Flying with SUPER MOM!

Happy Valentine's Day

Today, it almost felt like any other day, since Derek and I celebrated V-day on Saturday. Alex had Joy School today and we made sugar cookies for all of his class mates. He came up to me when I was dropping him off and he asked, " mommy is it valstimes day?" My reply was, "yes, it is valentines day." Later, I called Derek to ask him a question and I heard voices in the back ground, so I asked him where he was.. His reply, "Don't worry about it" once he said that I knew exactly where he was, he was at the store to get me flowers. That sneaky man! He got home with tulips and another interesting looking flower. He said, "you always call me when I am getting you flowers, so I can never surprise you, how do you did that?" Alex then came up to him and said, " I gots a surprise for you... close your eyes". He handed Derek his cars and yelled surprise... "Now you gots me a surprise, Daddy?" Derek had Alex close his eyes, then Alex kept asking, "now, I can open my eyes?" over and over, until Derek said he could and then hand all his cars back. Alex then said, "yay, happy valstimes day!"

FHE

Yesterday, We had Family Home Evening. Most of the time it is so hard to get Alex to sit still or listen, but ever since we started Joy School back up, he is more willing the pay attention. The topic yesterday was "Prayer". The reason for this is because the other day Alex really wanted to play soccer more, but it was dinner time, so I told him may be if you pray for it Heavenly Father will let you play more after dinner. So, he prayed and asked, "Let me play more soccer today." unfortunately, we didn't get to play more soccer. So, the purpose of the lesson was to help Alex understand that answers don't always come right away, but they do always come, not always when we want them or how we want them, but they do always come. So, I then reminded Alex that we did get to play soccer the next day. He got really excited about praying after that and wanted to say a prayer right then. So, we let him. After the prayer we then said our testimonies; Alex gets up and says, "I like to bare my testimony, I know the Church is true, I thankful for prayer... amen"

Lions, and Tigers, and Bears; Oh my!

Each month we have a field trip for the kids and last month we went to the zoo in Tucson. It was a lot of work keeping all the kids sane. They were having too much fun playing with each other as well as point like crazy at all the animals.
Alex really liked the giraffes and the elephants. Surprisingly we didn't have a hard time leaving those though. I think he really enjoyed the space, because he definitely used it.

School

Alex is doing a Joy School this year, and loving it. I love to see him learning. Before School started I was starting wonder if he was colored blind, because every color was blue to him. No matter how much I worked with him on colors. I have seen improvement since School started; he is doing a lot better at recognizing his colors. He knows purple, green, blue, gray, yellow, brown, red; and I am sure that he knows more. His favorite subject in School is math... he loves to count, and he is very good with numbers. I guess he gets that from his Daddy. His least favorite subject is English. We have the kid trace letters, and Alex does not like doing that, recently if he doesn't finish at school, I have him trace the rest at Home and since starting that he has been doing very well tracing his letters.
There is five kids in the Joy School and the teaching responsibility switches between the four Mom's (there is a set of twins, that is why there is more kids than Mom's). So I teach once every other week. We meet twice a week.
I love teaching, I have a lot of fun planning the lessons. I am teaching this week, and my theme is "Fairy Tales". I am pretty excited about it. I am hoping that I have enough material.

The Lean, Mean, Cleaning Machine

So, The cleaning is going good. My house has been clean for over two weeks now. If you do some cleaning every day, each day will get easier. Not just because the more you clean the more you get used to cleaning, but also because you don't have to clean as hard if you keep it up every day.
What I have found is that if I am productive, Alex is more welling to be productive. Ever since I have been doing good keeping things up around here, Alex has been doing really good at picking up his things, and even my things. The other night he cleaned up his toys, with the help of Derek and I cheering him on, and then he went and put my shoes in my closet. He has been a great help.

The Freeze

We survived!
We woke up one morning to find that we had no water. Because it was so cold we decided to start our day off with a nice cup of Hot Chocolate, only to find that our gas was off. Our gas company's supply was down, so a certain part of the town had their gas turned off. Thankfully we have family in town that let us stay with them. At first the water companies pipes were frozen and they were just waiting for the pipes to unfreeze, the next day we find out our neighbors have water when we still don't. Thankfully Derek and his dad were able to unfreeze our pipe with no problems. We had water for about an hour and then our company started having problems again. So, we were once again saved by family who had water and heat. We were so blessed that we had a place to go. Others didn't have a place to go, but our ward really came together, and everyone helped everyone.