Long time, no post! We pretty much just skipped an ENTIRE month! There's been lots going on. No doubt about that. Just not much time to sit down and write it out. March brought Spring and our long awaited Spring Break getaway to Lake Powell. That didn't happen. That's right. We had to cancel at the last second. Our sweet girl got sick. VERY sick. And the doctor's verdict was pneumonia. And just like that...we were homebound! Our sweet girl spent the ENTIRE week in bed. As in, every single day of it...just sleeping and coughing and resting and recovering. And visiting the doctor. Three times to be exact! I wasn't totally sure she would make it back to school when everyone returned on Monday...but she did! She was exhausted. And cranky. And exhausted...but she pulled through and ended up having a GREAT week back! Part of what made it so great was her class field trip to Phoenix for the J A Biztown day. It was a field trip they had been working toward and preparing for for a long time. They had been learning the ins and outs of the business world. How to write and receive checks, how to balance a checkbook, how to run a business, figure profits and income, etc. Each child in the fifth grade chose positions to interview for. They dressed in their very best, prepared resumes and put their best foot forward in a series of interviews with a panel of adults. They were asked about the qualities they possessed that might make them a good candidate for the desired job. They were asked about their past and current experiences that might contribute to their qualifications and about people they admire in life and why. It was a grueling and stressful process for them. They were total bundles of nerves. And then...after the interviews were all done, they had to WAIT. For an entire weekend and then two more days. The suspense was killing them! You might be wondering what position my Clara decided to interview for? Well...she's a high achiever and she set her sights this time on THE position. Clara decided to interview for the position of Mayor of Biztown! I don't know who was more nervous about the interviews...her or me! When the jobs were announced Clara was OVERJOYED to find out the SHE GOT THE JOB!!!!!! She beat out all the other 5th graders for the prestigious position and did a GREAT job in Phoenix! She had to make several speeches throughout the day to the townspeople, give several television interviews and sign paychecks for the entire town. There were lots of meetings and many issues that required her attention. She had a BLAST, but at the end of the day, told me she didn't get paid enough to do that job all the time! LOL! Spoken like a true overworked grown up!
And now...here we are in April! And it is FLYING by! Holy cow! Cannot believe we are a third of the month gone already! What's new in April? Well...Clara is currently juggling tennis lessons, ballet classes and swim team. Ballet is preparing for the June recital and swim team is just gearing up. Clara is proving to be a natural in the water! She has only been swimming for two weeks and has already been moved up a group level! All she wants to do is swim, swim, swim! We are out of the house 5 days a week with her activities. It's total craziness, but it's fun to see her enjoying and doing so well in her activities. The schools are all smack in the middle of state testing this week and next. And we are in the final 7 weeks of the school year now! WOW! Can you believe we are out of school NEXT month?! I am SOOO looking forward to some nice, low key summer action! Ben continues to do quite well in school and Max is slowly, but surely making an academic turn around. While he won't make any honor rolls, we DO have some hope that he will at least PASS his classes. Which is more than we could have hoped a few weeks ago!
In addition to all the kids stuff, we are currently having our house painted. This is the first time we have ever had to tackle this. And WHAT an adventure! Picking the color was stressful, since we decided to change it. Once we decided on our color, we thought it would be easy sailing. But that has NOT been the case! We have had one disaster after another. We hated the treatment they did on our wood vigas. MAJORLY hated it. So much that we ended up having to spend an entire day pressure washing the new paint OFF of the house. Sigh. We wondered if we wouldn't have to just totally replace all of our woodwork. We are talking disaster on a major scale here! Fortunately, we were able to find a solution that worked for all of us. We are now into the SECOND week of house painting. Oy! Hopefully, we will be done by the end of this week and will NOT be reaching into a third one! I do NOT enjoy living with all of my windows and doors all taped up!
On top of all the crazy paint ordeal, I managed to pick up some nasty cold bug. Came down last Friday with a sore throat. By Saturday afternoon I had added a fever and body aches to the mix. Monday brought on the snotty nose and cough. I was certain I would be cured by now, on Wednesday...but as I sit typing this...Wednesday has been a pretty miserable day and there is no end in sight for the snot! I am REALLY hoping that tomorrow is a GREAT day. My new symptom tonight is itchy ears! They are driving me CRAZY!!!! I am hoping the drainage is a positive sign, but I might lose my mind before this clears up! This has gone on WAY too long for this mama! I have felt sicker than sick and am ready to get back into life!
On the pet front, Cooper has been a MAJOR pain in the butt!!! He has learned to raid the trash can. Multiple ways! First he learned how to get into our COVERED stainless steel trash can. We managed to discourage him for a day or two by turning the can around so it opened opposite. It took him a couple of days, but he quickly figured it out and defeated our efforts. Then I bought a new smaller plastic trash can and placed it under the kitchen sink. It took him less than a week to figure out how to open the cabinet! Can you believe it?! Talk about a crazy, pain in the butt dog!!!! Finally, Chris had to install baby latches on our kitchen cabinet there under the sink. Not something we ever imagined we would be doing with our youngest baby being ten years old! If only that had solved all of our problems! Cooper's other favorite place is in the pantry. If its left open even a tiny crack he wiggles his way in there. It's a very small pantry, and if he wiggles his way to the back there on the floor, it's dark and we can't see him. He's been shut in there a couple of times. This past week I locked him in there by accident and left to take the kids to school. He ended up being in there for about 45 minutes! In that time he managed to relieve me of an entire bag of pita pockets and who knows what else?! After that incident, I placed a baby gate inside the pantry door along the bottom so he can't get in there. That way he can't be under the shelf where we can't see him AND he can't use anything on the floor as a boost up to the bottom shelf...where I have indeed found him on more than one occasion!
In addition to baby proofing the house, we've also attempted to snake proof our puppies! Cooper and Oscar both went through rattlesnake avoidance training a few weekends ago. That was interesting. I did not know when we registered them that we would have to personally walk our dogs RIGHT BY THE SNAKES! The snakes that most definitely were NOT in cages!!!! They both did well with the training. Oscar was not amused and, as we thought...was a super quick study. I'm not totally convinced Cooper REALLY got it...but the trainer felt confident that he registered the snake as a no no. Let's just HOPE he's right!!!
On a high note, we got our Gigi all moved here from Texas. She is living just a couple of miles away from us. She is busy unpacking all of her boxes and settling into her new place. Before long, it should be feeling like home!
Looking to the future, we are planning ANOTHER camping trip next weekend. Here's HOPING we can all stay healthy enough to actually GO this time! Our last TWO attempts have had to be cancelled. I really REALLY am looking forward to this one! We are camping with Clara's sweet teacher next weekend and it should be a great time with great weather! As an extra treat, we get to have Clara's little BFF come along with us and spend the weekend. Clara is CRAZY excited about having Claire along for a whole weekend and it will be nice for all of us too for Clara to have someone to play with!
So that's the gist of what's happening at our house. I'm sure I've left plenty out! But hopefully I managed to hit all the high points! Until we meet again!!! Life is good in the desert!
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