what i do

I've been wanting to write about what I do during the day, you know, the boring day to day stuff that I'll forget about but want to remember about this time in my life. I'm going to keep track of what I do for about a week.

Today, I woke up to the sound of Todd doing math with the boys. Katherine is sleeping in her big girl bed now, so she'll wake up and "do math with Daddy" too. Then I hear her screaming (the Carlson banshee scream) throwing a tantrum (this is every morning) and I'm too tired to go get her, so I yell, "Katherine, come here!" and try and say something like "Come give me hugs!" or "Look at Abbie! Come play with her!" Then she comes in and we play and then she says, "I'm hung'ee". So I go downstairs, change the girls' diapers, get Abbie a bottle and get Katherine breakfast. By this time, the boys are usually ready for breakfast too, because they're done with math.

For breakfast, we lately have been eating Todd's homemade granola for breakfast,  lunch and dinner, but it was gone so Alex and I made scrambled eggs with spinach and mushrooms (but no mushrooms for Nathan). Alex likes to cook. He cut the mushrooms and cooked some of the eggs.

Then we did scriptures. We're on chapter 60 of Alma. I read scriptures, and had to tell Nathan about 5 times to put down his sword, or come back to the rug. That child! Then we always say the scripture mastery we are working on 3 times each. They are on Alma 41:10.

Then we did spelling. We kind of did a lot of spelling, because we were finishing up last week's list, and starting this week's. They said, "too many letters!!" They were saying too much spelling. Nathan at the end of the day said, "the most fearful part of the day were all those words!" We're trying to work on spelling a lot.
After that we had lunch- pastrami and swiss on rye with leftover butternut squash. Yum! Todd is an amazing cook. He went in to work today. He goes to work on Mondays and Fridays.

Then we had to hurry really fast to go to the boys' art class. It is a lot of work getting everyone ready and in the car. Bottles, diapers, stuff, stuff, stuff, getting me dressed, the girls  dressed, telling the boys what they need to do, etc. We were only one minute late, surprisingly. Right now the boys have a reading thing for their school they go to every Friday where they have to read 300 minutes in the next two weeks, but if they read 600 minutes (Nathan's age) and 1,000 minutes (Alex's age) they are "star readers" and get an award. So the boys read all the way to the art class in Highland, and most of the way back. We stopped at Target in Orem to get Alex new glasses. Katherine broke them the first few days he had them. Then we looked around at toys, girl clothes and lamps. I ended up buying a cute black pea coat, sweater and shirt for Katherine, and a "baby's first Christmas" footie jammies for Abbie. The boys each got a sword with their allowance. Then we got home and I read the boys their science (about sharks) while they played Titan Quest on the computer (Nathan) and Sonic on the Wii (Alex). I ask them about what I read to make sure they are still listening, and they actually listen BETTER while on their games. Katherine kept standing on the book, so it was cut short, so we could give her attention.

Then we did writing. I had the boys write about going to the football game with Daddy for their newspapers. They have a newspaper paper (each) and we've been adding stories to their newspapers. That was for the "sports" section.

Then the boys played their video games for a little while, and then Todd got home and we had dinner-- pastrami and soup again. Since we ate pastrami for lunch, Todd had to go to the store and get more stuff for it. Then I put Abbie to bed (7pm). After we ate, I took the boys to the Covey Center in Provo to watch the Utah Valley Youth Symphony. The last piece they played was the Carmen Suite and the boys LOVED it (that's their favorite song; they love to play it on the computer and run around to it). We found out that they have an elementary aged orchestra! The older kids get to travel- this year to London. The younger kids get to go on a smaller trip-- this year San Francisco. Right now the boys want to practice to get in that orchestra. The conductor said they have to be in at least the Suzuki book 2 first.

When we got home we had to practice violins. Nathan was getting frustrated because he wasn't doing it perfect. I did some dishes, then told the boys to go to bed so I could have some alone time on the computer (checking email and writing this!). It's 11:18pm. During the day Katherine runs around wreaking havoc on the house while I do school with the boys. When I'm not teaching the boys, Katherine and I play, or she helps me do whatever I'm doing. She's a great helper. She always wants to help! She likes to bring me books now for me to read to her, and she likes to pretend she's doing what the boys are doing. So when we were doing spelling, she got a pencil and paper and sat at the table and said, "do spelling" and scribbled on her paper.

Abbie just learned how to sit up on her own. She still takes 3 good naps during the day and goes to sleep about 7, so she's pretty easy. She's a happy baby. Today the boys and Katherine were all running around in a circle around Abbie sitting on the rug. It was cute.