Mopping the Floor Again and Playing With Friends - October 8, 2014

Wednesday - October 8, 2014

Parker wanted to clean the floor again.  I'm really glad they like to mop.  I think it's funny that they want to do it so often.  I'm sad that I know it won't take too long before they realize what a chore it is and they no longer like it.

So, I haven't been feeling like myself for a while now.  I haven't had a lot of energy.  I've been tired and just feeling a little off.  I think it's a combination of not having a lot of food and quitting caffeine (it's been 2 weeks now).  I can't decide if it's from the lack of food and caffeine or if I have some kind of sickness. I really can't decide what is going on.  Anyway, so the house is messier than  usual, because I just don't have the energy to keep up with all the housework lately.  I thought it was kind of funny that our kitchen floor was is so nice and clean, but the rest of the house is a complete disaster.  I felt like it needed to be photographed.  We got toys everywhere in the living room, where the girls and a friend were playing Minecraft.  Brinley walked in the kitchen as I went to take pictures of all the dirty dishes covering the counter.  Parker's bedroom was the biggest disaster of them all.  He was upstairs playing the wii with his friends.

 Here's the disaster in Alissa's room and the mess of coloring pages, homework, backpacks, and my camera case on the kitchen table.  Alissa was heading upstairs as I was on my way down, so, of course, I had to take a picture.

 Alissa's friend Jamie came over right as Alissa was finishing up her latest crocheting creation.  she crocheted herself this beautiful hair hat.  It's so cute!  She is doing a great job with her crocheting.

 Here's Jamie sporting Alissa's hat.  They thought it looked better on her, because the hair matches her hair color more closely.

 Alissa showed Jamie all of the hats that I have been crocheting.  Jamie loved this one, so we gave it to her.

 We had fun with Jamie here tonight.  We grabbed some cups and played the cup game and sang the cup song.  We did that for a while, then it reminded Alissa and Jamie of some of the fun things that they learned at girls camp.  So, we played another cup game they learned there.  Brinley and I kept messing up and it was really funny.  We laughed a lot as we kept trying to do that game.  It ended in us throwing the cups at each other.  After that, we played some hand games, like down by the banks, lemonade, and double this that.  We had too much fun.  Then Jamie showed us her YouTube videos she makes and introduced us to her video editing program.  I've been looking for one, so I'm excited to try it out.  Then we talked about some of the funny videos we've made.  We've talked about making YouTube videos for a while, but haven't posted any yet because of the lack of a video editing program.  Jamie thought that we should start posting our videos.  She thinks we're fun and that we'll become famous like the Shaytards.  That was nice of her to say and think that.  I don't know if we'd ever get a lot for people to watch our videos, but I do think it would be fun to post some.  I have a lot of fun dorky ideas.  The kids and I have already made some of them, their just not edited yet.  When the girls were bored one day, I told them to recreate the Charlie bit my finger video.  I still haven't watched it, but I'm excited to see it and see what they came up with.  Another time they were bored, I told them a funny story from my childhood and we made a recreation of that.  I have a lot of funny stories that we can use for our videos.  Also, we love to copy funny videos we've already seen.  Also, we have some funny ghost videos from the time I learned how to make ghost videos using my old editing program.  Making videos is too fun.  I really think we will start to do it more.  so, be ready world.  Not only will I be blogging our life, I will soon start recording it.

Doing Chores, Family Home Evening, and Church Activities

Tuesday - October 7, 2014

Brinley was excited to do her chore today, since part of her chores is mopping the kitchen floor.  The kids love to mop the floor.  I have never liked to let them, since every time they did it, they would leave the floor really wet and sometimes messier than when they started.  So, I wouldn't let them mop very often.  But, they are much better at it now!  That's exciting, because I really do not like to mop and they love it.  So, Brinley happily did her chore.

 Half way through, Parker came in and asked her if he could chow her the Parker method of mopping the floor.  So, these pictures are of Parker showing her how to mop using his skateboard.

 Alissa lucked out.  Her chores today were to empty the garbage and help with Dinner.  The garbage wasn't very full, so she didn't have to do that and Dinner wasn't until later, so she got to relax while Parker and Brinley did their chores.  She was feeling super happy about that.  Parker and Brin were jealous, but they got over it pretty quick when Brinley started talking about mopping the kitchen floor.

 We didn't have a chance to get to Family night last night, so we did it tonight.  I was in charge of the lesson.  My lesson was short and simple.  We watched a Mormon Message video on YouTube then we discussed it.  Brinley had us sing 'I Love to See the Temple'.  Parker was in charge of a treat, but since he had made his treat yesterday and we ate waffles (which is pretty much a yummy, sugary, dessert), we decided not to have him make a treat again today.  Roger gave our prayer and Alissa was in charge of an activity.  Alissa forgot to prepare an activity, so we decided to have all of us think of something fun to do.  We knew that Alissa had a Young Women's activity in about 40 minutes at the church, so I suggested that we go play on the playground at Bothwell Park (right next to the church) until her activity started.  As I was saying this, it clicked in my brain that Parker had a cub scout meeting tonight.  I had forgotten and his meeting started in 10 minutes.  So, we all just hurried to get ready and headed over to the church.  The girls and Roger and I played for a little bit while Parker went over with the scouts.  There were a lot of mosquitoes out, so the scouts decided to take their meeting inside.  Roger went inside to the scout meet with Parker.  So, then it was just me and the girls playing for a little while until Young Women's started.

 Brinley is too cute and I love taking pictures. 

 Alissa and Brinley had fun goofing around on the playground.  They were whispering secrets to each other in this fun little talking toy until it was time for Alissa to head in to Young Women's.

 After Alissa left, I followed Brinley around and took pictures of her until she got bored.

 The sky looked so pretty behind these trees.  The colors were amazing.  I tried really hard to get a good picture of it, but I couldn't figure out the right settings on the camera to let those colors show.  This was the best I could do.  It does not do it justice at all.  

After Brinley got bored from playing and bored of me taking pictures of her, I put the camera away so we could play a game.  I suggested we play obstacle coarse.  She like that idea, but she thought we should call it wipe out and pretend that the ground is water.  We spent a while discussing and trying to come up with the perfect coarse.  Once we decided, we each took a turn going through the coarse before we started the real thing where we time ourselves.  Brinley walked through it first and it was funny, because we had a hard time remembering the coarse we had made up.  So, we ended up changing it a bit as Brinley tried it. On my turn to go through the coarse, Brinley laughed so hard.  The first thing I went on, was much harder than I thought, because the little stands actually turn and sway back and forth as your trying to step from one to another.  I did not do that very gracefully at all.  Brinley thought it was hysterical.  The other part that had her laughing so hard, was the part where I had to spin on the spinney toy.  It made me laugh and scream.  She said I made a funny face while I did it.  

After we each walked through the coarse, we went through again, this time being timed.  Brinley made it in 1 minute and 50 seconds.  I made it through in 2 minutes and 21 seconds.  Brinley was pretty excited about winning.  It was fun.

After our game of wipeout, we went inside the church to wait for Roger, Parker, and Alissa.  Parker and roger finished up quickly, then we had to wait for Alissa.  She only had 20 minutes left.  A teenager was in the gym playing basketball, so Roger went in and challenged him to a game of one on one.  Parker was watching them.  He came out into the foyer and told Brin and I to come see.  He said, "Dad's playing basketball with a younger guy and he's not doing very good.  He's losing.  come see!"  He thought it was funny that Roger was losing.  By the time we went in their too look, things had changed and roger was winning.  After their game, Roger came in the foyer to wait for Alissa also.  Alissa finished up and her and a couple of other Young Women went in the gym to play basketball with the boy that was there.  We waited for another 5 minutes or so, then we left.  It was a fun night.  Next week, Parker and Roger get to go hiking with the cub scouts.  Roger's really excited about all the fun activities and things that him and Parker will get to do in the scouting program.  

Conference Weekend - October 4 - 5, 2014

Conference weekend was nice and relaxing.  Well.... actually it is more like... watching conference was nice and relaxing, besides that my weekend was a little uncomfortable and I'm reaching my breaking point of what I can handle.  Here's why: Roger and I haven't had our temple recommends for a while and the biggest reason why is because of our tithing.  At some point, money was really tight and we decided to skip paying our tithing so we could afford everything.  We didn't do that every time, just every now and again when Roger's paycheck was too small.  Eventually, we started doing that all of the time and it just got easier and easier not to pay our tithing.  We realized how desperately we needed to start paying our tithing again, but it was really hard for us to get back on track with that.  We were super determined and doing really well with it, until we moved to our house on the south side of Tremonton and the bishop in our ward treated us like we were horrible people and obviously lying to him about having paid our tithing ever.  It was the craziest thing!  And it was horrible being treated like that.  He really seemed to have a horrible opinion of us.  Our bishop before him had told us that we could get our recommends in June if we continued to pay a full tithe.  By the time June came, we had moved, but we continued to pay a full tithe and we really wanted to get our recommends.  When we went to the bishop in our new ward, he accused us of lying.  He said that he called our last bishop and he said he had no record of us paying our tithing (which made no sense at all, because we had payed a full tithe and at the end of the year we got our little statement thing that proved it).  Anyway, he didn't believe us and he said he wanted us to pay a full tithe for another year, before he would even consider it.  We were frustrated.  It was not easy for us to pay our tithing because money was always so tight. So, after the bishop was so horrible to us, it made it really easy for us to just stop paying it again.  Which is wrong of us, we know that, I have no good excuse for us not paying, nut that's what we did.  So, we moved out of that ward into our current ward.  This bishop is much nicer, but I met some people in the ward shortly after moving in, and we had some experiences with family, that really made me start to question everything.  All of the sudden, I felt really lost and confused about things that I had been so sure about before.  So, I dealt with those feeling and that uncertainty for close to 9 months.  After I figured everything out and started to feel better about things and know that I was on the right track again, the bishop called Roger and I in for a meeting.  He said that he just wanted to talk to us about our tithing.  He had experienced the same thing when his children were younger.  He shared his experience and how it took a few tries for them, but when they determined that nothing would stop them from paying, they kept paying and never looked back.  He said he knew exactly how we feel and he offered to help us out anyway that he could if we made that goal for ourselves.  His words really struck Roger in a way that helped Roger to be really motivated also (that was the best thing, because it's usually one of us is motivated but the other isn't).  So, we left that meeting feeling really good and really motivated to be full tithe payers and get our recommends.  Ever since then, we have been full tithe payers.  It feels really good to be on the right track.

Long story aside, the reason why I was reaching my breaking point is that because we have been paying our tithing, we haven't been able to afford food.  We are trying really hard to not have to ask the bishop for help, but it is not looking good for us.  I'm starving!  We haven't had meat in over a week, red meat in about 2 months, cheese in over a week, and Roger hasn't had any soda in over a week.  So, we were completely out of gas in the truck, so Roger parked the truck and got a ride to work with a friend all week.  But this weekend, his friend, Dan invited him to come and spend a couple days at his house.  Dan said he would fill the truck up with gas and he agreed to feed  Roger, so he wouldn't have to spend anything.  Roger decided to do that, so he could use the truck again and so he could eat some food and have some soda.  It was getting pretty stressful here with nothing to eat, so I understood his wanting to get away.  Plus, Dan would fill the tank and that way we'd have some gas to get us through until his next pay day.

Because of the lack of money, I haven't left the house in a really long time.  So, being stuck here at home, nonstop, not having food to eat (besides rolls and cookies - because we had flour and sugar and baking supplies left), then Roger getting to go and play and eat really has taken a toll on me.  I'm starting to feel extremely fussy!  

I didn't mean to spend so long talking about that.  We had a nice conference weekend.  I crocheted while I listened.  Brinley colored while she listened.  Parker and Alissa played Minecraft with no volume while they listened.  Grandma Moser was in the choir for the Saturday afternoon session.  The kids were really excited to see her.  They all paid close attention during the songs so they could see her.  At first when they saw her, the kids thought she looked nervous.  At the end when they saw her, Alissa said, "Okay.  So, now she just looks tired."  I thought that was funny.  I thought she looked just fine.  It was really fun to see her.  Here's Brinley modeling the two hats I crocheted during Saturdays General Conference.

These are the pictures I took today (Sunday).  Brinley made some pretty art on my phone.

 Alissa and Parker played a lot of Minecraft today.  They had fun.

 Brinley stopped coloring to play with her dolls.  She asked me to come in the kitchen and see her doll coloring.  I was being lazy and didn't want to get up, so i gave Brinley my phone with the camera turned on and told her to take a picture.  So, here is Brinley's doll coloring.  Brinley also took a picture of the picture her doll was coloring.  Brinley is too goofy!  I love it!

Parker Cleaning - October 3, 2014

Friday - October 3, 2014

Parker and I had a nice morning.  I actually had some energy, so I cleaned.  While I was in the kitchen washing the dishes, Parker came in to help.  He offered to mop the floor for me.  Before I came in to wash the dishes, Parker and I fixed his skateboard, so Parker brought his skateboard into the kitchen and told me his brilliant plan for how he was going to mop the floor.  His plan was that he would sit on his skateboard, with two wet rags in his hands and mop as he pushed himself along.  I liked that plan.  I was really just happy that he had offered to help without being asked.

 After a while, he thought of a more efficient idea.  It was annoying for him to have to keep bringing me the rags to rinse them off so he could continue washing, so he asked me to fill a bucket with soapy water for him.  He also got a dry rag, to help dry the floor in case he got it to wet, and he asked me to get him a scrubby brush thing that I had.  He used the skateboard to hold the rags, water, and scrubbing brush as he cleaned and moved it around the room with him.

The floor looked so nice by the time he finished.  He was so proud of his work also.  He kept telling me to look at how the floor sparkled and look at how we could see out reflection in it.  My favorite, was when he said, "Look at that detail!"  He was really proud of what a good job he did.  It was so nice!

The girls got home from school, and all the kids ran outside to play.  Parker found some other boys around here that are his age, so he finally has friends too. Yay!  Anyways, we will have friends here for the rest of the night, because Alissa arranged for her friends, Malaiyha and Jamie to come over for a sleep over tonight.  They plan to go outside and play night games with some of the other kids in the neighborhood, then they want to come in and watch scary shows on TV.  Also, Alissa asked if a boy could come over and watch the shows with them.  We'll see how that goes.  If they all come in too late, I won't let him in, but if it's not too late, I'll have to sit in the living room and watch the show with them. 

Parker's Box - October 1, 2014

Wednesday - October 1, 2014

Parker has a big imagination.  I love it!  He has been saving this box in his bedroom.  He brings it down to play with it every once in a while.  He brought it down today.  He first set it up in the kitchen with the plan to surprise and scare his sisters when they got home from school.  The only problem with that idea was that they wouldn't be home for two hours.  So, when he tired of using it as a hide out, he turned it into a sled.  I'm glad that he is so creative and has such a good imagination.

Parker Wearing a Box - September 30, 2014

Tuesday - September 30, 2014

When I pulled out this box from our eggs, Parker grabbed it and put it on.  He is too goofy.  He looked really funny running around with it on.  Then Roger started teasing him and made him lay down on his back.  It was funny watching him trying to get up.  It actually didn't take him too long.  After Parker took it off, Brinley tried it out.  but she thought it would be funnier to wear it under her shirt.  Alissa was just chillin' on the love sac while this was going on, so I took some pictures of her also.

Family Night - September 29, 2014

Monday - September 29, 2014

We had a fun family home evening tonight.  Roger taught our lesson.  It was about keeping the Sabbath day holy.  After the lesson, I was in charge of an activity.  We played a game were you stand back and two of you shoot rubber bands at sheets of toilet paper.  Whoever breaks through their toilet paper first, wins.  It was hard for the kids, so we let them sit closer.  In the end, Roger won.  We all had a lot of fun.

Brinley's Dot-to-Dot Coloring - September 28, 2014

Sunday - September 28, 2014

Brinley was really proud of how quickly she was able to finish each of these dot-to-dots.  She wrote down what she wanted me to write about how fast she finished her dot-to-dots, but I can't remember which paper goes with which dot-to-dots.  One paper says, "Brinley made this dot-to-dot in like a minute and it had 288 dots."  The other paper says, "Brinley made this dot-to-dot in about a minute and a half and it has 139 dot-to-dots."

She did a good job.  She is also excellent at coloring.

Mikenna's Baptism and Kirtlynd's Baby blessing - September 27, 2014

Saturday - September 27, 2014

Brinley's friend, Mikenna got baptized today!  Brinley was really excited to go and be there to see Mikenna get baptized.  They have been friends since they were 2 and 3 years old.  Mikenna's little sister also got blessed today.  Her little sister's name is Kirtlynd.

Heather, Kirtlynd, and Braxin.

National Pancake Day - September 26, 2014

Friday - September 16, 2014

Today is National Pancake Day.  I didn't realize this until Alissa's friend, Sydney called to tell us.  She wanted to celebrate National Pancake Day with us.  She brought over a nice skillet for us to use (since I don't have one).  The pancakes were so yummy!  And I loved using the skillet she brought over.  I want my own so bad.  So, if anybody is wanting to buy me something nice for my birthday (on October 21st), you know what to get.