Plumper Pumpkin Adventure

Richard had a very long weekend. There was a huge project at Tek that has been in the works for about a year now and this was the weekend it was implemented. Richard worked most of the weekend on it, including many hours in the middle of the night. Then after a couple hours of sleep it was time for him to work some more. We did not see a lot of him and he was very tired when we did! We missed him! Now he has taken a part time job and for a while, we will not see very much of him at all! I appreciate the sacrifice he is making for our family and for me so I can continue with my classes.

Yesterday Richard was home by 3pm, so we took the little ones out to the Plumper Pumpkin Patch! We had never been there, but it had been recommended to me by several people, so we decided to give it a try. It was a beautiful afternoon! Being a Monday, there was hardly anyone there, which was nice. They have two hay bale mazes, one is inside a big barn so its dark and spooky and has fun tunnels and a slide to go down. The kids enjoyed going through them over and over and over again! There were also several large pipe slides, a couple of bowling lanes and a water pump ducky float challenge, which Joseph loved. There were tons of photo opportunities, which I loved and there were lots of farm animals which Annalina LOVED, and Richard was not at work, which he really loved! While we were watching the baby calves(there were 7) the farmer came out to bottle feed them milk. He asked for helpers and Annalina and a couple of other kids were able to feed the cows. Annalina was in heaven! I didn't get photos of this but Richard did make a small video of it. It was fun to watch. She told the farmer she was going to be a veterinarian and he told her about all the animals she would need to learn about. She was thrilled to have such a fun conversation with the keeper of the animals!

He looks far too comfortable in this photo....
Perhaps I need to invest in one of these?Annalina spent a lot of time with this particular cow. She wanted to keep it company since it was all alone laying in the corner of the pen. She was worried that it might feel bad that the other animals weren't near it. There were so many fun activities to do, but she was happiest with the animals and spent most of her time with them!This was the funniest thing. This big metal bridge goes between two different pens. Richard asked why it was there and the farmer told us the goats go back and forth on it. So he lured them up with some feed and they wandered across, then stayed up there for a while, probably playing king of the barnyard or something. It was pretty funny to watch!
There were four of these pumps set up next to each other. The kids had to pump as fast as they could to send the ducky down river to the trough at the end. Joseph had trouble at first, but after daddy showed him how to do it, he did it over and over and over again! The idea is to race them, but he was more than happy to just make the ducks go on his own!

Star Student of the Week

Annalina is the Star Student of the week in her class. This means we got to make a poster of pictures about her life and her favorite things to do. It is hanging in the class room and on Friday she will get to explain it to the class. She will also be able to take some show and tell items to share. She gets to be line leader and I am sure there are other benefits, but I haven't gotten clear answers out of her on them yet. She is very excited that this is her lucky week!

She came in the door from school yesterday looking very sad. I asked her what was wrong and she said a boy on the bus called her a crybaby. I asked her why she had been crying on the bus and she said, "I wasn't Mom, but when he called me a crybaby, it made me sad and I cried". The rest of the story came out and I learned that her friend told a boy at the back of the bus that he could not save seats. He got mad and said they were all a bunch of cry babies. She took this very personally and it made her sad. I explained sometimes people say things to make us sad, we just have to ignore them. Hard lessons for a 6 year old, but she seemed to understand what I was telling her. It was just a cute response from my perspective, one that is so Annalina!

Go Jake, go!!!

Today Jake had a cross country meet, and yes, you guessed it. He beat his personal record once again, this time finishing the race in 19 minutes even. One day he will just be a blur as he passes the finish line! He finished fourth for Glencoe and would have made third except he took a wrong turn and had to backtrack a bit. All I can say is WOW! I cannot even imagine what kind of times he will be making when he is a Jr or a Sr. Go Jake!! I think he only has one more XC meet to go to this year. He is already lamenting about missing the team and practice. There are some great kids on his team and his coach is really neat. But Basketball season is getting closer! And then we have track to look forward to...

We have had quite the week! Lots going on, and then Tuesday afternoon the van would not start and it seemed to be a starter issue. I had a lab exam to study for and go to, then my dad called with emergency work he needed me to get done, what with the final tax deadline on the 15th. So the studying went to the back burner and I headed over to work. My mom was kind enough to lend me her car so I could get to my class and I really appreciated that. I was late and was stressing out a lot! The lab exam was very hard, but I did not do as poorly as I thought I was going to. I don't know my score yet, but hopefully it will be ok! I did study an awful lot for it. There are so many great websites dedicated to teaching and quizzing on A&P subjects. It is a whole new world of learning than it was last time I attended college! While I was gone, Richard took apart the van(well, not completely) and we had the starter tested, it was fine. The battery however was not. So it ended up being a cheaper fix than I had feared. After a day of panicking because of our tight finances it was such a blessing not to have to pay a huge mechanic bill. I had to go back over to work and did not get home until 10:30 or so. Richard got the van put back together tonight, but I did not have a vehicle during the day today. I had to pick up the boys from preschool(I am part of a carpool). Christy Childs came to pick up Joseph and offered to bring them all home, which eased my mind as I was trying to decide if I could walk over to get them all or would that be too far for three little three year olds to walk. It always amazes me how the Lord truly knows me and my needs, even when I do not verbally state those needs. When Christy offered to pick up the kids, out of the blue, it was an answer to an unstated prayer. She may never know the relief I felt when she made that simple offer! It has not been an easy week, but sometimes I think we need to struggle to truly appreciate the blessings we are so freely given, and often overlook.

This evening we took Annalina to her Parent Teacher conferences at school. She is doing wonderfully. She placed high on her reading assessment and will be attending an extra reading group in the afternoon that will help her develope those skills. When she was tested in Math, she got all the first grade problems right, so the teacher tested her on 2nd grade skills. She got about half of those correct, so it appears she has a great aptitude for math! Just like her big sister! Her teacher told us she is a delight to have in class. She gets to be star student next week and is very excited about that!

Well, I am off to study! We are starting in on the bones and there are a LOT of them to learn, not to mention all their parts and markings. Sheesh!

Cute conversations

Annalina and I were scrambling to clean up her room for a play date today. She has the next three days off due to parent teacher conferences. I was vacuuming and Joseph was playing on his bed. I finished and turned off the vacuum and told Joseph to run downstairs and put on his shoes for preschool. His reply was: "Not yet, I'm still controlling the sun". Hmmm, an odd statement coming from a 3 year old, or perhaps not so odd. I looked over and he had a CD and was reflecting a beam of light onto the floor and moving it around in circles. He learned when he turned it the wrong direction it stopped reflecting. His vocabulary amazes me sometimes! His choice of words was just too funny, so I had to come blog about it so I can remember! Too often the cute things the kids do and say get forgotten as the day goes on. I am happy to have a place to write about it!

Itchy Puffy Joseph

Little Joseph has been having some allergic reactions of late. His skin, mostly on his tummy, breaks out into big puffy red hives. Sometimes it is gone within an hour or so, sometimes it lasts most of the day. I called the Dr to find out what we could do for him. She said due to the previous diagnosis of eczema in our family that it is probably just that. We put cream on it and that seemed to help. We got a special soap for the laundry thinking he was sensitive to the kind we were using. But on Wednesday Joseph had a tub of yogurt and within a few minutes he was covered with hives, this time on his arms, back, neck, chin and thighs as well as his tummy. Hmmm...his worst reaction yet. So we took him off of dairy products to see if that would help. By morning he was fine. Lots of foods have milk products in them, and a couple of times I have accidentally let him eat one of those foods. He has had smaller reactions to them. So we think Joseph may have developed an allergy to dairy. I'll be taking in to see an allergist soon to find out for sure. This is a sad thing for Joseph as he LOVES milk and all its food cousins! We got him some Vanilla and Chocolate soy milk and he seems to be ok with that. I tried it and thought it was kinda yucky. If anyone has any specific brands of soy milk that is tasty, let me know! My friend Dawn has two kids with food allergies and is an expert on these things, so hopefully I will get some great tips from her!

Joseph loves preschool. It is so fun to pick him up and see him interacting with the teenage girls and the other kids in his class. He gets to play on the playground, ride the tricycles down the sidewalk by their classroom, paint, color, play with playdough, watch the birdies, or the fish, etc, etc. I have been very impressed with the preschool and am glad Joseph is able to experience it and have such fun.

I have some photos to post, but it will have to wait until I find the camera. Having a cute little tiny camera is great for taking to the park, zoo, etc. However I always seem to be misplacing it!

My brilliant husband!

Its good to have a husband who knows how to do most anything, or can look it up if he doesn't. I got this nifty laptop last May, mostly for work, however I adore it and do most of my blogging on it. With work demanding more and more of my time I felt like I was always in my office and the kids noticed. Now I can blog from bed, or hang out in the kids room while they play and study. It keeps me out of my office more and more and I love it!

Earlier this week I started up my laptop only to find messages that made no sense to me. Richard knew what was up and immediately contacted Dell tech support to get it taken care of. My hard drive sadly passed away. This is not good, not good at all. Since it was such a new computer, I had not ever backed up anything. Sadly ALL my photos from the last five months as well as our vacation photos, of which I had printed very few, and all my new scrapbook layouts from July till now are gone! Luckily I posted some of my favorites on this blog! But I had over a thousand photos on the laptop! Richard is going to try to rescue them off the dead drive, so we will see what happens! I am just grateful to have my laptop back and will hope for the best! I am grateful to have a husband who is so knowledgeable and willing to help.

Since I started school in the afternoons, Richard has taken to the EARLY shift at work. He goes in around 6am and works until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. This is in the effort to keep his schedule simple for others at Tek who need to know when to find him. It is not easy for him to get up that early, he is quite the nightowl, and I really appreciate the sacrifice he is making on my behalf so I can go to school. It is so nice to know he is home with the kids when I cannot be. He is considering taking a second job in the evenings and on Saturdays through the holidays. My income has dropped considerably and its hard making ends meet right now. Richard's Land Rover is not working at the moment and its getting colder and colder in the mornings, not to mention the rain which makes riding a motorcycle to work uncomfortable and dangerous! I hate the idea of him being gone all day and again in the evenings, but hopefully it would only be temporary. Again, I am grateful for a husband who is willing to consider such an exhausting schedule!

A broken record...in more ways than one

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I just have to blog about Jake's broken records! We went to a XC meet on Wednesday and watched him run 3.1 miles in 19 minutes and 20 seconds. This was down from his last run of 19:48. It was a beautiful day for running, nice and sunny but cool. He learned that the run would be fairly flat so he set a goal to run it in less than 20 minutes. He did great! He seems to be making a new personal record every time he runs! Annalina went over to him when he was finished and asked for a high five! Instead he gave her a big hug. A very touching moment for a mother, especially with these two who are almost always at odds!

Well today Jacob went to the Adidas invitational in Portland with his team. We did not get to go watch him, but he told us there were a lot of hills to go up and yet he still beat his time from the flat run and came in at 19:18. It must be the new running shoes we bought him last night! Actually he is just a very passionate runner! Last night a bunch of the kids from the various high school sports teams met at Mooberry Elementary School with flashlights. They object of the game was to run to Glencoe without getting tagged by the kids who met at Glencoe and left to "hunt" down the runners. After making it safely to Glencoe, they traded roles and Jake's teams were "it" and went out looking for the runners. Jake really enjoyed being with the other kids!

On Thursday I took my first A&P exam. I read the chapters several times and went over my notes and then decided I would do just fine. After all, the test is multiple choice! I went to bed Wednesday night feeling very confident. Early thursday morning I started having bad dreams about missing the exam due to car problems, or not being able to find my notes to study from, not having the scantron form to fill in etc. I figured I should continue studying and used my online site to take practice tests on each of the chapters. I was failing miserably, they were really hard tests, so my anxiety rose until I was sure I would do very poorly on the test! I kept reviewing my notes and then I went and took the exam. It wasn't so hard. Only 50 questions and I felt good about 40 of them. Our teacher was kind enough to grade them that night and posted our scores on the online class page. I got 92%! Yippee! I am feeling much better about the class now, although I have a lab exam on Tuesday that is NOT multiple choice, yikes! It is a good feeling to be learning, stretching my mind to understand new concepts. I'll admit that I am really enjoying going to school and am looking forward to being a nurse!

Pajama Day

Today was officially declared Pajama Day by Richard! Twice a year on Sunday we have General Conference where we get to watch our Prophet, President Monson and the other leaders of our church on television from the warmth and comfort of our own home. The kids have been talking about Conference for a couple weeks now, looking forward to it. We ate breakfast of sticky buns while watching the first session and in a little bit another session will begin. I love the messages we have heard so far, they are truly inspired for our lives on this earth in this time. And they bring such comfort and hope in these difficult days.

President Monson closed the first session with a wonderful message about enjoying our lives in the present, not just looking to the future. I find myself often thinking of the future and how much easier life will be when...all the kids are in school or when I am done with school or when we are retired, the list goes on and on. He suggested we enjoy and do our best in the here and now because as we enter new stages in life we are met with new challenges and life will never be the peaceful bliss we look forward to. But it is through life's challenges that we are refined and that is how we can become more Christ-like, by meeting those challenges with a positive attitude, by learning to thrive on adversity.

I love General Conference because I alway take away much to ponder. I am able to make changes in my own life so that I can live more in accordance with the gospel. Often times they are just baby steps, but I know every step takes me closer to where I need to be. I love the Gospel and am so grateful to have the knowledge I do.

AP Adrienne

We haven't been seeing a lot of Adrienne these days. She gets home from school and immediately starts on her homework. As I mentioned before, Adrienne is taking a lot of challenging Advanced Placement classes. She is working so hard at all of her classes and I am very proud of her, but we don't get to see her as much as we'd like!

Friday night Adrienne went to the homecoming game with some friends. Glencoe won 49-o and Adrienne tells us it was an awesome game! I had to wonder though because every 15-20 minutes or so the rain would come down so hard I was sure she was getting drenched. Luckily Glencoe was the home team and got to watch from under the covered bleachers. She was excited when she got home! Saturday night she went to the homecoming dance with some friends. We went shopping earlier in the day for last minute things like shoes. She looked so beautiful! Well see for yourself below! I am happy that even though she is so busy with school work she finds time to socialize and have fun!

7 Random Facts

7 Random Facts

I was tagged by my dear sis Megan!

http://meganeconser.spaces.live.com/

1 One of my favorite Mother's Day gifts was a bottle of water given to me by my son Jake when he was only 6. Richard took him to Fred Meyer to buy me a gift. Well the claw game was broken, so what was a boy to do? He really wanted to win me something. But right next to the broken claw game was an Aquafina water machine. He decided that was what he wanted to get me. Richard tried to suggest some other things, but his mind was made up. I truly did love it, knowing he picked it out for me.

2 I am a recovering nail biter. I let them grow now, although I really hate long nails. They get caught on stuff and they just seem to get in the way a lot and there tends be a lot of upkeep what with painting them and keeping them the same length etc. When I get stressed I tend to bite them back down again, I think I will do my best to keep them trimmed short, oh and have a stress free life. That should do it!

3 I have an unnaturally terrible fear of spiders. I know it is far worse than just typical arachnophobia. If I see a spider near my bed, I will seriously not be able to sleep in my own bed for several nights. In fact I am usually paralyzed by fear when I see one inside the house. I often have waking dreams about spiders. My eyes are open and I see spiders, but they aren't really there. I wake Richard up so he can kill the spiders crawling on the bed, only there aren't any. He is very patient with me though, calming me down and getting me back to sleep. Oh and I do stay in bed if they were just dreamed, but often I have to hide under the sheets, after removing the comforter they were crawling on. Luckily we live in a nice house without lots of little ways in. I have only seen three real spiders since we moved in almost two years ago. I see them in my dreams several nights a week. Yuck!

4 I am going to school to be a nurse! I have always wanted to work in this field, and every time I have had a baby, or surgery, I think how great it would be to help other people through difficult times. But why oh why does the human body have to be so complicated?! It is truly fascinating and miraculous how we work! It makes the Big Bang theory seem utterly ridiculous!

5 I love to sleep with the windows wide open. Especially this time of year. Its nice to snuggle under the blankets when its so cold!

6 My closet is never clean. I just cannot keep up with it! I am sure my husband is glad not to have to share with me anymore. It couldn't have been fun to step all over my clothes to get to his. Maybe when I grow up I will learn to keep it clean!

7 I am unusually ticklish! I always have been, just ask my sisters. For years I had to sleep with my arms down in defense of being tickled under my arms in my sleep. I only got over that in the last few years. My husband thinks my ticklishness is pretty funny. He only needs to come near me pretending to tickle me and I laugh and yell at him to stay away. Sadly sometimes he is just being loving and he rubs my arms lightly and I break into laughter.

So now according to the rules I am supposed to tag 7 people, but I am afraid to say I don't even have seven blogging friends to challenge(since Megan already did this). So I will reinforce Megan's challenge and suggest that my sisters Beth and Mar do this, its really fun. Also, Aunt Renetta, any cousins reading my blog, my friend Beth Long, and Sarah Keith if you ever find time with that tiny sweet new little baby of yours! We'd love to get to know you better!