Top Golf, Peer Tutor, Holiday Drought, Germy-ness, Matthew Job Issues, Valentine’s Day

Here’s what we have been up to the last week and a half.  Yesterday was President’s Day and amazingly everyone was at home that morning.  That never happens.  Top Golf had a super sale so we decided to do some Top Golf that morning.  Matthew had his day program so it was just the rest of us.  We also had to celebrate the last holiday for Aaron as he is entering into the ‘Holiday Drought’ since there isn’t another government holiday that he gets off from work until Memorial Day. I think he is now in mourning because no more holidays until then--haha!

We got to play for two hours.  We did various games and I did horrible the whole time. I don’t think I have ever played that bad before--haha!  The kids loved it because it wasn’t hard to beat me at any game.  I am a bit of a competitive person so I was a bit perturbed, but what can you do?!  It just wasn’t meant to be that day.

Daniel:

We have two lefties in our family that need to use special clubs--Sarah and Josh.  By the end I was thinking maybe I should try the lefty clubs--I couldn’t have done any worse than when I used my righty clubs--haha!

Sarah:

Josh:

Aaron:

Noah:

Me:

We had played three different competitive games and at the end we had 10 minutes left of our time to play.  Those last 10 minutes we all took turns trying to hit the golf ball as far as we could.  I didn’t get the most points during this point so I had to at least post that score--haha!  All the other scores were too embarrassing for me to post because I did so bad.

Afterward we all went for lunch at Cafe Rio.  I had been banking my Cafe Rio rewards for a long time and had enough for everyone to have a free lunch.  It was awesome!!  Josh didn’t make us pray before eating our lunch like he did last time right after we picked him up from his mission.  We like to tease him about it in good fun--haha!

I love any noodle soup--ramen, pho, etc.  Fresh is always best, but I found this pho the other day.  It is a Pho cup that you add boiling water to and let it sit for minute before you can eat it.  It is like a cup of noodles.  I really like it, however, it smells bad whenever you make it.  Every time I make it everyone complains.  They say it smells like the dirty dishwasher that hasn’t been turned on in a few days.  So now whenever I make it I either have to eat it outside or open all the windows with the family room fan turned on.  Even then they can smell it when they get home from school despite having eaten it 3 hours beforehand.  Oh well, at least it tastes good even if it doesn’t smell good.  I found them on sale the other day and teased the kids at home with this picture via text saying I was getting another case. Oh my goodness all the texts they sent afterward....I will just sum them up they all said, “NOOOOOOOOO!!!!” Haha!  I didn’t get them...

It was Valentine’s Day last week.  I surprised the kids with these big kisses.  They are funnels filled with Hershey kisses with a printable Valentine banner.  I dropped Matthew’s off at his group home later that evening.  I even made one for Katie, Daniel’s girlfriend.

I thought everyone was going to be around for Valentine’s Day dinner so we had heart shaped pizzas.  However, the joke was on me because no one ended up being at home that evening.  We did have lots of leftovers, though.

One of my favorite book series is Lockwood and Co.  It is a young adult ghost story series that contains five books.  Sarah has read it, Josh is in the middle of reading it, Daniel started the first book and Aaron is about to start the second book.  Noah is not interested.  I was excited to see that they had made a series about it on Netflix.  We got Netflix last week just so we could binge watch the series.  As always the books are always better, but the series followed the book pretty closely with only a few alterations.  However, the series got cancelled after the 8th episode--boo!  We watched all the episodes this weekend together.  It was fun.  To make sure it was going to be okay to watch Aaron and I watched the first episode before the kids did.  I texted the kids what we were watching while they weren’t at home and they were mad because they wanted to see it, too.  

We rewatched the first episode with everyone and all the following episodes, too.  Good thing Monday was a holiday because we didn’t finish the last episode until midnight Sunday night/Monday morning.  Too bad it left on a cliffhanger that will never be answered unless you read the books since it got cancelled.

Josh’s major is Microbiology.  He is enjoying it. They have been learning the proper way to stain samples for viewing under microscopes in his Microbiology class.  Here’s one that Josh prepared (I have no idea what it is, though):

National pancake day was February 13th.  I had to work that day and Sarah and Noah had stuff going on.  Josh and Daniel went without us and celebrated at IHOP with a stack of free pancakes:

Josh is learning the joys of campus student parking or lack thereof.  It has been raining quite a few days and by the time he parks and walks to his first class he is soaked.  Too bad there isn’t anything to help with that like an umbrella or something....I really have no idea why he doesn’t get one.  

Josh keeps getting put in charge of picking of the refreshments for his YSA Ward activities.  A few weeks ago he was supposed to bring 10 pounds of cooked taco meat for a Linger Longer taco bar.  He left it until the last minute and realized he wouldn’t be able to cook it in time.  He called Aaron and asked for him to cook all 10 pounds of it for him and to have it ready by a certain time.  Aaron wasn’t too happy about it, but was willing to help.  After Aaron had almost finished cooking it all with our own taco seasoning, Josh called to make sure we made it gluten free.  What?!  Well looking at our taco seasoning we had used from our own cupboard, it was actually gluten free, but that was not on purpose.  Aaron told Josh he needed to plan ahead a bit better next time and not drop the food restrictions on us last minute.  Luckily this last refreshment assignment was only 12 dozen cookies.  Josh decided to do store bought cookies.  It was probably a good choice--at least from my perspective since I would have probably been the one to help out with that assignment had they not been store bought--haha!

The Syracuse Temple is really close to our house and we drive by it quite often in just getting to different places.  The construction is coming along and we will be excited when it finally gets done.  However, that is still a few years away.  Noah took this picture from the car window while we were driving by last week:

Noah has a friend who has a bunny that just had babies.  Noah got to hold a brand new baby last week and was pretty excited about it.  It was so new it didn’t have any fur yet.

For Valentine’s Day Daniel and Katie went to the Ogden temple to do baptisms for the Dead.

Afterward they cooked a fancy steak, green bean, and mashed potato dinner together at our house.  They had a fun cake for dessert with some sparkling cider:

Josh had an assignment last week in his Microbiology class to culture different things.  He chose to culture both his nostrils along with a few other areas.  After swabbing them on the agar they let it grow to see what things were colonized in and on his body.  He got to see the results today. He is a pretty germy guy--as is everyone else, but ignorance is bliss, right?!  Here’s the three Petri dishes he grew:

Ewwww!

Noah and his band partner, Sophie, did their solo ensemble performance in class this past week.  They did a mallet duet and did great.  They will advance to the next round of the solo ensemble festival next week.  For the next round they will be performing for a judge after school. Noah is a bit nervous, but I am sure they will do great.

Sarah signed up to be a peer tutor this semester at school.  She gets to go to a regular education class with a special needs student to help her throughout class.  She is getting to help a girl named Abbi in dance class and is loving it.  She also gets to occasionally see Matthew’s old high school teacher and visit with her.  She always asks about Matthew.

I got to have lunch with my friend, Erin, last Friday.  It was nice to visit and catch up without being interrupted five bazillion times when there are kids and even husbands around.  It was a nice break.

We have run into some issues with Matthew’s new job.  Bountiful High School has had to cut Matthew’s hours back because they don’t have enough for him to do.  We are frustrated at this point because it took so long to get here, why wasn’t this discovered before we agreed to this job?  Ugh!  Anyway, we have a meeting to discuss options with his job team tomorrow. I am hoping we have some other options for him.

Adulting, Neurology, Peace Offering, Appointments, First Job, Preference Dance, Valentine Goodies

What a crazy two weeks it has been!  Here are some highlights.  Since Josh is home from his mission he needed to transfer his care from a pediatric neurologist to an adult neurologist.  He had his final appointment with Primary Children’s Neurology in September when they transferred his case to an adult clinic.  I tease him by saying he needs to go and see the 'big boy’ neurologist since he graduated from the pediatric one.  I don’t think he things it as funny as I do, though--haha.  Anyway, he couldn’t get an appointment until recently because they were booked so far out.  We finally made to his appointment.  He allowed me to come along since I wanted to make sure the new neurologist had a good history on Josh as a new patient.  I don’t think Josh remembers back when he was 15 months old and had his first seizure and the complete history of his epilepsy since then.  After this first appointment Josh will be on his own with the 'big boy' neurologist, though.  After the appointment I took him out for some breakfast since he is so busy between work, school, other activities I don’t get to see him very much despite living in the same house.  He was a fun breakfast date!

Speaking of appointments I scheduled the kids to see the dentist.  However, the date that I made the dentist appointment for Daniel didn’t work for him.  I had to cancel his appointment.  I told him that he needed to call to make a new appointment since he could get one that worked with his schedule.  Since Daniel is 18 and assures me that he is an adult I figured he could flex and try out his adulting skills.  He reluctantly told me he would call to make his own appointment.  About once a week afterward I would follow up and ask if he had made an appointment.  This week we had this fun text conversation--haha!

I also have started having Aaron make his own dentist appointments, too, since he knows his own schedule better than I do.  He called this week to make an appointment and decided to make one for Daniel as well.  He let Daniel know about his new appointment and Daniel said thanks and that he probably wasn’t ever going to actually call the dentist’s office and make one--ugh!!  Let me just say that parenting ‘adult’ children is not the most fun thing I have ever done--haha!

Aaron has been traveling A LOT lately.  He has been gone for two weeks so far last month and will be leaving again on another trip soon.  Most of the time it isn’t a big deal, but this last trip was really rough on me.  Whatever could go wrong seemed to go wrong.  After two terrible days of single parenting it I had an even worse morning.  Let me set the stage....Aaron left early Monday morning, the rest of Monday was terrible.  Tuesday was terrible--I had a sick kid that called to be checked out right as I was leaving to go to work (I ended up being late for work), a bleeding nose that I couldn’t get to stop earlier that morning,  there was a mix up with Matthew’s new job which he was super upset about that.  While I was at work I was trying to sort out his job and ended up with 41 missed calls from Matthew in the space of two hours.  I couldn’t talk to him because I was trying to sort out everything else and trying to work at the same time.   Anyway, Wednesday morning I had almost hit my limit.  I woke up to having a strong ‘discussion’ with Daniel about something.  Matthew was on his 17th call of the morning insisting he had 'SOMETHING SUPER IMPORTANT THAT HE HAD TO TELL ME RIGHT THEN THAT COULDN’T WAIT’, Sophie had pooped in the kitchen, Noah had stepped in it and had tracked it all over my cream colored rug in the family room.  I had a painful ear infection and hadn’t slept very well for the previous few nights.  That morning Sarah, Noah and I all had dentist appointments that I was trying to get them to get ready for, but they were sitting on the couch not doing anything. They were dragging their feet and it would probably make us late for the appointment.  I was in the middle of scrubbing out the smeared dog poop on my rug when Aaron called from his business trip and needed me to to do something for him right that second.  That was the EXACT wrong time for him to call--haha!  I was super snippy, short tempered and crusty to him on the phone while I did the task he needed me to do.  He had no idea what had been going on that morning so this came as a bit of a surprise--the poor guy.  Afterward, he took the high road.  He knew that things had been stressful while he had been gone, but he didn’t know I was losing my mind.  Right after our ‘fun' little conversation on the phone, he ended up ordering some Crumbl cookies and having them delivered to try and brighten my day.  I am sure he wanted them delivered before he had to talk to me on the phone again--haha!  They were there when I got home from the dentist.

I didn’t want to share with the kids because I EARNED those--haha!  I taped them up accordingly with a sign telling everyone to not touch them.

Thankfully for the kids’ sake they left the cookies alone.  I think they knew Mom was DONE--haha!  The week did get better after that so we all survived it.  I did apologize to Aaron for being snippy, too.  

Speaking of even more appointments it was time for Matthew to see a few people.  He needed a physical done by the doctor to continue to participate in Special Olympics.  He also needed a new eye exam and prescription, to see the dentist and to see the podiatrist.  Luckily, I was able to schedule all the appointments in the space of two days.  Matthew passed his physical with flying colors.  Next we went to the podiatrist.  Matthew has really flat fee that had started bothering him especially when he was participating in the Track and Field part of Special Olympics.  The podiatrist gave him a bunch of stretches to do and also some orthotic inserts for his shoes to help his feet get in a better alignment.  His eye exam went well and he will be getting some new glasses soon.  

His dentist visit went well and he has no cavities so I call everything a win.  It was a busy two days!

Matthew also got the fantastic news that he got hired on as a sub cook in the cafeteria at Davis School District.  In order to start the job he needed to get a background check done and fingerprinting done.  We made a day of it.  I picked him up from his group home.  We went to the district offices, checked in and got everything done.  

Getting fingerprints done:

He then begged to visit his old school Vista Education Campus to see his old teachers, friends and the secretaries.  He visited for about 30 minutes when they needed to get back to work and class.  Afterward we went out to lunch at Cafe Rio.  He had a fun day.

Matthew was so excited for his new job.  When they called to let him know he passed his fingerprints and background check and asked when he wanted to started he was so excited.  He started this past Monday.  He made sure to ask Aaron for a Father’s Blessing the night before.  His group home manager got his Paratransit transport set up for early Monday morning. Here he when we dropped him off to his group home Sunday night--the night before his new job:

The next morning there were a few hiccups in his transport.  He was traveling from Clearfield down to Bountiful.  Paratransit said there would be a vehicle transfer in Farmington and to account for that he would need to be picked up early.  His shift was supposed to start at 9 am.  I don’t know what happened with Paratransit, but there ended up not being a transfer and he was driven straight to Bountiful and ended up getting there two hours early before his shift was supposed to start.  UGH!!  He called me in a panic.  His job coach was supposed to get there by 8:30am and Matthew called me at 7:30am.  By the time I would have gotten dressed and gone down there his job coach would be there so we just waited.  We let his job coordinator know and his house manager.  They both called Paratransit to see what could be done in the future so he doesn’t get to his job so early.  They got things worked out, thankfully.  That morning Matthew’s job coach got there early--thank goodness--and Matthew was able to get started.  They sent me this picture so I was glad things worked out and he was doing okay.  He worked three days last week and loves it.

A few hiccups, but it ended well.  He LOVES it there.  This is the culmination of 8 years of so many meetings, working with many different companies and people--Chrysalis, PARC, Vocational Rehab, his school so for him to start a job is a BIG deal!  We are so happy for him!

A few weekends ago Daniel went to Preference with Katie.  Preference is a Girl’s Choice dance.  Katie came and picked up Daniel and they put on their flowers--corsage and boutonniere.

Daniel had said some parents can come see the pictures be taken if they want.  Since we hadn’t see any of Daniel’s previous dance picture sessions we went.  The photographer ended up being a daughter of someone I work with which was pretty cool.  Here’s a few pictures that I ended up taking:

Daniel never sent me a copy of any of the pictures the photographer took.  Fortunately, I work with someone else whose son was in Daniel’s dance group.  She took pity on me and texted me the pictures from the photographer.  Here’s a few of them:

Speaking of Daniel he has started a business internship this semester.  He is working with the company Marketstar in Ogden every other day.  He is really enjoying what he is doing.

Josh has been busy.  He is working and going to school and other various activities.  He just got this in the mail.  His first semester in college went well which is awesome.  It was a bit of a hard transition for him going from mission life to full time school life again, but he is doing well.

He was just put in as First Counselor in the Elder’s Quorum last week.  He has a full load, but is enjoying it.  He just scheduled a trip to Chicago for Spring Break with a bunch of returned Chicago RMs in March and is excited to go.

While Aaron has been gone they wanted to cook. I asked them what they wanted to make and they said lasagna.  I gave them money to go shopping and pick up the ingredients.  Awesomely enough we had enough ingredients to make 5 pans of lasagna.  We ate one pan and froze the other four for some future dinners.  Wahoo!

Sophie got groomed this week.  She now looks like Dobby the House Elf from Harry Potter with her prominent ears.  I guess it would be Dobby’s girlfriend instead since Sophie is a girl.  We can start calling her Winky the House Elf until her hair grows out again.  Haha!

G&G T stopped by today to give the kids their Valentine’s goodie bags they made for them.  The kids loved them!

Matthew will get his tomorrow when he comes over.