restaurant gift cards left over from my fun anniversary gift too.  :)   And today is Thursday, so that means volleyball tonight, of course (I've been going through volleyball withdrawals since I haven't gotten to play in the daytime recently -- last Friday I missed it because we had our house inspection, and this week I haven't gone because I didn't want to try to take all the kids along, but next week I'll be there).

And tomorrow we have a hike planned with our hiking group.  We're looking forward to a church Easter egg hunt  on Saturday that we invited a few friends to, and enjoying Easter dinner with my family, Grandma Bev, and Jennie & Dalin and their kids.  It's been a nice week off.  It's always good to have a break sometimes.  I'm really looking forward to the summer break from school.  I love days when you can just go to the park or go on a hike and not worry about having to rush off to the next place on the daily schedule.