Weather Woes

Most of the U.S. has received a brutal round of storms over the past few weeks, resulting in lots of ice and snow. This is a picture of our snowfall this year.
This might be all we get this year.  If you ask Bailey or Aubrey, this is a travesty.  While I think snow is fun for a day or two, I have not minded at all that this winter we have had plenty of sunny days and no "snowed-in" days.  I especially don't like it when we have makeup school snow days tacked onto the end of school.

The one day in January when we got a skiff of snow, the girls ran around outside, reveling in the novelty of it.

 

 

 

 

Catching up - New Years

 Because this is our family journal, I realized I need to talk about New Years (even though that seems sooo long ago now that we are into February!)

We invited some families to come over on New Years Eve, and it was a really fun night.  The kids ran around and made a mess, we ate lots of food, and the adults played games.  Dan, the master music man, played songs for us to guess (I did really well on anything from 1980 to about 1989.  I couldn't guess anything in the 1990s. I guess that might show my age.) We also played "2 truths and a lie" and learned some very interesting facts about friends!  At midnight we made lots of noise outside and watched our neighbors do a big firework show. We are grateful for good friends and chances to hang out together.
 

The moral of this story is. . .

I'm trying to think of a good moral for this.

Here's the story.  I really like painting walls.  It makes me happy and relaxes me - really!  But, sometimes I might be a little anxious to just slap the paint up on the wall.  I want the instant gratification that a newly painted wall brings.

When we moved into the house four years ago, all the walls were painted a drab, dreary shade of grayish-white.  SO not okay in my book, and definitely not okay in an area where is is gray outside for much of the year.  So, I started to paint the house, one room at a time.  When I got to our master bedroom, I could tell that it had been painted many times, and not well.  There were globs of dried paint here and there, and it was clear that it had recently been painted with many coats of bright red and then covered over with  a quick coat of drab grayish-white. I had a nagging feeling that putting more paint over the messed-up walls may not be a super-great idea, but who has time to fix someone else's mistakes?  I needed painted walls NOW.

So, I painted.  Actually, I added two more colors to the walls, as the first color I tried wasn't just right with the light in the room.

Fast forward about two years.  Dan and I don't have a headboard for our bed (never have - we think about it every year and then conclude that it isn't worth the expense).  We started to notice that the areas on the wall where we leaned our head while sitting up in bed were actually flaking off paint.  Yikes - that can't be good!  It took me a few months to decide to investigate further.  One day I was in the middle of repainting the entryway when I happened to walk upstairs.  As I passed the increasingly flaking wall in our room, I impulsively grabbed sandpaper and decided to sand down the flaky area and repaint it.  Since I was already in the middle of a painting mess, why not add more? Never mind the fact that the house downstairs was torn apart and everyone would be home from school in a few hours.

As I started to sand the area, to my surprise the paint started to peel off in long sheets, separating all the way down to the sheetrock!  It seriously looked like wallpaper. It was not good.  It became clear that the many coats of paint were not adhered to the wallboard, and they were all going to need to come off.  The layers of paint were so thick, that there was no way to effectively blend in a patched area.

So, I got a big putty knife, started a show on the DVR, and began making a gigantic mess of our master bedroom. A few hours and a very good workout later, this is what the wall looked like.

It took two more days and many hours to chisel off the rest of the paint on that wall down to the sheetrock.  Then I had to try to touch up the texture (I did a really bad job of this), add a super good primer, and repaint the wall. 


In the end, we have a good adhesion between wallboard and paint on one wall.  Very likely, we should do the same thing to the other three walls in the room, but I would rather have a cavity filled without anesthetic. We are just going to live with the imperfections on the other walls.  If paint starts flaking off, I don't want to know about it.

There just has to be a moral in all of this, but I'm not sure I have found it.   
Maybe . . . .  "You don't really want to know what is underneath - don't dig too hard."  No. 
"Do it right the first time, fix the mistakes before you "paint" over them.   Maybe.
"Finish one problem completely before you make another huge mess."  Definitely.

FHE

 

Can you guess the topic of our Family Home Evening last week?  This wasn't actually the original plan for the night - I don't remember what it was, but it was probably a little more fun.  We had to make a last minute change to the lesson plans for the evening after a truly tumultuous dinner and early evening with lots of angry, demanding, disrespectful things going on.  Dan pulled out the white board and created another lesson on the spot.  He handled it well, and I daresay that behavior in the house this last week was better!

Bailey asked to give this week's lesson (held on Sunday night because Dan has to work late tonight). She did an awesome job, sharing thoughts from Elder Uchtdorf's talk about "Happily Ever After" from last year's YW Broadcast. This had been the topic of her Beehive lesson, and she was so excited about it that she wanted to share it with us at home.  She had some great visual aids set up to illustrate her points. We learned that "it is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself, that determines how your life's story will develop."  Great lesson, Bailey! She had even looked up hymns on adversity for the opening and closing songs.  Afterward, we played a rousing game of Curses. In the picture above, Aubrey is swatting mosquitoes while performing a challenge. During the game, Bailey had to scratch like a gorilla while barking like a dog and talking like Scooby Doo. And Dan had to make bunny ears with his hands while grabbing at Bailey's cards.  It was wild, I tell you!

Mission Call

Brandon was called to the Donetsk, Ukraine mission, speaking Russian! He reports to the MTC on May 18th.

 We are so excited for him! As he read the call letter, I felt an immediate witness that this was the right place for Brandon to serve. There will be challenges in his mission, but I have every confidence that he will able to meet the challenges and have a profound effect on those he teaches in the Ukraine.

Brandon opened his mission call in his dorm room in Provo. His friends Taylor, Sam, and Jeffrey gathered with him (and they were using Brandon's camcorder to film the opening for us). Thanks to Skype, our family and Lauren watched him open the letter on my computer. Typical for Brandon, he didn't rip into the envelope, but instead carefully and methodically slit the top and then pulled out each paper slowly.  The first paper he pulled out was "application for US passport", so we knew that he was going foreign (which elicited cheers from the viewing audience). It took a few more papers and lots of suspense before he got to the letter which read, "Elder Brandon Scott Porter, you are called to serve in the Donestsk Ukraine mission.  You will speak Russian."  It was priceless to see his reaction.  I think he showed the most excitement that I have ever seen from Brandon!

 We gathered around the kitchen table to watch him open the letter.  Last night Aubrey said "I wish he could get another call tomorrow and we could do it all again.  It was so much fun!"

 Brandon's roommate (who is very into world geography) pulled out a map of the Ukraine to show all of us.

 

 Brandon shared the good news with his grandparents, who were on speaker phone on Dan's phone.

Brandon has had a collection of Books of Mormon for a number of years.  Aubrey ran up to his room and found the Russian Book of Mormon.  Which looks completely incomprehensible to us, as it is (of course) written using the Russian alphabet.

We were able to talk to him for an hour while he and his friends looked through all of the information about the Ukraine.  Brandon's roommate immediately  began playing the Ukranian national anthem and he figured out how to post "Elder Brandon Porter" in Russian on his facebook profile page.

Since last night, we have been researching the Ukraine. Brandon will serve in the eastern half of the Ukraine, bordering Russia. The red dots below show the ten cities where the missionaries are currently serving.

We found the mission website, which has much interesting information.  If you are interested, you can access it through this link: Donetsk Ukraine Mission Info.  I especially found the links for "country info," "weather," and "mission info" helpful.

We are so proud of our son and know that he will be a remarkable servant for the Lord.

Good advice

This morning I have at least 29 things on my to-do list.  So, in order to procrastinate the inevitable, I sat down for a few minutes and read a random page in Reader's Digest.  And I laughed out loud when I read this quote:

"I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it."  Harry Truman

So, so, so, true.  And funny, too, as I think of all the times I have shared my opinion/given advice as my children look at me with blank eyes.  Sigh.  I tell them, however, that it is my motherly job to share my "insights," and they will just have to put up with it.

I liked these quotes, too.

"When your mother asks, 'Do you want a piece of advice?' it is a mere formality.  It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway."  Erma Bombeck

"It is a little embarrassing that, after 45 years of research and study, the best advice I can give to people is to be a little kinder to each other."  Aldous Huxley

Washed ipods and Josephisms

It turns out that running an ipod through the wash cycle for an hour (in the pocket of Dan's jeans) is not a good idea.  Who knew?  Now Dan is quickly getting a replacement birthday ipod (his bday is next week) so he can organize his music for the upcoming Stake Priest/Laurel Yule Ball.  He is in charge of the music, and has been working hard to prepare.  In addition to music, they are going to project some dance routines from "Just Dance" from the Wii onto the wall, so that the youth can follow along with the dances.  They also plan to project onto the wall some movie clips which show great dances the youth can copy. Should be fun!

I am definitely negligent in recording the cute things my youngest says. I was so much better years ago. . . . .   Here are a few recent "Josephisms."

He groggily woke up for school last week, but was really slow to get dressed. When I asked him why, he said "my pajamas say that they are too tired to do anything, so they say I should go lay down with them."

Over the holidays, Bailey had a big party with friends.  It drove Joseph crazy to not be part of the festivities.  He repeatedly got in the middle of the activities, did his best to be an "obnoxious little brother" and was summarily booted out of the room.  When I got him away from the party he stopped being rude and showed his true emotion, which was sadness. Tears ran down his face and he said, "I just wish Bailey would have invited me to the party!"

Also over the holidays, the older kids were playing a game or watching a movie . . . . something he wasn't old enough to understand.  I found him sitting on the stairs with his head in his hands.  He mumbled, "I just hate being little."

Joseph was trying to talk Dan into doing something. To convince him he said, "face your fears and do it, Dad!"

If Joseph doesn't want to eat something (which is frequently), he says "it tastes like chicken."

Joseph is very clear about his career aspiration.  He wants to be a fireman.  I asked him if he wants to be a fireman so he can save people from fires.  He looked puzzled and then said, "no, I want to own a cool truck.  All fireman have cool green trucks, and I want to have an awesome truck."

Right now we are watching a little girl Joseph's age. Whenever Lily is over, she immediately wants to play with our boxes of Barbies.  Joseph sighed and helped her carry down the boxes.  He found the "boy Barbies" and played a make believe game for about an hour.  Then he told me "do NOT tell my friends I play Barbies with Lily." 

Christmas Day 2010

The kids slept in until 6:30 a.m., at which time they woke us up and waited at the top of the stairs until we checked to see if Santa had visited our home.

We had a wonderful time opening gifts.  Everyone was respectful and patient, and Dan and I loved to see the happiness and excitement in the kid's faces.

 

After opening gifts we ate a breakfast of sparkling cranberry juice and scones.  The evening before we had prepared a Cafe Rio feast, and we ate leftovers on Christmas Day (and for several more days!)  We spent the rest of Christmas Day in our pjs, enjoying being together.

Last minute Christmas to-dos

Christmas Eve day, while I wrapped last-minute gifts and Dan continued to recuperate, the kids worked together to deliver fruit and nut gift bags to neighbors and friends.

Writing to Santa is an important part of Christmas Eve. Joseph took it very seriously this year, even sealing the letter in an envelope before setting it next to his stocking. Only Brandon didn't write to Santa this year.  Below, the Santa letters and Santa's replies.

 

This wasn't a Santa letter, but I thought it was cute.  One of the first nights Brandon was home Joseph dictated this letter to me, which he hand delivered to his older brother.