This week

 This week has been rather emotional all week.  I'm trying to unravel how I'm feeling.  It hasn't been a bad week, I suspect that I'm just tired.  This week has been a week of service.  Service that was needed and freely given, but I'm allowed to be tired too.  

This week started my "new" calling.  I was moved to Ada's YW's group.  I'm excited to be with her and excited to work with this age group too.  There are more challenges than I thought there would be, but the girls aren't as busy as the older group so that's a plus.  Out of our list of 12 girls, 6 come on a regular basis.  One is non-binary and has decided that witchcraft is a thing, but also wants to come to activities.  Two of them come from broken homes so are only around part time. 2 are in full time sports. 1 already has a job at 14.  2 of them are uber shy (one of them only comes if her mom is coming too.) I love to see how Ada reacts and loves each of these girls no matter their challenges. Adjusting to my new girls and new co-leaders.... and adjusting my viewpoint of what is expected of me has been more emotional than I thought it would be. Another plus side of moving classes is that I get to work with my daycare partner as my YW's partner as well.  We already work well together so I think this will be nice.  

Good news though, we were able to get Cristina, Frede and Lia all fingerprinted and get them to the DMV to get Drivers Permits and pass their written tests!  It's been a 5 year road of renewing passports, getting all the right paperwork, Covid, cancer and finally this.  They just need to hold their permits for 3 months, pass their driving tests and take one more online test... One step at a time.  I won't be able to translate for their driving tests, so I told them to go practice the words that were on the written test in english.  Sometimes it feels like I have a bunch of teenagers.  At least by the time my teens get there, I might know what I'm doing.

Emma had mastitis, so I took Peter overnight so that she could sleep and recover.  Putting him to bed is the funniest thing.  He looks like a soldier laying under his blankets. It's fun that he's getting more communicative.

Hannah has come after school twice this week.  She's trying to sort out her feelings and say goodbye to everyone.  They finally took her mom into custody and have her on a 6-month treatment plan, which means that Hannah's brother is trying to get legal custody through the courts.  Their case was heard this week and she's flying out to South Carolina this weekend. She's happy and sad.  You can see that she's a complete bundle of nerves.  Ada and I have been trying to be a fun and safe place for her.  I don't know how Ada's going to feel when her friend is not only not in our neighborhood but is far away in another state and eventually in Japan when her brother's orders go through. I will miss her.  I kind of feel like she's been a close part of our family even if it's only been for a little while.  I'll have to make sure that I'm a safe place for Ada while she's adjusting.

I feel like Ada is officially all grown.  (I'm starting to see why my mom was more emotional when "happy" things were happening to me.) She wanted to get her ears pierced.  We went yesterday with Hannah and they had so much fun browsing all the earrings together.  I hope it's a fun and good memory.  She looks very grown up and has Evelyn saying that she wants her ears pierced now too.  I'll let her do it eventually, but she's struggling to brush her hair every day let alone take care of newly pierced ears. Later baby, later.

Another plus?  I got to hang out and chat with Reid.  He needed a ride to a doctor check up for his hip. I love my family.  When I think of God's love, I think it's a little like how I feel towards my extended family.  I love them through their trials and I love them because of our shared history.  I love them despite and because of certain things.  Reid and I have such huge different experiences growing up with the same people.  We share a lot of political and social views.  He's very smart and it's really sad that he's had to struggle with addiction. If we'd met somewhere else, he would be a distant friend, but because he's my family I love him fiercely like I always have. Since I was a little girl, I prayed for him in my prayers and as an adult I've put his name in the temple many times. I love to see him finally find a stableness in his life and start to do better.

I'm almost ready to file our taxes, which will be nice.  One more thing I won't have to worry about for a while. Jer has washed almost a weeks worth of laundry because I just couldn't make myself do it this week.  He really is spectacular. Next step?  I need to submit my food claim for the daycare by next Monday, because Monday will be crazy.

cookies

This note was left with cookies on our porch.

temple

I got to go do baptisms with Sam, Ada, my Mom, Aunt Beth, Uncle Son, Tom and Inez.

Another round

 I just finished up another week of daycare.  It was nice to be done, but a half hour after my last kid left, my partner calls and tells me that her son has covid... So, I will be doing daycare next week and maybe the week after that as well.  The problem is that we had gotten over our numbers right about Christmas time, and we've been having to split the daycare up.  The person that's supposed to be working takes the early morning kids... 8 of them... and the person that was supposed to be off for the week takes the other 6-7 kids.  It means less time off, but we have 3 of them leaving in Feb and 4 of them starting school in the fall, so we should be within our limits soon without having to tell any parents to find other care for their kids. But for now, that means that I will keep the 8 that I had this week and the 6 that she had through the week need to find alternate care until we know that they aren't going to come down with covid too.  I was telling Jer that something that this pandemic has helped me with is being flexible and being able to change plans easily when needed. Just another example of plans and temporary plans.

As a side note, Jer was just called to be the Stake Technology Specialist... two days before Stake Conference.  He went and did it, and the person that trained him turned out to test positive for Covid on Tuesday.  Either it was too early to get Jer sick or Jer's mask helped, or Jer is asymptomatic.  He got tested this morning, but because of the sheer number of people with Covid right now, he won't get his results for a couple of days.  Here's to hoping.  One way or another, we'll be okay.  There were so many cases at the school that they chose to do online learning Friday through Tuesday of this next week and cut down on cases.  

Ada's best friend Hannah left today too.  I'm sad that Ada's lost yet another friend, but I'm so glad for the positive help that will come from the move.  Ada's been such a great friend and I'm proud of how she's handled such adult situations. Hannah's mom has been having delusions since Sept and Hannah has been trying so hard to get mental health help for her.  She's refused and we've come really close to being able to have her here in our home, but DCFS said that she was being provided for in her home and they couldn't help her.  We've helped her with calling the police and LOTS of days hanging out at our house.  FINALLY, they sold their home and now they are technically homeless. (They moved out today and checked into a hotel.) DCFS was able to come and take Hannah and the police took her mom into custody to go to the mental hospital down in Provo.  All because she was now "homeless".  Hannah texted me with such joy!  I'm so glad that her mom will finally get the help she needs and deserves (mother of 7 who lost her husband 4 years ago). I'm also glad that Hannah will finally feel safe and not have to sleep with her shoes on and her bag packed.  She's currently with her brother that's a student, but she can't stay long term. The hope is that her brother in Japan can take it to court and get legal guardianship over her while her mom is getting better.  Hannah's 15, so she might be over the age of 18 by the time her mom is stable again.  I'm sad to lose such a sweet neighbor, but I'm so happy for her.

Final weird tangent for tonight.  You can tell that our health system and labor force are strained right now.  One of my daycare mom's is the supervisor of the CNA's at a nursing home.  She has 15 staff out right now.  All of the stores and restaurants in our neighborhood have 'we're hiring' signs.  One of the ladies who used to be my Young Women came home for the 2 week break from college and immediately was hired even though she'd only be around for 2 weeks.  I got a sinus infection from that cold in December.  I knew it was a sinus infection because I get them often.  I tried treating it from home because I wanted to avoid the doctors.  I finally went into the insta-care (it was a weekend) and the doctor wouldn't believe me.  Even after I had two negative covid tests, he still wouldn't give me antibiotics.  I called my Primary care doctor's after hours line to see if they could do anything.... 3 calls in 6 hours and no answer from the doctor.  On Monday I called into the main office twice.  All I got was a text saying that my prescription was denied.  I was really confused because I wasn't asking for a prescription.... I was trying to ask what to do next.  I called one more time on Tuesday and didn't hear back from them until Wed night.  Yeah, you can tell that they are short staffed and super busy.  I think it's the same everywhere for the next few weeks through this Omicron spike.

Baby Charlotte Rose

 

My grandniece, Rosie, was born on Christmas day.  Best presents for Emma and Stephen.  She's adorable and I'm glad Emma is done with her pregnancy.  While they're fun, it's nice when you're not pregnant anymore.  I had a cold 3 weeks before Christmas, so I waited until about 2 weeks after Rosie was born to do a photo session.  I still haven't had a chance to edit them, but here are my favorites.  Only two are edited.

These last two are the edited ones.

New Year's

 

Sam decided to crochet Ada a Hufflepuff scarf for Christmas.  He didn't finish in time, but it's been fun watching him work on in whenever she's not around.

Evelyn taught our first Family Night of the year about the Plan of Salvation and the importance of covenants.  Seth is getting baptized this year, so it's a perfect year for that.

Jer and I had a rare moment where we were both home with each other and not the kids, so we went and had some Kneader's breakfast.

Aunt Mary was down from Wyoming to visit Emma and the new baby.  She brought us some shirts that she had gotten for her family for Christmas, but when she washed them they had shrunk too much and they found a home here.  My kids love them and it was fun to see Mary for a tiny minute.

We did New Year's Eve playing games, drinking soda and eating shrimp.

Ada's homework

Ada was in math and her teacher looked at her paper while they were working... he started laughing and had Ada share her answer with the rest of the class.