123123 to 010124

New Year! I can honestly claim I've not been to Hobby Lobby all year. Justin was not feeling well at all New Years Eve, he accepted defeat and went to bed early. He caught whatever mystery ailment I had earlier last week. The kids and I played out new Handsy game with two teams instead of 1 on 1. It was much more fun with more people! Amelia, Everett, and Josie won 2 out of 3 games. Then we played another new game I got called Gnoming Around by Grandpa Beck, it is scored like golf where you want the lowest points by the end of the game. The kids were quite excited to bang on pots and pans at midnight! Fergus got his first taste of New Years chaos, he was a bit unnerved so wanted to run up and down the street. We were all riled up and not at all sleepy after that escapade. Amelia put on a relaxing ASMR video on the TV to help us decompress. The video really helped! 

New Years Day! We had a nice lazy morning enjoying the Nintendo. I promised the kids we would make a gas station excursion. Josie had violin lessons at 11:30, we went right after she was done. Phillip was still comatose so he missed out on that excitement. I made a quick run into Walmart for cucumbers and some staples to last us the week. Amelia organized a cute doll tea party for Evelyn and Josie. The girls dressed up in fancy clothes and got our dolls all dolled up. Amelia and Evelyn made cucumber sandwiches, bananas in caramel and nutella, apples with dip, chips, juice in the large tea pot, and raspberry tea in the smaller pot. Everett was our "but" short for butler. The tea party started outside with Evelyn welcoming in all the dolls. Josie had an entourage of 3 dolls! We helped the dolls talk about sophisticated subjects like the weather, how to really drink tea, and yelling for "BUTTTTT." Evelyn was in heaven, finally getting to play dolls with Amelia. Amelia kept the trend going by playing more upstairs with Evelyn and her Rainbow High dolls. The new doll she got for Christmas is seriously darling, even I want one. 

Tuesday was brutal getting up at 6:25 am for school and work to start once more. Most of the students were crabby butts, myself included. I had a Dr appointment right after school so drove the truck that morning with my precious classroom plants instead of carrying them. Not much to report about the rest of the week...it was back to the grindstone. I did find a 6 inch long booger one of my 3rd grade friends dug out of his nose. I did not process that the item was a booger until I tried wiping it off, ewwwwwwww. I busted out the lysol and wipes to disinfect all surfaces. 

Phillip and Everett finally got to attend a robotics competition! They now have a 4 person team, one more member to balance out the awkward 3-person team. Phillip sent me a link to watch the event televised! I watched two of their matches, one during lunchroom duty. Johvanii's brother is on the 5th grade and on Phillip's team, we watched the match together. The boys were placed 2nd until the last match, they lost the match due to a low battery. They learned to always check the battery before going in the ring. Punkle Jared drove up from Utah to visit us over the weekend! He arrived the last 4 minutes of school, got to see part of the first grade chaos. Viewed the students pushing the computer power buttons after I asked them repeatedly not to power off the computers that way. Evelyn met Jared in the hallway, got a long koala hug! I was out at crosswalk duty when Josie got a surprise! Walked in my room to find Jared there! Yipee. Amelia dropped off Phillip's lunch then headed over to join the party. We rushed over to Nampa Christian Academy attempting to watch the last part of the boy's match. We missed it but still got to see their robot, the fervor of the competition, and watch a couple of live matches. It was quite impressive. I really needed to grocery shop, resorted to making a pantry meal of Carbonara. Oh my gracious, it was so delicious. Jared showed us photos of his unit in action, described what he does as an infantry grunt. We saw more Waldork photos, some quite impressive. I thought Jared was the radio guy all these years, nope! He is a gunner in a stryker tank. Life is improving in his unit after a year of misery. He had a team leader with a vendetta against Jared, made his life miserable. 

Saturday we really wanted to go soak in the hot springs. Alas, it snowed, and Josie's friend Melody was baptized in the morning, and Amelia had to be home by 5 pm for a party. So we revised, as is a common occurrence in our family. Evelyn went to bed Friday sobbing because I never keep my promises, like we STILL have not gone to Arrowrock, now we did not go to the hot springs. I got up early to grocery shop, that took longer than it should've (like usual). Amelia brought Josie to the baptism at 10. I somehow arrived just in time to watch Melody get baptized. She is a very sweet girl, Josie is lucky to have a good friend like Melody. At home we put groceries away then scrapped together a plan to go downtown to the RePop store, have lunch, and walk around. Once again our luck was against us, the store was closed for rennovation. It was snowing and very cold, so we walked down Freak Alley. Went in search for Guido's Pizza for lunch, it felt nice and warm once we arrived. I wanted to find a Middle Eastern market for sumac spice, shwarma seasoning, and pita breads. I found a store that looked like a replica of an Egyptian store. I wanted to make shwarma for Jared. By this time we were tired and bummed out. Stopped by a bowling alley, all the lanes were full, none to open for 1.5 hours, same story at another business. Phillip suggested Jeremy's Downtown arcade, we went there! It costs $5 per person to enter all games are "free" if they work. Some of the games were really fun! The dance games were fun, I found a cool rhythm game, Josie loved the driving games, needed a big human to push the gas pedal for her, and the fun pinball machines. That saved the day...there we had FUN. I got Mia to her party in the snow, Jocelyn turned sweet 16! Hooray! I made Zuppa Toscana for dinner. Jared was in rough shape, poor guy was feeling quite sick with some strange ailment. He perked up for a while after dinner. Justin and the boys headed out to shovel the walks at church before the snow froze to ice. We watched the Barbie movie to put that day out of its misery. 

Jared felt a bit better Sunday morning. We have early church now at 9 am, that means Justin's meetings start at 7:30. Started off the year with fast and testimony meeting. Everett went up and bore his testimony, he told a story about feeling down last week and reading verses from the Book of Mormon. He felt God's love and heard His voice saying everything would be ok. Several folks mentioned Everett's testimony in Gospel Doctrine, brought tears to my eyes. Means even with all the failures we have some successes. Jared called out Phillip for wasting time, lectured him for a good 20 minutes! In essence, get out of bed right away, get dressed, do all the things...then waste time. We talked about being ready for church at 8:30 at least 10 times on Saturday. He was still in the shower at 8:20, mumbled he thought he had to be ready by 10:30...what? Jared also called out Everett for his gross habit of eating with his mouth flapping, we've ridden him for years about eating with his mouth closed. Yes! Lecture those little doofenshmirtz. The Shwarma was delicious! I marinated the meat overnight with a mustard and tahini marinade. Today I made hummus, garlic sauce, and sumac-onion pickles. Oh my, with the fresh pita breads felt like we were back in Egypt. 

We started our study of the Book of Mormon this week. The first lesson focused on the Title Pages, Introduction, and Testimonies found at the beginning of the book. One podcaster I love listening to (feels like I'm back in Institute) gave this thought provoking opinion: Mormon had a huge task. By the time Mormon came around the records from Nephi were 1,000 years old. Think about how much the language had changed over that time. Then each king, leader, prophet, etc had their own set of records, the amount of records to condense was immense. I felt a renewed respect for Mormon's sacrifice.