Friday, September 28, 2012

Love don't judge!!!

Lately I just can't get judgement off of my mind. One day on Facebook one of "friends" on there wrote this long post about how horrible he thinks it is that there are so many people out of work and they live off of the government, using medicaid and food stamps and on and on he went. I am really sensitive about this subject because...hello! Brian has been out of work off and on and going back to school and stuff. There were times in the past that we used medicaid and yes, even food stamps, to help us through a rough spot. I hated doing it! It was humiliating! It was degrading! It was awful...but...my family didn't starve and my children were well taken care of. Matthew had pneumonia and x-rays and asthma and chronic croup and nebulizing treatments and scary allergic reactions and Zack had broken bones and stitches, etc. I am incredibly grateful for the help we received during difficult times that provided my children with the medical attention they needed and with food to eat.

People kept suggesting we go on food stamps and medicaid this past time Brian was unemployed. We didn't want to. We did the best we could. We made it work. We did have to go the Bishop's storehouse a few times to help us get by but we didn't get food stamps or medicaid. We lived on our own until we just had absolutely no other choice but to move in with my parents. I am proud of us for making it work for all of that time. I am so grateful for food from the storehouse even though that was humiliating and degrading and hard, too!

With the economy it took a long time to find a job. "They" (whoever THEY are) say that the typical wait for finding a job in accounting right now is about 15 months. We know people who have been looking for work for well over a year. We feel very blessed that Brian was able to find a good job after just 10 months. Just 10 months...those were 10 of the longest...hardest...scariest 10 months of my life! When we talked about how just last September we went to Disneyland. Before the rug was pulled out from under us in October. I tell ya, looking back it feels like it was at least 3 years ago!

People we know would tell us about jobs that paid $8-$10 an hour and then wondered why Brian didn't apply. Unemployment paid more than that. We HAVE to have more than $8-$10 an hour. Hello...we have 4 kids, almost $1,000 we have to pay in student loans payments a month, and life! I don't know who in the world could support a family on $8-$10 an hour. Judge all you want but the fact is: The economy SUCKS! Sometimes LIFE sucks! Don't judge me or anyone else when you don't know my heart! You don't know the hell I've been through! You NEVER know what is going on in anyone else's life and that is exactly why YOU SHOULDN'T JUDGE ANYONE...EVER!!!

My health problems have given me such empathy for people. Sometimes the grumpy person at the grocery store just found out they have breast cancer. Maybe someone they love just died or is missing. Maybe they are in so much pain that getting to the store and making it through the whole shopping experience with all 4 of their children in tow, is incredibly difficult and excruciating for them. Maybe they are struggling with infertility and just had to hear someone be cruel to their child in the store and it's all they can do to not break down in tears and beg to the Heavens...WHY?! Maybe they have been married for 19 years, never owned a home, moved 17 times, is in horrible pain, their husband just lost his job, they are worried how they are going to put food on the table for their 4 children or clothes on their butts, and they are just trying to make it through the store without going postal! You just NEVER know! There should not just be a category that you lump EVERYONE into and think of them as lazy, horrible, ungrateful, losers. You DON'T know their heart or their exact situation!

The crazy part about my Facebook "friend" is that just a few days after he wrote that post, he wrote another post. He said how you should never judge another because you just don't know what is going on with them and you just should never, ever judge anyone. I seriously wanted to smack him! WHAT THE HELL?!?! Does he realize what a hypocritical jerk he sounds like? I felt berated and so very judged by what he said just a few days before that and NOW he's going to say how horrible it is to judge others and you should never do it! Oy Vey!! I've forced myself not to respond to him. Others said how amazing he was for being such a non-judgemental person and how they really needed to hear that. I wanted so bad to just say, hmmm, that is really interesting that you would say that after the hateful message you wrote a few days ago that was full of judgement and hatred! So, I just decided to say my peace on my blog instead. It's much safer that way I suppose. Hopefully, I haven't caused you all to hate me and judge me for the things I've shared about us on here just now.  :)  Love don't judge!!!  The end.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Our Crazy Night

So, last night Zack went to The Big Red Barn for a hayride with the youth from our church. Our other children begged us to take them to the playground until we finally gave in and took them over. We sat on a bench and read our books that we are currently reading. We noticed there was a teenage boy sitting on another bench reading a Calvin and Hobbs book. He was watching some of the kids, mostly girls. They went inside for pizza and came out eating it and just were kind of running in and out of the house and squealing and having fun. We went home when it started sprinkling on us a bit hard.

After we'd been home for a while I heard a little girl crying outside. I checked to make sure Gracie was still in the basement and hadn't escaped. :) She was in the house and her brothers were too so I just didn't give it another thought. We live next to a house with several little kids and it's very common to hear crying, screaming kids outside our windows.

Well, when Zack got home from the activity, between 8:00 & 8:30, he told us that the people across the street from my parent's house couldn't find their daughter. I guess the mom called her husband, who was at the activity, too, and told him she couldn't find their daughter and she had been looking for over 30 minutes and was really worried, so he rushed home to look. Brian, Zack, my mom, and I dropped everything and immediately went outside to help look for her. I thought back to the little crying girl I had heard and I was terrified of what that could mean for this little girl. I don't know her, but I can imagine how I would feel if one of my kids was missing on a dark, cool night.

In this subdivision the houses are very close together. They are very large twin homes with about like 8-10 feet between the buildings. There is a communal playground and basketball court. I could hear people throughout the neighborhood yelling Ava!...Ava! I knocked on the door of the house next to us to see if she was there and she wasn't. Another mother came from a different house and asked what was going on so I told her and then I headed to the playground to see if Ava was there. It was VERY dark so it was hard to see anything but black. As I passed the house that those kids were running in and out of earlier in the night I could hear lots of children's voices and decided if she wasn't at the playground or on the basketball court I would go knock on that door, too.

She wasn't at the playground so I knocked on the door and rang the doorbell over and over. I could hear lots of voices and I thought I heard someone say Ava. A little boy, maybe 3 years old, came to the door and then went to get a grown up. Still no one else came to the door so I started shouting we're looking for Ava. A grown up woman came to the door and said she had just noticed a girl at the house and asked her who she was and it was Ava. Ava came to the door and I rushed her to the street, telling her that her parents were looking for her and worried sick and that we needed to get her home right away. I started yelling I found her! I found her! And she's ok! Her dad came riding his bike our way and I said that I found her. He looked at her and firmly told her to go home right now! He thanked me a couple of times and said that he couldn't have made it another 5 minutes! You know how when your child is missing, you are out of your mind with worry and all of your emotions are on the same level so that when you finally find them you can't tell whether you should hug them or smack them. LOL! You're mad, scared, relieved, happy. I was just so grateful to have found her safe and sound! And I was so happy that my kids had convinced us to go to the playground earlier so that I thought to look at that particular house. Obviously, she would have made it home at some point but I was just so happy to have found her so her parents didn't have to worry anymore! Having my children go missing is my worst nightmare!

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Matthew's birthday and a recipe

Yesterday was Matthew's 9th birthday. He was sooo excited for his birthday! He said it was the best birthday he ever had because he got a scooter, a soccer ball, and he got to eat at KFC for lunch. Zack got a motor scooter for his birthday and Matthew has been counting the days til his birthday came so that he could get one of his own to ride since Zack didn't like to share his. He was so cute about every celebration and kindness all day long. It's a tradition for us to take the birthday boy to lunch to anywhere they want to eat. He didn't want to go back to school after lunch. He conned me into letting him to stay home. I told him that if he was staying home though, there was a lot of cleaning and stuff to do in preparation of dinner and his little party. We invited my 2 sisters and their families who live in our town to come over to my mom's for dinner and the party. He asked for the Oreo ice cream cake my mom makes and homemade pizza pockets. The ice cream cake is even as good as, if not better than, the Dairy Queen ice cream cakes are. He's been talking about it for weeks. We ate our pizza pockets (yum!) and he was so anxious for the party that we hurriedly readied the dining room and called all of the kids back inside. Matthew was so cute when we sang Happy Birthday. He is very shy and you could tell he was kind of embarrassed and bashful about all of the attention being on him while we were singing to him. He was thrilled with his gifts! But...apparently he didn't like the ice cream cake this time for some reason. He's such a picky poo! At least all of the rest of us loved it even if he didn't. :) All in all it was a great day! He is so cute! His favorite color is green but he really likes all of the colors. He loves putting things together, riding his scooter or bicycle. He is very smart and does very well in school. He LOVES to play games on the computer or the Wii. He makes friends easily and kids love him! He enjoys playing basketball and baseball. He is a very fast runner. He is very picky about eating but is a bottomless pit when he finds something he really likes to eat. He has a testimony of the gospel and loves Jesus and Heavenly Father very much! I am just so blessed to be his mother! Having my precious children in my life teaches me so much about love and life.

Oreo Ice Cream Cake
1 package of Oreos crushed reserving some to sprinkle on top
1/2 cup melted butter
Mix these and press into bottom of 9x13 inch pan. Place in freezer until the crust is set up.

1 carton of vanilla ice cream
Cut and place evenly over crust.

1 jar of caramel ice cream topping
1 jar of hot fudge ice cream topping
Pour over ice cream evenly. You'll have to heat the hot fudge a bit so that it will come out of the jar.

1 lg. carton Cool Whip
Spread evenly over the top and sprinkle Oreo crumbs on top and place in freezer for several hours. You can even make this a day or so in advance. Delicious!!!

He is in that phase right now where he smiles kinda crazy for pictures. LOL!!! But he's still cute! :)

He LOVES to climb trees, door frames, really...basically anything that he can climb on.

 He has THE best imagination! He's LOVES pretending and role play. I love this about him!!!


Friday, September 21, 2012

Getting used to the "time difference"......

When we first moved to Price it took me a while to adjust myself to the time difference. Now, I realize that there isn't an actual "time difference" between here and there but there is definitely a "time difference". At first I would always leave like 15-30 minutes early to get places and then I would...sit. That is not common for me to be early, especially THAT early! I'll never forget the time when I allotted myself an hour to an hour and a half to run my errands. I had to go to the post office, the bank, and the DMV. I was so worried that I would not have enough time to run my errands before the kids would be home from school. Well, it took me like 15 minutes to do it all and I was just AMAZED! It was AWESOME!!! That was one of my favorite things about Price. If I was running a little late it was totally fine because it only took between 5-10 minutes to get to anywhere you needed to be in Price. Even if you live at the farthest end of Price it was like 10 minutes to get to the other end. There was NEVER a line at the DMV. I was always the only one in there when I went. And road construction. When we lived in Price they had Fairgrounds Road blocked off at a bridge that needed to be rebuilt. I'm not sure how long it was closed, I just remember that when I needed to get to a business on one part of Fairgrounds Road and discovered it was blocked and I had to turn around and go all the way around the other way, I was so upset because it took me like an extra 5 minutes or something.

Now that I am back up this way I have to retrain my brain to the "time difference" again. I forgot that when you need to be pretty much anywhere up here you need to plan for it to take a good 30 minutes just to get there and another 30 minutes to get back. I was running a good 10-15 minutes late to a Dr.'s appointment for Zackary in Orem (I missed Dr. Simmons so much!!! He might look and sound like Mr. Rogers but he really knows his stuff and I completely trust him with my children's lives! It was really hard to not have that peace of mind while living in Price!!) and then somehow I blinked and missed the exit and because of the CRAZY road construction I couldn't turn around until I got to Pleasant Grove. WOW!! Thankfully they all understood at the Dr.'s office because they had all made the same mistake at least once themselves. Then today I needed to get Matthew's birthday present and the only place that had one in the county was at Target. I was trying to be so clever about my time and planned the 30 minutes there and the 30 minutes back but that only left a small window for shopping...at Target...I have missed Target so very much!! I ended up being 5 minutes later than I planned on being to Zack's school's CTE (Home Ec) Daycare Day. I was supposed to drop Gracie off by 1:10 but he needed me early so I was planning on being there at 1:00 but made it there at 1:05. So I wasn't too much of a slacker on that one but sheesh! I have just got to get this whole "time difference" figured out again! Being early to stuff is SOOO much better than being late to stuff! :)

Monday, September 17, 2012

Tails... :)

Gracie just said, "I know brothers and dads can pee in the toilet cuz they have tails."

Monday, September 10, 2012

PTA-OOP

Tonight I took Max and Matthew to their school carnival. At their old elementary school the carnival was actually a Halloween Carnival and it was FREE and there were SOOO many things to do. It was a mad house of people in the hallways but also very organized and fun! Later in the school year there were some cool baskets with different themes, that were up for auction during the week of parent/teacher conferences and the book fair.

Well, tonight's carnival was a per-ticket carnival. 25 cents per ticket. There were only a handful of activities to choose from because the bounce houses had to be deflated due to the rain and lightning and thunder. That couldn't be helped, I "get" that but sheesh! The activities cost between 3 tickets and 8 tickets. There were only a few lame games and we had to be crammed into this tiny area. The PTA president would occasionally try to guilt everyone into bidding on the baskets by threatening that if we didn't put money into buying the baskets, our kids would have to go door to door selling cookies or something to earn money. Yeah, did I mention that the parents were the ones who donated items and money for the baskets in the first place.

SO, school just started. We all know how much it costs to get them ready for that. Then they had picture day last week. They are selling the school shirts.They were asking for those donations and money last week for the baskets. This week they wanted us to spend a fortune at the carnival. What the hell?! Why everything at the beginning of the school year. Why not spread it out a bit so people aren't so overwhelmed and irritated all at once. I'm sure I'm the only one feeling this way but sheesh, enough is enough! I couldn't help think they should rename the PTA. It should be called PTAOOP: Parents Taking Advantage of Other Parents, or something along those lines.

And what is the PTA for anyway. As far as I can tell, all of the money earned by the PTA goes towards paying for hotel fees for PTA leaders when they go to training conventions. I can't see where else it goes. Room mothers and other parent volunteers take care of class parties (including supplies and refreshments), teacher appreciation week, and pretty much everything else that goes on there. What does the PTA really do? I mean, besides come up with expensive activities to dangle in front of our children so that we look like horrible parents if we don't participate.

Seriously, if anyone can tell me something else that the PTA does that is actually worthwhile, please do so.

Ok, I'm stepping off of my soapbox now.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Just a little update...

Well, so far living with my parents has been working out really well. I am so grateful to them for letting us stay here with them in their beautiful home. I hope we aren't too annoying for them!

Gracie has kinda struggled with the move. Everything in her little world changed all at once. I stopped working and was home all the time. Brian was home all the time. Zack, Matthew, and Max were home all the time for summer break. Then we moved and everything changed. Brian started his new job 2 days after we moved here. The boys started school 10 days after we moved here. I was constantly trying to get everything unpacked, unorganized, and, hopefully, as un-annoying as possible. So, poor little Gracie has been rather confused. Now that things are more normal I've been trying to give her a lot more attention. It's been great for both of us. She is such a sweet little girl. She has her moments like every child, but she has just brought me so much joy.

Yesterday, Gracie and I went to the mall with my mom. Gracie had to go the bathroom (she's in that super fun stage where she just HAS to go to the bathroom where ever we go). So I took her to the bathroom in Dillard's. When she was finished she wanted to ride the alligator. It took me a few minutes to figure out that she meant that she wanted to ride the elevator. :) When we got to the food court I gave her the option of pizza or Chinese food. She chose Panda Express. I showed her all of the yummy looking options and she said she wanted the broccoli one (beef and broccoli). She's the only kid I know who would choose broccoli over pizza. Ha Ha! She also eats tomatoes like they're candy. I didn't like tomatoes until I was in my twenties.

Zacky is doing well in junior high. Although he came home one day and said, "7th grade changes you." Ha Ha! I was like, "That's why I had such a hard time letting you go to junior high!" He's made some friends and seems to like his classes and teachers. He has a teacher named Mr. Christmas. My sister KayTee's husband's first name is Christmas. Kinda funny! The other day when he was standing in line for lunch, a girl tapped on his shoulder and when he turned around she pointed to one of her friends and said, "She likes you!" Well, the girl who likes him cupped her hands over her face and ran off because she was so embarrassed so he doesn't even know who she is because he couldn't see what she looked like. Ha Ha! So funny! Remember those days? It seems like yesterday doesn't it! He's also fitting in with the kids in the ward and has enjoyed the lessons and activities that he's been to so far. He's such a great kid!

Matthew and Max are adjusting well also. They are making friends and enjoy their classes and teachers. They are happy at church too, which is a huge relief!

As for me, I miss my friends, worry about the kids, worry about being a humongous burden to my parents, and so on and so forth. But it is so nice to be here where we can visit with family. And who doesn't like having all of these stores so close by?! :)  I really like my mom's ward so far, too. We are hoping to buy a house in December/January. It will be the first house we've ever bought in all these years. I am so excited about that prospect! I had to go to Price for a follow up mammogram the other day. I had a Dr.'s appointment, then ran errands, felt sad about not living there anymore, had an extra 30 minutes and headed over to Maurice's for some retail therapy. I found a really cute shirt! Isn't it amazing what a new shirt can do for your mood!  :) Then I got my mammogram and drove home. It will take some time to make new friends but for now I'm enjoying spending my days with the prettiest little girl in the world!