School Rant!!!!

Alright, this is a rant!!!! I am furious this morning at the school that Weston is attending. I have never met with a more unfriendly staff, dumber rules or friviouls paperwork in my life!!! I thought that it was bad when we moved here that Weston had to have a physical on their "Kentucky form" within 30 days of our move, a shot record that was transferred to the "Kentucky form" before he could even enroll and an eye exam by a othomologist (give me a break) to enroll in school. I also think that it is rediculous that there is no pick-up line in the afternoon for the kids that get picked up by their parents. The parent has to go inside, sign your name and wait for your kid to get to the cafeteria (of course they let the bus kids go first). All of this in the name of safety!! They say that they do this to keep the kids safe, but they have only checked my ID once. When you come to sign a kid out, it has the name of the person that is "supposed" to be signing them out right next to the name of the kid, so anyone could write your name and then wait and take your kid. Is that so much "safer" than just letting them be picked up in the car? I don't think so!!

Okay, so I can tolerate all these things because this is supposed to be a good school and I don't know if we will even be at this school next year. None of the houses that we are considering go to this school. And after today, I am glad that we will not be going here next year. So this morning I go up to the school a few minutes early so that I can ask Weston's teacher about birthday treats. I wanted to know what kind of things I could send, what day would be best, etc. I was told I couldn't come after school because that is when the teachers were doing their planning and things for the next day. Silly me, I didn't figure I couldn't come in the morning either. I mean, this is a school and this is MY child. As far as I am concerned, I can go and see what is happening in MY child's school if I want to right!!! It wasn't even like I was coming in during the middle of the day and demanding to sit in on the class or anything. It was still 20 minutes till school started! So, they stop me at the front office and say that I cannot meet with the teacher. I say, "Not even for a minute to ask her a quick question about birthday treats?" The reply, "No!!!! The teachers are helping the kids get settled into their seats and started with the day. The principal is very strict about this." Maybe if they had said it nicely it would have been easier, but no, they were rude!! I then tell them how this is the 3rd school that we have been to and this was the most rediculous thing that I had ever heard of. Their reply to me was that the other schools that I attended must not have been safe then. Weston is standing there asking if he is going to get to have treats for his birthday or not, and the office staff is making a big stink about how I ABSOULUTELY cannot go talk to the teacher. They said that they could call the teacher and they would ask her about treats. At this point I send Weston on to class. So they call to the classroom and guess what....the teacher isn't even in the room or nearby. Yeah, she is really helping the kids get settled for the day!!! So then, I am really getting mad. I say again how rediculous I think that this rule is that I can't go ask a simple question. They say that if I had made an appointment to see the teacher, at least one week in advance mind you, I could go and talk to the teacher. So then I say that I am glad that most likely we will not be attending this school next year because of all the wierd things that this school does and the main lady that is being so rude turns to me and says, "What day are you moving? You had better go fill out a withdrawl form right now!!!!!" Okay, give me a break. School is not even done for 4 more weeks. I am sure I am going to fill out a withdrawl right now.

Alright so perhaps this is not as bad as it sounds, but it just makes me so mad. I can't even tell you. I will be so glad when we get settled and into a new school. If it wasn't the end of the year, this whole thing today would make me want to home school. Thanks for hearing out my rant. Hopefully the rest of the day will go better!!!!

Yea For Brian!!!

This picture is not new, but I wanted to post a picture of my little Bri-bri. We are so excited over here at our home!! Brian has successfully kept his bed dry at night for an entire week!!!! He is SO excited about it. He tells me every morning that he is dry and is so excited to be wearing underwear to bed just like Weston. Here's hoping that the trend continues!!!!

Pictures!!

Well, it seems like all I am doing lately is looking!!! Looking for houses, looking for doctors, looking, looking, looking!!! We are in a time crunch now and are imposing a time limit on our house looking. Our goal is to find something in the next 2 to 3 weeks so that we can be in a house before the summer starts. We will go looking a few more times this week and this weekend and will hopefully have a winner soon!!

So, since there is just not much going on (besides the looking), here are some pictures for your viewing enjoyment of my beautiful children!!! They were taken today, just so that I coudl have something new to put on my blog!!!!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures!!! I'll update more later!!!!

$1.88

Okay, I was just too excited not to post about this!!! After paying almost $4 for a gallon of milk in North Carolina, I have come to the land of cheaper milk!!!!!! Here in all the stores the milk sells for about $2.50 a gallon. But this week, at Krogers (which is right by our apartment) milk is ONLY $1.88!!! May not seem like a big deal to you, but to us big milk drinkers here, that is fantastic!!! And bread is cheaper here too!! Along with lots of other things. When I think about how excited I get when groceries and things are cheaper, I have to laugh at myself. If anyone would have ever told me when I was 16 that one day I would get truly excited about the cost of milk, I think I would have laughed!! :) Funny how life is huh? Boy I do love a bargain!!!!!

Good Boys

I have such good boys!!! Weston and Brian are the best of friends most of the time. They fight sometimes, but the sweet and kind times that they share far outweigh the bad. Last night we had asked the boys to get their PJs on and then hop up on the couch for scriptures. As I came out after getting Aaron's jammies on him, I found Weston sweetly reading his new school library book to Brian. After watching them for a few minutes, Barth took their picture. They didn't want to stop reading, but it was past bedtime, so we told them that they could finish reading it tomorrow. They were both excited about that. I am glad that I have such good and loving boys right now. It makes motherhood very rewarding to have the boys that I have!!!

Easter

Looking back through my past posts I realized that I neglected to post pictures of Easter!! So here are some pictures of our Easter morning. The boys had fun seeing what they got in their baskets and I think that they liked their new watches the best!!! Actually I think that Aaron liked all the candy best, but Weston and Brian liked the watches!!! It was a nice day and we enjoyed going to our new ward here and meeting all sorts of nice people.

The boys wanted to make cards for their basket so that the Easter bunny would know whose basket was whose!! I thought that was sweet.

Here they are checking out their loot!!
Aaron taking a look at his basket.
We had fun dying eggs on Easter morning.
Me too says Aaron. He was really into dropping the eggs into the cups. We ended up with a few broken eggs thanks to him, but we didn't really mind!!! :)

First Haircut

Alright, this is from a few weeks ago when Aaron got his first haircut. He barely has any hair even though he is getting close to 2 years, but he did have quite a bit that was getting too long on the back part of his head. This was the only picture that we got because he was NOT happy about it at all. In this picture I am holding him in place with my leg as I tried to cut. Barth had to help me hold him so that I could get the few snips that I needed so that it wouldn't be over his ears any longer!! Aaron has had the least amount of hair of any of my kids at this age. By the time Weston was this old he had tons of hair and was getting it cut like every few weeks. Brian, who I thought didn't have as much hair, had already had several cuts himself by this age. Just goes to show ya that each child is different! I am sure that this next one will be totally different as well and add another flavor to our family dynamics!!!

4 Months

Well, this week marks 4 months along for me!! I finally broke down and got some pregnancy clothes since mine are packed up and in storage somewhere here around Cincinnati. I got some pants at a re-sale shop since I am just not crazy about the new under belly pants that they sell now. Then I got a few new shirts at Kohls that were on sale. I modeled them for Barth tonight and then had him take a picture (not the best of me I know but it is the end of the day!!) so that I could show you that I am starting to show a little.

Floor Plan

Okay so this is the floor plan for our apartment. Ours is actually the flip of this one. I couldn't figure out how to link the apartment's floor plan to my blog (I am just not that fancy) so I printed out the floor plan and then took a picture of it. Any, this will hopefully give you some sort of idea of how our place is laid out!!!

The Inside Tour

Okay, so here are some pictures of what our apartment looks like from the inside!! There are not pictures of everything, but of the main stuff. This first picture is taken with the front door open. This is what you would see if you knocked on the door and I let you in!! If you can, picture a door to the left of this one. That is where door that goes to the garage is. The door that leads to the garage and the front door make like an L.

You got up about 2 steps and then hit the landing and this is the rest of the stairs that lead to the apartment. That is Aaron at the top of the gate calling my name!!!

This is what you see as you hit the top of the stairs... the kitchen.

If you look to the left, you will see this little computer nitche, and the boys' rooms. The door that you see open is Aaron's room. Across the little hall from it is the bathroom and Weston and Brian's room is between the bathroom and Aaron's room.

From the top of the stairs to the right is the living room. The boys have all been enjoying playing with toys on the coffee table. Brian is saying "cheese" in this picture.

Aaron wanted his picture taken too. You can see the couches a little bit better and see that the toys are stored back behind the couches in the corner.

This is a view of the dining room which is together with the living area. This is taken next to the window that looks outside and the door to the balcony.

And lastly, this is the view from our living room window/ balcony. Just to the right of this is a gazeebo and the playground!!

I hope that you enjoyed the pictures. I will try to take some more later. I will also see if I can get a copy of the floorplan off the apartment's website so that you can tell the layout of the place a little better!!!

Our New Place

Here is a picture of our new apartment!! The kids are standing in front of our garage. Our door is set back and is just to the right of the garage. There is a door right next to ours. Notice the beautiful artwork that the boys did for us on the driveway yesterday with their new chalk from the Easter Bunny.

Here is the park that is right by our apartment. It is just to the right of our apartment building. The boys had lots of fun playing out there today.
Here is Aaron getting ready to go down the slide!!
Brian hangin out at the slide!!
Weston trying his hand at the cross bars.

I'm Back!!!!

Okay well after a very crazy week I am finally back. We are almost all moved into our apartment and now have a computer connection and phone number!! For those that don't know, we were delayed in coming out here because Brian and Aaron both got sick. Because Brian got sick and has the problem with Ketotic Hypoglycemia, he was put in the hospital there in NC. We were glad that it happened there and not here where we don't know anything or anyone. The good thing about Brian being hospitalized was that the doctors in our practice there in NC said that Cincinnati has one of the best children's hospitals in the nation and perhaps once we got here and got settled in, maybe we could find someone that might know what is going on with our little Bri-Bri!! Plus because we were able to be admitted straight and not have to go through the ER as in the past, his numbers didn't fall as low and he didn't have to be hospitalized for nearly as long this time!!! Anyway, everyone is better and it has been DOWNRIGHT COLD here!!!! It has snowed here (I guess that I should really say flurried) for the past 4 days in a row and has finally warmed up today to a whopping 39 degrees!!! The boys have been loving the snow and are really liking all the big boxes that they have built forts out of. I will post some pictures when I have more time, but our computer just got set up and now it is almost dinner time!!!!!

Gone

Well, I am signing off for a while. The big day is tomorrow and the packers will be here first thing in the morning. That means that we have to disconnect the computer tonight along with about 50 other things. I don't know when I'll be back up again. We will have to wait for our stuff to get delivered!!! Till then, Happy Easter and I'll write when I get a chance!!!

Aaron's New Car Seat!!!

Yesterday we got Aaron a new car seat. I debated on whether to get him one to repalce the car seat that he was currently in that would work rear facing as well as forward facing, or to just get the next bigger size of seat. I decided that since we have a new baby on the way and our other kids have outgrown the little baby carrier type seat quickly, I would get one that would face forward as well as backward. So, here is the new seat. It is made by Evenflo. I really wanted a seat that would be comfy to ride in. That was actually my main concern. Aaron has not really been liking the old seat because it is like sitting on covered plastic!! I don't know why they can't make the seats more comfortable for babies!!!! This one has all sorts of padding everywhere and Aaron really loves it!!! Here are some pictures of him trying it out yesterday. It is now buckled in and the old seat was donated to the garage sale that the Young Women in our ward will be having a 2 weeks!!!

Aaron really wanted to sit in the seat as soon as we got it out of the box. He even wanted to buckle it up and didn't want to get out.

Here he is showing us that he really does LOVE IT!!! Such a cute smile!!!

Watch Over Me

When I went in to get Brian up from his nap today so that we could get Weston, this is what I found. By the time that I came back with the camera, Brian was already waking up. It was too cute not to take a picture of. It was an especially cute picture when he was sleeping and the animals were watching over him, but this is cute too!!

Easter Packages

The boys were all very excited to get packages from Grandma and Grandpa Yorke this past week!!! They got to open the packages on Monday night as part of an Easter FHE. The had a lot of fun ripping into the packages and seeing the fun clothes, candy and prizes that Grandma and Grandpa had sent to them!!! It made for a fun night!!!

Here they are trying to get into the packages! This is the only picture that turned out of Aaron. All the other ones were either blurry or he was not cooperating!!

Brian couldn't wait to see what was inside. He was actually the first one to get his package open!!
Weston was right behind him though. He got a carrot jump rope and has been jumping with it ever since to try to be like the jump rope kids at school!!!
This is supposed to be Weston with his new clothes. A fun red shirt and shorts!! Red is a great color for him!!
Brian and his new clothes. He was kind of in a posing mood so this was the best shot we got!! I will have to get the boys to model their new clothes so I can take a picture!!

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!! The boys love their presents!!!

Something I want to remember

Okay this post is for me so that I can remember something that happened at Weston's open house last week. Since this is my journal, I figured that I had better write about it here. If you are not into hearing about how great my child is, you had better switch blogs!! This is something that I want to remember and my brain is all but gone these days!!

Last week Weston and I went to his Spring Open House at his school. Daddy stayed home with the other boys so it was a special treat for just Weston and I. The open house started out with the PTA part and was followed by the schools jump roping team performing. Weston thought that this was the coolest thing that he had ever seen. When I told him that I used to do the same thing at my elementary school when I was little he looked at me as if I were nuts. You know, almost like, "You were never that age Mommy!" Anyway, after the thrilling tricks and double dutch jumping we headed over to his classroom. There were not many kids there yet. I looked at all the work that he had done so far. He had a book on his desk about seasons that he had dedicated, nicely enough, to me because, as it said on the dedication page, "she is my favorite person." Flattery will get you everywhere!!!!! Then I looked over his writing folder and at his nice, clean desk. I saw the egg, the caterpillar, and other works of art that he had made. Then it was time to talk to the teacher. We have really loved Weston's teacher this year. She has been a lot of fun and Weston loves her exuberant personality. So, I turn to her and say, "Well Weston told me that he told you that we were moving." At this point, her jaw drops visibly!! "No!!!" she cries, "You can't move!! I love that kid!!!!!" Now of course all mothers love to hear things like that about their child. It, of course, made me feel good that he was well loved by his teacher. Then she proceeds to tell me that he is her favorite. That he is the favorite of the entire class. She tells me what a good natured thing he is. She tells me that he is sensitive and is so kind to all the other children. How he never has an unkind word. She tells me how earlier in the year when a friend moved away, he cried. She says how at lunch, when the girl sitting next to him pinched his cheek (like a grandma would) and told him that he was cute, he simply said, "Thank you!" None of the "leave me alone", or "teacher, she's bugging me" stuff that kids his age usually do. Anyway, I am so glad to hear that he is a good boy, well liked and does so well in school. And even though I know that some of how he is is just the way that he is wired (you know calm, easy going), it makes me feel like I am doing a half decent job in teaching my kids how to behave and be kind. I am so grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ that gives me so much help and guidance in my efforts. I know that if it were not for a very supportive husband and the teachings that I hold dear, I would not be nearly as successful in my endeavors. I am so glad that I can stay home with my kids and be teaching them every day the things that are important. It is truly a blessing to be at home where I should be!!!!

oh-and on a side note, I asked Weston on the way home from the open house about his telling his teacher about moving. He replied that she had asked him what he was doing for Spring Break and he told her that he was going to "Ohio, Cincinnati!" (as he lovingly says it!) He figured that this was "telling" his teacher about the move. Oh well, he is just 6!!

More Visiting Pictures

Since not much is going on here other than busying ourselves with the upcoming move preparations, I thought that I would post more pictures from my family's trip up here!!

Here we are at Sunday dinner. I was so glad that we all fit in the dining room!! Our dinner was croissant rolls from Sams made into sandwiches and fresh fruit. Mom commented that it was just like the dinners everyone has at her house on some Sunday nights!!!

Here is Grandma playing with Aaron not long after they got here. They are playing with these little robot things that the boys got at McDonalds. I think that Grandma started out reading, but ended up playing when all was said and done!!
Auntie M and Weston are doing their favorite thing here, reading!! I think that Auntie M is reading Weston one of his favorite Magic Treehouse books. He loves non-fiction best but these books run a close second since they are based on historical events. Brian is enjoying a back scratch from Auntie M and also likes hearing these stories when we read them. We kept Grandpa busy while he was here. We had him fix all sorts of things. It started the day that he got here. The first thing that he fixed was Brian's fishing pole!!! The line was all tangled up inside the pole and Grandpa fixed it as good as new!! Brian was excited to have his pole fixed and gave it a thumbs up!! (Something his Daddy taught him!)
Aaron thought that it was so fun to read with Grandma. He just kept bringing books over for her to read. Aaron loved all the attention that Grandma showered on him!!!! It was such a fun visit!!!

Here we go again!!!

Okay, here is a quick update on our life!! As you may know, a few weeks back Barth went to Cincinnati to interview for a job. He accepted their offer and will be starting his new job on April 9th. That means that here in 2 weeks we will be gone from North Carolina and on to a new adventure!! Life has been a bit crazy this past year, but we really feel like this is what we are supposed to be doing. Barth told his work today and gave his 2 week notice. Things didn't exactly go peachy, but they didn't go as bad as it could have. We are grateful for that. Weston is very excited to see a new part of the country and we are glad that we will be at least a few hundred miles closer to family. (It is actually under 1000 miles between here and there!!!) Anyway, I will get busy posting more pictures from the fun time that we had with my family, but I just wanted to let those of you who check out my blog know our news!!!

Go Grandma, Go!!!!

There was a new section of the playground at Weston's school. It was a fitness part with all sorts of things. One of the things to do was a climbing bar. We all tried our hands at it!! (except Grandpa) Not only do we have a fun Grandma, but she is still strong!!! She climbed all the way to the top of the bar and here are the pictures to prove it!!

Here she is climbing!!

Yay!! She made it all the way to the top!!