March already

Every year about mid-February we enter a vortex which generally persists for a few months. In some ways life is less complicated than it used to be, but March is inevitably busy with birthday celebrating and church responsibilities.

Some of what we have been doing

This last month I spent a lot of time preparing for and taking over the primaries in the stake for ward conferences. One more next week and then we are done!

We spent about a week celebrating Aubrey and Joseph's birthdays, with birthday breakfasts, lunches, dinners, parties, etc. More to come on all of that.

Dan spent almost a week in AZ visiting facilities for work and then helping his parents with some projects. He has also been dealing with a lot of work stress, but (as always) is generally saving the day with creative solutions.

Decorating Drama

I decided early February to choose new wall colors for the den, living room, dining room, master bedroom, and master bathroom. Because . . . why not add more craziness to the crazy. After a few weeks of staring at splotches on the walls of the living room, I took a chance and bought paint. And, the first color I picked was wrong with the rug I had bought, so I switched and used that color to paint the den instead. It looks great there. Then, I tweaked the colors and bought more paint and painted the living room and dining room. My vision was for the walls to be a very light grey-blue with a slightly darker version of the color in the dining room. Instead, the living room walls ended up looking like a pale blue Easter egg and the dining room looked like the color which was on my girls' bedroom wall when they were little. Not at all the sophisticated colors I wanted. So, after staring at the colors for a week I decided to try painting over them with the neutral colors from our entryway and kitchen (one shade darker for the dining room). And, I really like it. I bought enough paint to finish both rooms, and I can finally say that I'm done with the paint in those two rooms. Truly, I had to go down the wrong road (blue on the walls) to realize that I didn't want blue on the walls but instead wanted neutral.  This experience has made me gun-shy about the pale green/blue/grey I chose for our master bedroom and bath. I'm wondering if I should  just save myself the trouble and paint the walls a light neutral, and then add color through accessories!  Also on the docket for re-painting: the laundry room, the half bath downstairs, Joseph's room, and the bonus room. So, basically the rest of the house. Luckily, I like to paint! In general, I have been lightening the colors and adding more "greige" rather than yellow-toned darker neutrals.

In order to make these color changes throughout the house, I have been continuing the process of getting rid of most of the home decorating accessories in those rooms. It feels good to have a blank slate! I haven't changed out the actual furniture so far, and I may not do so because I'm way too cheap for that. But, the wall art, curtains, pillows, etc., are all gone or changed. I'm living with mostly blank walls for awhile, and I'm OK with that.  I did buy new cream colored curtain panels at Home Goods, and in the next few weeks I'll be adding more fabric at the bottom of each to make them extend to the floor.

In addition to changing colors, I have felt lately like I only want to decorate with things that are meaningful to me/us. Soon I'll take some pictures of what I did in the family room and kitchen to show what this means. I truly don't care if what I put on the wall is what decorating-savvy people would do. If I like it, it works!

Re-learning Algebra

After discovering a month ago that Joseph had been confused by some of the concepts in Algebra and that this confusion was being compounded as more and more concepts were being piled on top and was causing frustration and low grades, the rest of the family members (Dan, Aubrey, and I) have been spending time every day helping him re-learn some of the Algebra skills and feel confident for the quizzes and the midterm he took a month ago. Our hard work paid off (all of us contributed, but Joseph did the most work for sure) and he got a VERY high score on the midterm. Regarding his process of recover ing from a mini school crisis, we think he is learning some valuable lessons about what he should do when he feels overwhelmed and how to reach out for help with things are confusing. And, we are all re-learning a bit of Algebra! Well, not Aubrey. She is still in the throes of Math (taking AP Calc right now), so she remembers all the math stuff. Dan is a little better than me, but when it came to graphing functions he was completely lost. And I remember almost nothing. Thank goodness for Khan Academy, that amazing free resource which patiently teaches anyone just about anything!