gyros and eulogy

The first weekend in November the girls had a dance performance in the mall.

Grant and William spent a lot of time travelling back and forth to dance rehearsals. Here they are taking a peek at Caitlin's class.

More unpacking discoveries.  Kyle has been our french toast fanatic.

Still trying to make sense of things, piece life together, find my direction, move forward. This is the basement after the box opening.  Looks hopeless.  Olivia pointed out to me, during a moment of my own frustration, that we once had an enormous laundry pile in the basement hallway, and now it is gone, so we can make it through this, she said.  I was grateful for her encouragement and wisdom.

Here is where all the boxes were in the pictures that I posted before. So she is right. We can make sense of things, little by little.  We call this the clean room. I was hoping to sell the big sofas that our old land lords gave us, but they never sold.  Ben and I lugged them to the garage, where perhaps they will stay when I create the clubhouse of my fantasy out there...someday.  I replaced them with these chairs from Ecuador. They leave more room for the music.

Second week in November.  Grandma Martha and the at home kids and I had a fun day driving to Salt Lake City.  I had to go pay for my massage therapist license.  We had lunch at one of our family favorites, Crown Burger.

This gyros was amazing.

The last of our hamsters passed away so Kyle and his friends held a funeral...

New Orleans style.

scrunchy tiger

January 11...  Craig's Cuts gives five dollar haircuts on Tuesdays.  Grandma Martha and I planned to take William and Grant, since she had been giving me frequent reminders that too long bangs can hamper a child's developing visual acuity.  Grant was all protest as we were heading out the door...trying everything from the limp body passive aggressive thing to screaming "I don't wanna haircut" for all the neighborhood to hear.  But as we pushed forward, Grant's protests became less fervent, and he started to enjoy himself.

William, on the other hand, grew more and more apprehensive as the cut approached.  In the end he opted for Grant's old favorite take- the- lollipop- and- run routine, and came home with bangs still in crisis.

Grant's after shot.  The face of new found confidence.  I want to smile like that...so I ask myself...what am I afraid of?

In other news, Sam made this picture worthy plate of home fries.

We had out of town visitors..something I am most definitely not afraid of of...particularly visitors as easy going, fun to talk to, feels just like family, as our good friends from Maine (now Arizona) the Bennetts.  What a blessing to see them again.

Kyle demonstrated to us all the combined power of prayer, patience, pathos, and persistence when he wouldn't give up on what seemed like an impossible search and rescue mission.  Julie and Uhora, our dwarf hamsters, went missing in the basement after their cage fell to the ground in the middle of the night, precipitated by Julie's very aerobic activity on her exercise wheel. Kyle led the finding effort and the basement erupted in cheers when both hamsters were found several hours later.

Olivia came home excited about the Utah Flash tickets that had been distributed at school....And since everyone kept referring to it as the "baseball game,"  I thought it was probably my duty to give them a better education about North American sports.

We had a great time...proved again that we're all a bunch of high energy...chaos junkies.

Here are some of Sam's pictures.

I love what Sam caught going on with these ladies and their cell phones.  I love any situation that could be called, as my neighbor once put it, "a concentrated dose of humanity..."  any place where you can just sit and watch people doing their own thing.

Last week Grandma Martha bought some new action figures for the kids to play with at her apartment...and since she was too nice to "break Grant's heart" as Grant puts it whenever anyone tells him no...the new Power Rangers came home with the kids.  Grant and the Power Ranger were inseparable for days.  He named it Scrunchy Tiger.

All day Saturday I could hear him proclaiming on behalf of the Power Ranger "I am Scrunchy Tiger!"  It seemed like such an empowering declaration, I decided to make it my own mantra.  So I'm still thinking about what fears are holding me back...now that I have this new alter ego.

back to birthdays

I was happy to hear Kyle recognize that his was the first birthday of the year in our family of eleven, especially since I planned it that way. Kyle is good at being grateful for little things.

I used to think of Kyle as my, not technically, but practically spring baby. Rob was two months from graduating law school at the University of Utah when Kyle was born. He was supposed to be induced, so we woke up at five a.m. and called the hospital every hour until sometime in the mid-morning when they told us we could go in. In the waiting time, I took a walk around the path that surrounded the University Village, the married student housing where we lived. Sometimes we saw deer, or heard owls there, that morning I saw buds on trees. No buds here. In Beijing Kyle is our winter baby. At least the weather was bright and sunny, if cold.

Here are a few scenes from Kyle's big day.

That hamster that Bethany is holding was not a birthday gift. That's Rhino, Kyle's class pet that he got to care for this weekend. It was fun to have Rhino's company for the birthday weekend, especially since he made it back to class alive Monday morning.
Hunter and the Sevys came for dinner. We made our own chicken tikka on the barbecue (finally used a mix I bought at the Indian grocery store) and ordered naan, samosas, and a few other things from Victor's. I could swear I ordered mixed vegetables in cashew sauce, not maraschino cherries in a strange cheese concoction, but that's what came. Cool to see Kyle enjoying the eggplant curry though. As for this picture, I wish I could say that it was just a bad hair day. This has been going on for weeks.

After dinner we had two cakes, a homemade chocolate cake, the recipe on the back of the Hershey's chocolate box, and the box kind for those less in love with rich things. Hunter ate a big piece of the homemade cake and I heard him say "I'm gonna die," as he left the kitchen.

Along with Rhino, we borrowed a copy of The Blind Side from Kyle's teacher. It revived my secret love for Tim McGraw and my secret interest in moving the whole family to Tennessee. I tried to get Sam on my move-to Tennessee side but he said "No way, too many Republicans."

That was all about Kathy Bates' line "There's something you should know about me...I'm a democrat."

Kind of reminded me of dating at BYU.