This Week...

This week thankfully seemed to have a little more relaxation than the previous week, though it didn't seem to start that way. Last Sunday we woke up to Dirk being sick in the bathroom and me taking the kids to church by myself which is a full time and exhausting job in itself!  After church I was able to attend choir practice. Since moving here to Oregon, I've decided to try some new things and make some changes in my life. Since I don't plan on having any big/time consuming obligations in the church, I thought it would be fun to join the choir... and it has been fun! I really enjoy the time I get to spend practicing with the others and making friends... and I'd like to think we're pretty good, too!

one of the many roses blooming in our yard

Monday morning Hayden finally decided to give up the fight and actually got ready for school on time and without a big fight. It was nice to be able to have a quiet morning. Surprisingly, I'm actually enjoying getting up early in the mornings and walking two miles to get Hayden to school. I don't do it every day, as Dirk is around, and sometimes I'm too tired or lazy, but I try and do it at least half the time.  The rest of the day lived up to the morning and went pretty smoothly. It was Dirk's first day back at school, which he said was uneventful but enjoyable.
In the evening I went out with a friend to have sushi for my first time ever! I'd tried some sort of raw seafood at Disney World last year, but it wasn't prepared as sushi... I don't really know enough about this to know the difference. Anyway- we at an entire meal of sushi, which was daring for me. I was surprised it filled me full, and was quite good... but I still don't think it is an "entre'" dish... more of an appetizer.. After sushi we went and watched "the Help" in the theater then sat in my driveway and talked until midnight. I am so happy it has been easy for both Dirk and I to be able to make friends since we've been here... in fact, we feel like we have more friends here already than we did in all our other places we've lived put together! Maybe this is because we are trying to be more social? Maybe because we've had more time to focus on meeting people? I'm not sure, but it's kind of nice!

My favorite sushi of the night

  Tuesday Dirk went to his scout meeting. He has been asked to be the Weebelos leader for the scouts at church. This is kind of humorous to me, as Dirk never did scouts, but I'm glad he has this calling, as it will be a good way for him to be able to follow the scout program, and to prepare for when Hayden is older!

Wednesday was a LONG day! Dirk left for school at 9:30 and wasn't planning on getting home until 7:30! Thankfully he was able to come home a bit earlier than that. I actually did pretty great at running things smoothly, considering I hadn't had the kids home by myself for that long in a LONG time... in fact, I'm not sure I've ever had to do that with both of them! My biggest bump in the road of the day was, yet again, I forgot Hayden gets out early on Wednesday!! I left the house with Ginny in the stroller with approximately 4 minutes to get to the school. Good thing I just got some new running shoes, because we ran! The teachers wait outside the school for 10 minutes to wait for the parents. Somehow I managed to get there with time to spare and wasn't even the last parent there! I was sweating and out of breath, but I made it! And of course- Hayden was tired and wanted a rid on the stroller instead of walking himself home. I almost died and took the rest of the day to recover! Pretty much as soon as Dirk got home that night, I left to go to the church for an activity.

Tomatoes from our one-plant garden! We ate almost all of them for dinner! yum yum!

Thursday I attempted to be gone yet again in the evening, but failed miserably! I was supposed to go to a craft night someone's house but I couldn't find the house and then I couldn't seem to get her correct phone number, then my social anxiety kicked in and I just went to Target instead. At least I tried!

We got a call from our landlord on Thursday, warning us she was walking through all her properties on Saturday. We are living in the house she raised her kids in, so this is her most beloved property, and I think I've stated before, the previous occupants trashed the place and really let it go. We've been trying really hard to clean it up and make it nice again, so we were kind of excited she was coming over, but still had a lot of cleaning and organizing to do. This was just enough motivation for us to work almost the entire day Friday on putting our house together! We really got a lot accomplished. We were able to clean out all the half empty boxes from our room and bathroom and actually turned it in to a clean slate ready to decorate! We also were able to hang lots of pictures on the wall, scrub the bathrooms, clean up some more outside and put up some Halloween/Fall decor!  I swear, if we didn't have people coming to our house so often for play dates or dinner dates, our house would not be nearly as well put together by now! I'm kind of excited to have it mostly organized so now I can actually have some fun putting all the pretty details up!  Friday night we also ate dinner outside again and then had 'smores! After 'smores and after putting Hayden to bed, Dirk and I snuggled up on the porch with the twinkly lights and watched some tv shows on the computer.

My favorite place to spend my time

Yesterday we tried to listen to General Conference, but that didn't go over too well. It didn't work very well this morning either! We were able to catch some of it, but the kids seem to like to work together, taking turns being noisy! It's a good thing we can listen to it or read it all later!

This week, Ginny has been trying to put her cute new boots on every day and wears them all over the place. She also is getting really good at saying the word "baby" and must have a baby doll near-bye and in bed with her at all times! Hayden has recently discovered watching the show "Backyardigans"... I was okay with this, thinking it would give him ideas for using his imagination outside but instead he just wants to watch every single episode available on Netflix! I finally sent him with many fights outside to play. Eventually he and Ginny started having fun digging in the dirt with trucks and stacking rocks.

Say Cheese!

 That's pretty much how our week went. I'll try and update actual events from now on, though, probably not in as much detail... I'm just tired, so apparently I'm rambling.