How would you live without running water?

Early last week we went to Utah as a family for Kory to install a job. We spent almost a full week and had a great time spending time with family. We have been home since early Wed. morning. As most people do right before leaving town I didn't buy many groceries the week before we left. Not being able to pay ourselves quite yet we have been living without milk, eggs, and some of those bare essentials. We've done this before so it hasn't been that big of a deal.


Since we've been home I've been babysitting everyday and have had 7 kids running around. Emily has been running a fever since we've been home and it seems she is constantly crying (thanks to her shots last week).When Kory came home this morning to grab some paper work he commented on how quiet our house was. Hunter and Maddie were at a friends and Emily was napping. It was very peaceful. Not having anyone at my feet I was trying to catch up on some buisness work. Kory went into the kitchen and asked me what the hissing noise was. I couldn't hear it in the office and didn't know what he was talking about it. We soon discovered that the hissing noise was coming from under the house. We have a water leak. It's not gushing water but we've got ourselves a pudddle. After calling around and being a friday afternoon afterall the soonest we can get someone to come by is monday morning. Not wanting to waste water and cause any damage we have shut our water off.

Not having any fresh produce, milk, eggs, nearing the end of our laundry detergent and now not having running water has made me think. How would our family do in an emergency situation? I don't know if we'd do very well. Thankfully I have about 20 gallons of water stored. We have been using that today to wash hands and flush toilets. Tommorrow I will heat some water and wash my dishes by hand. I have two sinks full and a dishwasher full. YEAH FOR ME!!!

With the warm weather the kids and I spent the afternoon outside. When Kory got home from work we grabbed some shovels and started moving some dirt around. When we came in it was a real pain to wash everyones hands without running water. I can't bathe anyone tonight.
(If we had just had a natural disaster we would probably have been outside assesing the damage, maybe even starting to clean up. Chances are we would be dusty and sweaty and probably not have any running water.) I was tired and not having any leftovers tonight I let the kids make themselves a jelly sandwich. They've done this many times but tonight I realized how messy these can be when I don't have the convienience of running water. Kory and I had grilled cheese sandwiches.

Tonight feeling my nerves were fried we scrounged up some change and I ran to the store and bought another loaf of bread, milk and eggs to help ease my pain over the next few days. What if we had just survived a natural disaster and I couldn't go buy these things? I feel better tonight knowing for the next few mornings we will have cold cereal in a plastic bowl with plastic spoons. But what if we couldn't? Tommorrow night we'll turn the water on just long enough to bathe everyone for sunday. This is going to be interesting to see what and how we do during the next two days.

I have learned that I need to get a few more water storage containers and some spickets for them so I don't waste as much water as I feel I am doing now. I need to get some hand sanitizer. I need to find some recipies that don't ask for milk or eggs, especially breakfast meals. So far we've had bottled fruit, muffins that I had in the freezer and cinnamon toast. I need to have a good supply of paper goods.

It is going to be an interesting weekend for us. I know we will be O.K. it's only 2-3 more days. There is an end in sight. I'm just thankful I had water stored. I always thought I'd probably never use it and if I did it wouldn't be becuase of a water leak. I will be very thankful to teach my lesson next sunday. The lesson is "I am thankful for water". The things you take for granted.

Belly Dancing

For my brithday last month I told Kory all I wanted was to take a dance class. I looked into several but most were offered during the day during the week. I didn't want the hassle of trying to find a babysitter on the same day every week for 12 weeks. And I've started babysitting again. I babysit 2 different families and their work schedules are different every week. So I finally found this. It's a beginner belly dancing class held on Saturdays from 2-3:30, for the next 7 weeks at Yavapai College in Prescott.

This past saturday was my first class. I had so much fun. Just turning 28 I was thinking that I may be one of the oldest ones there. WOW was I wrong. I was one of the youngest ones there. There's probably 30+ women and most are 50+. I ended up standing next to a teenager. She asked me how old I was and when I told her I laughed at her expression. Her eyes almost jumped out of her head and her jaw dropped. Then she said,"Your that old". I replied,"Yep I'm that old, I left my 3 kids at home with their dad." She thought I was about 21. I guess I'm aging very well. She's 17. After our class had started 3 young girls that are probaly 18-21 walked in. Other then that though the others are 50+ which isn't a bad thing it just surprised me.

I had so much fun. What good exercise it was. I don't need to loose any weight but I'm trying to tighten my flabby tummy. This class will do the trick. She started teaching us a routine already. I'm anxious for saturday to roll around again for my next class.

Plugged Back In

So, how did we do with no electronics? We unplugged everything on a tuesday night. Wed. went surprisingly smooth. It seems like every half hour I was asked if some sort of electronic device could be used but I stuck to my guns and didn't allow it. I made bread that day and we turned some of the dough into differene shapes. We had a dinosaur, a butterfly, a heart, a cookie and a monster.

Thursday went pretty well too. The kids were a little more whiny wanting to watch cartoons but again there was no tv. The kids went to school that morning and we made an elephant paper sack puppet that afternoon. In the evening we played games till bedtime.

Friday morning Hunter got up at 5:15am. He crawled into bed with us and just couldn't seem to hold still. Kory was getting frusurated with the constant movement of the bed and covers and finally told Hunter to go play the WII. Unfortunately this broke my plan of a week without electronics. Saturday and Sunday we were having our own little snow storm which kept us all inside.

I have been talking to several friends and have come up with a plan. Several weeks ago I printed out several picts. of dinosaurs. I had the kids color and help me cut them out and then lamenated them. I keep them in a container on top of the tv. Originally this was just for Hunter and the WII but for a week now I 've been using it for all of our electronics. Maddie doesn't seem to mind using some of the dinosaurs herself. Each dinosaur is worth 15 min. We have 10 dinosaurs which gives them a total of 2.5 hours. They can use this for cartoons, the WII or the computer. We've been doing this for almost a week now and it is really working. We have had a few farely warm days this past week. The kids didn't ask once during the day to use a dinosaur they spent it all outside riding bikes, and swinging. It was great!!!

Hinkley Challenge

I thought I'd share this challenge real quick before I begin our week of being unplugged from our electronics. For those who haven't heard of this challenge it's being called the Hinkley Challenge. To honor President Hinkley who was 96 years old when he died we are being challenged to read The Book of Mormon in the next 96 days. This challenge officially started yesterday Monday, Feb. 4th. You can register for free at http://www.hinkleychallenge.com/. This AWSOME website will track your progress and show you a little graph. It tells you how many pages you need to read to reach this goal. You can also type in your town and see how many people have registered to participate. When I registered I became the 7th person inPrescott Valley, AZ. It tells me who the first 6 people were. I thought it was cool the 1st person to register is in my ward. I have checked the website several times today. It is so neat to see that so far 22,752 people have accepted this challenge world wide.

Un Plugging

Kory and I have never really watched a lot of tv. We passed this habit along to our kids. It's been great. All of our kids even Emily now prefer to be outside than inside. I use to turn the tv on at 8 am. The kids would watch The Little Einsteins and then at 8:30 Mickey Mouse Club House. They would be GLUED to the tv. This gave me enough time to do the breakfast dishes, shower and get ready for the day. At 9:00 the tv would go off and it generally didn't get turned back on until 5 which was when I watched the news.

With the cold weather we've been having lately along with my muddy front/back yard it's been really hard on all of us, but especially the kids. Hunter started turning the tv on about 6 am when he got up instead of playing quietly in his room. I wasn't quite ready to roll out of bed so I was ok with this but of course the tv stayed on until 9 am. It has slowly progressed to more and more cartoons. When they don't like the cartoon playing they'll turn the Wii on. When they are tired of that they'll try the cartoons again or get on the computer. For the past couple of days I felt like the tv and computer have been on most of the day. When I do turn it off they cry, throw a tissy fit and argue with me about it. The hole time it's off they're bugging me to turn it back on again. So this morning I decided I was going to stick with it and go back to our old schedule but.... Hunter was up at 5:30 and I was too tired to argue so the TV was on from 5:30 to 7 when I made them turn it off to get ready for school. I did not allow them to watch cartoons while eating their breakfast (another habit that has been formed). It was kinda nice. We talked during breakfast. Breakfast went by faster making them be completely ready for school earlier than usual, and we left the house calmly and on time this morning.

But what a HORRIBLE afternoon we've had. I wouldn't let them turn the tv on after pre-school and all Hunter and Maddie did was whine, whine and whine. Hunter even had a friend come over for a few hours. They played for about 15 minutes and then I let them turn the WII on. After a few minutes of the WII I realized they had shut it off and were watching cartoons. Hunter was not very happy that I made him turn the cartoons off and go play with his toys while he had a friend to play with. The second his friend left he wanted to turn the tv on again. I stuck to it and the tv has not been on since this morning before school. I was shocked to see how bored they thought they were. They REFUSED to play with their toys all day.

So tonight at dinner I announced to the family that TONIGHT we are unplugging the TV, DVD player, WII and the computer for the next 7 days. You should have seen the tears from Hunter and Maddie. I told them that Daddy and I were going to be doing the same thing. I don't think Daddy appreciated me volunteering him to go along with my plan (it's baskettball season), but after spending a few hours with the kids tonight and seeing their reactions to this unplugging idea he is willing to go along with it. The kids wanted to watch a movie after dinner but instead I pulled out a few games. We played Memory and Chutes and Ladders till scripture study and then it was bed time. Once the kids got into the board games they had fun and forgot about their movie. We had a good evening together.

Wish us luck. After the afternoon we've had I am not looking forward to tommorrow. I will bolg about our un plugging experience in a week. Till then...

It's Snowing!

Monday morning we woke up to SNOW! We pulled out the gloves and hats and we all went outside. Kory had already gone to work so it was just the kids and I.
Emily wasn't to sure about it but she caught on pretty quickly.
We had a fun little snow ball fight.
We played for about 30 minutes outside and then we got a little cold. Maddie was even still in her pajama's.
We all came inside. I had Maddie get dressed. Fed everybody breakfast and then the kids went back out for another 45 minutes and played. I'm am so glad we played as early as we did. By lunch time most of the snow was gone. We sure had fun while it lasted.