So tired...

I hate my hormones. Let's just get that out of the way right now.

OK /rant. I think.

We've had two calls in the last two days, so the evenings have been rather hectic. Tonight Larry has class and tomorrow night we have to go to the town council meeting. Some of our town council people don't understand why we won't issue burn permits. They don't understand that we won't issue burn permits right now because fire conditions right now mirror fire conditions in 2002, the year of the Hayman fire, the largest wildfire in Colorado history. So we have to make them understand that. We will be presenting some facts regarding current fire weather and fuel conditions, historical observations from both Hayman and Ordway. Ordway is important because that fire was started by an intentional burn of trash-something that is common out here in rural Colorado, and something that is seen as harmless. We have to change that perception.

Of course, we are forecast to get between 12 and 24 inches of snow on Thursday and Friday, so everyone will expect that, that will end the fire weather danger. And while the moisture will mitigate the danger in the short term, meaning we may begin issuing permits for a few days following the snow, only a rain of biblical proportions will truly reduce the fire danger. The plant life in our area has less than 10% of the moisture content that it should have right now. While topical moisture will help that in the short term, it won't take many warm days to suck that moisture right back out, turning those plants into tinder. Forecasters are saying that there may not even be a "green up" on the plains.

So the bulk of what I will be working on today will be preparing for that. I also have to do some research on a minor workman's comp claim, but that probably won't take too long. Although now that I've typed it, it will take all day, LOL.

Then when I come home I will probably cook tonight's dinner and tomorrow's. If we are going to be getting a lot of snow, we will probably be getting a lot of calls.

OK, off to go get dressed and read for work!

Busy, Busy, Busy (Again)

Yesterday we spent the day running around like the proverbial chickens.

Saren had an eye appointment, so we went and took care of that. Then we went to see if the thrift store was open (it wasn't) and went to lunch. Then we went back to WalMart to do our shopping and get haircuts. The boys got a LOT of hair cut off, and Nikki and I got bangs trimmed and then some cut off the length. The boys' hair would make any woman jealous, I think. It grows super fast, and has a tendency to waviness when it gets long. Aimee didn't go with us, she was working, but she needs a haircut, too. I think I will see if Catherine can do it. She's awesome at cutting hair. Maybe Aimee can trade her some daycare over Spring Break for it.

Since our IRS refund came, we did some shopping for stuff we really needed. I hit the clearance racks in all the family's sizes and got everyone some shirts, and Nikki and Larry each a pair of jeans (Larry's weren't on clearance, but he really needed them). I also got some mixing bowls, and two more laundry baskets. I found some bakery bread on clearance, so I bought a bunch of that to go in the freezer. I didn't hit the meat because we had already been waiting a LONG time to get into the hair salon and I wasn't sure how long the cuts would take. We finally got out of there at 3:30, and by then we were just done. The babies did great throughout, despite the fact that they had to have been exhausted.

When we came home we had our traditional tax refund pizza feast, ordering pizza from Adamo's here in town. I did add a salad. We also hit Ringos Market, to stock up on some stuff there, including cereal for $2.00/box (I know, but sometimes, we just need cereal for a quick breakfast). Earlier in the week I had gotten blsl chicken breasts there for $1.69/lb.

After dinner we got some kidlets to bed, and I sat down to work on the work laptops. Did some stuff on those, and then just relaxed. Read some interesting blogs, including this one called $5.00 dinners, and then bought some coupons. Well, I didn't actually buy the coupons, I paid someone else to clip them for me. We don't get a lot of coupons in our Sunday inserts, and sometimes, by the time we get up to the store, the Sunday paper is already gone. And, honestly, in the winter, sometimes we just don't get in to the store.

Looking at $5.00 dinners made me think about how else I can save my family money. She was talking about going to Walgreens and getting about $30 worth of stuff for less then $3, after coupons and their rebate program. That sort of thing is just not possible for us to do. Our nearest Walgreens is an hour away, and we only get there once a month if we're lucky. But I do need to be more judicious about our use of coupons. I manage to do pretty well on our grocery budget but could do better.

Which is what made me decide to get some coupons in bulk. I got quite a few from the coupon clippers, and then this morning I got some on ebay. I think, on Sundays when we're home, we'll start walking down to Ringos and getting the Sunday paper there for more coupons. I can always sell the ones I can't use. Plus there's ones I can print online-I know Safeway at least will take those. I think I'll call Walmart later and see if they still take those. I know a lot of stores don't.

Today's agenda is laundry, and going through crates again because for some reason I didn't pull out 3T pants for Roan. Between thrift store shopping, going through crates, ebay shopping and now Walmart clearance, I have a LOT of laundry to do. Plus, with Larry and Aimee gone, I can bleach to my heart's content, so I'm going to bleach the bathroom, the kitchen, and all the floors. Maybe the fridges, too.

OK, I'm off to get everyone breakfast.

Here's the link to the coupon clippers

"Take these dispatches and..."

Well, I'm not particularly awake yet, so forgive the typos, please ladies...

Sometime back (I think before Aria was born), I had offered to dispatch for our local volunteer Fire Department. DH was leutenant at the time and said he'd talk it over with the chief. Long story short, because the chief was in town during the day, we didn't need a dispatcher, he could do it.

Three months ago, our chief was medically retired. DH is now Assistant Chief. The chief came to him and asked if my previous offer was still good.

Well, at this point, I have a two and a half year old, and a one year old, and I'm babysitting a four year old child who is very high needs. I tell DH I will think about it. One night, they get some kind of call right before dinner time, leaving me to deal with kids, walking the dog, and doing the things that are normally his responsibility in the evening, plus cook dinner and bathe the kids etc (you ladies know the drill). My DH is a wonderful helper at home and I'm quite frankly spoiled by that! So that night I "pretend" that I'm also having to handle dispatch, and realize that it's not such a hot idea.

Fast forward to Monday the 23rd. Right now we have fifteen firefighters on our roster. Usually, however, it's the same three or four guys who go out on almost every single call. Most of our guys work traditional day time schedules, so there aren't many people here from about 7ish am to about 6ish pm, cause the jobs are all 30 or more miles away. I get a phone call from the Sheriff (the actual guy, not a deputy or one of his underlings) and he's ticked off. Seems there's a fire in our district, and he's been toning us out for the last hour and no one has responded. He tells me I'm the first live person he's gotten and can I please find him some firefighters and get him an updated call sheet. "Yes, Sir" says I, a little intimidated (to which my husband would be shocked). So I pull the call sheet off the fridge and start calling firefighters and get four on the scene. I tell DH "I guess you better get me a radio."

So he brings me a radio and dashes out the door with a half frozen turkey sandwich. I start listening in but no one calls. No big deal, because I have no idea what in the world I'm doing!!!

So I call our administrative assistant. She does the office work for 2 days a week, and is assistant chief and back up dispatch for the neighboring district. Tell her the Sheriff needs a call sheet and I need dispatch lessons. We agree to talk after she fixes dinner and I get babies down. She gives me a crash course in dispatch.

Now, the entire reason I turned down dispatch is because of my "worst case scenario." Dinner is being cooked, babies are fussy cause they're hungry or whatever, I don't have any bigs here to help, and something major happens.

So Tuesday dawns, and I actually get to get on the radio, to ask the guys who are watching for flare ups from Monday's fire if they are going to need to refill the water trucks, so the town can make the extra water available. I take care of that, and do my normal mommy stuff. Do it more efficiently and at a faster pace because I have no idea what may happen down the road.

DH comes home a little early, so he can get on the scene of the fire and do an assessment, so I put dinner on early-something easy because I don't know what is going to happen with the fire. I made spaghetti sauce earlier in the CP and bread in the machine, all I had to do was deal with the meat and pasta.

Now, Aria, now 15 months old, is teething, so she's been fussy all day. Roan is moderately fussy, mostly due to his being 2 and wanting his way all the time. I'm walking into the kitchen to drain the pasta, and the radio goes off. So I'm in the midst of cooking dinner (and risking icky overcooked pasta with not enough to replace it if I ruin it), dealing with fussy babies, the dog needs to go out, it's raining, and I need to dispatch a smoke report. It's my first darn day on the job and already my worst case scenario has happened!

Well, I did it. Not only did I do it (thankfully it was only a smoke chase, it's hazy cause we have three fires nearby) but I did a pretty good job, according to my DH and the lady who trained me, who called to tell me I was doing an awesome job. The oldest kid I have at home right now, Nikki, who is 7, stepped up and did a great job at helping, too!

So I guess I'm a working mommy. Still home, but working. I'm trying to get things done earlier, because I never know when the radio will take me away from that stuff. But if I have all the dinner prep done early, it will save me time in the evenings. Also planning on double cooking a lot of things and taking a day a month to put some extra food in the freezer so I can just pull stuff out if something happens near dinner time.

There are some benefits-#1 is that with a local dispatcher, my husband will be safer. The other guys as well, but of course, my primary concern lies at home. I'll have life insurance, and we get a small incentive bonus for every call we work on, so every call I dispatch I will get a small amount of money for, paid in one check in December. Plus DH gets a "recruitment bonus" for me "joining" the FD. That will help our family out a lot. Life insurance for me has been a concern in our family-if something happens to me, DH would have to pay childcare so he could work. Now that huge need will be taken care of.

So now to figure out how to juggle all of this LOL.

Shopping and soccer today

Well we have a game at the scary hour of 8 am. But at least they don't overlap today, so we can have a relatively restful day instead of running around like the proverbial chickens. We're doing muffins for breakfast instead of the cereal on the menu, cause I need some freezer space LOL. There is a good sale on pork chops so I'm going to stock up on those, which means I will be completely redoing all of the freezers today when we get home. But that always gives me a good opportunity to take stock of what I have. Ground beef is also on sale, but easy to repackage and put the little packages into the nooks and crannies.

LIving out in the boonies, we don't always get the sale ads, so what I do is check the sales online. The major grocery stores all have their ads up online. So before we go (usually day before) I check the ads to see what is on sale, and work that into my list. This is where a price book comes in handy. If my sale store has something on sale, I can check the price book and make sure that it's actually a deal by checking what the price is at my normal store.

OK, off to wake the kiddoes, have a blessed day!

What a week or two!

Of course it was my intention when starting this blog to update it three or four times a week-you can see how well THAT is working out. As a matter of fact, I have several drafts of blogs saved, and none ready LOL. But I do have reasons why...

First, it's soccer season. My 3 oldest kids all play soccer. We have two games every Saturday and then at least one either Monday or Wednesday. Every Saturday morning the city of Trinidad, about 30 minutes down the road from us, becomes soccer crazy. Everywhere you look you see soccer uniforms. At any given moment there can be up to five games going on-which crushes schedules quite a bit when you have multiple kids playing! It's nothing for Larry to drop off me, a little and a middle while he takes Aimee, a little and a middle to another field, then goes and picks us up and takes us to the other field. Poor guy, spends a good deal of his Saturday driving.

Next, Larry is finishing up school. Lots of excitement there, and some night classes involved, too. He graduates May 9.

Then there's Spring Cleaning, something I will be blogging more about later. I got a late start on it, and haven't been able to properly do it in a few years because I was either pregnant or had a little. So, as you can imagine, it's a large task this year.

We've been on Fire Watch, and with Larry being a volunteer firefighter, this always bring an added sense of awareness. Driving to Trinidad can mean a detour for a smoke chase! There was a huge fire a few hours away from us, near Ordway, and two volunteer firefighters were lost. Larry wrestled back and forth about going to the memorial for these two heroes, and ultimately did not go. I think he has a hard time facing his own mortality in the loss of a brother. I have a hard time with these losses, too. It's hard for me to face Larry's mortality.

We've been trying to decide whether or not to homeschool the middles. I haven't talked a lot about this, but they are special needs, but on the other end of the spectrum from someone who is learning disabled. Aimee, my oldest, is a sophomore, and wants to graduate with her class. I can respect that, but if she won't graduate ready to go straight to college, I will homeschool her, too. See, living in a small town, our school doesn't have a lot of funding. The average cost of a house here in town is less than $120,000, so there isn't a lot of property tax. They also don't have a grantwriter. So they are strapped for cash. Our teachers and aides just got their first raise in SIX years. Saren has already been bumped up a grade, and could probably go to the junior high for math but I don't want him there, he's not socially ready for that. Nikki isn't socially ready to be bumped up but she spends half the day in the next grade up. At seven, she reads at the fifth grade level. Any special needs money is spent on the learning disabled kids. While I'm not saying that they shouldn't be getting that money, I AM saying that my kids have special needs, too. Aimee was mainstreamed, and I regret that decision. While her grades are great, I can see that she isn't always as challenged as she should be, and that leads to some behavior issues. The high school math teacher, at her last conference, said that she corrects him often in front of the whole class, and it really bothers him because she's usually right. This one was a challenge because technically she's not talking back to him, so, umm....soldier on, Sir. A few years ago we had an issue with a teacher where Aimee would refuse to do the work because it was too easy and the teacher easily intimidated. Had to have a chat with my girl about that. While I was proud of her for speaking her mind, she has to learn the proper respect as well. But anyway, back to the school. Because there's no money for my children's special needs, they can't get the challenge that they need. I have resisted home schooling them in the past for a few reasons. One, curriculum is expensive, and two, if my kid is correcting a man who has a master's degree in math, no way am I qualified to teach her. Also, the teachers themselves at our school are fantastic. I mean, beyond the call of duty. Remember the aforementioned no raise in six years. Despite the fact that we are the lowest paying district in the state, most of our elementary teachers have stuck around. We have lost quite a few high school teachers, but most of those were valid reasons. One retired, one had a baby, one had a job offer from New Zealand (yeah, I'd jump on that, too!). A few have left for higher pay, but not too many. None of the elementary teachers have left for higher pay. They are dedicated, and willing to work with our family, within the boundaries of what the district has available. They deal with my crabby 5 am emails without complaint, they give me their home phone numbers and private email addresses. No one in the administration at my school has done anything but lie. Yes, Aimee will graduate ready to go straight to university (they STILL don't have foreign language or higher math, but I can sign her up for online classes at TSJC and pay for them out of my own pocket), yes, we will have a gifted and talented program in the 2007-2008 school year (umm, it's April, no GT program, although testing has been done, but not evaluated); yes, we will make every possible accomodation for your gifted kids (but there's now a team in place which must explore and approve every change of the type my kids have already done such as spending half a day in another classroom so it will take months to implement these changes).

Well, typing this out has certainly helped. Guess I should have done this awhile back. Because re-reading it makes it all look ridiculous. The overwhelming attitude that I get from them is "Sorry that your children are smart, but we can't help them." So, thanks, anonymous readers, for helping me to make a decision you didn't even know you were going to help with when you came here today!

I have managed to finish a couple of books-Looking Glass Wars by Frank Bedder and Diana, Her True Story. Looking Glass Wars was great, an alternate look at Alice In Wonderland (and I'm currently re-reading that) and Diana was, well, depressing, in light of everything that eventually happened in her life.

More later, littles, middles and big all awake!