january's big snow

my cell phone went missing

My cell phone went missing in December along with all my pictures, and intentions to upload them and catch up with my blog before the new year. It being just barely the afternoon of the thirty-first, I'm still hoping to be current by 2014.

  I feel grateful for each day with my children, in all honesty, notwithstanding the fact that I just excused myself to pound the mop on the dining room floor in futility, my effort to quiet an argument in the girls' basement bedroom. So I will gather up what pictures I prudently posted to Facebook, and call it my archives for the past few months, although I know that there are many that I've neglected, and are now lost somewhere in the memory of my very cracked iphone, in a random drawer, under the bathroom sink, tucked into Sophie's glittery dress-up purse. The possibilities are endless with a three-year old in the house. Much better to post pictures quickly, I've learned.

Lovely Olivia turned ten in August.

 The present opening.

 Grant started Kindergarten.
 Sophie's third birthday in September, and the first day that Grant got to ride the school bus.
 Our front yard,
the day of the great flood of September 2013.
 Our favorite event of the year, The Riverwoods ward September Salmon fry.
 Another favorite Fall memory, picnics with Grandma Martha at Paul Ream nature park.  Hunting for leaches.
And feeding the ducks.
 The kids performed on the hay wagon ride at the Spanish Fork Harvest Moon celebration.
 Grant turned six in October.
 We celebrated with a picnic lunch in the canyon, and dinner at Nickle City.
 And just before Halloween, beautiful, spirited Mary turned nine. She hosted a small party with friends, and dangled doughnuts from the ceiling fan--one set of pictures I really hope to find again.

commencement, consolement, chiropractory

In March, I started filling in for a massage therapist at a chiropractor's office in a little old house on Main Street. It was exactly the work environment that I had hoped for...low-key, flexible hours, interesting clients.  At first, I felt like an impostor, because it had been so long since I have worked for anyone else.  I felt self-conscious about my shaky hands, and unsure of my abilities.  But I cannot be faulted for any lack of earnestness or work ethic, so I had to build confidence from there, and pray that I could improve where needed.   By May, I had taken over most of the other therapist's hours.  There are still times when I wonder if I am doing any good. And there are other times when I feel incredibly humbled and grateful to be a part of someone else's healing.This is my walk to work..not from home, but from a nearby mall, since the chiropractor's lot is too small for my van.

 Needless to say, it has been a challenge to keep up with the kids' activities and the house..especially the house...and also recording life and the many things to be grateful for.

This was girls' night out in April, while the boys were with Granddad at the priesthood session.

Lovely, Caitlin.
The mall performance in May. We were all there from four in the afternoon until ten at night. I was busy with multiple costume changes and grateful that Grandma Martha was willing to watch the little ones at home. I know she would have loved to have seen the girls dance. Bethany is in the back.
 
 Bethany's competing dance team performed two numbers at a competition at Provo High and took first place for both. I never get tired of watching them do Funky Monkey.

We had another pet funeral.  Cocoa, the mama rabbit passed away in the spring.  We think she might have had uterine cancer, which is very common in rabbits.

The girls played "This Little Light of Mine" together. Thank goodness for bluegrass camp.

"Dear Cocoa...I love you as much as fried chicken..and other things like my mom and dad and blossoms."

I haven't mentioned much about the rabbits either. They have continued to be an after church attraction on Sunday mornings.  Olivia loves to put them out in their rabbit run in the yard for primary kids to play with on their way home from church, much to the kids' delight, and somewhat to the frustration of hungry parents.  Our little Smokey went out for an adventure, and sadly, never returned, but Wes and Hugo still manage to run about and return, though they are nearly impossible to catch.  They have fallen out of favor with me because they eat my hasta and petunias, which has prompted me to save money on annuals this year, and kept me from the IFAs, the Lindon nursery, and the garden sections of Lowes and Walmart, so I suppose I should thank them.
He looks so innocent.

So while I was working, the little kids went back to the daycare center that they attended during my massage therapy school days.  The administrators and teachers are like family to me now, and I am always grateful that they welcome the children back when needed.  I am a big proponent of socialized daycare for all incomes, like in Sweden. I loved my new job, but as the end of the school year approached I started to feel needed at home, and weary from the high cost of daycare.  I believe it was equal to what I was earning.
But this moment made it all worthwhile. The timing seemed perfect, blessed in fact.  I was grateful to be able to give the little ones a few months of preschool experience, and support Grant through his preschool graduation.  In June, I decided to ask for fewer hours at work to make time to be with the kids...and the laundry....



Kindergarten time. I'm proud of you Grant.

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."

grantums

I have an exact moment in mind. It was about seven years ago in Guangzhou. I was crossing the vast sand colored, cement patio surrounded by the towering sand colored, cement Oakwood apartment buildings, walking from the little import shop, David's Deli, of which I was an at least once a day visitor, returning to our apartment, carrying some last minute dinner ingredients. I was expecting Caitlin, our seventh baby, and  must have been particularly exhausted, because I thought to myself, this is the last time I am doing this.

  At that moment I heard a boy call out in a loud, extended as if multi-syllabic manner, "Mom!"

 It seemed like an elementary school boy standing on one of the balconies in the tower across the patio.  It was more likely some child from the consulate, than an angelic visitor..but as the sound echoed around that fishbowl of concrete, it moved through the Guangzhou air, thick and grey at dusk, and was carried by a little wind as it travelled through the palmettos, to the extent that it created a moment that gave me the impression that the boy's call was not a coincidence.

So, I was not surprised when our eighth child was a boy.  We found out from an obstetrician in Quito, Ecuador.  She said with a thick Spanish accent, "He is a boy, or I will cut off my head."  I thought that hardly seemed necessary either way.

Grant's first nickname came by way of our friendship with our neighborhood watchman.  I've forgotten the term for non-embassy owned housing in the state department, ( I even forgot the name of David's Deli, until it came back to me after an hour of pondering.)  But whatever the real term was, isolation would have also worked, if you'd asked me.

 The neighborhood guards were my only friends on the street, so from time to time I would stand in the driveway and chat a while. It's possible that they both told me their life stories, but only one had Spanish that I could understand. His name was Segundo. I was fascinated with the numerical nature of his name. He was a large, portly, sweet man, often dressed in t-shirts with  leftist political slogans.  He was troubled because his pregnant wife couldn't stand him anymore. I told him to chalk it up to pregnancy hormones. I think. Now I'm not sure my Spanish was capable of navigating that discussion at all.  In any case, his baby was born. They were happy together, as I knew they would be. We gave him Caitlin's old crib, and nicknamed our still germinating little one Ocho.

Sometimes I forget that that name stuck with him up until the time he was born.  My Dad was hoping we would Shakespeare-ize it and call him Octavius. I was preoccupied with wanting him to born in September,  to the point that I grew increasingly depressed as the month waned. (Pregnancy hormones.) And on September thirtieth I walked three miles around the park, came home just in time to see little Caitlin, who had been napping, fall into a febrile seizure, ran in a panic to the hospital, (strep throat), came home and went to bed still pregnant, defeated, exhausted, hoping to never have to give birth at all, only to wake up two hours later in labor.

Five years later, I know that everything about Grant is October.

"I love Halloween!" He sang out over and over again into the night on his first Halloween back in the states.  He is pumpkins and pirates. He is costumed characters and  chocolate candy. He is the number eight.

 But even back in the hospital room, at two in the morning, I looked up at the white board where the nurse had written October, and understood its perfection. Just one of many times I had to admit to God, You were right, I was wrong.

Monday morning Grant requested bacon and Reeses' puffs, for which there was a high approval among the siblings. I took doughnuts into his preschool classroom.

We had lunch with Grandma Martha at McDonald's, a tradition for Grant.
William's dinosaur, unsurprisingly named, Dinosaury, came with us. This seemed as if it were peculiar to the other customers.


Grandma Martha and the eleven of us went to Chuck E. Cheese in the evening.

It was Sophie's first time to be an active participant.

 It is still one of our favorite places, even though I have sworn off Cherry Coke,

 and some of us looked a bit overgrown.

 As usual, we went home for the late night, maniacal present opening.

 Everyone was excited about The Avengers.

 This was Grant's first big Lego set, Batman and the Joker.

Happy Birthday Grant. I love you.