The current goings-on

(I won't be offended if you don't read this. It's absurdly long. Just my journal, really. Lack of comments won't hurt my feelings since most of you won't read the whole thing!)

You'd think, wouldn't you, that with all this time on my hands with the kids in school I'd be blog-posting like crazy. I guess since the kids are gone all day, I'm not finding much to post about! Well, here are a few things that have been going on, mostly for my own future curiosity...

• I have been getting my schedule figured out for helping at school. My plan is to help about once a month in each of their classes, plus twice a month as a cafeteria aide. With district budget cuts, the school has asked for more parent volunteers to help at lunchtime... I wasn't looking forward to doing that but it I went on Monday and it was kind of fun. All we do is respond to raised hands; kids asking for a napkin, a fork, a spoon, help opening a Gogurt, or permission to go to the bathroom. Easy peasy. Plus it was fun to see all my kids, nieces and nephews, and all the other kids I know who go to our school.

• I figured out my "dream job" ... did you know I used to want to be a school teacher? My major in college was math education. I love algebra and math in general. I didn't graduate but I have thought some about completing my degree one of these days (although it would be with a different major... just for the sake of having a diploma). Last night Aaron & I went to curriculum night for Noah & Molly's advanced math teacher. THAT would be the best job! She teaches grades 3-6, only math, only four classes per day, ONLY MATH, and only elementary school kids. At my favorite elementary school! I would just love that. Well, seeing as I don't have a college degree and therefore no hope of getting a teaching certificate, I will stick with teaching piano for now. Which I do love doing too.

• I'm still doing after-school snacks, every day. The kids really seem to look forward to it and I don't know if we've ever done the same snack twice. Sometimes it's stuff I took some time & trouble to prepare, like homemade cookies or frozen chocolate-covered bananas; other times it's store-bought stuff like ice cream sandwiches or yogurt or mini carrot sticks. I mix up the healthy and the unhealthy, and it's a nice little few minutes that we spend together every day right after school.

• I made a batch of homemade rice milk last night. Strange? Yes. I think Lucy might be a bit lactose intolerant, but she loves cold cereal, so I wanted to come up with an inexpensive alternative to cow's milk for her. I thought I did a pretty good job of making it; I looked at a couple different from-scratch recipes online and made my own version. The flavor isn't bad but the texture was a little funky... nobody particularly likes it. Although, if you have it over a bowl of supersweet cereal like Apple Jacks, which Zoe & Lucy both did this morning, all that sugar kind of disguises the weird milk. That being said, I probably won't make it again.

• Our kids typically go through a rough transitional phase at the beginning and end of every school year. Fits, grumpies, pouts, etc. due to the abrupt change in schedule. We have been fortunate to have seen very little of that this year; yay! Zoe & Lucy have done a fabulous job in making the jump to all-day school. Noah & Molly were both always SO tired their first few weeks of first grade, but the twins are holding up marvelously. Molly still doesn't love mornings but she's being a trooper. Noah has been very sweet lately; always giving me hugs and telling me about his day. Noah and Molly are both in orchestra this year; Noah still doing cello and Molly just started violin.

• Lucy had a bad dream a couple nights ago and came into bed with me for a little while. The next day she told me that after I'd sent her back to bed, she said a prayer that Heavenly Father would help her have a nice dream, like a dream about her and me. I thought that was the sweetest thing.

• The kids & I have been reading the Little House on the Prairie series the past couple of months; there are 9 books and we're halfway through the 3rd. We love them! I read to them almost every night, sitting in the hallway between their bedrooms after they're in bed. It's such a peaceful ritual and the kids almost always stay in bed now; they weren't awful at it before but now they only get up now if we really do have the TV on too loud or something and it's making it hard for one of them to sleep.

• Speaking of books, I have personally read quite a few books this year. Before long I'll give a few book reviews here. I do love to read and I'm glad I've made more time for it these days.

• I have stopped being such a nazi about bedtime. I think it has really helped our household. I used to be like, "It's a SCHOOL NIGHT! Those lights had better be off by 8pm SHARP!" but not anymore. They are still in bed by around 8:15, and then I read them a short chapter or two of Little House. On days I'm teaching piano til 6pm, we don't eat dinner til 6:45 or so, and that doesn't leave a lot of time before bed. Relaxing my attitude towards bedtime has been really good. We make sure to not skip out on the important things like family scriptures and prayers, and some nights I take extra time to make sure everyone's homework is correct & etc. On my Mindbloom tree, one of my goals is to not raise my voice at the kids. If I force myself to keep calm as bedtime approaches, I am much more likely to accomplish that goal.

• Speaking of my tree; it's really growing! I'm still sticking with it and it's still been great.

• Lest you think that everything is peachy and perfect around here, I have gained a few pounds since school started. Bleh. Instead of spending more time exercising (one of my grand plans once school started), I seem to be eating more, and exercising only occasionally. I think I just need to spend less time near my kitchen. Plus, with summer coming to a close (and swimsuit season), I'm not feeling a lot of motivation with fitness goals. It's not out of control yet.... but I do need to make a few changes.

• I am married to a greasemonkey. I knew Aaron was good at figuring out how to fix things, but these past few months he's really been on a roll! (But now I think he's officially tired of having extra fix-it projects to do.) Aaron's household projects over the past few months have included: changing my car's brakes, fixing his car's power steering, fixing our downstairs air conditioning, completely rebuilding the boat's engine & replacing old/broken parts, replacing a couple of belts on his car, changing the cars' oil and air filters and wiper blades and batteries, fixing the lawn mower, and there are couple more that I'm forgetting. I think he's about done with what is hopefully the last project for a while. Tomorrow we're taking the boat out to see if Aaron's long long hours in rebuilding the engine have worked! We think so. He has saved us untold thousands of dollars in repairman fees; I'm so glad to married to such a handy guy.

• So, in short (too late for that!)... life is good. We're settling in to the school schedule and the kids are doing great with it. We're busy, but trying not to be too busy for the important things. I do need to take more pictures of the kids... I promise the next post will contain at least one photo.