The Beal/Cannon Family: January 2017

Sunday, January 29, 2017

Debrief Society

Lets see last week I had my first Debrief Society meeting. There is an online group of local women that are fringe to ex Mormons and we sporadically get together but I wanted something a little more organized. I stole the name Debrief Society from a podcast and we are going to try to have monthly evening meetings. I mostly just want to have it be a platform for friendship with like minded people who understand the trauma that is leaving the LDS church and/or having historical/cultural issues. It was good. I hope next month more people come. I think we may try to do a craft next time (very Mormon of us).

On Thursday my real calligraphy class started. I'm taking that class with several of my book club friends and also my neighbor friend Rachel. I think it will be fun. It is very tedious. We will see if I can master it or at least be somewhat competent in it by the end or not. We are learning just one type of font. It should be interesting. I'm getting together with Rachel today to watch a movie and practice.

My parents, Chase and Rachel, and Trisha came into town for the weekend. Alex and Lance's birthday was Saturday so we all got together Friday night at Enrique's Mexican Restaurant in Kuna. That place is always packed on a Friday night. It took forever but it was good. Afterwards we headed over for dessert at Alex and Anna's new house. Their house was great. Trisha stayed at our house for the weekend. We got up Saturday morning and got ready. When my mom came over we went and did some shopping and had Zupas for lunch. We came home and rested for a bit and then went to the movie Hidden Figures. It was so good. My brothers all went ice fishing all day. Brrr. It was apparently 1 degree. Later that night Trisha and I had some shakes and watched a movie. She and my parents left this morning. It was fun to see everyone this weekend. We were just missing Keaton and Amanda and Kelsey and Justin. That's all!

Most of the adult fam at the restaurant. Me with my eyes shut. Nice!

Lizzie got caught in Gabby's hair.

This is my valentine card. You can't believe how much that stressed me out. Haha.

Story time

"Frozen" day at Dance.

I decided to take my cards from the class and use them as decorations. Basically everyone else's card was better than mine. Haha. Oh well, I get to enjoy all of them.

I bought bagels for my sister's stay and the kids were in bagel heaven. Little bagel munchers.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Ryan Beast

Well Ryan has been keeping it real over here. He is making progress....I think! He has pooped a couple more times in the toilet but never voluntarily. He wears a pull up at night (my only kid to need to do that) and the last couple of mornings he has woken me up to go pee in the toilet rather than in his pull up. That is progress for sure. I was tempted to throw in the towel a few times last week but I figured it's January and what else do we have going on? It is the perfect month for potty training. I guess who cares if it takes him forever. He is also my first child to color on the walls.

We had another snow day on Thursday. I was talking to Corbin's teacher and she said that a colleague told her that in 30 years of teaching in Boise that they have never had 2 snow days in a row (we had 5 in a row) and another teacher said in 18 years they have had 6 snow days total (we have had 6 this month). To say this is an unusual Boise winter is an understatement.

That night I went to a freestyle handwriting class. My friend signed up with another friend who bailed so I took her stop last minute. It was fun-ish. I am not very creative and forced creativity hurts my brain and stresses me out. Ha. I am better at copying other people's ideas rather than creating my own. We made Valentine cards at the end and I was running out of time and was stressed big time. Ha. I will show the cards our class made next week. My 8 week calligraphy class starts this week. That will be interesting! I hope I like it and survive it.

Our family went to our friends' house last night and had dinner with them and hung out for the night. It was fun! Lucky for me I was able to talk Ryan (stubborn cuss) into wearing a pull up over there so I didn't need to stress about him. Yay! We went to the UU church today and he wore a pull up and has been wearing it all day. So far he has been telling me when he needs to go potty. Maybe since he is going to take a whole month to get it pull ups will be good for him. He is just keeping it real for me by not cooperating and doing it like his own way that's for sure!

Gabby lost another front tooth last week. Look at that gap! Haha.

The good news: it forces me to do some touch up painting.

F-O-X...name that movie. Ha.

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Snow Days

Lets see Monday and Tuesday were snow days making it so the kids had 5 snow days in a row. Minus 1 day back at school were out of school for 25 days. That's a long time folks! One of my friends said that all of the snow days were starting to feel like the movie Ground Hog Day. So true! We survived! It's been weird trying to get back into a schedule with Christmas break, snow days, and trying to potty train. Everything is kind of all of the place. Ryan is doing well with pee. He will tell me when he needs to go potty. He had an accident at a friend's house so he doesn't have it down completely. I got him to poop once in the toilet but that's it. I want to try really hard tomorrow to poop in the toilet. Oy! These are a few of my least favorite things!

We did get to go to story time last week at the library and have a couple of play dates. Today we went to an Episcopalian church downtown. It was in a beautiful church building. It was really cool. We probably wont go back but it's been kind of fun to visit other churches.

We were talking about how Ryan can be crazy and angry and unpredictable and then Gabby said, "like you." Then we all laughed. How rude and maybe a little true?

I don't know if I already shared this quote or not but just in case I'm going to share this was sometime in December. The kids were talking about Christmas presents and Gabby was talking about a hatchimal, "if I got that for Christmas my head would explode." Corbin: "and then you wouldn't even be able to play with it." G: "it's just an expression."

Ryan just peed his pants, (wah wah) but then pooped in the toilet! I'll take that as a victory!

The snow all winter has been really dry but on Monday it was wet. Almost too wet. It was so heavy! It made it very difficult for building a snowman. Our poor snowman didn't last long. His top heavy head fell off pretty quickly so we built him a new head but within a few hours all of it had collapsed.

Gabby's painting

On one of the days the kids started climbing on top of the kitchen cabinets and even taught Ryan how to climb up there. Joy! Now they are obsessed with it and playing up there constantly. Spring is just around the corner right, right?

Gabby is in the school's jumprope club. It's crazy packed. I don't know if she is going to continue doing it. After jumprope last week she asked if she could skip next week. When I asked her about it she said she dind't want to talk about it. Okay.

Plants vs. Zombies

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Snowmaggedon

This Boise winter has been dubbed by some as Snowmaggedon 2017. I think it's the most snow Boise has seen in over 30 years. It has been snowing on and off all week. It's not tons of snow for Salt Lake maybe but its TONS of snow for Boise and the city of totally ill prepared for it. Most of the neighborhood streets aren't even being plowed. Our neighbors went out with shovels and shoveled out a pathway in our street so cars could get out. The main roads are okay it's just a matter of getting to them. The kids didn't have school on Monday for Christmas break, they went to school on Tuesday and then school was canceled for the rest of the week! Crazy! We mostly just hunkered down and stayed home. The snow is really dry so it's not good for building snowmen but Scott managed to help the kids build a killer igloo. There is room for probably all four kids at once in there.

I was supposed to try to hard core potty train Ryan last week. I did pretty good on Monday of following him around constantly and Tuesday too but then I just couldn't keep caring as much any more. He's still in underwear and he's at the point he's always at when I've tried to train him, he can stay mostly dry, he won't poop in the toilet and he wakes up wet. I'm hoping school is not canceled tomorrow and I bought some more drinks and I want to try doing a few more hard core days. It's January and we have no plans forever so I think we will just stick it out and hope he can get it all the way. FINGERS CROSSED. Seriously potty training is the WORST.

I did venture out and go to book club on Thursday night. I had to shovel my way from my driveway to the path on our street to get out. I also went grocery shopping yesterday morning before another storm hit. Other than that we have been homeward bound. The snow is beautiful. I am thoroughly enjoying it. It's supposed to rain later this week. Yuck, that will make it so ugly.

I'm trying to lay down and take a nap. Ha.

I decided to help the kids try to build a fort. It was so much better in my head. Ha.

My kids do not go outside and play in the snow unless I go out too. UGH. Ha. I don't really like to play but I don't mind shoveling while they play. Shoveling snow was my only workout last week but I did that a lot and so did Scott. There was so much to shovel for real!

Snow cave

I love these bar stools but they were falling apart. We bought them from IKEA 9 years ago and I can't believe they survived this long. Our kids dropped them on the ground 1,000 times. Scott has glued and re glued them so many times. I had two parties last week and I was pretty embarrassed having anyone actually sitting on them. I decided new bar stools for Christmas was in order. I put them on Facebook for free and someone came and picked them up in about 30 minutes. I was too embarrassed to charge any money for them but I was happy that someone wanted them since I spent so many hours painting them.

We got these cute stools on Amazon for a screaming deal. I like the old ones better because they are bigger and take up more space in the kitchen. I like how I could see the pop of red while I was doing my dishes but these are cute and not falling apart.

So much snow!

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Christmas Vacation

Oh man we have had a great Christmas Vacation and I have SO MANY photos to share. We were originally planning to do Christmas in Boise this year and head down to Salt Lake afterwards but we had to change our plans. We decided to go ahead and have Scott get the ol' snip, snip surgery and it had to be done before the new year for insurance purposes. Luckily they were able to fit him in after Christmas. I still wanted to do our own Christmas in Boise so we celebrated Christmas day with the kids the Wednesday before Christmas. It was so fun! Christmas morning was so special. I LOVED it. I cooked a turkey dinner that day and even busted out our china. I was a nervous wreck with the kids drinking out of the goblets. We made it through dinner without any broken dishes. We played some family games after that. On Thursday we headed down to Utah.

We love going to Utah to visit. It is always a good time. The kids can't get enough of Nana and Papa. Some highlights of the trip were Hires (of course), dinner and musical Scrooge at Carole's house, the movie Sing, I was able to binge watch the show This is Us on the apple tv in my room (best Christmas present ever), games, games, games, delicious feast after feast, gingerbread men, Christmas karaoke, Nana and Papa's amazing country western Rudolph duet, presents, sledding, the movie Moana, extended Cannon family party, Corbin birthday festivities, sleeping in, staying up late. Phew. Good Trip!

Since we've been back Scott has been resting and we hosted two game nights this weekend. New friends Friday night, old friends Saturday night. Both nights were tons of fun.

Here's to 2017, may you be less tumultuous than last year. FINGERS CROSSED!

The kids fight over who gets to sit by me. Usually it is always Piper and Ryan but sometimes Corbin wants to get in the mix. This can lead to some tears and commotion, Gabby says, "how come I'm the only one who doesn't care?" I don't know Gabby but bless you! Ha. (Piper is upset in the picture which you may or may not be able to tell).

I found this paper on the ground. So funny. Gabby was trying to write out the lyrics to the song call me maybe. I didn't even know she knew that song. I just met you and this is crazy but here's my number, call me maybe. Haha. I love that she wrote the numbers to our address. So funny.

We had the Linquists over one night to decorate sugar cookies.

Our creations.

Ryan is so funny he will lay on the ground forever waiting to get dressed. If we forget that we were supposed to get clothes and come back he will still be laying there. Notice the diaper, yes I'm attempting to potty train AGAIN tomorrow. It has to work one of these times!

Kids playing in the snow. Piper had no interest in going outside in the cold. Getting Ryan to put on snow clothes was nearly impossible. Dang stubborn kid, can't wait to try potty training AGAIN tomorrow.

They were trying to use the card table to help them build a fort or something.

Oh man he came in the house screaming with frozen hands right after this.

Family games. Piper (5) knows how to play this game more than I do. It is pretty funny to hear her speak in nerd game talk, "we almost have the elder wand." Or some other such nonsense.