Charles Dixon Ellis

I had the baby finally! Charles Dixon Ellis was born at 1:31 am on November 23, 2012. He was 8 lbs. 3 oz. and measured 19 inches long. It has taken me the past week to start feeling mostly normal; postpartum stuff is pretty hard for me. It's been good having my mom here to take care of Joseph and Annabelle and they have loved spending so much time with her. She'll be heading home tomorrow to take care of the many things she has neglected while being with us. Charlie is a really good baby, mostly sleeping and eating all the time. He doesn't cry or really make a fuss about anything. Joseph and Annabelle enjoy having a baby brother a lot, especially Joseph. I don't have any pictures to post because Mitchell has done the photo taking with his iphone. Let us know if you want to come for a visit!

Happy Birthday, Annabelle!

Today was Annabelle's 2nd birthday. I can't believe that she was born 2 years ago. In many ways, it seems like she has been with us much longer than that, but it also seems like the time has gone too quickly. She is such a joy in our family and I can't imagine what things would be like without her. She and Joseph are best friends and do everything together. And she has her daddy under her complete control; yesterday, she got 5 cinnamon bears from him because she just kept asking him with such cute faces that he couldn't resist.

We had her birthday party on Saturday so that a lot of family could come. Jason had been staying with us for a couple weeks, my mom drove down, and Samantha and Athena were there. My cousin Emily and her fiancee, Josh, came. Aunt Marianne and Annemarie were able to make it. And we were really excited because Popi and Doreen came up for the party. It was so wonderful to have so many family members with us. 

Jason, Joseph, Popi, Annabelle, Doreen, Samantha, and Athena

It took her a few tries, but she was able to blow out her candles all by herself.

 Opening presents this morning. She was so excited to open everything.

We went to lunch at California Pizza Kitchen, where she got a free birthday meal. This red balloon was just floating by one of the tables across the way when we got there. It eventually floated right over to us all on it's own, and it became her birthday balloon.

Eating her birthday brownie. The whipped cream was her favorite part.

Even though she had some very cranky 2-year-old moments, she had a good birthday. We are all so grateful that she is a part of our family. 

Home School Revisited

After doing lots of thinking and talking with family, I've realized that I don't have to have a strict school schedule for Joseph, which is what I had planned. I don't think Joseph is ready for something like that anyways. As I get more pregnant, I because less able to do something that strict. I have a tendency to go either too far or not enough; I'm terrible at balance. I've always felt like I either have to follow a very strict schedule for things and then I burn myself out and do nothing at all until I've recovered. I think that working on home school is going to be the same for me. I need to find the proper balance for me and my kids. Joseph has forgotten a lot of the stuff that he knew, so he isn't even ready for the program that I had planned. That lets me know that we need to take some time to review and work on the basics again. I think I'll just take time to help him remember his basics, but do it in a way that will be enjoyable for him. Today we played Go Fish! with alphabet cards. It was good seeing that he at least remembers his uppercase letters. Next week, we will start review lowercase. He also did a page in his tracing workbook. His lines aren't as neat as they were and he's forgotten a bit about how to hold the pencil properly, but he's slowly getting better. We also had fun playing Uno and he's good with knowing his numbers. I think I'll just gather a lot of fun ideas for reviewing things and getting him ready for higher level stuff. I'm glad I didn't go out and spend money on a phonics primer and handwriting workbook because it's definitely not time for those. I think we'll review through the end of this year and then see where we are. That will also give me time to get through this pregnancy and have time to get used to another little one in the family.

Home School

For several months, I've been planning on starting a home school Kindergarten program for Joseph. Yesterday was our first day. I don't have the curriculum that I originally planned on starting with, but it turns out it's fine because he's forgotten a lot of his letters and their sounds. He seems to think that school means "playing games", so yesterday he was annoyed when we were reading and practicing letters and their sounds; he was constantly asking, "What game are we going to play now?"

This morning, I had the hardest time waking up because I was so tired. Mitchell doesn't get home from class until after 9 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but he leaves before 9 in the morning. We obviously wanted to spend time together last night, so we stayed up late. Also, spending the entire day with the kids by myself really wore me out. Today, I have no motivation for doing school with Joseph or really much of anything else. I think I'd be content spending the morning in front of my computer eating a box of Poptarts.

I don't know if taking on the task of schooling Joseph was a bad idea, at least for now. This school semester is going to be trying on Mitchell and on me. I'm also having a baby in 2 1/2 months. But I keep thinking, "If I can't do a simple Kindergarten, then maybe I'm not cut out for homeschooling at all..."

One thing that's good about home schooling for me is that it gives me things to do with Joseph and Annabelle. I've never been very good at spending time WITH my kids. Planning school activities helps me come up with things to actually do stuff with them instead of just letting them do their thing while I do mine. There seem to be a lot of pros and cons for me with doing this home schooling thing, the real problem is deciding what to actually do.

Labor Day

We had a good Labor Day weekend. We did a few fun things today since Mitchell didn't have to go to work. The kids let us sleep in pretty late, which was nice since we usually have early mornings with Mitchell working and going to school. We went and browsed around the mall for a bit and had some lunch in the food court there. We went to a park in the afternoon. The kids had fun playing while Mitchell drew for some assignments and I worked out homeschool lesson plans. We had a nice quiet time and I read a Sherlock Holmes story in my book. We were excited about getting some awesome new Star Wars shirts from Baby Gap with a 30% off code we had, but after not getting the code to apply, we realized that line is excluded from coupons. :(  Later, we took the kids to another park and they had fun playing there. We also did a mini photo shoot to get some pictures for the invitations I want to make for Annabelle's birthday party. That was pretty fun. The kids are so hard to get pictures of because they are either moving around like crazy or they are making really stupid smiley faces. It doesn't help that our camera is TERRIBLE at taking pictures. I was surprised at how many I got. We ended the day by watching new episodes of 2 of our favorites shows, which happen to be cartoons on Cartoon Network. They are Adventure Time and Regular Show; we love watching them together.

Here are a few photos that I really liked:

A Fun Dinner

Today was a really awesome day. Now that we don't have church at 8 am, I'm really beginning to enjoy Sundays so much more. I also LOVE our new ward. It's so fun to be in a real family ward with people in a variety of stages in their lives. I feel like I am able to learn so much more in my classes. Another couple moved into the ward the same weekend that we did and they also moved from Wymount. Today, before Relief Society began, the sister asked me if I missed Wymount yet. My response was "not at all." She said they are starting to miss their ward. This couple differs from us in 2 aspects: they haven't been married as long as we have and they have no children. I think this is what makes them miss Wymount when we don't. I do miss the friends that we made in our Wymount ward, but I feel like our new ward fills so many needs that Wymount couldn't. We are just so happy to be a part of the Pioneer Park ward.

We actually had some Wymount friends over for dinner today. It was really fun to have them over and hang out. I love trying out fun new recipes when people come over and I have a tendency to go a little overboard. The first time we had this couple over for dinner (about a year and a half ago), I made a burger from the Bobby Flay book that I gave Mitchell for his birthday a few years ago. They loved it and requested to have another great burger next time they came over. Mitchell picked out the Cheyenne burger for me to try this time. It had smoked cheddar cheese, homemade barbecue sauce, bacon, and thin onion rings on it. It was a really good burger. It would have been better when we ate it, but I timed a lot of the preparation wrong and they were kind of cold by the time we all sat down to eat. Nobody really cared about that, though. Mitchell made the onion rings almost entirely by himself (following Bobby Flay's recipe) and they were so good! I love good onion rings and these were just like the really good and crunchy ones you get at restaurants. They were a lot of work, but they were delicious. For some reason, I thought we would want fries to go with the burgers and I prepped them, but they were never fried; we ended up having more than enough onion rings to go on the burgers and eat on the side. We also had this amazing "Old-Fashioned Pink Lemonade" that I found online. It was SO good. It made 2 quarts and we finished all of it between the four of us. The last thing we had were Double Chocolate Milkshakes with Fluffy Coconut Cream. This was another Bobby Flay recipe and it was great. I've never been good at making milkshakes, I always seem to mess up the ratios and can't get good flavors. Following this recipe was easy and it was delicious. I actually made the chocolate syrup by hand earlier in the day; it made me feel so fancy. :) I didn't get the layering of the milkshakes quite right, but they were really good anyway. By the time we were done eating, we all felt like we were going to explode. It was a really fun evening and I'm glad we were able to have fun with some friends.

My kitchen is a DISASTER. I forgot to unload the dishwasher before I started cooking, so I couldn't just immediately put the dishes in there and they all just got piled on the counters and in the sink. And I accidentally left the frying oil on the whole time we were eating, so the house got super smoky and my dutch oven is full of pitch black oil. I want to just leave it all for tomorrow, but I don't think that would be a very good idea. I have to decide if I have the energy to get it all cleaned up...

P.S. If you are interested in any of the recipes, just let me know!

Busy and Tired

We have been so busy! We officially moved in on the 1st and then had until the 4th to finish our cleaning at Wymount. And since then, I've just been trying to unpack and organize as well as just get settled in. The only room that I've completely organized is the kitchen; everything else is still a wreck. and pretty difficult to maneuver around in sometimes. I've taken some pictures, but everything on and around my desk has been so messy that I kind of avoid my computer most of the time. We also have real cable for the first time in years, so I've been distracted by the TV. I've been watching a lot of the Olympics as well as enjoying having my favorite channel, HGTV.

The kids love having so much space to play in, so they are constantly running around. They've also been getting into a lot of trouble. We don't have any cabinet locks in the kitchen yet, so I'm constantly pulling them out of the cabinet under the sink (they like to pretend it's their car and they drive to places like Macey's and SmashBurger). They also like bringing all of their toys out to the living room and leaving them there, but they don't actually play with them. They like to be my helpers when it's time to load/unload the dishwasher or start a new load of laundry. Joseph loves watching the clothes "take a bath." The first couple naps/nights sleeping in their new room worried Annabelle a lot. She woke up after her first nap and was crying because she thought we left her. She would ask to go home whenever she got really tired, but now she's figured out that this is home.

I wanted to get pictures of the various stages of our moving in process, but that didn't happen at all. I could take pictures now, but it really just looks like we have a super messy house because most of the boxes are gone. I think I'm just going to wait to get pictures until we have everything set up. Some of the set up has to wait until the end of the month when we get our school loans in and can go get some bookshelves. Our Wymount apartment had built-in bookshelves, but this apartment doesn't, so we just have stacks of books laying all around the house. One of our bookshelves also fell apart during the moving process, so we have even less shelving than we were expecting to have. We also have no couch because they only way we could have gotten our old one into the apartment was to lift it over our 2nd floor balcony and bring it in through the sliding door. We decided we didn't want to do that for a $30 DI couch, so we are going to buy a more compact, but functional couch (it folds out into a full-size bed!) at IKEA.

All of this busy-ness has been very exciting and fun, but also very exhausting. I've been sleeping WAY longer at night because I keep getting so worn out, but I have been going (mostly) without naps, too. I think once things have settled down and I'm not doing so much organizing and unpacking, I won't be quite as tired. But it all could just be that I'm pregnant and I'll keep being tired for the next year or so...

A Joseph List

The 3 Most Annoying Things Joseph Says Everyday:

1) "I want to see you" or "I want to see Mommy" -- It means that he is feeling very whiny and clingy and will start crying if he isn't right on top of me.

2) "What day it is?" -- He asks this at least 20 times a day, sometimes most of those 20 occurring within a 15 minute period. Mitchell has been working on getting him to phrase the question correctly, but he still says it wrong most of the time.

3) "I'm so thirsty!" -- This is frequently said a little bit after we have given him a drink, but he has misplaced it or he drank it so fast that it is gone already. This kid drinks RIDICULOUS amounts of liquids a day, but never wants to eat his food. In fact right now, he is asking for a drink and not eating his (very small) bowl of cereal.

I think my hopes in posting this are that I will be able to find the humor in what Joseph says and stop being so annoyed. Do you get annoyed by things your kids do everyday?

Dream Home

In my excitement over moving into our new apartment, I started pinning a Pinterest shopping list for things we would need. That led me to start pinning things that I want to have for our new apartment, even though we can't afford them. And that led me to wondering what color schemes I want to have for our someday, final home because I don't want to buy things now that won't work with that decorating scheme. So I went to the library and checked out at least 10 books about decorating and home planning and stuff. But I won't know exactly what I want my decorating scheme to be unless I have an idea of what my house will look like, so I've been going through a book of over 500 Traditional house plans and marking the ones that fit my criteria for a "dream home." I've decided that I want a house with at least 4 bedrooms, a formal dining/living room area, and a open kitchen/family room with a breakfast area. For exteriors, I like stone and timbers on the front, big porches, shutters, and gables, dormers, turrets or bay windows. Inside, I like foyers, more than 1 story, bonus rooms or dens for Mitchell to work in, butler's pantries, "overlooks" on the second floor, powder rooms, coat closets, walk-in bedroom closets, a separate shower/bath in the master bathroom, fireplaces, and kitchen islands.This is a long list of wants/likes, so I'm just looking to get ideas that match as many of those as possible.  It's kind of silly that I'm doing this, but I LOVE it. I just love looking at house plans and making decorating plans and gathering design ideas. It's just way too fun.

Our New Apartment

On Saturday, after a good week of looking at apartments (we saw around 15 different places), we signed the lease for a new apartment. We are really excited! It's over 850 square feet and has an awesome living room. It's also cheaper than we would be paying if we had moved over to a 3 bedroom in Wymount, but it's SO much nicer! Our official move-in day is August 1st, but our landlord gave us permission to start moving some of our stuff over. Today we took a few loads of boxes that I had already packed. The kids loved playing around in all of the space and it's exciting for me to see our stuff going in. I took some pictures of it empty and I'll try to show the process of us moving in.

This is the first part of our living room (the lighting did not work for me). The sliding door leads to a wooden balcony/deck. Joseph is doing a little happy dance because he loves being there. 

 This is probably what would normally be the dining room portion of the living area, but we will be setting it up more like an office area. The white to the left is the fridge.

 This is my cute little kitchen. It's not large, but it's U-Shaped and is very functional. It has a dishwasher and the fridge is the side-by-side type with a water/ice dispenser. It's also red and that's the color I've always wanted my kitchen to be! And aren't the cabinets so cute?

 This is our bathroom. The bathtub is actually jetted and there is a timer on the wall for setting the jets when you want to use them. It's WAY deeper than any tub I've ever had in my life and I'm excited to take a bath in it.

This is going to be the "master" bedroom. It has the biggest closet and I like that it has a full length mirror, which we haven't had in about 3 years.

 And this will be the kids' room. In the closet, there is access to the attic where we will have tons of space to store things. 

I like that the apartment came with the cute curtains in all the rooms and it had a brand new A/C unit put in to replace the old swamp cooler. We also have a closet in the hallway with a full-size washer and dryer! Everything about this place is so great and it seems almost too good to be true that we will be living there for the next 9 months (at least). I can't wait to actually move in and start living there.

Fun on the Playground

We've been having fun playing on the playground lately. It's been nice to have a place to play outside. 

The kids like sticking their faces in the little windows on the tube of the playground.

Joseph has finally learned to push the peddles on the tricycle. We will probably be getting him his own bike this fall.

They got so tired out and just look so cute when they are sleeping.

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More to Come

I have so much I want to blog about. We took tons of 4th of July pictures and I've been taking other pictures of the kids for posts. But we are apartment shopping - again - and I'm SO tired (we looked at 5 different places today). So I will have to blog about everything later.

Movie Night

On Friday, Mitchell got his first paycheck from his new job! We decided to have just a little bit of fun. We bought the movie John Carter, which we saw in theaters and loved. Then we had a movie night. We rearranged the living room so that the seats were actually facing the TV and we could watch together (Mitchell normally sits in his computer chair and I lay on the couch). We had popcorn, pretzels with cheese, movie candy, and soda/kool-aid for dinner. The kids thought it was super fun and they loved eating popcorn and the gummy worms they picked at the grocery store. We enjoyed watching the movie again; it really is an awesome movie and so much fun to watch.

Mitchell and the kids in their seats.

 Me and the kids in our seats.

The pretzels that I made. They were really easy and only took 1 1/2 hrs. from start to finish, including rising time. I should have baked them a little longer to see if it gave them a better crust and they needed a lot more salt, but they were good for my very first pretzels. Our popcorn was homemade, too. Mitchell just pops it in our saucepan with the kernels and some corn oil; it's so much cheaper and it tastes way better.

The next day, Mitchell and I were definitely feeling the after-effects of a ton of junk food. It helped reinforced the need for a real dinner, even though a "movie theater" dinner was a lot of fun. We were just glad to eat healthy food and feel normal again.

Hand, Foot, and Mouth

On a Thursday, couple weeks ago, Annabelle got a funny rash that spread from her diaper area to the rest of her body. I decided to take her in to the doctor the next morning.

That morning, she had a very low fever and Joseph suddenly had one that was a bit higher. So I took them both in. While waiting for our turn with the doctor, Joseph threw up. After being examined, the doctor felt for sure that this was strep throat. He could see sore spots in their mouths and Annabelle's rash looks like the one that comes with Scarlet Fever, although he didn't think she had that. He did rapid strep tests on them both (Joseph threw up again because of his) and those were negative. So he sent us home and told us they would do cultures to re-check.

On Saturday morning, Joseph seemed entirely better. Annabelle seemed to be doing better as well; her rash was almost gone, too. We just figured it was a quick virus and we were glad because we didn't want to miss church.

On Sunday, we let them sleep in and only went for the last hour of church, which is Sacrament Meeting for us. They seemed like they were doing way better, so we also went to the ward Father's Day barbecue. However, after the barbecue, I found blisters all over Annabelle's diaper area. And you could tell they were hurting her a lot. This seemed really weird to me, so I called and talked to the on-call nurse at the doctor's office. She told us that Annabelle had Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease! When I got off the phone, I looked at Annabelle's hands and feet and saw little red spots on them. Then I checked Joseph and found the same thing, but he seemed to have more. As the evening progressed, we noticed the kids scratching a lot, so we put hydrocortisone and socks on their hands and feet. They looked pretty cute with sock hands.

The next day, Joseph's spots seemed mostly better. A few had blistered, but most had just disappeared. But Annabelle was an entirely different case. Her hands and feet were covered in blisters and the blisters were spreading up her legs and on her arms. She also had a pretty high fever and was just completely miserable that whole day. So in the evening we took her to the doctor. She met with a PA first, who said that she looked like some really bad cases of HFM that he had seen. But he wanted to get a second opinion just in case, so he brought the doctor in (a different one than the one that diagnosed strep). This doctor took a look at her and determined it was a herpetic virus, similar to the one that causes cold sores. He explained that sometimes kids will get the virus from someone who has a cold sore and, instead of just getting a cold sore, the virus breaks out on their whole body. They prescribed an anti-viral to stop the reproduction of the virus so that she wouldn't get any more blisters.

Annabelle decided with this illness that she hates taking medicine (she used to take it like candy), so we battled over tylenol and benadryl a lot over that week. Luckily, we could put the antiviral in her milk and she couldn't tell the difference (she had to take it 4 times a day for 3 days). She stopped getting spots and the ones she had started to heal. She finally seemed to be doing better.

However, a few days ago, she started a process of peeling that I thought was a part of HFM, so I really have no idea what she had. Her hands and feet are peeling where ever there were blisters; Joseph's are doing the same. But since the ENTIRE bottom of her feet were cover in blisters she is losing all of the skin there. We've had to hold her down every evening so that we can clip some of the dead skin off so that it doesn't catch and pull on things. She hates it, but it seems like the process is almost over. I finally found my camera a couple days ago, so I was able to get some pictures of her poor little feet.

This foot still has most of the dead skin on it, only the toes had been peeled so far.

This foot had peeled the entire bottom off. It's all red and wrinkly and feels just like a newborn babies foot. She also has a band-aid on her second toe where she lost the toe nail. :(

This is just a comparison of the two feet together. Since the picture was taken, almost all of the left foot has peeled as well.

This is a side view. You can sort of see where the old skin is and the new skin starts.

The peeling process seems to be almost over, but her feet and hands are very tender and she doesn't like them getting wet or being touched a lot. She walks on her tiptoes a lot because she doesn't like how her feet feel on the ground, but she doesn't like wearing shoes either. I'm just glad that the process is almost over and that she is finally getting back to normal.

Nothing Interesting...

I lost my camera. Last time I used it was about a month ago, and I have NO idea where it is. I've cleaned and organized every inch of my bedroom, which is where we normally keep it, and I have checked all the other usual spots. No luck yet...

I feel like my posting ideas are much more limited because I don't have a camera to take pictures of fun things we do. I guess I could try posting some of the older pictures that are on my computer...

Changing My Mind

I just posted yesterday about how we are planning on moving into a larger apartment. We have decided to stick it out in our current apartment for the next year until Mitchell finishes at BYU.

Several things led to us changing our minds:

~ Earlier this week, I was talking to my dad and I mentioned that we were planning to move. He was like, "Why?" His suggestion was to save up the extra money that we would be paying for a bigger apartment. That led us to think about the fact that, right now, Popi is paying for our rent and we don't want to ask him for an extra $100 a month.

~ Today in Relief Society, the lesson was on President Uchtdorf's Forget-Me-Not talk. As we were talking about his "Forget Not to be Happy Now" point, I realized that I have been putting all my thoughts towards moving, thinking that we will be happier after we move. Talking to Mitchell about my impressions helped me realize how wrong I was in feeling that. Moving would be so much work and we are FINALLY feeling moved in to this apartment (it's only been 2 years).

~ The final factor was just realizing how much I love the ward we are in and that I don't want to have to get to know all new people right before we move again.

It's going to be an adventure living with 4 of us in this small apartment, but I know we can do it and it will be so much better for us. I'm actually excited about going back to do everyday things instead of constantly working towards moving.

Work, Work, Work

In an attempt to blog more, I deleted all the games on my Facebook and I pinned the Blogger page to my browser. My hope is that when I'm bored, eating, or otherwise unoccupied and sitting at my computer, I will blog instead of playing games.

Today is an organizing day at our house. We are hoping to move into a 3 bedroom apartment this summer, so I've been going through each room and super-organizing. I've finished the kids' room and managed to keep it clean since. I'll be finishing our room today, which has been the messiest room in the house for several months (we couldn't see the floor for most of that time). I'm going to start on the hall cupboards and closet this afternoon and hopefully finish them quickly so that I can move on to the kitchen. I'm scared of my kitchen. It's SO messy. But I was scared of cleaning this room before I started and now it looks great! This is seriously the cleanest it's been since Annabelle was born. Yay!

I'm also finishing up the mountains of laundry that have been sitting around our house. I've spent around $15 on laundry in the past week and it's pretty cheap here compared to regular laundromats.

Now off to do more work!

Another Update

I feel bad because I never blog anymore. So many things have gotten in the way and my life has gotten so busy! I want to update on everything, but I don't know if I can remember it all.

I'm home with Annabelle while Mitchell is at the priesthood session of conference and Joseph is playing with a friend. It's so lonely! I think that I'm spoiled because Mitchell and I spend a lot of time together. It's going to be hard when he gets a real job and works normal hours because I always want to keep him for myself.

We've really enjoyed conference so far. It's wonderful to hear so many inspiring messages. I'm excited to hear more tomorrow. I have to admit that I'm also excited that I don't have to wake up for our 8 am church. It really is just a terrible time for church to start!

We are expecting Baby Ellis #3 in November. My due date is the 27th, but I think the baby will be born the 18th. Both Joseph and Annabelle were born about 9 days before their due date, so I think this baby will be similar. I like patterns in things and I decided that this baby has to be born on and even day because all of our birthdays are even. The 18th would be a perfect number because it fits between Joseph's 16th and Mitchell's 20th. I also wanted the baby to be born in November because then we would have October, November, December babies. But it does mean a lot of presents all in a row. And I'm always pregnant in the summer...

We've been having a pretty difficult time lately. We stopped getting food stamps at the end of February, but Mitchell still doesn't have a job. He went on a field trip to LA at the beginning of the month that cost a lot of money and then buying groceries has put a huge dent in our bank account. It's so hard when we don't make any money of our own. We are hoping that Mitchell will start some work sometime in April. The company that his brother works for is supposed to start giving him work and it will all be done from home. If he can start doing that, we will make more money than we ever have before, but we don't know when he's starting. One thing that's sad about living on only student loans is when we run out of money at the end of semester. It just happens to be that Easter and our anniversary are at the end of this semester. We think we might be able to go to a movie for our anniversary, though, so that will be fun. Mitchell has class the whole day anyways. We are going to have Easter dinner at Samantha's house and that will be fun, too. It's good for us to learn to sacrifice things that aren't necessary, even if they are things that we really want and feel like should be a part of these special times.

I'm hoping to be able to remember to blog more often, but I always say that and never do it. Maybe if I keep my fingers crossed...

All By Myself

Mitchell just left on an Illustration student field trip to LA. He will be gone until Saturday night. The longest we've ever been apart since we were married is about 1 day, so this is pretty huge for me. The kids have never been away from Daddy for more than a day of classes. It's definitely going to be a big adventure for us this week. I don't do very well being alone, especially with my depression, so I'm going to be trying to do lots of fun things with the kids. It doesn't help that I think I have an ovarian cyst because I've been in a lot of pain the past couple days and I woke up with a sore throat today...

I'm going to take this time to get a lot of work done that I normally wouldn't do because I would rather be spending time with Mitchell. The kids and I are going to go to the zoo and the park and do other fun things. And Mitchell is going to be visiting a lot of studios that he would love to work at someday.

Mitchell's Many Projects

I'm blogging two days in a row! Yay!

So, Mitchell is taking photos of a bunch of his artwork right now. He's applying for several different things right now.

 The coolest one is a paid internship with Blizzard. If you don't know who Blizzard is, it's like the Disney of videogames; they are the ones that make World of Warcraft. It would be so amazing for him to be able to work there for the summer. I'm REALLY hoping that his is able to get the internship.

He's also applying for the Visual Arts Department Talent Award. It's pretty much a scholarship and it's based entirely on the student's portfolio. I'm not sure how much the award would be, but I think it pays tuition for a semester or something like that. It would be great to take a semester off from adding to our student loans.

The last two things he's working on are shows at the school. One is for life drawing, which he is very talented at. And the other is the Sketchbook Club show. I believe all he needs to do is pick out the pieces that he wants shown and then they will be in one of the galleries at the school. It's pretty cool thinking that he will have his artwork hanging in the HFAC.

We are also looking at finding him a job. I found several job postings on the school's website. He might be able to get some freelance illustration or graphic design work from one of them. It's been a year-and-a-half since he's had a job, so it would be really nice to actually be earning money again.

And for practice, Mitchell is doing free portraits for members of our ward. The first piece that he is working on is a portrait of a couple in their Halloween costumes. They dressed up as the Joker and Harley Quinn from Batman, so it's right up Mitchell's alley.

After reading about the lives of some artists he admires, Mitchell came to the conclusion that having your spouse involved in your work will bring you closer together. So, I am working as a sort of secretary/partner with Mitchell on many of these projects. I've been finding out a lot of the information for him and I remind him of deadlines and requirements. I'm also the one that set up the ward portraits. It's kind of fun for me to be planning and organizing all of these things for him. We are trying to make his art and work "ours" rather than just "his."

Preschool

A couple weeks ago, I started a preschool for Joseph. He's had two little friends coming and a third will start coming this week. It's been really fun to have and I like planning little lessons and activities. I have a theme for each week based on a book that I have called "Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready." This week's theme is "Up and Down" and we will be reading books about ladders, playing chutes and ladders, and (hopefully) playing on the playground outside.

Tomorrow, I am starting a little playgroup for the 1-year-olds in our ward. The activities will be based on themes from the same book. For this group, the week's theme is "Homes." I built a little fort out of a block/bookshelf type thing that we got from Walmart and the kids are going to play in it.

It's really fun for me to have these things to focus on and plan, especially since I'm not going to school myself.

Tomorrow

I'm about to go to sleep, but I wanted to tell you all that tomorrow is National Popcorn Day. So make sure you eat some popcorn. :)

Happy New Year!

I know I'm two weeks late, but I guess it's better late than never. I didn't realize how busy life was going to get for me even though I am not taking classes. It's been a very big adjustment for me to be home all day again. I feel like a two sided person; one side of me wants to be the best stay-at-home mom in the world and the other side wants to do her own thing. I'm trying to make sure that I schedule time for myself as well as the kids every day ( I have to have schedules to survive...).

I'm planning on starting a little preschool next week. It will mostly be focused on Joseph, but I've invited some moms from the ward who have children that are Joseph's age. I think it's going to be really fun; I just have to make sure that I don't overboard trying to make elaborate lesson plans or anything. I've written "teacher" for What Do You Want to Be? questions for nearly my whole life, but I have to keep from getting to excited at this stage. I'm hoping to homeschool the kids, so I will get to make fancier lesson plans later on.

We took Joseph in for his 3 year old check up at the beginning of this week. He's not doing as well as he should be. He's hardly grown at all in the past year, and by "hardly" I mean less than 2 inches and less than 5 pounds, although it could be even less than that. He will be seeing a GI next month to make sure that there are no underlying problems. We've been trying to get him to eat more at his meals, but sometimes it feels like a war zone. Hopefully, we can figure things out so that he can start growing again.

Yesterday, we were able to buy a countertop dishwasher! I'm so excited! We found a listing on ksl.com for someone that was selling one in Orem. I'm so glad because now it's so much easier to do dishes. Mitchell has been really great and has been doing most of the dishes since we got it. It's such a load off of my shoulders.

Tomorrow, we are going to Ikea and buying a bed frame. For almost a year, we have been sleeping on a 4-inch memory foam topper that just lays on the ground. It's not as uncomfortable as it sounds, but it causes problems because the kids think it's a tumbling mat. A week or so ago, someone in our ward gave us a feather bed topper and we put that on top, too. So it's softer for us to sleep on AND for the kids to play on. A few days ago, I just decided that I was tired of being jumped on and somersaulted on and headstand-ed on while trying to sleep or rest, so I told Mitchell that I need a bed frame. We figure that once we have the frame, Joseph may try to do a somersault on it and get hurt and then he won't do it again (at least, that's what we hope). We went and browsed at Ikea today and decided to get something from there because we could really use the storage space that their beds provide. I love Ikea because everything is just meant for living in small spaces, which is totally what we are doing. I'm excited to get a bed tomorrow!

I made New Years' Resolutions for myself, but I think I might post them another day. I have two sleeping children, a warm bed, and a not-busy husband, so I'm done typing now.