June 2013

 Breakfast with William at UVU.   In mid-June I took Mary and Olivia back for their second year of Women's basketball camp at Utah Valley University.  Coach Nixon is amazing, and I love that the girls had an opportunity to observe her leadership, as well as learn about basketball.

William enjoyed the morning drop-offs.  

I am grateful for the ward scout leaders who were dedicated to holding frequent camp outs this summer.  The boys enjoyed a lot of hikes,  some kayaking, fishing for crawdads,  and of course, Red Vines and beef jerky.We spent time with some of our wonderful friends from the Beijing days, the Carrillo family.

We went to the Asian market and bought our old favorite snacks, like sesame crackers and White Rabbit candies, and made dumplings.  These needed improvement.

We were also blessed by a visit from our dear Beijing friends the Sevy family.  We hadn't seen them since before they left for Denmark.  It was a very happy reunion.

 In June,  Hugo the rabbit began acting a bit strange and the kids suspected that she was pregnant. On one of her outside escapes she dug this hole and prepared a nest with her fur.  Kyle observed the preparations, and carefully pulled the two babies out of the hole so we could bring the babies and mother inside.

This was about a month later.  Sadly both bunnies have passed away since then, but we enjoyed their little spirits in our home.

 The last week of June, Ben and Sam enjoyed almost a week in California at the FBLA Nationals competition.  They got to spend three days at Disneyland.

Grant and William enjoyed many June evenings running around as various Superheroes.  Sophie was Snoopy Girl, Princess Girl, or whatever-kind-of-Girl seemed appropriate at the time.

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.

pestilence, presidents, pie

Staring across the room from his perch on my bed, William my ever inquisitive four-year old asked, "Mom, why are there clothes in your closet?"

"Well son," I responded thoughtfully. "Ideally that's how it should happen."

So by Valentine's day laundry was an issue again.  This time I noticed a back log not only with the clean, but also with the wet and stinky.  I started a personal campaign against the towels.

"We're Democrats," I said to the kids.  "Democrats means reuse."

"But Mom, sharing towels can give you genital herpes."

"Really?" I asked.  "Spontaneously?"  And for the first time I wished I had let my seventh grade son ditch maturation day, as requested.

"Then you'd better not share with the rabbits," I said, remembering how lagomorph bath day had increased my work by a full load of extra large, super absorbent, navy blue bath towels covered in white fur.

"Mom, that's disgusting." He replied.

"Well you're the one who brought it up," I said. And that ended the discussion, but unfortunately, not the dirty towels.

President's Day weekend brought some progress. I had opportunity to ease the clean clothes pile growing up the side of my bedroom wall.  As is usually the case, Friday evening Sam and Ben insisted we go to the Orem Library--which has the world's best collection of movie rentals in its basement.  Sam picked out School of Rock, because I had been calling myself a Jack Black fan and hadn't seen it.  It was a movie that all ages were eager to watch. Even baby Sophie knows Jack Black by name. Everyone agreed to gather by the little T.V. in my bedroom so I could put away laundry as we watched. I took particular pleasure in watching Grant"s "gut busting" laughter at Jack Black's dance moves and facial expressions. School of Rock has become the next movie I can't get enough of, but if you decide to watch it with your family, don't blame me for the raunchy language, or get mad at me when your kids tell you to step off for the next week anytime you ask them to do something.  You can check IMBD for yourself.

Sunday was Stake conference--which Olivia referred to as "that thing we're always late to."  So remembering our 2010 experience. I suggested we pick up Grandma Martha and head out on another picnic and Temple Square trip. Sam agreed that could possibly be less stressful than chasing William around the Stake center.
As it turned out--it probably wasn't.  William terrorized the North visitors center at Temple Square, tearing up and down the ramp leading to the Cristus statue surrounded by planetarium, or Moon Jesus, as Sam called it when he was a toddler. I felt out of sorts and wondered how, after 15 years, I felt no more capable of achieving reverence at church sites than before--remembering the time we visited Palmyra, New York, and Sam and Ben ran around like wildlife in the Sacred Grove...or so it was called before we arrived.  Now in retrospect, chasing frogs in the woods seems like a perfectly reasonable activity for young boys...but parental angst and anxiety are so often self-inflicted.  I'm sure the the sister missionaries weren't really shooting poisonous darts at me with their eyes Sunday afternoon at Temple Square...but it kind of felt like it at the time.

On the happy side, I was grateful that the kids were all willing to spend the afternoon together.  Something about President's day makes me delusional and over-optimistic about eating outdoors.  Everyone was enthusiastic about returning to Grist Mill Park, the little strip of grass and stream in the city, where we had our picnic in fall of 2010, so we took a drive around the beautiful old homes in the Salt Lake City Avenues until I happened upon the familiar place.


  As we passed out the sandwiches, Bethany hijacked my phone for the purpose of taking pictures of people looking miserably cold, but insistent upon eating at the benches all but buried in snow.






  When the wind picked up and blew across the still very frozen ground all agreed we could eat in van. I felt grateful  for good sports, barring a minor scuffle over the bag of Chicken and Waffle flavored Ruffles.




Monday I made good on a promise to Caitlin and took the girls and youngest boys to Classic Skate.





In the evening, Kyle and Olivia spent time with their friends Nathan and Tracy, and I enjoyed time with their Mom, Cami, while I cleaned the kitchen and served up dinner.  We have somewhat of a traditional President's day meal-- in honor of Abraham Lincoln's favorite meal Chicken Fricassee, and in honor (loosely) of George Washington and his cherry tree--pie.  We skipped the chicken altogether in favor of beans and rice from the Mexican market, and Olivia helped me make a raspberry pie.


This was her first pie. She managed the crust all by herself, as I was distracted by another man-to-man with Kyle. Good job Olivia!

involving hope

One morning in November, I heard a man on the van radio say, "Planting anything always involves hope." I was impressed by the simplicity of that thought, and how I felt that he had been speaking directly to me, and I started to cry. I thought about it Saturday, and felt sorry that I didn't remember who had said it.

Saturday was the coldest day of last week, the second week in December. We had enjoyed several perfect days of light jackets. Lindon Nursery was selling flower bulbs at forty percent off Wednesday. I used some of my birthday cash from Grandma Martha to buy Spring...daffodils, tullips, and irises.  Saturday snow was predicted by noon, so I went out first thing to get the bulbs in the ground before it arrived.
I let the rabbits help me. They were upset about my pulling out the old annuals and dead heading the perennials, which I don't think I did a very good job of.  They probably won't be back.
Here are Wes and I together. I think there is a bit of resemblance. It is true that Sam named one of our rabbits after the director of Moon Rise Kingdom.  

 I am not sure that there is anything more inspiring than a bulb, with its amazing potential to produce, divide, withstand, repeat. 

 Just as I was sweeping up the pulled out weeds and scattered soil and crunchy old leaves the wind started to blow in and what looked like the predicted storm started to arrive.  I can't remember the last time I was outside when snow started to fall, little gentle flakes.  It was lovely to look up at the heavy clouds covering the mountains and imagine what drama was going on up there as I stood below, in the valley, looking at my garden and thinking about Spring.  In summer I looked toward winter with dread, knowing my yard would be bleak again.  But this, year, because I have planted so many bulbs, it will not feel abandoned, but rather, cultivated. It will know I am waiting.  The rabbits are waiting too, but they aren't going to play here once my flowers come up. They can poop there all winter long, however. 

 I am like this: wherever I am I miss the rest of the world.  It is my challenge in life to be patient with the present, because I always miss it intensely when it is gone.  This was my Saturday evening. Looks like rubble. I am buried underneath the figuring out of many things, but this one happens to be what to do with too many girls in one room. 

One day this will not be the present, and I suppose I will feel an intense longing for this view from the mess upward. And for everything that surrounds me... blankets, dirty socks, pencil stubs and candy wrappers, gloriously rescued misplaced shoes, and maybe I will even miss the figuring out, which some days feels like it will crush me, like rubble would, or maybe even like soil, but my hope is that it won't.

rabbit and fly

August should be an idyllic bowl of peaches on a kitchen counter ripening to perfection, but this harvest season has turned my kitchen into a mixed metaphor from a ninth grade reading list: The Summer of My Flies.

And I had always thought about the song I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, as at worst, morbid in its condemning prognosis, and at best, as a statistical and logistical impossibility, until this summer.  Maybe it's the always open doors combined with the pungent odor of the rabbit cage, dirty diapers, and peanut butter toast crumbs on every square inch of the carpet, wood, and tiles, that makes them feel so welcomed here.  It would be stomach churning, though accurate to report that we have found dead flies floating in abandoned glasses of milk on multiple occasions, to the point that "look before you drink" has become a principle of survival.

Here is the worst thing that was so repulsive, I knew I had to write about it.  It turns out to be my comeuppance for annoying my children repeatedly with my favorite adage you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

 I don't know who alerted the fruit flies that there was a bottle of apple cider vinegar with a missing cap on the top shelf of my bathroom closet on the second floor, but someone did.  And since when I got ready for bed last night it was pretty close to midnight, and since washing my face with apple cider vinegar and a cotton ball has become so second nature to me that I hardly pay any attention to what I am doing anyway, I wondered what had made my cotton balls so dirty when I noticed I was actually spreading little black clumps of something all over my face. Then, with horror, I looked at the bottle of apple cider vinegar. My miracle tonic, anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, anti-everything, cures anything that ails you and your skin, apple cider vinegar was filled with tiny fly embryos ( for lack of any knowledge of fly gestation terminology) and the mama fruit fly who had felt so welcomed there, had birthed her children right in the middle of my beauty regiment. My disgust was followed by gratitude as I thought about how long I had been thinking about adding drinking a swig of the vinegar to my routine.  Ironically, I had heard it helps you live longer. Thank goodness I  postponed that one more night.

But this post wasn't really meant to be about flies, but rather about more endearing creatures, our rabbits. Which brings up a question that I have had for a long time, particularly since the day I found a couple of my children playing with Guangzhou sized cockroaches on the way to the school bus in China. Why is it okay to play with lady bugs and caterpillars (but not the poisonous ones...that's another Guangzhou story) but not  cockroaches?  Why are some creatures condemned to the realm of the disgusting, and others are charming and cute? I haven't answered that, but as to not discriminate, I never watch Animal Planet at dinner, no matter what the animal being featured is. I don't want to admit that one is less appetizing than the other.

Back to the rabbits.  I found these long lost pictures of our bunnies, whose birth I reported, but never posted pictures of their cute infant stage, or even cuter toddler stage.

This is when I was afraid Cocoa had post-partum depression.

That little one passed away the same day I took the pictures.  We lost two of the five. 

It seems we have had a lot of pet funerals over my years of blogging.

These pictures were taken by Kyle in the spring.

And here they are grown to present day maturity.  I guess I should not have been surprised by the amount of money and energy it requires to manage their cages.  When I think of rabbits I think of productivity both of offspring and output
.

I could say this was also the summer of rabbits. Cleaning their cages was a daily requirement and so we tried our best to follow a schedule of who cleaned and who sat or stood by their play pen in the front yard, particularly guarding Cocoa, the Mama, who would regularly escape from its confines and play fugitive in the bushes. Even though who's day is it often became a hot, contentious, debate, there were few occasions when getting up off the couch or away from the x-box, and going outside failed to bring about a better mood.  Whether to scrape rabbit poo into our just for the rabbits trash can, or to just sit and play with the rabbits and the crowd of neighborhood children that would often gather, it was easy to see the immediate benefit of work, particularly serving a smaller creature.