Good and Bad

The bad news continues. Today I decided to take the kids to the library. When we got inside I noticed that Cole had his DS with him, and I didn't want it to get lost or stolen, so I took it from him and kept it with me. Well, I turned my back on it for one minute and when I turned back it was gone without me realizing it until we were leaving (when Cole asked if he could have his DS back). We were upset with him for bringing it in anyway--they only get their DS's on the weekends, but I don't like that it's glued to them when they're allowed to have them. But I feel absolutely horrible. I know it's totally my fault, but I'm frustrated that no one was honest and turned it in. I'm going to keep calling the library this week to see if that changes, but I'm really not hopeful. It's so frustrating, he's had such bad luck with these things. I told him I'd replace it when I can, but it's going to be awhile until I can, so I'm asking the girls to share with him until then. The game he was playing was one of the kids favorite games, so I'll have to replace that too.

In good news, though, I've been having great success with my most recent class. We're making decorations for St. Patty's day and Easter and the sign ups have been huge (for me anyway).


I've scheduled a class for every weekend in March, which is a lot of classes and I've been really busy with stamping stuff all weekend, but I love that I'm finally having some success.

A difficult week

This week has been really hard on us. Not were we just busy like we always are, but the kids really tested us this week. They've been bickering so much lately, I really have a hard time dealing with it. It makes me just want to scream, but of course I hate yelling at them all the time. So that's one of the things that's been going on. Tuesday I took the kids to the dentist, which is a nightmare, especially because I always end up doing it by myself. Lindsay doesn't like the dentist--she's never had a bad experience, but she just hates them touching her or even brushing her teeth. We found out that the girls each have a spot that could turn into a full blown cavity if they don't watch it, so that's always great. And then there's Cole. Last summer he had to have a baby tooth pulled because it was either that or a root canal. So they pulled the tooth and put in a spacer to make sure his teeth didn't shift until the new one came in. Well, his tooth is coming in so they pulled out the spacer--which hurt him really bad. And then we found out that he's got two teeth that need to be pulled for the same reason as last summer. You would think I never tell my kids to brush their teeth. And yes, I could go in there and brush their teeth for them, but 1--I don't have the time and 2--they're old enough to be responsible for themselves and be able to take care of their own teeth. So I'm really frustrated.

In addition to that, Bailey's been doing poorly in school all of a sudden. We've set up and have had her teacher cancel three meetings with him so that we can get a handle on what is going on with her (she has always been a straight A, or close to it, student). From the little bits of conversation I've had with him, she's just rushing through her work and not doing her best. But the straw that broke the camel's back came this week when we found out that he gave the kids a chance to take back their math papers and correct them to improve their grades and Bailey was content with a B. So we had a really long talk with her trying to get her to see that it's unreasonable to be content with not trying your best and just getting by. She also had not brought homework home all week. So, thinking I was clever, I decided to give her work to do for me instead. So I asked her to think about it and set goals for herself. I wanted to see a goal for one week, one month, one year, and when she grows up. The whole time J and I are talking to her, she's just sitting there crying like we're the meanest parents ever. When she left our room, she went into her room and was just screaming, crying so loud that I could hear her all the way down the hall. After she calmed down, she comes in my room, slaps a paper on my desk and walks away. The face up side of the paper said, "Stop acting like you hate me". And on the other side it says, "Goals: 1. Be perfect 2. Be perfect" etc. So I was really frustrated that she had just shut down and didn't even think about anything--not to mention how much it hurt to even have her think for a second that we hate her. But I also knew I needed to just give her space, so I pretty much put myself on time out the rest of the night and stayed in my craft room and let J take care of everything. I was able to have a good talk with her the next night on our way home from her dance class, and she admitted she was just mad.

So to try to smooth things out between us, instead of getting ready for my class I had today, I spent Friday night with Bailey. We went out and shopped for a birthday present for her friend. We went to Justice (a girl's clothing store) and they had a great clearance section. We bought her friend three things and a couple for Bailey and we only spent $10. Then I helped her decorate the plain gift bag and make it cute and I made her friend a Twilight journal. This morning, she asked me to blow dry her hair and pick out her clothes for the party, so I spent time with her on that, and she seems to be much better. It's so hard to find the time to spend individually with each of the kids, but I think it's getting even more important than ever to make sure we each do. I think for me, the toughest thing was her behavior. Not that I'm surprised that she's behaving that way, just that it's coming so soon. I thought we had a couple more years before she turned into a big hormonal mess, but it seems like it's coming now. I think this is one of the things that scares me most about being a parent. When they were little, it was hard work, but at least it was just physical. I could just kiss them and make it better. Now it's just hard--and I think as parents we're all scared of this time because it seems like this is not only the roughest part of growing up but there's also so much potential for screwing up--for the parents too. And I know I'm going to make all my mistakes with Bailey, I guess I just hope to not screw her up too badly. Though I have to say that when I started getting into stamping, I could see then that it was something that I would be able to bond with my girls over, so we at least have that. And as much as I have a ton of glitter all over my craft room now, the bonding time with Bailey was totally worth it.

Valentines Day

In my normal fashion, I was behind making the valentines for the kids. Jason thought I could just buy them valentines from the store instead this year (and yes, I let him live for making a comment like that), but it just wouldn't have been my style. Instead, since I had already bought the suckers and cut and scored the paper, I let my kids help out and make their own.
I let the kids go through my stamps and decide which ones they wanted to use. From left to right, Cole chose a baseball player, Lindsay chose a monkey with hearts, and Bailey chose a hippie. All night I had to hear about how hippies are so cool, and then she told me the next day when she handed them out that she told everyone, "Hippies are cool, yo!" or "Peace to the hippies, yo!" (and I have tried on numerous occasions to explain to this child that she is a little white girl, not a gangster, but it's obviously not working).

And then of course, we found out the night before that Cole and Lindsay needed a decorated box to bring goodies home in, so I was rushing to get that done as well. I found some plain boxes from Target which we cut a hole in the top for the cards. Then the kids decorated the lids and I put a phrase on each of their boxes, whatever they wanted.
Lindsay wanted hers to say Valentines Day in her new favorite color, pink.
Bailey, with total originality, decided she wanted hers to say Bailey's Box in her favorite color, blue.
And my favorite, Cole asked for his to say Dodgers Rock in Dodger blue (yes, he asked for it in Dodger blue). He gets teased because the kids in his class are all D-backs fans. And we had decided when we moved here that we should try to like our local sports teams. I really did try, and if the D-backs are not playing the Dodgers, I'm happy to cheer for them. But I guess I found out that you just can't take the Dodger blue out of my blood.

I also had to throw together some valentines for their teachers really quick:
So for today, I wasn't really expecting much. Valentines days in the past have been pretty disappointing, so I try not to get excited about them. We usually give our kids a little something, and since the girls were shopping with me last night, they got to pick out little toys they wanted. We decided that Cole's present is going to be his sparring gear, which is more than we usually spend on valentines day presents for them, but I figure we have to buy it anyway, might as well save ourselves the money on the toy. I got Jason a gift card for a massage (he had his first one with me last year and just loved it and has been wanting to go again, so I thought that would be nice). And then I found him a Flash t-shirt, which is his favorite superhero. I was really thinking I outdid him this year, but my amazing husband totally surprised me. There is a huge tournament at the tennis complex that begins this weekend so I figured I wouldn't really see much of him today. He got up really early to get down there, so I was still in bed asleep, and I was really suprised when he came home an hour later. He made me get out of bed and come downstairs to get my present:
I have always wanted to try one of these, they're so beautiful. And although I love flowers very much, they die in a few days and you don't get to eat them. I hope everyone has a nice valentines day.

Creativity

I've been fortunate to have some time to be creative, so I've been working on gaining some business and generating customers. I recently held a free class in my house and had seven attendees who are all interested in me running other classes. I have also been working with a friend to get a club up and running which we're going to start in July and have an informational meeting in May. I'm excited for this because once I start nursing school, I'm not going to be able to meet my minimums myself anymore. And since I've been a demonstrator for almost six years, I really want to keep it up. Not to mention, I really enjoy teaching other people how much fun it is to create. I get a real high when my customers are excited about something that I've created and I especially love when I get comments about how easy it is. These are the cards we did at my house the other night:
I also made invitations to try to generate interest in the class, so here was my invite:
In addition to these, I've scrapped a little:
When I was done scrapping, I went to put the scraps away and realized that I didn't have any room. So my new challenge to myself this year is to immediately use the scraps on cards. So here are the cards I made using scraps from my pages (I have another set of pages that I didn't take pictures of, so that's the other paper that's not featured in this page):
I always feel really blessed when I have the time to be creative. It's a great way for me to refresh and feel ready to take on the next day. I'm also working on setting up a website to sell my cards, so I'm hoping to generate just a little extra money with that. We'll see what happens with that, but for now I just love having fun creating.

Cole's progress

Cole absolutely loves karate. He is really motivated to become a black belt and enjoys going to his classes every week. And he's doing a great job advancing. Tonight he tested for his gold belt and passed (with an A-, not too shabby). We've also seen some other positive results from karate with him becoming more disciplined at home and at school lately, which is exactly what we were hoping to see. We just hope he'll keep up the hard work!

Adventures in cooking

I'm usually pretty good in the kitchen. Jason and I both like food and I've learned how to be a pretty good cook. Last night I was making burgers and french fries before the missionaries came over to give the kids the discussions in preparation for Cole's baptism next month. My girls were in the kitchen chit chatting with me, so it took me longer than normal to slice up all my potatoes. In the meantime, I let the oil get too hot without realizing it. So as I dumped the first of the potatoes in, the entire pot just errupted, gushing oil all over the gas stove. Of course since the girls were there I had to stay absolutely calm although I was really worried about how big the fire would get. (And interestingly enough, Bailey and I had just had a discussion the other day about grease fires and how you absolutely cannot put water on it, but she even said something about how I couldn't just put a lid on it because it was beneath the pot). Luckily I had a fire extinguisher close by, but I had moved the kitchen one outside when we got a gas grill because I thought it would be more likely to cause a fire than inside my kitchen. By the time I got back in the kitchen with the extinguisher, the fire was actually dying out by itself, so I didn't have to use it. I think we were extremely lucky that my stove is designed the way that it is (all of the oil got trapped on the top of the stove and didn't spill over although I had a deep layer all over the top). I only burned my hand in one little place, and that's the only damage that occurred. I was lucky too that my girls didn't freak out, they realized it was pretty bad and got out of my way very quickly. In the meantime, I had burgers on the grill that I wanted to make sure didn't burn, so I was trying to clean up the stove and flip burgers at the same time. When I got the burgers to the table, and we were ready to start eating, Lindsay asked me to cut hers and I found out that I undercooked two of the burgers. So Jason gave up his burger to Linds so that she could eat before the missionaries got there while I went and resuscitated the grill and threw a couple more burgers on it. While those were on and I was continuing to clean, the missionaries showed up twenty minutes early. Of all the nights to show up early! So somehow I managed to burn the second set of burgers for me and J, and besides the fact that I only had one more patty left and was pretty defeated at that point, I don't think he wanted to eat in front of them anyway. After they finally left I ended up having a grilled cheese sandwich and J had a cup of noodles. I certainly made for an interesting night--one I could definitely do without repeating.