A full week update & progress with Ashtyn

November is already 1/3 over! It's crazy how fast this year is flying by. And today, we felt the first real glimpse of winter. When I took the kids to school, I got out and played with them on the playground, in nearly 60F weather. By 10am, when I returned to volunteer in Mrs Ranum's class, the temperature had dropped to 28F and there was light snow. Only in Colorado can the weather turn so quickly. It's amazing!

Well - since it has been a week since my last post - it's time to update on some crazy events:

• Another business trip - it was a very busy week last week on this front. I had a full day of meetings with Cisco on Wednesday of last week. This included a meeting with about 100 people from Cisco. That meeting went pretty well and we did a thorough review or our methodology updates and flows. Overall, the meeting was good and we left with only a few action items.
• On Thursday, the meetings were all day with Elway, plus another meeting with the Insieme folks on the Lorentz SerDes issue (i.e. our 16FF SerDes are still not working in silicon).
• Both nights, I was expecting to have business dinners, but I ended up having the evenings free, and I took advantage to get caught up on work and enjoy nice dinners
• On Friday, I flew back home and worked my tail off. I was hoping to slip out and play some golf, but there was just too much to do. I had learned on Thursday that I was supposed to fly to China on Sunday to meet with ZTE in Shenzhen, so needless to say, I was pretty busy on Friday. Luckily, that trip was posponed a week, but I still had plenty to do.
• At 4pm on Friday, I picked up Jantzen and we headed down to Loveland Lazer Tag for Tyler Huff's birthday party. It was so much fun! Here are a few photos from the evening:

• On Saturday, I had probably the best Saturday I've had in months. With nothing on the agenda except a Relief Society activity, Amy left me at home with Jantzen and Aubrey and I got some work done. I unclogged both sinks in our bathroom, I had a plumber come out to replace both water-heaters (one was leaking, so we replaced both of them), I fixed hooks in the laundry room, I mowed the lawn, I fertizlized the lawn, I replaced a blade on the lawnmower when I bent one with a rock and I cleaned both garages out. All of this by 1pm. It felt AWESOME!! Amy came home about 2:30pm and I asked if I could celebrate my awesome Saturday with 9 holes of golf. I took Jantzen and Aubrey with me and I had a blast. Jantzen started getting sick though and he stayed sitting on the cart the entire time.
• After golf, Amy and the girls watched Harry Potter and I took Aubrey to run a few errands and to watch "The Book of Life" movie. It was a cute little movie, but I could tell that Aubrey started getting sick as well! Both of the little kids were sick and by bed-time, I could feel myself getting sick. I was thinking - great - I have to get on a plane to China and I feel like crap! Luckily, the China trip was postponed!
• On Sunday, it was the Primary Program. Amy had spent so much time working on it, as she does every year. She works so hard on the program - but I made her made. She was expecting me to stay home with the kids, but I was feeling better, so I got up, showered and dressed, and went to Ward Council. Then, when I got home, I cleaned things up, got Jantzen and Aubrey dressed, and took them to church anyway. I thought I was doing a good thing, but Amy was mad at me. We worked it out later, but I guess I wasn't "getting it". However, after Sacrament, I took the two kids home and feel asleep with them for 3 hours. I was exhausted and I really did need to rest. I felt better afterwards, so we played some games and watched some Mormon Messages together. It was a nice evening together as a family. I'm glad we stayed in! Here's a shot of us wrestling a bit before bed last night:

I really do love my kids!! After we sent the smaller kids to bed last night, I stayed up with Ashtyn and then Mom joined us later to talk. We've been praying and thinking about ways to help Ashtyn be more responsible with her school work. She was very worried about going back to school today to deal having missed so much last week because she was sick. However, we challenged her to "own" her work and we challenged her to get home and do ALL of her school work, music practice and chores before she does anything else. We promised her that if she does that, she will feel happier each day and if she does it for a week, we will let her have a friend over on Friday evening or Saturday. Well - today was the first day and she did awesome! She worked on her school work for pretty much the ENTIRE day after school and she even stayed after school to work on some of her science with her favorite teacher and class. You could visually see how proud she was, how happy she was. It was awesome!

For FHE tonight, we did something a little different. Tonight was "Math Night" at school, so I took Alyssa, Jantzen and Aubrey to Rangeview to participate. It was fun. Here's a photo of the kids in Mrs. Schnieder's class at the end of the Math night:

We enjoyed playing games in the classroom together and it visiting with friends. We got home about 6:45pm and had dinner until 7:30pm. Since it was so late, we just read scriptures, but we read 2 Nephi 5 tonight. So we talked about what it means to "live after the manner of happiness". It was a fun time together and the kids enjoyed it. The baby was super happy as well. In the end, today was a great day! Just look at Alyssa and Aubrey playing with Jarrett:

Before finishing, I will admit that I lost my temper with the kids this morning. Alyssa and Ashtyn were fighting over who gets the front seat this morning. I lost it - I was sick of the constant bickering and fighting. I was most mad at Alyssa and I let her have it. However, we lost the spirit and I asked us to all pray before Ashtyn went into school. I think that helped. It definitely helped me today!

 

 

 

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