So Happy It's June!

I kicked April's butt, and May kicked mine. That month sucked hard core. But it's over now and I'm feeling so much better. I hope it lasts. I struggle with sort of an anxiety induced depression from time to time, I guess, and all of the various crap going on in May just ramped it up. I started going to a therapist a few weeks ago to help me figure out how to untwist my brain and change my thought processes so I don't get so anxious when things start to worry me. Both times I've been there I've run into former students of mine in the lobby. That's an awkward scenario right there. I just want to say, "So, what are you here for?" We're sitting there trying to make conversation, pretending we're not in the lobby of a counseling center.

Ok so May. Hmmm... We went camping over Memorial Day weekend. We stayed Friday night and Saturday night, and when we woke up Sunday morning I officially declared it the Worst Camping Trip Ever. It was wet and cold and windy. We couldn't have a campfire either night because it rained the whole time. Our quickshade canopy tried to blow away in the wind so Sean and I had to go out and wrestle it to the ground and try to dismantle it in the rain. The trailer had technical difficulties right and left (please, trailer, last one more year!). And then when we woke up Sunday morning and it was snowing, I said that's it. We didn't even stick around to make breakfast. I walked up to the bathroom (the one in the trailer was no longer working-- one of the technical difficulties) and by the time I got back 5 minutes later Sean had thrown everything in and the kids were in the car. We were so out of there.







Brittney and Kylie bored and freezing:


Lexi's birthday was on Memorial Day. I think she had a good one. She wanted sandwiches for dinner and cupcakes, and she got presents. She is pretty darn silly, as a 4 yo should be.







We went bowling with Scott & Wendy's family and mom on Saturday night. That was fun. The kids were all cute. David loved bowling.



The weather has been so nice the last few days!



I was out working in the yard Saturday and Sunday, and got such a bad sunburn. I never learn. But I got burned in spots where I didn't think about. The back of my neck and shoulders because my hair was pulled up and my shirt had a low neckline, and then the small of my back because my shirt would ride up when I was bending down. Who thinks to put sunscreen under their shirt? Not me. I still have quite a bit to do out there, but I want to wait until it cools down in the evening. Sean keeps talking about what we need to do to the cabin and I'm just trying to get my first yard worked on before I worry about a second one.

This Friday night is the John Michael Montgomery concert. We aren't really sure if we should count on actually going to it. This is the third time we've had tickets to see him... both other times the concert was cancelled. I'm hoping it will actually happen this time.

This is the last week for Josh's baseball, unless they play some make-up games for the ones that got rained out. It's been fun, but the city rec season is too short. We need to find him something else next year, or at least a camp. Just when he really gets into it and starts really loving it and wanting to practice, the season is over.

Well, that's about it.

May goal review:
*I did not start on any home remodeling projects.
*I did not finish reading Outliers, but I did give it back to the student.
*I did some exercising and lost a little more weight.
*I survived.

June goals:
*Clean.
*Exercise.
*Get on a good schedule.

Catching My Breath

Life needs to have a pause button. I need a few moments just to breathe. I wouldn't want to fast forward; life goes by too fast as it is. I don't want a stop button, obviously. I surely don't want to rewind. It's been a couple of weeks I wouldn't want to live over again. But a pause button, that would be nice.

Mother's Day was great this year, even though I have a well-documented hate of the holiday in general. We went out to dinner with Sean's mom and siblings, and had dinner at my mom's house with my family. The kids and Sean made me breakfast and gave me everything I wanted (concert tickets, flowers for the yard, a trip to Yogurt Stop, and a girls day of my choice and homemade cards). The only thing missing was my beautiful oldest daughter, who went to Texas for 10 days to visit Levi, an old friend-ish type person. I missed her greatly. But she's home now, thank goodness.

Sean planted 8 tress in our yard. I'm very excited to get some shade, and now maybe I won't have to look at my neighbors anymore. Our houses are too close here.

I can't even think what else has happened. I have been in a fog for a few weeks, but I'm feeling better now. I have a few more weeks of school and so much to do. I hope I can focus and get it all done.

April Goal Report:
I kicked April's butt! I did so well. I very rarely get to say that, so it feels good. Of course then May came along and I had a nervous break down, so maybe I can only have one good month at a time.
*I did not gain any weight, and I in fact lost weight. Nothing dramatic or anything, just a good healthy amount that I feel good about. I modified a few small things and I'm going to slowly lose these pounds and keep them off.
*I got flooring bids.
*I did yardwork. I planted stuff.
*I not only hung the picture frame I wanted to get on the wall, I got another one finished that I've had forever.
*I put down the fiction temporarily and finished my diabetes book (well, all but a few chapters) and finished my diet book. I started Outliers, but didn't finish it. I needed the distraction of some fiction the last little while.
*We all stayed out of the doctor's office pretty well.

May's Goals:
*Get started on home remodeling projects.
*Finish Outliers so I can give it back to the student who lent it to me before school is out. Oops.
*Keep exercising and losing weight. I lost a few pounds due to stress, so I don't expect to keep those off now that I've started eating again, but I don't want to gain back anything that I lost pre-freak out.
*Survive.

"How Great Thou Art"

One of my favorite hymns. Just beautiful.

Easters

At my house, Easter is usually pronounced Easters with a Nacho Libre accent, as in, Don't you know that I have had diarrhea since Easters?

The Easter bunny hid candy at our house this morning, and we had a delicious Easter dinner and Easter egg hunt at Cami's house.





I have been doing pretty well on my weight loss quest. Nothing dramatic, but I've been feeling good about my efforts. Until today, when I ate too much. I did skip dessert tonight to try to make up for it, but I don't think that was enough. I have been really dizzy the past few days, so I hope I'm up for exercising tomorrow. Otherwise I'm going to really be getting off track. Losing weight is such a weird thing, because it's the only thing where you can achieve your goal by not doing something. So it should be easy. Like, if you want to get a good grade you have to do hard things. If you want to build muscle or get in shape or run a marathon, you have to do hard things. If you want to learn to speak Mandarin Chinese fluently or remodel your whole house, you have to do hard things. If you want to lose weigh, all you have to do is nothing. Not buy that candy bar, not put that thing in your mouth. Keep on walking past the donuts in the break room and don't stop. Don't get up and get a snack. But somehow it's harder to just do nothing in this case.

I cannot believe the amount of money we've spent on health care this year. Thousands, and it's only April. And I cannot believe the amount of money the doctor's office bills the insurance for some of the most simple things. Brittney's track physical and immunizations were over $400. He listened to her heart and looked in her ears. Seriously? Lexi's first diabetes appointment at the Clinic came in at well over $700 for a half hour appointment.

I can't believe it's midterms. A few more weeks and then the school year will be over.

April Stuff

Life is moving along, and it's going pretty well. I'm really looking forward to summer. I'm not feeling too sad about having a few months off of work.

Spring Break was pretty good for me because I got a lot of things done that I have a hard time doing when I'm working. Ran errands, made doctor appointments, made phone calls, got estimates, cleaned stuff. We didn't go anywhere, and that makes the break feel longer, too. My kids were probably really bored, though. I felt like I got a lot accomplished, but then when work started the next Monday I wished I had spent time just resting and hanging out, because it's been really busy ever since. I wish I had taken a break. Oh well.

Josh and Lexi have been taking swimming lessons, and they really like it. Thank goodness. Josh is really funny about stuff like that... you never can tell if he'll like it or refuse to do it. Lexi cried when it was time to go with her teachers, but now she loves it. Kaden and Spencer have swimming lessons at the same time, so I get to hang out with Mindi or Steve, too, so even better.

I took last Tuesday off to take Lexi in to the Clinic out in Salt Lake. By the time I get out and back it ends up being more than half a work day, so I'm not going to pay for a full-day sub and still teach part of the day myself, so I just took the day off. Lexi's HbA1c was good... it was in the zone for good sugar control and her doctor was happy with it, but I'd like to see it a bit lower. She's been higher than I'd like lately, but hopefully that's worked out a little better now. The first day of swim lessons she was 581 right before (she said she ate 3 pieces of pizza for lunch, which I didn't know about), so I gave her a bunch of insulin, and then I checked her after her lesson before we left the pool and she was 44. Huge drop. Freaked me right the hell out. The next 2 lesson days were much better, thankfully.

Last Thursday we took the kids-minus-Courtney to family bowling night put on by the American Diabetes Association and Family Link. My friend runs Family Link for Utah, and she's really awesome. The littles had a good time... Brittney tolerated it.

We drove up to the cabin to see how it's getting along with all the water coming down the canyon. The retaining wall is holding up well, but it was high enough during the week at some point to come up over the steps and through the yard a little, from what we can tell. It's lapping over the top step right now, but not coming all the way over. We threw a few sand bags down. There are tons of dead fish this year. Should be nice and stinky once the water recedes and we start finding them stuck in the rocks and grass at the edges of the yard.







I had hoped to get a bunch of yard work done today, but it's too rainy and wet outside. So the girls and I are going shopping when Courtney gets off work. I hope I can find something that I even like. I have zero clothes, but I don't like the way anything looks on me. Blah.

I've got estimates for new flooring and an awning... now we have to decide what we can afford to do. There is so much demolition work and painting and tile we are going to be doing ourselves anyway before we do the rest of the floor... we might as well just do the wood ourselves while we're at it. So my house may be torn apart for quite a while. So fun.

Brittney started running track this week, and she went to the Language Fair at BYU on Friday and it wasn't as horrible as she thought it would be. Hallelujah. Courtney is finishing up the semester next week and then taking a trip before summer semester starts. Josh is off-track. Lexi is... Lexi. Sean tore apart the whole front end of the truck and replaced ball joints, a tie rod end, brakes and rotors, maybe a pitman arm? Got it all back together, and that's a relief. Saved us a ton of money. So for now, that is all.

Missing teeth, Bon Jovi, and other scintillating stories

Josh lost his first tooth this month, followed shortly by his second. He was so excited to go to school and tell his teacher because his teacher keeps a record of how many students have lost a tooth each month up on the wall. I love Josh's teacher so much this year. I wish he would move up and teach 2nd grade so we could have him again. Josh learns so much from him. Josh drew him a picture of an octopus attacking a boat, so his teacher said, "Let's find out where an octopus would live," and sat and looked it up with him. He does little things like that all the time.

Bon Jovi was so fun. He still sounds good, he's still hot, and they played all of their greatest hits for hours. It was one of my favorite concerts. We ended up seated 2 rows apart from Mindi and Steve and just barely across the aisle from Miss Heidi, Lexi's daycare teacher. So funny. Lexi and Josh had a blast chilling with grandma Saundra. I think next up is Poison and Motley Crue this summer. Then maybe Def Lepard.





I'm on Spring Break, and I am so very happy about that. This is the first year in as long as I can remember that we aren't going down south for at least a few days. I'm bummed about that, but it will be good just to have the week off. I have no plans except getting a bunch of papers graded and cleaning out the medicine shelf in my closet. I was rumaging around in there yesterday and found a tube of something or other that expired 10/07. Hmmmm... guess I need to go through and see what all is in there.

I'm so excited to plant things in my yard. So of course it's snowing right now. But hopefully that's another thing I'll do this week. We bought raspberries, blackberries, red potatoes, walla walla onions, yellow onions, 2 kinds of lettuce, and some sugar peas. Smith's had some super cute primrose, ranunculus, and anemones. The anemones were crazy awesome and I wanted them all. They were $2.99 a piece and I just had to walk away before I spent another $30 on flowers that are not in my budget.

Speaking of my budget, I spent $250 today on groceries. $250!!! That's for a week. Hopefully next week I'll only spend $100 to make up for it, but I doubt it. It gives me heartburn. That's not including the $54 I spent at the pharmacy. Or the $150 worth of diabetes supplies I got in the mail last week. I can't think about it.

Speaking of diabetes supplies... I have had the hardest time getting the mail order set up through my insurance. Finally got it set up and working... and my doctor called in a prescription for the lancets that I don't like, and they sent me 700 of them. So now I've got to figure out how to return them and get the right ones. So fun.

Speaking of diabetes and so fun.... it's really not so fun. I hate diabetes. It's just constant ups and downs and looking at the numbers and guessing and estimating and guesstimating. There are so many variables and I take it as a personal failure when her numbers are off target... yet there is really no way to keep it on target all the time.

Speaking of failure, the last of my teams lost tonight in the Final Four. Kentucky is out. Won no money, my brackets did terrible, but still love March Madness.

I talked to my doctor about my back pain the other day, and he basically said it's from being fat and out of shape. Except he said it nicely-er than that. He said I need to strengthen my core. So lose weight and exercise.

March goals progress:
*I did not lose any weight. At all.
*I didn't entirely fix my organizational issues, but anything that I didn't accomplish is at least being worked on or looked at.
*No yard work done.
*Did not hang the picture frame. Forgot it was even a goal.

April goals:
*Not gain any weight. Exercise. I really, really want to join Gold's Gym just for the cardio cinema thing they have. Or I could just buy a flat screen and mount it on the wall across from my eliptical. Oh, oh, I could move my eliptical to the middle of the surround sound, get an awesome sound system and a big flat screen, and make my own cardio cinema at home. That would be AWESOME.

*Get flooring bids.

*Do yard work. Plant stuff.

*Hang that stinking picture frame.

*Quit reading mystery novels and read some non-fiction this month. I have had Outliers sitting on my desk at work for months. I have a diabetes book I got in January that I want to read. I have a diet book that I need to read. That should do it for starters.

*Keep the entire family out of the doctor's office this month, with the exception of already scheduled appointments.

March Madness

Lexi was telling me a story about something naughty that someone did at daycare, which may or may not have been true, you never can tell, and then she told me, "Mom, these are all the bad words that you can't say. Stupid. Dumb. Holy crap. Messing around. I think that's it. And messing in Brittney's room and messing in Courtney's gum and messing in your purse and your gum. That's it, mom." Well then, I'm doing pretty good in the bad word dept by that standard.

We've spent a good amount of time this weekend watching basketball and following scores. One of the owners at Sean's work put up $100 for the winning March Madness bracket, so we filled one out for that contest. Then a few of my boys at school asked me if I wanted to join their group, so I filled out a different bracket for that. I've kinda been keeping track of that one while Sean keeps track of his work one. He's doing better than I am, because I picked Pitt for the championship, and they got eliminated last night. Major bummer.

My little kids are having a hard time remembering that they have manners and how to use them (they've been kinda bratty is what it amounts to), so we are doing the old standby, the marble jar. In other words, we're bribing them to be good. It's going great for now, of course, but we'll see if any of the behaviors generalize into habits once the bribing is phased out. That's always the trick with behavioral modification stuff, I guess.

I'm so excited for Bon Jovi on Tuesday. I wish I had something hot to wear. I wish I could look hot if I did have something hot to wear. I lost 3 pounds. Then Brittney made peanut butter rice crispy treats and I ate half the pan. Stellar. I started reading this new diet book at breakfast yesterday morning, and in the introduction it said Have you ever finished a meal and felt unsatisfied? and I said Yes! Just now! and flipped through the book to see what it would suggest for such a problem, and instead of easy answers it had all this crap that looked like lots of effort and work, so I put it down and haven't picked it up again since. Looks like I might have to buckle down and do it.

Sean and I were just talking about emergency preparedness stuff right before the earthquake in Japan. His dad was talking to him about it, and Sean told him that our theory is that we need to store a year supply of money, not food, so that's what we're working on (so far, I think we have one week saved up, go us) rather than stockpiling food. Because in most disasters, a 72 hour kit and a month's supply of food and water would be more than sufficient. I don't think his dad was very impressed with our plan or our logic. A year supply is just overwhelming. And Sean and I agreed that the most likely disaster that we would have here is earthquake or job loss. In the case of earthquake, if our house is destroyed and/or the Great Salt Lake floods our home, our food storage would quite possibly be lost, but money would be very useful. Obviously same goes for job loss. The only time a year's supply of food would really be beneficial is if food sources became highly contaminated, and what's the likelihood of that, says I? Doh. Two days after our conversation there are nuclear reactors leaking radiation in Japan. Oh well, I'm still just going to start with our 72 hour kits and move on from there. I had them done a few years ago, but it's all expired and needs to be updated. Spring Break might just be a good time for that.

I'm so ready for a trip somewhere warm. I've been trying to talk Courtney into going to Dixie next year, which she would love. I just want to have an excuse to go down there.