We survived!

Wow, this week had two major events that require my help and attentiveness. The first is the Science Fair. It took me a couple of years with Eli before I realized that the Science Fair wasn't required every year. So now the kids only do it when they are required. 5th grade is one of those years and Jonah chose to experiment with which type of cheese would mold first. We've had cheese molding in our kitchen drawer for several days and it was a relief to throw it out.

Next up was the Blue and Gold banquet with a Chinese New Year theme. Jonah wanted a dragon cake and this actually turned out to be pretty easy. I did some internet searching and found the idea to print out a picture of a dragon face and attach it to the front of the cake. I think it turned out pretty cute. Jonah baked it and decorated it. I shopped for the supplies. I also put all my Chinese souveniers to use and helped Carolyn decorate for the big event.

In addition to all these extra things going on Jason was out of town 3/5 days. I really depend on him so it was hard to do all the extra stuff with him gone. A little absence always makes the heart grow fonder.

Regrets

Now that the children are sleeping peacefully in their beds and the house is quiet it's time for me to sit back and reflect on the day and I must say I'm full of regrets.

Regret #1--Losing my temper when Anna, Lily and Jack pulled out my tall, skinny Christmas trees and put every single one of my Christmas decorations on them. They were LOADED down with sparkly snowflakes and glittery candy canes and looked so festive. Unfortunately at the moment all I could think of was how painstakingly I put away the decorations so that next Christmas I could simply pull them out and decorate away. Now they are in a tangled mess in my Christmas boxes. I really wish I could have just had a good sense of humor and praised the kids for their creativity. They were so proud too. Why, oh why didn't I pull out my camera and capture the moment.

Regret #2--Losing my temper again when I turned my back for just a moment and then heard Lily and Jack trying to fix the printer. It was slow so they popped up the lid and took out every single color cartridge in less than a nano-second. Man, they are fast. I must admit that I am secretly proud of their ingenuity and go for it attitude. I just wish I could remember that in the heat of the moment when I see the dollar signs flashing before me. It only strengthens my resolve to not own anything too nice for the next several years.

What I don't regret is that we took the time for FHE tonight even though I just wanted to put the kids in bed and have a calgon moment. I had a little epiphany as I whipped the lesson together. What a blessing the internet is for our busy families. In a matter of minutes I had visuals, a coloring page, a lesson from a primary manual and music downloaded from LDS.org. Without the internet I would have had to spend a lot of time tracking everything down.

Last night I read to Jack from the illustrated Book of Mormon about the Tree of Life. I seriously got so much from that little Book of Mormon reader. Jack's inquisitive nature that drives him to decorate Christmas trees in February also makes him very engaged in gospel discussions. He wants to know everything and I mean everything. We had such a good little chat about Lehi's dream that I decided to do our family home evening on the same topic. So the day was rough but we ended on a good note.

Ronald McDonald House

Two years ago we took Lily and Jack to Cincinnati Children's hospital where they both had surgery and recovered for 17 days. Jason and I had to spend each night at the hospital and we also had a room at the nearby Ronald McDonald House. Six months later we had to return to Cincinnati for some followup appointments and spent another 10 days living in the Ronald McDonald House. One of the highlights was the groups of volunteers that would come in and make dinner for the guests every night. They were always great people who we enjoyed getting to know. They provided such a great service and we were so appreciative. We both commented that sometime in the future when our lives settled down a bit we would like to do the same thing at our local Ronald McDonald House.

Our bishop asked me to organzie a few service projects that we could do as a ward and the Ronald McDonald house was the first thing that entered my mind. Our first time preparing dinner was Thursday night and it was so much fun. They only need about eight people and since the scouts need 8 service hours for a merit badge they are working on we decided to let them have the first shot. It was a total success. We had our ward members donate the ingredients for Enchilada Pie, Salad and Rolls. Dessert was Texas Sheet Cake. Everything has to be prepared on site so we put the boys to work chopping onions and opening cans. Eli and I made the sheet cake since he likes to help make it at home. The houseguests kept coming in to check on dinner and we met a cute little boy who is undergoing chemo for Leukemia. It was so sweet to watch a member of our ward whose wife recently finsihed chemo interact with this cute little boy. We met several parents who had premature babies in the NICU. Everyone was so appreciative and devoured our dinner. It was such a great feeling and put everything into perspective. I was absolutely giddy the whole night and couldn't believe that we pulled it off so flawlessly.

Homework Blues

I've been so proud of a certain child of mine lately. He is required to do a cereal box book report. This means he must wrap a cereal box in butcher paper and then decorate it around the theme of his book (Can I just say I hate homework like this!) He chose "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card and has been working on it a little bit at a time since Tuesday. This is huge for him because he normally struggles with big projects. So here's the kicker, I emailed his teacher this morning to find out exactly when it was due and he informed me it was due last Tuesday, the day child who shall remain nameless started the project. What the???

So today he was unable to leave the house until the project was finished. He kicked it into high gear and I must admit I did too, helping glue some pieces of his spaceship to the cereal box. While we were working on this, another child of mine who shall also remain nameless, found a cereal box and created her own spaceship out of all our scraps. Oh, the difference between my different kids. Love them all, but I must admit the intense desire to do a project is sometimes as difficult to take as the apathy toward projects.

Digging Out

Oh my, what a winter we've had. Snow, snow and more snow. For the past several days the sun has been shining and the 3 foot snow banks are melting from our driveway. The end is in sight and spring looms just around the corner.

With all this quality time I've spent at home lately I've noticed that the snow isn't the only thing that needs to be removed from our lives. I don't know how it happens but somehow STUFF just seems to creep into every corner of our house. Just a couple of months ago I went through the same ritual but it hardly made a dent. I've been digging out for weeks, giving stuff away left and right. Things like port-a-cribs and other baby stuff that will not be used again. Boxes and boxes of books, bags and bags of outgrown clothes.

Here are my new philosphies to keep my life clutter free:

The library is my new best friend. No more buying books. I must make an exception for children's classics though since the kids can pass them down and they will be read over and over again.

Buying the bare minimum amount of clothing. I must resist the temptation to buy outfits for my kids just because they are cute. I have already been doing this to some degree and I'm going to go even more bare bones.

No more toys. My kids have more fun dumping them from their storage containers than playing with them.

My biggest problem is paper clutter. Our school has started emailing our newsletter and I love it. I need to switch things like our investment statements, bills, etc to paperless.

Another thing I can improve on is shopping with my kids for rewards. Anna loves to go to our local consignment shop and pick out a new toy for a prize. I'm going to shift to rewarding her with an activity instead of an object. She is very resistant to this idea. The girl loves to shop.

So, having said all this, I have to go to Target to pick up supplies for a project Eli has at school. Help me resist!

Answered Prayers

Sometimes I feel like I am guilty of vain repetitions as I pray. Yesterday when we said family prayer I really felt that way as I asked for safety for our family three times. We proceeded with our day and took the kids skiing since they had the day off of school. We had a great day, probably our best this season. It was so warm and sunny that we just couldn't get enough. Near the end of the day I ran into Jonah who told me that a log had rolled down the hill while he was skiing and it almost hit him. I kind of brushed him off and didn't think that much about it. We talked about it again when we got home and I got the full story. Jonah was on a run and heard people shouting "Get out of the way!" He looked uphill and saw a log bouncing down the hill. He was able to get out of the way and watched the log tumble the rest of the way past him. As he related the story to me I got chills when I realized that Jonah really was protected from what could have been a major freak accident. Jason went down the run after Jonah told him what happened and said that in a group of trees there was a pile of logs. One of them must have broken loose and careened down the hill. I wonder how many times I pray, asking for the same thing over and over again, without really pausing each day for gratitude for answered prayers.

Snowed In!

A week ago Saturday we went skiing and halfway through the day it started snowing. Within a few hours it had probably snowed six inches. We left and were surprised at how much snow was in town when we arrived home. Sunday morning we woke up and it was still snowing, big beautiful flakes.

Before we knew it we received a phone call that church had been cancelled. We spent the day digging out and playing in the snow. Then we went to Jason's parents and helped dig them out. It was such a great family day.

Monday brought more snow and NO SCHOOL! I let the three oldest kids invite friends over and spent the day keeping everyone fed. I volunteered to do all the driving since some of the parents didn't have good snow tires. It took me over an hour both ways to pick everyone up and drop them off because the roads were so bad. It was around 5 pm when I was driving everyone home and the light on the snow was just gorgeous. Where we live it is dark by 4:30 pm. I always look forward to December 21st because I know from that day forward we will gain a bit of light each day. I couldn't believe that it was 5:00 pm and still light. All the trees looked like big, shimmery marshamallows. I wish I would have had my camera with me.

Tuesday we ventured downtown to the Children's Museum. We just had to get out. We spent a good chunk of the day and had lunch as well. When we got home I couldn't get up our dirt road because the drifts were so bad. Luckily a nice neighbor plowed our road for us and within 30 minutes the county plow had showed up.

By Wednesday the snow days were getting old. Again we ventured out, this time to Chuck E. Cheese. We usually only go for a birthday a couple of times a year. Lily said it was the best day of her life. That night they announced that Thursday would be another snow day. By then I expected it. We were hit with another big storm Wednesday night and woke up to big drifts on our beautifully plowed road Thursday Morning. I braved piano lessons and Costco and was relieved to find that the roads were great once we got on the main streets.

Our family motto is to Embrace the Lake. This means that even if the water is cold we jump in and ski anyway. We have now expanded it to "Embrace the Snow." I have to admit that I loved all this white, fluffy stuff. It was so pretty and so fun to play in and it made for some great skiing. We had already planned to ski on Friday since it was a day off school due to semester break. We headed up to the mountains and had a great time skiing with friends on Friday.

I learned a valuable lesson last week. I used to pride myself on being spontaneous but with each kids I've become a little more scheduled. Now I rely on routine to keep us all sane. Last week I felt like we were floundering each day. The week would have been so much better if we would have known, even a few days in advance, that we would have an entire week off of school. Life is so much better when i take a few minutes each Sunday night to plan our week. I wonder how much of my life I have spent feeling out of sorts due to poor planning.

This morning the kids went back to school and I'm feeling back on track. Hooray for routines!