A Good, Busy Week

We had a good, but busy week this week. Last Sunday Eli read the scripture and Kolby gave a talk in primary at church. I was impressed, because we suggested that Kolby read his talk, offering to help him with words that he didn’t know (although I expected that we would be reading most of it and he would just read the shorter words here and there), but then he surprised us by reading most of the talk by himself, only asking for help with one or two words in each sentence. Wow, our boys surprise me all the time with how much they know and how much they can do. Oh, and on Sunday I was also asked to be a Family History Consultant at church too, so I will get to help people with their genealogy research and work at the family history center at the church. I am really excited – it’s been about 7 years now of moving to new places and letting the leadership at each new congregation of the church that we move into know that I would love to help out with genealogy if they need anyone, and this is the first time that I’ve finally been asked to do it.

On Monday morning we went to playgroup at the church and the kids enjoyed riding their bikes around the gym with their friends. After playgroup the boys ate lunch in the car on the ride home, then we got home for Kolby to catch his bus, and we went to a lab to have some bloodwork done for Isaac (just to check on his iron and vitamin D levels) but when we got there the lab had just closed for lunch, so we went to the Target, JoAnns, and then back to the lab and got the bloodwork done before getting home for Kolby’s school bus to get back. For family home evening that night we all wrote a letter to Uncle Matthew on his mission, and the boys colored pictures and each wrote their names – now we just need to remember to find an envelope and actually get the letter in the mail.

On Tuesday Eli had preschool – they’ve been having color days for a few weeks now and the kids are supposed to dress up in specific colors each day. So, it was green day on Tuesday and Eli wore some striped green pajamas. When I dropped Eli off that morning, the teacher asked when I wanted to come in for Eli’s birthday celebration. We decided to do it Thursday, so I was supposed to bring in a treat for the kids and Eli’s favorite book to read to the class. And when I left, the teacher said, “Oh, and Thursday is purple day, so if the treat could be purple, that would be great.” So, we went off to the store to get cookies and then headed to the library to return the boys’ books and check out a new set of books, before picking Eli back up from preschool, doing lunch in the car, getting Kolby home in time for his bus, and picking up around the house before Eli’s speech therapist came over. That afternoon we got out the frosting and food coloring and set out to make purple frosting before realizing that we had no red food coloring left. We tried mixing blue food coloring with an entire container of red sprinkles, but that just made a kind of grey-blue frosting with a rather bumpy texture from all the sprinkles. So, we ended up asking Michael to pick up some red food coloring on his way home from dropping off the scout re-chartering paperwork after work. That night I was able to succeed at getting a purple frosting, and frosting the cookies. On Wednesday we went to the Pittsford ward playgroup – again riding bikes at the church, which the boys enjoyed. Then we went to the Johnson’s house and had dinner there with the Johnsons and Silvas, which was fun. That night was the big Daddy Daughter Activity that I was in charge of for both classes of the Activity Days girls at church. I went over about half an hour early to set up. We started out with a relay race – first the dads had to braid their daughter’s hair, then the girls had to tie their dad’s tie, then the dads painted their daughter’s finger nails, and then the girls “shaved” their dad’s faces (by putting shaving cream on their faces, and “shaving” it off with a tongue depressor). And after that we played a simplified version of the ‘newlywed game’ where the dads and girls each answered questions about each other, and then we found out if their answers were right or not. We finished off the night with some cookies. I think it went well – I thought the girls would think it was more funny than they seemed to, but they did act like they were having fun. And one of the moms told me later that her daughter said it was her favorite activity yet, so that made me feel better about it.

On Thursday morning we decorated a puzzle piece for Eli for school (that we had forgotten to do earlier in the week), then we dropped him off at school. It was purple day, and since none of the boys own any purple clothes (I’m the only one in the house with a purple shirt, and it’s not one that I wanted Eli to wear to school), so Camden was kind enough to let Eli borrow his purple fleece blanket, which Eli wore around his neck like a cape. (Luckily this Tuesday he has brown day coming up, so I think we shouldn’t have much trouble finding some brown clothes for him to wear). After dropping Eli off we went to BJs and got some diapers – lately Isaac has grown out of the size 3 diapers (and they’ve been falling down the leg of his pants a lot, which is not fun to clean up), so we got some size 4 diapers which has resolved that problem. Then we headed back to the school and we all had some purple cookies before I read ‘Horton Hatches an Egg,’ the book that Eli chose, to his class. Then the boys ate lunch and Kolby grabbed his two dinosaurs that he got from his brother for Christmas for show and tell before heading out on his bus. Then Eli had his speech session, and we later got a call from Kolby’s piano teacher that she couldn’t make it because it was snowing so hard that she couldn’t see well enough to drive. Michael had a dinner that night with the set of new applicants, and one of them was Dave Smart, someone he knew in our ward in Milwaukee, so that would be kind of fun if they ended up out here.

On Friday we finally had a day that we could just stay at home with the kids, and it was nice to relax for a bit. I worked on my genealogy blog that morning and was able to mess around with the HTML to get three columns, and now it’s set up so that I have a surname index on one side of the page that links to each post on the blog that includes a specific surname. I was pleased with how that turned out. Kolby’s piano teacher called and ended up coming on Friday instead, so that was nice for him to still get his lesson in for the week. And I worked on getting the house cleaned up before the birthday party on Saturday. Then that night we made last-minute plans with the Johnsons to go play laser tag – the Johnsons had given us some free game coupons and we had tried to go before, but didn’t know that you needed reservations so we tried again because the coupons expired this weekend, and it was actually quite fun – I’d never played before.

On Saturday I made three cakes – one for Eli that was decorated with blue frosting for a lake and green frosting for grass with plastic dinosaurs on the cake, one for Courtland with chocolate frosting and blue and green polka dots, and an extra chocolate cake so we’d have enough for everyone. We finished cleaning the house, and Michael installed some baby locks in the kitchen so we could put all the stuff back into the cupboards that Courtland had taken out and then we’d set up on the counters over the last week or so. And then friends came for the birthday party in the afternoon – we decided to combine Eli’s and Courtland’s parties since Courtland’s not old enough yet to really understand about birthday parties. Eli turned 5 today, and Courtland will be 1 this upcoming Friday. The party was fun. Eli really liked his dinosaur cake, and we had our tradition of letting Courtland eat his own cake by himself on his first birthday. He had fun eating eat, and he probably ate about half of the cake himself. (And he is our only boy who threw up the night after eating his 1st birthday cake). Then that night Eli had his first piano lesson – Kolby’s teacher made an exception when she started teaching Kolby because he was 5 and she usually doesn’t take students younger than 7, but she allowed it because he had already taken lessons for almost a year and was starting to read at the time. She has been impressed with how well Kolby plays for his age, but she seemed hesitant to make another exception for Eli to start when he was so young – she said that maybe she could start teaching him in the summer time. But Kolby has done so well with starting lesson at age 5 (I think that it’s good to start them young, because they’re really excited about practicing – not old enough yet to be bored or too cool to practice. Anyways, we decided that until Kolby’s teacher will start teaching Eli, Michael will start giving him lessons on Saturdays. That way Eli can start learning, he can have a special little time with just him and Daddy, and he will be that much further along when he does start with the teacher. Michael taught him where to put his hands, how to count the beats in a measure, which fingers to use for each note, and he learned his first little song – he was so proud of himself. We were so worn out from this week that Michael and I decided to lay down in bed and rest when the boys went to bed around 8 o’clock, and we ended up falling asleep for the rest of the night.

Today was a nice day. Kolby and Eli practiced the piano this morning. And then we were a minute or two late for church because we had to jump the van when we went to leave – oh, the joys of wintertime in cold places. The boys did pretty well at church, Isaac and Courtland both falling asleep in our arms for part of the meeting. And I got my keys to the family history center for my calling as a consultant (which has the added perk of me now being able to go do research at the family history center anytime that I want to, without feeling like I have to inconvenience anyone else to get them to go let me in). And after church Michael had a young mens meeting, then he went home teaching. He has two new families that he visits – the Johnsons and the Karrens – so that will be fun for him. I brought the boys home and got them down for naps while Michael was gone. Then we had some crock pot chicken for dinner. And now we’ve got another busy week ahead of us – with all the normal things that we usually have going on, plus dentist and doctor appointments for Eli to get his paperwork filled out for his upcoming kindergarten registration.