There's a lot...

Of posts that is. I just posted like 5 things so make sure you check them all out so you can see what's been goin on.

Happy Birthday Matt

Actually it should be more like Happy Awesome Week. The Monday before his birthday, as you saw from his post, he passed his last CSET test so we went out and celebrated at Red Robin. Then on Wednesday Matt turned 26 and we went out to Chipotle for dinner. His birthday was pretty uneventful, as we know most are as we get older, but he said all he wanted was to celebrate that night with Daniel and me. Like that was all we were going to leave it at. Cha. Prior to his birthday, Matt asked for NBA League Pass for his birthday after it had been reduced in price so I agreed to that and he enjoyed the last 12 Nuggets games of the season (along with every other game that could have been on…dang TV shows taking breaks). Well, we decided to get him a BBQ too since it’s getting close to summer time. Last Saturday, my mom, my Dad, Rick, and all my siblings minus Brent came over and Matt grilled some carne for dinner. It was sooooo yummy. Then of course we had cake and ended the evening by watching the Lakers game. He’s lucky it was his birthday. Anyways, so that was Matt B’s birthday! Happy Birthday babe!

Video Camera

Daniel does all kinds of really awesome things and says cute things. He loves to shoot baskets on his little tikes hoop. He loves turning the TV to an XM station and having a dance party where we all have to get up and dance (this could last as long as half an hour). He will also jam out in the car in his car seat. He will pretend like he’s asleep by lying down and fake snoring, although he still wants his eyes open to make sure you’re paying attention. He counts to seven. But he never says three. It goes “1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 4, 5!!!” He can tell you what a doggy, a kitty, a cow, a duck, a lion, and a car say. He can tell you where his button (belly), nose, feet, and arms are. He calls Mickey Mouse “Ma Moss” now that we have D-land passes. He sings the song “The Boys are Back” from High School Musical 3.

And yet, no one will ever know because this kid won’t let me video tape him. As soon as he sees the camera he just wants to play with it or cover the lens and when he doesn’t do that, he stops doing his cute thing and won’t say anything. How do I get him to let me record him???

It's gone!

You all remember my story about how much crap we had to throw out when we moved into this house. Not ours – theirs. The crap they left behind. We got everything from the inside of the house (minus the paint since you obviously can’t dump that) and from the immediate backyard area. We went through 4 dumpsters and that wasn’t everything because people asked if they could take the metal (to recycle) and some other things so we would’ve had at least a whole other dumpster’s worth. Well, it still wasn’t everything. We had 2 large work benches that I assume he made himself covered in crap. Wood, chemicals, random pieces of granite, pipe, shower heads, plastic tubing, tires, and…wait for it…..a toilet. Ya, they replaced the lovely green toilet with a new nice one but then left the old one in the backyard. So all this has been sitting on the side of our house this whole time. Well, it was my mom’s city’s “big trash day” where they would come and take anything. Literally anything. So we borrowed my dad’s truck the day before and loaded everything (in a few trips) and hauled it over there. It is so awesome to now have a clean side yard. Here’s a few pics of what it looked like in front of my mom’s house (ya – it literally goes from one end of the sidewalk in front of her house to the other end) and our side yard now.

swibbin

At least that's what Daniel calls it. You obviously read the previous post about his swim lessons and how he did not like them at all. Well the 2nd week, he totally turned around. He started loving them! He's smiling, laughing, and doing everything pretty well. Now he's always asking to go swibbin! It's also not heartbreaking when they're not crying! He did a great job and I feel so much more comfortable with how well he did. I tried to post some video but it was taking too long to upload so I gave up. Maybe I'll have Matt try later and put it on Facebook or something.

Work

Most of you know that I’m a junior high teacher. There were a lot of reasons that I decided to go into this profession. First, if I had to work (which is the case), I’d be able to have the time off with my kids. Second, I wanted to help make a difference. Like that song by Lady Antebellum “I was here” – you should totally check it out because it’s awesome. Well, recently I’ve had a couple of really great teaching moments. At Open House, I had a parent talk to me and tell me that her son (who’s got like the highest grade in my honors geometry class) has always been good at math but this is the first year that he’s liked math – it’s his favorite subject! I also work with the students who are below grade level in math and struggle with basic skills. Last week we had our post test on the topic we were covering and this girl who’s come to the class at least 3 times this year and normally still struggles (ya, she’s really low). She got a 100% and you could just see the joy in her face. I mean she didn’t say anything because she’s one of those girls who has a reputation to maintain and doing well in school is not part of it. But she was super excited. Then, I’ve been tutoring a student at a different junior high that was pulling Ds and Cs in math, which was really unusual for him. I’ve been working with him since October and recently he was part of an Academic Pentathlon team that went to a competition for our entire district. His team won 2 1st place medals overall and he himself won 2nd place for History and Science, 5th place for Language Arts, and……..3rd place in Math. That’s 3rd place out of every individual in the tournament in the entire district for the junior high level. Now, I’m not telling you this to toot my own horn. What a lot of people don’t know is that as teachers, we feel defeated much of the time, especially when you work in an area with the population of students that I do. We get down on ourselves for the poor test scores, that there are students that no matter how many times and different ways you teach something they will just not get it. We deal with disrespectful kids that we’re not allowed to hit. =) Our administration doesn’t back us up and more often than not, tells us we’re doing our job wrong when our test scores don’t improve (never mind that the student has no parental support or never does his homework or puts in an ounce of effort). 95% of the time we watch the days go by feeling as though we didn’t accomplish anything and struggle with the thought that maybe we could have done more. But these last few weeks, that 5%, is part of the reason I still believe that I have the best job in the world and gives me hope that I am making at least a little difference in this world.

Swim Lessons and Eating

As most of you know Daniel took swim lessons last year and he did a great job especially because now he can float and buy us a few seconds if he were to fall into water and we weren't paying attention or something. It was a tough experience to watch, but worth it, now this year we just began his refresher lessons and he remembers everything. He's not as good at it as he was at the end of last year, but he certainly has the basics down and still can float well. However, he hates it. He didn't hate it as much last year and maybe he just couldn't communicate that as well, but now he despises going. Once we pull up to the house where the lessons are he says "bye bye" and starts crying. When he is going through his lessons he asks "Out!?" and yells for "Daddy." It is heartbreaking to watch even though I know that the lessons provide an invaluable service and crucial seconds to us if something crazy were to happen.

Another thing that has been happening is that Daniel has 12 teeth now and is beginning to cut the sharp teeth in the bottom of his mouth, I'm lame and don't know what they're called. He has been running a fever and what not, things you would associate with the teeth, but then he has decided he rarely wants to eat. Over the past two days I could probably place all that he has eaten in the palm of hand. Today, he finally decided he wanted to eat and had a relatively good sized lunch. It's not so much that I think that he is starving, although I wish he would eat more, and he certainly is growing at an appropriate pace both weight and height wise, but it's just difficult to stomach. I think that is my biggest problem with him not eating because I feel like I am a bad parent or that I am doing something wrong when he doesn't eat. I let him feed himself, we give him good food like veggies and fruits, and we give him food we know he loves sometimes like nuggets and fries, and yet sometimes he just doesn't eat. Like I said I mostly feel like when he doesn't eat that it reflects on my ability as a parent. Anybody else feel this way?

Anyways, I will end this update post because I have to head off to swim lessons for the day. Awesome!

Small Miracle

On March 13, I took the second of two California state mandated tests necessary to become a teacher. I passed the first of them in November thanks to the help of my lovely wife, and this time I had done most of the studying on my own with her quizzing me to help me retain the information. When the day came to take the test I felt pretty good about my chances to pass the test, but coming out of it I didn't feel so good. Each test is four hours long, or at least they give you fou hours to pass it, I was done in two and a half hours because there were about six problems that stumped me and a few essay questions that I literally knew nothing about, and don't worry about me being a teacher they were ridiculous questions that would never be taught until college or AP Calculus.

Anyways, I knew I had gotten about 21 of the multiple choice questions right and that I did pretty well on two of the four essay questions. So based on what I know about how the test is scored I am required to get a score of 220, and I figured my score to be around 215 to 223. The problem with this was two-fold. First, the next test date is May 8th, which is Daniel's birthday and that would suck to have to worry about the test on that day, and second, I had studied pretty hard that odds are I wouldn't do much better than I did this time. Well today, I got the unofficial results and I passed the test. They don't tell you the score because they don't want it to effect hiring, but I passed and that's all I care about.

It may seem simple or even silly, but to me this was a small miracle because now I can keep pushing forward with my master's and credential program and there is no concerns for me with regards to Daniel's birthday. I know I did my part, but I owe this one to the Lord and his blessings.

Easter 2010

First of all, how awesome was it that we had conference on Easter? Nothing like breakfast casserole to start off Easter morning. On Saturday, we went to the Spring Egg-stravegansa that our city put on. There were bounce houses, a petting zoo, pony rides, field games, arts and crafts, pictures with the Easter bunny, and an egg hunt. Daniel did the bunny toss, looked at the animals because he was a little freaked out by them, and played on the playground. There were too many big kids in the bounce houses and after what happened with Santa, I don't think meeting the Easter Bunny was going to be any better. Unfortunately, the egg hunt was during his nap so we didn't stick around for that. But we did do an egg hunt Easter morning after conference. We filled as many eggs as would fit in hit basket and "hid" them out front. It took him a little coaxing the first few eggs but then he was into it! And he had to hold his basket in his arms so every time he bent over to pick up an egg, some of them fell out. Then he wanted to sit down out front and open them all. We filled them with fruit loops because we didn't want him to have so much chocolate. He opened one and was like "CEREAL!!!!" all excited. Glad it doesn't take much. We got some cute pictures from that so enjoy.

House Pictures - 6 months later

Since we moved in last September, we've done a lot of work to this house. More than I think we actually thought we'd have to do when we put in the offer. I remember thinking - this house is move in ready. Says a lot about the houses we were looking at before!!! So we wanted to post pictures of what the house looks like now but since the old pictures we took when the other people lived here were from like August, you may not remember what it looked like before. So I wanted to post before and after pictures of each room and in the interest of space, decided to make it a video. Before the video though, I'll detail what changes we made.

Paint: We painted every room in the house except the bathrooms and kitchen (which are the next things we're budgeting for since paint always means new towel racks and baseboard right?) The most dramatic change was in our master bedroom that went from electric green to a sandy color. Big thanks to the Jamisons, Eva, and my family for helping us paint.

Light Fixtures: With the exception of the kitchen, laundry room, and storage room, we've replaced ALL the light fixtures. All the bedrooms got ceiling fans and both bathrooms & the dining room got updated lighting. (Even though the hanging crystal balls in the bathroom and deco looking glass chandelier were just so lovely...)

Windows: Thanks to my dad and his parents, we were able to replace all the bedroom and bathroom windows. They were sooooo gross and old. Single pane, metal framed, some painted shut multiple times, some with so much mold on them I felt sick looking at them. But now they are new and beautiful!!!

Front: Luckily the front was in great shape so the only change we really made was changing the address numbers.

Living Room/Dining Room: Well first of all, they are now separate. Before they had the combo room just one big living room with 3 separate areas: main entertainment center, computer and ancestor shrine area, and video game area. Their entertainment center took up the entire dining room wall! They had already updated the room with a new gorgeous picture window and crown moulding.

Hall Bathroom: While I'd love to replace the vanity and sink, it just wasn't in the budget. However, we did get the tub done, with the plumbing all brand new and the shower head raised and a built in caddy. It also went from having the sliding doors (pain to clean!!!) to a curtain. I'd love to change out the fixtures in there too but they painted so weird that we'd have to paint at the same time and replace the vents since they painted over those too....

Bedrooms: Not much had to done to the bedrooms. Just in Daniel's current room, they originally had a hole from the hall closet into the bedroom where they had a TV. Ya. So my dad framed that out and drywalled it up and you can't even tell) except in the closet since we haven't finished it.

Kitchen: The granite was already there so that was a nice touch. Since they didn't have an oven or a dishwasher though, we put in all new appliances: fridge, stove/oven, micro hood, & dishwasher. We lost a little cabinet space but we are definitely not hurting for space. We also framed and drywalled up the door from the kitchen into the master bath. Ya.

Laundry Room: Well, now there is one. Before they had their laundry set up outside and they had a dining table in the little added-on room. We thought it was too small and since it's right behind the kitchen, we tapped into the plumbing and had our friend set up lines for a laundry room. Matt and my dad then hung up a bar and shelf for all my laundry needs.

Storage Room/Video game room/Scentsy/Scrapbook room: Technically they were using it as another bedroom. It's part of the addition but we thought we could use it as a catch all room right now until we need it. The only thing we've really done is paint.

Backyard: They had sooooo much crap back there and everything was overgrown. However, with the help of a young women service project and our realtor's housewarming gift (gardener), it looks a thousand times better back there. Still a lot more work to do (like getting rid of the koi pond) but it's getting there.

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