Thursday, May 31, 2012

Fun in the Rain

So after last summer with extreme amounts of rain (think  raining every day for over 30 days) and this past winter with 11 feet of snow... I guess it was time to give us a break as this spring has been really dry. I mean really dry. Like no rain. Which was fine as the snow needed to melt and the ground needed a break but eventually you do need rain again. And Reagan needed rain...
For Christmas Grandma Lois had gotten the kids rain boots and umbrellas. The kids have used their rain boots repeatedly as we went through Break Up (the 5th season in AK). I can hardly get Daniel to wear anything else. (He is trying to get out of having to tie his shoes.) But they had never gotten to use their umbrella's as it hadn't rained yet. One day last week it finally did, and Miss Reagan looked out the window and said, "Yay it's raining! I can use my umbrella!" So we put all our stuff on and they got to use their umbrella's even though it was barely a sprinkle and I had some happy kids.
I finally broke down this year and got them rain coats. We've always done rain boots up here but I've never done the rain coats. This summer my goal was to get them outside more in spite of the rain (think Seattle rain only colder). We enjoyed the rain for a couple days and now we're back to no rain. Now if it would only warm up just a little more. Instead of just looking like it was going to rain and not doing it with the temps hoovering around the high 40's.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Changes

I've been gone from here for a while. Life has gotten in the way so I thought I'd bring you up to date on where we are at.
The 2nd of April we received a phone call from our landlords telling us we had 30 days to move out as they were moving back in. This caught us totally by surprise as we had no plans of moving in the near future. The search for new housing wasn't promising. Luckily one of Paul's coworkers, a dear friend found a town house for us right across the street from him. We spent the month scrambling to pack. Paul was supposed to compete Nationally in an Army shooting competition at the end of the month but took pity on me and canceled it as he realized that he wouldn't get back until after we moved. So luckily he was there this time.
School work took a back burner for the month although I tried for Daniel's sake to  have him do a little every day so that he could continue his routine. Luckily we were ahead in pretty much everything so it didn't matter academically. I've just gotten a lot of push back from him as we have tried to return to our schedule now. He doesn't deal well with messing with his routine.
Our new house is wonderful. It's a bit bigger with a two car garage and an extra room that we have made into an office/schoolroom. My kitchen has even more cupboards than I know what to do with, even though it isn't that large. It's so nice to have a working dishwasher again. In our last house our landlord's never had the money to replace ours so the last 9 months or so I'd been washing them by hand. Daniel has had a difficult time adjusting to his new room. Difficulty falling asleep, and it's a fight every day to have him get dressed in his room. But he likes it here.
We moved to the other side of town which is still new to me as we have always live on the North side of town and I'm still finding my way around. That also meant a new ward for church. They have been so welcoming it has been so wonderful. They helped us move in, they called another teacher to help with Daniel's Primary class before we even got there, his teacher came to meet him the day we moved in to help transition him, they watched my kids without my even asking so I could clean our old house and helped me clean it, invited us to a party and that was all within the first week! We are very grateful to this new ward for helping us feel so welcome.
Another change we have been dealing with is that we had Reagan tested for food allergies. She had been complaining for awhile that her tummy hurt after eating. Some days I want to go back to life before the test! We found that she was allergic to wheat, soy, oats, corn, potatoes, rye, milk, beef, and pork. With beef, corn and milk being the worst. Ever try pulling out half the food you eat? Changing completely the way you cook? The doctor told us that we should take her off of all this for a year and then we would retest and she would probably get some of it back. So we get to try all kinds of new things like quinoa, rice pasta, coconut flour, rice milk.A lot of people looked at the list of things she couldn't have and said no problem, you just buy the gluten free stuff. Unfortunately all the gluten free stuff has potatoes, corn or soy in it. There is only one bread I can buy her and it will make maybe 5 sandwiches and costs about $6. I'd try making my own but again, all the recipes for alternative breads have one of the ingredients that she can't have and let me tell you, all these strange and different flours are much harder to work with as they have no gluten. It's an adjustment that we are still working on and do better some days than others. The upside has been that she no longer complains that her stomach hurts and Daniel who has had constipation issues since he was about 12 months to the point of needing daily medicine, has been doing better without the gluten in his diet. Sad news for me who LOVES to bake...
Paul was home for about a week and a half after we moved and then left for 6 weeks to Augusta GA for a leadership training class which will help ensure his promotion this summer. He is still there and bored out of his mind. They are done with class by 9:30am every day and apparently there isn't much to do there.
Well that's about it for our current changes. I'll try to get a few more posts up with pictures in the next few days.