This Week

 This week is going to be busy.

Today is high school registration for my son.  After hearing about from other moms about the problems with trying to register online from home, we're just going to go over to the high school and do it there where counselors will be there to help with any problems.  It will be a relief to get that over with.

Tuesday is Young Womens and Young Mens for my oldest two children.  It's the fifth Tuesday, which means their activities will be at Bishopric member's houses.  Should be fun.

On Wednesday we have an awards reception for our 11 year-old daughter.  She entered a piece of art in a competition and will be receiving an award for it.  The reception is right during dinner time, of course.  We're all excited for her.

On Thursday our niece, Kaitlin, is getting married.  Her fiance is Muslim and she has also converted to his religion.  They will be married in a mosque in Salt Lake in the afternoon, so my husband and I will be going to that and to the dinner afterwards.  It should be interesting.  We have to wear ankle-length pants or skirts and long-sleeved shirts and take off our shoes for the ceremony.  The men and women are separated for the ceremony, with one group upstairs and the other downstairs.  Different, for sure.  The kids will be on their own for dinner, but macaroni and cheese is a favorite around here and two of the kids know how to make that.

On Friday our oldest daughter is going to an old neighbor's house to sleep over until Sunday morning.  They will be going to Lagoon on Saturday.  She's very excited.  It's always fun to see old friends.

On Saturday one of our youngest daughter's friends is getting baptized, so she and I will be going to that.  There is also a half marathon in Vernal that my husband and son may be participating in.  We're not sure on that one yet.

In other news, I'm completely off antidepressants.  I haven't done that for years.  It took a good couple of months to wean off them, most of which wasn't too bad.  I'm definitely more emotional now than I was while taking them.  I always feel like I'm either on the edge of irritation or two seconds away from crying.  Hopefully that evens out.  

I'm also trying to improve my eating and fitness habits.  No white sugar, corn syrup or white flour.  More water and movement.  I set up a points system where I earn points for how well I do each day.  When I get to a certain number of points, 210, I can buy a book on my Amazon wish list.  This has been a great motivation for me, as I always want more books.

Yard work has certainly picked up.  The front yard hasn't been too bad so far.  Mostly pulling a few weeds here and there.  And then there's the back yard.  The weeds are thriving, for sure.  Most of the garden is in: potatoes, onions, carrots, strawberries, tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, and a few other things that I can't remember.  My husband usually does all the planning and the planting, and I do the weeding and harvesting.  I've been slacking on the weeding already.  It's not quite out of hand yet, but getting close.

I put in a time change request for the elementary school kids for next school year.  Instead of leaving the house at 9 like they do now, they would have to leave at about 7:45.  The high school starts much earlier and my son would have to be at the bus stop by 7:06 or something like that.  My oldest daughter leaves at 7:50, so it makes sense to have everyone out the door early.  It wasn't so much of an issue until now to drag out the getting-ready process for hours, but next school year, I want it more compact.  We'll see if my request is granted or not.

We went to hike the Y on Saturday.  The kids had done it with my husband and I had gone as a teenager, but we had never done it as a family.  I made it to the second benches as my stomach was not behaving and I thought it best to not be too far from the bathrooms.  We're going to go hike it again sometime when my stomach is healthy.

Pictures of Steve and Pete

 This is Steve.  He is mostly white with a bit of tan.

 Here's a nice shot of Steve's whiskers.  And cute paws.

 Pete is more shy.  He wasn't sure about the camera or me.

 Pete hightailed it for the safety of the igloo as soon as he could.

Here's a good picture of his ears.

The Trouble with Ratties

Our pet rat, Cluny, started breathing hard about a week ago.  He had a respiratory infection, which is the number one killer of rats.  After watching him suffer for a week, my husband put him to sleep last night.  That sure is hard.  I had my time of crying, for sure.  He was such a sweet rattie.

Since rats are very social animals and don't do well alone, we thought we'd get another rat to be friends with Remy.  Well, that didn't work so well.  Remy was very territorial and kept attacking the new rat, Steve, until Steve had several wounds.  Poor Steve.  Steve is a dumbo rat, which means his ears are a bit bigger than the fancy rats.  He is so small and cute and loves to be held and petted.

Our new plan is to give Remy away to a new home and to get another dumbo rat to be a brother to Steve.  This should work much better, since no one will be the boss yet.  Once I get the other new rat this morning, I'll take some pictures and put them up so you can see the new cute ratties.

Pictures Around the House

I haven't done a post with pictures for a long time, so I'm doing one today.  Here's what's been going on around our house:

 Here is what is at the foot of Daughter #3's bed.  Phineas and Ferb's eyes are awesome.

 You can see actual carpet in the little girls' bedroom.

 Daughter #1's rollerblade waiting to be fixed.  Attempt #3 will be made today.

 One of many owls.  This is my newest one.

 Sneak peek of a rug I'm making for a sister's birthday present.

 Seedlings.

 A dresser I bought at a thrift store and am fixing up.

 Pile of things to go to D. I.

 The too-cute ratties.

 The too-weird chickens.  And gross window and gross back patio.  All thanks to weird chickens.

 Our family room is starting to come together.  Still trying to figure out what to put on the walls.  The couch, ottoman and rug are new.  Everything else is thrifted.

 Latest set of used childrens' books.

 Our cheap but new couch for downstairs.  Love it!

 An old rolling cabinet I found at the thrift store.  Of course.

 It holds all our movies.  It's very handy.

 Just part of our food storage.  I think we've got condiments covered.

 All that's left of our nasty old couches.

 You can see carpet in the older girls' bedroom, too!!

 Laundry.  Always laundry.

 My craft room.  I need to spend some quality time in here.  Stat.

 Someone is studying for their learner's permit.  I don't want to talk about it.

 LEGO

 One of these things is not like the others.  OUCH!!

 Hey!  My bed is made.  And you can see carpet.

Dishes.  Always dishes.

It's Still Life...

around here.  Just the usual things going on:  dishes, laundry, vacuuming, homework, cooking, chickens getting into the garden, rats making a mess, kids making a mess, me not wanting to clean up the mess, more laundry, etc.

Right now I'm making bread, doing laundry and running the dishwasher.  I've already vacuumed half of the upstairs.  The kids are at school and Bryan is at work.  And I'm listening to music.

I need to put more of my items up in my Etsy store.  I have about 8 rugs to list.  And doilies and purses.  I've almost finished another afghan.

Tomorrow afternoon I get to officially help with my first radKIDS simulation.  I'm quite excited for that.

We got another set of bunkbeds.  This set went in the little girls' room.  It's a small room and they really need the extra space a bunkbed provides.  We got it used from the KSL classifieds.  Now we just need to organize the rest of the bedroom.

We also got a new couch for the family room downstairs.  We had had the two very gross, falling apart used couches for several years and it was time to move them to the garbage.  On Saturday we took them apart and are slowly disposing of them on garbage days.  We got a put-together sectional and ottoman and it is so much better.  Now to paint and finish the rest of the room.  I'll add that to my list...

Life

It's snowing again.

I'm almost done teaching radKIDS at my kids' elementary school.  It's been since the end of October that I've been teaching 4 or more classes a week most weeks.  It's been a lot of fun and my teaching sure has improved since the beginning classes.  I'm also helping my sis teach at her kids' school for the next month or so.  I really enjoy teaching with her.  It's fun to be silly together.

Our hens haven't laid any eggs for a while.  Between the cold weather and molting, it might be a while yet.

I tried a cleaning recipe on Pinterest yesterday.  It's equal parts hot white vinegar and blue Dawn dish soap mixed in a spray bottle.  I sprayed it on both bathtubs and let it sit a bit.  After scrubbing the tubs with a magic eraser and the soap mixture, both tubs have never been so white.  It was awesome.  I heartily recommend trying it.

My son joined the track team.  I'm impressed and pleased that he decided to do that with no prodding from his parents.  Yesterday was his first day to run after school.  They ran 4.2 miles.  He was tired when he got home.

Sugar and carbs are hard to stay away from.

It's still snowing.

Stake Conference

Last weekend we had our Stake Conference.  Elder Richard G. Scott was the visiting general authority.  He spoke at all three sessions.  My son and I were in the stake choir and sang at both the adult session on Saturday night and the main session on Sunday morning.  All the talks were excellent and and it was neat to sit on the stand during the sessions.  It gave me a different perspective.  After such inspiring talks, we went over our family rules and changed up a few things.  They have been working quite well.

In other news,  I had another sale in my Etsy shop today.  A lady in California bought my Chevron Table Runner.  Very exciting!!!!!