Beach Day

We spent Monday of spring break at the beach. It actually went much better than I thought it would. I guess I've learned to go into adventures like that with low expectations. We pulled up and I was pleasantly surprised to see a mom with four kids as well. It was a blessing compared to our bookstore outing.

Lydia surprised me the most by loving the beach. I thought she would be glued to me the whole time. She loved the water even though it was freezing! I like the beach we go to because there are swimming buoys so the kids can't go too far. I even let Tanner and Gemma go in without life jackets every now and then. We stayed a lot longer than I anticipated, which meant we were having a blast.

Gemma chased the seagulls for most of the time. Ashton found some friends (surprise!) and swam with them in the ocean. Tanner went between loving the beach and then not loving it.

We got back home and cleaned out the pounds of sand that came home with us. The little girls took extra long naps, which was nice. The big kids ran off to play with neighbor kids while I worked on the garden beds. It was a peaceful afternoon.

Bookstore Galore

 On Saturday, I took the kids to a bookstore. We miss being able to browse the library. They are still shut down and you can only pick up books you placed on hold. The kids had a blast inside the store and found many treasures to add to their Christmas wishlist. They each picked a book out and then the older kids spent their allowance money on some more.

I felt discouraged at the store, though. I took all four kids and left the stroller in the van. I don't bring the stroller much because Lydia prefers to walk. So then I am trying to keep track of her, the others kids, and a stroller. She doesn't wander or run away yet so I am good to go.

The manager was near the front and asked me right away if he could help me find anything. "Nope, just checking out the kids section." We spent some quality time in that section and had a blast. Gemma kept running from one book to another in delight. Tanner found some great "I Survived" books. Ashton fell in love with more Roald Dahl books and the Spanish books. Yes, some books got misplaced and I tried to quickly return them. But I also had the store/area to myself so I didn't feel rushed to get the books back right away. The manager kept coming into the section and grabbing books to put them back correctly. I felt bad but shrugged it off.

Then, we went to check out and I get the infamous comment, "You sure got your hands full. You're brave to bring them all out." My response now to that comment is, "My hands are full and so is my heart." The lady ringing us up was having a hard time getting the computer to work so it took FOREVER. Not what I anticipated. The kids were done and so was I.

Part of the store's kid's club deal is a free baked good from the cafe. So after we checked out, I surprised the kids by wandering over and getting a few treats. We sat down on the two tables available in the cafe and enjoyed the treat. We were cleaning up and getting ready to go. I mentioned we'd walk out and head to the van. The cafe had an exit door facing the parking lot. It was an emergency only door with an alarm. Tanner thought that was the door to exit through and opened it. The alarm immediately went off. It isn't a door that the alarm turns off when it shuts. Nope, it keeps going until the manager walks from the other part of the store/building with his keys and turns it off. Poor Tanner is already terrified of fire alarms due to a bad experience at a grocery store once. Here is Tanner just bawling and I am stuck trying to figure out how to gracefully escape with the four kids. The manager comes and looks a little unhappy with what happened. I felt defeated. I felt society was telling me to not come out with my kids. But seeing the kids so excited to read their new books at home made it worth it.

Spring Break Starts

This time last year, our school district dismissed to spring break and NEVER went back! Today was a little odd to think about that. 

The district does early release on the Friday before break. Ashton has been pretty sad as some of her classmates talk about their spring break travel plans. Thankfully, I came up with some fun ideas for us. Joseph's turnaround got pushed back AGAIN to March 22-24ish. We were hoping it'd be done mid-week next week but nope. So it's me and the kiddos for the week.

This morning, Gemma, Lydia and I did our weekly grocery shopping and then headed to a park for a playgroup from church. It was much needed. Then we grabbed Tanner from preschool and hurried home. A friend has been picking up Ashton from school during the turnaround so she grabbed Ashton and brought her two boys over to play for the afternoon. It was a great start. Tanner loves playing with the older boy as they both are competitive and play sports.

After they left, we regrouped and I surprised the kids with dinner at a local park. Joseph met us there on his way home from work. Tanner's highlight of the park was some teenage boys playing basketball. I could tell Tanner desperately wanted to play, but he would not be able to shoot the ball high enough. He kindly asked the boys if he could grab any basketballs that went into the grassy areas. They said yes, and Tanner was very committed to every single basketball. His face showed it all. He was very proud. On the way home, he asked if that was thoughtful of him to help. Such a sweet boy.

Overall, I think our kick-off to spring break went alright. Just a whole week to go.

Family Updates

 Joseph:

- Working turnaround. The freeze pushed a lot of work back. Rather than a three week turnaround, it will be about six if we're lucky. He gets one day off and then works 7-9 days straight. This week, his day off is tomorrow to run his marathon. Then he will work 7 days straight again. His schedule is from about 5:30am to 6pm or so.

- Running his first marathon tomorrow! He's been working hard at this goal since last year. One blessing of COVID has been more time for him to run.

- Excited about the new BYU football uniforms.

 

Casie

- Repainting the fireplace ever so slowly

- Teaching just one section. We're already at the end of week 9! I have a great class this semester.

- Trying to plan a somewhat cool spring break since we'll be home... again.

- Reading a bunch of books. Between Lydia's nap schedule and decent bedtime and only teaching one section, I am enjoying my free time more.

 

Ashton

- Cooking up a storm. Ashton loves to make dinner for the family. One chore of hers is to make dinner on Mondays. Each month, she picks a new recipe to make. Then she practices it over the four weeks. She did pork chops and roasted carrots in January. February was challah bread. March is waffles (she already makes eggs).

- Still taking piano. She is struggling some with virtual lessons. She really loves the time at the lesson and with her teacher. The teacher recently announced a very slow return to in-person lessons soon.

- Ashton was accepted into the GT program in our district. This means she is able to go with a small group of kids once a week for additional interaction with the GT specialist. Ashton loves this day. The teacher also gave me some great games and puzzles to play. Ashton is mastering cribbage right now and we may move on to SET next.

 

Tanner

- Loving life in preschool. He absolutely loves the environment there. His favorite part is the letter of the week and how many words their class can come up with.

- Playing sports. That boy is outside shooting baskets before breakfast and out well past dinner time. He loves all the sports. His requests from the library are just sports books. He is also very excited about the new BYU football uniforms.

 

Gemma

- We've had some park playdates with neighborhood moms and church moms. They all have girls around Gemma's age. With how much Gemma can talk, she gets along really with them. This morning, we spent time at the park with a bunch of little girls and Gemma was just in heaven. She never came to me for anything. That's a sign of a good time for a kid.

- Almost 3! Her only request for her birthday is a Frozen cake. I can handle that.

 

Lydia

- Walking all over the place. Climbing stairs, etc. She is quite mobile, much to the frustration of her siblings.

- Rocking two naps a day still. And a full night of sleep. Life is good.

- Starting to slowly open up to strangers/people that are not mom. She waves and says "buh" for bye. She enjoys being around other kids, just not adults.

Aftermath of the Storm

The Texas freeze spared our home for the most part. The worst damage was to our mantel. It got a little singed from the fireplace heat. I'll sand it down and repaint it. I'm hopeful our plants survive. They seem to be okay.

We only lost power the one time, for about 20 hours. We boiled water for several more days until they said it was safe again. Our neighborhood seemed to fare well. A few broken pipes but nothing major.

The kids and I enjoyed more at home activities. It's really nice that we're used to being home so much. School closed for the Monday after the week of the storm. We had some chill days. Joseph went back to turnaround so was gone again. It was refreshing to not have a schedule to keep up with.

Now I need to remember to restock our supplies before hurricane season. But all the stores have limits on water and other non-perishables so I'll wait a little bit. It was a nice dry-run of hunkering down for a hurricane.

I never really loved the tile on the fireplace. So this provides an opportunity to paint it all and do a stencil design on the tile. I'm excited for the finished product. We are also upgrading the materials to be more heat-resistant. We also learned to open the flue when we use it. Whoops!

100th day of school

Ashton finally had her first "100 day of school" event. Last year's was cancelled as it was later in March I believe. She was thrilled to dress up for it.

The Prayer of a Young Boy

Texas was hit with a bad storm this week. Very frigid temps and then the power grid failed. Politics aside, it's a disaster. We've been fortunate so far. We lost power for about 20 hours. And we have a boil water notice. That means we can't drink the tap water or do much with it. Basically flush toilets. But then the water pressure bottomed out for all of Houston so we had no water. It was/is a mess.

Thankfully, our prophet and Church leaders have encouraged us to be prepared. We prepare for hurricanes and we've learned this is pretty much a hurricane except no wind damage and no 100 degree weather. We also couldn't really leave if we wanted to because roads were icy everywhere.

We have plenty of water storage. We have a gas fireplace. We have batteries, flashlights, camping lanterns, propane grill, etc. It was nice to feel validation in our preparations.

We had two families stay with us the first night of the ordeal. One family is still here. We expect power to still go on and off over the next several days. Hopefully shorter increments. And it will be cold the next couple days but nothing like Sunday-Tuesday. We've had so many blessings through it all it is almost too long to list. But I don't want to forget:

- I'm glad I stopped pumping Lydia a few weeks ago and weaned her from breastmilk. Trying to keep all that refrigerated and finding time to pump with the chaos would have been challenging.

- I'm glad we have a slew of kid activities that I save for "rainy days." It's been a great few days with the kids to do some fun things.

- I'm grateful for good neighbors. This morning, our neighbors across the street knocked on our door asking if we needed anything. We needed some pool water to flush our toilets. That way, we didn't have to use our precious drinking water. The husband helped fill up a big bucket and carry it over to the house.

- that the power went out after the kids went to bed. The first 10 hours of no power were during the night. Not such a bad time.

- I'm glad we listen and prepare for natural disasters. It's been nice to focus on serving others rather than being worried about our own livlihood. 

Tanner reminded me tonight of the purity of a child's prayer. He said our dinner prayer and so plainly asked Heavenly Father to give us power again. I started crying. To hear my son ask and more importantly, to know God would hear his prayer meant so much. The power came back about an hour later and Tanner was thrilled. It was better than Christmas morning.