Hi Everyone,
I didn't write a letter last week-- it got way too late. But it's not quite 10:30 here, so I can squeeze in a quick letter before bed.
This last week was spring break for the public schools around here. As such, the boys were kind of expecting to also get the week off. However, when we looked at how many days of school we need to complete to get our 180 days, we agreed we should at least to some lessons. So we got up on Monday and attempted to do lessons. It wasn't a great day. I'm beginning to seriously hate Mondays. In the afternoon, we had flute and speech. At least, I thought so. On Mondays we go down to UT and drop Mosey off for speech, then go drop Joseph off for flute, then go back and pick up Mosey, then go back and pick up Joseph. Well, we hit lots of traffic on the way downtown. I was very surprised and couldn't figure out the reason, since there was no accident. So we were very late dropping Mosey off. I watched him walk into the building and then skedaddled to get Joseph to flute, since he was already late for that. Well, not 5 minutes later I got a call on my cell phone. Turns out that UT also had spring break, and there was no speech. No one told me! I was very annoyed. Luckily the receptionist was there and was able to call me. But I couldn't come straight back because I had to get Joseph to flute. So poor Mosey had to wait there for 20 minutes before I got back to pick him up. After we got home, it struck me why there was so much traffic-- SXSW is this week! SXSW (South by Southwest) is a big (super, duper big) week long music festival here in Austin. It's huge. There are bands everywhere, and performances all day and all night all week long. Wristbands to get in to these performances are hundreds of dollars a piece. So anyway, that definitely explained the traffic heading into downtown.
On Tuesday I decided to let the boys have the day off. I could tell they needed it. So they spent the day reading and playing and digging canals in the dirt outside and filling them with water (making a big, muddy mess, of course :-)).
Wednesday was Pi day. :-) We had tamale pie for dinner. We went to the library in the afternoon. (One very nice thing about spring break week was that we had the week off of piano, violin, and cello lessons, which gave us a couple of free afternoons.). In the evening a guy came over to try and sell us replacement windows. We need them, as our power bills were absolutely horrendous last year. We could have afforded a very nice vacation to a cooler climate for the amount we paid in electricity running our AC. But ultimately we decided not to go with this guy. They were the cadillac of windows, but our house just isn't a cadillac, if you know what I mean.
Thursday was nothing spectacular. Natasha came over in the afternoon-- the only one of our art group who took me up on our offer of a play day-- I think everyone else was doing spring-breaky things. It's fun talking to new moms. Desiree isn't a new mom exactly, she has an eight year old, but I think the 8 year break qualifies her as a new mom again. New moms have a tendency to be rather obsessed with their babies' sleep schedules. And rightly so since baby's sleep schedule dictates mom's sleep schedule, which in turn dictates her level of sanity. This obsession leads to a strong need to talk about the intricacies of your particular baby's sleep habits. Therefore time spent with Desiree will inevitably include discussions about Nadia's sleeping, or lack thereof. :-) I don't mind one bit-- I think there must be something important and cathartic about being able to witness to someone else the frustrations, anxieties, and occasional small triumphs in the ever-elusive quest to Get Your Baby to Sleep. :-)
On Thursday night Ben and I went to Lowes and spent a couple of hours looking at windows and new kitchen cabinets. I hate my kitchen cabinets. They are very ugly. But, the wood matches the paneling in our living room and breakfast area, and I worry that choosing another type of wood will just look odd. And then when we came home, I realized that a lot of what I like about new cabinets, is the crown molding and pretty details around the top. But our kitchen has a low ceiling because of the air ducts that run under Joseph's room (which is right above the kitchen), so I'm not sure new cabinets will even have that much of an impact. Oh well. We did decide to try to replace all of our ugly stained wood, hollow-core, cheap and flimsy interior doors.
Friday is supposed to be our day off, but since we took Tuesday off, we did lessons anyway. I let them have a pretty easy day, though. In the afternoon I took Joseph and Brigham to the boulder park where they played for a while (or actually, just read-- I guess that's more fun to do at a park than at home?), and then walked themselves home! It's only a mile and a half, and I figured that at 10 years old, with the two of them, they're completely capable of walking home themselves. It takes them through a number of different streets, and along a pretty busy road, so I think they were a tiny bit nervous. Joseph is my worrier, actually. He's very cautious, and gets very nervous especially when Brigham does crazy things (like climb 3 stories up into a tree). He packed a backpack full of flashlights, candles, a lighter, water, and granola bars just in case Brigham got lost in the "caves" at this park. (They are not really caves-- just spaces between and behind a bunch of gigantic boulders in one area.) But Brigham didn't get lost (we just finished reading Tom Sawyer which may have contributed to his concern over caves), and they made it home safely.
Friday evening I went to dinner with some friends at a Thai restaurant, and then to see the movie "The Vow." It was a fun evening doing something Ben would have hated. :-) He hates Thai food, and "The Vow" was pretty much a "chick-flick." I liked it though, especially because it was based on a true story.
Saturday was pretty busy. Joseph didn't feel good so he skipped archery. Ben went to Lowes to get a door and the supplies needed to install it. We were busy getting started with it when I realized with a start that Brigham was going to be very late for horseback riding lessons. So we raced out there, and he was late, but it was worth it because there was a baby horse, less than 2 days old there in the stable. Oh it was so cute! It is totally amazing to me how animals like horses can immediately stand up and walk around right after birth. The little thing was positively scampering around her mother in the stall. It was almost impossible to imagine that gangly, long-legged, bouncy, bounding little creature folded up tight in her mother's belly just two days before. Imagine if humans were like that! On the way back, Brigham and I stopped at Lowes to get a couple of other things Ben needed for the door. Well, Lowes is always busy on a Saturday afternoon, and it was yesterday as well. I got inside the store only to discover that the only motorized cart left was broken. I was very annoyed, and was getting ready to leave and try another store when a man stopped me and asked if he could push me around in the manual wheelchair and help me find what I needed. At first I demurred, saying I'd just go to Walmart. But he very sincerely wanted to help, so I let him! He pushed me in the wheelchair while his girlfriend pushed a cart and we roamed the aisles finding saw horses, white paint, and a new doorknob. He took probably 15-20 minutes out of his day to do this for me. It was so, so nice. He wheeled me out to the parking lot and unloaded my things into the back of the van. I told him that I collect stories of really nice things people do for me, and he just made my list. :-) Whenever people do really nice things, I always wonder, if the tables were turned, if I'd be the one so nice. I doubt it. Maybe I would, now, having been in my position. But for someone who hasn't? It's really remarkable.
After we got home, I drove the boys out to help with a move (this couple did it right-- asked way in advance, had everything all boxed up and organized, asked specific people to help-- i.e. didn't simply call the EQ president and expect him to organize it, and provided pizza for all the helpers. Mosey did NOT want to go at first. I get very upset when he is like that, because I want so much for my boys to learn to work and serve and to do so willingly. I was very tempted to get angry and threaten this or that if he did not get in the car NOW. But I resisted because I realized if I got mad and forced him to go, he would go, but he'd be sulking the whole time, probably wouldn't help, and would get nothing out of it. So I swallowed my annoyance and sweet-talked him into going. It took some doing, because he's stubborn, but it worked, and by the time we got there, he jumped out of the car, and was the first of the boys to jump in and start moving boxes.
When Ben and the boys got back, they worked on the door for a while. It's much harder than it seemed at first. You have to chisel out the places for the hinges and drill holes for the doorknob and latch, and it is very time consuming if you don't have fancy tools. Ben got really frustrated. Midway through, we decided to take a break and go see "John Carter" which was a lot better than I thought it would be. Ben and I ended up being up till way past 1:00 AM finishing the door and getting the house ready for Sunday.
OK, this letter is ridiculously long. Here's Sunday in a nutshell: Church was early after being up so late. After church I had a frustrating scout meeting. There are some issues with some of the scout leadership people in our ward. At home, I made a batch of Irish soda bread, since I did NOTHING for St. Patrick's Day the day before except wear green. We went to go see a house a couple of miles away-- one story, half an acre, pool, beautiful view lot. But unfortunately it had a step-down living room, the garage was on the wrong side of the house, my wheelchair wouldn't fit in the doorway of the master bathroom, and the backyard would be entirely inaccessible to me, being build on a steep slope. Oh well. We'd like to find a one-story house, but my requirements are so particular, I'm not sure we'll ever find something exactly right. I also shudder at the thought of having to go through the process of selling this house... We had the Sturdevants over for dinner (more talk about baby sleep schedules, but not too much :-)). I made shrimp pasta, fruit salad, and the Irish soda bread. The boys got into bed at a decent hour, although I could hear Mosey kicking his feet on his wall for more than an hour and a half after he went to bed. Aaargh! Why won't he sleep? I guess the obsession over your kid's sleep habits doesn't end with infancy. :-).
That's it, have a great week everyone!
Love,
Gabrielle
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