A Real Game

We actually had a real looking game on Saturday. Nate and I were out of town the week before for the tecnical first game, but apperently we got slaughtered so it was a good thing we missed it. This time the kids were looking like they almost knew what they were doing and it was an exciting game. Ethan of course has to be Ethan so he was warming up on the field with a little sprinkler dance. Once the game got going he looked for opportunities to grab a little break when all the action was at the other end of the field. I don't think I have ever yelled so much in a game. My throught hurt so bad at the end I couldn't even yell anymore. I don't know what came over me, but suddenly I was a sideline coach. I think I was channeling a soccer mom or something. Maybe the camp chair I was sitting in on the sidelines had magical powers that induced yelling? Not sure, but everyone knew who my kid was. Poor little guys were so hot and tired at the end and they all had beat red little faces. Ethan was so worn out from all the running and the hotness and the game loss that he needed a little pep talk from Daddy at the end. So cute. I love the picture of the 3 boys. K, B and E are all the same age and yet such different height levels!

Tennis

 My 2 oldest are playing tennis this fall as part of the community center.  This is the first year they have had the program.  The kids get bussed directly from the middle school to the high school courts for practice and matches.  They decided that since they were playing they would watch the US Open and really pay attention.  Dad was at work, so they were left with my minimal knowledge of how the game is scored and played.  Luckily we have this little thing called the internet that is very resourceful.  All this new knowledge and watching some pros in action led them to making a court in our driveway out of the pool volleyball net.  I gotta give them props for creativity.  Unfortunately the court was too small for their wild shots. :0)

 This was their 1st match after 3 practices.  I can't get there until about an hour into it so I alway miss them doing their singles matches.  They are in separate doubles matches there.  It was a bit on the painful side because they only had 3 practices and they were left to score themselves with no ref.  Tennis isn't like soccer or basketball where you can not be very good but  people are moving around and it looks like a game is being played.  With tennis, not so much.  This first match every point was won by fault, so the only action watching them run after wild balls.   There were not a whole lot of balls making it over the net and the ones that did weren't landing in the right spot.  Jared though was looking pretty ready in that picture though.  He's in the purple shirt running.

This was their 2nd time at a match and they actually had to be doubles partners.  Uh oh, was my first thought, but they played very nice together and they made it through the match without calling each other any names.  So proud.  It was amazing how much better things were looking in just one week.  I think I even saw a couple of volleys that were at least 2x over the net.  During this match Jared finally figured out how to serve so they were actually making points on a serve.  He was pretty excited and about half way through he raised his hands up in the air and said "yes! I finally know how to serve."  It was an awesome moment for him.  They are doing good and having fun.  The nice thing about tennis is that ,other than doubles, you have no one to blame but yourself when you loose and with that the celebration is all yours when you win.  btw, isn't that sky against the court a-maz-ing?!

The Plague

So, I had a little too much time on my hands for this photo.  I'm pretty bummed though because to get anything cool to do to your photo you have to pay the premium price.  I don't need one more thing I have to pay for, so I'm stuck with the cheesy beach props for my new pet.  This little guy was the 3rd scorpion either in my house or just outside the house in a 2 -3 week period.   The first one was discovered in the swimming pool dead.  Surprisingly,  knowing that it is dead does nothing to make it any less creepy.  The 2nd one was discovered in my house.  Right on the floor in a walkway.  Just when I thought a scorpion couldn't get anymore creepy, it did.  How did he get in my house!  Is it like finding a cockroach...there's never just one?  My first attempt at ridding this creature from the house was to trap it in a cup and then do what with it, I'm not sure.  I really don't think releasing it back into the wild was part of my plan, but I was goin with it.  Well, turns out they are pretty fast and he took off onto the carpet and under the couch!  Crap, crap and double crap!  I lost a millipede in my bedroom a month ago and spent forever tearing up my room looking for it and eventually had to give up and talk myself out of a mental breakdown over the fact that now I was fully aware that I was sharing my room with a millipede!  So, I was not about to loose this scorpion under my couch only to discover it one night when it was playing with my toes.   Oh, no!  Was not going to happen.  I pushed back the couch and armed myself with the vacuum hose and got my eagle eyes on because they are translucent.  It wasn't looking like I was going to find him for a bit, but then I spotted him and quickly sucked him up sending him to a dust filled death.  After this bit of trauma that went down in front of the kids, a few nights later when my husband and I went out through the garage to take our dogs for a walk....but what should I see, a very translucent scorpion staring up at me.  It was dark outside and I only happened to spot it because Nate was carrying a flashlight.  It was hanging out right on the threshold of the garage.  Jared ran out when he heard me yell, scorpion.  This time we had a more brutal approach.  Jared grabbed the shovel and we set about trying to cut the thing in half.  We succeeded. 

  

I'm not sure what is going on.  We have lived in this house for 3 1/2 years and have only spotted 1 other scorpion (although my kids tell me they have seen a couple more that I didn't know about).  I am thinking we must have some sort of plague going on here.  I'm about to look up what eats scorpions and make sure that I have one of them hanging around my house.  It can get pretty interesting living in the desert.  We have tarantulas, lots of black widows, millipedes in abundance and we get to watch the roadrunner cartoon play out each morning on the way to the bus stop.... well kind of.  We see this one particular coyote nearly every morning who we named wile e and we see roadrunners too.  We keep checking the mesa for crates of dynamite and listen for the "meep, meep"  when the roadrunner outsmarts the coyote, but surprisingly.... roadrunners make no sound and they are very small! 

What To Do, What To Do?

It's been a crazy fast ride these past few days.  The journey that lead up to the last few days started in August when we made the decision that Emma should be in seminary this year even though she wasn't in the 9th grade yet.  We made the decision based on the fact that she meets the age requirement, but not the year of school requirement.  I won't go into detail here to keep a long story short, but after some persistence and council our initial no became a yes.  Our goal was to have Emma graduate high school 1 year early because she wants to make up the year she lost from us starting her late.  In order to attend the college she wants to go to a certificate of graduation from 4 years of seminary is required and she would only get 3 if she waited.  This year would need to be made up through some home study and with trying to pull off a year early graduation, it wouldn't be doable.

Ok, now fast forward to last week.  It was Mon when I finally got a return call from counselor at the middle school to see what our options were if we were going to succeed at our goal.  Our only option.  Test out of the 8th grade immediately.  She would have to move quickly because we were already several weeks into the school year and in order for the credits to count you have to be in attendance so many days of that semester.  That was an absolute no go as far as Emma was concerned.  It is hard enough to start the 9th grade with your peers let alone start 6 weeks into the year after skipping a grade and survive.

My next stop was to leave a message for the 9th grade counselor at the high school to see what our options were if we waited until she started the 9th grade.    We had a lovely conversation on the "joys" of the government in our state.  Like most states we have a program with the community college that you can graduate high school with an associate degree.  What makes our state particularly "lovely" is that you are not allowed to take any of your core classes at the college, only electives.  Why?  The unofficial, completely off the record guess by the counselor....  The funding that the school gets per student is based on how many students attend the core classes, so if you take your core classes at the college, no $$$ for the school for that student.  The BS becomes nearly unachievable and a waste because you have to double up on classes let alone the worry of transfer credits.  Because of our states rule that also means that each student may only take the core classes for the current year they are enrolled in.  So she couldn't be a freshman and take a sophomore core class etc... So my statement/ question to that was: "so what you are saying is that the state doesn't really care about my child and her education, they only care about the money they get for her?"  The counselor laughed and said something about how lovely and "special" our state was.  Armed with that information, our only option was for Emma to be in an online school or home schooled where she could move through the courses as fast as she wanted to make up a year.

My next call was to the online school, which is surprisingly part of our school district, no surprise that the other schools in the district like to bad mouth.  As with all calls to administration to any school we have been with, my questions were not met with pleasantries but rather rudeness.  I pressed on though.  I got the usual, "well there is an acceptance process, our 8th grade class is already full, why do you want to come here....."  I was told I could fill out a pre-enrollement form and basically cross my fingers.     Emma had been home sick for 2 days and so I had plenty of time to discuss her options and what she wanted to do.  Before I left to pick up the forms she told me that she wanted to just wait until 9th grade to change to this other school because she still wanted to be in choir and do track with her friends this year.  I wasn't sure if the school was expecting me to come in or not and I wasn't sure I should even go in because of what Emma just told me.  I had to run another errand and had to drive past this school and I had a fight with myself on wether or not I should pull in.  My car pretty much drove itself in there and I took a deep breath, went in and thought that I would just see where going in led me.

I was a bit taken aback when I entered the building to this one room school house.  Three days a week the student does work from home, but two days a week they come in and receive instruction from teachers and receive any help they need with their assignments.  I really started questioning why I was there.  I was again met with an unfriendly receptionist, which I am convinced is a requirement to work in a school, and got my forms.  When I handed them back I was asked to meet with admissions.  Turns out she had pulled Emma's transcripts and suddenly I was an awesome person that they wanted to talk to.  I kissed up as best I could and spoke unfavorably about the system we were coming from.  I also explained our goals and what we were hoping to accomplish and asked if she could help us accomplish them.   She said she would call me the next day with what I thought would be a, yes this is doable or no it's not, try homeschool.

The next day I got the call saying that Emma had been accepted and that I needed to go to the middle school and withdrawal her.  Say huh???  Wait, where are the breaks on this train?  I about threw up thinking of telling Emma that I know she told me she didn't want to start until next year, but too bad.  I did have a peace offering to hopefully sweeten the deal though.  I was able to work out her being able to still attend her middle school for choir which is right before lunch and she can still participate in their sports program because they are part of the same school district and they allow for 1 elective.  When I told her she said "ok, awesome, when do I start?"  "Ummmmm, how do I say this, tomorrow!"  A funny thing that happened while withdrawing her was that when she went around to all of her teachers to sign out they were all really sad and stunned, but one of the teachers was so stunned she asked "what happened? Is everything ok?  I know the high school has problems, but we've got a good team here."  At least there was no denial about the system she was heading for next year if she stayed.  :0)  BTW, Emma is loving her new school and she still gets to see her friends 3 times a week.  Her big epiphany that this was the route she wanted to take was after she had been sick for 2 days it only took her 1 hour to do all her make-up work.  She realized that there was a lot of wasted hours in the day in traditional school and graduating a year early was a completely achievable goal.  Now if I only she could drive because my life is now dedicated to running her all over the place during the day.  A day that starts at 5 AM.  :0)

What does $185.00 buy you????

Apparently not enough.  This is how much I paid for my son to play soccer in a city league.  Our team didn't have a coach so someone stepped up that doesn't know a thing about soccer which by the time you are 8 & 9 is unacceptable.  The practices have been painful to watch but when it came to our first game this Saturday, we achieved an all new low.  How low?  Our coach didn't know where the field was that our game was to be held so we all showed up where he told us to.  Even after one of the parents called and asked if he was sure our game was at this field because typically there are no games there.  Yes, he was positive.  Guess what?  We were at the wrong field, so we climbed in our cars and headed to the correct field only to find out that..... our game was 2 hours earlier and our coach somehow missed that memo.  We were already there and so we asked some kids that were hanging around to join us in a scrimmage.  The coach never said a word to the parents and was hiding the whole time on his phone, so 2 of the Dad's stepped up and actually taught our kids how to play soccer.  As you can see by the pictures, C, was pretty livid...which was highly entertaining to me and worth the money I paid for my kid to be in soccer.  lol  Ethan was also entertaining everyone with his cartwheels.  That is the "coach" in the orange shirt in one of them just watching the boys do cartwheels while the other kids are in the game.  C is mounting a coup to have the coach replaced by 2 of the Dad's.  Never a dull moment!  :0)

Apples and Such

It is around 9 pm and I have been up since 5 am (because MJ is in seminary this year), but I can't go to sleep yet because my kids have friends over watching a movie.  I know it's a friday night and I am usually on a date with my hubby, but he is out of town and I have been busy being a domestic goddess for the day.  My domesticness started out at 9am when I went to one of my favorite places to get a breakfast burrito with my friend C, her Dad W, and my new friend and neighbor K (the one we have to thank for the laundry detergent).  We had this nice little stop of goodness for burritos on our way to a lady's house that we know from church.  Can I just say that this woman is so awesome.  They built their house in Bernalillo in 1973 and they have all kinds of fruit trees plus she is known to work miracles when it comes to genealogy.  Love her!  Anyway she has way too many apples and pears so she invited us out to take what we wanted.  We had the best time hanging out with her (she would not let me take her picture so she could later claim that we came and stole the apples. haha)  I am seriously way too short to be picking apples.  I have a pretty intense fear of heights but something overcame me and I was climbing in the trees trying to get the best apples.  So fun!

Our next adventure after I had a quick lunch with my Nate and drove him to the airport was; showing C and her Mom and Dad how to make laundry soap.  I picked up the ingredients and headed over to C's house.  After about 2 seconds I realized yet again that I need to work on my muscles so I can grate the bar of soap much faster.  We were all intoxicated by the smell of grated soap.  It is worth the effort making the soap just for how good it smells plus I feel kinda like a mad scientist too.  We got them all set up and ready to be dazzled and amazed with their new soap.  The picture of C is cracking me up, she loves to make crazy faces. lol

During the soap making there was already a shift going for processing the apples.  Holy moly did we come home with a ton of them.  I am exhausted!  We decided that we were making all the apples into apple pie filling for which I have my sister in law to thank for that recipe.  She probably doesn't even remember giving it to me because I got it from her back when we lived in CA together 14 years ago.  It has been hanging out in my recipe box untouched since then.  Luckily I remembered that I had it when I suddenly found myself with tons of apples.   There is still a batch being made over at C's house even as I write.  Each batch we made takes 1/2 a bushel of apples.  We made 5 batches (each batch made 7-8 quart jars) and we still have enough apples for probably 3 more.  You have to peel and cut them which is always an adventure... as evidence by the worm picture.  Ewww!  Then cook them and fill the jars and then give the jars a bath in boiling water for 20 minutes.  Each step in the process takes time but it is so worth the effort.  Yum!  It tastes soooo incredibly good.  We even took the peels from the apples and made apple jelly.  How cool is that.  Those are the jars in the picture with the almost translucent color.  I can't wait to try it.  I am told that it is incredible and I will love it.  Who knew all you needed was the peels to make jelly?  I surely didn't.  There is something about being self sufficient that brings pride, joy and peace.  I am having the best time learning all kinds of things.  I have the best feeling looking at all those jars of pie filling and jelly and knowing that we didn't waste a single apple, not even the peels...... well some of them....if we would have used them all we would have had enough for the entire state to get a jar.  Add that to making the soap and I feel like I can do anything to take care of my family.  I also loved just being in the kitchen working together all day side by side with people I consider family.  Do I sound like an old lady or what?  Oh well, at least I'm in good company, some of my most favorite people are older.  :0)

Court of Honor

I think this was Jared's 1st court of honor.  I know it was the first time he has received any awards as a scout.  They haven't had one in at least a year but are hoping to do them more often in the future.  Court of honor as near as I can tell is essentially pack meeting for the older kids with more formality.  Jared got to lead everyone in the scout oath and he received 4 merit badges that he earned at camp this year and he received his tenderfoot and his 2nd class.  He had one thing left to do for his 1st class which was completed by this night but he needs his board of review to receive it.   I am already stressed about an Eagle project.  Which is of course why for every award your child receives, the Mom gets a pin as well.  Jared put the 2 pins on so they would connect which you can see in the picture.  It is great having Dad in there too.  Nate is over the 11 year olds.  Jared got to spend his entire first year with Dad and then he moved on to some great leaders over the 12 year olds...which probably have some sort of name?? I don't know.  I just show up where I'm supposed to and look through his book to see if there are things he can be working on.  :0)  Parents don't get to sign off anything anymore once they hit scouts like you can when they are in cub scouts.  We had a fun night and I got to embarrass Jared pretty good by giving him a big 'ole kiss in front of everyone.  The crowd loved it but he turned about 5 shades of red!  Then there was a bit of a competition and one of the other moms dipped her kid and then kissed him.  haha :0)  You gotta kiss and love them while you can!   

Laundry

My friend talked me into trying out making my own laundry detergent.  What made me decide to do it?  The cost!  I was going to go back to the store to get exact pricing, but I haven't so oh well.  Here are some guesstimates.  I didn't include the cost of the 5 gallon bucket and lid because that is a one time cost.    The bar of soap is $1.  The borax was probably close to 5 and the washing soda was 3 something.  So to make 10 gallons of laundry detergent it was roughly 2.50- it's a guess, but a nice one -because  I haven't measured out the remainder of the boxes to see how many batches they will do.  I know they will do a few more though.  I included some pictures because when making it for the first time you can wonder if everything is going right because it looks pretty weird.  I would say that it took me about 15-20 minutes out of my day to make it.  I was cruising along grating the bar of soap when about half way through the bar muscle fatigue set in.  So it's kind of a 2 for 1.  Work out and laundry soap.  I have used it now on several loads and I can unequivocally say that I love it and can't imagine going back.  I think it works better than the expensive stuff.  So, what's the recipe you ask?  Here it is.  Enjoy and spend all the money that you save on something good... like....food storage.  :0)
***Updated pricing information*** $1.67 per batch***See comments for complete breakdown***

4 Cups hot tap water 

1 Fels-Naptha soap bar 

1 Cup Washing Soda

1/2 Cup Borax

~GRATE bar of soap and add to saucepan with water.  Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted.

~FILL 5 gallon bucket 1/2 way with hot tap water.  Add your melted soap and your washing soda and borax.  Stir until powder is dissolved.  Fill the bucket the rest of the way with hot tap water and stir again.  

~Let the mixture sit overnight until it thickens.  (my laundry room is small, so I store mine in the garage under my utility sink which works out nicely because I make up my batch right there before I take it back to the laundry room.)

~Then you stir it and put into a container.  Fill the container half full with mixture and half with water.  SHAKE before each use.  (I used a pitcher because I like exact measurements but you can use an old detergent bottle just as easily with a funnel.)

It makes 10 gallons total.  For a Front Loading machine use 1/4 cup which will yield approx 640 loads. (you can reuse the measuring cup that comes with your old detergent.  Just figure out where the 1/4 cup mark is on it.) 

For a Top Loading machine use 5/8 cup which will yield approx 180 loads.  (my friend just uses 1/2 cup)

I think it smells perfect the way it is but if you want to add some scent to it you can add 10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 mixed gallons.  

Reality Cabin

Oh how we will remember this trip to Las Vegas NM.  Not just for the pure redneck fun that was had by bringing up our 4 wheelers and our friends bringing up their razors and not for all the dirty looks and screaming and yelling we got from all the neighbors when we rode our toys around because the cabin was in a gated community on a golf course in the woods....which had no paved roads.  We will remember it as the time we squeezed 3 families for a total of 18 people into a 1,500 square foot cabin. 

How did we come to this cabin?  Our friend has a client that owns this cabin.  This person owes our friend money so apparently over sold the awesomeness of said cabin.  Isn't that always the case?  We were told that we were going to a 5,000 square foot cabin that was worth 1 million.....  We didn't know what the set up was going to be when we got there but figured there would be enough room to accommodate everyone that was invited..... Yea, not so much.  Completely delusional or pathological. There were 3 tiny bedrooms and hardly enough floor space to put all the kids.  So little floor space that Nate and our 2 boys ended up sleeping outside under the stars.  The cabin itself was no marvel to behold with an obvious "rustic" element to it and it was a duplex and so it was attached to another unit.  The attached neighbor must have thought Armageddon had hit when we arrived and tried to squeeze all those loud crazy people in next to them.

What trip could I be on that wouldn't include some kind of tragedy?   It's just not likely.  I didn't think we were going on this weekend trip until we actually left so in my haste I left all my bathroom needs on the counter in the house.  No contacts, no glasses, no nothin!  Strike 1.  Replaced a bunch of forgotten items at the store when we got into town and then headed over to the "palace."  As you heard Nate and boys slept outside. Strike 2.  The next morning my eyes were hurting pretty badly because of my allergies and having to sleep in my contacts.  With kids sleeping on every avail floor space and my boys sleeping outside... if something happened in the middle of the night I wanted to be able to see.  So because I had no glasses with me I left my contacts in.   I decided to take them out and rinse them off in the morning which turned out to be a fatal error.  For the first time in years I ripped a contact.  Right in half!  My prescription is -5.50.  Which means that I am for all intents and purposes.  Blind.  Strike 3.  I had resined myself to laying in the bed reading a book with one eye while the kids went out and had some dirt filled fun because I could not see a thing even with 1 contact in.  Luckily my friend Rachel was there and had a spare contact with her in case of emergencies that was a -4.25.  Luckily our eyeballs were similar in shape and the contact fit and I was able to see considerably better.  My vision still wasn't the best but I was able to play with everyone and have fun until we left right after lunch because no one was happy with the way the whole cabin adventure had gone down.  

On the way home I had myself a nice pounding headache from the vision problems and dramatically reveled that it was time to have my eyes lasered dag gone it!  We cleaned all the dust and dirt off and ditched the kids and went out to dinner and a movie.  A movie that was horrible, by the way, but would you expect anything less when I'm around???  The kids had a blast though and didn't know or care that the cabin was too small and the neighbors were getting ready to haul us all off to jail.  These are the experiences memories are made of.  :0)  

p.s.  On a extremely funny side note.... I was convinced there was a bear hanging around outside our cabin because I kept getting woken up by "bear" noises.  Turns out it was Rachel's husband snoring so loudly that the sound was going out his window and into mine.  She worried that we had been kept up all night by his snoring.  Nope didn't hear him at all just a bear hanging around outside. Hilarious!!! lol

Jordy's 7

Well, my baby girl is 7 years old.  I know I say this a lot, but it's true....where does the time go?  It seems like just yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital.  One of our favorite things to do together is watch cake and cupcake shows and she always wants a cake made by one of the people on those shows.  Well, chef Duff has gone commercial so we picked up everything we needed at the craft store and I did my best to give her an awesome cake.  Let me tell you though, his stuff's not cheap especially when you are going for the full bakery experience. We had to try his cake mix, buttercream and fondant to get the full effect.  On the day of Jordy's birthday I took her the lunch of her choice to school and ate lunch with her there.  It is a pretty exciting thing when a mom comes to school so we got a lot of attention.  We got lots of "hello's, waves, is that your mom, you are so lucky, and hi jordyn's mom."  I'm pretty sure Jordyn was feeling like a rock star with all that attention.  Then they all sang "happy birthday" to my little sweetheart and we handed out the doughnuts we brought.  So fun.  

When I got back home I started on the cake.  This take took me all day to make.  From the baking and cooling and cutting and dirty icing and then cooling and then putting it in the freezer to help the buttercream go on easier and coloring the fondant trying to get just the right color......  It was looking pretty disastrous for most of the journey.  The little flowers didn't even get any icing along the edge because I couldn't get the buttercream on without destroying them.  My fondant was all bumpy because there wasn't a nice smooth coat of buttercream under it, BUT it tasted amazing.  It really was the best tasting cake I've ever made.  Seriously.  Plus, Jordyn loved it and thought it was the best cake ever, so who cares that it looked like I made it.  She could hardly stand waiting until the next day to show her friends and eat it.  That night we had a mini family party where we went out to dinner at the place of her choice and then when the 2 older ones got home from a youth Temple trip she opened her presents at 9 pm and then rushed off to bed. 

Wednesday is our short day for school which lends itself to the perfect time to have a birthday party afterward.  Nate is at work and doesn't have to suffer through a bunch of girls running around screaming and I don't have to give up a saturday.  It's perfect.  Right after school we had everyone come over for a swim party.  She invited a couple of friends that are neighbors and classmates and one that she knows from church.  Kids are so funny at this age.  They couldn't decide what they wanted to do.  They kept getting in and out of the water and all Jordyn wanted to do was open her presents.  So I gave up on the order I thought things should go in and we had the cake, opened the presents and then they decided to have fun and swim and it was hard to get them out to send them home.  Isn't that the way it always goes. The kids don't really start playing until it is time to go home.  :0)