Evening Chain of Events

So, today was Wednesday - that means it's a day to look forward to because we get to hear from Elder Wride. Here is his letter for this week, he's been gone 3 months today! 13 weeks done out of 103. Time's flying (kinda). So many things to countdown - Joseph's mission, the pregnancy - on week 23 out of 39 (cause I'm hoping to be induced again, as usual) almost done with the second trimester, one more, ugh. and my invisalign braces, I'm on #16 aligner with those, although I don't know how many weeks those go for. Back to our missionary - I received a text with a few pictures from someone named Lilian who lives in Sandy who was down in Guatemala and Joseph and Elder Aquino are teaching her friends.

That was a fun surprise text to see! What a cute missionary.

We invited her over for dinner, she's still checking her schedule. That should be fun.

So, tonight I had a funny chain of events that started around 9pm - Corey wasn't home yet, working late. It was probably good he wasn't home (or even worse trying to work from home) during this chaos. Dinner is winding up, Daniel stinks, he and Owen are doing circles on the main floor on their cars, I grab him to change him, but it was bad, so upstairs we go - he needed a bath pronto. I give him a good scrub and rinse down, then fill the bath. I didn't take the diaper outside, just put it in a grocery sac in the garbage. Owen joins him in the tub. They quiz each other on the ABC toy foam letters "What is dat? O! Good job! What is dat? D! Good job!" They're cute. We just do a quick bath and I get them out and dressed. I am now ready to take the smelly diaper to the outside trash. I decide to save myself a future trip by emptying all the garbages upstairs. Owen and Daniel go downstairs. Then two things happened at once: Hyrum tells me the kid bathroom toilet is clogged, and Lily tells me that Owen and Daniel are throwing rice milk all over in the kitchen. I assume the rice milk is a little bit in a cup or dripping it from Daniel's bottle. I tell Lily "Well, stop them! Get it away from them please" and I go to hurry and unplug the toilet - fixing the toilet takes priority over emptying garbages and spills on the kitchen floor ~ I'd like to thank years of motherly plunging toilet experiences for that knowledge, esp two recent ones: experiences #1 and #2. So, I unclog the toilet, then I decide to clean it real quick (I try to clean them on "toilet tuesdays" and do a pretty good job doing it weekly but I didn't do it yet this week, so might as well while I have the toilet bucket out anyway...) Ok. So I clean the upstairs kid bathroom toilet, hurry and clean the master toilet, then go downstairs with the toilet bucket and garbage to empty the rest of the garbages and do the toilet down there after I survey the rice milk mess.

...Then I learn the rice milk mess is not rice milk, it's just rice. Grains of rice all over the floor. And no one has stopped the toddlers yet. Daniel reaches for another handful from the bag. Lily is at the counter coloring. "Lily! I said to stop them!" We pull Daniel away from the bag, so he goes for the rice of floor and just starts sweeping his hand back and forth quickly scattering it and flinging it further in all directions. "Daniel, NO! Hyrum! A little help here!! Can you come get Daniel?" The kitchen is a big "no one helped clean up after dinner" mess (since I left right during dinner with the Daniel's diaper mess) and there are smashed tortilla chips and school papers all over the floor. I start barking orders and calling in the rest of the troops. I pull everything out of the bottom of the kitchen pantry to sweep out the rice, I put it all back in and tuck the big Costco bag of rice out of sight of the toddlers behind the oat and flower buckets, so it's still in the kinda same place, but I'm hoping they won't notice it tucked in the back. Lily helps me start to sweep, Hyrum Wes and Abi are cleaning the floor. "What smells?!?!" Hyrum kept asking. It's the freaking poopy diaper in the garbage right there that I changed 20 min ago that I haven't had a chance to take out yet!! I'll take it out, but I need you guys keep cleaning in here for two minutes, can you do that? I take two trips to the outside garbage, emptying the kitchen trash and the recycling and the upstairs garbage that had the poopy diaper. When I come back in, Daniel has gotten a hold of the wet plunger and toilet brush that I left within reach on the kitchen floor and as been flinging them around like two swords getting gross toilet water who knows where... UGH! Can someone just hit pause on these little people for me?!?! I grab the gross dirty toilet cleaning things from him, which hurts his feelings and he cries, and I let Wes love him as I walk away and go to finish cleaning the toilets. An hour later it's 10:30 pm, with good help from the kids, we have the kitchen cleaned and looking awesome, little D is in bed, and Corey arrives home and is not aware of the mess that had just transpired, which is good cause then he won't bring up to me how we should hire a maid. Yay. So there's a "little-crazier-than-usual-evening" for us. Phew! Then I came up to start this blog post, then I spent 5-10 minutes scrubbing the wall in the boys room (before picture is #7), it's looking better, just a few more days of magic eraser and I'll be ready to call it good enough.

So, we had parent teacher conferences today. Corey did the older 5 kids at the high school and jr. high, I did the 4 elementary girls. Corey said most of the older kids are doing good but can do better, so we'll try to encourage that. As for the elementary kids, I had their appointments all scheduled one right after the other, as usual. Going youngest to oldest this time, so to Kindergarten first. Natalie's teacher said she is an absolute delight. (she really is just so cute, such a cute voice and fun personality, she's a little ray of sunshine.) Sophi's teacher had to cancel last minute, so we're doing Sophi tomorrow.

Lily is doing great, and her teacher doesn't mind that she is doodles if it helps her focus, but it often becomes a distraction (which I could guess from how she doodles at home during scripture reading and or instead of cleaning her room or going to bed). 

Abi is doing good too, except for the same "her tendency to doodle and draw kinda makes it hard for her to focus..." comment/concern.

What are we gonna do with these little artists?

So, that's all good. Those are some pictures from their classroom's hall bulletin boards. There's our after school day and evening. Gonna go to bed and get some rest and get ready for the fun tomorrow will bring.