Jayce Played Soccer

After some initial anxiety tears, Jayce joined his team, played and had fun. Not sure why he is anxious about playing. He always has a good time and can't wait to get back in. He told his coach he was scared. His coaches are great with him and help motivate him to play.

One of the parents on the apposing team was making a comment about Jayce's height. One of my friends had to tell the parent that Jayce was only four years old. I could see reason for the parent's comment looking at him standing with a couple of his teammates.Colton got board watching the games. I kept having to chase him out of the soccer net and off this flag. I finally gave up and took a picture.

Lunch with Megan

My girlfriend and I take turns watching each others kids while we volunteer in our kids' classes at school once a week. This week I was able to stay and have lunch with Megan and her friends. What a loud place that cafeteria is. Instead of talking the kids yelled. The kids were all very friendly and glad to eat lunch with Megan's mom. However, a couple of the boys' table manners...I had to tell myself to just look the other way :{ The kids wanted me to come out and play with them after we ate. You can get a glimpse of the dirt playground the kids get to play on. It's real fun with the dirt flying in the eyes with Dayton's frequent high winds. If it's too bad, the kids do get to go in. This day, it was really windy but not windy enough. The kids had to tough it out and I went home. It was fun spending that time with Megan.

Lessons learned while sanding the picnic table

Today I started the huge task of sanding our redwood picnic table. The wind has eroded much of the old finish off and it's getting so you can't hardly sit on the bench without getting a sticker in the bum. What a job. I worked on it for about 3 hours today and I got almost 2 slats in the table sanded. This is the first time I've taken on a job like this and I've learned a few lessons today that tomorrow I hope I will remember.

1. Don't wear regular clothes to do sanding. Wear your grubbies. It's a messy job.
2. Don't bring on open drink cup outside when sanding. The sawdust (what do you call it when you're sanding and not sawing?) will get into it. Sorry kids :)
3. If you don't wear a mouth and nose mask, you will be sneezing and blowing red snot from your nose.
4. Thirty minutes later and the hands still vibrate. Reminds me of when I stuck wet hands in exposed electrical wires in our kitchen stove when I was a kid. Not a feeling I have forgotten.
5. When the wind starts blowing and you see your sand paper blowing in the wind STOP SANDING. The dust in the eyes doesn't feel good. Therefore, I almost got two slats sanded.

Once There Was a Snowman

If you are familiar with the children's song "Once There Was a Snowman" you will get a kick out of this song, "In the Sun They Melted" by Insideout. My mom gave me this CD and we have been listening to it near constant all weekend. After you listen to "In the Sun They Melted" (Snowmen continued) be sure to listen to "Primary Jamboree" and "Peanut butter and Jelly." Their version of many other familiar primary songs is fun to listen to and you can on YouTube. Check it out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50_qtOUnydQ

Homemade bread...yum! (or oops again?!)

I am continually on the hunt for the perfect wheat bread recipe. I've gotten recipes from relatives and friends who say their recipe just can't be beat. I've even attended a bread making class. I try to make bread once a week to get more practice. However, it's been more like once a month. Regardless, the practice does not make perfect when it comes to me and my bread. I don't think I will ever be one to brag about my fantastic bread. I think that in all the times I've made bread, I've had it turn out to look like yummy homemade bread once or twice. It's usually flat, caved in, hard as a rock or has other problems. My family members are good sports about my practice and don't complain...much. One of the times that it turned out right, I was so excited that I found a good recipe that I thought I'd make more and send it to my dad for Christmas. Luckily, before I got it in the mail, I cut into another loaf from the same batch...IT WAS HOLLOW! It looked all yummy from the outside but had a big hole in the middle. Some say my problem is that I let it rise too long or not enough. Others say I use to much or not enough yeast. Who knows. I thought I was just following the recipe. Tonight, as I was putting the bread in the oven to bake I was excited as it appeared to have risen just right. Kind of looked like something you'd see a professional baker put in the oven. As I was smelling the bread baking in the oven, I was imagining the perfect picture I would to put on my blog posted with the Stephanie proof recipe to share. And this is what I pulled out... And so the hunt is still on. One thing is for sure, I will never be asked to bring bread or rolls to a family dinner!

Father-Daughter Night

Blake and Megan went to Father-Daughter Date Night at the church tonight. They played games and ate pizza and of course played with their friends. Jayce, of course, wished he was going but is looking forward to the father-son camp out this summer.

Jayce's preschool friends

I do a preschool co-op with 3 other moms in our neighborhood once a week. We rotate doing preschool in each of our homes each week. This week, preschool was at our house and I snapped a picture right before moms arrived. Jayce is only the oldest by 2 months but boy look at the difference in height.

I figured out my picture problem

My picture problem is solved so if you were having a difficult time reading Blake's spotlight here it is again. Sorry the for the headaches I caused because of the eye strain.

What is the deal with my pictures?

I can't figure out why my pictures won't pop up bigger when clicked on or why only once in a while they will when I do nothing different to the pictures each time I post. If you fellow bloggers can offer me help or advice please do. I'm disappointed that Blake's spotlight is unable to be read. Help!

Blake

Blake's work has been feeling the results of the economic recession. Civil Engineering is supposed to be one line of work that is pretty safe during this recession but not so where we are here in Northern Nevada. The firm he works for, Peak Consulting Engineers, was doing well with plenty of work piled on the desk, enough work to hire more engineers and they even were able to expand and open a 2nd office in Minden a couple years ago.This year is quite a different story. They had to lay off (but call if there is work) engineers, draftsmen and office staff and close the Carson City office. Blake's first day in the Minden office was last week. They had to keep the Minden office because they were locked into a lease and unable to get out of it. Blake has been with Keith, the owner, for nearly 10 years now. Thank goodness for his seniority or he'd be out of a job too. They are back to nearly the original staff they had when he was hired minus all the work that kept him so busy. He's under a lot of stress and getting a few more gray hairs because of it all.

On a positive note, Blake is doing well with his 1st Counselor in the Bishopric calling. During our last ward activity, Blake and the new bishopric were spotlighted. Here is what they wrote about Blake and had framed. They missed a couple important details of his life like a brother and a sister but hey they got the right movie that described his life: Beauty and the Beast. I hope he didn't mean I was the beast. The kids, especially Colton, love to wave to him when he's sitting on the stand. Colton loves it when Blake can wave back to him before the meeting starts. He doesn't understand why Blake can't sit up there and wave during Sacrament meeting. It's not uncommon to hear him yelling, "Hi Daddy! Wave to Colton!" Blake looks so handsome and important sitting on the stand frantically taking notes in case the speaker runs out of time and he has to cover the extra 5 or 10 minutes. :) Alright, not frantically. He's loving the calling and it's actually not as time consuming as I thought it would be. He's got his early Sunday meetings and sometimes after church but then just one or two week nights but not all night. Maybe I'm just used to us being so busy all the time. One of his friends said he looked like a stake president and asked if he was one. Are we really old enough for comments like that?

Finally, a break from some of the craziness

Woohoo! Last week, I finished my computer classes I was taking to renew my teaching license. I took a couple short term Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel classes to get the credit I was missing to renew my license a couple years ago. I learned a lot from the classes that I'm excited to use but a big thing I learned was that you don't have to know how to teach in order to get a college teaching gig. Not a teacher I hope I run into in the future. We would all be lost trying to help each other out while he's going on and on not realizing we're not with him and ignoring the raised hands. It was frustrating at times but I survived and now I'm onto submitting my teaching license application. I have to get re-finger printed with a background check. I hope they don't count speeding tickets. I've had plenty of those in the last few years:) I need to thank my girlfriends and mom for helping me out with my kids while I went to class.

I quit taking Colton to his Sensory Motor Therapy last week too. I didn't notice a change in his behavior specifically his flapping. The therapist gave us some activities we can work on at home. As you can see in the above picture he's still a flapper. He'll do it when he's excited or when he sees things move like rocks splashing in the water. Every time he would throw a rock he would flap his hands. He loved that.

Megan Loves Soccer

Megan is having a fun soccer season. She loves her coach who is always giving her praise and a boost of confidence. Her team has 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders with varying skills.

No pictures of Jayce playing because he refused to play this week. Not sure why. He says it's because he didn't practice. He's not into soccer like Megan and actually wouldn't have played if the coach hadn't requested that he be on his team. He keeps saying he doesn't like to run and that he wants to play baseball. We'll see. He'll be old enough when he turns 5.

Spring Has Sprung

Megan had spring break last week. The beginning of the week it snowed but by Friday it was sunny and 70 degrees. I got sick during her spring break so wasn't feeling up to much playing. I tried to make it up to her on Friday. I still have those embarassing cough attacks that happen only when you're in public.

We took a walk along the river watching ducks swim and dogs chase frisbees into the river and back to shore. It's a pretty and fun walk for the kids. Of course, they needed their walking sticks. (Colton wouldn't take his hand off his nose for the picture--stinker.)After our walk along the river, we stopped to throw rocks into it. They could have stayed there for hours. Colton especially. Finally, a place where he can throw things like rocks and he doesn't get in trouble for it. He loves throwing everything everywhere, rocks, balls, puzzle pieces, unfinished food on his plate. It doesn't matter. Makes me crazy. One day he didn't like a yogurt he was eating and I didn't get to him before he held the container, shaking it and watching it fly on the floor, walls, kitchen door and blinds. I'm still finding places that yogurt landed that I missed when I did the initial clean up. I wish I took a picture instead of hollering.You can see Jayce's rock flying if you look close. He was trying to throw them across the bank and nearly did. After our walk along the river we stopped at a park to eat and swing. Grandma Georgia gave the kids kites for Easter so we did a little kite flying too. We actually had the right kind of breeze to keep the kites flying for a while. Not the kind of wind that sends our lawn furniture tumbling in our back yard and dust devils twisting that we are used too. Dayton High School mascot: "Dust Devils".

An Apostle's Easter Thoughts on Christ

Easter Photo Session

Colton is really a character these days. Often times to my frustration, like when I am trying to take a cute Easter picture of the kids. The pictures say it all.

Easter

The kids enjoyed coloring Easter eggs. I had a hard time keeping up with Colton throwing eggs in the cup and taking them out. He was sloshing egg dye all over the place, making me a nervous wreck. We only ended up with one green egg because Colton dumped the green all over the table and floor. After some scrubbing, it finally came up. My hands stayed green for a while. All cleaned up and calm. Trying again with blue. Colton had a great time coloring eggs. We do our Easter Bunny stuff on Friday and Saturday so that we can focus on the real meaning of Easter on Sunday. This year my Mom came for Easter dinner (Grandpa was ill) and we had an Easter FHE lesson on the resurrection. I made resurrection eggs which are eggs containing items I found around the house that represent events that happened during the time of the resurrection.This is a picture of Resurrection Eggs you can purchase but I just used things around the house. As the kids took turns opening the eggs we talked about what the items represent. Some of the items I put in the eggs were nails, coins, thorns, cross, rock. I got the idea from The Family Home Evening Spot. After the lesson we watched "He is Risen" and ate yummy Easter cake. I made these cute edible bird nests but the kids were glad Grandma brought the cake.

A weekend of funerals

This past weekend, we celebrated the life and morned the death of both my grandmother, Toni Vann and my grandfather, Merrill Vann. My grandfather's funeral was in Upper Lake, CA on Saturday and my grandmother's funeral was in Gardnervill, NV on Monday. The services were nice and it was wonderful listening to the stories that were told about each of them. We had an enjoyable time visiting with family and friends we hadn't seen in a long time.

The kids with Uncle Josh

My cousin Margie and me

Family who attended Grandma Toni's funeral

Jayce's eye surgery

What Jayce had growing out of his eye was an Angioma. Angiomas are benign tumors that are made up of small blood vessels or lymph vessels. The surgery was quick but the wait was long, especially long to child who hasn't had anything to eat or drink in 12 hours.Jayce was excited that the hospital gave him a new pair of slipper socks to wear so he wouldn't slip on the hospital floor. The nurse had to mark which eye Jayce was having surgery on so the doctor wouldn't cut on the wrong eye. I wouldn't have thought that was necessary. Jayce got to ride in a wagon down to surgery.

All done and on his way home. He was excited that he got to wear his pajamas to the hospital.

The angioma is gone with only a couple dissolvable stitches to indicate it was even there. Jayce never complained of pain and never needed to take Tylenol but the anesthesia made him sick and vomit a few times. The day following surgery his eye did appear more red with some bruising.