Another Month Gone By

I used to make a point to blog at least once a week. I seem to be on a once a month schedule and I don't like it! I'll try to get back into the habit. Life just seems so crazy it's hard to find time to sit down and do it. Plus my memory card in my nice camera was busted, and my cell phone camera is lame so I hardly have any pictures. So here's a big long dump of whatever I can remember right now.

On April 29th we celebrated our 10 year anniversary!!! I picked the kids up early from school, and Kenny came home early. Then we drove into Houston and dropped the kids (and dog) off at my parents' house. Then we went to The Mad Potter and painted our own plates. All the kids have dishes they can use that they painted/made themselves. So now we can join them :). It was a fun activity and we've always wanted to do that together. We just normally have too many kids to help so it was a fun date. Then we went to some Chinese food restaurant (can't remember the name right now). After that we went to the movie theaters and saw the new Batman vs. Superman movie. We stayed the night at a hotel, and went to the temple the next morning to do sealings. It was a wonderful overnight date and I'm grateful to my parents (and Cami! who took them for a few hours while my parents were at a wedding reception) for helping out. It is so nice to live by family!! :)

Ty and Bryn are still in school (don't get out till June 2nd). So that's the main structure to our day. I get up at 6 a.m. every day, sometimes hit snooze and sleep until 6:09. Get ready for the day and start making lunches. Everyone's up by 6:30 or 7 at the latest. (Even on the weekends, Ty and Briggs come waltzing into our room at 6:30 a.m. ready to start the day. My kids just don't know how to sleep in!!) We get ready to go, Ty and Bryn have to do their morning chores before we leave. We read a little from the Illustrated Scripture books, and sing a song and have family prayer (without daddy) and are out of the house at 7:35 to drop the kids off at school. Then I come back with Madi, Kels, and Briggs. We eat breakfast if we haven't already and then I help them accomplish their morning chores. The rest of the day is always different, until 3:20 when we go pick them back up from school.

Speaking of school... I've been wrestling with the decision of whether to keep them in public school for next year, or go back to homeschooling. It was really weighing heavily on my mind and heart and I just couldn't think about anything else. I flip-flopped a million times a day and could think of good supporting arguments for both sides. It was a very serious matter of daily prayer and lots of discussing with Kenny. After months of this I've decided that I will homeschool again next year. I was scared of it, especially with another baby coming. Mostly I just didn't trust myself. I feel wholly inadequate to the task and I didn't want my weaknesses and flaws to get in the way of my children's education. It's also really hard!! I didn't know if I was willing to take it all on again. But there is no denying the Holy Ghost and I know that for whatever reason, that's what I'm supposed to be doing (at least for next year). So I've ordered the Year 2 curriculum for The Family School, and I've contacted the CC director in Beaumont and we'll be joining that back up again as well. I'm excited, but not overly optimistic haha. I also told Kenny I would be hiring a housekeeper to come once or twice a week for at least the first 6 months after this baby girl's born. :) I think it will be great though. I need to learn how to have a little more grace for myself and trust the Lord. Having the kids go to public school for these couple months has helped me to see that no matter how I felt I had surely failed them, they are not "behind" at all! In fact, they're doing really well compared to other kids their age. So even with the bad days, what we did was enough and I'll try to remember that. I just think there's so much more they can be doing and learning with their time every day. Brynlee watches a movie literally every single day in first grade. I don't know if that's normal or not, is that every school? It drives me crazy though. It just proves to me that even they don't feel like kids at that age need to be learning for 7 hours a day. Bascially once they get to lunch time (shortly after 11 a.m.) they're pretty much done with book learning. They have lunch and recess, PE or music and then watch a movie to end the day. So WHY NOT JUST LET THEM COME HOME? I guess because most parents want their kids gone all day, and that's the sad truth. The earlier they can drop them off and the later they can pick them up, the better. Well I don't agree. It's not that I'm against other people teaching my kids. I just don't like the all day every day scenario.

There are some good things about public school. I hope we can keep the earlier schedule, because I'm a morning person and I feel like it's such an important and productive time of day. But at the same time, I will have a newborn so I'll try to be gentle with myself and especially my children, even when I'm not Ms. happy sunshine every morning.

Tyler had the STAAR test this last week. That's pretty much all they've been doing in school the whole time we've been here, is preparing for it. He excels at reading and is average at math. I know these standardized state tests are all part of the deal, but that's one thing I will NOT miss. I just don't agree that doing nothing but practice tests on reading comprehension and math is the only thing worth learning when you're in 3rd grade. There's so much out there to learn and be interested in. But they throw it all out the window and focus only on the upcoming test like their lives depend on it. I'm glad it's over with. I don't doubt he did well, but I was never really worried about it anyway.

Brynlee had a 1st grade Music concert a couple weeks ago and that was fun to watch her. She had been singing the songs all around the house every day so it wasn't anything we hadn't heard before :). But still cute to see her up there performing--she was pretty shy.

They both had Field Day this past week and I took the little kids over there to watch them for a little bit and say Hi. It was sort of like a weird flash back for me. Doing Field Day every year in Elementary School, even in the hot Texas sun. It's like they're re-living my childhood and it was weird haha.

Brynlee with her first grade class. Wish you could see her cute teacher better. We love Mrs. Hone. Bryn's 4th in from the right with a bun right on top of her head.

Tyler with two of his best friends at Field Day.

Briggs' favorite toy is this big inflatable shark. Tyler is nice enough to help him stay on it and float him around for a while. Such sweet brothers.

We've been working on some big house projects that seem to be sucking up all my time and taking over the house. I will be so glad when it's all finished, but it is fun to make this home ours. Last Saturday my parents came out to help us, and the Juergens came too. My dad and Kenny spent most of the day with their heavy duty sanders trying to sand off the ugly faux-brick that was all over the walls. It took forever, and despite trying to hang up plastic sheets to block off the rest of the house, EVERYTHING had a nice layer of dust. Kenny and I were up till midnight cleaning and trying to get the dust a little more under control. But I still see it. It's on every book, every little thing on every shelf, the ceiling, the floorboards...literally everywhere. No mercy. It was a big, messy project and we'd all laugh every time they took a break and came outside because they were completely covered head to toe (eyelashes and all) with dust. The kids kept calling them "abominable snow men". It was the first time we've had the Juergens out here and it was so fun to have them, albeit in not ideal circumstances. We had all of our furniture from the living room moved out to the back patio so it was just a total wreck everywhere. But the kids had a blast swimming and playing all day long, and I got to spend time with my mom and sister while my husband worked his tail off :). It was a fun day.

Totally unrelated to this whole post. But one time Briggs had a blow out in his swimmer diaper. (thankfully he was already out of the pool and we were outside still) so I just stripped him down and sprayed him off with the hose. Then I let him play with the hose for a while, still naked. He loved it.

This past week, we (mostly me) have been painting our house! Kenny's gone a lot. Not just because of work, but meetings and a hundred different reasons for young men's, and the missionaries ask him to go on splits every week...I told him next week I'm going to make him a sign that he wears around his neck that says "The answer is No, my wife needs me at home." Because I would love to have his help! But he is doing good things so I'm grateful he's such a good man. But this feels like the eternal painting project. We're going with a much lighter cream color. The blue-green that's currently on the walls is just so dark. But it's a huge job and it's coming along slower than I'd like. So much work to do all the time. Saturdays especially are non-stop working from dawn to dark. Stopping to feed my kids seems like such a nuisance ;). We can't really paint at night when the kids go to bed, although that would be ideal. But I have to leave the doors open to ventilate it all (painting while pregnant isn't exactly on their list of recommended activities) but there's so many bugs here!! Especially once the sun goes down you just can't leave your doors open. Kenny tried for a little bit one night and I told him it was a bad idea because all kinds of critters would end up in our home. He laughed at me and thought I was being dramatic. But sure enough, the next morning when I came out into the kitchen and was making the kids lunches, a frog started hopping across the floor!! I made Kenny get him out of the house. That was the second frog that's been in our home actually. I don't like how unpredictable they are. I never know which way they're going to jump and even though I know they're totally harmless, I still don't like to touch them or be near them. But anyway, every bit of progress we make in painting feels like it's a positive difference and we're liking the house more.

This is our house.

See all that awful brick stuff? So they sanded it all down, then Kenny has to go in and re-texture it, then we paint over it. The back wall behind me is just going to have to have new sheet rock and just re-do it altogether. It still looks terrible.

The last two weeks have gone better since I implemented chores once again! The kids had a nice long break from responsibilities and it was just mom doing everything all the time. So I made them all up some nice little job charts. If they have every single thing checked off they can earn a dollar a day. If they have even one thing missed, it drops down to .50 cents. If it's not much at all, then no money. Probably not the best system, but it's working so far. We've never paid for regular jobs before, because it was just expected that they help out since they're part of the family. But I decided that I really want them to be saving and learning how to manage their own money. We don't have chickens anymore to sell eggs, and so until I come up with another way for them to earn their own money, this is really good motivation for them.

Last Sunday (May 8th) was mother's day. I really wanted to make chicken cordon bleu because it's one of my most favorite meals, but I've never made it because I'm scared at how it would turn out. Well I decided to try it out. We also had the sister missionaries over for dinner again. So they got to try out my mother's day meal. It was okay, but turned out kind of dry, which is what I was worried about. But the carrot cake I made for dessert was yummy! They used our phones to talk to their families, and I got to join in a call with my sister, Sarah for a little bit too. I wished so much I could've stayed on the whole time, but it was good to see her and hear from her. She's doing awesome on her mission!

Also this last week, on the 12th was my mom's birthday! I took the 3 younger ones with me and we went to spend a few hours with her and take her out to lunch. I love that we are close enough to do that now. I sure love my mom and the great influence she is on me, and now on my children too!

This pregnancy is still going well. I don't really like my doctor, she's pretty cold and unfriendly and seems totally uninterested in me and my health. Maybe I've just been too used to midwives. I'm sort of hoping she's not on call when I have the baby. I'm sure she's totally qualified, I just haven't really clicked with her. Not a big enough deal to go out and find a new doctor again at this point, but still bugs me. I don't feel like she's going to listen to me or care what I think or say when I'm in labor. I might just excuse her from the room if it gets to that point haha. But baby girl is growing well and doing great. I'm really struggling with how much weight I've gained this pregnancy. I try to not let it get me down, but it's hard on me emotionally and physically. I look forward to working hard to get back to normal afterwards. We still don't know what we're going to name her.