Three weeks worth in one post!

So the blog tells me that I haven't done a post in three weeks. How is that even possible? Last week and this week we had people to our house for dinner on Sunday. Cooking for a big group like that takes a lot of energy out of me. I also see that I started a draft on the 11th that only had these two sentences: This week has been a rollercoaster. Depression knocked me out for nearly 4 days. I some pretty severe depression for about a month there, which was weird because I can't think of anything I changed that would have caused it. But whatever it was went away and I feel much better now.

I made a cake on Feb 4th (the first Sunday of the month) to satisfy a sweet tooth. Man did it satisfy. Uh-mazing.

Two days later, I had quite the day. I exercised, showered, straightened my house, and made lunch for us and my friend and her two kids who came over for a visit. After school, Mira had a play date, and that night I got together with some friends from North Dakota for dinner.

 Wednesday, I helped Julia in the morning, and then because Cecily just watches TV the whole time I'm at Julia's house, I took her to McDonalds for a happy meal and play time so I could get some writing-related reading done without her watching more TV. I was actually really happy I got her a happy meal that day, because they came with cute little monster valentines that she could color and decorate with stickers. WAY better than a useless toy. Those things entertained her for literally hours. There were 12, so she made one for each of her family members, all 4 grandparents, her Primary teacher, our friend Anessa, and a couple of kids in our neighborhood. So not only did I get a good hour of reading in which Cecily was not using an electronic babysitter and she was entertained by the toy for 4+ hours for the next week? Best $4 I've spent in a long time. For. Sure.

She did make me take a lot of pictures of her. They turned out kinda fun.

That evening, Cecily and Mira had tumbling, too, so I got even more writing time in. It was lovely. *cue starry eyes*

The next day, I went to my parents' house to do Valentine's day nails with my mom and to show her how the nail stamping plates that I got for Christmas work. I love how mine turned out.

After school, I took the kids up to BYU so I could buy tickets to Wonder at their $1 theater.  On the way, this conversation happened:

Cecily: Mom, how do you spell Mount Horu? (A location from a video game we haven't played in weeks)
Me: M-O-U-N-T H-O-R-U.
Emilia: I don't know why she wanted to know that.
Cecily, indignant: Because I don't know how to spell it!

I also took them to the library for a bit before dinner.

Friday, me and the girls mostly stayed home. I played playdoh with Cecily for a while. We ended up making robots because I think the googly eyes are just so darn cute.

That evening, Steve and I went out for dinner and then went to a gallery opening at the BYU MOA. It was called "Tiffany Glass: Painting with Color and Light." I was expecting gorgeous old stained glass windows, but it was mostly lamps. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Saturday, we got to use the tickets to Wonder that I bought. I got tickets for my parents and for some friends, too. Unfortunately for my parents, the friends (my parents knew them too as they were friends from North Dakota) brought a child who was sick. That child threw up within the first 10 minutes of the movie starting--all over the floor--and they just wiped it up with baby wipes and kept watching. She threw up again into a jacket about an hour in. My mom has a very sensitive nose and she was sitting right next to the sick child. I was in front of the sick child and had my purse splattered with it. It was so gross. Who has a kid throw up and doesn't take them home?? They were only out $6 and a 20 minute drive. Ulgh. Anyway...

The next Monday, I made sugar cookies that I had sold to make money for writing conferences. I sold 42 cookies. This is what they looked like:

The next day, we had our friends, the Ables over to bake and decorate cookies. It was fun because all my girls could help cut out and could work the decorating bags themselves. In the past, I had to mostly help them instead of decorating my own. It was a fun afternoon.

The next day was Valentine's Day. To be honest, I was kinda ticked at Steve the whole day, though I can't remember exactly why now. He did make crepes for breakfast, so you'd think I would have forgiven him, but I guess I was feeling petulant that day. Oddly, the thing that helped me be in a better mood was getting out of the house, even though it was to take Cecily to the ER because she'd swallowed a balloon.

I also helped Julia that day and took the girls to gymnastics. It was a weird Valentine's Day all around.

That next day, Thursday, I conned my dad into taking me car shopping. Steve's little Mazda protege had blown a head gasket and he could no longer drive it to work. We tried using that Steel Seal stuff, but it didn't work. So we found out that Pontiac Vibes had Toyota drive trains and my Dad and I were able to find an old one in amazingly good condition for under $3000. We only had to drive 4 cars, too. And I got to spend the day with my Dad and Cecily got to have a bunch of fun with Nana (as always). I call that a win/win/win.

Friday, I got a free editing session with a professional editor at a small writing conference in Provo. I'm hoping with the feedback I got I can get my memoir into shape. I had to attend a day at the conference in order to qualify for the editing session (how terrible, right?), so I went to that for most of the day on Saturday. I love attending conferences even if I don't learn a ton. But I learned some interesting stuff at a few of the classes, so I was glad I went. We had dinner at my parents' house that night to celebrate Ben turning 33.

Sunday we had a family of five over for dinner. Great conversation, food, and a fun game, and they broke one of our chairs. Fair trade. I guess. Maybe.

The whole family had Monday off for Presidents Day and we were ecstatic to wake up to a valley full of snow. After running to Walmart to get Emilia a new pair of snowpants and winter gloves, we headed to Rock Canyon Park for some excellent sledding. I never loved playing in the snow as a kid, but I have never liked being cold either. I found a pair of snow-shoeing boots at the thrift store a few years back, and ever since, I have LOVED it. Plus you get an adrenalin rush, some exercise, some Vitamin D in the middle of winter, and lots of great memories with your kids. Sledding is the best!

The cherry on top was that after we'd been there for a good hour, the kids needed a snack break. I noticed that there was a group of 4 adults and one 18-month-old nearby who only had one snowboard that they were using as a sled. I'd been underprepared for sledding before, so I took pity on them and leant them our saucers. They could at least all take turns. They were so grateful for something was so small and I was grateful for a small way to make someone's day better.

Cecily was playing with her magnets one day that week and made this "sun." I'm always impressed with her ability to construct things.

We had a pretty mellow time the rest of the week. Steve had game night. We built a snowman who was dubbed SnowDrops by Cecily and SnowJoe by Mira. I found a bunch of cute, name brand jeans at the thrift store, plus a new pair of boots. We took some friends out to dinner who are moving back to Florida, me and the kids discovered the Great British Baking Show, I took my kids to the Thanksgiving Point Museum of Ancient Life (the Dinosaur Museum), and we had another friend over for dinner tonight (just one this time, and our chairs all survived). I did a lot of decluttering, too. Drawers, bedrooms, all those little things that aren't too bothersome until there are a hundred of them. Oh! And we watched the Olympics. We did that last week, too. It was so cute. Two Sundays ago, we turned on the Olympics at Nick and Wilda's and ice dancing happened to be on, so everyone sat down to watch. Cecily and Mira are too young to really have understood the Olympics before, but after a couple routines, they were pumped. They started "skating" around the room, twirling and jumping. Cecily begged Steve, "Skate with me Daddy!" Which meant she wanted him to lift her above his head and twirl around over and over and over. On the way home that night everybody wanted to know when we could go skating and if they could start taking skating lessons instead of gymnastics. It was fun to see their excitement over it. I remember feeling the same way as a child.

even the cat watched The Great British Baking Show with us. :)

My dinner smiled at me.

I made a gluten free lemon-berry-cheesecake torte for dessert tonight. It looked pretty. The flavor was good, too. But the gluten free crust was kinda terrible considering it took me a good two hours to make. It would have been better to use an easy dough, like biscuits, instead of rolling out supposed "puff pastry" 8 times and refrigerating it for 15 minutes every other time. What a waste! It wasn't flaky at all. My pie crust is way flakier than that.  Since Emilia has been super into The Great British Baking show, I suggested she try to make one, too. And she did! She measured out the ingredients and rolled out the dough six times (she did complain a bit about that, but I don't blame her--there's a reason you buy this stuff in the freezer isle). Hers turned out much flakier than mine. So, word to the wise--don't make GF puff pastry. It ain't worth it.

adventures in space and bounciness

I wrote a post last week and forgot to publish it. Whoops! So you get two this week.

I exercised five days again this week! That feels like such an accomplishment to me. It's nice having kids old enough that I can have a routine. 

I took Cecily the the Bounce House this week, so I could work on writing while she played. She loves it. It's such a great little place. This first picture, you can't really see her because she is across the room on that farthest bouncy slide. She was yelling at me from there to take her picture. The next picture is a zoom of the same thing. She cracks me up.

She was afraid to try the climbing wall, so I had to walk over there with her, but once she got over her fear, she was great at it. It's so good for her to get her energy out that way.

This is a picture of Steve and my girls as we read scriptures one more before school. It made my heart swell.

This is a story I posted on Instagram that I'll just copy and paste here:

The Lord works in mysterious ways, as they say. We took the kids to the planetarium today and planned to leave at 9:30, so we could arrive as they opened at 10:30. But things went as they often do and we didn't leave until much later. We had vouchers for the IMAX theater and had to pick which movie we wanted to see after we arrived. The one both Steve and I would have chosen was called Beautiful Planet, but the last showing for the day started one minute after we arrived. They wouldn't let us in after it started. So we reluctantly got tickets for Think Big (instead of Aircraft Carriers--sorry Dad). Though i was disappointed, I had the thought that God doesn't work in coincidences and he is in the small details of our lives. It was possible that one of us needed to see the Think Big movie. It was about encouraging girls to go into engineering. Maybe one of my girls needed to see that she could be an engineer. But as we watched an hour later, I found that it was me who needed to watch. One line, delivered in Jeff Bridges' swoon-worthy tones, was an answer to earnest prayers that I've been sending up over a subject that's been hard on my heart lately. As I teared up with Cecily on my lap, I was grateful for a Father who helped me be calm over leaving late, or who made it important to my girls to fully dress 2 Barbies each to the nines before we left, or who made finding parking taking 7 minutes instead of 4, so I could get my answer today.

I also put up Valentine's Day decorations this week. Sometimes, I love going all out decorating. And sometimes, I can't muster the energy to even try. It's an all or nothing thing. But my kids love it, and I really love the pops of red and pink with the teals in my living room. So I went for it.

The kids have been playing really well together this weekend. It's amazing how fun the house can be when they get along. And how awful it can be when they don't. I wonder if them yelling less at each other has a direct correlation to me yelling less at them. I bet it probably does. Even more motivation to improve my parenting skills.

First science fair and stuff

Sadly, this week was a lot rougher than last week. I could tell Monday and Tuesday that my body was fighting something, so I tried to take it easy and get lots of vitamins. It seemed to do the trick, because I never did come down with the sore throat that was threatening to take over. But I didn't exercise more than 2 days, and I didn't get a ton done, and I forgot to take my aminos for a couple days. So once I physically felt better, my mental state pooped out. Steve took care of me yesterday, though, and we got to have dinner with my side of the family last night, so I'm feeling much renewed today.

I did manage to help Emilia start her science fair project. It was probably the worst thing I've done in six months. She wanted to compare different ways of growing crystals, and at first she wanted to do a consumer report and try out different kits to see which ones worked the best. But looking online, they cost anywhere from $10 to $50 each and there was no way I was spending that kind of money on a 4th grade science fair. So she decided to try different DIY methods instead, and narrowed it down to making rock candy and trying different methods. Had I known what an ordeal it was going to be, I might have paid the money for the consumer report!

First, we decided to use distilled water, because one of the websites said that it would keep a film from forming on the top of the solution (which would make it harder for the water to evaporate). So I had to go to the store and buy some. Then we were going to use two different kinds of sugar as one of the studies. So we boiled two pots of water and started adding sugar. Most of the websites said to use a 1:3 ratio. 3 cups sugar to 1 cup water, so it would be highly saturated. Since we also wanted to study Light/warm vs. dark/cold and plain skewer vs. sugar-dipped skewer, we needed 4 cups of water per kind of sugar, which meant 12 cups of sugar per pot. That's a lot of sugar. Three bags of brown sugar to be exact. After adding 3 cups, I could no longer see the bottom of the pot and had no idea if the sugar was still being dissolved. But the white sugar seemed to be dissolving, so we kept going. This is what the brown sugar pot looked like after. 12 cups of sugar were added:

So in other words, I had brown bubbly sludge. About five minutes after taking each of them off the stove--not even enough time to prepare the jars we were going to pour the solution in, both mixtures had become nearly solid. Since the brown sugar was so thick and dark, there was no way we were going to be able to keep an eye on the crystal formation, so I wrote it off as a nice try that we'd have to toss.

The white sugar solution was translucent, but still hard. So we put it back on the stove and added water until we had a 1:2 solution. This time, it stayed liquid, we added food coloring, rolled 1/2 the sticks in sugar and stuck 2 in per jar.

Since we wanted to study light vs. dark, Emilia decided the closet under the stairs would be the best place to put two of the jars. But the solution was still hot. It was after 9 by that point, and I was still trying to mend (this was Tuesday), so I was really tired, and I didn't want to do the project for Emilia, so I told her to get a hot pad and take them down herself. Bad idea. She dropped one of the jars half-way down, spilling purple syrup all over my carpeted stairs and the rug near the front door. I didn't save myself any work by having her do it. Sheesh.

After scrubbing carpet, wood floor, tile floor, moving and washing a rug and carrying the other jar downstairs, I declared the project done and fell asleep on the couch while trying to brainstorm worldbuilding stuff for my next attempt at writing a book.

Here is what the jars with the sticks that were in the light looked like:

When I was talking to my parents the next day, I was telling them about the brown sludge when I remembered that people used to make candy by pouring hot syrup on the snow. Miraculously, we had snow. So I thought, why not try that out with the brown sludge?

Our first attempt just made brown-colored snow. It looked super appetizing. (Not.)

So, in looking up recipes, I decided to add a little bit of honey, and then measure the temperature so it got to the hard ball stage.  We also decided to pack the snow into bread pans so it was compact (harder for the hot syrup to to melt through). It worked. And it was REALLY good. I loved it. Mira and Cecily thought it was disgusting. Emilia thought it was edible enough to have a few pieces. :) But everybody had fun taking turns pouring.

Mira is holding a piece she made.

Steve also had game night this week, I helped Julia--I've been keeping it to an hour lately and it seems a lot less tedious--and I went visiting teaching. Cecily has been drawing a lot lately. This first one she said was a 9-armed squid (that was before she drew 16 arms) who doesn't like other sea creatures. But he likes humans, so he's nice to them (hence the smile).

Trip to St. George

I missed last week because we were in St. George. The previous week was super busy. I took the lady I help to DI for a couple of hours on Tuesday while Steve was working from home. I had lots of laundry to do and I needed to clean both bathrooms before we left. The girls had parent/teacher conferences (they both are model students, though Mira is much more average as far as grades go. She is either satisfatory or mastered on all of the subjects, though--no below average). I spent time with my friend Gina one night. I had a follow-up appointment with the homeopathic doctor. I had to pack all the girls and myself for a 4-day trip, get the car packed, get the house straightened, work on my writing, do some shopping, and get my parents off to their trip to colorado (Steve took them to the train station at 4am on Tuesday and then was cranky all day).

I find it cute that Mira is so proud of her bed-making skills that she often wants to take a picture when she's done. :)

Another photo from my instagram challenge: favorite genre: YA sci-fi/fantasy, sock Sunday: I just need my feet warm, favorite trope: beauty and the beast, plotter/pantser/other: both, depending on whether I've written anything like it before.

The girls decided I needed a picture of them hugging at parent teacher conferences.

Friday afternoon, we drove down to St. George and stayed until Monday evening. We went to a number of parks, hiked in Snow Canyon on the Butterfly Trail (there's a rock that looks like butterfly wings), learned how to play pickle ball, played a number of board/group games, attended church twice, and ate a lot of good food. Joe and Cindy are so nice for always being willing to host us.

I loved their two geckos. They always peeked their heads out to see who was watching them.

When we got back Tuesday, I went up to BYU to get us tickets to Murder on the Orient Express at the dollar theater on campus. Since I was up there, Mira and Cecily wanted to come with and go bowling. I did pretty good!

I got to hang out with my friend Camber this week, Steve got to play LOTR with Ben, I took the girls to the library, went grocery shopping at Walmart and Costco in the same day (this may not sound that amazing, but it totally is), the girls had a sleepover at Camber's house, her daughter Cassie came and played at our house, Steve and I went on a date (to the movie I got tickets for), I exercised FIVE days this week (I think that's a record), I picked up my parents from their flight home, Steve and I both did some writing, and I played a lot of Ori and the Blind Forest--a video game that is totally addicting. It was busy, but it was a really good week. I think the exercise makes a huge difference in my emotional stability. I felt really mentally healthy this week and really the only difference was the five days of exercise. I'm excited for the week to come!

Introspection

Wilda asked Steve today how our week went and Steve immediately answered, "It was kind of a crappy week at our house, post-holiday." I'm not feeling so negative about it, but I know what he means.

Steve is struggling at work. Not *with* the work, but with feeling like he's needed. His team had slowly been breaking apart during the last part of the year and there are only a couple of people left with rumors that his team leader might bow out soon, too. He's never felt like his team does a job that no one else can do, and he's never felt like he's improving lives or even reaching the "end guy" even though he's on the communications team. So he's been very introspective all week (the whole manly mind cave sort of thing). He's got to figure out if he wants to stay with Oracle or move to a different company/career.

I've been suffering post-holidays depression because I ate far too much wheat and sugar and did far too little exercise for my body to not protest. Today it finally feels like all that is working its way out of my system and I'm coming out of the blahs. It helps that I ate fairly healthy and exercised as much as I could this week (which was still only 3 days, but it's way better than none). I've also been struggling to figure out what I want to do with myself. I've been getting a lot of joy out of creating things (bows and mermaids and hats and barbie clothes and notecards recently), but that's not something that I can really make money off of, and even if I could, I'd probably be making about $3 an hour. Plus, if I could get more efficient so I could make more money at doing crafts, the creativity would likely plummet, taking the joy out of it. So crafting is fun, but it doesn't provide much value for the family past saving a bit of money using a lot of my time. I've been writing for 9 years now and I enjoy that as well. But so far, I've earned exactly $50 and spent over $1000 (going to conferences, entering contests, etc.) so it's definitely not a lucrative hobby either. It pays even less than crafting! ;) And the more I do it, the less I'm sure that I'm up for the marketing aspect of being an author. So do I go back to teaching? Do I just craft and write for fun in my free time? Do I push away my fears and continue to try to publish? Do I risk having another baby at my age so I have something that demands my time again? (That makes parenthood sound lovely, doesn't it?) I've been trying to figure all that out this week, too.

So Steve and I have been complete joys to be around. *Not.*

The writing conference I go to every year is doing an instagram challenge this year. I've participated a couple of days:

Day 2 #storymakers18 #igchallenge : word for this year. I feel like the word "care" is going to play an important role in my life this year. I feel a push to care about and serve individuals I come in contact with this year. I want to make sure I make time to take care of myself. I need to figure out what exactly I care about so I can make and achieve goals that will bring satisfaction, joy, and a feeling of accomplishment to my life. I need to take care to balance my desires with those of my spouse and children. I may have taken this theme too far, but I don't care. Bahaha. I slay me.

Day 4 #storymakers18 #igchallenge : writing space. I use a laptop because my brain works best when I'm comfy. This is my usual spot, and my usual companion, but my bed, the benches at the kids' gymnastics place, the in-laws front room couch, or the splash pad, are not out of the running.

I just found this story Mira wrote. Translation below.

Page 1: The Book of Mermaid Diary. Hi I am Ella. Once I went to a party.

Page 2: And then I turned into a mermaid again. And then I went to the ocean and I was safe.

Page 3: I like to swim. I like a moon [?]. Like my story? YES / NO !

Page 4: I like you. The end.

Monday we just had a lazy day. I had doctor appointments on Tuesday and Thursday (naturopath to get some blood tests done to see if my supplements are working/needed, and my yearly checkup) and I had bloodwork done on Wednesday. The kids had gymnastics Wednesday. Friday, I went to the temple in the afternoon and Mira got the Stand Strong student award at school. Steve worked from home so he could go to the assembly. I always appreciate when her positive qualities get recognized by others. It makes it seem more real than when we or grandparents say it.

Steve and I are entering a video contest for the writing contest, too. I'm excited to show you the end result next week. Stay tuned!