Tuesday

Our day today...

Jace went to seminary (we were up when he got home today, yeay!)

Aliysa went to a young writer's conference at BYU-Idaho.  She got a parking ticket while there.

 I went to my blood test.

Breakfast - simple muesli (oats, raisins, and milk)

Morning Chores

School

 Bob working on his computer woes - it turned out his hard drive was completely ruined.  So, he has lost a lot of information.  Reminder - do your regular computer backups!  We did one on my computer yesterday.  It took forever, but I'm so glad it's done.  I feel so bad for Bob.  

Abby made a fort during school.  This is one of those times I love being together for school.  She proudly showed her fort to Spencer, and said "would you like to come inside?"  He was so sweet with her.  

Lunch - steamed potatoes, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, & onions with butter, salt & pepper.

Another break from school - the first snowfall!  Which started as rain, then turned to snow, then hail, then into a football game in the wet snow.

Taycie was so excited for the snow!  I think she looks a lot like Abby in this picture.

This is how Buddy feels about the wet, cold weather.  

He's not one of those dogs who has learned to dance in the rain, he is just waiting for the storm to pass.

Courtney, Spencer, and Mallory had Violin & Cello lessons

Taycie took her nap in the car today - 

We took dinner to our friends who we forgot yesterday - Italian scrambled eggs, garlic toast, berry milkshake & pumpkin raisin cookies. 

I waited ALL day to hear the results of the blood test...I called twice, the second time just as they were closing.  The nurse said she wasn't allowed to tell me the result, but she kindly went and tracked down a P.A. who could sign it off, then she told me...

====250.8====

(Last week was 504.1, so we cut it by half this week.  And, this was actually only 6 days because I went on Wednesday last week.  I'm so happy.)

I've been juice fasting from Saturday night until this afternoon, because I was feeling so many food cravings, etc.  Just doing fresh juices for a couple of days was a good thing. 

Now Bob, Aliysa, Jace, and Courtney are gone to a combined YM/YW -  Gathering donations for Primary Children's Hospital.  

I stayed home because my little ones needed me.  We're getting ready for bed...

Monday

Our day...
Jace is up first, he gets up before 6, gets ready for the day, has personal gospel study, and leaves for seminary with his friend, Emily. 

He always says bye to Bob and I before he leaves, but we were so tired that we woke up only enough to say "bye, love you!", and then went back to sleep.  So, we got going on morning chores when he got home at 8:30.  We had family scripture study & prayer and then went through the morning routine.  It went well. 

Then we had breakfast.  I hadn't planned or made breakfast, so everyone made their own, and for their buddy.  Someone decided to make a grilled cheese sandwich, and that became the popular breakfast (yuck).  It wasn't the usual breakfast, but fun for a change I guess.  Usually we have hot cereal, muesli, smoothies, or eggs and toast. 

This day was one of those days that seems to go smoothly. I started on school lessons with the little ones because it seemed to be taking forever to get everyone together.  Soon everyone was in the family room together, studying, reading, working on projects.  Spencer had asked me earlier if he could earn some money, and I told him I'd pay him to clean out our pantry.  Well, Spencer doesn't do anything halfway, so he cleaned off and washed every shelf and found a few spoiled food items (we'd been having lots of fruit flies, and I'm so relieved that he wanted to do this job!)   So, he was cleaning that out while we all did school, with a few breaks (recess?) to play football in the family room.  Bob was home too, working on his computer that crashed Sunday evening.  It was just a nice, peaceful day.  I felt like it was a gift. 

I was enjoying our day so much that I completely forgot to take dinner to a friend that was counting on it.  Ooops. 

We decided to go bowling for FHE.

These tiny little bowling shoes were so cute.  Even though bowling shoes kind of gross me out. 

I only took these three pictures, and the camera battery died.  Bob has more on his phone, so I'll add them to this post later. 

A day in our life...Monday

Monday morning was a busy one.  

We start each morning with family scripture study and prayer - today we called the kids in around 7:20, because it was Jace's first day of Driver's Ed.  

Aliysa was not too happy that we called for everyone in at that time, because she has been getting up at 7:00 and jogging, actually I can't call it jogging because it is more intense than a "jog".  She warms up for a few minutes, and then runs for 1 minute with the treadmill on its fastest speed, then walks briskly for 1 minute, then repeats.  She does this for 20 minutes.  And she does it every day.  

I told her she should only do interval training 1-3 times a week, but she said she loves it, and pointed out that football players go to practice and play hard every single day, sometimes twice a day.  So, I'm leaving it up to her.  

Anyway, she's been enjoying her nice morning routine, jogging, walking outside, drinking her water, feeding the chickens, stretching out, and making and eating her own breakfast.  So, she was grumpy when Bob called her into our room (right during her jog).  I talked to her and asked what exactly she wanted to accomplish in the morning, and how long it would take.  She agreed to get up even earlier.  

Each morning we read 10 verses in the Book of Mormon.  Right now we're reading about the stripling warriors - one of our favorite stories.  Then we have family prayer and begin our "morning chores".  Here's how the routine goes:

We have 5 minutes to complete each chore.  Some chores take less time, so the kids hurry to start another chore that may take longer.  Bob times them on his watch and whistles when 5 minutes is up.  The kids have 10 seconds to be in our room (he does a short whistle when the 10 seconds is up).  Then he asks them, in order of oldest to youngest, if they completed that chore.  They get 1 point if they were there when the 10 seconds were up, and 1 point for completing the chore (quickly, cheerfully, and thoroughly).  So Bob calls out each child's name, and they answer "Yes, Yes", (or, "No, yes", or "No, no". etc.)  Bob keeps a tally sheet, one mark for each "yes".  When they get 50 points, they get a Yummy Earth Lollipop.

Here are the chores we do: scriptures (they read the Book of Mormon for 5 minutes), prayer (they have to spend the entire 5 minutes on this, not jump ahead to other chores), dressed, hair, make bed, clean bedroom, upstairs zone, trash/hamper/hangers (empty the first two, and gather all extra hangers out of their closet), farm chore, laundry (we sort all the clean laundry, fold it, and put it away.  Since we do this each morning, it really does get done in 5 minutes. Yeay!), downstairs zone.  

So, even at 5 minutes each, this routine takes almost an hour.  It has taken Bob and I a long time to be totally consistent with doing this daily.  It takes some patience, and I've had to learn to not listen to excuses.  Bob pointed out that the worst thing that happens is they might lose one point, so I don't let them say "I was hurrying to get here", etc.  If they report that a chore was finished (like cleaning their room), and it really wasn't done well, then their points go back down to zero.  

This routine has been such a nice thing for our family.  Before breakfast the whole house is cleaned up, everyone is dressed, has their hair done, the animals are fed, and the laundry done.  It is a great foundation for the day.  

Then we eat breakfast, do our kitchen jobs, brush teeth, and lately, we go outside and work in the yard for a bit.  

Anyway... back to Monday.  I was in charge of the chores because we had:

8:00 - Mallory had to be at her activity leader's home to go to day camp

8:30 - Jace had an appointment with the dermatologist for a curious mole on his back

9:00 - Jace had to be at the courthouse to register for Driver's Ed, and then he had to go straight to Driver's ed.  

We harvested our first cherry tomato!

For Family Home Evening, we went to the Lake.  It was beautiful weather and we had such a nice evening.  

 Courtney & Abby

 Mallykins

 Aliysa & Taycie.  Aliysa sat with me on the beach.  She was too sunburned from a YW floating activity to move her arms, so she didn't want to kayak, and it took all the energy I had just to go to the lake and sit.  We had fun chatting and watching our boys show off.

 Taycie loves being outside

 Jace is getting pretty good and kayaking - he was practicing his roll. 

 Abby kept declaring how brave she was to go so far out in the tube. 

 Why the swim goggles?  Best be prepared for anything!

 Bob teaching Spencer how to roll

 Oh how I love that guy.

 Yes, even when he looks like this.  We were laughing about how his hair looked when he came up from rolling.  So he gave us this look.

Andrew is such a sweet boy

Home we go, happy and ready for bed. 

And one more picture from today - Abby caring for her dearest doll - Grace. 

A Week In Our Life...Day 1

I'm hoping the next few posts won't bore any readers of our blog, but I want to be able to remember later what our life was like at this point in our child rearing years.  It seems like there are so many details we'll forget.  So, here's a snapshot into a typical summer week for us.  I'm beginning on Tuesday, but I'll start by describing Sunday, and then go day by day from there. We'll see what this week holds for us!

Sunday - getting ready for church.  Oh, the woe of getting 22 shoes on 22 feet on Sunday mornings.  (Okay, so it's not so hard to get Bob's shoes on his feet.)  And making sure those shoes are clean, and match all the suits or dresses.  Really this is more of an ordeal than it needs to be, because I often forget to gather up the Sunday shoes right after church...that's my goal for this week.  In fact, I'll do it today.  I'm going to do what I've planned to do many a Sunday: have a tote to store all the little ones' Sunday shoes.  All the shoes go into the tote right after church.  Brilliant!  The older children keep pretty good track of their own, but I'll tell them that if they ever are running behind schedule because they're looking for shoes, then they'll have to put a pair in the tote too.  However, I was missing a pair of mine this week.  :(  Then I remembered that I left them in Utah when we were there last. How can I expect my kids to keep track of their shoes?  Sigh....

Finally, after eating a hasty breakfast of bread and milk, we're off.  Some weeks we really need to get to church so we can get back into a religious frame of mind after preparing to head to church.  But this week was relatively uneventful, and everyone looked presentable.  In fact, they looked adorable, if you want my unbiased opinion ;)

This was my first week back to church after my surgery, and I was planning to just go to Sacrament meeting, but I felt pretty good and decided to go to Sunday School as well.  We have one certain child who has been having some reverence challenges, and I planned to make this child sit with us in our class, but Bob vetoed that idea and just gave the child a warning of dire consequences if this child did not remember to be reverent.  Talked to the primary teacher...and headed to our class.  It was a good lesson, we have a good teacher.  By the end of the lesson I was yawning incessantly and feeling like every bit of energy had been drained from my body.  So Bob took me home where I changed into pj's and collapsed into bed.  It seemed like a minute or two, but an hour passed and everyone was home again.

Sunday is Bob's day to cook and do dishes (thus the tradition of bread and milk on Sunday mornings).  He decided to make fried egg sandwiches for lunch, and got creative and made me a sandwich with a fried egg, mustard, ranch dressing and lettuce.  It was not his finest accomplishment, and I choked down half of it before scraping my bowl into the chicken scraps.  Mallory, though, had seconds, and even asked for another the next day for her sack lunch at day camp.  :)

We watched a church movie "The Testaments" as a family, and then Bob and I had some interviews with children, including a discussion with the above mentioned reverence challenged individual, who admitted that the primary teacher had to remind once.  So, this child called their primary teacher to apologize, and then Bob talked with the primary teacher to clarify.  The report was that there had been more than one reminder, but there was a big improvement.  We'll see how it goes next week. 

Aliysa is our ward's stake youth representative, and she had a committee meeting in the evening.  They are planning a youth conference right now. 

Bob had a court of honor to attend in the evening, and so evening farm chores and bedtime routine didn't go as smoothly as they could have.  (Exhausted tearful Mom)  By 10:00 we were finally getting everyone in bed.  Whew...

I was happy again to have Bob home.  He was gone Thursday - Saturday for a High Adventure Scout Trip.  Oh, there's a funny story.  The first night he was gone, I was just about to go to bed (way too late), and realized there was a voice message that I needed to listen to.

It was an 'emergency notification' from the Sherriff's office:  "...[male name] escaped today at approximately 4pm.  Subject is a 39 year old male, that escaped on foot.  He is described as being 5 foot 9, and 190 pounds. He had slicked back hair, brown in color, a goatee, brown eyes, and multiple tattoos.  He was last seen wearing a long sleeved white shirt, with blue jeans, white tennis shoes, and a brown Carhartt jacket.  Fremont County Sheriff's office would like to encourage citizens to secure their homes and vehicles.  Please contact only if you have additional information about the subject."  EEEEEK!  I was instantly so scared!  Of course this message had to come when it was dark outside.  I just KNEW he was sitting in our yard, watching us and noticing that my hubby and oldest son were gone camping!

 I shut every window (we usually leave them open a bit to let the cold air in), locked them all, double checked all the doors, and asked Aliysa if she would mind coming down to my room instead of sleeping all the way up in the attic.  She laughed but did it just to ease my mind.  I saw Spencer's hatchet in his room and picked it up and put it by my bed, turned on all the outside porch lights, and checked my firearm.  After all that preparation and a nightly prayer, I actually slept pretty well, although I did snap awake a few times when children got up to use the bathroom. 

Pretty funny that it had to come the night Bob left.  I'm sure all the other wives of scout leaders in our ward were a little alarmed as well.

Well, it's bedtime for the Lamoreaux kiddos.  And so, this long journal entry must end.  

Hmmm, what is a blog post without pictures?   I'll try to find one...

 Here's one I never posted!  Spencer recently shaved his head...and grew a nappy little beard. 

And here's Taycie in a swing in Utah - oh how she loves to swing!  Lately she has figured out how to climb into her little swing by our front porch.  Even if no one pushes her, she'll just sit there forever.  But usually she has lots of volunteers to push her, and she laughs in delight.  She is a joy to all of us.