Depression and wedding prep

I am SO tired. I started depression meds because post-partum has been pretty bad lately. But the first few nights on it are generally pretty bad for me, I think because my body sees it as a stimulant. Even the small dose that I'm taking kept me up until 3 am the first night and then at 7, I couldn't go back to sleep. Last night (night 2 on the medication), I fell asleep around 10:30, but was awake by 3. At 7 I was finally tired enough to go back to sleep and slept until 9, but I'm too old to be averaging 5 hours of sleep a night. Blergh.

Two Sundays ago Alison came over and I practiced doing her hair for the wedding. It won't look like this, but this is where we started. :)

One day--Tuesday, I think, the kids wanted to go to a splash pad that wasn't ours. So we drove up to the Orem mall only to find out they were fixing the splash pad. So then we went up to the one across from Cascade Mini Golf. Jules was exhausted and managed to sleep for 1/2 an hour in 90 degree weather on a blanket under our umbrella. She is literally the best baby.

We celebrated Emilia's birthday early so she could have a Friday night sleep over. She had 4 friends, including one boy (who she was surprised she couldn't ask to sleep over, too--I love innocence!) come. One girl got sick and left within an hour of the party starting, poor thing.  Everyone else watched a movie, roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, and burned their math books. Emilia said it was the best party she ever had.

I went to a couple open houses last Saturday and the picked up Mira and Cecily who had stayed overnight at the Childress's house. When I got home, Steve had chopped down a large portion of our front tree (just cutting off lower branches) and I got to help him chop up the branches and take them to the dump. The pile was taller than the bumper of my dad's truck when I was done unloading it!

I found Jules sleeping like this the other night. It was adorable. Also, I need to get a bumper so she stops getting her legs stuck.

Cecily got a paper at church today to color & cut out a puppet that had Saul on one side and Paul on the other. 
Cecily, holding the puppet after dinner, showing the side with Saul: I'm mean and I would never do a backflip.
Flipping it over: I'm happy and nice!
*flips it over it's head like it's doing a cartwheel*
I would totally do a backflip!
*grins*

Megan got into town Monday and we've been spending time with their family and helping my mom get stuff ready for my sister's wedding next week.

We had at least one showing every day for the first 10 days after we put it on the market and then they just stopped. We've had one showing since last Saturday. :(  So I cleaned all the family pictures and any extraneous stuff I could out of all of the upstairs rooms and we dropped the price again.

Thursday, my sisters, mom, niece and I got pedicures and went out to dinner in place of a bridal shower for Alison.

Yesterday, Steve and I went to the temple with everybody as James went through for the first time. We were late and I felt terrible about it.

Hopefully the depression medication will help me to find my groove again soon and I'll be up for doing these posts more often.

Too lazy to put the pictures in the right places

Sunday afternoons have been really hard lately. There's so many people to entertain and coordinate and we have to figure out what to do for our home church and then execute it and we no longer have the luxury of having someone make dinner for us and I just don't have the brain power to blog about the week at the end of the day. My kids are getting on my case though. They love reading these posts. So here I am, trying.

We have finally listed our house for sale. We changed light fixtures, updated the master bathroom, cleaned the carpets, cleared out a ton of junk, straightened up the garage, took loads to the dump and to DI, sprayed down all the sidewalks and the back porch, weeded, cleaned windows inside and out, matched and touched-up paint, painted window sills that needed it, moved the baby into Emilia's room and moved Emilia downstairs, and took pictures. And we did all of that except the master bath and weeding in a 2-week period. I was exhausted afterwards.

Since listing it last Tuesday night, we've had 5 showings. No offers yet though. We'll probably lower the price on Tuesday. It's a such a competitive market.

Cecily had a dragon birthday party. I tried to keep it simple and held it at the park. One girl said this was her best day ever, so I suppose it went pretty well. We made our own "dragon egg" pinata that had dragon stuffies for each kid. That was their party favor and the basis for most of the activities. We did an obstacle course "training" with the dragons, made name collars for them, colored our own dragon eggs, played pin the fire on the dragon, and ate dragon-shaped cake.

Emilia had a writing camp each morning for a week. During that week, Cecily and Mira also had swimming lessons and it was one of the weeks we were getting the house ready. It was kind of a crazy week.

For the 4th of July, we went to Thanksgiving Point to watch the fireworks. We were expecting 90 degree weather. It ended up raining on us for a couple of hours with 10-20 mile/hr winds. And after it rained it was about 60 degrees (or colder) and we all froze in our shorts and t-shirts. The weather thought it was April. But the fireworks were amazing! I absolutely love sitting right under a fireworks display. We even had particles drop on us after some of them went off. Loved it! Though it freaked Mira out so much she just sat and cried the whole time despite wearing sound-deadening earmuffs. The baby slept right through it in her carseat in the car. She is so nice to us.

summer schedule

The week after Memorial Day was our first week of summer break at home. The week didn't really start for us until Thursday since we didn't get home from St. George until late Wednesday afternoon.

Thursday morning is when we made our schedule, and so far it has worked well for us. We haven't been able to keep within the schedule on any of the days really, but it's made it so that we're expecting what comes next and we're able fit the important things into each day. We shift things around when the need arises and it's actually kind of freeing to not have to decide each day what we're going to do. Decisions take a lot of mental energy, so having a lot of them already made is so nice.

Last Sunday, the Watts parents came and hung out with us. We had tasty ribs for dinner and played games with the kids and had ice cream for dessert. The kids really miss being able to go to Grandma and Grandpas for dinner on Sunday so it was a treat to have them here.

Grandma and Grandpa had a free day on Monday, so they offered to take us to paint pottery. It was, as always, really fun. Mira and Cecily had never done it before, and Emilia hadn't done it in like 7 years. They decided we HAVE TO go back again soon. If only it was a less expensive activity! We haven't gotten our pieces back yet, but when we do I'll take some pictures and include them next time.

Monday night, we had our monthly Frohlich birthday dinner since Megan and Ariana were in town for just 3 days. Cecily had an epic meltdown over her birthday gift, which is becoming a habit for her lately (the meltdowns, not necessarily about birthday gifts). On the way home, the sunset was just too pretty to not take pictures of it. So I pulled off the side of the road and took some.

Tuesday has been designated as play date day and all three of the girls had friends over to play that day. They also had dentist appointments. Nobody has cavities and I'm super grateful for good teeth genes. Tuesday is currently our gymnastics day, too, and right after, we went to see another house. It was a gorgeous house with way too much landscaping (and a west-facing backyard, Nick). We decided that despite it being a gorgeous house, it wasn't the one for us. We're trying hard to figure out where we can best serve the Lord in this move, but haven't felt any direction yet. Hopefully we'll figure it out about the time we get done with the work we want to do on this house and we can have a fairly smooth transition. Also, hopefully, it won't take us 9 months to get the work done on this house. That may be sort of a pipe dream though.

Wednesday is visit Nana day. The girls built legos with Nana and watched some TV while I looked at new home construction to see what that market looks like here. We scheduled a makeup gymnastics that night and since Steve was playing D&D, I got pizza for the girls on the way home. The Little Ceasars around here are currently giving away an extra pizza, a 2-liter, AND crazy bread with every online purchase. Even if you only buy a $5 pizza. That was a score. :)

Thursday is shopping day, so we went to Walmart and Party City. For essentials. Lol. Party City was for stuff for the birthday party I was supposed to throw for Cecily before we went to St. George and still hasn't happened. *sigh* At least I'm not mad at myself for being behind schedule. And she doesn't seem upset about it as long as she gets one eventually.

Thursday night I got a text from Haylee asking if I was going to the Independent Study teachers' conference that I'm supposed to attend each year. Apparently it was the very next morning. I didn't even know it was happening! I got locked out of my BYU email when I switched computers and I was too lazy to figure out how to get back in since I get notifications on my phone when I got emails and nothing important seemed to come up. Guess I was wrong on that. :D So Friday morning, I left the girls with Steve and headed to the conference. I wasn't more than a mile from my house when someone cut me off, forcing me to swerve into a curb to avoid be smashed by them. It totally popped my tire. :( There wasn't a spare in the trunk, even if i'd felt strong enough to undo lug nuts and put the car up on a jack. Fortunately, I was able to get ahold of Steve eventually, and a tow truck, and the whole endeavor only lost me an hour and about $150.

Yesterday, we were finally able to work on the bathroom again. In just under 3 hours, we got the undermount sink and new granite countertop installed. And that was with feeding kids lunch, taking care of the baby and having to borrow a drill when ours died. I was impressed with us. We're not super great at efficient home improvement. :)

Jules seems to be getting over her terrible sleep period. We've been sleep training her (not the hard-core cry-it-out method) and she's been doing really well with it. She's been only waking up once at night and it's really great to feel more rested again.

I've also been continuing to work on my website and book covers for people. I might have a paying job if I can get a photo to the right specifications for a very particular lady wanting a horror-esque real estate non-fiction book. . . . Yes, you read that right. Because those topics obviously go together and should be a cinch to incorporate into well-designed book cover, right? *le sigh* :D

I'm looking forward to seeing what this next week brings.

trip to St. George for Memorial Day

We went to St. George for a week over Memorial Day. The baby got an ear infection. I averaged about 5 hours of sleep per night. Steve and I both got fevers and a sore throat and fatigue at one point. It was supposed to be warm swimming weather and it averaged 65 degrees most days, with a LOT of rain.

But the kids loved seeing their cousins. And I actually got a lot of computer work done. I made five more book covers. I wrote a picture book. I got the content written for my new website. The kids ignored the weather and swam 5 out of the 7 days we were there. Steve got to play games almost every day. Plus, the views with all the clouds were amazing!

I think it was an overall win. :)

In the ongoing process of getting our house ready to sell, we weeded the yard yesterday and put down 10 bags of new mulch. With all the rain, the yard is looking amazing, so that's a net positive for sure. On the other hand, the undermount sink kit we ordered off Amazon got lost in the mail and we had to request a refund and order a new one. So our bathroom update got delayed a week for us being gone and another week for the part getting lost. *rolls eyes* You win some you loose some.

In better news, the baby is now on antibiotics for her ear infection and feeling much better. She's been super smiley today. Also, we made a schedule for the summer that everyone agreed to live by and it includes a 1/2 hour a day for chores. This might be the cleanest our house has been in years! Emilia was so excited to have a schedule that she volunteered to make it a picture schedule for Cecily. She did a great job.

We started Jules on solids and one day I tried giving her green beans. She didnt love them. She likes fruit and rice cereal though. I was hoping the solids would help her sleep better but no dice. She's doing worse now than she was at 3 months. *so tired*

And here's some Mira happiness to end my post.