Endodontist, Refinishing Furniture, Cross Country, Pennywise, Holi Powder, Job Experiences, Smoking, Rivalry Game, Baseball Game

The past week and a half have been steady, but good.  The kids have settled into a school routine somewhat.  I forgot to mention in the last post that we did continue with a few preschool traditions.  Aaron was able to give all the kids (and me) a blessing to start out the school year.  We then measured all the kids' heights and marked them on the wall.  Amazingly enough Josh is STILL growing.  He measured in at 6'5 1/2 inches tall.  We have no idea if and when he will ever stop growing--haha!  We are at the point that we have to order his pants online because no one has pants in the store that will fit his long legs and skinny waist.  Matthew measured 6'1" and is the same height as Aaron.  Daniel is 5'2 1/2 inches tall.  Sarah is 4'11 inches and Noah is 4'10".  They are all growing and trying to keep them in pants that aren't high waters is a bit challenging--haha!

Sarah had a follow up appointment at the endodontist to check out her root canals that were done 4 months ago.  She had to get the root canals after she fell at school a year ago and the roots ended up getting infected.  Anyway, the endodontist told us that she has a risk for infection so that is why we were following up.  The endodontist took X-rays of her root canals and everything looked great.  However, he did tell us that she can have a risk for infection and that we don't need to keep seeing him, however, we do need to have the regular dentist take X-rays every so often just to keep an eye on things.  He told us that an infection can start anywhere from tomorrow up to 20+ years from now so it will always need to be checked on occasionally.  Oh well we were just glad everything looked great for that visit and that we are done seeing the endodontist unless heaven forbid anything else happens.  Here's Sarah waiting patiently for the reading of her X-rays:

We finally got our dishwasher fixed.  Yay!!  Two weeks with no dishwasher with a family of seven that likes to dirty every single dish every single meal was frustrating!!  We had to fight with the warranty company on getting it fixed.  After playing phone tag more times than we can keep track of and getting the wrong company's phone numbers to fix things,  and other issues we finally found someone that would honor the warranty.  However, we had to pay him first and then submit the work order to the warranty company to be reimbursed.  I really hope the reimbursement goes more smoothly than trying to get it fixed.  Ugh!!  Oh well at least we have a working dishwasher now and for that I am very grateful!!

Josh has had two meets that I unfortunately had to miss this season so far.  His first meet I missed because I had to work and Aaron was out of town on a business trip. However, the second meet Aaron and I had to divide and conquer.  Aaron went to see Josh run and I had to take Noah to scouts and then to soccer.  At least Aaron took some pictures of Josh running during the meet so I could see those even if I had to miss the meet.

Here's Josh after the race--glad that it's over, but on a runner's high:

Josh has been keeping busy, especially with his new job at the haunted maze. He has been cast as Pennywise the clown from the movie It.  His boss wanted him to watch the new It movie to see who Pennywise was, but when Aaron and I looked up what the movie was about we wouldn't let him watch it.  It is a bit messed up of a movie.  Anyway, Aaron found some short Youtube clips of Pennywise that were okay to watch and let him see those to get a good enough idea of who Pennywise is.  Josh has had two different haunted maze trainings and likes to practice his 'Pennywise' the clown voice at home.  The kids (and Aaron) don't really care for his creepy Pennywise voice, though.  He is really looking forward to the opening of the haunted maze at Black Island Farms.  However, they did discover that Josh is too tall for their Pennywise costume so they just asked Josh to wear tall white socks to make his costume seem like it fits and isn't too short.  I am interested to see what it will actually be like when it opens.

Josh is still trying to juggle his 3 different jobs (Arctic Circle, Black Island Farms and Urban Air) as well as school, city youth council and cross country.  He is a pretty busy guy, but so far he is keeping his grades up so we will let him continue with his busy-ness as long as he is enjoying himself.  As he is getting older Aaron and I want to let him become more able to manage his own activities scheduling-wise.  We used to nag him to remember to ask work off for his cross country meets, but we decided to back off and let him take over.  He learned a hard lesson last week, though.  He forgot to ask off of work for one of his meets.  He tried calling his work mates to see if someone would switch shifts with him, but no one was able to trade.  He tried emailing his boss to see if there was anything he could do.  He emailed back saying that this was a hard decision, but he should have asked for the time off.  Also that if he didn't show up for work it would leave his fellow employees short staffed and make it hard on everyone as well as show up as a no show on his work file.  Josh called me and asked me what to do.  I told him to actually call his boss and talk to him, but if they weren't able to do anything his first responsibility was to work since he should have scheduled better. His boss couldn't help him so he ended up missing the meet and going to work instead which he wasn't too happy about.  It was a hard choice to make, but hopefully, he learned from it and will be more aware in the future.  I must say it is hard to watch your kids make mistakes, but I think they learn better that way than if someone is always there telling them what to do.

Last weekend was a fundraising activity at the high school called STOMP.  It was an all night activity where the students walked the track and earned money.  Josh really wanted to go, but I was nervous for him to be gone all night long.  With epilepsy, there are certain things that lower seizure thresholds and a few of them are sleep deprivation, stress, poor nutrition, etc--the biggest one concerning Josh for that night was the sleep deprivation.  Josh will hit 2 years seizure free on September 30th and I didn't want to jinx that.  He was upset that I wouldn't let him go all night but we did compromise and I let him stay until 3 am, however, he had to take a nap before he left for the activity and sleep in the next morning.  Those were the terms he reluctantly agreed to so he was still able to participate in most of it which was good.  I feel bad the kid has had to deal with this for 15 years, but it is better to be safe than sorry!

Last Wednesday the young women had their post camp activity.  We got to watch a slide show with all the pictures that were taken at girl's camp.  Then they handed out awards to everyone.  Here's the award that I got--haha:

After that we went outside and had a Value Celebration with holi powder.  Each of the young women values (Faith--white, Divine Nature--blue, Individual Worth--red, Knowledge--green, Choice and Accountability--orange, Good Works--yellow, Integrity--purple, and Virtue--gold) has an assigned color.  The Camp Leaders put together squirt bottles filled with the different value colors assigned holi powder, let us put on shower caps, and then turned us loose.  This is what it probably looked like even though this is just a stock picture of a holi powder festival I found online.

After that we gathered together and enjoyed some Zeppe's Italian ice.  Then they brought an air compressor and used it to hose down everyone with compressed air to blow off the extra holi powder before we had to get in our cars to drive home.  This is what I looked like when I got home:

Before I got blown off with the air compressor I looked a lot more colorful, but it was a fun activity. I am glad I got to go to Girl's Camp this summer.

Last week I was able to go to the temple with a friend.  We had wanted to do an Endowment session which usually takes about 2 hours, however, we ended up talking in the parking lot for two hours since we had so much to catch up on.  We didn't have time for an Endowment session, but were able to do some Initiatory work instead which only took an hour.  Since we were all caught up on everything we did go back yesterday and did an endowment session which was nice.  It was nice for the recharge at the temple especially in this crazy time of life for me!

Matthew is loving his new school.  He still missed Syracuse High, but he is enjoying Vista.  His first week he got to go out in the community.  They got to ride a bus to the Frontrunner and then over to Trax to get to the City Creek Mall.  In the middle of the day I got a text with this picture:

I guess Matthew was so excited to be on Frontrunner he made one of his teachers take a picture and text it to me.  I am sure he LOVED it and the teacher told me such.  This week he got to go to his first job experience.  They took the kids over to the theater and let them clean up after the movie got over. Matthew wiped down chairs and swept the theater and seemed to enjoy it.  The point of Vista is to let the kids try out different job experiences to see what they enjoy doing.  After they get a good idea of what they enjoy doing they get them set up on having a regular job so they can become more independent.  It will be interesting to see what jobs Matthew enjoys doing.  I did get an email message from his teacher from last year.  She just wanted to know how he was doing and to let him know that she missed having him as a student.  I thought that was really sweet.  Matthew does miss high school and all his teachers and friends there.  Too bad things have to change sometimes.

Back when Daniel went fishing with Grandpa Terry, Grandpa Terry helped him tie his own fishing fly.    When it was time to come back home Daniel forgot his fly so G&G T brought it by last week so Daniel could keep it.  I think it looks pretty cool.  Daniel liked tying the fly with Grandpa T.

I found this meme for Aaron and I thought it was pretty funny and applicable for him.  He does have a smoking problem--haha!

Last week was the rivalry football game between BYU and the UofU.  We invited the Einzinger's over to watch the game with us.  They are avid Ute fans so it was fun to watch together.  In preparation Aaron put out his BYU flag in the front yard as well as zip tied this BYU flag to my curtain rod in the family room.  We are so redneck it's not even funny--haha!

BYU lost unfortunately, but it was still fun to watch the game together.  It was a late Thursday night game that ended after midnight so Friday was not as much fun, but it was worth it.  Aaron is holding out hope that BYU will win one of these years.

At the beginning of this year I was able to pick up two old desks for cheap.  I had wanted to refinish them and put them in Sarah and Noah's rooms.  They had been sitting in the garage all summer until we finally found time to start them at the end of July.  Sarah wanted to help me refinish them so we worked on them together.  First we sanded them down:

Then they got put aside until last week when we picked up the paint and worked on them.  I also had a headboard and footboard for Sarah's bed we decided to tackle as well.  It took 3 coats of white paint for one desk and the headboard and footboard.  Sarah decided she didn't want to paint her desk white so she chose some purple paint.  To make things a bit easier we picked up a cheap paint sprayer from Harbor Freight.  Unfortunately you get what you pay for and the sprayer didn't even work when we poured the paint inside.  DOH!!  That meant we got to hand paint everything.

It was a big project, but we finished.  After painting everything we went and picked up some new drawer pulls and everything turned out great!  Here's Noah's desk:

 Sarah's purple desk in her room with new drawer pulls, a new mirror and fuzzy chair to go with it:

 The headboard is in place, but we are waiting for the hardware to attach the footboard so there is no footboard for now.  But the headboard looks good!

It was time consuming, but we like how everything turned out.  However, we will wait a bit before we take on another project--haha!

To celebrate Labor Day we took the kids (minus Josh because he had to work) to a Bees baseball game.  We got some pretty great seats, too.  This was our seat view:

It was fun watching the game, but it was SO HOT!!  We had to make multiple trips to the water fountain to refill our water bottles.  We were directly in the sun on a 100 degree day.  The chairs were so HOT.  During down time the kids would have a contest to see who could hold their hand the longest on the back of the chair in front of us.  The chairs were so hot it would burn your hands after a bit.

Matthew enjoyed the dancing music and made sure to dance every time they played it:

After the game we picked Josh up and went for some shaved ice to help cool down.

It was a great day and great end to this year's summer.

The next day it was back to business as usual.  Matthew had another work opportunity and was told to wear a collard shirt and nice slacks.  He wanted to wear his church clothes so we let him.  Here he is getting ready in the morning:

 We picked up some passports for the kids and finally got their birth certificates back since they have to send those back separately.  I had to look at Sarah's birth certificate again just to laugh.  I don't think Aaron has yet recovered from accidentally delivering her at home.  At least he can have his name on her birth certificate as the birth attendant--haha!

Josh had his 4th meet this past Friday.  I was excited because I was able to actually attend this one.  Wahoo!  It was fun cheering him on.

Unfortunately, my Daith piercing in my ear never healed even after the round of antibiotics so I had to take it out.  I felt like they did help with headaches so I am hoping I won't have an issue with it being out, but time will tell.  After taking it out last week my ear feels a lot better though so I guess it is a trade off.  If things go great I might be able to get it again in a little bit.   However, the thought of getting it pierced again makes my eyes water.  It really hurt last time and I am sure it wouldn't feel any better getting it again--haha!