Very Cold Halloween

It's Halloween morning! The little kids got up with eager anticipation, cause it's finally arrived! They got dressed in their costumes that they've carefully been gathering accessories for, excited that today they get to put on make up too! Sophi is a pirate. But the poor girl wasn't feeling well...

I told her she could stay home, but she didn't want to, she really didn't want to miss her program "Who would do my part?!?!" she asked me, as if staying home could even be an option!?!? NO! I like that commitment, Soph. Too bad you were sick on a fun day! And I was thinking if she stayed home then I wouldn't have to take the kids over to school for the program, oh well for me, haha. NOT that I don't want to support my kids! But I do go to the Halloween parades (and most programs and activities...) begrudgingly the majority of the time (Like last year, when we had a US program, and state float parade AND bike rodeo all the same day! ...about killed me)) Hope you feel better Soph! And I hope she makes it through the day.

Lily decided for her costume to be Mulan as a bride. She has a Mulan costume underneath and wore a robe that Ethan brought back from China. I said I'd paint her face white. We had white face paint but it rubbed off so easily that we decided to try the acrylic paints! It was a little overdone, but she was happy with it. So hey that's all that matters. I told her to turn her face and thought this picture was pretty fancy!!

Lily, you would make a lovely Chinese bride. And I was proud to deliver on her expectations, yay.

I ran Lily over for Safety Patrol, and then came home in time to be able to surprise Sophi and Natalie with a ride to the bus stop. I didn't get a picture of Natalie today beside this one. She was Jasmine.

Sophi was trying to walk in my high heel boots, so I was glad to be able to take her to the bus stop. And then I intended to go get the boys ready to go over to school for the parade. I made it home, but didn't make it to the parade. I was glad that the girls didn't say anything about me missing. I did make it over an hour later for Sophi's program. I think it worked out great and that I might let them know from here on out that I won't make it to the parade. I take pictures of them at home anyway, so I don't need to go to the parade. So yay, a new policy on tradition that makes my life easier! One thing I don't like about the parade was that parking during it is NUTS. But today I got there for the program as people were leaving and found a stall nice and close to the front of the school, which is very helpful when I've got 3 kids in tow. So again, yay. Sophi did a good part singing and on her part. She seems to be a natural performer. She's second row, 3rd from the right

Daniel, do you like the performance? I think that's a yes!

Actually that's just the face he does to mimic me when I'm telling him my face to "smile big for the camera!" This is his normal smile face when he's not imitating me.

Cute boy. Sophi was a one legged pirate! Corey's parent's came. It's always nice to see them. I hope I can support my grandchildren in their performances like they have done for our kids. But we'll see... maybe since I don't love trying to get to all the performance now, I better not commit myself for later! But maybe it will be easier when I'm just getting myself there and not toddler with me. I hope it's easier.

Tonight - pizza at the neighbor's house is a tradition everyone enjoys. So much so that they all ran over there without me getting a picture. I did get one of Daniel. He was a vampire.

And he's all ready to go get candy.

It was suuuuper cold this year, so there wasn't a lot playing and waiting outside. After the kids were done eating pizza, they headed out, so we had kids in lots of different groups. I did snap a picture of them as they came by our house - Lily and her friend Isa

Natalie with Berkley and Berkley's little sister, I can't remember her name.

Abi went with her Jr high friends, but they took off before I had a chance to see them, but Abi was a slice of bread with jelly. The older boys didn't go gathering treats but they were coming and going hanging out with friends and watching movies.

Owen came back from pizza ready to go, but then he saw our caulderon of candy and was like "Well hey! We've already got some!" and he kicked off his boots and threw off his gloves and coat, and I

"Who needs to go do all that work?!?!" Hey Owen, that works for me.

I almost got out of it entirely except Sophi wanted to go out, Corey was going to take her, but he felt sick, so I took her out. Daniel had been enjoying candy from home with Owen, but when he saw me leaving he said "I want to come!" and I said ok since he still had his coat and shoes on.

We went around our neighborhood one time. I think they might have gone longer except it was so cold.

Daniel was scared of some of the decorations

"Dat Scary!"

Sophi is pretty low key, so when Daniel said he was done, she was ok to be done too. We went to the Jensen's house for root beer floats.

We were glad to take a break to warm up. And then we went home and watched Harry Potter and the Socerer's Stone. We don't have a candy policy this year. I don't want any, so I'm not going to make them donate some to a central candy stockpile or anything. We'll probably just let them eat it, and I'm pretty sure they won't be rationing it out themselves, so they'll probably all binge on it for the next 48 hours and then it will be gone.

Sluff Day

Today Natalie seemed tired. And yesterday she said she was sick, so I thought I'd let her sleep in. When she woke up she was fine, but I let her have a day off today. So after she woke up she and her little brothers went outside to play.

I said "Daniel! Smile!" - and of course that makes them look at him.... but he did his smile imitating me

Ok you three.... eyes over here!

Cuties. They tried to go sledding, but not enough snow for that.

It's melting a little bit on the north side of the street, but not much over here in the shade cause it's still sooo cold. I think it's gonna be a very chilly halloween tomorrow! And we loved talking to Joseph today! His letter this week is on his blog.

He mentioned that this next transfer coming up is only 5 weeks because if it was 6 weeks they'd have transfers on Christmas, and they don't want that. Soooo that means that all the transfer dates after that get pushed back a week too.  ...Soooo rumor has it that that will make his release date of June 9th turn into June 2nd!!!! BUT another rumor has it that since his official start of mission date of June 26th smack in the middle of those two tranfers, he might actually be pushed back now to July 14th! (boo!) Well he's excited about that, but I think that kinda sucks cause we'd rather see him sooner than later. And it also might stink cause we had been planning a family trip mid June to go see the Sacred Grove and Church History sites, so I don't know if we can push that back to July, also because Melodie and Ethan were planning on putting their availability date for their missions at the beginning of July, so yeah, a mid July release date for him kinda messes up the plans we were working on. We'll see, he's going to talk to his mission President and I think I'll email President Barney too, to see if we can find out for sure when he's done so we can make plans around it.

Couch Car

It is another cold and snowy "autumn" day. I hope this means that winter is going to end early. We are grateful for a warm house and roof over our heads.

The boys went outside for a little bit, but they've also found a new inside game that they like. Owen takes the cushions off of the couches in the front room. They call it "car". Daniel is sitting shotgun.

I took that picture standing where the  back row of seats were. Owen soon moved that little stuffed dog in front of him to the back seat. They've been playing a lot with stuffed animals this week - a few stuffed dogs and a stuffed cow who takes turns on a leash, which said leash is one of Mel's old graduation cord rope things.

And as I saw them play, I was thinking I had before me more evidence that these kids don't need more toys or things... what they would really benefit from is more clean and open spaces where they can get creative and imagine. I recognize that then they will still be playing and making a mess from regular household items (in this case dishes and couch cushions) but thankfully this one is a quick clean up. One bad thing that Owen is playing with lately is aaaalllll the solders and cannon and cavalry pieces from Hyrum's Risk game. He picked them up most of the time, until this last time. He had dumped them in a high traffic area and I asked him to pick them up but he didn't so I finally did before the kids came home from school and they are now picked up and hidden from him in an undisclosed location until further notice. In my attempt to simplify, I will be getting rid of some of the games. And for those  board and card games that stay, I shall need to find them a place to put them that is out of reach from Owen and Daniel, Probably Lily Sophi and Natalie too. They have too many pieces to be left within reach of the small children.

Snow, Dinner, & Funplex

Cold weather is here! And the little boys are ready for it.

I am not. I'm not much of a winter person and don't think I will be unless someday all my babies and toddlers are grown and I actually go skiing or something. But today was good - I was able to made a good dent in cleaning in the basement. I've been reading "It's All Too Much" by Peter Walsh. I've suffered from a messy basement before, and had help in getting it in order, only to have it once again fall in to disarray. You can't organize junk, I need to get rid of the stuff. Let it go. I'm hoping this might be the final time I have to clean it. Simplify simplify simplify...

So, I'm working on organizing the house and family habits. We had a sit down dinner tonight, yay I did it! Having a "sit down" dinner is one of the things that I usually fail at. Usually it is because I don't have a meal ready, so the kids all start to fend for themselves with pb and jelly sandwiches or top ramen. Other times I will have a meal ready but they are not hungry from their after school eating frenzy. (I haven't been keeping the pantries locked) Tonight I had a meal ready with ample provisions - spaghetti, salad, and a good hearty 3 bean chili. Corey brought home bread rolls. So the food was ready this time, but it wasn't much of a "sit down" dinner for a different reason...

It was cute though. So we let them have fun and dance and stand on the bench and talk with food in their mouths. We've about given up trying to enforce table manners... One good thing about tonight was that we were going out for an activity - and we had cookies. Corey held the cookies captive until they helped clean up dinner! So that worked out great - everyone ate, and the kitchen got cleaned. And then we drove up to The Rush Funplex. When we got there, it had been reserved for a private event, doh! We drove 45 minutes for nothing... But then a guy who saw us about to walk away, and who seemed to have some authority, told us we were welcome to stay. He said they are from a LDS Stake and they rent it out once a year for a Young Single Adults Activity, but they had plenty of room for us to stay. So we stayed! And he told us to help ourselves to the pizza too. So we got in for free and got to stay longer than the 90 mins the Get Out Pass allowed, AND it also means we get to go back again to use the Get Out Pass another time! So that was pretty sweet.

And since it was mostly adults that where there, I felt like it was okay for me to take a swing on the trapeze. No picture of me in action, but here's Lily falling through the air

I did the trapeze swing 4 times, it was fun! The hard part was climbing out of the foam cubes, as Abi is demonstrating below.

That was a real workout! Sophi remembered to take off her glasses this time, so that they would not be accidentally eaten by the foam pit monster this time.

Ethan and kids bowled. 

This cute dino bowl ramp doubled as a slide for Daniel!

Wes, Abi, and Lily did the go carts. A great time was had by all.

So we played outside this morning, played inside tonight, we cleaned and we had dinner together... it was a good day.

Software Stories at 1 AM

It's late Saturday night (actually Sunday past 1AM...) But Corey had me laughing so I thought I'd share this "real quick" - He was up late working, and I decided to stay up with him to try and get a few things done. He has been working, for his consulting work, on software. And after he finished and we were brushing our teeth, he was shaking his head at the project he's doing. He's happy to have the job, but he also feels like he totally doesn't know what in the world they are talking about and that he's not qualified. So Google has been a lifeline, and he keeps being amazed that he keeps figuring out the problems! So some of Corey's quotes ~

"Programmers are stupid cause they keep inventing new ways to do stuff."

So he's finished with last weeks tasks, and will get more things on Monday that he doesn't understand. He's ready, knowing they'll ask him "You ready for more (work?)" and he'll say "Allright. Just Talk" and then it's gonna be coming at him like a firehose, and he'll just be trying to write everything down. So I asked him "So what were you working on tonight?" His reply (I recorded a voice recording of this for myself to write down!):

"Today I created a public and private RSA encryption key, and then, with the private key, I was able to, using RSA Shaw 256 encryption algorithm, I was able to create a JWT security token with all the necessary claims that I would need, and then I was able to validate that in my C+ test code, and then, I was able to get a local instance of the KONG API gateway running in a dogger container of lynx on my computer's local host, and then I was able to validate that that JWT token was valid. I haven't been able to messed around iwht how to do it with Yaml files or within Cubernetties, but that's coming next week. And that is my Morning report! And I'm excited to say it!"

Then he shakes his head and says again in disbelief "That is my Monday morning update. What kind of world?!!? I'm sure Medical school is hard... I know the body is complicated, but atleast it's consistent! I think God was like "Ok, that's it! NO more upgrades! We're done! If it can eat the others and survive, it can stay... but no more upgrades. Just pick a butterfly and make it a little different! Then call it good! NO more upgrades! We're solving the same problems we've always solved, '...but hey! We've never solved it in THIS way before!' Computers are like different kinds of aliens and plants put together. One of the reason they have to hire consultants is cause they don't know how to do it either. "DO you understnad this nonsense?" It's like the Emperor's new clothes!"

"And like everybody, as if Cubernetties (sp?) wasn't stupid enough as a name for the technology we are using, when we're looking at the documentation, Kubernetes is abbreviated K8. Like ?!? There is no way that people around the world can keep up with this stuff! And I feel sorry for people that might think "oh, new technology!" cause it's just a mess! This company has hired 7 guys to try and do something that would be like really simple if it weren't for all the new tools that they want to use! They basically want to receive a simple order data and send back the results but they want to do it this really interesting way using all this new technology and everything encrypted along the way (that's not hard) but it's just... (‘◉⌓◉’) ... (that's a wide eyed expression of exasperation)... They (the other programmers) are mocking older technologies that work and have already been proven... I mean it's kinda cool to do it different, but kinda lame. (I googled it, it's -->) "Kubernetes and AWS"  ... ＼(◎o◎)／ I'm struggling with coobernetties cause they have all these security things, so I've created my own cluster in AWS with my own knowds and pods, but I can't get the services to work. (sigh) It's complicated stuff!"

He continues to vent...  "And THEN they review all your changes. You can't just commit code, I mean you have to review it with all their coding standards." (@_@)

Corey said he's going to start looking for a different job, cause "I can't keep this up.... I'm done. Every morning I'm like "Dude, I have no idea what you're talking about." I feel like they're paying me to be in school, cause I'm learning all this new stuff, so it's good, but man!" I asked him about how his education 20 years ago has helped him if things are always new... "I remember vague stuff. but no, I didn't learn any of this in school."

Ok, last bit.... he said that on Monday morning, there will be no stories (aka a unit of work, or tasks) in the "pile" that the actually knows how to do, so it will be more of the same steps into the unknown. Then he said "That's another stupid thing! calling the tasks 'stories'!" Well, not sure how all of that translates but it was a funny conversation and it was funny to see Corey shaking his head in disbelief. I'm impressed with all the work his head does each day, he's got a hard working brain.

No Date Night This Week

Tonight we went over to our church for the annual chili cook off. Natalie had her usually "chili" meal, which looks a lot like her salad bar meal: cheese. Then she had some cornbread. Which she didn't care for, so then she went for dessert.

We've got some major sweet tooths in this family (those come from my side of the gene pool) Owen and Daniel dressed in their PJs for the chili dinner tonight. They all ran around the gym the whole time and had fun with their friends, and I enjoyed a quiet meal at the table by myself and a few small visits with neighbors. As we were coming in tonight, Hyrum held the door, I was holding my salad I was bringing. Then Hyrum said "Where's Daniel?" Luckily he had noticed that Daniel was not in the group of kids that ran ahead. I had locked the car already... "Is he in the car?" I asked, so sad that I hadn't seen him. Hyrum went back to see, and yup, he was in there. Daniel took it well, he was just waiting quietly in his car seat. Thank you Hyrum, I'm grateful for these extra eyes and brains to help me keep track of kids.

The big kids are patient with the little kids. Owen and Daniel have really enjoyed being in the big boys bedroom lately. They will dangle their stuffed dogs and toys off the top bunk by their leashes. Today Owen put himself down for a nap in Hyrum's bed.

I thought that was cute and funny.

He knocked his alarm clock over. They like to get on Wesley's bed and get in his hats and toys and everything and mess it up. That's not so nice, but they are patient with them. We're all used to the chaos I guess. When Mel calls she mentions how nice and quiet and clean it is for her in her new life at BYU! We used to have a life like that. And we will again someday, I trust. And someday my kids will have kids and they'll be the ones with the messy house! haha. And Daniel down for his hap - he just waited to collapse.

And that's how it usually goes around here this year. Nap time was so nice and structured last year - Natalie would go catch the bus for afternoon kindergarten. We had lunch at 12, she left at 12:30, and right after she'd left that was when I gave Owen his binky and blanket and I gave Daniel a bottle as I put him in his pack and Play (which he wasn't yet able to escape from) and then I closed the door and had 2-3 hours to myself, it was really nice. Life is not structured like that this year. I'm lucky about once a month, so far, to have all 3 of them in bed and have some quiet time during the day. But usually atleast one of them is up and so it's go go all day. I am grateful for Fridays and to have the kids come home early to help love Peter and play with Owen and Daniel. And I am grateful for our weekly date nights that help Corey and I reconnect. If we go someplace close, I have been leaving Peter, so it's a really nice break. We didn't get date night tonight cause of the chili cook off, and tomorrow is stake conference, so we probably won't make it out this week and I'll probably be feeling it Monday. But we are pretty consistent with date nights and that gets us through.

We've Got A Problem

Today I'm getting to work, cause I'm tired of living like this.

I don't have Iveth here to help me, but the fact that she was able to do a clean sweep of this whole basement area lets me know I can do this. Sure, it took her 4 uninterrupted hours, but it's possible. 4 uninterrupted hours might translate to my life as 4 days. The real thing I need is to detach myself from the stories in my head about all theses things. I can turn this around. But, I tell myself, we can't just keep turning this around today, I want to turn it around for good and stop living with a mess! We need to end this cycle of "it's clean (breath of fresh air) it's a wreck (I can't breath)". I want this to be the last time I need to rescue the basement from us. And it does need to be rescued from us. Once upon a time a younger Abi offered a solution: "Let's just move to a different house..." lol. The house is not the problem, sweetie. It's the people that live IN the house! It's US!! 

I've been reading Peter Walsh's "It's All Too Much". I have a certain vision for this space, and it is more like the open space of the Crosswood House's open basement or Brazil than what we currently have. So today is day 1 of a Sugar Free Me" challenge with the EJC. I'm saying NO to sugar and YES to organizing my home. And I was doing great until a neighbor texted that she had dropped off some cookies for us - one of my temptations - homemade chocolate chip cookies. doh.

I tried to give all of them to Owen, Daniel, and Peter, but I still ate more than I should have. I'll have to start the sugar free challenge over.

Today Abi had her flute lesson. Usually Hyrum takes her for me. They are just 30 minutes long, so there's not really a chance to run errands or anything in that short of a time, so I usually wait in the car. I've tried a few times to go to the store, but then have been late picking her up. Those few times I told her before hand that I probably would be late and we had a plan for where to meet. She only recently got a phone so that takes care of that problem, but still I usually don't try. I'm grateful when Hyrum takes her to her lesson for me. Today though I decided to take her since Wesley was willing to watch Peter for me. Daniel saw me leaving so I let him come. He hadn't had a nap and fell asleep right away. After we got there, I got in the back so he could rest on my shoulder and I could try to do computer work (go over $, blog, etc)

My cute little D

With these few minutes I caught up a little bit on the blog, and I like not being months behind on it like I have been most of the past few years. Along with the basement, I know that being "behind on the blog" is another thing that I am always saying. I'm gonna take care of that too. I want to start to be in control of myself and my life, home, blog, etc - living the life I envision. I know all the opposition is good for me though.

Takin' It Easy

We've just been taking it easy so far this week. I snuggled with this little guy most of the day yesterday as we watched and listened and sang to the Greatest Showman several times. Just chillin' and singing.

I am so happy he is feeling better. So I'm happy about that, but it's almost time to face the fact that the house is starting to really show that I was gone. ...and that I have yet to kick it in gear since returning. So, yeah, I need to start working again. Owen and Daniel have been playing cowboy today - here they are ready to rope up Peter who is their little calf.

Get away from the cowboys! Run Peter!

We talked to Joseph today. He encouraged me during the call, and also in the his email, to do better at studying Come Follow Me. And as I attempted right after we were done talking. And, I was quickly foiled by the small children crawling across my book, bumping my pen that I was trying to write inspiration down with, asking for food, etc etc.

I know the ideal and what I want to do... how do I make it a reality in my messy life? I need to pray for inspiration on how to do this...

I probably need to get up earlier.

So that's what's going on here. Tonight Corey, Wes, and Abi went rock climbing outside for a youth activity.

Fun!