Things

Last Saturday evening Tyler had to go chaperone a stake dance so I decided to get the kids out of the house and we took a walk down a trail by the YMCA. While we were walking, we decided to look for a geocache that was supposed to be just off the trail. It was a tricky one (especially since it was covered in camouflage, but Steven found it. He was so proud of himself!

Penny, as usual, had me carry her a lot but she did walk sometimes so that she could find some super rocks!

The weather was perfect and it was such a nice walk, that when Tyler said he had a fireside to go to Sunday night, I thought we would do a second round. I should have known better. Nothing goes quite as well the second time around. There was also a geocache off the trail we walked on Sunday but it was a nano one and we had absolutely no luck in finding it. This made Steven extremely angry and Lucy extremely fussy and it was really just a miserable walk. I should have just stayed at home with them.

On Monday, Steven gave me some major attitude and ended up vacuuming the car, mowing the lawn and doing other misc chores as punishment. This meant we had to postpone FHE until he was done with all his work. While waiting Ben was a very good sport and let Penny push him around in a stroller and Lucy feed him fake food:

This week we started story time at the library. This is my attempt to get Lucy in free learning activities. She loved it so much and it made me wish even harder that we could put her in preschool. She is so ready for all that fun! And she is so constantly bored, this is going to be a rough school year. 

Also, boredom apparently causes Lucy to get creative in what she wears to pick up the boys from school.

During Penny's Mom & Tot Speech class Wednesday I asked the speech therapist if she had any tips for how I could help Lucy. She said doing repetitive phrases (like "I see...") or looking at a pictures and having her say what the person is doing in each picture or just really enunciating when I spoke to her would all help. So this week we have been doing a lot more talking than normal and I have really had to focus on slowing down my speech and enunciating words. For some reason this has been more challenging than I thought it would be! I also printed out some picture cards that would help us with all our speech practice. Lucy (or should I say Spider Lou) decided she wanted to "help" me cut out the cards. She was super helpful...

Wednesday I had Bunco and was once again mediocre and won zero prizes. I always have one really awesome round (I got 3 BUNCOs and 3 baby BUNCOs in one round) and then my rest are really lousy. That means I don't do good enough to win the high score prizes and I don't do bad enough to win the lowest score prizes. Regardless though, it was so much fun and I love getting out.

Thursday Tyler headed to Woodbadge Scout Camp and he came back Saturday afternoon. The kids were actually pretty good so it wasn't been too hard having him gone. The only bummer is that I have had a cough and the girls have had runny noses so we haven't been able to go out and socialize.

Lastly, I am still slowly trying to become a substitute. I got all my letters of recommendation and so I decided to start the application Thursday night. That ended up being quite traumatizing. It was late and I was tired but I figured I could handle filling in blanks. Turns out there was an aptitude test that required THINKING-- like MATH thinking!! I am pretty sure I did a terrible so...great. Then I got to a part that asked for contact info from my previous employer and since I don't have their current info, I had to stop. I am still waiting for her current info so it seems like this is going to be a long process. I don't know why I was thinking it wouldn't be. I also saw that I will need to get fingerprinted so that's another step. But on the bright side, I did find someone in the Ward who would be willing to watch my girls so that is one thing taken care of...