macbeth

In February, Ben and Sam performed in their high school's MacBeth.

The same week, Ben's honors art class held an exhibit at the school.
 Proud of you, guys.

vitamin D

 
Pony tail and dancing boots.

In May I was grateful for going back to parks. Vitamin D. Sanity.

Snow in the mountains Spring in the valley.

Saturday morning science.

I was grateful for mugs, drawings, Mary's Mother's day essay with furthermore and in conclusion, and preschool potted flowers and hugs.  We roasted hot dogs at Vivian park.

Bethany played her cello in the school orchestra concert and the girls demonstrated their artwork at the art showcase. I always look forward to that evening.

Ben needed a haircut...he was looking like a handsome, young, terrorist.

Bethany went to school dressed as Alfred Hitchcock for the fifth grade wax museum.

And this is why we don't use shower curtains.

festiggiando

Festiggiando is one of my favorite words in Italian and my new word for the act of participating in local customs, or celebrating local holidays that the participant knows nothing about.  Festiggiando is one of the side effects of State Department life and it has persisted, even as we've return to normal life, as evidenced at our house in February.

We were happy to spend time in the kitchen with Aunt Courtney. She and the little cousins joined us for Super Bowl soup and bread bowls. This is her amazing cheese and broccoli soup.

As it turned out, Bethany and I were the only ones interested in the game, inspired by our east coast- west coast rivalry. Although Bethany should know, no true Mainer should be loyal to any team from south of Boston. She is obviously confused...our fault for moving her from Augusta.  Bethany mentioned half way through the half time show that her friends probably weren't allowed to watch it. I was too busy with my face two inches from the t.v. screen, jaw dropped in awe. I am praying to come back in the next life as Beyonce.

 The next weekend we took a trip down to my favorite Asian market on the corner of Fifth west and Center in downtown Provo.  It was unusually crowded with other howlies like us getting ready for Chinese New Year.

Caitlin is a native Hong Kong ren.

Sam chased Sophie around the store with a frozen fish.

 She was terrified.

Sunday evening I fried up the frozen dumplings. The girls ate them happily, but informed me that Dad fries them better than I do.  I agreed and decided not to take a picture.

February was a busy month for other reasons.  Bethany took part in the school spelling bee for the third year in a row. 

Olivia presented her Curious Cub project on violins to her class.

 Ben took part in the high school performance of  Shakespeare's As You Like It. Here we are in the post play hubbub.

seven days of stink

Judging by the archives, it would seem there wasn't much to say about January 2013.  But if there were just one word, it would be pollution.

Throughout the month Sam kept saying, "This is what I don't miss about Beijing."

And I kept wondering to myself-- Whatever happened to The English Beat?-- a band that will always remind me of Santa Barbara mornings riding from early morning seminary to high school with the Mormon kids in the Mills girls' Land Rover. The lyrics to Mirror in the Bathroom were stuck in my head, but just one line really.

Drift gently into mental illness.

 It seemed like that was what everyone was talking about... in Utah Valley... in the Salt Lake valley. It was about the terrible cold, and the terrible stink, and the cold that kept in the stink. Or was it the stink that kept the in the cold?



Toxins must have been on Ben's mind too. I walked into his room one January morning and found this Ben Raines pen-on-canvas newly displayed on the wall among the movie posters.

 One Saturday we drove to Draper, and as we ascended I prepared myself to enjoy the majestic view at the top.  Winding up the mountain road, just as we reached the summit where our friends live, we all gasped. It was like a B-grade horror flick.  The black, amorphous, mass--heavy and foul, hovered over the valley, and from our view point, threatened to envelope and smother the inhabitants with a blanket of particulates. Meanwhile, everyone below, though pausing to bemoan their mild displeasure with another stinky day, continued innocently to inhale and exhale.

Facebook was rife with comments.  And I started to notice a meltdown trend among the family.  One night after the next, this child or that decided that life was tragic and meaningless, and on about the fifth day of stink I started to agree.

The ill tempered children brought back affectionate memories of our time in Guangzhou, and the wisdom of our dear Chinese ayis.  If the children were depressed, throwing fits, or running a fever, the polite explanation was always kongqi bu hao--bad air. For that matter if the washing machine wasn't working, the traffic was terrible, the milkman was late kongqi bu hao could also be held to blame. At the time, I dismissed so much of their insight and carefulness--umbrellas in the sunshine, watermelon makes you cough, the fear of cold beverages...

 But years later, after just one week of bad air in this mountain paradise, I realized how right they were.  A little kongqi bu hao  and  everyone you knew had a cold or complaint.

At the same time, Beijing was suffering its own bad air crisis, with the particulate index at 725. That's 225 points off the U.S. Embassy charts, much worse than any day we experienced there.

 Even this February 2010 morning...can you even recognize this as River Garden?

Vice Beta blogger George Ding wrote this post, Beijing's Pollution Problem is Becoming Harder to Ignore including unbelievable photographs of the city shrouded in toxic air, and discussing the more serious effects of long term pollution, and The Sydney Morning Herald published this story, Canned Air for Sale in China about a Beijing business man who sold flavored air to increase awareness and concern about China's environmental crisis.


George Ding wrote, "Like with other global crises, self-delusion helps to get you through the day."  

Jobs were the big focus of our 2012 election, and shipping to jobs to China a big part of the discussion. Between all our competitiveness and complaints about our weakening national economy, do we give China any credit for bearing the environmental burden of global commerce?  While we've shipped jobs overseas, we've also shipped the bad air, taking advantage of fewer restrictions to decrease costs, but leaving our toxic mark on the cities and villages abroad. At some point we will need to set new priorities, for the sake of their children, and ours.

 This was the snow that broke through the inversion.  It came in with warmer air and cleaned the skies.



 This was the fairly impressive accumulation of several January snows.




 After a month of permafrost, we were blessed with a typical Utah melt.  While we were loading into the van one morning I noticed that Grant had paused in on this green patch and was quietly speaking to the ground. "Hello grass. I missed you."

Ben

It felt great to do some celebrating last weekend.  Ben turned thirteen.  I'm grateful for Ben in my life.  His help around the house, with the cleaning...my dish expert, with the little kids, his company and charming, fun personality...our music lover and artist... are my survival.  I am grateful for his nightly hugs, one-armed,  teenager, mom-might-have-cooties hugs, but predictably I get offered two or three before bed each night and I love them.

Festivities began the day before at the movies.  The girls saw Judy Moody and the big boys and I saw Super 8.  Sam had been following every bit of  Super 8 Internet news possible for the past year.  We all loved it.  I cried. That's not so surprising.

I was grateful that I happened to have the day off from massage therapy clinic on Ben's big day.  I made the kids help me out with our move preparations in the morning, because I'm mean.  At noon Ben opened presents and then went off to lunch to celebrate joint birthdays with Granddad.

In the evening we used our Pass of all Passes at Trafalga in Lehi.

Judy and Jeremy and the cousins met us there.  They have the Pass of all Passes too, so I'm excited about fun prospects for the summer.

I'm not sure Sam will fit in that boat next time we go.

Quick dinner.

This might look more fun than it was.  After dinner Grandma Martha and I took the kids to Orem Summerfest. We had been watching it go up for days.  We bought a bunch of tickets and stood in a line that was only moving imperceptibly.  Too many people was the consensus so we started back to the van, just as the fireworks began.  Then to find out that I half of my children are terrified of fireworks at close range.  They claimed post-traumatic stress syndrome from living with haphazard Beijing local Chinese New Year pyrotechnics.  We tried to explain that there was surely more mathematical calculation involved with these, to no avail.  So my kids don't all have my carnival loving, firework loving, crowd loving gene. The things I impose upon my children.

We got home late but made time for sparklers and Ben's request, Oreo Pie.  Happy birthday Ben.

ten in the van

Sometimes I mention loading up in the van.  Usually that process takes like an hour.  So many agendas.  I found these pictures that Ben took, probably while we were getting ready to go to Trafalga.  I don't know when.