Auto Accidents, Quarantining, Cavities, Meetings, California, Concerts, Tours, Snow, Raw Pig Ears, Caroling

Another two weeks has come and gone.  Here’s what we have been up to.  Sarah and I got to have a mother/daughter date.  However, it was to the dentist so both of us could get a cavity filled.  Not the funnest thing in the world, but at least it got done and won’t be a problem in the future.  They called me back first.  Then it was Sarah’s turn:

We were both pretty numb for a few hours afterward.  Sarah had a really hard time in band since she couldn’t even feel where her flute was on her chin.  Her band teacher thought it was pretty hilarious.  

I, unfortunately, had to go back the next day since my filling was raised just a bit too high and I couldn’t close my bottom and top teeth together without the filling stopping that.  They had shave some more of my new filling off and now it is doing great.  

Matthew had a visit with his psychiatrist just for a 6 month check up and medication management.  Over the last 6 months his psychiatrist has been weaning Matthew off of his respiridone medication.  It was causing his prolactin level to be really high.  Between that and his behaviors getting better she wanted to wean him off of that medication.  Matthew has tolerated the weaning well, however, he has lost 30 pounds since his last visit 6 months ago.  I am not too concerned since he gained 30 pounds when he first moved into his group home a year ago.  He just lost all the weight he had gained in the last year.  Now if he keeps losing weight I will be more concerned, but as for now he is doing well.  Since he has lost so much weight none of his clothes fit him so guess what he is getting for Christmas--haha!!  He also got to go and see Santa Clause earlier this month. He was so excited!!

He also had a meeting with the state representative of his DSPD case.  It is a new format they have decided to go with so she wanted to meet with Matthew, Aaron, me, his group home management, and his services coordinator.  Thankfully, it was over Zoom.  That way Aaron didn’t have to miss work.  I, however, did have to go pick Matthew up from his school at the end of the day so he could join in the meeting, too.  Going forward they hope to have Matthew set up with a job within the next year.  Matthew is getting pretty excited to get a job so that’s a good thing.

Sophie has mastered the art of looking pitiful.  Anytime someone is not sitting with her giving her pets, she will stare at you like this until it is remedied.  She is especially pitiful when you are eating something and not sharing.  What a crazy dog!

One Christmas present came early this year--our family blog books.  We had 2020 part 1 and part 2 printed as well as 2021 part 1 printed up.  It is always fun to go back and see everything that has gone on in our family during the last year and a half:

Daniel got the chance to go to California to run in the Footlocker race.  This is the same Footlocker race Josh go too attend 3 times.  Josh and Daniel didn’t get to go last year due to Covid so Daniel was really looking forward to going this year.  They left after a late parent meeting Thursday night and drove through the night.  I wanted to make sure Daniel was okay so he sent me this picture:

They made it to Walnut, California the next morning which was Friday.  They looked/walked over the race course.  After that the whole Cross Country team then went to the beach.  They had a bit of a delay in getting to the beach since their bus got in not only one, but two car accidents on a California freeway on the way to the beach.  DOH!!  Luckily, they were pretty minor so after a two hour delay they finally made it.  Daniel had a lot of fun:

They spent that night in Walnut, California.  The next morning they got up early and ran the race.  That evening they drove to Mesquite, Nevada to spend the night.  They made it home the next afternoon.  It was a quick trip, but a lot of fun.

I had my last CNA Clinical Instructor shift for this semester the morning after Daniel left for California. I am still working my CNS immunization job, but the CNA job is done for this semester.  Anyway,  since I was up so early (4:30 am) I got to track their driving and see where he was at and when he made it to California Friday morning.  That last CNA shift seemed so LONG!!  It didn’t help that I had to wear a face shield and a mask the whole day.  It was a little claustrophobic.  

Daniel, unfortunately, caught Aaron’s man cold.  However, Daniel was complaining that his throat hurt really bad.  I just wanted to rule out Strep throat so I took him in to get tested.  They only had a very late night appointment available so I took it.  Thankfully, Daniel came back negative for Strep, but since he had really swollen lymph nodes in his neck and a cough the doctor decided to give him some corticosteroids to help him get some relief. They gave him a dose in the office.  Let me just say ‘roid rage is a real thing!  Steroids have a side effect of moodiness/mood swings.  When Daniel was a baby/toddler since he had asthma pretty bad he received corticosteroids almost every time he got sick to try and open his airway since he was so wheezy.  Those steroid doses always made him crusty/moody.  They were the worst.  Anyway, it has been nice since Daniel has gotten older that his asthma has improved so much that he hasn’t needed any steroids for years.  However, we got to revisit memory lane when he did get the steroids this past week because we got to remember how moody they make him.  Ugh!!  It was so fun (not really).  Glad they are now out of his system and he feels A LOT better!  

Sarah had a band concert last week.  It was fun to see and hear her play.  Here she is on the front row with her flute:

Sarah said it was a lot easier to play when she didn’t have a numb mouth/chin--haha!

The night of Sarah’s concert Daniel had a combined oldest YM/YW class activity where they got to visit the Conference Center in Salt Lake for an in depth tour.  He got to see some really cool things and had a great time with all the other kids.  Here’s a few pictures of their night:

He got to sit in the actual choir seats, too:

Last week we got notified that Noah was in close contact to a positive Covid case.  Since he is still in the process of being vaccinated (only has one more dose left to get) he had to be quarantined.  He ended up staying home from school Thursday and Friday and was my buddy.  We got notified so late about his exposure that his quarantine time was up by Monday.  Anyway, Noah made his own fun in those two days.  He found some amazon shipping boxes and made him a cardboard box suit to see if he could go sledding in the snow in our yard.  Here’s what he looked like:

It didn’t work as well as he hoped for, but at least he had fun trying it out.  It did snow and got cold last week.  Daniel took a picture outside of his classroom at the high school to show off the snowflakes and icicles:

We are glad it warmed up somewhat because we didn’t get outside to shovel right away and since our house is north facing it meant our driveway turned into a sheet of ice.  Thankfully, through some procrastination and warmer weather it has finally mostly melted off our driveway.  Phew!  That’s one of the downfalls of having a north facing house--if you don’t shovel right away, you have an ice sheet for however long it is until it warms up enough to melt.  Sometimes that can take a few weeks to months which is not fun.  Oh well, we lucked out this time.  Hopefully, we will be more on the ball next snowfall.

Daniel had a band concert last week.  The high school combined the different choirs, bands and orchestra into one massive concert then charged everyone to come and watch.  This bothers me a bit.  I am all for fundraising and things, but I feel like charging for tickets to come and see your child perform is not okay.  Since the families already have to pay the school fees, the band fees, buy a suit/outfit to perform in, and supplies for the instruments I do not think it is okay to then charge to come and see them play.  Anyway, I will get off my soap box and say the concert was great.  Here’s Daniel’s band while they played their portion:

The conductor is leading, but happens to be pointing right at Daniel in this picture.  She wasn’t pointing at Daniel in real life, but just happened to be in this picture if that makes sense.  Daniel still is playing the baritone saxophone.  

Since it was such a massive concert they had two different performances to accommodate everyone that evening.  Aaron and I went to the earlier performance and got to visit with Daniel a few minutes before the second performance started.

We love memes in our family.  I found this one and sent it to Aaron because it was funny:

Josh had an eventful week.  His zone got to attend the Chicago temple.  He said it was great.  Here are some of the pictures he took while he was there:

His zone--Josh is the super tall one on the back row:

Josh’s companion, Elder Pena, is 5’7” so there is quite the height difference between them:

You can’t take pictures and not have some goofy ones thrown in, right?!

This past week Josh got to try out a raw pickled pig's ear.  He poured hot sauce on it before he ate it.

He is getting up the nerve to try it out:

He was not a fan it seems--haha!  He said it was crunchy and it was the texture that he had issues with--gross!

He also got to try out a pig hoof.  He said it tasted and had the consistency of meat jello.  Gross.  He did have some other excitement, too.  He and his companion got into a car accident on the Chicago freeway during rush hour.  Thankfully, Josh was not driving and no one got hurt.  Some guy didn’t check his blind spot before he changed lanes and ran into them.  He dented up the driver’s side door, but then the guy drove off and left the scene of the accident.  Luckily, no one was hurt.  They called the older mission couple and got directions of what to do next.  They will be dropping off their car to get it fixed next week.  I guess the driver’s side door makes a horrible creaking/grinding noise when it opens or closes, and there are deep scratches down the side of the car, but no other damage.  I guess if you are trying to see the bright side--in Josh’s vast car accident experiences that resulted in totally two different cars before he went on his mission it helped him so he didn’t get too freaked out when they were in the accident and kind of knew what to do.  However, he likes to scare us and titled his weekly email ‘Elder Mancil Got Into ANOTHER CAR CRASH?’ because he knew it would get an instant reaction from me and it did--the punk!!  Glad it they were okay.  Too bad it ended up being a hit and run, though.  Boo!

We order a lot from Amazon.  I have found out that if you chose a later shipping day a lot of the times you can get a digital credit that you can build up.  Since we had done a lot of Christmas shopping from Amazon, I had built up enough credits to buy a book.  We do occasionally watch the series ‘Bob’s Burgers’.   It is a cartoon, but pretty funny.  It is about a guy that runs a hamburger restaurant and every episode they have a burger of the day written on a chalkboard in the background of the show which is usually a pun.  Someone has compiled all the Burger of the Day puns and actually made recipes for them and put it together in a cookbook called ’The Bob’s Burgers Burger Book’.  I bought it for Aaron using my free digital credits and sent the Kindle version to him.  Aaron tried out one of the recipes from the cookbook this past Sunday.  It was called the Poblano Picasso burger and it ended up being pretty good.  Here’s what it looked like:

Here was the recipe:

The family seemed to like it since Aaron made 14 hamburger patties and we had absolutely no leftovers. 

This past Sunday Noah had a special Temple Prep class put on by the primary for all the kids going into the YW/YM program in January.  I can’t believe Noah is that old!! He will be passing the sacrament in a few weeks and that just seems crazy to me!!  I am sad I won’t have anymore kids in primary, though.  I got to give a little spiel at that meeting for the YW, too.  We are only have 4 new girls coming in to our class so our class will be really small next year!!

Later that evening we went out driving to see some Christmas lights.  This house a few miles away from us didn’t disappoint:

Noah has been doing orchestra at the elementary school this year.  He got to go ‘caroling’ with his orchestra class of about 20 kids to the whole elementary school today.  Aaron and I got to see him play which was pretty cool.  Here he is before they started playing:

Jingle Bells never sounded so good!

Ice Skating, Replaced Water Heaters, Working, Thanksgiving, Shot Blocker, Church Speaking, Sickness, Weirdness

Another two weeks have flown by.  We are keeping busy.  Two weeks ago Aaron and I had the chance to attend an afternoon endowment session at the Ogden Temple.  It was nice to be back there again.  After we got back home from the temple the youth had a combined young women/young men activity and we got to go ice skating.  It was a lot of fun.  Here’s Daniel:

Sarah and her friend, Laurie:

Here’s most of our youth that got to attend:

I love to ice skate and enjoyed going.

Between Covid shot clinics and Flu shot clinics I have gotten to work with my sister, Johanna, a few times.  It is fun to chit chat while we shoot people--haha!

Every month Josh’s Mission President’s Wife puts together a newsletter for all the missionary’s families.  This last month she also put together a slide show of all the baptisms for that month.  It was fun to see Josh in a few of the baptism pictures.  Here’s one of the pictures that was in it:

We have a plug on our island in the kitchen. However, it is the one that gets used and abused quite a bit which has made it very loose.  It got to the point that you had to use one hand to hold the plug in place and the other hand to work whatever item you had plugged in.  It was a bit frustrating.  Aaron ended up changing out the plug for me so it wouldn’t be so loose anymore.  He even got Sarah to come help him out, too:

Aaron and I flip flop cars quite a bit.  If I am driving a long distance to work I will take the Camry and he will take the van to work.  The Camry gets better gas mileage.  He doesn’t really like driving the van to work because he says the guys at work make fun of other guys that drive mini vans--haha!  I just shared these memes with him:

It works out most days, however, the other day I was late leaving for work down in Salt Lake when I got in the Camry and found that I only could drive 29 more miles until I ran out of gas--DOH!!

I HAD to drop by the gas station to fill up before I could get on my way.  Aaron didn’t run out all the gas and leave it like that for me intentionally, but maybe subconsciously though--haha!  Oh well, no worries.

Aaron is always up for a good steak.  He has also figured out that our local grocery store will put steaks on clearance every night around 8-ish pm.  Sometimes there are good steaks and sometimes there’s nothing at all.  The other day Daniel was craving a steak and talked Aaron into going to the grocery store to try their luck with the clearance steaks.  They were both in luck and scored two cheap steaks.  They came home and Aaron showed Daniel how to prepare and cook a yummy steak outside on the Blackstone for a late dinner.  I figure there was some man-bonding going on as I looked at this picture of them as they watched their steaks cook--haha!

We had some unfortunate events last week.  Our water heaters decided to die on us two days before Thanksgiving.  DOH!!  They needed to be changed which was a bit daunting of a task.  We had a family friend who is a plumber who was able to get us a good deal (however, they were still a TON of money!) on two 40 gallon water heaters and had them delivered to us.  They are pretty big so until Aaron could get to installing them they had to be put in the garage which meant there wouldn’t be room for Daniel to park in the garage until they got installed.  Now if you can’t have fun/tease your kids who can you do that to?!  After the water heaters got delivered Aaron texted Daniel this:

Daniel was so excited.  When he got home he Facetimed his friends as he opened the garage to see what was parked there.  He was sorely disappointed when he saw it was just water heaters and came inside the house with the universal teenage annoyed face look:

Daniel was even less excited when Aaron asked--okay let’s be honest--TOLD him that he needed to help him move them both downstairs to the basement.  

Water Heater #1:

Water Heater#2:

Thank goodness for Youtube!  Aaron and Daniel were able to do most of the work, but at the end Aaron had a question he couldn’t figure out.  

He called Bryan, my brother, who was able to stop by for a few minutes to help.  At that time they also changed out the expansion tank.  Aaron thought it was empty, but was sorely mistaken.  When he went to pull it off, 5 gallons of pressurized water sprayed him from head to toe.  Daniel and Bryan thought it was pretty hilarious--Aaron did, too, once the water stopped spraying him and he was able to come up for air.  Nice.  They are now all installed and it is nice to have a hot shower once again.

The next morning when Daniel had to go somewhere he actually had to scrape the frost off his windows and had never had to do that before.  Luckily, Aaron was leaving for work about the same time so he showed Daniel how to scrape his windows.  Daniel is spoiled by being able to park in the garage--haha!

We hosted Thanksgiving this year.  I was trying to get everything ready when I looked over and saw my kids sitting on the couch with their devices.  I figured it was time to get them to help!  I assigned Sarah and Noah to clean and organize the cupboards/drawers.  Daniel got to clean out the pantry.  For an added bonus Sarah even cleaned out the fridge for me.  It was awesome!!  They weren’t very excited to do chores like that, but they did it anyway which I am grateful for!  Here’s Sarah and Noah doing the cupboards:

Like I said we hosted Thanksgiving this year.  We had G&G T, my brother Bryan and his family, my sister Johanna and her family and us.  Thankfully everyone offered and brought something for dinner.  Aaron smoked two turkeys--one cajun flavored and one traditional.  It turned out very yummy.  It was nice to visit and the cousins had fun hanging out.  However, that morning we realized our dishwasher had stopped working.  DOH!!  That is a lot of dishes to do by hand.  After dinner my brother Bryan helped troubleshoot it and between him and Aaron realized it was actually a quick fix that was related to replacing the water heaters, but not after I had done the dishes by hand.  Sigh.  Oh well it is up and running and we are good to go now!!  When we found out the dishwasher wasn’t working we were scrambling.  We were late getting our part of dinner ready and were afraid those who would show up would see something like this:

I am sure everyone is glad that didn’t happen.  We did get our act together and dinner went well.  Here’s everyone that was here:

Thanksgiving morning I couldn’t sleep and was awake at 5 am.  Josh happened to be on Messenger at the same time so we were able to direct message that morning.  Josh asked for my mashed potato recipe and told me a bit about what he was going to do that day.  It was fun to be able to ‘talk’ to him right when he got up.  Josh was also able to call right after Thanksgiving dinner and Facetimed everyone.  It was so nice to talk to him and have everyone say hi!  Here’s a few screen shots of some of the people he talked with:

We just mailed off Josh’s Christmas package this week.  His mission emailed and said they needed all packages to be delivered by December 6 so we did a fun 12 days of Christmas for him with some small things with added scriptures.  I didn’t realize how much I would miss him at Thanksgiving and I am assuming Christmas will be the same.  It is hard not having everyone here.  

Anyway, Aaron found some clearance roasts on sale.  He bought some and him and Noah helped prepare them to turn them into pastrami.  It takes two weeks for the meat to cure in the fridge, but Noah had fun injecting the meat with the brine solution:

Homemade pastrami is really tasty, too!

Noah got his first Covid shot two weeks ago.  He has recently developed a severe phobia of needles.  It took Aaron and me holding him down to get him his flu shot this year so knowing he needed this shot soon was not a good thing.  The local high school did a Covid shot clinic, however, it was on a night that I was working so Aaron would have to take Noah by himself.  I talked to Noah and told him some things he could do to help have the shot not hurt.  I lent him my ’shot blocker’ which is a flexible, plastic thing with plastic nubs that you wrap around the shot area and pinch while you are getting the injection.  This is what it looks like:

This helps trick you into not feeling the shot.  I also told him to put a bottle of ice water on his arm to numb it up for 30 minutes before he would get the shot.  Aaron took him and said he did okay.  Noah told Aaron later that he didn’t feel like he could totally freak out in front of this nurse because it wasn’t his mom and that would be embarrassing.  WHAT?!?!  What a punk!!  Had I known that I would have had someone else give him his flu shot because he was fighting Aaron and I tooth and nail when we had him get it.  Anyway, Aaron texted me this picture after he got his first Covid shot:

I am glad it went okay.  I am hoping the second one goes just as well.  I got my Covid booster a few weeks ago.  I had to wait until I had a few days off afterward just in case it made me sick.  Luckily, all I had was a sore arm no other side effects.  I was happy about that!
 

Two Sundays ago Matthew finally got set apart for his calling.  He was so excited!!  He even invited G&G T to come see him be set apart as the assistant building representative.  

Speaking of church Sarah and Daniel got cornered into being youth speakers.  When we went in for tithing settlement the second counselor in the bishopric asked them to speak.  They weren’t too excited about it, but I think everyone needs that experience.  However, Tuesday of that week Aaron got a call from the same counselor asking him to be a regular speaker, too.  I had a good laugh about that.  

However, early Sunday morning about 2 am Aaron woke up feeling like he’d been hit by a truck.  Body aches, horrible sore throat and a hoarse voice.  He did not feel well.  He ended up texting and saying he probably shouldn’t come to church because he was sick.  He felt bad about leaving them in the lurch, but they filled in just fine.  Sarah and Daniel did great.  They both wrote their own talks and weren’t too terrified to get up there and speak.  Luckily, Aaron was able to watch from home via Zoom since our ward is still doing that.  G&G T were able to come and listen to them, too.  

Later that Sunday Aaron went to see a doctor to get tested for Strep Throat.  He amazingly didn’t have that so they decided to test him for Covid, RSV, and flu.  All of those came back negative as well so I guess he just has a nasty virus.  I started teasing him saying he just has a ‘man cold’.  He doesn’t think I am very funny, but at least I think I am--haha!  He was really sick though and ended up staying home from work Monday and Tuesday as well.  He is starting to feel a little bit better, though.

Matthew got to try out making some Funeral Potatoes.  He called me and asked for the recipe and it had to be sent RIGHT THEN because he was grocery shopping and wanted to buy all the ingredients.  One thing Matthew struggles with is patience, but luckily, I had time right then to text him the recipe.  He made it and LOVED it.  The last recipe he loved he ended up making it and eating it every day last month.  That is how you can tell how much he likes a recipe by how many days he will eat it in a row.  So far Funeral Potatoes have made it every day for a week so far and counting--haha!

I took Sarah and Daniel Christmas clothes shopping last week.  They are both getting to the point they have to pick out their own clothes because they are picky.  I took them to Old Navy because they were having a really good jeans sale.  However, the only pair of jeans that Daniel liked that was in his size was on the mannequin.  I tried to discreetly undress the mannequin to get the jeans off of him, but I couldn’t get them off and just ended up looking weird and creepy instead.  Daniel and Sarah were so embarrassed and walked away pretending not to be with me.  That just made me look that much more weird trying to undress a male mannequin by myself--haha!  Good thing for me an employee walked by a few minutes later and asked if I needed help.  I sure did!  He got the pants off the male mannequin for me, but Sarah and Daniel were still not very excited to be with me for a while afterward--haha!

We hung out with the Einzinger’s last Saturday night.  It had been a long time since we had all gotten together and we had a lot of fun.  The kids all hung out together and had a good time while the adults played games.  It was a good night!