Tool Chest

I bought Kyle a tool chest for Christmas. I nice black one with lots of drawers and a smaller chest to sit on top. Yes it’s big and we don’t really have many tools but I figured, owning a house over the years we are going to end up collecting tools as we end up with projects to do. And I wanted to get him something useful, not something that was going to become a piece of junk in just a matter of time, or something that was just going to become clutter. Well he FINALLY got it out of the box last night! I’m so excited that it’s set up (I think I’m more excited than he is, or he hides his excitement really well). As I’ve been going throughout my daily routine I’ve been keeping my eye out for all those tools that are ALL over the house, and I’ve been gathering them to the tool chest. (YAY! I love creating order!)

Fish tank epidemic

Well we’ve had some fish in our tank since Easter weekend, but every one of our original fish has died. And we keep making trips to the pet store to exchange them, and those fish have all died. They have just been dying left and right. The only things from our original fish purchase that have survived this whole time, are the frogs. So Kyle and I were starting to think that the frogs were trying to eat the other fish or something and that they were killing everyone else off……

Yesterday I was looking in the tank to see if I could find any of the living fish and I spotted a couple of the red ones, and they had white spots all over them (and I noticed that one of the white fish was dead). So I told Kyle about it and he did a google search and sent me a link to some fish disease that I seriously thought that he already knew what the fish had. (He laughed when I asked him how he knew that that article explained what was going on in our tank.) By the time we cam back home from the bug program last night, five fish had died throughout yesterday. So we decided it was still early enough to go to petsmart and return them, and we decided to take the two remaining living fish with (in a separate container of course). We were able to return the dead fish, and the guy in the fish department took one look at the two remaining living fish and said “you’ve got ‘ich'”. We were so surprised that this guy could tell just by looking at these fish what the problem was, when it has taken us weeks to figure it out!

I just LOVE it when this guy is working when we go to petsmart to get fish. He actually KNOWS what he’s talking about and he’s the FIRST petsmart employee in the fish department that I have EVER had that knows about the fish (and we’ve had a fish tank for years now). He was even able to tell us which fish were male and which are female! He could tell us anything we asked him all because he has had personal experience with fish. HE’S AWESOME! He even let us return the two living fish for a full refund as well (since they were pretty much done for anyways with all those parasites under their skin).

SO we bought some ‘medication’ for our fish tank and decided to not get any new fish at the current time because our fish tank is under quaranteen for the next few weeks. Bummer I know, it looks so empty with no fish in it, and I had to pull our live plants out and treat them separately (the guy at petsmart said that they would just absorb the medication which would make the tank take longer to get over the parasite infestation). So the tank is really empty aside from our rocks and the frogs (this parasite doesn’t affect these frogs so they are safe, thank goodness). Sigh, someday we’ll have fish again.

Kindergarten Bug Program

Ethan was in his first school program tonight. He got to dress up like a bug, and sing bug songs with all the other AM kindergarteners for all the parents. It was so cute. Ethan’s class sang ‘Baby Bumble Bee’, ‘Butterfly Song’, ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’, ‘Ugly Bug Ball’ and ‘High Hopes’. The other classes sang some other bug songs. Kyle got it all on video (he’s taller than I am and could hold the video camera over more heads than I could 😉 )

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Mean Mommy

Yes, I am a mean mommy. I make my kids clean up their toys before dinner (or at least I try). I make my kids eat food they don’t like. I’m SO mean!!!!

I just don’t want my kids to grow up to be lazy bums that never have to do anything because ‘mommy did it all for them’ growing up. I just WISH I knew the secret to getting them to help out more. I have tried being nice, I have tried making the job fun, I have tried giving treats for cooperative behaviour, I have tried yelling and screaming, and recently I have tried playing ‘cleaning music’ during clean up time. That way they could dance as they clean or sing the working songs (and there is a time limit to clean-up time). So far both positive and negative motivation are just NOT working, and I am getting frustrated. With only 7-9 weeks left of this pregnancy, and Kyle working the two jobs and so is never home, I get worn out really fast. I physically cannot do everything for everyone. It’s just not possible. My kids are old enough to be responsible for certain things. But obviously they don’t think so. Ergh! I just don’t know what to do anymore.

FHE #16

Emergency Telephone Numbers FHE Manual pg 323

Opening song: Children’s Songbook pg 276 “Do As I’m Doing”

Opening prayer: Jeremy

Lesson: Tonight we made a list of phone numbers that we felt might be useful in the case of an emergency. We included obvious numbers like 911, and Poison Control, as well as close family members, and the doctors and home teachers and the bishop. We will print out and post the list either on the fridge or near the phone.

Closing song: Children’s Songbook pg 95 “I Love to See the Temple”

Closing prayer: Daddy

FHE Treat: See’s Jelly eggs