The Peaden Life

Friday, October 30, 2020

Friday Field Trips - October

I decided to start making a separate blog post for our Friday Field Trips instead of lumping it into our regular homeschool posts. We school Monday-Thursday, then Friday we do three things -Family History, - Journal, -Field Trip. It's one of the things that I love most about homeschooling (do I say this about everything? I probably do.) I love to adventure. I love to spend time with my kids and allow them to explore, learn, and feel joy. Sometimes our Field Trips are big. Sometimes they are simple. This month we had a good combination of those.

Park Day

One week we just went to a local park that we'd never been to. It had a big grassy area with some rocks for climbing on plus a HUGE pipe (I think that the park was built over an area of water pipe and there was a big sign explaining about it). The kids loved running up and down the inside of the pipe and it was just a nice day of being in the sunshine. Lucy is walking like a champion and I just can't get over how darling she is. While the kids were playing in the pipe she just sat behind them and moved rocks from one pile to another the whole time. I love this age.

Burgess Orchard Field Trip

One of my very favorite field trips was the trip that we took to Burgess Orchards our very first year of homeschool. It was so full of magic and solidified our joy in homeschooling. I set up another homeschool trip this year, but because of COVID there had to be a lot of modifications and we had to split our group in two. The Haderlies came with us and several of our homeschool friends came right after us. I wish we had been able to be together, but it was lovely anyway.

I think that one of the biggest things you can do for "self-care" as a mother is to find the things that fill your cup that you can do with your children and DO THEM. One of those things for me is going to an orchard in the fall. It just fills my cup.

Timpanogos Canyon with the Haderlies

We wanted to go spend some time in the mountains but couldn't find a good trail on the internet to guide us where to go. We decided to go up to Cascade Springs which is WAY far away but it fit the bill for what we were looking for. As we started up the canyon I kept seeing these little pull-outs and finally just called Jenna and we pulled into one of them. It ended up being perfect. There was a little lunch area for us to eat at, a walking trail, and a river for the kids to play in. Lucy loves the water as much as the rest of the kids. We stayed for a really long time and only left after Austin fell completely in the river after climbing the entire way across a log. (Lydia and Camille both were adventuring all across the rocks and logs in the river, too.) It was a wonderful afternoon.

Highland Glen with the Middletons

I didn't take hardly any pictures (enjoying the moments) but we had a great day riding bikes/scooters around the path at Highland Glen. We love spending time with this family and enjoying the outdoors together is one of our favorite things to do. Of note: about 1/3 of the way through our adventure Caleb fell into the lake (he was okay, thank goodness). I had a change of clothes in my diaper bag (win!) - and we laughed because this is the second lake that he has fallen into when we were with the Middletons. The day ended with all of the kids riding their bikes and scooters down the sandy beach into the water. It was messy and wet and everyone ended up soaked but it was joyful and the best thing to do before the weather turns really cold.

(Before riding into the lake, all the kids spent a good amount of time riding through some of the big puddles on the path. Ah, childhood.)

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Croup

Earlier this month Caleb woke up in the middle of the night not feeling well. His breathing was pretty labored and for a while I thought it was an athsma attack. We put him in a warm bath, used eucalyptus on his chest, and David gave him a blessing. Even after he finally fell asleep I stayed in his bed and slept with my face right next to his for the rest of the night to make sure that he was breathing okay. I kept telling myself that I would call the doctor FIRST thing in the morning, but when he woke up he was fine. I watched him for the whole day, then just hoped that it was a one-time thing. But that night, after only 30 minutes of being asleep his breathing started becoming more labored - so I called our after-hours instacare and set up an appointment for that night.

They were immediately confident that it was croup- a textbook case (which was funny how relieved I was to have it be diagnosed NOT-covid, even though croup is pretty scary). Poor guy fell asleep right on the examination table - but they were able to give him some steroids and told me that they were glad I brought him in because the second night was usually worse than the first. They said that after that it usually turns to a nasty cold that lasts about two weeks.

I asked how contagious croup is and the doctors answer for tips of how to keep it from spreading to my other kids had me shaking my head thinking "yeah - everyone in my house is going to get this." The person I was worried the most about was Lucy, but thankfully she only got a stuffy nose for a couple of days. In fact, all of the kids just got small colds and were mostly fine within just a few days.

I, however, got the brunt of it. I didn't feel well for the next three weeks. Not dramatically-awful. Just an exhausted, achy, sneezy, low-energy several weeks. I'm finally feeling slightly better, but man. I guess sleeping with your face RIGHT in the breath of someone sick with croup is NOT a good idea. I'm glad that it wasn't worse and that we are all on the mend.

(And by glad, I mean incredibly grateful to Heavenly Father. When I realized it was croup and that it could have been VERY dangerous I felt awful for not just taking Caleb in to the ER the first night. It's so hard to know how serious something is in the middle of the night. Also SO grateful for modern medicine.)

The Peaden Kitchen

Back in 2011, David and I started a second blog specifically to post our favorite recipes. In the past ten years we've posted over 200 recipes of things that we've enjoyed and want to remember. We have Peaden/Walker family favorites, new recipes that have become family favorites, rolls, desserts, and everything in between.

For most of those ten years, we had this header at the top of the blog:

But just recently I asked my amazingly talented sister-in-law, Brooklyn, if she would illustrate a new photo of David and I. It turned out so lovely and I love it. It's perfect because David's #1 job is to grate all the cheese, and we joke about it all the time.

I feel like this perfectly describes us in the kitchen. We work together all the time. Sometimes that looks like favorite recipes where we have assigned tasks that we each always complete, sometimes it looks like one of us doing the dishes and the other doing the cooking, and sometimes it looks like David working hard all day to earn the money to pay for the food and me working downstairs to prepare and provide it. It's teamwork in all of it's forms and I'm grateful that we are on the same team.