It's a Busy One

I swear I'm trying to get caught up. If you remember last week was midterm time. Midterms time, and final time is so busy. Yesterday my grades were due, but I had so many late projects handed to me at 5 on Friday. Much more late work turned in than I've ever had. I spent much of the morning yesterday grading. Then another instructor and I hung up 2 gigantic murals each student did a little section of. Maybe I'll share that with my WW. I have yet to decide.

This last weekend we got 2 big boxes of organic nectarines and apples from The Fruit Club.

Do you have The Fruit Club where you live? They go to spots where fruit is ripe, and fresh, load up, and travel to different spots to sell the fruit.

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They Fruit Club got into town later than expected. I pretty much had to process a HUGE box of nectarines right away. I'll use them for smoothies during the winter months. Now my freezer is packed with nectarines, shredded zucchini, chili peppers, June Berries and more. When it gets colder, I'll make June Berry Jam all one day. I also processed 2 pumpkins. We've had pumpkin seeds, pumpkin soup, pumpkin muffins, and pumpkin smoothies. I'm sure I'll have to make pumpkin something else tonight. The pumpkin puree needs to be used up!

Here's My Schedule This Week:

Monday: I made a spaghetti squash pie, processed nectarines, graded, hung up murals, and picked out awards for students - who's work gets put up front in the lobby.

Tuesday: I have to work on finding videos to introduce the Creative Cloud for Macs. I have to go grocery shopping during lunch. I have no other time to do it. Daddy has a meeting, and many more Tuesday nights called Artist Inc. It's like school, except he didn't have to pay for it. He just applied to it. I'll try and make pumpkin bread.

Wednesday: The boys have  jiu jitsu.

Thursday: I have a home party to go to for jewelery. I really hate home parties, but I feel obligated to go. Especially when Daddy makes jewelery. I'm sure I'll feel obligated to get something. At least the earrings I bought from them before are one of my favorite pairs. I plan on getting earrings, and stashing them away for Daddy to get me for Christmas. I'm practical like that. Daddy hates when I get my own Christmas presents. Let's just face it - I get most of the shopping done myself.

Friday: The boys have a Fall Festival at school. Prior to that I'll have to fix their costumes. When? I have no idea. Isaak snapped his elastic in the foot part of his Superman costume, and Mica whipped his whip too hard, and wants it fixed. He's going as Indiana Jones. I keep changing my mind as to what I'll be. I think I'm going as Coraline, but how to fix those buttons to my eyes will be hard! I most certainly will not sew them on - Ouch! Nope, I'll have to find away to glue them to my eyebrows. I may change my mind again. I have a few costume choices.

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What's your week like?

A Good Week

I have to say that Isaak's bounced out of his troubled times. He's been much easier to deal with. It was like a few weeks of a crabby 4 year old. Now he's better. He still is doesn't like us out of his sight. He's going though some stranger anxiety. For instance I was down stairs doing laundry. Isaak freaked out because he didn't know where I was. It's that kind of stuff. At least he's not having temper tantrums like he was a few weeks ago. The boy hasn't wet the bed for months now! :) We're so happy about that!

Isaak is very into wanting to write. It's really cute! He asks how to spell things all the time. I can't always tell what he's wrote, but he's getting better! 

Last week we had Isaak's preschool conferences. This week we had Mica's 1st grade conferences. Conferences were strange with Mica. I've heard my co-workers say that conferences are boring. Now I get what they are talking about. Mica's teacher just said, "He's good at pretty much everything. You guys are doing a great job with him. She showed us a folder of papers and that was it! He loves art, writing, technology, music and P.E.

The only thing that stood out was a self evaluation they did. They colored things yellow if they felt they did good with the topic, orange if they were just ok with it and red if they need to work on it a lot. The thing he colored red was listening. His teacher said, "He listens really well in class!"  I think Mica gets so involved in things that when he's told to do other things, he has trouble changing his mindset. I think that's pretty normal for any boy his age.

Mica also got a yellow stripe on his belt for jiu jitsu. They do stripes before changing the color of their belt. His Sensei also started handing out stripes for good behavior type things the kids do. A few weeks ago Mica got one that says, "Good Discipline". This week he got one for, "Good Form". His Sensei doesn't pass the word stripes out often, so it's great that he got these!

Busy Bees

This week and next are so busy. Here's the run down:

• Aug 8: I started up the school year. I'm a college graphic arts instructor. I had a new project that lasts the first 1/2 the semester. The other 2 classes are pretty much repeats. 
• Aug 10: Mica turned 6. He unwrapped presents from us. We were going to go to Chuck E Cheese because Mica asked to go there once. Instead he wanted a movie night. We went to Best Buy to get a movie of his choice. He choose Disney's Hercules. 
• Aug 11: Mica had open house at his new school for Kindergarten. It was fun! He got to meet his new teacher. He looked nervous, but so was the next student. We had to miss Emerson's 7 week birthday party. Isaak went to sleep and woke us up with throw up on his new bedding! Then he threw up again! He was tired today.
• Aug 12: Thank Grandma and Grandpa Spiehs for taking in a sick boy! What would I do without you? They've already been around him yesterday. Isaak was cranky and none of us knew why.
• Aug 13: Mica's birthday bash.
• Aug 14: Isaak goes to hang out with his preschool teachers.
• Aug 15: Mica starts kindergarten.

Happy 1st Birthday Party Emerson

My sweet little nephew Emerson had his first birthday party tonight. We celebrated him being 1 week old. You can read about his condition here.

I brought over Isaak's 1st birthday hat. It was really too big, but we shot photo's anyhow.

 

Grandma and Grandpa Spiehs got him this cute 1st birthday bib.

It was just close family eating cupcakes, drinking juice and the kids blew on noiseless ;) party toys.

Sickies

This has been one week! 

• The week started out with Mica getting two timeouts for punching at Aunt Terra's house. 
• Once was when he was wrestling with his cousin Evan.
• The other time was when his younger cousin Elijah took a toy out of his hand and spit on him. Elijah is only two, he does have a sharing problem and is learning to spit with brushing his teeth. 
• The timeouts could have been disputed because Mica was just defending himself, but he doesn't need to punch in order to solve his problems! 

• Mica got sick to his tummy at Aunt Terra's house. 
• Terra is pregnant and has been sick with a cold that's been lasting for forever. I was and am hoping that no one in their house gets sick!  
• Mica tossed his cookies at the end of being at her house on Monday. Luckily he made it to the toilet! Five years old must be the magic age for hitting the toilet.
• We went home and cuddled. Mica said he was hungry, so I gave him soup and crackers. He managed to keep those down.

• Mica acted fine on Tuesday morning.  
• It was me that woke up with body aches all over and a sore throat.

• Off to preschool Mica went. Usually he goes in without saying too much. That morning Mica walked into preschool and said, "Guess what? I threw up last night!" Daddy had to explain that he was fine. He did however seem like he had a slight cold that afternoon.
• Mica learned all about Martin Luther King at preschool, and was fascinated. 
• He wanted to color a picture of Martin Luther King, but Daddy couldn't find a brown crayon anywhere! We only have small boxes of crayons. We were joking how Crayola must be racist. The same with Band-Aid for making only peachy flesh colored Band-Aids. They colored him orange, then black on top. 
• Mica told me on the phone, "Martin Luther King was a man that wanted to stop people from fighting!" Daddy had him listen to his speech on YouTube. Mica lost interest because it was so long and over his head.

• I taught for two days in a row when my cold was the strongest. 
• I hate talking when I know my voice is strained. 
• I had to talk a lot because last week we had a snow day. Major catching up to do.

• Tuesday night I went home and pretty much crashed on the couch. Both boy's were trying to cuddle with me. I wanted to cuddle with Mica since I knew he had been sick, but with Isaak...well I wanted him to leave us sickies alone. 
•  I don't want Isaak getting what I have. Kind of unavoidable with a two year old. They want whatever their older sibling has. That includes Mommy and Daddy attention!
• The boy's were bouncing all over me. I drifted into sleep and didn't even care. I slept through their bouncing around. 
• I woke up to Mica digging his foot into my leg and Isaak getting off of me, only to get back on. 

• Drink, drink, drink, pee, pee, pee, sleep, sleep, sleep is what I've been trying to do. 
• Poor Daddy has had to do all the shoveling. I usually don't mind doing some of it. I like the exercise. But I can't be out in the cold getting worse. Daddy has Grandpa Tom's back issues.

• I'm hoping we're all better soon. 
• I want to go make my rounds to see the Great Grandparents. Great Grandma Kent moved into a home last weekend. Great Grandpa Kent isn't used to her being gone. I want us to go see them, but not if we're sick!