My schedule lately has been so crazy that I found that I was resenting having to take the time to go help her. I felt like it was taking away from me keeping my house running or keeping other commitments or from being able to have a little bit of downtime to care for my own mental health. I was going to find someone in our ward who could take over for me, but when I talked to the lady who is both her ministering sister and in the Relief Society presidency, she told me that there are already a bunch of other people in the ward helping Julia on a regular basis and the lady thought I just needed to let her rely on herself and the others for now. She also knew of a program in the community where elderly people can apply to have a companion come help them with things a few hours a week, so she was going to help her sign up for that if she was interested. So I feel like I did my due duty in trying to get her help. I also am glad that I've been able to do it for the year+ that I did. It was beneficial to both of us, I think.
This last week felt so open without that on my schedule, but it filled up quickly, of course.
Monday is my laundry day, plus my critique group got moved to Monday this week because one of the members was flying to England on Tuesday. (I'm not jealous at all. Nope. No jealousy coming from over here. Why would I be jealous?) That took 2 hours of my day. Plus it was early out day for my kids, we needed to go to the library, Cecily had dance class and Mira had gymnastics.
Cecily has been in gymnastics for 2 1/2 years and I think she was getting a little bored, so she told me about a month ago that she wanted to try ballet and hip hop. I asked her multiple times she was sure she wanted to quit gymnastics and try dance. She emphatically told me yes every time. So I signed her up for a ballet/jazz class (nobody teaches hip hop to five year olds). The class didn't start for a month after I signed her up and Monday was her first class. She flipped out. Screamed at me for fifteen minutes that she didn't want to go. I finally convinced her to try 1 class and see if she liked it. So we went. She smiled the whole time and was really quite good for it being her first class. But then she screamed all the way home saying she hated it and never wanted to go back; she just wanted to keep doing gymnastics. *eye roll* I would make her stay in dance just to prove a point, but it's WAY easier for me to take both Cecily and Mira to the same place at the same time than to drive them both to separate places at different times and entertain them during the other kid's class. So no more dance class for Ces.
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| I found her and the cat like this Monday morning after her sisters went to school. |
Throughout the week, I worked on finishing it. I painted it white one day, spraypainted the drawer faces another day, spraypainted and reattached the hardware a fourth. What I really wanted to do was make the drawer fronts mirrored, but that would have required getting a mirror and having it cut to the exact dimensions of the drawer fronts (or risk doing the cutting myself and getting the special tool for it) and then drilling holes in it for the drawer pulls. That would have been a lot of extra time or money which I really just couldn't justify spending. So I used black, copper, and gold spray paint I already owned + a plastic bag. This is the finished product:
Tuesday, I hosted another activity Days after school. It was one of the girls' birthdays, so I decided to do a fun day to celebrate. I made sugar cookies (from a mix) and decorated the table with a bright tablecloth and some streamers. When the girls arrived, we mixed up some homemade face masks and let them dry while listening to meditation/relaxation exercise. Then I got out all my nail polish and let them do their own manicures. It was interesting to see the different colors and patterns they all chose.
No pictures of that. But Mira was bored and didn't want to join us. :)
I also played Legos with Cecily that morning, did some writing, and folded laundry before making dinner.
Wednesday, I took Cecily to a play date at the park in the morning, worked on the dresser, made dinner (two nights in a row!), and watched a TV show with Steve after the kids were in bed. My kids are always disbelieving when I tell them that I probably watch 1 hour of TV a week. Some weeks it's 2 or 3 if I don't have a good book to listen to while I work on projects, but otherwise, it's about an hour a week. So watching a show with Steve was a nice break. We tried the new Jack Ryan series on Amazon. It's pretty good. The first episode had some unnecessary swearing and a bit of gore, but it was war-related and didn't bother me as much as other TV shows have.
Thursday, the fires south of us really picked up. There are two--Pole Creek and Bald Mountain fires. The news says that the went from 3400 acres to over 20,000 in about 8 hours on Thursday, and this was the view from my house all day.
They've had to evacuate about 5000 people so far and one of the highways through the canyons has been closed for 4 days now. I'm sure everyone would appreciate prayers for the firefighters and for rain for our desert state.
Cecily went to school that day with 12 bows in her hair--6 pairs that went all the way around her head. She felt very beautiful.
I also did family history with my mom that morning and she was nice enough to make us a pancake and sausage lunch.
Steve and I got to go on a date Friday night. We had a picnic and then played frisbee golf in the near-dark at Scera Park in Orem. Then we got Jamba Juices (smoothies) at the exact same place we had our very first date. It was nicely nostalgic. I convinced Steve to walk through Savers with me since he never went garage saling with me. He found some new shirts and I found some cheap cotton yarn. It was a perfect date. :)
I had to finish my sub for writing group before I went to bed, so I worked on that after we got home. I didn't quite get it finished, so I worked on it the next day as we drove to and from a family outing to Thanksgiving Point gardens. It was one of our Visit Salt Lake pass places. It was okay. Very hot. A lot of walking. There was a good amount of shade, but not in the flower gardens, so it made us just want to sit in the shade and look at the flowers from a distance.
Before we left on our outing, Steve went and helped clean the church again and I went to a garage sale that advertised baby girl clothes. They actually didn't have a ton of baby clothes. It was mostly toddler stuff, but I did pick up a few cute, name brand items.
The sunrise was really pretty that morning because of all the smoke. There is ash on everything, too.
Random picture Mira took of herself.
Pictures from the gardens.
After our outing, we came home and cleaned house and I finished up my sub and sent it off. Saturday night, Steve went to the temple and I took the girls out for ice cream at the new Farr Better Ice Cream in Payson. It was just as good as the one in Orem that we used to go to until it closed. This was the sunset on the way:
At Farr Better you get to serve your own soft-serve ice cream and add whatever toppings you like from a topping bar. There are about 10 different flavors of soft serve. I tried huckleberry and brownie batter with brownie pieces, butterfinger pieces, nuts, hot fudge and caramel. Mira got raspberry dole whip and brownie batter with fresh strawberries and chocolate chunks. Cecily got plain old vanilla with gummy bears, m&ms and sprinkles. Emilia got brownie batter with sprinkles, m&ms, oreo bits, hot fudge, and whipped cream. Yummy.
After the kids went to bed, I finished quilting my quilt (finally!) while listening to my current book and then Steve and I watched the second episode of Jack Ryan.
The girls drew some fun stuff at church today.
And tonight we'll head to Nick and Wilda's for dinner. I look forward to another week of growing a baby, hanging out with my kids and husband, and checking things off my to-do list. What's on your to-do list?
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