Engineer badge



Wade's floor plan of our downstairs--it was challenging to think about our house from a bird's perspective!

I've gained more appreciation for Jason by working in Cub Scouts!  We're covering the Engineer badge right now in Webelos and it is a lot of fun.  A couple weeks ago we had guest speakers come in and talk about different fields in engineering.  Jason talked about aerospace engineering, and we had an electrical engineer and  a software engineer, too.  Last night the boys made floor plans and created simple electrical circuits using a D-battery, wire, and a flashlight bulb.  We'd turn off the lights in the room each time the boys made their flashlight bulbs turn on--it was fun and the boys loved it!

"Engineers are problem solvers!"  I couldn't agree more and I'm thankful to be married to one!

The other cool thing was that Wade had a good time.  He'd had a VERY busy day that day with back-to-back activities.  Straight from school he went to piano, then dinner, then flag football practice, then Webelos.  He was a little stressed out and just wanted to be lazy!  He felt good on the way home from Cub Scouts, though.  After that long day, Wade said, "I had a lot of fun tonight at Webelos, Mom.  It was relaxing and fun, just like you said!"

Determination

5:45am:

Me: Ya know, you don't need to go to school if you don't want to.

Rhiannon:  (cough, cough + look of horror on her face) NO! Yesterday Coach Barnes told us we'd be running the mile today and there is NO way I'm going to be one of those girlie-girls who doesn't show up.

Me: (seriously impressed and a little scared by daughter's determination) Oh-kayyyy.

Be a good human

Saw this on Facebook this past week.  I love it!  Be a good human!

A gift for a special teacher

Earlier this morning I shared something that happened to me yesterday involving popcorn seasoning and feeling Heavenly Father's love for me.  Yep, the two are related.

Well, today that "tender mercy" magic happened again. 

At Wade's school this year I'm doing something new and helping with the Battle of the Books program.  My friend Becky and I meet with about 25 4th and 5th graders every Wednesday at lunch and prepare them for a book competition coming in the spring.  The kids are there voluntarily, missing out on recess time to be with us.  It's been a lot of fun for me so far, and challenging. 

Right now we're doing little "book talks," where we preview each of the 30 books on the list and try to psych the kids up to read them.  Today I decided to get a jump on next week's book and get organized for it.  It's Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan, a great book!

Thanks to Google Search, I came across this:

 

The man on the left is Steven Kellogg, a fantastic illustrator, and the woman is Patricia MacLachlan.   The man on the right helped design the book.

 

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Steven Kellogg's children's books.

 

I really like Patricia MacLachlan's Sarah, Plain and Tall.

 

Steven lived in the Sandy Hook village in Newtown, Connecticut for 35 years and was very, very sad about the school shooting that happened in December 2012.  He called up his friend Patricia and asked her to make a book with him.  Their collaboration, Snowflakes Fall, came out this year on October 29th. 

 

You can bet that my book talk on Sarah, Plain and Tall will mostly be about two friends coming together to heal their own pain and help others do the same.  Amazon.com shares a little more; that the publisher of the book, Random House, donated to the Sandy Hook School Support Fund and also gave 25,000 books to the national literacy organization First Book, in honor of Sandy Hook children.

 

Finding out about this book was a tender mercy. 

 

Realizing that I'd just stumbled on the perfect book for Wade's special teacher for Christmas was another!

 

Merry Christmas!


Post Script:  5 days later...today (Monday) Wade's teacher thanked us for the book.  I'd slipped it in her teacher box in the office on Friday.  She said that day she'd gotten chewed out by another parent over a small thing, and she was feeling low.  She went to her box at the end of the day and found the gift, at just the right moment.  The book was perfect, our letter to her was perfect, and she was very appreciative.  AWESOME!!!!!!!!

 

 

Little things

Yesterday I was driving around town between carpool trips like a crazy person.

WalMart.  Check.
Albertsons.  Check.
Gas station.  Check.
Post Office.  Check.
Library.  Check.
Other Albertsons.  Check.

I'd gotten a lot done that day but was on a mission to find the best price on some Kernel Seasons popcorn seasoning  (haven't tried it?  it's amazing!) to throw in Christmas gifts for our neighbors up and down the street.  And nobody had the price I wanted or the type of seasoning.  I was getting frustrated and I only had a couple minutes before I had to get back on base and pick up kids.

All of a sudden, I remembered this crazy good coupon in my wallet for $10 off a shopping order (thank you, General Mills, producer of all the cereals we love).

I ran into the Stater Brothers grocery store.  Check.
Found the popcorn seasoning.  Check.
A dollar less than all the other places I'd checked.  Check.
So I grabbed 4.  Check.
Total on the order:  $11.96.  Check.
Turned in the coupon.  Check.
Final cost to me:  $1.96.  Score!

Could I have used the coupon another time?  Sure.  But at that moment, I was desperate to get a good deal and had been driving all over town to try to find it.

I didn't pray that morning that I'd find a steal on popcorn seasoning.  But I said a little prayer of gratitude in my heart when I got back to the van, because I could just FEEL the heavenly help on such a small thing.  I had completely forgotten about that silly coupon until just the right moment. 

With all my heart, I know that Heavenly Father knows us and loves us! 

No joke

These were the conditions for Wade's first flag football game yesterday.  Apparently the city league only cancels games if there is lightning....so they suffered through it bravely!  Hats off to the boys on Wade's Broncos team, their coaches, and the total of 7 parents who were out on the sidelines for both teams.  Everyone else stayed in their cars and honked when there was a touchdown!

Welcome to Ridgecrest, folks! 

Merry and bright!

Life is good!  Today we:

-- had a great time at church
--had a visit from our home teacher Brother  Robins
--relaxed at home
--the boys hung some lights outside and started a fire in the fireplace
--watched some football
--had a tasty dinner and devoured some chocolate chip cookies
--and all around enjoyed each other's company!

Merry Christmas!

A hurry-up harvest

It's supposed to freeze tonight, 20 degrees or lower here, which is COLD!  The kids and I got in the garden and did a quick harvest to try to save what was growing before it gets wiped out.  I'm happy and surprised by what we grew--we'll definitely have to do a fall garden again!

Hurray for kale, spinach, cilantro, and a few leftover radishes! :)

Jason did something COOL last weekend!

Jason stayed home with us for most of the Thanksgiving break, yay!  The guest bedroom is getting a painting/baseboard/crown-molding makeover, and Jason is doing about 99.99% of it.  It's going to look so good with the crown molding and the two "Aggie Maroon" accent walls!

He also took us to Thor: The Dark World, motivated the whole family (+ the dogs) to participate in a 5K Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning, and made several trips to Home Depot, all of which were breaks in between all the prep and painting he was doing.

So I was super happy that he could go have some fun, too, on Saturday at the Willow Springs International Speedway in Rosamond, CA, about an hour south of us.  Here's what Jason had to say about it, and some pictures to prove it!

On his Facebook page, Jason said, "After over 8 years of ownership, I finally gave my Infiniti a proper break in today.  I raced it at the ExtremeSports open track day at the Streets of Willow racetrack down in Rosamond.  It was an AWESOME time and I made some new friends with a local racing club.  There were a lot of great, fast cars there, but I feel like I more than held my own as a total newbie with a stock 8-year-old car.  Hope to do it again soon."

The kids and I drove down in the van as "race support" and had a good time watching all the fast, LOUD cars.  I had no idea this place existed!

ANT-agonistic

Boy howdy, I am exhausted and it's not quite 11:15am.  I've gone through a bottle of Windex and two rolls of paper towels this morning, cleaning up ants.  Merry Christmas to me!

The pesky ant problem from last night, er, escalated to a war this morning.  The weird part was that I didn't see ANY ants at all until Wade went to grab something in the kitchen for me before he left for school.  He's the one who first saw the moving counter top, poor kid.  It was soooooooo gross!

Our pest control service came to save the day about an hour later and set some bait out, telling me to call them at 1:30pm if the ants were still busy.  They assured me they'd seen worse, that Ridgecrest sits on ants and our house just happened to get picked today.  Fun.

On the plus side, I won't feel guilty taking a nap today AND my countertops and kitchen are oh, so sparkly, seeing as how I've been spraying everything down every 5 minutes!

14 more school days until Christmas Break

Only 14 more days of school until Christmas break, but who's counting?  :)

We really enjoyed a week-long Thanksgiving stay-cation--it was fun!  But this morning it was time to get back to reality.  Today Jason headed back to work and the kids went back to school.  I did laundry, worked on Christmas cards, did some more laundry, worked on some more Christmas cards, and I also caught a couple of Cyber Monday sales.  Then it was suddenly time to pick up kids from school--the day flew by!

Tonight I opened a cupboard in the kitchen to take down a cookbook and got a big shock to find that the entire shelf was crawling with ANTS.  SICK!!!  I haven't had a problem like that since we moved in 4 years ago.  I put a call in to our pest control service who can come tomorrow at 9:30am. 

So... the entire pantry is spread across the dining room table and the kitchen counter.  It's a lot of stuff.  I guess a silver lining is that I'll get to organize it and make it all pretty after it's all over.  Got to think positive, right?

Things that made me happy today

Things that made me happy today:

1.  Jason sporting a Christmas tie for church.

2.  Me making a mess opening a bottle of Martinelli's (leftover from Thanksgiving) and Wade grabbing paper towels and saying, "It's okay, Mom!  I'm on it!"

3.  Sitting next to a newly baptized member of our church congregation all through Sunday School and Relief Society and enjoying her friendship and kindness.

4.  Taking a short nap with Samson the dog.

5.  Rhiannon taking charge and doing laundry for the family; wasn't asked to do it--she just did!

6.  Painting baseboards together; appreciating Jason's patience with us all, knowing that he could do it a lot faster and better by himself.

7.  Reading Around the World in 80 Days on my Kindle.

8.  Our whole family fasting with our ward for missionary work.

9.  Taking a break from Thanksgiving leftovers (we have a lot left!) and eating DiGiornio for dinner, ha-ha!

10.  Pretty Christmas tree, all lit up!

11.  Wearing my turquoise scarf (that I bought on the Ensenada cruise) to church today and remembering fun memories!

12.  Having time today to soak up all the good fun we've had this past week and preparing mentally for the month of Christmas!

A wonderful way to start this month of Christmas!

This morning I took the dogs for a walk and thought about this special month.  I thought about things I could work on personally, and I wondered what I could do to make Christmas special for our family.  You can imagine my surprise when I sat down to take a breather just after getting home and watched this video.  It is EXACTLY what was on my mind today.

Merry Christmas!!!