a cold day, a bad dog

Tomorrow the high is 2 degrees F. School is cancelled tomorrow. Which means time for me to get creative and come up with some around-the-house projects for 6 busy hands. I do have a massage scheduled tomorrow morning that I was so looking forward to. I think I'll take a movie pass again. Not only will they get to stay home, but also watch a movie on a school day. Double bonus.

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I hate my dog- Jake. Call me evil, a dog-hater, a communist, whatever. That's fine. I still hate him. We went to the hardware store all together (we're looking into finishing a room in the basement) and when we get home, guess what I find? Oh I'm so mad I can hardly type about it. Jake peed on my pillow!!! GROSS! It was on the floor, the pillow, I mean. I'm not sure if he jumped on the bed and knocked it off then peed on it or it was already on the floor. So I take it downstairs and throw it in the wash. Then I talk to Emi again about taking him out. He's such a whimp though you open the door for him and he feels the cold air and runs up to his bed. And THEN, I flip the light on in the toy room. Oh no..that's....!!!JAKE!!! poop in the toyroom. I seriously threaten for the 109th time to put that dog on craigslist. All the children hate me and tell me so. Why am I the bad guy? Is it so wrong to not want dog poop and pee all over my house? This is what he does when it's cold outside. He refuses to go out then when we leave, he takes care of business in the house. Well guess who's getting THROWN out in the snow 3 times a day? That's right, Jake, YOU ARE (just in case you're reading this). I don't care if it's 18 below. You ruined my night and turned my children against me. No more chances!

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Okay, I'm better. Accounting class is great. I love it, actually. A fun challenge. I think I may have been an accountant in another life. It's also helping me with my quickbooks consulting. Not that I do a ton of it, but a few hours with different businesses here and there. But it's helpful to have the foundations of accounting because often the questions people ask me are more along the lines of accounting than technical things with quickbooks.

Sunday night

One of my simple pleasures in winter is being able to put the kids to bed at 7:30, just because it's dark out. Emily's onto this and doesn't fall for it anymore, but she likes to read at night anyway. It's the other two that are a work-out and luckily can't tell time yet. I think they need more sleep in the winter anyway. And there's something about Sunday, between 3 hours of church and all this family togetherness, that makes them a little more unruly than other days of the week. So sometimes by 6:30, I'm ready to turn my "mommy" hat in for the night and put them all to bed. Tonight Taylor and I both had meetings at church from 6-7 so we let them watch "Veggie Tales" which is a rare treat around our house to let them watch anything on Sunday. Emily's almost 11 so I do leave her in charge from time to time, and they usually watch a movie so there's not much to fight about. When we came home we had scripture study and put them to bed.

Taylor and I had a talk the other night. It's time to put more effort into our marraige. We go through marital hi's and low's and lately it's been a low. Nothing bad really, or nothing any other marraige probably doesn't go through from time to time. We're just sort of living parallell lives but not really connecting. But we agreed that we do want to make things better and the past few days they have been better. Here's a thought. I've been reading through some different marraige books and I came across something that clicked. When we feel like communication has broken down in our marraige, we try to be better communicators. But communication isn't the problem. It's being in love. That's the feeling we've lost, not our ability to communicate. If we can rekindle the feelings of love for eachother, better communication happens. A great marraige isn't built on great communication but great love. That's paraphrasing, but it made sense. Because sometimes I feel like we forgot how to talk to eachother or we don't have much to say but I think it's because neeed to be "in love" again, not necessarily become better communicators. And it's just all the little stuff, like being thoughtful, respectful, doing kind things, saying nice and positive things. It's hard, marraige is. It takes a lot of effort and pride-swallowing. It's interesting that most love stories are about falling in love, but not about the next 60+ years of staying in love. That's where the real effort and lasting love are. Taylor and I are sealed together forever and I want to make our marraige the best it can be.

Interactive Modern Art

We took the kids to the CU faculty art show today. They all took turns sitting on this chair that started flapping it's wings when someone sat in it. Not sure of the deeper meaning, but they had fun dreaming about a flying chair anyway.
Taylor and I went to the y for a workout then when we came home I had a bowl of icecream.

I'm not still not liking the color

Olivia said it looks like playdough. I'm such a do-it-yourself-er but I think the realm of hair is something I should leave to the professionals from here on out.

I am really liking my accounting class. I like the mental challenge and I feel pretty ept with it. I've had a lot of experience with quickbooks, and running the office so a lot of what I'm learning totally makes sense.

Today is a beautiful day. Taylor and Evan and I went to Boulder and walked up the Chataqua park trail a little ways. It's in the 60's I think and I even soaked up a few rays while Evan played at the park.

my hair

I died my hair today. It was not what I had in mind. Emily said it looks Mexican, whatever that means. It was supposed to be golden blonde but its more like strawberry blonde.

Evan's new pet

Evan got a Venus fly trap today.  He named him "Fifi Jacob Workman". But he said we can call him Fifi for short.  He's scouring the backyard for dead bugs at the moment to feed Fifi.

Evan and me at the park