Our Family – Page 80 – Andelin Adventures

Quick Trip to California

I made a super quick trip to California on my own this weekend. Wendy decided she wanted to go to the temple to receive her endowments this weekend, even though she knew that a bunch of family were coming to Utah for Adam’s baby blessing two weeks earlier and that I am planning on bringing my family down three weeks from now. I was slightly frustrated that she would plan it right in between two other family events. Then, when we got word that Great Grandma Ruby wasn’t doing very well and wasn’t going to make it and we ended up in North Carolina for a week, I was more than ever, hoping that Wendy would change her mind and reschedule to make things a bit easier. But she wouldn’t and because the kids had already missed several days of school because we were on the east coast, I just couldn’t make myself load them all up in the van and take a road trip THIS weekend. I really didn’t want to drive through the night, because that was the only way we would have been able to make it work. So, being very sad that I couldn’t take my family with me, I hopped on a plane all by myself Friday night after my Girl Scout meeting. The good thing about flying alone this time, was that I actually got to read my book (The Neverending Story by Michael Ende). When we flew to North Carolina, and home again, we had all the kids and two of them were lap sitters, which meant that Kyle and I each had a kid in our lap for the whole flight, and reading a book meant trying to keep the book away from the lap child at the same time. 😛

The airplane that I was on this time, was a LOT smaller than the ones we were on to go to North Carolina. And even though I packed super light, and shoved my temple bag into my smallest suitcase so that I would only have one carry on and my purse, my carry on was still too big. The over head compartments in this plane were only big enough to hold backpacks, nothing bigger. And if you had a really big backpack stuffed to the gills, that wouldn’t have fit either. So they ended up checking my bag at the gate.

I arrived in California safely, and after collecting my suitcase I worked my way outside and called my dad. He found me and picked me up and we went to the house. It was rather late when we got there and so we just went to bed.

Saturday was rather insane. We woke up and got ready for the trip to the temple. Dad had bought muffins for breakfast, and after Wendy arrived, we were off to the temple. We got to the temple a little bit early, so before going inside, we went to check out the visitor’s center. A couple of sister missionaries showed us some of the neat things that are new in the visitor’s center, and then it was time to be getting Wendy inside the temple. The session was a 1:30pm session, but Wendy was supposed to be there at noon. Mom, being Wendy’s escort went with her, and Dad and I went to hang out in the cafeteria for a little bit.

After the session was over and Mom and Wendy and I were all back in our regular church clothes, we went out to find Dad. But we didn’t see him anywhere. He came out of the dressing room several minutes later saying that someone else was in his locker when he got there to change. Then we went out to the car, and after realizing that there wasn’t enough time to go get some dinner, we headed straight to my parent’s stake center for the adult session of their stake conference. President Francis, was being released as stake president this weekend and my parent’s didn’t want to miss it. My family has known President Francis for many years. He was the Bishop in my family’s ward when my family was baptized, 15 years ago. We finished up the evening by going to Mimi’s Cafe. I would have rather gone to The Whole Enchilada, but they weren’t open as late as Mimi’s was.

Sunday morning, we went to the general session of Stake conference, and I saw a bunch of people that are still in my parent’s ward after all these years. A lot of the people have changed, but some of the faces are still familiar. President Francis was released this morning. They announced that he has been called to be the mission president in the Rochester, New York mission, and so he is selling is chiropractor practice and they are selling their family home and he and his wife will be taking their kids to go live in New York.

This afternoon after church, I changed and got everything packed back up. I told mom that I planned on leaving my temple bag, since I will be back down in just three weeks and I will need it for that trip too. I had time to eat my leftovers from Mimi’s, and then Dad took me back to the airport. RIGHT as we were getting to my terminal, he was pulled over. I felt so bad, but I didn’t have time to stick around and find out why he had been pulled over, so I went into the airport to figure out how to get on my plane home. Later I saw that he had texted me that he had only been pulled over because there wasn’t a license plate on the front of the car. That cop must have been bored or something. I made it home safely, and Kyle and the kids met me at the airport to pick me up. And now I can get started on moving into my newly finished basement!

Conference to Discuss Tyra

Tyra has been struggling in school for a really long time. Almost since she started I remember being concerned that she just wasn’t getting it. She has difficulty with both reading and math and because every other subject revolves around those ones she just struggles in everything. I remember expressing concern to Mrs Spaulding, her kindergarten teacher, and being told “Oh, Tyra can read.” But as soon as Tyra got home she couldn’t, or at least that was what Tyra must have wanted me to think. Last year, in second grade, she was put into a reading tutoring program called double dosing. She would stay after school a couple days a week and get extra practice with reading. But at the end of last year, when she was filling out a packet that was supposed to be a review of the whole year, and she couldn’t do any of it, I felt like maybe she should repeat second grade. Her teacher, Mrs Gustafson, told me that they “really REALLY don’t like doing that” and she said that Tyra would be fine, and they went ahead and moved her up to third grade. This year started with their regular evaluations in the fall, and her teacher, Mrs Nelson, told me that she is a year behind in her level of reading, to which I am of course thinking, “see, I knew we should have had her repeat second grade!” Kyle and I thought that maybe we should have Tyra evaluated to be sure that there wasn’t something more serious going on. Sometimes we would wonder if her difficulties in school were somehow linked to her bed wetting issue. We also kicked around the idea that maybe her near drowning accident might have caused deeper damage than we had thought. So we asked her teacher how we can go about having her evaluated. First we were required to wait for her teacher to go through six weeks of interventions with her. This was a period of time where her teacher would pull her aside during class and help her work on practicing reading, but they weren’t just reading books. Mrs Nelson has a big book of columns, and Tyra would have to read down the columns as quickly as she could without messing up. The first columns were just a couple of letters put together and Tyra would just have to read the sounds, and as soon as she could do it in under the specified time, she could move on to the next set.

After the interventions period, Mrs Nelson had to recommend Tyra for further evaluation, and then we had to wait a few more weeks before that could begin. In the meantime, someone had recommended that I ask the school psychologist to observe her in her classroom, and when I asked if this could be done I got an email from the school psychologist asking me what she is supposed to be observing Tyra FOR? I didn’t know how to answer that. Tyra obviously is having some problems, and I am not there to see why, and her teacher is busy with all of the students in her class, so she can’t really sit there and pay attention to just Tyra. I was told that observing the child is just something the school psychologist is supposed to do, I don’t know how they are supposed to be doing their job! Finally in mid November I heard from a resource teacher at the school about filling out some paperwork so that they can begin an evaluation. Of course by that point school had already been in session for nearly three months and was therefore a third of the way through. Kyle and I got the paperwork filled out one night and got it sent back to the school and they were able to begin testing. The testing took several weeks to complete, and with the holidays in there, there were several non-school days so that felt like it slowed the testing down a bit.

Here we are mid February now, and we had our conference to discuss the evaluation results today! They went over the answers that Kyle and I had put down on a survey that was part of the paperwork and showed us how that score made it look like Tyra was having serious problems (and that really was how it looked to us: she really seemed to be having serious problems), and Mrs Nelson’s answers for the same questions, had a score that made it look like there was some concern but nothing nearly as big as the concern that Kyle and I were having. So then they talked about the things that the school psychologist had noticed. She sat in the class to watch Tyra and saw that Mrs Nelson would instruct the class on the topics for the day, and then she would sit down and instruct Tyra. Also they told us about how they tested Tyra and they told us that basically what it boils down to is Tyra just has a focus problem, and they did not find any learning disabilities. Based on the testing it showed that Tyra would get several math problems in a row correct, but then every math problem after that wrong because she lost interest and just wanted to be done with it. Same thing with reading; she would read a bit and then start making things up because she was impatient and just wanted to be finished! So based on that, they found that she does have all the tools she needs to figure things out. When she stops long enough to think things through she CAN and DOES figure them out, but she would rather be doing something else and so tries to get out of it as quickly as she can.

I am glad that there is no underlying problem. Focus is something that can be worked on. I’ve heard that using a timer is a great tool in teaching someone to focus, so we will have to give that one a try. Of course I do kind of feel like this year has been a bit of a waste. I thought last year that she should repeat second grade, and so far all this year she doesn’t seem to be improving and here we are six months into the school year, and we finally have the results from the evaluations. School gets out in about three months from now. But at least now we know that it’s just that she needs to practice focusing, and now we get to decide how we are going to do that.

Decisions, Decisions

So, before we left for North Carolina, I got a job offer over the phone for a new company, with the understanding that I would get an official offer by email the next day. I didn’t want to mention anything to my manager about it, until that offer came. Of course, I left work early to get to the airport, before the email ever arrived. I didn’t get the offer until we got to the airport, and I didn’t want to deal with it during the chaos of travel. That night, I emailed my manager and told him I got another job offer, and asked if Symantec would try countering this soon after my last offer. He replied back and confirmed that they wouldn’t try to counter again, asking me to let him know my decision. I emailed the manager of the other company and explained I was out of state, with limited internet access, and asked for his patience until I returned. He agreed.

I noticed that for the last job offers, I felt more apt to leave when I was away from the office, and more reluctant to leave once I got into the normal routine in the office. Having a week away to think about things helped me be more objective, even though it was still a difficult decision. When we returned home and I got back to Symantec, I slipped back into feeling scared of a change. However, one of the managers was best friends with the new position’s manager, and told me a lot about him. With this positive endorsement in mind, I started considering what it would be like to leave.

When the HR rep from the new company called me around lunch time, I told her I accepted the position. Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the last day, hoping I can endure.

Finished Basement

When we arrived home this afternoon, we found Dave here working on some things, and we also found a finished basement! There are just some minor things that still need to be finished up but otherwise, it is finished.

They still need to put the banister back up:

Here is the family room as you come around the corner off the stairs:

Here is the view of the family room including the book cases:

The bookcases still need a bit of work. There will be doors on the bottom portion, and then crown molding along the top and there is other trim to put along the seams of the book case up against the walls. Dave didn’t want to take a chance making the doors and end up messing up so he ordered those and he also ordered the crown molding, so he is just waiting for those to arrive and then he will need to stain them before they can be put on.

Kyle’s closet under the stairs:

The storage room:

The girls room:

The boys room:

The tiny linen closet:

They also haven’t put in the sink in the laundry room. Since we weren’t home we weren’t able to really pick something and Dave didn’t want to just pick something for us (for which I am grateful) so Kyle and I will need to find what it is that we want in there and tell Dave what it is so he can finish that up for us.

It has passed the final inspection and so we are good to start moving things in! We aren’t going to move anything down tonight, though. We are wiped out from all this traveling! So we will just go to bed tonight and work on moving stuff down later. 🙂

Coming Home

We were up very early this morning to get the kids dressed, pack up the last of our stuff and leave Grandma Katrina’s house. Mom was coming with us, and since Jenny spent the night with Auntie Laura we needed to go pick her and James up before going to the airport. We would have liked to stay longer, but considering our basement was being finished while we were away I was feeling very anxious to get back. Also Jenny needed to be back before Tuesday, so we all flew out on the same flight.

The airport was crowded this morning. It took the lady at the desk quite a while to get all of our seats situated. We were just glad we called the day before to get tickets for the morning flight. We then went to the long line to get through security. I was so happy to find that there was separate (much shorter) line for families, so we got through much faster than we expected, even though they had to x-ray Adam’s bottle of water. We were running short on time though and we got to hitch a ride on one of the carts that airport employees drive around. We made it to our gate just in time and boarded directly. This time the plane was FULL. There was not a seat to spare. Our seats were in the very back of the plane, and I honestly think there are the very worst seats on the plane. There were windows, but you couldn’t see anything out of them because the engines were right there. And because the engines were right there it was very loud. We couldn’t hear any of what was being said over the speakers, and we couldn’t hear each other either. Mom and Jenny got to sit closer to the front of the plane.

Here we are walking through the Dallas airport. Jenny turned around and used her phone to take a picture of our family. You can’t see Jeremy though, because he got cut off the edge (he is standing right next to Chloe…). In Dallas we had to split up and go our separate ways. Jenny, James and mom had a lot further to go to find their next gate. Our next gate was just a bit of a walk from where we got off our first plane. Once we found our gate, Kyle went to get some lunch for the kids and then he went back to get some lunch for us. We ate, while we watched airplanes landing and taking off outside. Soon it was time to get on the plane that was going to take us home!

We had the same back row seats on that plane, like they wanted to put all kids in the back. We finally arrived at the Salt Lake airport, and we went to the baggage claim to collect our stuff. Now things were going to get tricky. Not only did we have the seven kids, the booster seats, carry on bags, car seats, and the three suitcases, but we now also had the three cases of girl scout cookies to juggle to the car. I think next time we go anywhere on an airplane we are going to bring the stroller! We ended up having the older kids help with suitcases, and set a box of cookies on top of each and we slowly, and carefully walked to the pick-up zone.

Here we sat to wait, while Kyle took the car seats and got on a shuttle to the parking lot to get our van. It took a while for him to get there and get the car seats strapped in, and even longer to get the van out. It had snowed while we were away, so the windows were all covered in icy snow, so he had to scrape all the windows clear. Then, the van wouldn’t move as the ground was covered in a foot of icy snow, but after clearing the ground around the wheels and rocking the van forward and backwards, he finally got out and came back to get us. We loaded everyone and everything up and now we are home!