A week in pictures

This week I decided to be more mindful of the camera and document a bit of each day. Some days are always better than others and if it's a bad one there is always consolation that you can blog about it... :)

Monday:  The day started off with a dog hike for Maddie with the Elsworths. The dog loves them and gets herself tired out especially when its warm outside...which it has been lately. Where is the October weather already???

I tried something new today with Family Home Evening. I tried a shorter lesson, more game and a fun treat. The kids were all for the shorter lesson but I warned them that we were going to start using the FHE chart again and they would all get a turn teaching the lessons as well. We played Sorry, which some family members said was stupid, but funny how when you pull it out and people start getting competitive they somehow don't mind playing any more. 

Ashley was awesome tonight and rinsed all the dishes so I let her pick what she wanted for dessert. 

"Lets make homemade waffle cones and have ice cream" she said.

Hmmmmm

We got this waffle cone maker at a garage sale probably a year ago and I haven't been brave enough to get it out and try it. She's been begging me forever to try it so I thought "OK tonight will be the night"  

We ended up having to throw away the mix that came with it. 3 years after the expiration date, all I had to do is open it and we knew they had to go in the trash...so I thought waffle cones were out until I looked on-line and found a recipe for them. (I love that you can find almost anything on-line)

A little practice and they turned out all good. (Though I had to stuff a marshmallow in the bottom because I couldn't figure out how to pinch it closed until like 1/2 way through)

They were very yummy and I'm excited to try them again...so we're now ready for someone to come have family home evening with us and we'll make you waffle cones.

Tuesday - Tuesday is our crazy day....5:30, 6:00 and 6:30 am piano and a short day for 2 of the kids that brings the first one home right after 12:00. Ashley got home and wanted to make a fort....she's been into forts lately. I try and get them picked up before Jeff gets home but there were a couple of times this week that I get a call from him "Why is the family room all messed up"...for some reason Ashley feels that building a fort must include rearranging furniture. 

That night while Jacob was doing scouts and Taylor and Jeff were making pool noodle swords Ashley and I went on a girls night out to BJ's to celebrate Jennifer Shaw's birthday. 

Ashley gets to be my sidekick on Tuesday nights weather it's the booster club meeting or whatever I'm doing she's tagging along.

In the course of dinner and conversation the ladies asked "What time is her bedtime?" 

I almost laughed out loud when everyone gasped when I said "9:00"

I guess have the oldest kids there and since I'm not going to try to do multiple bedtimes she goes to bed at the same time as the boys.

Ask around the table and a couple families put their kids to bed between 6:30 and 7:00.

What!! Most of the time we're eating dinner then! I guess every family is different.

Wednesday: I've been going in to do art on Wednesday's in Ashley's class. Our plan was to do a food chain mobile but the teacher's son was sick so she moved it to next week. 

Since my schedule was now clean I thought check to see if Jeff was free for lunch. He was just thinking about getting a burrito and was looking for someone to share it with...good timing. It was nice to spend a bit of time with him since we've been playing tag team the last few weekends.  

It's nice that Jeff's office is so close to home, even though I don't go out there very often.

Since I've had a bit of free time this week I've been working on beading stuff. A friend of mine is having an open house in a few weeks and lets people come and sell their stuff...kind of like a one day craft fair at her home. 

I have found I love to create things...but trying to sell them is not my favorite. 

I keep creating but I know I'll end up with a lot of leftovers at the end of the day...so how to sell them...I don't know yet. 

I came up with the idea to bead the ends of bobby pins so you could put in the bobby pins and the decoration would hang down. 

Ashley came home from school and wanted some of just about all of them. (Thats the problem she sees what I've made and thinks that she wants to keep them ALL)

We did keep some for her and we experimented in her hair.

That night we had our 5:00pm dog training class...again Ashley is my little sidekick. I've tried to get the boys to come but they haven't wanted to. 

2 more classes and Maddie be starting the good citizen class.  We are training her to be a therapy dog and if she passes the test she'll be able to go into nursing homes, hospitals and libraries to visit people. 

She's still a little puppyish and gets excited sometimes to meet new people (and she licks them a lot) but we're working on it. The good thing is she is very friendly and likes everyone. 

Thursday: I looked on the calendar in the morning and nothing was on it. Sweet! So I created more jewelry...at the end of day I got reactions from the husband from "That's nice" to "That's a little gaudy isn't it?" to...."That one is weird, do you like it?"...The one he thought was weird was Ashley's favorite and she (of course) wanted to keep it. She wanted to keep a lot of them. Leave it to her to be my cheerleader :)

I got a call from Taylor before school was supposed to be out....I asked him if it was a short day...no...it was a league meet and he missed the bus on purpose because he knew he wasn't going to run. I was bugged because he hadn't cleared it with the coach (basically he didn't want to know the answer). He said he was fine with supporting the team he just didn't want to stay there hours and hours. Since it wasn't far I loaded him up and we planned to drive to the park where they were running. As we were getting ready to leave Ashley came running out of the house wanting to go with us to watch the races....

and we decided to bring the dog...I figured it was at a park and what better way to get Maddie used to meeting people than bring her to a place where there was a lot of people.

I'm not so sure it was a good idea....since it was a new place and she was very excited she kept pulling me all over (also something we're working on) and as we were walking through the crowd to go to the our high school's tent she decided to make a "deposit" in the grass.

Oh yuck! I was so embarrassed and I hadn't thought to bring bags to pick it up. I'll have to learn :(

So sorry...so embarrassing! What a bad dog owner!

She did pretty good otherwise but I'm not sure what the runners thought of her...if they got too close she proceeded to start licking off all their sweat.

Friday:  I was thinking about Monica and wondering how she was doing. I remembered that she said being pregnant with triplets made her hungry ALL the time and bread sounded good. So since I had made rolls the night before I thought I'd bring her some. I called first and found out she's pretty much just laying around because she's too uncomfortable to do much of anything so I was able to pack up some books to bring over too. I always buy ones that look interesting at the library sales then I don't worry about them after I'm done with them so most of these were rescued from the DI pile to give to her.

I'm thinking she'll need some baby holding help when the babies are here too!

Friday afternoon I had a hair appointment...long overdue.  A couple days before I had a friend comment "Oh I like your hair" I mentioned that I was about to get it done again and she said "Oh the brown on the top 'grown out' look is the newest thing." 

"That's great" I said "but when the brown is mixed with grey it's time to go to the hairdressers" :)

I realized that my appointment was too close to after school pick so I ran out of there wet....

Also all week Taylor had been asking me every day if the MRI place called yet to schedule the MRI... they said it might take up to a week so I told him I'll call on Friday. 

When I called to follow up after waiting the week the call center lady said the doctor had never requested it from the insurance company. 

What!!??? That was supposed to happen a week ago!

So I asked who I could talk to and of course they were all out of the office that day and I would have to wait until Monday. 

What!!!?? 

I have to say I was mad (this is my mad face)... (with my unstyled hair)

This is Taylor's mad face

I actually was mad enough to request the phone number to file a complaint. The lady on the phone said "I'll let the doctor know you filed a complaint". It's not just this thing but the whole run around a month into this and I was BEYOND frustrated. 

After I got off phone I realized that I was just mad at the time and I knew that it wouldn't be a good time to try and file a complaint. I thought I'd cool off and wait until I talked to the actual doctor's office on Monday. 

Well while we were having frustrating things at home, Jeff was having frustrating things going on at work. Soooo  we thought it was time to have a family night out. 

We took the kids to dinner...you can see how excited they are...

And a movie at the $3.00 theater...our favorite. 

We wait and see most of our movies there. 

I guess for most of the summer one of the theater's had the air conditioning broken. So they got it fixed the day before. 

It felt like the arctic circle in the theater! We sent Jeff out to the car and luckily he had some jackets that we all had to share and snuggle up with. It was the coldest movie I've ever seen! (I guess you get what you pay for)

Saturday:  This morning was the first annual breast cancer walk at Jacob's Middle School. I guess there were 4 or 5 staff members at the school that have been fighting breast cancer in the last year so the students in the key club wanted to raise money for chemo baskets for cancer patients. I was impressed and wanted to walk, and once we found out that Jacob could get service hours for it I signed him up too. 

Jacob and I picked up our stuff and changed into our pink shirt and I was surprised at 

1. how many people were there and 

2. how organized it was

We started out with music and a fun warm up, a speech from a student and a speech from the husband of a cancer survivor and then we were off through our balloon arch starting gate and on our course.

I didn't see Jacob at the beginning...he was walking with his friends. Of course there were a lot of people there too.

I found a few people to talk to as I walked. I was impressed with the cheerleaders from the school cheering us on, the cold water bottles and cut up oranges (donated by Gless Ranch)  and the signs along the route honoring both survivors and remembering those who didn't survive. 

Once the friends left...I caught up to Jacob. 

It was fun to walk with him. 

Even more fun to watch him try and score hugs throughout the walk. 

He confided in me that his motivation for going around the course 3 times was knowing when he came around the next time he could hug the girls again. 

Crazy kid...I swear we could've been done 20 minutes earlier EASY if we hadn't had to stop for all the hugs!

In the end he said he really liked going on the walk with me....I wonder why ;)

Right after I dropped Jacob off at home I ran over to the church to make crafts at Super Saturday...

every year I add something more to our collection....this is the latest.

I also made personalized soap thingies for visiting teaching people and these hair bows for Ashley. She wore one the next day and 1/2 her class had the same ones in Primary ;)

After I got home from crafting Jeff and I drove around the neighborhood trying to pick out paint colors. We are getting our house painted on the outside, and with all the ivy, peeling paint and calking that will need to be done I'm sure it'll be a big job. 

So trying to pick out colors isn't as easy as it looks. Right around us the houses are old enough that most people have had to repaint...some of the colors have turned out better than others. What looks good on the paint chip doesn't always look good on a house. We have one of our neighbors who painted their house baby poop color. We don't want to be the baby poop neighbors too so we are taking our color selection seriously. 

We've gotten some looks as we've pulled into driveways and are trying to match paint chips with house colors that we like. 

Saturday night Taylor got to go to Knotts Scary Farm with friends. 

I remember going when I was about his age. 

I'm sure it was more crowded compared to when I went and more expensive. I also didn't remember it staying open until 2:00 a.m. We warned him that he would have to go to church the next day (9:00am). 

We stayed up until midnight and then texted Taylor and told him to wake us up when he came in. He got home at 5:00am!!  He told me that they had gone to breakfast on the way home. I guess since he wasn't driving and he was the only one who had to get up for church the next day he didn't have as much control about when he got home. 

I told him I'd wake him up in 2 hours.

Sunday: 2 hours went by fast and then it was time to be up and ready for church. Taylor got ready and didn't complain going to church until after sacrament...he was a zombie. Jeff took pity on him and brought him home so he could sleep with promises from him that he wouldn't do it again.  After a 4 hour nap he was fine. 

I asked him how Knotts Scary Farm was. He had fun and told us about it. At first I was surprised when he told me that some of the dressed up people tried to trip his crutches..that was until I heard he was doing things to egg them on...so basically he deserved it. 

Sunday night we had the missionaries over for dinner....I was frantically trying to get all the flies out of the kitchen first. 

I swear we have been having a fly plague over here! We were killing something like 20 a day!  Are we the only ones???  I'm hoping it's over soon.

While we were getting dinner the kids were occupying themselves... remember this game. I thought it was sweet that Jacob made this paper thing (I don't remember the name) and was playing it with Ashley, that was until I heard all the answers she would pick were negative...

Wow....I pulled it out and found you could've picked...

you are fat and ugly, 

you are pretty...NOT!

you smell funny

you are fat

LOSER!

you look funny

you look ugly

and 

you're cool

She got "you're cool" once and Cool was some accronym for some insult. So basically you couldn't win.

Air soft guns were next. When Jeff saw that it looked like Ashley was being shot (don't know if she really was) he got them both eye protections, both guns and set up a target practice area. 

That lasted about 5 minutes before his gun lost it's charge. 

So Jacob decided to try and climb this tree. 

There are some boards nailed up on it and a small platform at the top. He always wanted to climb it when he was younger but never could. 

Well with the two step stool he can now.

Maddie wasn't too sure about him being up there....neither was I.

He was thrilled that he finally conquered the tree. 

He came down filthy.

In the middle of dinner with the missionaries the phone rang. It was Angela but we didn't pick up in time so I figured I'd call her after the missionaries left. 

10 minutes later we got a knock on the door and there was Angela and Robert and baby Ian!

What a nice surprise!

They were in the area last minute and were dropping by to see if we were home to say hi before they headed back home.  Ian is 7 months old know and we absolutely loved his laugh. He loved Jacob tickling him.

They got there just in time for dessert so we fed them all cake and visited for a few minutes before they had to head back. 

Ian also laughed Hysterically when the dog licked him...he liked it but I didn't think mom and dad liked it so Maddie went outside and will have to wait until he's a bit older :)

Poor Robert gets rubbed to death every time he sees my kids...Taylor was actually rubbing his head too but he didn't want me to catch him on camera doing it. 

Epilogue :  So as for Taylor's follow up. I took him into his doctor's today because he was complaining of his hip popping. The orthopedic doctor ordered an x-ray just to see if we could see anything (because stress fractures don't show up until they are healing and it's now been a month). The doctor then mentioned "We'll still do the MRI and hopefully it will come back normal and just be a pulled muscle. But it will be good to get an x-ray and check to make sure it isn't anything like a stress fracture."

So we did the x-ray...and he showed us the results on the screen. Guess what, definite evidence that it IS a stress fracture in his other hip. The doctor agreed and was now very interested in getting the MRI.

 I KNEW IT! 

Never underestimate mother's intuition.

So the MRI is scheduled for tomorrow night and we go back to the orthopedic doctor on Friday. 

Finally feel like we are getting somewhere!!!