Ending the dinner time battle

What is my least favorite question as we approach the dinner hour? 

 "Mom, can I sit by you?" 

With six kids, everyone wants to sit by mom.  The children tried to better their chances by asking a few minutes before dinner if they could fill my water glass.  There were nights where there were three water glasses on the table intented for me.  Another strategy was to stake out a spot for mom, with them sitting beside it, long before dinner.  When those two strategies failed, there was always the next step to argue their way into sitting next to me.  It was a common occurance for their to be tears, put downs, yelling.  If Miriam didn't get to sit by me, she would get so upset, she would have be sent upstairs to cool off.  Or, she would grab a stool from the island and plant herself between the lucky child who thought they'd be sitting next to me and me.  Needless to say, that did not go over well.  It got to, when dinner approached and I was asked my least favorite question, I wanted to say, "No, because I'm not eating at the table!"  I couldn't keep track from night to night who had sat by me so there were cries of favoritism.

We came up with a solution that has worked perfectly, a rotating seating chart.  It's posted on the fridge for all to see.  It has entirely eliminated the battle.  Miriam now happily asks where she'll be sitting for the night.  Of course, Jacob thinks it's absolutely ridiculous (but I don't know what we do that he DOES think is great!).  The lucky child who sits by mom also gets to say the blessing on the food.  Hooray for coming up with solutions to problems!

Our latest happenings

I never got around to posting what's been happening lately, so here is two weeks worth.  Last weekend, we made a craigslist swap.  I finally got rid of the treadmill I purchased on craigslist a few years ago and rarely used.

and, we  found a used cargo trailer for our trip.

I wish I could say it was an even swap!  The trailer was quite a bit more (several months worth of newspapers more).  We drove all the way down to Bonney Lake (1 1/2 hour drive) to buy it.  There was just NO WAY I was going to squeeze everything I needed for a three week trip into the van.  And believe me, I wish I could.  I'm not excited about taking this on the road but am sure by the end of the trip, it will be much more natural.  This trailer is a 5x10 and will hold all our gear and our bikes.  Dode is in the process of building shelves to make the space easier to pack/unpack.  We're also planning to buy an inverter that will allow me to run a small microwave off a battery.  The ability to heat something up quickly and easily is one of the things I miss most when camping, having a microwave will be wonderful, and a cost savings.  Sometime in the next month, I need to practice hooking it up to the van and backing it in.  Most of the campgrounds we're staying in don't have pull through sites.  We know that when the trip is over, we can sell it for what we paid and only be out the tax we paid when licensing it, but thinking of future road trips, I don't know that we'll end up getting rid of it.  I wish we could rent it out! 

William has a cold which means he's spending a lot of time looking like this...

We just had his IEP meeting for the next year.  He qualifies for an "extended learning year" (summer school).  William has a really hard time academically.  Over the course of this year, he'd managed to learn to recognize the letters "A" and "E".  After going back from spring break, it was gone.  His teacher told me that in seven years of teaching in her self contained special ed classroom, William is the most affected student she has ever had.  What makes it so difficult for William is he looks perfectly normal, so people he interacts with expect him to act like a "normal" child.  Even in the fall when I had the parent/teacher conference, the teacher was talking like William was soon to move out of her class (I just nodded and smiled).  Now that she's had most of the year to work with him, she realizes the extent of his disability.  William's biggest strength is his cheerful personality and optimistic demeaner.  He never feels bad that he can't do something, he tries and if it's too hard, he just moves on to the next thing.  He's also always willing to help, but his limited understanding and lack of color knowledge makes it difficult.  I've learned creative ways of describing things to him that don't involve color, number, or size.

Isaac had a scout campout up in Darrington.  Dode was able to go along.  They went up into the snow and were able to practice target shooting with some of his scoutmaster's guns. 

Isaac had a great time and loved having his dad there.

This was a crazy week.  Dode had a work conference down in Tacoma Mon-Wed which gave him 12 hour work days.  Then, on Thursday he had his wisdom teeth taken out.  He only had three left because several years ago when we didn't have dental insurance, one started to really trouble him so after months of waiting for it to resolve itself, we had it removed.  Now that he has dental insurance, it was time to get the rest out. 

He hadn't had a general anesthetic since he was five years old.  (For those that don't know, my sweet husband caught himself on fire as a young child and had to endure a long hospital stay and skin grafts.)  It was weird to have him the one out of it, it's been me way too many times.  The procedure went smoothly and a little more than an hour after we got there, we were ready to go home.  Right before his appointment, I'd driven over to Frost doughnuts, a gourmet doughnut shop in Mill Creek I'd read about in the paper.  I bought a dozen of their "evolved" donuts to bring home to the kids.  Isaac's favorite is the maple bar topped with crumbled bacon.  Jacob liked the aztec, which was a chocolate cake donut topped with a chocolate frosting with cayene in it.  My favorite looked plain but tasted wonderful, salted caramel.  It was an absolutely fresh old fashioned doughnut, drizzled with caramel and sprinkled with sea salt.  It was definately worth the calories!  When we got home, Dode spent the rest of the day sleeping.  He's actually doing great so far and is not in a lot of pain.  He keeps wanting to tackle more shelves in the trailer and I keep encouraging him to relax and take it easy. 

We had 81 at the co-op.  Hooray! (82 is my max).  We got:  fuji apples, bananas, strawberries, green bell peppers, cantaloupe, pineapple, green beans, carrots, corn, persian cucumbers, grey squash (think zuchini) and romaine.  I'm so glad we got pineapple.  We didn't get any last week and I had to buy one at Costco, it's become a staple.  Last week the truck came at 6:00 am, three hours early.  I was laying in bed when I heard the sound of a semi setting its breaks.  Surely that can't be my truck, I thought.  Wrong!  Dode was gone so it was up to me to help the delivery man get the produce up the driveway.  He has an electric hand truck the pallets rest on but there is one spot of loose gravel that requires someone to push.  Then for the first time, the people who did the ordering messed up and we had to send stuff back.  The boxes that had to go back were on the bottom of the pallets which meant I had to unload all the boxes, by myself, as quickly as possible so the truck driver could take them back.  My lower back ached for days.  This week was much smoother.  The truck showed up at 8:00 which is still early but we were already up and about. 

It's so wonderful to hear so many "thank you, you're so wonderful for doing this" type comments in the morning!

I've been sewing for the girls.  I'm surprised that my 12 year old girl wants to wear things her mom makes for her but she's loving it and shows off to all her friends.  I've made her three skirts and a repurposed sweater.  I am NOT a skilled seamstress.  The seam ripper is getting a bit dull!  But, skirts are just rectangles sewed together with an elastic waistband.  I can do that (as long as I don't mind ripping a waistband out three times before I get it right, no exageration.)  She was so impressed because the last skirt I made had pockets in it.

Here is one of the outfits I've made her.

The wrap skirt is reversable so she can have either the polka dots or solid black on the outside.  The pink jacket used to be a sweater that I cut down the middle and added a ruffle and ribbon tie to.  She made the flower bracelet.  Anastaya spent the morning at a music workshop at the stake center.  She now wants to get an organ so she can practice on it.  She loved the way an organist can personalize the song to their liking.

Here is a dress I made Miriam.  Two rectangles sewn together, shirred at the top using 8 lines of elastic thread.  She loves it.  Yesterday she wore it to Haggen with purple rubber boots and about 6 plastic sparkly butterflies in her hair.  It was quite a unique look.

Elizabeth's new skirt.  I love the chiffon ruffle at the bottom.

 

Traveling on a dime

What do you do when you're a big family with a limited income but you want to do some fun family things?  How about a paper route?  Our paper route is a family affair.  Each week we deliver 1400 Arlington Times newspapers.  The papers are free to households in the delivery area so we drive down the road delivering to everyone that has not expressly asked not to receive it.  Each paper we deliver brings us 10 cents.  We're traveling on a dime!

On Tuesdays, I drive down to Marysville and run errands before picking up the papers.  When I get home, we go into production mode.  We've got to be fast because I get back around 4:15 and we have papers to stuff and dinner to eat before leaving for the church at 6:15.  Everyone has a part. 

Elizabeth rubber bands 75 papers which are delivered to the businesses on Olympic Avenue (the main street in Arlington).  Anastaya and Isaac both bag 200 papers.  Jacob, Dode and I each do 300.  We're pretty quick and get the papers all ready for delivery in about 45 minutes.  Miriam and William help by picking up papers on the ground that miss the bucket. 

While the kids are at youth night, Dode and I deliver to one of the areas on our route.  We're usually just squeaking by with getting done in the hour and a half of the activity and any setback, like a potty stop for William, makes it hard to finish.  We don't have a working radio in the car so it gives us some good talking time, our weekly date night.  Then, when Jacob and Dode get up for seminary on Wednesday morning, Anastaya and I get up and start delivering again.  Up and down the dark streets of Arlington we go, tossing out papers and hand delivering to the apartments.  When seminary is over, we pick up Jacob and a two other teenagers who come over to our house for a few hours before school starts for them and head to Olympic.  With a child on each side of the street, they walk down Olympic delivering to the businesses.  Once we're done, I drop Anastaya off at middle school and bring the rest of the carload home.  When it's time for Jacob to go to school at 9, I load up Isaac and William and we finish whatever Anastaya and I have left.  I spend about 2 hours delivering on Wednesday morning. 

We put all the newspaper money in a separate account at a different bank than our checking account.  Each child gets paid $10 a month for their efforts (I know I'm cheap) with the remainder going to savings.  We've got some fun travels planned for our money, a trip to Navuoo, Disneyland, our recent trip to Great Wolf Lodge.  We've also used the money to send Jacob to Florida with his school for a week.

So, that's traveling on a dime the Dode Dickson family way!

Spring Break 2010

I always try to make spring break fun for the kids. I want them to be able to go back to school and feel like they had a nice respite. This year, on Monday we all went to see How to Train Your Dragon. Reviews of the movie range from amazing (Elizabeth) to ok (Jacob) to "ouch that was expensive!" (me). I thought it was a good movie and brought tears to my eyes a few times. I'm sure we'll buy it when it comes out on DVD. We did some shopping at Target and Costco after the movie and to give you an idea of the chaos, I paid for, then walked out of Target without my purchases because I was busy keeping track on where the children were! Tuesday we took a bike ride to the Local Scoop, a restaurant in town with an ice cream counter. It was Elizabeth's idea to do the bike ride but I think she had second thoughts as she peddled uphill against the wind to get home.

at our destination

I'm the one in pink reflected in the window

I did the math and this year is the 10th year I've brought the children down to Ocean Shores. We did our newspaper delivering on Tuesday and Wednesday morning and then headed out. Our first stop with the Grand China Buffet in Everett. The kids love it because they don't have to wait for their food and they can choose just what they want to eat.

Tummies filled to the rim, we spent the next three hours driving to the beach. For the past 7 years, we've stayed at the Quinault Beach Resort. I've loved staying there because they are the closest to the beach and have a great pool with floor to ceiling windows looking out over the ocean. Unfortunately, they raised their prices this year and I couldn't afford two rooms at the new rate. This year we ended up staying at the Best Western Lightouse Suites, which is the 2nd closest hotel to the beach. The "lighthouse" in the name is the cupala you can see in the photo. You can stand up there and get a 360 view. There is a walkway on the outside but it was closed due to the storm weather. The manager of the hotel had to find me to let me know that a certain 17 year old teenager was seen climbing out of a venilation window and doing pull ups off the gutter. Aparently he wanted to walk around on the outer walkway. Do all teenage boys have a death wish? The first night we were there, he went swimming in the ocean at midnight without my knowledge. It's a good thing I love him so much or else I would kill him!

The rooms here are a lot larger than the Quinault and it's nice that they have a microwave so I don't have to bring one from home. (Jacob finds bringing a microwave from home the ultimate in hillbilly tacky. I call is economical!) They also offer a deluxe continental breakfast which makes it nice for the kids. We've never gone out for breakfast so we aren't saving any money, but it's nice to keep the sticky breakfast mess out of the room. The kids enjoyed the make your own waffles, muffins, and bagels. The biggest drawback at the Best Western is the pool. It's a lot smaller than the Quinault and looks out over the parking lot. The kids don't mind the size but because it's smaller, it's MUCH louder in the pool area. I actually went to Ace Hardware and bought ear plugs which make hanging out in the pool area way more pleasant! We generally spend 3-4 hours a day at the pool so getting through it without a headache is huge if you're going solo like I was. We have a big bin of pool toys: snorkels, masks, balls, diving toys, flippers, things to float on. It's funny to look around the pool and see kids everywhere using our toys, not just my own. When we leave, the pool looks pretty boring.

Our fearless Miriam had watched other children jumping into our inner tube from the side and decided she could do that too. Here she is.

Isaac and Isaac decided to use their allowance money to rent these fun bikes for an hour.

Since we WERE at the ocean, we did spend a little time at the beach! You have to know that the beach in March/April in Washington is not a lounge around in a bikini kind of beach, it's a bundle up in winter clothes and almost be warm enough kind of beach. On Friday, they had a "10 year" storm that brought sustained winds of 50 mph with gusts up to 70. We didn't go to the beach that day but Isaac did learn that kites don't like 50 mph winds.

The Isaacs were the only ones brave (or crazy) enough to go in the water.

Jacob and William built a sandcastle.....

while the rest of the children stayed warm in the van.

The beach in Washington is a state highway and cars are allowed to drive along it.

It wouldn't be a vacation in my book without ice cream. I absolutely LOVE ice cream but when I'm at home I'm able to resist. Something about vacation causes me to throw caution to the wind and I gleefully consume ice cream on a daily basis. We braved the wind storm that was so strong it was difficult to open the car doors so we could go get ice cream!

We can never seem to go anywhere without looking like a real hillbilly family. Here's the van packed and ready to head home. The back inside is also filled as are the areas around the seats.

We stayed for three nights which gives us two full days at the beach as well as our two travel days. I've decided over the years that two nights just isn't enough. Four might be perfect but we always have to weigh play time with cost. Just getting the two rooms was a reach. The maximum occupancy of the rooms at the Best Western was 6 and while I know I could have squeezed the seven of us in, I just wouldn't have felt right about it. As long as we were paying for two rooms, I decided to let Isaac bring a friend.