Don't Forget Jace!

I started to add some of the antics of Jace in the last post, but it was getting too big so I decided to make a new one for him. Ya ya ya, I hear it all the time- "Jace gets all the attention!"

But I really do need to write about the story of our little Jace and his first 10 months. I could probably write pages and pages, but for now I'll start with the present and try to work back. Hopefully before he graduates high school....

But for now this little guy is not slowing down! Walking is his new favorite skill and he loves to practice. Getting a good picture of him has proven difficult too, he's always moving! I don't think any of the other kids could walk by the time they were 10 months. H.O.L.Y C.O.W!! No prob. I'm just weeks away from turning 40. I've got all the energy in the world.

He's following in Ty's footsteps and LOVES balls. One of his newest favorite activities is picking up and chasing the basketballs.

 Apparently first attempting to chew on the ball is necessary....

Oh wait, Jace pretty much loves to chew on EVERYTHING. I have never seen a baby who loves to chew like he does. He'll find anything on the floor to put in his mouth- keeps me a nervous wreck. We just can't keep it clean enough for this little magician who seems to make things materialize out of thin air. The kitchen rug? Of course, why not? I even pulled some of the rubber backing from the rug out of his mouth the other day. Um, EW?!

The other day Ty was trying to get a wrapper out of his mouth, and Jace bit down HARD. Ty ended up in tears with blood trickling out of his finger. Later that day, Jace managed to get right under my feet in the kitchen and I accidentally stepped on his fingers. Poor little Jace was crying, but from the other end of the counter Ty muttered under his breath, "serves you right you little jerk." This ended up being really funny because it is so uncharacteristic of Ty. He loves Jace and is really good to him.

Of course all this chewing makes sense seeing as though Jace hasn't had much of a break from teething. They seem to come one at a time, one right after another. Ya, super fun. Insert sarcasm. This hasn't helped his sleeping habits either. Yow. I have finally had to pull out my tough love card and make him cry on his own for a while. I just can't wake up multiple times a night anymore. It's not good for me OR him. The past few nights he's just had to start to figure it out on is own. I'm starting to see a bit of an improvement, so hopefully it just keeps getting better. It probably doesn't help that he has 6 of us who give him lots of love and attention throughout the day.

His siblings sure love him, and I love to sit back and watch it. Last Sunday we needed to get out of the house for a bit, so we rode over to Plymouth to help Benson feed the cows. We brought the stroller, but there was a wind that kept it just a bit too cold outside. So Jace kept Kenna company in the back seat while we waited.

Apparently he's a whiz on the computer too:

Thanks for keeping us going J Bear!

Social Distancing

I think I need to apologize to the world.

I'm afraid this whole coronivirus deal just might be my fault.

You see, for a while in my efforts at trying to improve my parenting skills (emphasis on try- I can at least hope for participation points), I've been praying for help with developing a few of the attributes of charity: namely patience and long-suffering. Well guess what? If I ever I had an opportunity to practice said attributes, it's NOW.

Yes, now. Now that in a matter of days the whole world went topsy turvy and I am suddenly taking on the role of 24/7 everything-you-could-possibly-think-of-with-limited-access-to-sanity-mom. Pretty much I have found myself on the front lines of a battle ground requiring a high degree of patience and long suffering. 

So you see, I really apologize that my efforts at self improvement have pretty much brought the rest of the world down with me!! Moral of the story: be careful what you pray for.

But then again, maybe I should say watch carefully for the blessings that come as a result for what you pray for. I have to say that in spite of all the chaos, the Lord is most definitely providing moments of respite even while the storms rage around us. And oh the storms most definitely rage when all of us are cooped up together day after day with only so much square footage to diffuse the chaos. But I am finding that He is making me much more capable than I thought I was. Note to self: remember this in 10 minutes when it all falls apart....

First item of business in finding our new norm was creating a schedule. I can't say setting up and following a structured schedule has ever been a strength of mine, but we've done some tweaking to find what fits for us. There's often something that puts a wrinkle in the schedule, but for the most part it's definitely helping out. The kids know what to expect and it helps keep us on track. Considering I have 5 dependents all day every day and am often up a few times a night with a baby who is still figuring out how to sleep well, I am not starting our day at 7 am. My hat’s off to anyone who can.

The problem with a schedule is it looks so nice and neat on paper. If only the execution of a schedule was so nice and neat.....

Mornings are definitely the best time for school work. By the time the afternoon rolls around, it's hard to keep the wheels moving. Behold, the Israelsen Elementary/Middle School. Minus Lexi who takes turns with Ty on our home computer and Jace who just roams the premises (nap time is GREAT). THANKFULLY we were able to borrow Chromebooks from the Elementary school and South Cache. Only one per family per school, but without them it would be really difficult.

It's pretty amazing how everything can be accessed online. Even before "homeschool," I have loved utilizing an app on my phone where I can access all my kids' classes and info, especially my 2 middle schoolers. I can see attendance, assignments due, assignments missing, grades, etc. I even get little alerts. Love it. Now with doing it all at home, the girls hop online and pretty much work their way through the system by themselves. I can still look on my app to make sure everything is getting done, but I'm sure proud of how well they are staying on top of work that needs to be done without me nagging or micromanaging. If they need help they ask, but are great to keep themselves on task. Even Ty and Lexi have gotten really good at navigating their websites on their own. I have been really impressed with all the work their teachers are doing as well. Considering the monumental task, it is fairly well organized. Hence I use the term "homeschool" loosely. Thankfully I don't have to prep any content. My poor kids would definitely be deficient if I had to do all the lesson plans! Perhaps I should be grateful for the opportunity to keep up with my math and writing skills? There is something vaguely familiar about the Pythagorean theorem. I think I maybe did learn that once....

Seeing as though we can only do so much school in one day, we're trying to find out other things to keep us busy. We've been painting:

We're getting in a little crafting too. They all made their own version of Forky from Toy Story 4. Lexi made her own disposable utensil family. She is also sporting some amazing face art that is only half left:

Don't forget sometimes you just gotta dance:

Of course one of the first items of business as soon as spring started to make an appearance was setting up the trampoline. I don't have a picture yet, which is odd because they spend a good part of their free time outside playing on the tramp. Ty and Lexi were out in their coats jumping in the hail the other day! 

Overall we're figuring out our new norm and how to make it work. We have good moments and pull-your-hair-out moments every day, but overall I think we all are going to learn some amazing lessons from this experience. 

Our new motto is COVID: Calling On Very Inspired Direction. We are trying hard to remember that Heavenly Father is over all. There is great peace in knowing He has a plan and this is part of it. In spite of a lot of trepidation in the world, great things can come of it. We have a great opportunity to come to Him and trust in Him completely, and I just keep praying and hoping that is one of the greatest lessons my kids can gain from this. Me as well.

Patience and long-suffering, patience and long-suffering, patience and long-suffering. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

The Dog Experience

Hmmm. Interesting. Here I am sitting in front of a fresh blog post again. After a brief hiatus. Lapse. Apparently chasm is a synonym as well.  That's a good one.  It sounds like chaos. That just sounds so fitting for these here parts!

Regardless of what I call this great blog deficit, I just can't ignore the many (many, many) recurring thoughts (promptings) of things I know I need to write down before they are forever lost in time.

Prime example was a little experience we had today.

This morning the kiddos and I headed up to Ammon, Idaho to hear my oldest nephew speak in Sacrament before he heads down to Sao Paulo Brazil on his mission. Jacob needed to stay home for Bishopric duties so I was in the driver seat. Just me and the chaos.

We started the trip with our usual prayer then off we went.

Ugh.

I just remembered.

It was daylight savings too.

SPRING FORWARD. Lose an hour of sleep. It's not the most wonderful time of the year. I much prefer to fall back. So sorry you lovers of spring daylight savings, I don't share in your delight.

Anyhow. Back to the task at hand.

We were on a stretch through Petersboro and heading up a hill when I looked down at my speedometer and realized I was cruising along pretty fast. I had a simple thought come in my mind, "you have plenty of time, you really should slow down." So I adjusted my cruise control and took it down a few notches.

Not one minute after this, we came over the hill and onto a straightaway where a big, fat, black collie mix wandered out into the road in front of me. I had to brake fairly fast to avoid hitting it, then cringed and tried to look away as it headed toward the truck in the other lane. Thankfully the dog made it to the other side of the road and all was well. Whew!

About a minute after my heart slowed down a bit, it just hit me: I had the thought to slow down which gave me just enough distance to prevent a disaster. It hit me so quickly that I grasped the steering wheel and shouted out, "Oh my heck, that's so cool!" As quickly as I shouted it out and let it sink in, I was overcome with tears. My kids were wondering what in the world was going on! I finally got it together enough to tell them about the thought I had. They were able to put two and two together and we just kind of sat there in a beautiful silence for a minute. We had a great little discussion on the power of prayer and following the Spirit.

About 5 miles down the road as my mind was still going over what had happened and I was offering a huge prayer of gratitude, I had another thought come. (I'm slow, I admit, but I was pretty fresh on the lesson of thoughts need to be followed through with!) This thought led me to Lehi and his family. When the Lord had watched over them and helped them, they took the time to offer prayers and sacrifices specifically in gratitude. So, we had a little discussion about that and Ty offered us a prayer of thanks for the great blessing we had received.

We made it safely (and in plenty of time!) to Idaho. After a great Sacrament meeting and a nice meal with family, we started to work our way back home.

As I drove I got thinking again about our little happening. Who knows what would have happened? Would it have just injured the dog? Would the dog have been killed? Would it have traumatized the kids? (I'm a tender heart when it comes to animals, it would traumatize me!) Would it have thrown us off course and ended up in a crash? I really don't know.

One of the coolest things about these experiences is that the Lord uses them to continually teach us little by little. As I kept thinking about it, I had a new thought enter my mind. If the Lord is aware of me enough to simply tell me to slow down and not hit a dog, then He most certainly is aware of pretty much everything. In that moment the Lord was telling me that He knows and He's there. This time it worked out. But there are times when it doesn't- at least not how we want it to. Times when despite all our prayers and offerings, we still "crash." Times when I feel like I'm really struggling. Times when I feel like things aren't working out the way I want or think they should. All times. He is aware. He is there. Thankfully, this time we stayed safely on the course. But even in times when it's not going how I want, He is still very much guiding and directing me and in actuality it really is working out the way it's supposed to. This is something I need to know and remember.

So many lessons I learned and relearned today:

Prayer is so important. Yep, those simple Primary lessons once again that just get deeper over time.

Listen to those "thoughts."

Keep listening to those "thoughts."

Heavenly Father will always be there. Even if it's about a dog. Even if it's hard. Even if it seems dark. Even if I don't feel like I'm getting any of the "thoughts" I want to get.

I'm so grateful the Lord is so incredibly patient with me. I'm a slow learner, but He's willing to wait.

Casualties of Childhood

Ty and a little buddy of his were enjoying some spring weather out in our backyard playing some baseball.  I just knew we should have had the yearly discussion on batting the ball away from the house.  I didn't follow that thought and we ended up with this:

It's hard to see, but if you look close you can see the glass shards decorating the bottom of my bedroom window.  Fortunately it was a tennis ball and only went through the outside pane of the window, and the screen on the outside kept the glass from going everywhere.  There's looking on the bright side, huh?! 

Granted, I'm really not at all thrilled about paying to fix this little fiasco, but the looks on their faces were really priceless! I was in my room when it happened, so jumped right up to look out the window.  Oh how I wish I had my camera right at that instant to catch their reaction!  It was a combined look of bewilderment, shock, and horror.  They came rushing in to the house to find out if they were going to be beaten to a bloody pulp.  Freaking out was really useless.  The damage was done and I could see they were definitely not going to try that little stunt again, so I sent them back out again- this time clear out to the field, far away from windows.

The best part was about 20 minutes later when Ty came running in to ask if his friend had to pay for it since he was the one at bat who sent it flying into the window.  Ha!  I assured him that no, it was an accident, his friend didn't have to pay for it.  We'll take that hit.  Dangit. 

The Little Mermaid, Jr.

I just simply can't go another blog minute without doing a post about the musical!  Allie, Ty, and Lexi had a successful run of The Little Mermaid, Jr in March.

Lexi made her musical debut as a Poor Unfortunate Soul.  Pretty darn cute little group of poor souls!

At the end of the play when Urusula meets her impending doom, the poor souls are finally freed from captivity and emerge as beautiful mermaids. What 5 and 6 year old doesn't absolutely love that?!

I helped backstage at the Friday night and Saturday afternoon performances, so Jacob, Kenna, and I came to watch the Saturday night show.  While on stage in the spotlight, Lexi apparently seemed to not notice the crowd of a few hundred watching as she very emphatically extracted what must have been some very annoying nasal mucus that just had to come out right then and there.  Ya, pretty much she dug her finger up her nose.  Apparently it was in deep too, she was digging for quite some time.  Being the stoic parents that we are, Jacob and I both doubled over with the giggles.  Seriously there was nothing else to be done.  Two choices here: a) hide in horror and disown said child   -or-   b) laugh hysterically.  We chose the latter.

Ty was a very handsome sailor.  Ahoy Cap'n! (he's on the floor in the middle):

Allie made her debut as a seagull.  When they were doing group pictures I somehow managed to not get a close-up of the seagulls, dangit.  They were so cute though!  The costumes were simple but so creative and darling! (Allie is the top gull):

Here's the full cast.  They have some very dedicated parents who put these shows on and do a fabulous job. Such a great experience for elementary age kids.  I would have absolutely loved something like this as a kid!

We especially loved having some VIP's come see the show:

Of course every great performer needs a congrats gift of sugar:

Lexi is already asking when the next play is, and Ty and Allie are undecided on doing it again next year.  Guess we'll see.  Their musical-loving mama was sure proud!

Kids and Kids

When I was little, one of us kids' very favorite family activities was when Dad pulled out the ol' slide projector and we'd look at the slides from when we were younger.  We'd turn the lights down and project the slides onto one of our walls.  I can still hear the hum of the projector and even smell the air that came off the fan.  Wow, that brings back some memories!  My dad spent plenty of time hunting, so we would laugh as a large majority of the slides included plenty of dead birds and deer!

So where am I going with this?  My childhood pictures are filled with pictures of pheasants, geese and deer, and my children's childhood pictures are going to be filled with pictures of GOATS.  Yep, it's goat kidding season again which means we are adding to our collection of memories and pictures with goats. The snow and freezing temperatures offer prime conditions for such an event.  Please take note of the sarcasm. 

Let's see, where do we start.  Oh yes, how about the (inevitable) yearly picture of goats in my house:

It seems inevitable that we end up bottle feeding goats.  Goat kids are such finicky little buggers.  For these two, their mom's don't have enough to feed them and their twins so we get to be the surrogate.  It's a good thing they're such cute little nuggets, it can be pretty time consuming taking care of these furry critters.  Three times a day gets really old.  Not to mention the amount of milk we go through- sheesh!

We had a new experience this year to add to the goat memoir.  One of our mama's started kidding but hadn't made much progress in about 8-9 hours.  We called an amazing lady in our ward who is a vet tech with the university.  She had come out a few weeks earlier and saved our bacon by helping pull a very large baby out.  I'm sure she was super thrilled to come out for a second visit.  It wasn't too long before she discovered that the mama hadn't fully dilated and there was no way to get the baby out without doing a lot of damage to the doe.  We basically were left with two options: spend a few hundred dollars and do a c-section to save the doe, or shoot the $1000 doe.  I really struggle seeing animals suffer so was grateful that after a few phone calls, we had everything arranged to head over to the USU farm for a c-section.  Well now that wasn't on the schedule for the evening- for any of us! 

Here is mama goat getting prepped for surgery:

Being the nerd that I am, I was so intrigued through the whole process.  The injection for the spinal block went in right above the tail.  For some reason I would have thought it would be further up along the spine.  Whaddayaknow?!  This was the point where I had to sit down for a bit lest I become a casualty.  Thankfully after that I got over it and watched the rest of it.  Yep, I'm a nerd.  I thought it was absolutely fascinating.

More prep (seriously, this goat is getting a lot of blog attention- I am so weird.  I was so intrigued!)

There we have our amazing neighbor Sara in the black who is the vet tech, then Lexi Sweat on the other side in red.  Lexi didn't do the surgery, but assisted the doc-whose-name-has-escaped-me.

Unfortunately, the goat had been in labor too long and the baby didn't make it.  Big sigh.  We knew going into it that would probably be the case seeing as though Sara could tell part of the placenta had detached.  I hate hate hate that death has to be part of it.  Later that night we brought home a weak triplet from another mama, but she didn't make it either.  The life cycle can sure be rough sometimes.

I have one more pic of the goat getting sewed up, but I'll keep that one to myself to spare anyone the ick factor.  But, here is the poor doe after it was all said and done and she was back at the farm:

My sympathy meter was just through the roof for this poor thing.  She had a rough day for sure.  Thankfully she is doing well.  Probably a little chilly with a quarter of her hair gone (funny not funny). Add that little experience to our memories, huh? 

Basically I'm ready for goat kidding to be done.  It's much too nerve racking for me.  Yet for some reason, we do it year after year.  When I say we, I mean Jacob.  Oh fine, let's be serious.  That inevitably means me.  How do I always get so invested in these furry, smelly beasts for crying out loud?!

Wait a minute, did I seriously just devote an entire blog post to goats?  Who am I, and how did I get here?  I need help.

Science Fair

The kids' elementary school gave students the option of participating in a science fair.  This year Allie decided she wanted to give it a whirl.

This is another area of parenting that really stretches me- science fair projects.  Science.  Hmm.  Not my forte.  I did the minimum requirements for science.  Something about the periodic table of elements and chemical explosions and dissecting frogs just doesn't do it for me.  But, I had to gird up my loins and dive in with Allie to come up with a project.  Fortunately, the world wide web gives lots of options!

We finally decided on a little experiment about how the pH levels in soda affect teeth.  After following the directions perfectly, we didn't get the results we were hoping for.  It kind of backfired.   So basically we didn't come to any great conclusion, but it was a great learning opportunity to realize sometimes you have to just try, try again! 

She decided to share her experiment in an oral presentation to some judges.  I didn't get to go in with her when she presented, but she did awesome when she practiced with me!  They had an evening for all participants and families to come and see all the other projects.  When we got there, we realized Allie was one of 4 other first place winners!  We were so proud!  I suppose a large part of the scientific method requires multiple attempts at experimenting, which Allie discovered. The judges must have agreed.

 Way to go Allie Gallie!  We're sure proud of you!