No Whitney, I'm not dead.

I was going to post a few pictures, but I emailed them to myself from my phone and can't get them saved somewhere to upload them here...I usually don't have a problem with it, so pictures will have to wait.

Poor Whitney thinks I'm dead even though we chat on gmail a few times a week. As you can see, I'm not dead. I just have a very different life than I did a few months ago.  We are learning the joys of owning our own business. To make ends meat I had to start working there as much as possible while not putting the kids in daycare.  I work 9-5 on Monday because only one other employee can work on Monday from 5-9.  Luckily we know some great people and Emily gets to walk home with her friend and stay with them until I can pick her up at 5.  Tuesday-Friday I work 9-2.  We also work 6 or 7 to 9 on Wed, Thurs and Friday.  Owen and Tyler get to spend their day with me at the salon.  We have empty rooms still so we set one up for them to hang out in. They've brought a bunch of their toys with them and they get to watch Sesame Street etc on my laptop as well.  Owen gets to spend the entire 9-2 shift with me, but Tyler is in kindergarten so he gets to come join us after I take "lunch" and go pick him up at 11:00.

They have done really well transitioning to not being able to play at home all day.  We are even starting to get a routine down.  Owen plays by himself when we first get there while I spend an hour or so doing all the chores etc I need to get done first thing in the morning.  Then he gets to come up front with me and we work on some preschool workbooks. I think this is one of his favorite parts of the day as he spends the entire first hour asking if it's time to color his books yet. After we've hung out, we close down and go get Tyler at 11:00, 10:45 on Wednesdays.  Sometimes its tricky timing the customers so that I won't be late and other days we get there really early and just have to sit and wait.  When we get back to the salon, Tyler and I work on his homework while Owen plays quietly in the waiting room.  Once that is done, it's lunch time.  After lunch the boys watch an episode of Sesame Street. I was so excited to see that netflix offers tons of episodes on their instant play selection. I'm hoping that watching it will help Tyler because he seems like he is going to need a lot more help with school than Emily.  By this time it's about 1:00 and we only have an hour left.  The boys get to choose what they want to do for the last hour...they usually choose watching Lightening McQueen videos on youtube.  They could watch them four hours and hours and never get bored.  At 2 o'clock we get to go home.  The weather has been fantastic and Kevin fixed Tyler's power wheels Jeep so they spend as much time outside as they can once we get home. They love to ride in the Jeep and ride their bikes.

We already had our first parent teacher conferences and Emily is doing great.  She is almost already at the level of reading she needs to be at the end of 2nd grade, so she's a fabulous reader, even though like me (when I was a kid), she hates doing it.  Part of her homework is to read 20 minutes every day and she whines and complains about it every single day.  Her teacher says she doesn't talk much in class either, which is good, but it makes me wonder why. Is she finally learning to be good in class or is something wrong that is making her not as outgoing as she used to be? I hope she's just learning to be good in class.  She is still doing cheerleading and absolutely loves it.  She even got moved up to the higher class that is for 3rd to 5th graders.  I'm not sure if it is because she is good or because they needed someone small to be the one they lift in the air. Either way, she loves it.  She also knows though that she has to keep doing good in school or she doesn't get to keep doing cheerleading. Bribery is a wonderful thing.

Are you bored yet? Tyler seems to have Kevin's brain and like I mentioned is going to struggle in school, but I'm doing my best to have patience and keep that in mind when working on his homework with him.  He seems to not think he can do things, but once I show him he can, he gets pretty excited.  We are working on the days of the week and counting to 20 right now.  They are also starting at A and going through the alphabet.  He is struggling to remember the sounds that each letter makes; this is one of the things I'm hoping Sesame Street will help with.  He already has great handwriting for a kindergartener.   It looks just as good as Emily's and sometimes better!

Owen is learning some of the same stuff as Tyler as he's around when we do his homework.  He has started to answer some of the questions I ask Tyler and it's pretty cute.  He is going to be 4 in exactly a month! When did my little guy get so big?

There is a little (sort of ) update on our life.  Sorry there are no pictures, but I'll try to get some up this week.

I'm not dead.

 Emily's first day of 2nd grade! Tyler starts kindergarten next Monday. He says he's not excited for kindergarten. lol

Sitting at her desk.

Trying to play Catch Up

I've obviously been pretty busy lately, so I have a lot of pictures to post of what we've been doing besides opening a tanning salon. :)

This one is kind of gross...Owen had dead skin peeling on his feet and Tyler was kind enough to help him pick it off. At least they were working together on something and not fighting. lol

We took the kids bowling on Memorial Day. It was rainy and cold and we couldn't go camping over the weekend so we went bowling. One game was fun, but everyone was tired and ready to be done not long after the second game started. We'll just stick to one game from now on.

Emily

Mom

 

 

Tyler

Owen

 

 

 

 They tried throwing the ball, but even the 6 pound ball, which was the lightest they had was to hard. They loved rolling it down the ramp.

I could have sworn I took more pictures on Emily's last day of 1st grade, but apparently I didn't.  They had an awards ceremony where the teacher gave out awards for reading, math, citizenship etc. Emily got an award for doing well in Math and for reading over 100 take home books throughout the year. Way to go Emily!

 Tyler also graduated preschool this year! Here he is getting his diploma with his teacher. I would have been closer up, but I forgot my camera and had to use my phone, which doesn't have zoom. :(

They put on a little program before they graduated where they sang us all the songs they had learned over the year. Tyler didn't really participate much...he just kind of stood there. lol

 I think this is the only picture we got of the kids with Grandma while they were here visiting for Shelby's graduation from college.  They are snuggling with grandma on her bed in the hotel while she is looking at pictures on Kevin's phone. :)

This was probably in April some time...Kevin was working down at our property we bought, clearing out the brush for where we want to build our cabin and I took the kids to a local museum. These people are made from quilt batting type stuff and nylons. lol My kids were scared and I couldn't get them close enough to get in the picture with them.

This is the inside of an old pioneer type wagon. It's hard to tell in the picture, but it looks a whole like like a camper to me, that is why I took the picture.  There is the bed in the back, bench on the side and some cupboards on the other side. I just thought it was pretty neat.

This is the building where the museum was. It used to be the school for the area. So very cool inside!

I don't know if Shelby looks at my blog or not, but these next two are for her.  I thought she would enjoy the swimsuits from who knows when.  The one on the left is the man's and the one on the right is the woman's if I remember correctly.

More dresses for Shelby. I'm sure there is a way to rotate the picture, but I'm not going to figure out how. :P

So, we have been up to other things besides the tanning salon, just not much. I'm waiting for the weather to finally get warm so that we can take the kids to the pool! I want to go swimming. :)

Tanning Salon Progress

 Laundry room

 Hallway

 Only one room has a bed right now. This is a used one that we bought and put in.  The rest of the beds should be here Friday and we hope to open Monday or Tuesday.

 Empty room. 

 Reception area. (Excuse the messy desk)

Kevin built the shelf thing on the wall for the lotions to be displayed in.  I absolutely love it!  We are just down to a few last things to do and making sure we know how everything will work before we can open.

Volleyball is dangerous

Wow this picture turned out really orange.  Can you still see the giant bruise on my thumb? I played volleyball on Saturday night and this happened on one of my bumps.  The ball apparently his something it wasn't supposed to.  This isn't the first time it's happened though.

Kevin's New Project

So, we still aren't quite finished with the loft, all we need is carpet and trim and it will be done, but it has been put on hold as Kevin has found something new to occupy his extra time.

 This is from a week ago.  Kevin started Thursday night after work.

 Here it is less than a week later from last night.

Any guesses? Most of you probably already know, but it is going to be a tanning salon.  I tried to find somewhere in town to tan this spring, but was unsuccessful.  Payson had a tanning salon up until last year when the guy decided he was tired of running a business and just quit at the end of his lease.  We got the idea because his salon was still in the same spot, not rented out.  So we called the realtor and talked to him, but were 2 weeks too late...it had been rented out and it was all being torn down to make a sporting goods store. :(  This little spot is 2 doors down from the last one and we have to put a bit more money into it to make all the walls etc.  Neither of us know anything about running a business and we've been super busy getting it all set up. We are on our way though and hope to open June 1st if everything goes right.

Wish us luck!

Extreme Couponing

 I have been watching the Extreme Couponing  show on TLC. It's fun to see what these people can get, but at the same time, there is no way that they can ever consume all the things they buy before it expires.  I started couponing last August and I'm getting better, but I'm no expert. I made 2 separate trips to Smith's yesterday because the sale they have going on is great and you have to do each order separately, which is a hassle, so I went twice. In the first picture I got 4 boxes of Chex, 4 boxes of Golden Grahams, 4 bags of chocolate chips, and 4 boxes of granola bar type things. I don't know what the prices would have been not on sale, but the price for all this before coupons was $38.00 plus tax, after my coupons and the $5 gift card they offered for each set of 4 things I only paid $12.84.

In my second trip I got 6 boxes of Cheerios, 1 box of Chex and 5 boxes of granola bars and paid $11.20.  And I went back today with my $30 in gift cards and bought other basics that were on sale like eggs, flour, sugar and fresh fruits and veggies.  And you know what? We will eat every bit of the food that I bought, but I certainly don't need to buy any more cereal for quite a while. :)  I'm nowhere near as good as the people on TV, but I've got a decent stockpile of food for my family that will get eaten before it goes bad and I've learned how to save myself some money at the grocery store. :)  And the grocery stores here don't even double coupons. :(

FYI  We don't have cereal for breakfast every day, so this cereal is going to last quite a while.