Our Week

Well, it’s the end of another week, and here we are again. I’ve enjoyed finding a chance here and there this week to try to post some genealogy to the blog (I’ve even been toying with the idea of possibly creating a separate genealogy blog, just so as to keep all of the genealogy work that I want to post online all organized in one spot – we’ll see).

So, our week has been rather hectic at times, but overall it has been pretty nice. On Monday Kolby had his 6-year-old check-up (and since the boys all got the flu shot at Camden’s last appointment, and the swine flue vaccine at Isaac’s last appointment, it was pretty nice to go and not have any of them have to have anything). Kolby is healthy and is growing well – he is up to about 46 pounds and 46 inches tall (from 44 pounds and 44 inches tall a year ago). The doctor noticed Kolby reading a book when she came into the office, and she said he was doing really well with his reading. He has kind of taken off lately – and can now recognize many words without help and can read basic books. I think that it’s pretty cool to see a child learn how to read.

This week I was also able to contact some people who are going to come to the house tomorrow afternoon to do a speech evaluation for Eli (they do this for free through the school districts out here). I’m assuming that they will tell us that he is pretty normal and just needs some extra work on pronouncing some of his word sounds, and will grow out of it too as he gets older, but we’ll see.

On Tuesday Eli enjoyed going back to preschool after having to miss both days last week because he was not feeling well.

And on Wednesday we went and spent the morning at the Phillips’ house while Kristin helped me (well, really I helped her a little bit and she did most everything) to convert an old dress I had into a skirt. It turned out really cute and I was excited to wear it to church this weekend. Thanks, Kristin, for taking the time to do that for me!

On Thursday Courtland turned 9 months old. He’s getting to be such a big boy – moving all around the house all the time. I spent most of the day Thursday making and decorating birthday cakes for the birthday party we had for Kolby this weekend, and cleaning the house up. Kolby had his piano lesson that afternoon, which he always enjoys. And his brothers love to sit and watch him take his lesson too – Eli has told me more than once that he is looking forward to learning to play the piano when he turns 5. Kolby is almost finished with the two lesson books that I picked up for him about a month or so ago, so he’s really learning a lot pretty quickly. And Michael had his scout committee “roundtable” meeting that night too, so that was a full day. When he got home that night we got out the paint and painted the darker tan color below the chair rail in the entryway and the kitchen. It turned out really nice looking – now we just need to get the chair rail back up in the kitchen and it will be great.

Friday morning I had plans to go with Kristin to Jennifer Schmuhl’s house for a quick visit because it was Jennifer’s birthday. Kristin had a doctor’s appointment for Mary that morning, and then she was going to stop by afterwards so we could go visit Jennifer at 10am. I was getting things ready around the house and getting the kids ready. Kolby and Eli took a shower before Michael left for work, the boys had breakfast, I changed lots of clothes and diapers, I cleaned up some things around the house, I got Kolby to get his backpack ready and he made some peanut butter sandwiches for himself and his brothers. Isaac and Camden were playing with their toys upstairs while we were getting everything ready. Then Kolby called out to tell me that Isaac had made a mess, and I went upstairs to find that someone had left the bathroom door open (so instead of playing with his toys in the bedroom, Isaac had been playing in the bathroom for the last 10 minutes or so). He had gotten the bottle of children’s vitamins, opened the child-proof lid (don’t ask me how), and eaten somewhere around 60 vitamins, with the remaining 10 or 20 vitamins all partially chewed up and spit out in the sink, on the counter, on the stool, and the floor. He had gotten red vitamin “juice” all over himself, and then smeared it on the walls and floor. So, after cleaning him up I called poison control to make sure that he wouldn’t have any problems, and luckily I was told that the vitamins didn’t have any iron or anything in them that would cause a problem. So, I cleaned up that mess and then I turned around to find that while they had taken a shower earlier Kolby and Eli had squirted shampoo and conditioner all over the walls, shower curtain, tub, faucets, and the shampoo and soup bottles inside the shower, so I got to wash that all down. By the time I was done cleaning up those messes, it was really too late for me to take the time to get ready, but I showered anyways because I needed it. Kristin was patient and waited for me to finish getting everyone in the car, and Kolby insisted on taking his backpack, coat, and the sandwiches in the car with him, even though it was 10am and his school bus doesn’t come until almost noon.

When we got to Jennifer’s house we decided to just run up to the door and have a brief visit, so the boys waited in the car. They kept opening the automatic sliding door of the van, though, which set off the panic alarm over and over as I had to keep pushing the buttons to silence that alarm. After a few minutes they stopped doing that, so I figured that they must have gotten into the sandwiches or something to keep them occupied. We had a nice little visit with Jennifer, and then Kristin and I went to leave. When I got in the car the boys were all laughing at themselves – they thought they were hilarious because they had put the front seat backs all the way down, opened the mirrors, turned on the windshield wipers and the hazard lights, moved all the vents, pushed the buttons on the radio, etc. I was putting the seats back up when Kristin pulled out and headed home. Then I tried to start the car, and it wouldn’t start. The mirrors that they had opened had lights in them, which had drained the car battery. I had to have Jennifer come out and let me use her car to jump ours, and her car was set up differently, with the battery below some other engine components, so we had to make some phone calls to figure out how to even jump it in the first place. While I was doing this, my 3 oldest boys were going into her house to use the bathroom and I guess Eli had to wait too long, because he needed a change of clothes before he came back out. I finally got things ready, and we headed out, having missed Kolby’s school bus. It was good that Kolby had insisted on bringing the lunches and his backpack, because we dropped him off at school before going home. I got the boys down for naps, and fortunately for the rest of the day things calmed down a bit.

I got everything done that I wanted to with getting the house all cleaned up, which felt good to have that all done. Then after dinner we put Isaac down to bed and Kolby’s friends started to arrive. We had 9 kids come, plus Kolby, Eli, and Camden. We ate popcorn and watched a short ‘Wallace and Gromit’ movie that I’d picked up at Blockbuster, had cake and ice cream sandwiches, opened gifts, and then got out the sets of Legos that Kolby had gotten from us and other family members for his birthday and all of the kids built things until their parents picked them up. The party lasted from 7 to 9pm, and we were amazed that that many 5 and 6 year olds could be that well behaved for that long, that late at night. It was great. The best birthday party yet, I think.

And yesterday was a nice relaxing day. We purposefully didn’t schedule a lot so we could try to have a break from our usual crazy busy Saturdays. We had Michael’s special whole grain blueberry waffles for breakfast, Kolby and I ran to the store in the morning, then we got the boys’ toys cleaned up, Michael got the front yard mowed (after I had spent 2 hours earlier in the week raking the leaves), I got the bathroom floor mopped upstairs (the only thing I had wanted to get cleaned in the house that I hadn’t gotten to before the party), the boys played with some dinosaur toys that Kolby got at his party, and Kolby and Eli also worked on one of his new Lego sets in the study, then we picked up a babysitter so we could go to a church meeting last night in Palmyra. After the meeting we stopped at the store to exchange a couple of space heaters that I had picked up earlier (we’ve got big plans to heat our house [mostly] this winter with electric heaters rather than the gas furnace, which should hopefully save us a lot of money with the electric plan they have here). We also picked up a movie and set up the projector that Michael had home from work for the night and had a nice little date night in after Michael dropped off the babysitter.

Today we had ‘stake conference,’ a church meeting that is held twice a year when all of the congregations in the area all meet together at once. It was a long 2-hour meeting with all of the boys, and we were all glad to have a chance to walk around afterwards when we stopped by the Hill Cumorah and then briefly stopped by the visitor’s center there to see a new exhibit of sculptures of Jesus’ life.

So, I’d say overall we had a pretty good week. Hopefully things are going well with all of you too.