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!

Thankful to be me

There's a song that I learned in Primary when I was younger and I taught to the Primary children in November. The ending goes, "These many blessings make me feel, so thankful to be me." I had a series of thoughts that made me feel this way when Brian, the kids, and I were coming home from work yesterday and I would like to write them down.

I complain and dread working a lot. I also am tired of our family being so busy - mainly Brian and me. Wednesday the car broke down and we had to pay to get it fixed. Brian started talking about the gigs he has so we can pay for it quickly. I felt so frustrated at all the nights that he was going to be gone, but none the less, it is helping us to have the things we need.

We were talking about his upcoming schedule for the next week and I was feeling gypped about the time that he is going to be gone. Then I stared feeling resentment about my work ToDo list that is building up with deadlines approaching - including the work for my Primary calling. You see, I am a lazy person - I don't like to work if I have to. If I want to, I like it (cleaning and organizing the house or doing projects). But when it comes to actual work that has deadlines - I just don't like it and I put it off. I am a big procrastinator. Anyway, so I was feeling frustrated about Brian being gone, and me having to work, when my thoughts turned to some friends from college that I ran into the other day who have a two year old. Both of them work. I am assuming with the kind of jobs they have not doing anything with their degrees and the amount of student loans they have, that its not because they want to, I think they need to. I started wondering what it would be like to raise a child if they are both gone? I then started thinking about our family and how I would manage having a family if I had to work outside of the home. I would definitely not been able to homeschool the kids this year - or help Brian at work when things get busy there. That led me to think how I am grateful for Brian working at a job that is the majority source of our income, and taking gigs at night to supplement that income so that I don't have to go find a higher paying job. I can work my two part time jobs at home to help complete our income. How lucky are we to be able to go to work with Brian and I get paid for it and we can bring the kids and their school work along? We are very lucky.

It may feel/seem weird that our income is like a patchwork quilt, but it works, and maybe in the future, Sierra can be our only source of income and I won't need to work and Brian would only need to take gigs if he wants to, but for now, our quilt works just fine.