Janae – Page 24 – Terry Family Shenanigans

Parent Teacher Conferences

As I have mentioned part of the reason for our pre-Spring Break is because it is parent teacher conference time.

I went and saw all of the kids teachers and saw how they are doing. Matthew was supposed to come with me and show me a presentation that he had made about how his year has been going. He was sick so I just went myself and his teacher showed me. He is doing great. He catches on pretty quick most of the time and things seem easy. His biggest area to grow in is challenging himself more. Not just doing the minimum and being done. Pushing himself to go above the minimum even if it is uncomfortable (because it will be) and growing more than the ‘requirement’. When I was telling him how his conference went I told him this is a nice way of his teacher saying-don’t be lazy, and I agree. He rolled his eyes and said ‘okay mom’. Then I gave him a hug and told him I am proud of his effort he does put in. I know a lot of moms that have to remind, nag, beg, threaten their kid to not just do homework but turn it in, and even admit they have it. I ask Matthew on occasion if he has done his homework but more so he doesn’t feel like I don’t care than I am worried he hasn’t done it. Since Kindergarten he has come home and done his homework on his own unless he needs help without being asked.

Allison was also supposed to come with me to her conference. She did and showed me her slide presentation she prepared for me. Then we went through some of the papers she had written the first part of the year. She is doing very well and her creativity shows just as much in her school work as it does in other areas of her life. I took a picture of a couple so share. Even her research reports are fun to read. She is a talented girl. She excels in many areas. One of her favorites right now is Math. She seems to have a good portion of her dads engineering brain. I am very proud of her and how hard she works. Her area of improvement is to slow down and take her time. It isn’t a race to finish everything. Then she gave me all the sticky notes she had collected from various teachers on the board of “items needed” for their classrooms, while she was waiting for me to finish Emilee’s conference. When I tried to explain the items are for the kids/parents to get that are actually in that teachers class and picking one was enough she was mortified at my “lack of caring for others and their needs.” When I told her I would split the cost of whatever she wanted to get for the teachers she put a few back and kept a more reasonable amount of sticky notes. 😘

Learning about geese was more entertaining then I thought possible

Emilee was the only one that was not supposed to come to her conference. While I enjoy my children’s company this is the way I prefer to have a parent teacher conference-with just the people listed in the title of the event. Emilee has improved her reading a lot this year. I will admit I was a little bit nervous at the beginning of the year. It was a bit of a struggle to get her to even try to read. She has tried hard and is doing really well now. In Emilee’s life in general I feel like she has started to accept the fact that she can do a lot of stuff for herself. While she is the youngest and all of us are guilty of just doing things for her because it is easier-and quite frankly she prefers it that way- I think we have made great strides in her willingness to try doing things on her own and for herself. She has shown it in playing basketball and not taking herself out of the game because she is ‘done’, making her own peanut butter sandwich, and reading books on her own even though she might not know every word. Her teacher said she is a happy fun girl to have in class and I am proud of her too. She had a very good folktale about how guinea pigs learned to run I got to see at her conference.

Patterns

This is the third year that I have been writing my blog. I just had the 4th six month volume printed and delivered last month. The kids like to look at them and I feel like one of my goals for having a blog has come to fruition. I have started a family journal that is documenting our family and helping us remember the fun, mundane, silly, happy, great and not so great memories of our lives while we have these years all living together that might seem like the permanent normal but before we know it will be history.

This being the third Winter I have blogged I have also started to notice some patterns that seem to happen in our family each year. We all seem to get some illness to varying degrees at the end of January beginning of February. It started last this past week for us. Allison got it first, then Matthew, Ryan and I have a very mild version that is hardly noticeable, and Emilee is now taking her turn. It was Matthew’s turn to get it the worst. Since he has asthma it is often his turn. Allison took the longest to recover, but all in all it wasn’t a bad year for sickness. I know a lot of other people that have had it pretty bad. I am jinxing myself and knock on wood we don’t have a round two but I am counting it as a blessing and hoping to keep my streak going of, “No cleaning up puke in 2020!”

Another annual event in February is the pre-Spring Break in preparation for the actual Spring Break next month. I don’t actually count because I really don’t want to know, but between the already short month, teacher conferences, snow days, and holidays if the number of school days isn’t less than the number of days off, it certainly feels like it. I didn’t even count sick days in that either. They had a half day Wednesday and now don’t go back to school until Tuesday.

So far we have been keeping busy. We ate lunch with dad yesterday. Then they all invited a friend or two over.

Emilee had Jovee over so that was business as usual. They played great together and watched Frozen II and went to bed without any issues.

Allison invited a friend over and they played, made slime, and entertained Peanut but I told her she could have a sleepover a different night. She asked Leah to spend the night tonight.

Matthew had two friends over. One had spent the night before but the other hadn’t. Two boys is a lot different than three and boys are a lot different than girls. Me being a girl, I always feel a little more…out of my wheel house with boys. I usually have Ryan check on them most of the time. I always monitor them and screen any movies they watch and collect all electronics/phones at bed time and tell them when it is time to go to bed. I feel like I am pretty good at thwarting possible problems. When the new friends mom dropped him off she talked with me a lot about electronics and sugar. She wanted to know my policies on both. Like I said I watch them but I felt like she wanted a written contract spelled out. After the conversation she had me a little stressed out. Then as she was headed out the door she “warned” me that she had found one of them awake at 4 in the morning when she had the two (not Matthew her son and the other boy) stay at her house one night. I thought, “How often was she checking on them to know they were awake at 4am) I felt like she wanted me to be sitting with them at all times during waking hours and at least hourly during sleep hours. Then I started worrying if it was because she was worried about her son doing something, my son doing something, or just general worry. So I was paranoid and got a crappy night sleep on the couch upstairs because I thought there was going to be some catastrophic event at any moment. They were fine and other than making the basement look like pigs had lived in it for the last year (which I made them clean up), they went to bed when I told them slept until I woke them up at 9:30 for breakfast while rubbing the kink in my neck. Uggg.

Sleepovers are not my favorite but with cousins around they love to have them and it is nice that they can. I felt like a bit of a hypocrite saying they could only have sleep overs with their cousins and no one else so while I don’t suggest them myself, I let them have them on occasion.

I am going to go down a little bit of a rabbit hole here, then get back on track with my original thought process. After worrying and having a crappy nights sleep last night I started evaluating myself a bit. I’m not mad or annoyed at the mom for asking about how I do things with electronics. I am glad that other mom’s are concerned and watch out for things like with kids. And good for her for straight out asking. Most of the time I am not that brave. The more eyes the better. I am mostly annoyed that it made me question myself. I do that a lot. I can get stressed and confused trying to guess what other peoples expectations are and live up to them instead of being confident in my own decisions and expectations. It is something that I am consciously trying to work on. It seems to me like some people are really good at thinking through what they think and feel about things and forming an opinion ahead of time before a situation arrives. I remember in church they told us that a lot when I was growing up. Decide what you are going to do in a situation ahead of time so when the time comes you aren’t put on the spot and you have already made the decision. I think that is good advice and I tried to do that with bigger obvious decisions that might come up in my life. I don’t know if I am just not as creative as some people but this is not a natural thing for me to do. A lot of people I talk with seem to be very good at this. Some people do this with EVERYTHING and that actually annoys me and I think it is exhausting and if it isn’t true it at least appears that they are impossible to please if others don’t know or agree with their opinion. I guess I should say with inconsequential things this annoys me like ‘how to empty the dishwasher’, ‘how to correctly replace a toilet paper roll’. That stuff is inconsequential and it seems trivial to me to think about how I like every single thing to be in my life. Yes, we can have preferences, that’s different. The bigger, more important things I tend to find myself having a general thought about something but until I actually do it myself or am confronted with something myself I generally don’t form a solid response or opinion. Another way to look at it is I guess I am not the best on the spot thinker. I do better at either being able to take a step back and take time to think, or if that isn’t possible afterwards evaluating how it went and then if that situation happens again I have a much better handle on what I want to do. But sometimes in life- a lot of times in life we have to react on the spot. When this happens to me instead of trusting myself, I often find myself trying to guess what the other person is wanting me to say or do and then my people pleaser self tries to please them. It is easy to see how this can get stressful pretty fast, as I can not read minds. My point to this tangent is that I am trying to make a more conscious decision to remind myself when those new situations come up-like a mom asking what my electronic/sugar policy is-that I can and should trust myself to just say what I do then taking her feedback, instead of trying to guess exactly what she wants me to say and then hovering over the boys like a weirdo all night. I am biased but I have a pretty good head on my shoulders. The longer you live the more experiences you have and there is a lot to be said for life experience. Which brings me to another point. Pay attention and read this next part closely my children. This isn’t anything you haven’t heard before. Your dad and I tell you and try to help each one of you on a daily basis with our own life experiences. You will be very familiar with what I am going to say…something in the language of- “The reason we are having this conversation is because we are trying to share what we have learned with you because”… we have ALREADY done it or something similar to it most of the time. And if we haven’t, all the other experiences we HAVE had will help you more than all the experiences you HAVEN’T had yet. The older I get the more I appreciate life experience, mine and others. One of my favorite quotes right now is, from Socrates. He is getting the credit if it wasn’t him. It sums up a lot of what I have been rambling on about.

Smart people learn from everything and everyone. Average people from their experiences. Stupid people already have the answers. ~Socrates

I have been all three of these. Most of the time I’d like to think I am an ‘average smart person’ but I hope I’m at least leaning more and more towards a ‘smart person’ every day.

That rabbit hole was longer than I thought. Where was I…After our sleepovers everyone went home then I picked up the rest of the cousins (we already had Jovee) and went to the community center and swam until they were all exhausted. Then they paired up and split out among each others houses to spend the rest of the afternoon playing. So we have had a successful two days of pre-Spring Break so far, and a fun low key Valentine’s Day. Three more days to go!

Tomorrow Grandma and Grandpa Terry are coming to stay for a few days. I will wait to blog about that until it happens. 😁

Allison’s Famous Pictures

This is when Allison was three maybe 4. Ryan’s company was putting out some new media and asked if Allison could be the kid for the pictures about their work with different school districts. She looks adorable but she was having none of it that day. She wouldn’t smile for anything. The best they got was a silly face. Every now and then it pops up on mine or Ryan’s Facebook feed. I know it is in a picture book somewhere but I don’t think it has made it to my blog yet so I am going to put it here because she is a cutie.

The look on her face to me says, “You can beg me all you want to smile, I am no ones puppet.”

Guess what time it is?!

It is Valentine’s celebration at school time! It was Emilee’s turn to have me help at her class party so I went and ran a game for them. There were many cute boxes and lots of excited kids. It is cute to see them deliver all their valentines. I helped with a game called Cupids Arrow. Each kid get a straw and a bunch of q-tips. They put the q-tip in the straw then blow through the straw and try to get it in a bowl. One boy started at the game area and was not happy at it because ‘the games are always boring and the worst part of the party’. Once I explained and started the game, he ended up being the biggest fan and was hard to get to move on to the next area. Emilee opted to go with a traditional mail box for her Valentine Box that she decorated.

Handing out her candy and excited about the candy she will find in her own box when she is done. The girl has the worlds biggest sweet tooth.

Allison’s party was not at exactly the same time so I was able to stop by and hang out with her at her party for a little bit too. True to her previous endeavors when making her Valentine Box she had to go bigger then the year before. Last year is her last year to make boxes which will be sad to not see the creative ideas she comes up with, but good in that they can’t get to much bigger or she won’t be able to carry them with out help. She went with the Rooster theme like last year but created an entire scene instead of just one rooster. This poor guy is running for his like so he doesn’t get eaten by the roosters that are quickly gaining on him. The last rooster is reminding them that they are vegetarians and don’t really want to eat him. The barn door is where you put the valentines.

Allison stuck with the Rooster theme again this year.

Matthew’s Basketball

Matthew missed about half of the basketball tryouts because we left for Florida for Christmas. He was nervous he wouldn’t be able to make the team but he ended up getting put on the Junior Varsity team. He has been loving it. He has been getting better each week too. There team is 10-1 so they have had a good season. One of the games they were down by more than 15 points almost the whole game then they came back and won in triple overtime. He loved the excitement of the whole experience. The jersery’s are already made and the bigger the number the bigger the size of the jersey. His usual number he likes to be is 14 butthat jersey was to big so he had to settle for 11. He is very aware of his lack of height compared to almost everyone else on his team but he makes up with it with speed and effort. He is getting really good at darting around and stealing the ball from the other team.

They start each game with the National Anthem, which I love.

Emilee’s Basketball

Emilee tried basketball again this year. She played on a team with her friend Stella. Stella’s dad was the coach for the team.

She has done a really good job. You can tell that a few things have clicked for her on how to play so she enjoys it more and her skills are getting better. It is fun to watch.

The girls are still young enough that some pretty cute mistakes or distractions happen during the games too. Sometimes they get confused and shoot at the wrong basket. Another time two girls that were guarding each other decided to take a break for a minute to play patty cake together.😂😂

Fabulous February

It has been snowing almost weekly this winter. That is a lot more often that usual for us. Most of them have been less than an inch but some have been a couple inches. Several of them have been the really wet snow that is good for snowman building. We have played a lot in the snow but winter is always a time to get creative about what to do indoors.

Allison has her braces on and gets to go to the dentist a lot these days to have them checked. She found a fun toy in the treasure box after her last visit.

Allison also tried her hand out at the school National Geographic Geography Bee this year. She was the representative for her class. I was proud of her for trying it. The questions were pretty hard.

Family Flexibility

The range of flexibility in our family goes from Allison doing full splits and bending over backwards to Ryan and Matthew who can barely bend forward let alone touch their toes.

The past year Matthew has started having issues because he works out so much and then doesn’t stretch enough. On top of his lack of flexibility his muscles tighten up from working out and make him even less flexible and more tight. He has had to do several rounds of physical therapy. Of course Ryan and I have been nagging, harping, reminding, lecturing, begging, threatening, and anything else we can think of to get him to stretch 1-2 times a day. I’ve made him do Yoga with me. He is pretty ornery about it ,mainly because it hurts, he doesn’t like it, doesn’t get the importance of it, he is not good at it, and he is a belligerent teenager.

Our chiropractor gave us a video to use with some basic stretching. Ryan realized he needs to do it just as much as Matthew so the two of them have been doing it together at night. It is so ridiculous watching them. I switch between laughing so hard my eyes water to rolling my eyes as they moan and complain and roll around on the floor supposedly stretching but looking more like they are having a seizure or full body muscle spasm.

Kudos to them for trying though. They get an ‘A’ for effort. Well Ryan gets a ‘B’ and Matthew gets ‘C-‘

Philosophy and Toothpaste

I am not an idealist, I am a realist. Usually an optimistic realist but have my moments on the pessimistic side as well. So maybe you could say most of the time I am a realistic idealist, heavy on the realistic. 😂😂😂 I wonder if that is an original joke, or if my brain pulled it up from my memory that I heard somewhere before. Anyways. The reason I am rambling on about this is because it is a new year! One of, if not the highest time of year that people focus on making new goals for achievement and self improvement.

Ideally, many of us decide on something that we think will make our life better, or happier and make a plan to achieve it. Then follow the plan and achieve the goal. This process can then be repeated and goal by goal, step by step you are farther along the path of being a successful, fulfilled and happy person until your life is perfect and you are perfect.

Realistically, most of us start with great intentions and ambitions but then usually loose interest, desire, and/or motivation, and shortly afterwards and are back to our old habits. Old habits are hard to break and new habits are harder to make. Of course individual circumstances fortitude, self discipline and other traits have a big effect on success/failure too.

However, from an ideal realistic point of view. Sometimes we set goals for ourselves and are successful, sometimes we fail, sometimes we change our mind and change our goals. Sometimes we take a break then start again. There are almost numberless possibilities and reasons for why we do and don’t achieve goals. I think that the desire to make goals and put effort towards self improvement can be praised for heading in the right direction. Hopefully each day we can take another step in the direction we want to go. Sometimes the steps might be baby steps, giant leaps, maybe even a slip backwards, or complete stand still. Some goals are achieved in a day, some take years, some a lifetime, some are frivolous, inconsequential, life altering or even eternal but hopefully when all is said and done if you haven’t yet achieved the goal, you are closer than you were. And, along the way when needed you have the discipline to rededicate yourself and try harder, the courage to re-evaluate and change course, and the brains and humility to know which one of those to do-or come up with a third option.

Anywho. I am going to switch gears a little now and address the second part of the title of this blog. Toothpaste. The recent focus of a minor goal in my life.

Throughout our marriage we have lived in several different homes and sometimes Ryan and I have shared a bathroom sink, sometimes we have had our own. Depending on whether we shared a sink or not we would also share a tube of toothpaste or each have our own. Currently we have our own sinks and have our own toothpaste.

A while back while we were brushing our teeth one night, I made the comment that when I was helping the girls brush their teeth their toothpaste had so much dried toothpaste gunked up around the top that you couldn’t squeeze anymore toothpaste out even though it was at least still half full of toothpaste. Ryan chuckled and said it must be hereditary. To which I rolled my eyes and changed the subject because I knew where the conversation was headed. Ryan being Ryan wouldn’t let it go and asked to see my tube of toothpaste. I told him to not concern himself with my toothpaste…yaddy yaddy yaw…Ryan makes fun of me…I call him a turd…as the conversation is wrapping up he says something to the effect of it boggles his mind that he is a less detailed oriented person and messier than me but his toothpaste is clean as a whistle. I am a clean, organized, person but there are a few things in my life that are just a mess like my sock drawer and my tube of toothpaste. I laughed at the sock drawer comment because I know why I do that. It is the perfect amount of ‘controlled chaos’ for me and I like it. The toothpaste though…I don’t try and make it gunky but it usually is that way and I have to clean it up pretty often. So my curiosity was piqued as to why it was messy too.

So I decided to make it a goal of mine (definitely in the frivolous goal category) to keep the toothpaste tube nice and clean. Each time I brushed my teeth I made a conscious effort to leave the toothpaste nice and clean. A week later…it was getting gunky again.

I casually inspected Ryan’s toothpaste and noticed that he doesn’t just flip the lid down, he snaps it on tight, so I tried that. A week later I couldn’t snap the lid tight because it was getting gunky again.

Now it went from curiosity to a mission. So I checked the toothpaste after I put it on and and sure enough it was nice and clean but when I set it down a little toothpaste would come out the top and start building up. A little more trial and error and I discovered the proper way to apply toothpaste if you want to have a gunk free toothpaste tube.

Squeeze the toothpaste to get the toothpaste you want. Then while simultaneously releasing the squeeze on the tube so it will suck the toothpaste down into the tube apply a moderate amount of pressure with the toothbrush while applying the toothpaste so that the bristles scoop out more of the toothpaste and leave a little dip going into the tube instead of a the toothpaste being flush with the opening. Then close the lid tightly. This method has successfully kept my toothpaste gunk free for several weeks. Also, a note is to squeeze from the bottom not the middle of the tube which is different then what I used to do.
Basically, Ryan applies his toothpaste more aggressively so it stays clean. I have a more delicate approach due to the fact I inadvertently try not to touch the bristles when I apply toothpaste to anything except the toothpaste. If you have your own toothpaste either way is fine, but if you share a tube my way is a little more hygienic…until the tube gets gunky.
I successfully achieved my goal (which turned out to be more of a science experiment) and now tend to switch back and forth between my old way and Ryan’s way.

I know it seems like I spent a lot of time and effort on this, but I would like to say I really didn’t. All the thinking and pondering of what to do next occurred during the time I spent applying the toothpaste. I have however spent a lot of time writing this blog about toothpaste.😁

New Year’s Eve 2019

It was a laid back New Year’s Eve for our family this year. That is just the way we like it. I asked the kids several times what they wanted to do. None of them had any ambitions except Emiliee. She wanted to have a sleep over with Jovee. They had plans at their house so she joined them.

The rest of us stayed home. We got some snacks and treats for the evening and then we played games, watched movies and put puzzles together. All while wearing my most comfy pajamas and slippers. About 5 minutes before New Year’s we turned on the count down and then celebrated at midnight.

Doesn’t sound very exciting but I thought it was a perfect night. For New Year’s Day we all slept in of course and then had a big breakfast. Ross and Lauren and their family came over and we spent the rest of the day playing games and enjoying each others company.

Bring on 2020!