New Years and Grandma visiting

 

New Year's Eve, we invited some couples over for a game night.  We told the kids they could play in their room, as long as there were no problems.  One couple showed up, but brought all five of their kids too.  I guess next time, I need to be more specific about who is invited on the invitations.  It all worked out fine though, the kids were super excited to have friends come over for their "party" in their room.  There was plenty of food, since none of the other couples were able to come.  We had lots of fun playing games and had a good time.  Travis was very entertaining during this one game called "quelf", in which he had to act like pirate, and lots of other fun things.  Everyone stayed up until about 1:30am, except Samuel who had to go to bed early for some misbehavior. 
We had a lot of cleaning to do New Year's Day, Travis' Mom was flying in for a week to visit us.  While we were cleaning I stubbed my toe real bad on the vacuum.  It was my pinkie toe, and it hurt pretty good for while, made me limp around a little bit, so I'm pretty sure I broke it.  It's still painful 17 days later, but only when I move it, it's fine to walk on, and the bruising is almost all gone. 
It was very enjoyable to have Travis' Mom here visiting.  She was very helpful with the kids and the cleaning.  We even made some applesauce, apple butter, and apple cobbler together while the kids were at school. (I had some apples I needed to use). 
We spent a lot of time fixing the tires on our van.  The van was wiggling a lot in the back, so we took it in to Midas which the place we bought the van from told us to take it.  It was about a 30-45 minute drive each way, there was a McDonalds next door, so we went over there and let the kids play for a while.  They told us the problems was the tires, and they needed to be replaced, so the next day we drove another 45 minutes each way to the tire place we were told to go to, and played at a game store for a while.  They told us they didn't have the tires in stock, so we had to come back the next day.  Travis had been wanting to take his mom to this Irish restaurant he likes.  So we took her to dinner, and yogurt for dessert.  The next day we once again trekked out to the tire place, this time playing at a McDonalds while they fixed the tires.  Travis had been given some free happy meal coupons, so we had plenty of happy meals for our kids.  I didn't want McDonalds so Travis walked to the panda express next door, and got us dinner.  We finally had our car fixed, yeah!  The kids also loved going to the dollar store and picking out 4 things, that Grandma paid for.  Everybody had fun with Grandma and we were sad to see her go.  Joseph and Samuel started Wrestling practice on the 7th, and practice three nights a week.  They are both enjoying it, and just starting to learn the maneuvers.  This last Sunday, a lady in our ward called Travis (since he's a chaplain), she was struggling and asked for help.  Her husband was out in the field, so she and her three children came over and played at our house, while Travis figured out who her home teacher was, and he came over and gave her a priesthood blessing.  They also ate dinner with us, and stayed until bedtime.  It felt good to help someone in need.  Also last week in the middle of the night, Travis got a call from the hospital, and had to go pray over a stillborn baby.  It was very sad.  I went to a Chaplain Spouse Coffee last week, and it felt good to get out of the house without the kids for a little while, although I was only there for a little over an hour, Travis came and picked me up, so I could help put the kids to bed.  On Tuesday I went to the PWOC kick-off and ended up arriving a little late, so the childcare was full, and I had to keep Caleb with me the whole time.  He did pretty good except when we were switching classrooms learning about all the bible study groups.  He didn't want to leave one of the classrooms, and threw a fit, so I stayed out in the halls with him for a while.  At the very end, when it was time to leave, Caleb was throwing a fit and did not want to go home.  So I finally just picked him up, and walked out the nearest door carrying his coat and shoes.  Halfway to the car, I put him down, since I was tired of his kicking and screaming, and thought he would follow me to the car.  I started walked towards the car, but he didn't follow me, he ran all the way back to the chapel door in the 0 degree weather, with no coat of shoes, and knocked on the door we left from, before I could catch him.  A lady let him inside, and I quickly caught up to him, and took him all the way back to the car kicking and screaming. Most of the time Caleb is pretty reasonable, but he occasionally throws his fits.   Last week Joseph got a black eye from a seventh grader at school.  At lunch the boy (very big boy) was calling Joseph a lot of bad words, and Joseph finally couldn't ignore him anymore and called him a "big fat cow", so the boy punched him.  Joseph ran off so he wouldn't try to fight him back.  The teachers in the lunchroom saw what happened and the other boy got in trouble, Joseph went to the nurse's office and they put ice on his eye.  He was fine but still upset about it after school.  The next day after school another boy from his class started calling him names as he left school, so he ran back into the school and told his teacher.  I feel bad about him being picked on, I remember hating middle school.  Joseph is doing much better with his homework and organization this semester, I helped him get his new binder all organized and it seems to be helping.