Rain, rain and potty training

It's been raining a lot lately here in the Bay Area the past week. It's been raining all day today. I really like the rain and if I didn't have kids I would probably be out dancing in the rain. Miriam might like dancing in the rain, but Isaac would scream bloody murder.

I figured that rain would prevent me from taking Miriam outside much I would try to do something productive with her indoors. . . . . potty training. I helped to potty train an autistic preschooler when I was in college so I figured this would be a snap. Miriam has actually done pretty well, but I think all the books that claim you can potty train your child in just one day are full of it. Miriam has no problem going "pee pee" in the potty, especially since she gets M&Ms when she goes. She just doesn't always tell me when she needs to go. Good thing Huggies invented pull-ups.

Today we had regional conference. It was broadcast to our building. There were a lot of good messages. One that stuck out in my mind (probably because it was "meant" for me) was what Elder Wickman said about living in California. He talked about how bad things have happened or are happening here in California, but that doesn't mean the saints should just pick up and leave. That seemed to be the theme of the conference. Building Zion where one is. My husband had to kind of poke me about this. I reminded him that living somewhere and trying to make the most of it doesn't mean I have to like the place I'm living.

I have to be honest, California has some really cool places to visit. Key word here: VISIT. I really don't like a lot of aspects of living here. I don't want to raise my family in the Bay Area. I've heard a lot of people talk about how wonderful San Francisco is. I've visited San Fran twice. It's a pretty city and a good place to visit. What most people don't understand is that San Francisco isn't all of the Bay Area. There are a lot of nice places to live here, but they are really expensive and most of the schools here are gang infested so even if we were to find a nice place to live the chances of us being near really good schools is slim.

I've realized how lucky I was to grow up in Centerville. I know that Utah has it's issues, but when I was growing up Utah was a really nice place. People here in California have such low standards sometimes. I thought that maybe I was really picky when it came to housing, schools, quality service, etc. I think it's more that I grew up in an area where people took care of their houses, I had good teachers in public schools, and most of the people I interacted with when it came to service were pretty happy, which is defnitely not the case here.

This week I need to start de-junking my house. We will be moving in about a month and I'm determined to only box up and take what we use, will use, and have used in the past 2 years. It's too bad any time I start de-junking things Miriam finds some object to get attached to. Two-year-olds are so funny sometimes.