She's Al Gore.....

Well, they just ran a whole new election today and Kyra did not win. She seems to be OK with it. She brought home her campaign posters and only one of them had a mustache drawn on her picture. Pretty good for junior high!

Kyra also got her report card back for the second quarter - a straight 4.0! That is quite a miracle, as she really struggled with geometry early in the year, but she is getting it now!

In other news, Brynn has figured out how to check her e-mail all by herself. When I got in the shower, the computer was off. When I got out, she'd turned it on, opened up Internet Explorer, gone to the web site, logged in and was reading her messages. My jaw hit the floor, I had no idea she could do all that independantly. She loves to get e-mail. Anyone can e-mail her and I'm sure she'll write back. If you think about it, you can figure out her e-mail address yourself, just susbstitute her name instead of mine, Darrin's, Kyra's or Callie's.

On Monday, the girls were out of school and we got them together with my friend Andrya's kids. They love putting on plays and call themselves the "Double L Theater" (both last names start with L) For Christmas, Andrya & I made them T-Shirts with the LL logo one of them designed and put their names on them, and also gave them each a binder full of skit scripts. Monday was the first chance they'd had to put on a play in their matching shirts. They did one with teachers and students. Even Brynn had a walk-on role as a teacher's aide.

Not much else new around here. Still trying to sell the old van. Still on call for a birth. Still sick of the cold weather. Still wondering if anyone reads this blog.

Must be Hanging Chads

So Kyra is running for SBO (Student Body Officer) for her grade this semester. Elections were this morning, with results that were supposed to be announced by the end of school.
However, Kyra's class received incorrect ballots, and apparently this was a widespread problem, because no results have been announced, and it could be interesting tomorrow to see what happens....

And now, to liven up this blog......

PICTURES!
Storytime at the Lythgoes:

Kyra's snow sculpting

Callie and friends at her birthday party - we had a cooking party!

Organized into Confusion

So Sunday morning Darrin got the dreaded tummy bug. It was convenient for him to be able to have an excuse for not doing anything else while the Patriots were playing...

Thankfully, Darrin's new job lets him work from home whenever he wants, so he did that on Tuesday, when *I* got the dreaded tummy bug.

It is a short sickness, though, so by yesterday, I was feeling fine and actually anxious to get something DONE! So I reorganized my entire office. Every shelf, every drawer, the piles on the desk, everything got cleaned out, sorted and organized. I filled the recycling can half full, plus more in the trash, plus a pile for DI and a pile to sell at the doula conference. And of course, the pile of unfinished projects! But I am wading through those today and am almost halfway done.

I filled 5 banker's boxes with old paperwork that can go in the attic but I can't quite get rid of yet (business paperwork, tax receipts, etc.) FIVE boxes. And of course, as I'm finishing up those projects this morning, I realize I need something that is not where I thought it was.

You see, last summer I went to the DONA International conference in Denver. And I earned continuing education credits there. And it is time to renew my certification, so I need that certificate. And it is not filed with the rest of my recertification paperwork, nor is it filed with the tax deductible receipts (though the receipt for my conference fees was in that file!) It's not with my childbirth educator certification paperwork, nor is it with my personnel stuff from the hospital (they have to see proof of continuing ed, too)

So the 14 hours I spent Wednesday night and Thursday organizing myself? Useless. I still can't find the paperwork that cost me hundreds of dollars and 4 days of my life to earn.

Off to go unseal all those boxes and start looking through them. Maybe they got filed in 2005 stuff....

COLD!

I don't think I have been warm in about 2 days. It is SO cold here. Even with the heat on, I am still cold. And the forecast does not look good. Single digit lows, highs in the teens. And not just any single digit lows, NEGATIVE NUMBERS!

And with my luck, I'll have to go off to a birth at 3 am on one of those days.....

Pass the cocoa!

Cabin Fever!

This week has been more craziness with planning the conference. We went live with registration, and it looks like people are really excited about the conference. Registrations are pouring in! Which is GOOD - as we've already bought enough supplies for 50 attendees!

But this week has also brought lots of cabin fever. Monday morning I woke up to the sounds of a child throwing up, which meant an end to my plans to run errands and get things done during preschool. Instead I spent the day doing laundry and rationing out saltines and juice.

Wednesday was a little better - I was able to get out and do a few errands, as well as go help in Callie's class. Callie's teacher is the most high-energy teacher I've ever known. She really demands a lot from the kids, but she has the kind of personality that all the kids just love her to death and want to do anything to please her. It's perfect for Callie - and she's been able to just learn at her own rate for a lot of things.

Thursday I was stuck at home waiting for someone to come get some things for the conference - go figure she never showed. But we had a big snowstorm and got about 6-8 inches of snow, and the plows didn't show up in our neighborhood until about 5:30 pm, so I may not have gone anywhere anyway.

And then Thursday night the deaded tummy bug returned to plague the third of my children. So today looks to be yet another day where I don't leave the house. I canceled a meeting with some other doulas, I'll skip the open house at Kyra's school, and once again put off my errands. If there is no more thowing up, I may try and leave Kyra in charge and slip out for a bit this afternoon, as I still have a big list of errands that need to get done and we're running low on milk, bread, etc.

I can only hope & pray the adults don't get it.

Darrin is also knee deep in preparing for the Genealogy Jamboree in St. George next month, where he and I will be exhibitors demonstrating his software. We've done this a few times before - twice at BYU conferences, once at a large national conference at the Salt Palace. It can be boring at times, crazy at others, but has always increased sales, so we keep doing it. Plus, it will be the closest thing we'll get to a romantic weekend away this year. (Yeah, yeah, I know, not close at all! But the kids won't be with us, so that counts for something, right?)

My latest project

I am in charge of this:

http://www.lythgoes.net/uda/csi.html

and I am teaching more than half the sessions, too, in case organizing the whole dang thing wasn't enough.

It's official. I am crazy.

**The Link Works Now!!**

Switching gears

Tim has prodded to me do what I've been considering for a while now - changing this blog to be more of a "keep up with Andrea's family" blog. So I will try to be posting weekly updates on the exciting world of "As the Lythgoes Turn"

The past two weeks have been pretty crazy for us. In early December, we had no heat in the van, so I took it in. $450 repair to the heating system.
The very next week, the power steering had a problem. The part we needed had to come from Denver, and with the big storm there, they weren’t sure when it would get here, so they did a temporary patch ($100) that let me drive it for the next week until the part came in and we could do the real repair ($510). On my way to drop it off for the real repair, the “Check engine” light came on. I had them look at it, and it had blown a gasket on some intake valve. ($530) At that point, especially when combined with the brake repair ($375) and the transmission repair ($780) earlier this year - not to mention the two times I had to rent a car for a few days because I was on call for a birth - we decided to scrap the hunk of junk and just get a new van!

So the week after Christmas we spent looking around & shopping, and on Saturday, we bought ourselves a brand spanking new Toyota Sienna! Got a great deal because it is a 2006 that has pretty much no options, and the dealers are trying to get rid of the 06s to make way for the 07s. And in Utah, dealers have to pay property taxes on all cars in their inventory on 1/1 so you can usually get a good deal right before then. It’s a dark grayish blue color, and I love it! It is so much smoother than our old van and clean, too! (But not likely to stay that way for long....) I'll try to remember to take a picture and post it soon. I'd do it now, but the snow is piling up and I need to shovel.

We also spent a ton of time with Kelly, Preston, Nick, Brooklyn, Spencer & Bonnie who were all here from Virginia. And I mean a ton! Like 4-6 hours a day. Sometimes just playing at their house or ours, but sometimes going out to eat & to movies, etc. Saw “Night at the Museum” which was really good!

Oh, and I did a birth on New Year’s Eve! Kind of an unusual situation – the mom is another doula and a friend of mine. She actually was my apprentice a few years back. She had talked to me about hiring me to be her doula, but I have this rule that I don’t do births in Utah County between October & March (I made this rule after a very scary white-knuckle 3 am drive over Point of the Mountain in a snowstorm a few years back!) So she hired another friend of ours who is my current backup. Well, when she went into labor, her regular doula was home with 4 vomiting kids, so they called me anyway! Luckily, it was a beautiful weather day and I had no problems getting to Provo & back. She was having a home birth, and her midwife was not answering her phone, so she ended up with a backup midwife, too! She asked me to take pictures with my nice camera, and I took a couple rolls in black & white. Got some llovely pictures I hope to get permission to use on my web site. Everything went well and she had a beautiful little boy just in time for me to make it up to the inlaws for our New Year’s Eve gathering. We ate junk & played board games until midnight. Boy was I exhausted!

New Year's Day Callie went out to Saratoga Springs to play with her best friend who moved out there (the girl who sang at Callie's baptism) and I stopped by Tim's new place to check it out. I think he found a great place, even if he IS copying me. (I lived in Grant Stake in SLC, then he did. Then he moved to the same stake in California where Darrin & I lived when we were first married. Now he's followed me to Sandy and bought the same couch I have!)

So I am really glad that it is all over (well, my back is about 80% better) and that the kids are back in school, cousins have gone home, van shopping is over, etc. I am hoping to get back into a more normal predictable routine, if such a thing exists. So on to planning the doula conference that I am in charge of next month!