Crochet Creatures

With autumnal colors and decor inside our home the outdoors is finally catching up. This morning felt positively delicious with a cool breeze and leaves changing their colors. It finally feels like fall, I almost want to wear a sweater! Almost. 

I had to work 3 hours outside my normal hours this week because I had to take two hours off early on Tuesday and leave an hour early on Thursday for MCO. Usually, I come 15 minutes early to work each day to make up for the hour early I leave on MCO days. Phillip had an intake appointment with Austin Hansen a psychologist that specializes in ADD treatment. I think Phillip really connected with Austin and vice versa. We went through all the intake stuff like family history and goals. Phillip mentioned several times as we drove home how glad he felt to have another trusted adult to communicate with about his struggles and headspace issues. Friday afternoon I checked in with him about his history and schoolwork after he had the day to work on his assignments. He accomplished absolutely NOTHING in the 9 hours, he had to work. At the same time Evelyn was also struggling with and English assignment she fell behind in. Phillip dorked around for an hour making every noise possible under the sun until I lost my mind and sat hip to hip with him smacking his head every other second to keep him on task. He just did not want to do the work, it took him 90 minutes to write a total of 14 sentences for 3 different assignments. Justin got mad and took away his phone game again, which made everything even worse. Justin decided it was best to just go to bed at 8 pm and leave me to fight the fight. I wanted to lose it, felt like I was once again alone to parent alone because Justin can’t (won’t control) his temper. I lost my cool several times between 6:30 and 11:00 pm while we worked on multiple assignments. Can I go to bed whenever I feel mad? Sounds like a good idea to me. 

Thursday was the MCO parent meeting. I had 8 youth models ready to show off their attire to new parents. Everett and Evelyn moved up choirs this year, that means our attire costs were quite high. It’s not cheap to make the youth look so put together. I had Logan bring his Youth Chorus attire in case the young man I found forgot. Logan only had white socks and his concert shoes were way too small, he wore an extra pair of blue girl socks! Luckily, the other boy was there and had shoes on, phew! Logan was off the proverbial hook. I was very sad to miss Phillip’s first choir concert with the CHS Men’s Concord group. He is singing bass but can also sing tenor if needed. Justin recorded the songs which we watched after MCO. The concord group grew from 8 guys to 12 this year! They sounded pretty good! 

I had to work on Friday for the first time this school year. Last month we were gone to Rexburg dropping Mia off to college. I had a list over a mile long of things to work on but decided it was most important to work on sorting the stem bins back to their proper order. The bins get the most use and I am trying to teach students to respect the order established for the good of the whole. I ordered quite a few sets of magnetic blocks as they are the most favored toy. I really like using the blocks for coding activities as well, last year there were never enough blocks. I listened to a book Stacie Harp recommended, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. So far the book is highly amusing. The school kicked off another fund raiser this week. Josie got a honey bear at first. She traded it for a monkey, was really wanting the flying squirrel. I pawed through the box and grabbed the highly coveted duck named Waddles. Josie is very excited, she named it Bon Chon. Right after work the girls had strings lessons, we were 20 minutes late because I had to work longer than expected. Josie has a new skill to work on twisting her hand parallel to her violin neck, she is accustomed to flipping her hand out which displaces her fingers off the strings. It will take some time and patience to correct her hand, the goal is to help her play faster. Andrew came in to coach both Evelyn and Josie. He is a very talented musician. Josie took all her wrist pets and decorated Roz’s steering wheel. So lovely. 

Everett wants to sell chickens at school for the holiday bazaar next week. He finished crocheting his pizza and is on fire to make as many chickens as possible. He bought his own butter to make some cookies to sell along with the crochet creations. He made a reverse chicken (red body, white comb) which looks quite derpy. I helped him out during Stake conference by crocheting two chicken bodies in an hour. We also worked on his bedroom most of Saturday. I got Amelia’s stuff packed into bins. Everett transferred his clothing over to the closet and chest of drawers. I helped him decorate some of the room. We made a trip to Walmart for cloth bins for his stuff in the cube shelf, new curtains, and a Bluey wall print. 

I decided it was the day to finally take Evelyn and Phillip’s birthday photos. Seems I am running two months behind so actually I was right on time for this year. Phillip was in Kuna all day at another marching band competition. They took third again! Nice work! I went to Walmart AGAIN this time to find a shirt that was not stained or had the face of Shrek on the front. Phillip was done at 6 pm, by the time we got to the river in Eagle our light was nearly gone. We had 10 minutes before the sun set, it was overcast so the amount of sun we had was minimal. I was grateful for the 3 minutes of sun that pierced the clouds right at sunset. I was seriously afraid all the photos were too blurry, most were but there are at least 2-3 images each that turned out in focus and properly posed. That was frenetic for a hot moment. Both kids were ravenous, plus Evelyn is allergic to leftovers, so we got some food at Arctic Circle before they melted into nothing.