Tuesday, October 15, 2013

October 15th

Wow, what busy times these are....

First of all, October 15th is when all personal extensions expire for our tax clients.  As of this morning, we had 31 (THIRTY ONE???) clients that thought they were going to give us the info we needed to complete their returns.  Neil is going to take tomorrow off, but then we jump right back into quarterly payroll filings.  Now, I do most of those, and since it's not year-end reports yet, it will only take me a couple solid days at the office.

Ben is doing great in the Chinese Immersion program.  On the english side of learning, he had his first spelling pretest, words like "fix", "in", "it", etc and since he got 100% on it, they sent him home with extra words to be tested on, like "suffix", "quick", "into", and "appendix."  He said he got 100% on the real test yesterday. :)
We asked his Chinese teacher for extra/harder math homework (I can't handle the simple math he is working on....) but since they learn the math AND math lingo in Chinese, she didn't think it was a good idea.  She suggested he do extra math at home in English and also explain his homework to me in Chinese.  He said he couldn't explain HOW to do it, but he was able to say "7-4=3" all in Chinese, so that was great!

Tristan is doing great too - we opted not to do preschool because he can already read and do simple math.  I do need to have him practice his writing more, because he wants to write questions for me to answer but he doesn't know how to form the numbers very well.  I also need to get him signed up for tumbling!  He would be great at it :)

Ruth is as mobile as ever and likes to empty whatever she finds - tupperware cabinets, silverware from the dishwasher, toys from the bath, shoes from the basket....  you name it.  She is adorable and super fat.  She is 13 months old but has to wear 24 month clothes because not even 18 month stuff will fit, for the most part....

Neil and I have been working on a health challenge for a while, and while I'm not very good at the "no sweets" part of it, I have made sure to be more consistent about exercising, eating better, drinking more water, and reading scriptures.  Unfortunately, Neil hasn't been as good about it, and now we're both paying the price.  He was over his weight at his PT test in September, and they said they wanted him to lose 3-8 lbs between then and Oct 26th.  It wouldn't have been a big deal if he had kept up with it, but now he's up 6 lbs from that Sept weight, and he has 13 days to lose 9 lbs.  I made him a list of things he should do to make sure he's keeping weight down, and hopefully that will help him.  Going to bed by 10, eating slowly, only a small (as in, 5 peanut M&Ms or a mini candy bar) treat per day, exercising 2x day, more water, etc....  I told him I didn't know that I could commit to cutting back that far on treats, and I wouldn't exercise at night with him, but otherwise I'd do everything else.  I'm sure it will be good for me in the long run, I do have plenty of weight to lose....  But no one ever likes making those kinds of changes!

Thursday, October 3, 2013

80 lbs of chicken bottled!!  Ok, so a bit of it was put into some freezer crock pot meals...  But wow!



Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Sometimes when you read the bible, you get really confused.  What is Genesis 38 all about??  They didn't put that in the musical!!  Good thing tho, it's not for kids, or anyone else for that matter...  I shall have to do more digging to see if I can understand it!

On another note, the mobile baby got herself into this situation today.  She was not at all thrilled.

She also 'fell' ie climbed out of the tub today.  She is too big!

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Arrow of Light

Back when we lived in AF and we were joint Cubmasters, I found this idea somewhere online and had my bestie Jess design it for me.  I have probably made about 15 since then!  The boys could probably care less but the parents LOVE them :)  We had 4 boys receive their Arrow of Light tonight and it was great!