Snippets

In March my presidency and I pulled off Stake Pinewood Derby. It was a lot of work and I still have the same issues with Pinewood Derby, but I appreciated all the hard work given by great people, including Joseph and Dan, who helped us set up.  I will have to do another post to talk more about the ups and downs of my calling over the past year.  I have no picture for this, but I spent about 3 weeks in April agonizing over a talk for Stake Conference. So glad that is over!

Aubrey received her actual drivers license in the mail!  She loves driving. 

Joseph played three sessions of basketball this year, with Lance Kartchner as his coach and his buddies Alex, Ian, and Matt on his team. They had a great time playing together and learned SO much.  They had some great games. Below, we celebrated his great game at Burgerville.

Aubrey dressed up for Spirit Week - 80s Day. I offered to rat her bangs in true 80s style, but she declined.

 We gave in to Joseph's entreaties for a pet after he carefully studied options and settled on a guinea pig which he then actively marketed to his parents. We spent one family night at PetSmart picking out Luna, who has turned out to be a very nice pet. Now, however, he is lobbying for a cat!

We finished out our season tickets to Keller Auditorium by all going to see Newsies. It was so fantastic!  Dan and Aubrey also saw Annie at Keller in May.

Easter 2016

The Easter Bunny caught us just before our trip back East and dropped off a few goodies.

Then we headed into the rain for the annual Easter egg hunt with all the kids in the neighborhood. In the ten years that we have lived here, our kids have grown up and become some of the oldest kids in the hunt!

After church we took a few pictures.

And Joseph hid eggs for Aubrey around the house.

Then Joseph made himself a nest by the fireplace and ate Easter candy and carrots while reading a Goosebumps book.

Meanwhile in Utah, Bailey slept over and Brandon and Angela's house so she could go to church with them and then go to Ali's house in Lehi for a wonderful Easter dinner! My grown kids took Easter pictures in front of our Provo apartments and sent them to me on their own volition!

It was a Happy Easter!

Other random events from the Spring 2016

In February Dan received a new church calling to the High Council. For a few weeks he continued teaching Seminary every morning while also serving on the High Council (and deejaying the stake youth dances), but then the Stake Presidency changed their mind (whew) and released him from teaching Seminary. This is Dan as he left to Seminary for the last time. Can you see the mix of emotions on his face? 

Later that week we went to his Seminary room and helped him clean out his cupboard. This was really a bittersweet and sad experience for him, to say goodbye to a time-intensive, all-encompassing calling he had embraced for almost 4 years. 

Since then, Dan's responsibilities in the High Council have switched several times, and eventually he was designated the High Councilor over Stake Primary - which means that we get to work together! That has been a relief, because I was getting frustrated with the lack of response from the High Councilor I was working with previously.

I love Spring. So many beautiful colors. I was making a bed upstairs one day and had to pause to take a picture through the window of some of the colors in our backyard.

We all came down with a terrible virus in February, and it took a few weeks to feel better. (I did, however, have the chance to watch the entire season of Poldark on PBS Masterpiece and over a season of Call the Midwife while I lay on the couch recovering so that's a perk.)  Joseph had been sick for 10 days and had missed a full week of school by the time of his birthday. We already had a party planned for the night of his birthday, and he had been feeling better and had gone to school that day, so we went ahead with the party.  

That may have been a mistake! We had a great time running ourselves ragged at the Family Fun Center in the somewhat cool spring weather. By the next morning Joseph was much worse and began coughing. By the next Wednesday I took him in to the doctor to see why he could not shake his virus.  It turns out that the poor kid had developed mycoplasma pneumonia, or walking pneumonia. 

It took a few days to find the right antibiotic that Joseph was willing to take.  Only certain antibiotics work on mycoplasma, and he could not bring himself to take oral Zithromax. He doesn't weigh enough to take the Zithromax pills. After a tumultuous 24 hours and consultations with the doctor and pharmacist, he was prescribed oral Doxycycline. Finally, he was on the mend!

Somewhere in the middle of all this, Aubrey and I used our season tickets to the theater to attend Wizard of Oz. It was a little bit meh, but our standards for musicals are pretty high! 

 The end of February I randomly decided to update all our 72 hour kits. This had been on my to-do list for YEARS. The clothes that I pulled out of each child's backpack would have fit a much younger version of themselves. We are set now - food, clothes, and everything.

 We have the coolest dentist office. On St. Patrick's Day Joseph went to the dentist, and the dentist was wearing a leprechaun outfit with crazy light up shoes.  No cavities!

We took one last picture of most of Joseph's costumes and bagged them up to give to a friend. Sigh. It's hard to see the end of a season.

 This year in Joseph's 5th grade classroom the students walked down to the Salmon Creek once a month and took water samples to test for dissolved oxygen, phosphates, turbidity, ph, and other things I have forgotten. They got very efficient at the process and were cool little scientists. I went on the field trips most of the time, and the walk back up the hill to the school was always a killer workout!

Joseph is 11!

Joseph's 11th birthday fell on a Friday. He started the day with a hearty breakfast in bed: bacon, strawberries, homemade pancakes with maple syrup, and powdered donuts.

He opened all of his gifts before school because we knew we would be gone to his birthday party from after school through late evening. 

 At lunchtime I picked Joseph up and took him to Burgerville for a lunch of chicken strips, fries, and a chocolate shake. Then we ran into Winco to pick out cupcakes that he could give to his class.

As soon as Joseph got home from school we loaded up in the car and picked up all his buddies. We took two cars - I drove all the boys and Dan drove Aubrey and her friend Emma. We traveled for over an hour to Bullwinkle's Family Fun Center, where we played and partied to our hearts content. 

On the way, to maximize our playtime at Bullwinkle's Joseph opened the gifts from his friends. We also picked up Little Ceasers and everyone ate pizza and drank juice boxes on the way. Multitasking for the win!

 We rocked out to all the boy's favorite tunes all the way to Wilsonville.

Once we got there, we got our unlimited ride bracelets and started doing laser tag, bumper cars, zipline, arcade games, miniature golf, and more.

 What a great group of boys! We are grateful that Joseph has such good friends, but we are especially grateful for our sweet, kind, smart, tenacious, and good-natured boy. We are so glad he is part of our family!

Eating the whale

Joseph asks me now and then when I am ever going to get around to updating the blog. He especially would like to see my documentation of some of the events in which he was involved, such as his birthday way back in March.  The thing is, updating the blog is only one of the to-do items I'm not getting done.  I've decided today that the only answer is to take a bit of the whale. That's an intentional allusion to one of my favorite Shel Silverstein poems, Melinda Mae.

Have you heard of tiny Melinda Mae, 

Who ate a monstrous whale?

She thought she could,

She said she would,

So she started in right at the tail.

And everyone said, "You're much too small,"

But that didn't bother Melinda at all.

She took little bites and she chewed very slow,

Just like a good girl should...

...And in eighty-nine years she ate that whale

Because she said she would!

I was listening to a podcast while I watered my plants today, and I had to laugh out loud when the podcaster said (in regards to an organizing-her-life tip), 

"I think this is a great idea; something I could really use because 

I have so many of those tasks on my list that I don't even 

think of them as tasks.  I just think of them as 

things that never will happen!"  

There are a number of things on my to-do list which feel like they are never going to get done. They feel like a whale. I'm not sure how to find the time to address them, along with the other every day and immediate demands in my life.  The only answer is to summon my Melinda Mae and keep on chewing.