Painting Chairs

We are SLOWLY working on getting the girls bedroom back together. Last weekend they started painting the chairs to their desks. We will have some pretty loud colors going on, but I think it will be cute. I can't wait to see the final result. Hopefully, their room will turn out as cute in real life as it looks in my head.

Pre-School

I have been collecting stuff over the past few years in hopes to one day do a pre-school out of my home. Well, this year I made it happen. I started trying to get licensed by the city in April and finished all of the requirements by July. Our first day of pre-school was on September 6th. I have a full class of eight 3 and 4 year olds. The twins love it and I am having alot of fun.

The Flood

Last Thursday, I had been a "single" mom for two weeks and three days. I tried to get a hold of Darin all day, but his phone was off. I then noticed that there were some large purchases on our debit card and I became concerned. At 9:00 at night, after being in a panic, I finally got a hold of Darin. Here is the story of his very eventful day. On Wednesday 9-7-2011 it was raining really hard at his job in Pennsylvania, so hard that his managers told them to call it a day and head home. All the guys went to bed pretty early that night, but were jolted awake to the National Guard banging on their door forcing a mandatory evacuation. The guys grabbed what they could and headed out the door in knee deep water. The Susquehanna River was flowing through their front yard and rushing past the house in the back yard. When Darin went to bed the river was about 40 feet from their back door. The guys loaded up in a 15 passenger van and after 2 detours finally made it out taking a chance as they drove the van through three foot deep water to escape the flood. They traveled to higher ground (NY) and the company put them up in the hotel. The area was declared a natural disaster zone and Darin was told that it would be a minimum of 5 weeks before he could return to work. The guys could choose to stay in the hotel or head home. Dairn decided to head home since he missed his family and now was not making any money. Darin flew home and finally called me to tell me the harrowing story at 9:00 p.m. when he landed in the Salt Lake Airport. Heather and Shane picked him up from the airport and we were re-united at midnight. I am so grateful that he is alive and well and not stranded on the roof of the house he was living in. The house's first story is still under water and it may take them a while to re build. In the mean time, Darin is hoping to help out with harvest with some of the larger farms in the area to at least keep some cash flow coming in. The video is of some if the destruction that occurred that night.

Canning

It is canning season again here in Idaho. This weekend I have spent quite a bit of time doing peaches and corn. Earlier I did beans, chicken noodle soup, and canned apricots and apricot jam. Next weekend is pears and the following weekend after that will probably be applesauce. It is a lot of work, but I like it and the food seems to taste so much better to me.

Corn

Peaches

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Apricots

Dry Beans

The Third Day of School

Abigail's first day of second grade was on September 1st. When I got to the school to take her pictures the camera battery died and I was so upset. September 2nd was Friday and they always wear their school shirts on Fridays. Monday the 5th was Labor day and we didn't have school, so I snapped these pictures on her third day of school which was September 6th. She seems to be liking her new class and loves her new teacher Mrs. Sirois. Mrs. Sirois reminds me of a sweet grandma that you just want to climb up in her soft lap and hear a story. I hope Abigail doesn't take advantage of her soft-spoken-teacher and appreciates the calmness of her classroom.

Yes, my Texas friends Abigail is wearing a jacket. It is about 55 degrees in the mornings when Abigail heads off to school.

5 in 5

I have a really hard time keeping my house from being so cluttered. I see the clutter and I feel a bit overwhelmed. Yesterday the girls and I tried something new and it worked, so I thought I would share. After dinner I said, "we are going to spend 5 minutes in 5 rooms picking up." They moaned and grumbled, but off we went anyway. I let the girls choose the 5 rooms they wanted to pick up and we set the timer and cleaned and picked up for 5 minutes. Sometimes we were able to pick up the entire room and sometimes we weren't able to finish in 5 minutes, but by the end of the game the girls were having a great time, happy and no one was complaining. In fact they asked if we could do this every day. SURE THING! The house isn't completely clutter free, but we made a pretty good dent and I feel much better after 25 minutes. Who knows we may do 4 in 4 or six in six or 10 in 10 next time.

New And Exciting Change

As many of you know, things have been a struggle in our family for many reasons over the past two years. Too many reasons to explain, but the one I will elaborate on is that two years ago Darin was laid off from IBM. IBM was really a perfect job for our family and we were pretty devastated when this happened. Darin quickly got hired by Direct Communications a local company in Rockland, which was a tender mercy. Things did not work out in Rockland as we had hoped, so we decided to give Texas a try again. Things were going well for me in Texas, but not for Darin. He got a job at the Wal-mart distribution center to make ends meat, but it was very clear after getting to Texas that we would not be staying there for long. Being the kind people that they are, Direct Communications offered Darin a job with the company in a different position than he had worked before, so we moved back to Idaho, this time to Chubbuck. Chubbuck is a good fit for our family. All of us really like it here and we were able to purchase a home. We are so grateful that Darin has been able to work for Direct Communications. They have bailed us out twice in our family's time of need. Although Direct Communications is a good company for Darin to work for, it has been very clear to us from the beginning that this was just a job and not a career path for Darin. This local company is owned by a very kind family, but because it is a small company, there is not really any movement within the company, and the pay is decent, but not quite enough for our family of five that relies on one income to support our needs. We are also in desperate need of Health Insurance for obvious reasons. Darin got wind of a company that is headquartered in Rexburg they are an oil and gas company and have been hiring for a while now and Darin actually knew one of the managers from his childhood in Rockland. All he needed was a CDL and an interview. He trained for his CDL with his brother Mark and was hired by the company (IBEX). He starts on MONDAY. What does this mean for our family? Well, we will be making more money, we will have vision and health insurance, and sometime next year a 401K possibly. Darin will be working for 3 weeks and then home for 3 weeks. he will be driving a water truck. All of Darin's living expenses are paid for while he is gone except for food and the company pays for half of his travel expenses. The con is that he will be away from us for 3 weeks and I will be a single mom for that period of time, but he will also be home with us 100% of the time during the 3 weeks he is home. The job is in Athens, Pennsylvania and he and I feel pretty comfortable about the environment he will be living in. Supposedly, these are a really good group of family men, we shall see, but the hiring manager said that they really tried to hire good clean guys, not like the rough characters you hear about working on the oil fields. I really hope this works out for our family, I have a feeling that it will and things are finally looking up for us after two years of struggle (2009 & 2010). Wish us luck with our new adventure!

We love to play at Grand Nan's House

We have been having so much fun over the past six weeks that I haven't even had a minute to blog about it. The posts are in order of the most recent to ones that go back to around July 15th, so if you want to read in order of events you will have to click on "older posts" and go back to where I left off.

We took our annual trip to Texas and the twins tried to beat the heat by doing puzzles and playing polly pockets. Grand Nan has some pretty fun toys that we don't have which makes it exciting to play with her stuff.

Elizabeth

Emily

Ashes loved to hang out in the same room as the kids, but quickly realized that she wasn't a puppy anymore and couldn't keep up with their energy level.

Legoland

Grand Nan took us to Legoland in the Grapevine Mills Mall. The tickets were pretty expensive, but I think worth it for a one-time experience.

Harrison is going to save the lego princess in this interactive video game.

Emily and Grand Nan

Abigail singing Karaoke in the princess palace.

At legoland we watched Bob the Builder build a roller-coaster out of Legos in 3D.

Elizabeth loved the 5 foot Buzz Light-year made entirely from Legos.

Abigail liked building with the brick-size Legos and thought she was being sneaky hiding under this giraffe also made entirely out of Legos.

The coolest thing in Legoland was a large-room that had a model of the city of Dallas all out of Legos. There were working parts to this model, lights, and millions of pieces. There were sky scrapers, the Fort Worth Stock Yards, Buildings, The DFW Airport, Ball-Park in Arlington, Texas State Fair Grounds, etc. I think my favorite though was the model of the Dallas Cowboys Stadium. Every piece in the entire model is a Lego.

Hamster Ball

While we waited for Legoland, the kids tried to run around in this life size Hamster Ball that was floating and a pool. It was pretty funny. I will try to upload video later.

Chuck-E-Cheese

It has become a family tradition for PaPa to take us to Chuck-E-Cheese when we visit Texas every summer. The girls had a blast eating pizza, playing games, dancing and singing with Chuck-E and getting prizes.

Swimming Lessons

I don't know when the year will come that I don't teach swimming lessons, but it is a good way to pay for my vacations to Texas and my parents have the perfect facility for it. I just taught 7 classes, most of which had about 3 students in them.

Elizabeth liked the kick boards.

Emily learned to back float.

Abigail does a pretty good breast stroke.

As a side note. I know that there were angles watching my children over the past two weeks. There were two accidents that could have had very sad outcomes that ended up being just fine. The first was that Elizabeth fell in the pool right after her floaties had been taken off and somehow she got herself out before I even noticed that she had fallen in. I was at the pool, but talking to Thomas when this happened. The second accident is that Emily fell 12 feet from the top of my parents water slide and landed feet first in the grass. She missed falling into the pool, hitting the huge decorative rock that is near the slide and did not hit the concrete below at all. I am so grateful that my Heavenly Father showed me tender mercy and was watching after my children in these life threatening circumstances.

Texas Family

We have lots of family in Texas on both my side and Darin's side of the family. We were able to see all of the Ralphs cousins in one big bang at a back yard BBQ and swimming party hosted by Sheralyn. The older cousins are very good about playing with the little ones and my girls really get excited to visit them and hang out with them. It makes them feel really cool.

Abigail and cousin Carlie

Elizabeth & Emily with cousin Savanna

Victoria and Abigail

Just cause she is cute - Elizabeth

Harrison was so good about spending time with the girls. They had several camp-outs in the living room and movie nights. We will miss that guy when he goes on his mission. He will be getting his call in about 3 weeks. I can't wait to see where the Lord has called him to serve for the next two years.