Pictureless Update

That title sounds funny because my updates very rarely have pictures, but I have pictures to post - I just don't have the camera with me right now.

Honestly, I am avoiding school and work right now. It is Friday and it has been a long week with work, school, appointments, and lots of praying and asking for some answers to our questions in life right now. I'll share with you a few of our questions to enlighten you to our situation.

Last week we found out that a friend of ours is moving. They just bought a house and are interested in selling/renting their current house. It is a 3 (technically 4 - one without a closet) bedroom house the same square footage as our current house but with a different layout. Before we saw it, Brian and I said no. Then I went and saw it... I still wasn't sure, but wanted Brian to take a look at it. After he saw it, it became more of an option that was appealing to us - even with the thought of having to move all our crud out of this house and into the new.

I have seen it 3 times now and we went to the temple last night to get some extra guidance. After feeling like the answer was up to us, we felt that it would be the best for our family to move. The kids are so excited! We will be 2 minutes away from the church (yay), we get to paint (yeah), there's a possibility of us getting a dog (sarcastic yay from me*), AND we'll be across the street from the Gilsons, family friends of ours (woohoo!).  Brian and I are very excited to have our own bed and bath with a separate laundry room. There is a garden already set up and a large fenced back yard. There is a deck with a spot for our BBQ and our patio furniture. There is a place for our Fire pit to be set up (yay!). It has a two car garage which is needed now that we are a 2-car-family (pictures of Stella coming soon). AND if the kids go to public school next year, the bus stop is right outside our front door.

*It's not that I don't like dogs, its just I am not too thrilled of having that constant responsibility. Being the youngest of 6 kids, I have been on the kids side of the argument "We will take care of it... honest, we WILL!" and seen my mom's side of the work. Yes, my kids love animals, but they said they would take care of Skitter, our hamster and I ended up being the one who cleaned its cage. A dog may be different, but I don't know if I am ready for that extra work and extra financial obligation.

The scary thing about moving is that it will be more money - not actually in rent, but in extra gas that it will take to get there from work and back, and the extra heating expenses (its base board heaters instead of gas central air). When we went to the temple last night we were really worried about financial circumstances. When we left we both felt that no matter what we do, we'll be taken care of.

We feel like if we do move, a big pro is that we can help Jamie (Gilson) while Glen is deployed for 6 months. We can also spend our last year with them here closer to them than ever before! It will be so much fun living right across the street from them! Another huge thing that will be nice is that the lease is flexible since we are renting from friends verses being stuck on a year lease. We are starting to look at houses since the market is so good right now and we want the option to buy if the right one comes along with out a lease holding us back.

-gotta get school ready, i'll be right back-

Ok, So that was Decision #1.

Decision #2 - Homeschool. I don't want to homeschool next year. Elijah has been going back and forth between public school and Bryan Tec, a parent partnership with District 81 that has classes twice a week for homeschooled kids. The Gilson's are doing it next year and all year long I have thought if we do homeschool next year I would do Bryan Tec.  I think it would be better if Elijah went to public school. I have a really hard time getting Elijah to focus. He has made such progress in this, but some days are just rough. I also am getting tired of not having a schedule. Every day is different because we go to work with Brian at least once a week. This week we went 3 times. When I think of homeschool next year (especially homeschooling both kids) I get overwhelmed. Right now I have two part time jobs, Sierra and All-City. Thankfully I resigned from All-City for next year. There were a couple weeks where I thought about asking for the job back, but after this week I have realized, I don't want it.

Quianna really wants to be homeschooled next year. So as far as her being homeschooled, I think that I can't help her as much as school can. However, I think that Bryan Tec could help her more than public school can. If we can get her in the right classes, I think it might work out. She could really use more preparation in writing before she goes into High School. She has excelled so much in math this year but I think we could make more progress - especially if I spent some time with her each day. What I worry is that I won't have time. However, if there is just one child home (and no offense to Elijah) but that one child is the low maintenance one, there would be more time and I can manage it differently.

I worry about Quianna though, because she isn't a morning person, and when she is in 9th grade she will be doing early morning seminary (basically a sunday school class for high schoolers every morning at 6:00 maybe even earlier) and I would like to get her in the habit of waking up early. Right now we are waking up at 8:00 and that is even hard to get her up. So I think even if we do homeschool next year, I am going to wake her up at 7 to help her get use to it.
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Anyway, that's a little bit of what's going on in our life right now.

I have been going to a chiropractor 3 times a week the last couple weeks and I have lots of weeks ahead of me of twice a week visits and such. I have a messed up pelvic bone that is malformed (for all my life) and twisted, along with the curve in my spine is basically gone. Therefore, my chiropractor and I have a plan to get me fixed so I won't be going through daily pain. Since the car accident I was in when I was 14, I have had tons of stress on my muscles trying to keep me upright and so they fatigue very easily through out the day. This week I have felt so much progress. I am so excited to get better! However, I won't be done with appointments until the middle of July, which takes a lot out of our family because my appointments are in Liberty Lake. I am very fortunate that the kids are willing to help me out with going to work with Brian a couple of times a week so that it is less on gas. The appointments are 7 minutes away from Brian's work. I am also very fortunate to have a husband that is willing to pay the bills to help me feel better and function better. I am also fortunate that there is hope through chiropractics and that I am not facing back surgery.

So needless to say, life has been quite hectic lately. It has been nice to get all this stuff out and explained. It has been pretty overwhelming, because sadly enough this is only part of what has been going on. I am very thankful that I have my Lord to lean on during these stressful times. With all this being said, life and love is wonderful!

Great Minds...

Brian and I have been talking about going to a place in Sandpoint. It's called the Waterhouse. It has a hottub outside, a two person jacuzi in the bathroom, and an awesome shower. Here's the thing, I was going to try and surprise Brian by booking it for us during the kids' spring break, while they were in the Tri-Citites. I emailed the place to ask how much it was (it is extremely reasonable). He emailed back and said, "I believe I emailed your husband, Brian, right? Unless its a coincendence that it's the same last name." I was thinking about the time before we had emailed him so I thought, "Wow! He remembered Brian."

This morning, Brian and I were on our way to work and I said, "Our getaway for April, would you mind if I took money from my All-City checks to pay for it. Because I want it to take care of it." He hemmed and hawed and I asked, "What are you thinking?" he said, "Well, I was already planning a getaway for us." So I said, "Was it the Waterhouse?" and he said, "Yes!"

We laughed and he said, "You ruined my surprise!" and I said, "So did You!"

Then I said, "Great minds..." to which he replied, "Sabotage each other?"

Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year!

This the Chinese dragon cake that I made. I was going to make it look fierce, but since I couldn't get a red color for the frosting, I decided to make it look fun and festive!

We had Joe and Chris (newly baptized members of our church) and Chris's girlfriend and her son, along with the missionaries over for a Chinese dinner and Family Home Evening. Brian gave a great lesson about holding onto the scriptures to help us guide our lives. Then we did some activities as groups - the group with most points at the end got to the cake first :-)

Quianna, Joe, Elder Petersen (back), Elder John, and Elijah.

Warren, Chris, Amy, and Brian. Brian was a helper from the other team.

This the beginning of the cake. I think it would make a cool snake cake. I love the slits that look like eyes.

School started today!

Yesterday the kids stayed in bed until 12:45 pm trying to fool me that they were still asleep so I wouldn't start school. Boy were they shocked when they got out of their rooms and I told them that we were having a day off!

Off to a great start!

So I have been thinking about all the goals I want to be meeting and then things I want to do to change my life. Right now things are a disaster and for a while now I have been feeling like I am just fighting to keep my mouth above water (not my head, just my mouth - that's how much I have been drowning in CHAOS). So since it is the new year, I guess I could call these goals New Year Resolutions - however, they are more like Life Resolutions. Brian and I have been talking about the goals we want to meet individually, and most of them match, so we had a talk yesterday about how we can meet those goals.

I went to my sister's blog and she had written her resolutions down, and I thought that would be a great idea so I can keep track of them all.

1. Read the scriptures and pray daily - individually, as a family, and as a couple. Things have been so hectic that we just lose the momentum of working on our spiritual health. We are really good at family prayer but we haven't done family scripture study for a while. Now that the kids are old enough and own their own set of scriptures we are going to start in a book and read a chapter each night with all of us taking turns reading 5 verses. We started last night.

Since Brian and I both have callings that make it so we can't go to Sunday School (I'm in the Primary working with the kids, and Brian is the Ward Clerk so he is usually doing stuff for the Bishop), we decided that for our Couple scripture study we would go through the Sunday School study guide discussion questions. We were going to read the scriptures together after the kids went to bed, but we felt like we had just read the scriptures 10 minutes ago... oh wait we did! We have family scriptures study at 8 so then we get done and put the kids to bed, so we decided we will read the sunday school assigned scriptures for our individual study, then discuss them after the kids go to bed for our couple scripture study.

Since we are studying the Book of Mormon this year for Sunday School, I want to read the whole thing this year, so I have a chart that will help me read it completely but keep me on schedule for reading the assigned scriptures.

2. FHE - now that Brian is cutting back on his Monday gigs we can have a regular night again for Family Home Evening. We were doing well when Tuesdays were always free and that was our night. Then Tuesdays became all-city day fro Brian, so we potentially moved it to Thursdays, but now with Quianna in Mutualy (Youth Group) on Wednesdays and Brian teaching All-City on Tuesdays, Thursdays became the day that Brian could do meetings, go out with the missionaries, have gigs, or filled up with other stuff and we never made the switch to Thursdays official. Now, we are going to do Mondays. We are starting are first Monday FHE off with going over to the Holmes. They invited us and the Christensens over (people in our ward that have kids Quianna and Elijah's age).

3. Exercise - Both Brian and I are doing the 100 Push ups Challenge, and the 200 Sit Ups Challenge. We are also doing the couch to 5k. The plan is we are doing the sit ups and pushups on our own, but when he gets home for work, we go for a jog. Hopefully doing this with someone will help me stay accountable. Also, it will help to not have to go jogging in the morning.

4. Get my life and our house decluttered, organized, and keep it that way! Today I reorganized my control journal along with routines for keeping my Homeschool, All-city Work, Sierra Work, and House work straight. I also downloaded and printed the 2011 and 2012 Declutter Calendars.

I want to declutter and organize the garage especially. That is the biggest problem in our house. I want a spot for each holiday's decoration (and wrapping paper/supplies). I want a spot for our food - since we don't have a lot of room upstairs for one. I want spots for outdoor games, gardening, camping, my boxes of fabric and craft stuff, Halloween costumes, snow clothes. My dream is to line the walls with shelves and then have storage tubs and drawers with everything. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a place for everything so when I need something, I know exactly where it is and it is easy to grab? Then when I need to put it away, I can take it to its place. Oh, that would be amazing. First step is to declutter, and do one section at a time. I think I'll start with the Christmas stuff since it is already out. Then move to the food section.

The biggest thing about all these goals is self discipline and not to procrastinate. That will be the Master Challenge - my Master Resolution! Wish me luck!