Pages

Friday, June 29, 2018

That was a pretty good day

The final installment, this is Mark's.  I added a picture (complete with heart because that's how it is saved in my photos) from approximately that time.  Just so you could see the little cherub.





Warning! The following contains an irresponsible scout story. Keep out of reach of any young men prone to bad ideas.


It started with the government shutdown right before our 11 year old scout camp. Our troop had decided to camp at Verlot National Forest, which didn’t work because the government had shut down, and the camp there was closed. Since we had driven an hour already, we decided to drive on another few minutes and see if there were any other campsites. We found a small, unmarked campsite right on a cliff, and decided to camp. It was a nice place, and we thought we would come back some time.


Fast forward a few months. We had decided to go to the exact same campsite, and we set up camp, ready to get a good night's sleep for our five mile hike the day after. But we never had a good night's sleep. Nobody in our tent slept at all that night. The three of us had unanimously decided to make a bad decision, and pull an all nighter. To be completely honest you probably couldn’t pick better people to stay up all night with. With me was Fletcher Pratt, with a large bag of Warheads Extreme Sour Candies to keep us awake, and Vance Fairbanks with a 2012 Guinness Book of World Records, for trivia purposes. I brought my winning sense of humor of course. We managed to stay up the entire night, though the memory is fuzzy from lack of sleep. Amazingly we were able to go on our hike without faltering. The same cannot be said for our ride back to Everett. I don’t know about Fletcher, but Vance and I were out cold the drive home. When I got back I laid down for a quick nap on the couch. When I woke up, we were going out to get dinner, and I had not only slept through half the day, but my family had watched the Belmont Stakes on TV, on the same couch I was sleeping on.


All this sounds rough, but in fact that was one of the greatest campouts I’ve ever gone on. We had a great time, talking, eating warheads and all around being irresponsible scouts. It was certainly a pretty good day.

Thursday, June 28, 2018

That Was A Pretty Good Day

by Emma

I woke up the morning of April 1st, 2017, screaming.

At least I thought I had.

In reviewing, I supposed it must have been a dream. It had been a strange dream, and it had been interrupted by a terribly loud noise, like a--

Rrrriiiing!

The telephone beside my bed rang again, piercing the relative quiet of my hotel room. I picked it up, asking a tentative “Hello?”

No answer.

I recalled that last night, Madame Tyler had said that she had asked the hotel to give us all a wake-up call. It had certainly succeeded in waking me up. 

I crawled out of bed, shaking off the last bits of jetlag. I went to the window that I had opened last night to try to get some of the shower’s steam out of the little room. Standing in front of it now, I took in the cool and damp morning, the sound of cars, the fresh city air. 

Paris.

An hour or two later I was on a bus, sitting next to Fiona, staring out of the window in wonder as we rode through Paris. I couldn’t get enough of it; I took pictures of every beautiful building, every interesting intersection, every detail that I had only ever dreamed of seeing. It was incredible. 




Our guide for the bus tour was a small man who was so stereotypically French, from the newsboy cap to the peacoat to the name that was probably Lauren or something like that.
Seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time was magical. There was the tower that shows up in every postcard, every picture, every movie scene from Paris. There it was. And there I was.




I wish I could show you every single picture I took on that tour of Paris. Just looking over them makes me feel giddy. 

But we didn’t spend all day in the heart of Paris. We also visited the nearby neighborhood, Le Chesnay. There we visited the beautiful Paris temple, where we were able to have a few moments of the ever reliable church wifi. Also in Le Chesnay was the incredible, extravagant, opulent, magnificent Palais du Versailles. 


my attempt at an artsy photo that doesn’t do it any justice
My mouth must have been wide open the whole time we were there. This was a building older than the country I was born in. This was a palace, inhabited by royalty. Every room was dressed to the nines, from the gilded furniture to the elaborately painted ceilings. I dodged through crowds of fellow tourists, phone in hand, documenting everything I could.



Fiona and Rose and I spent the better part of two hours rushing through the palace, exploring as much of it as we could in our limited time. We wanted to see the gardens, but they were closed. We tried though, even working up the courage to ask one of the employees for directions. Fiona and I went back and forth, debating who should ask. Eventually we approached the help desk together.

“Bonjour,” I said, “Où sont les jardins?”

The woman gave us directions, but we only vaguely understood her answer. She asked us if we wanted a map. 

“Oui, oui,” we both answered. 

“Anglais?” She asked us (“English?”)

“Oui,” Fiona answered sheepishly.

We never did get into the closed gardens, but we did find them. In hindsight, the woman probably told us that they were closed but we just didn’t understand her. 

Arguably the best thing to come out of our trip to Versailles was our discovery of La Durée macarons. 




I am a different person now that I have eaten macarons from La Durée. The sun is warmer, colors are brighter, the song of birds sweeter because I have tried these macarons. I’m not exaggerating; they were really that good.

I mean, just look at us with our post-macaron smiles:



One bizarre dinner of couscous and watery stew, and one boat tour later, we arrived again at the Eiffel Tower. It was nighttime now, and the tower was sparkling. I swallowed my fear of heights and took the dark elevator to the top, all 1000 feet.

I gripped the metal bars holding us in and looked down at the glowing city streets. In that moment, I understood why they call it The City of Lights. 

The best moment of my life was an hour later, lying on the ground underneath the exact center of the Eiffel Tower, deliriously tired, singing and laughing next to my best friends. 



It was a memorable metro ride back to the hotel, but I’ll keep it brief. To summarize, a man played his accordion for us, and the train was held up for quite a while as a drunk man threw up (and fell out of his shoes. Remind me to tell you the full story sometime).

That night, I sat in my hotel room, the open window letting in the cold air. I felt like the world was glowing. It was two in the morning, and I was exhausted, but I had never been happier.

That was a pretty good day. 

In l’Île de la Cité, in front of Notre Dame, there’s a symbol on the ground. It’s said that if you touch it, you’ll come back to Paris someday. It hasn’t happened quite yet, but it will.

 Honestly? I can’t wait.


Wednesday, June 27, 2018

A Surprise to be Sure but a Welcome One


Here is Braeden's guest post.  I am starting to think I should stop blogging and just get my family to write instead.  I am loving this!



Running errands with your parents is a fickle mistress.  Sometimes you are good, and your mom buys you a treat. Sometimes the relentless nature of 45 minutes in a Joann fabric store is enough to set you over the edge, preventing you from deserving your treat.

So, when your father tells you that you are going to run errands together you have mixed feelings. Time with Dad is almost always good. Dad has great stories and opinions and big ideas which are fun to talk about.  When I was five years old the biggest ideas I liked to talk about were STAR WARS ideas.  My dad had begun the sacred process of indoctrinating me with the stories from a galaxy far, far away.  Anyone who knows me, or at least knows the contents of the photos app on my phone, knows that I have a love of STAR WARS that runs deep.  My dad planted that seed and now the fruit is most precious.

But like I said, even time with Dad can be marred by the rigors of a Saturday’s morning worth of errands. So, my feelings were mixed when my dad and I set out one morning.

Our first stop was at a movie theater in South Everett.  I wasn’t sure what we were doing there, but I trotted along.  We went up to the counter and these were waiting for us.  


As you can see the tickets have been enshrined by my wonderful mother in a scrapbook. Generations of my posterity will bless Dad’s name forever for setting my feet on the Star Wars Path.

I had anticipated Attack of the Clones for so long.  I had seen the ads on TV, and my 5-year-old mind was full of ideas about what had to happen in this movie.  I knew that Anakin had to turn to the dark side, but how? When?  Somehow the emperor was going to take over but was that going to be in Episode 2 or Episode 3?  I had decided that Anakin was likely to turn to the dark side in Episode 2 but the Empire would be created in Episode 3.  Such are the workings of the young fanboy’s mind and heart.

Say what you will about Star Wars Episode 2, (most people think that Hayden Christensen’s performance slaughters not just the men, but the women and the children too) but to me life is like a STAR WARS movie; even when it’s bad, it’s good.  Sitting there in that theatre with my dad Attack of the Clones did what every STAR WARS movie is meant to do: take me back a long time ago to a galaxy far, far away.  It captured my imagination, filled me with happiness, and fueled my love for politics and storytelling.  My favorite images from that movie are still carved on my heart:









But more than anything else from that good day, what has stuck with me the most has been the thrill of seeing a STAR WARS movie in a theatre with my Dad.  It is one of my favorite memories, not because of the clones and the lightsabers, but because it was with him.  

There’s a reason my favorite moment in all of STAR WARS is the ending of Return of the Jedi.  It’s because...




Tuesday, June 26, 2018

In praise of ordinary days

Here's Adam's guest post.  It made me laugh and cry a little and no, he wasn't supposed to write about me, but I still love that guy.

Thelma announced to the world on her blog that each of us would write a guest post, then she announced to each of us on Monday evening what kind of punishments would await if we let her down. So, right now every one is asleep and I’m fearfully typing out this post at the kitchen table. Only I’m sitting in Thelma’s chair and there is nothing she can do about it.

Every once in a while an alert pops up on my phone telling me that the Photos app has created a memory for me. I’m not sure that’s how memories are supposed to work, but I’m cool with technology. I decided to open my phone and see what memories it had in store for me.


Gatherings in Pleasant Grove. Based on the picture, that’s a memory I should try to forget. Based on the picture, it’s not much of a gathering if I’m by myself. Based on the picture, it’s no wonder I’m by myself.


Bay Lake. The problem with this memory is that I have no idea where Bay Lake is. I don’t remember going to Bay Lake. The way Braeden’s head is warped in the picture, it may have been in an alternate dimension.


Best of Last Month. That sounds promising but, apparently, it’s been since 2017 that I’ve had a month worth noting. And it’s kind of sad that the cover image for the best of that month (whatever month it was) was a barren landscape.


Las Vegas & Boulder City. Now we’re getting somewhere. I remember those days. There is nothing better than spending time with Thelma. In this particular picture we are spending time in a diner in Boulder City where, as I recall, they had a dish simply named “those potatoes.” That was also the day Thelma must have looked like an antiques thief because the shop proprietor came after her with a loaded gun.



Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed. But you can’t blame the shop owner for being on the lookout when you stock your shelves with choice treasures like this:

I want to know the story with guy in the back right corner.


That little lady has a face that says, "Please buy me. Then put me out of my misery."

Problem: I’m supposed to write about one particular day, not a road trip.

I scrolled further through my phone and saw a picture taken from inside Costco on our birthday. Problem: Thelma has already documented that day (using my pictures and all). Still, that was a pretty good day. It was good because the only plan we had was to spend the day together. Two things I love are not making plans and spending the day alone with Thelma. In fact, the best days of my life for the past 27 years almost universally involve being with her. I’ve heard her say that she could be happy with me in a Turkish prison. As long as she’s my cellmate, the feeling is mutual. (Also, I call the bottom bunk.)

One way to avoid writing about a day Thelma has already documented would be to write about a day I was alone. The older I get, the more I enjoy solitary adventures. Last month I took most of a day to meander from Nashville to Louisville. I drove the backroads. I ate by myself at a roadside McDonalds. I stood silently in the mouth of a cave.


Not for the first time, I hurriedly filled up my rental car’s gas tank at this same dive of a convenience store while nearly missing my flight:


(As an aside, I took a personality test the other day and passed. It told me I’m an introvert. I’ve never thought of myself as an introvert. But it also told me I’m not very self aware. Since I’m the one who answered the questions about myself, who knows if I can trust the results.)

The other way to avoid writing about a day Thelma has already documented is to beat her to the punch. So, I’ll write about today. I’ll write about today because it reminds me of so many reasons I love her.

Thelma texted me midmorning to say that the city had shut off the water to our neighborhood without warning just as she was in the middle of a load of laundry and cleaning one of the bathrooms. The amount of effort she puts into making our home beautiful and peaceful astounds me. A few hours later, still without water, I received this. “Things aren’t so dismal though.  We have electricity and I pulled some ice out of the freezer to make myself some water to drink.  Hopefully it won’t last long.” Then, if the challenge of being without water wasn’t enough, she decided to bake a cake. Watching The Great British Baking Show the night before had put her in the mood, but the intended recipient was a couple in our neighborhood who just had a son pass away. She thinks of Things. The big things. The important things. She thinks about them and remembers. I wish I was more like that. Then maybe my prayers would be as full as hers are with pleadings for peace and comfort and restoration to make their way to people who are suffering and separated. Then maybe my days would be as full as hers are with helping others and being the answer to those same prayers.

Back to the cake. Now that I think about it, I’m not exactly sure where she ultimately got the water to bake the cake. But she did. It took a few attempts before we found our friends at home. Thelma gave them the cake and we visited. As we were leaving their doorstep, I heard this dear woman tell Thelma that she loved her. And I knew it wasn’t because of the cake. It was because of the hours these women had already invested in serving together and strengthening one another.

Thelma doesn’t like being out front. She doesn’t like attention. And she probably won’t be happy that I made this post about her. But she means everything to me. If you ask me to think of something good, I can’t help but think of her. Any ordinary day is a good day and the world is a good place when I’m with her.

Monday, June 25, 2018

That was a pretty good day

This week, everyone is going to do a guest post.  Five days, five family members (except mine isn't a guest post, but still.)

We talked about different ideas at dinner yesterday and finally landed on That Was A Pretty Good Day.

So I'll start.

There are so many to choose from.  There's our wedding day.  The days our children were born.  Vacation days, days at the river, days in National Parks, the day we discovered luggage trolleys in hotels (life changer).

I think I'll just write about Saturday though.

Because it was a pretty good day.

I got up early and early summer is lovely.  There were hot air balloons across the valley.  I drove to Provo to pick up Braeden and there was neither a marathon nor road construction blocking my path.

It was great to see Braeden.  He was tired but happy and told me some highlights from his week.  I told him all about book club earlier int he week which had had a spirited discussion.  We got home and Adam started Mark mowing the lawn (the lawn mower is super hard to start) and I gave Emma a list of tasks and Adam and Braeden and I headed to the temple.

We performed proxy sealings and it was pretty incredible.  There's nothing like the feeling you get in the temple when you are serving people you researched and hunted for and felt help in finding.

We also met a sealer who is Joseph Fielding Smith's son (so Joseph F. Smith's grandson and Hyrum Smith's great grandson).  He was 92 and very kind.

When we left the temple, Braeden said he thought he'd been very good so deserved a lunch out with his parents.

We were going to veto the idea but then I remembered we'd taken the other two kids out for Indian food the night before.  So we hit Arby's (fancy, I know).  Before that, we went to Walmart because Braeden needed a patriotic hat to wear when he's in San Antonio over the 4th of July.

He ended up with these. (He took a picture later that evening to show his fellow EFY counselors.  One of his friends texted him that she had just been looking at flag pants on Amazon.  Braeden said, "These are my people!")


While Braeden napped and Emma went to work, we cleaned the garage when we got home.  We took everything out that wasn't on a shelf and pressure-washed the floor.  I can't believe all the dirt we'd been living in out there.  It was a big and tiring job but very rewarding.  I love it when things are clean!

But we were exhausted and the teriyaki chicken dinner I was planning would have to wait another day.  We went to Mod Pizza (Mark and I had stopped by there the previous day to see the Cobians who were passing through.  We didn't get any pizza at the time and wanted to rectify the situation.)

Pizzas and marionberry lemonade all around.

After dinner we went hunting for a drop off box for my primary ballot.  Earlier in the day Braeden and I had done a little research on candidates.  I felt good about the people I'd voted for and that's a great feeling.  Also, Utah is the first state I've lived in that my candidates (except presidential apparently) have a prayer of winning.

Emma was here when we got home and we watched a few episodes of As Time Goes By together.  We've subscribed to Brit Box TV because we are anglophiles and British TV is the best.

So there was nothing out of the ordinary about Saturday.  It was just a day.  It was a day we worked together and played together and ate together and laughed together.

I guess what it comes down to is that any day I'm with these four people, it's going to be a pretty good day.

Friday, June 22, 2018

Grateful Friday

Stick with me here, I'll get to the gratitude, let me start with the guilt though.

In addition to feeling heartbroken, I've felt a little guilty this week.

I've felt guilty when I could turn away from the news headlines because they were too awful.  I have the luxury of being able to shelter myself from the savagery by staying away from the news.

I've felt guilty that through some incredible luck of the draw that I had nothing to do with, I was born into privilege.  I was born into a free country, into a stable family, into a life brimming with opportunities. My parents, grandparents, none of us has had to make desperate and dangerous decisions just to find freedom and safety and opportunity.

It was just handed to us.

I've felt deep sadness when I've seen images and heard about the unthinkable cruelty of children being ripped away from their mothers.  I've felt horror, drawing similarities in my mind to Nazi Germany.  I've been angry when I've seen Facebook posts by good people that are weirdly and blindly motivated by partisanship, defending evil and a morally corrupt administration.  (I've felt cowardly for not writing indignant responses, but like Braeden said, "No one ever woke up because of a Facebook fight.")

I've felt embarrassed that this is America.  This is how we're treating people?

So what do I have to be grateful about?

Yesterday on our morning walk, Mark said, "I'm not sure our society has as much hope as we used to."

I told him all the reasons there are to hope.  I told him about innovations and medical cures and miracles of technology.

And in addition to the bad in the news, I've also seen the outrage.  I've seen people of all walks of life (including the leaders of my church), rise up and say, "NO!"

And for that, for the reasons to hope as well as for the people fighting the good fight, I'm grateful.


Thursday, June 21, 2018

Guest post

I love my morning walks with Mark (and Braeden if he's home).  Yesterday morning Mark had me laughing so much that people stared on the Murdock Canal trail.  He's good company.  

He brought up again that he wanted to write a guest post on my blog.  "Do it," I said.  

He said, "Well, I don't want you changing it."

"I won't unless it's mean."

We walked a few strides and he said, "So what should I write about?"

"It's not so easy, huh?"

A few more strides.

"You could write a list," I told him.  "Twenty things I love about my mother."

We passed a few list ideas back and forth.  He finally arrived at 15 Reasons My Mom Could Have Killed (but didn't).

Our kids know the wisdom Geri shared with me that if you can let your son live between the age of 11-15, you can do anything.  "In your case," I told Mark, "letting you live between 1-5 was a lot harder."

"I was ten years ahead of my time," Mark said.  

So here's Mark's guest post:

Fifteen Reasons My Mom Could Have Killed Me (but didn’t)


15: The time I broke a dozen eggs onto the carpet of our living room
14: The time I broke a dozen eggs into the sink
13: The time I filled the toilet with Legos
12: When I won’t read a book she suggests
11: Whenever I mention a corndog
10: Whenever I mention Skittles
9: Or Starburst
8: Or Chinese Food
7: When she tried to get me to take choir in 7th grade
6: When she tried to get me to take choir in 8th grade
5: When she tried to get me to take choir in 9th grade
4: When she did get me to take choir in 10th grade
3: When I got kicked out of the Ikea kids area (three times)
2: When I got a lifetime ban at the same Ikea kids area
1: When I took a bottle of maple syrup out of our shopping cart and dropped it onto the floor


“If you can raise a child from the age of 1-5, you can do anything.” -Thelma Dahl Davis


It’s a lucky thing I’m so cute, or I wouldn’t have made it.

And he was cute.  Still is.




Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Lost causes

I'm drawn to plants and maybe specifically to plants that are lost causes.

Trayvion.  Poor Trayvion.  Braeden and I brought him home a proud leafy abundance.  Leaves slowly turned brown and fell off and Adam told me to give up but I didn't want to.

Look at him now!


He's not as leafy as when I bought him but he's coming back!  (And that little humidifier on the floor has a lot to do with it.)  Tropical plants and arid air are not always a winning combination.

I had our boys move a hydrangea bush from a pot where the previous owners of our house had planted it.  The bush was too big for the pot, which was cracking, and I couldn't even tell if the hydrangea would survive but I like to try.

For weeks it has done nothing except sit there and look dead while I made sure it was getting enough water and I fertilized it.

And guess what?


That little bit of greenery behind the bush is a volunteer marigold.  They are springing up all over the front flower bed and I love it.

Next up in my lost cause plant list?

This friend.


This peace lily is one of the plants I've had the longest.  It loved the Pacific Northwest and thrived there.  It's struggled here.

But kind of like when google maps tell me how many minutes until my destination, challenge accepted.

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

BYUnion

Erin and Adam looked at this camera and Robbie and I will be the ones looking at the other camera.  The travails of modern life and kids taking pictures with different phones...


Adam and I hosted a reunion of a few BYU friends last night.  Emma, master of portmanteau, decided to call it our BYUnion.

Erin and I were freshman roommates, randomly assigned.  Adam and Robbie were freshman roommates, randomly assigned and Rachel (who wasn't able to come and it made us all sad) was next door to Erin and me.

(We all love Rachel.)

Through some jockeying by Adam, who was in the Elder's quorum presidency back then, he and Robbie were our home teachers.

And also, Robbie and Rachel and I had older sisters who were best friends/roommates.

So there were a lot of connections.  We ate dinner together nearly every night and Adam and Robbie called us every night to play a Billy Joel song for us when Robbie found Erin and me lacking in our Billy Joel knowledge.  (For example, we hadn't heard of him.)  We visited our older sisters' apartment often and it was our home away from home.

We were kind of each other's home away from home.

I scanned and printed some pictures from our freshman year, which was 27 years ago.

We were children.  Babies.  I have two kids older than we were back then.

Weird.

This picture was taken in our older sisters' apartment.



The stone washed jeans....

We had a lot of fun back then and we still have fun now.  We are the it's-like-no-time-has-passed-since-we-last-saw-each-other kind of friends.

We've been through stuff that's been hard that has made us different, but a lot of the same things are important to us as they were back then.  We still feel connected.

And we'll be friends forever.

Rachel asked us to take lots of pictures and we almost forgot to take any.  I know this is pretty much the same as the above picture, but in this one, everyone is looking at the camera.  So there's that.



Monday, June 18, 2018

Um...Dad?



Saturday morning, Braeden, the perpetual early bird, got up to get his worm.  (His worm was a small tree that was invading our front flower bed that I had asked him to get rid of.)  He wanted to do it in the early hour before it got hot.

Braeden is a lot stronger than he is careful and he punctured a sprinkler hose in his zeal which resulted in a deluge (the sprinklers were on at the time).  He quickly turned off the water and came inside to report his doings.

Adam, having just woken up, sleepily said, "Call before you dig."

Then he said, "You can help me fix it."  Braeden happily agreed with all the enthusiasm of a 6'4" Lab puppy (because that's basically what he is).

And they went out and repaired the problem.

Late Saturday afternoon, I asked Mark to replace the toilet seat in one of the bathrooms (the previous one never fit correctly).  Mark's usually good at stuff like that but he got confused apparently because instead of removing the toilet seat, he started removing the tank from the toilet.

Another son, another flood.

Adam hastened to his aid and Emma threw a big bath towel down from the upstairs bathroom, where she was getting ready for work, to mop up the water.  I could hear Adam patiently explaining to Mark what had gone wrong and then he walked him through the steps of fixing the problem and then replacing the toilet seat.

With a sad head shake, Braeden said, "I know how Mark feels.  You think you're doing the right thing and then you mess it up."

Then he added, "It's hard turning boys into men."

And it is.  Except I think Adam's pretty good at it.

Having celebrated Father's Day yesterday, I'm grateful.

I'm grateful for my dad.  When we went to Isaiah's basketball game last week, we were looking for the right gym.  I knew my parents were already there so we were on the lookout for Grandma and Grandpa.  I told Sam (because he hadn't met my parents) that my dad was tall and always had a hat on.  I said, "When I was growing up, I could always find my dad.  All I had to do was look up."

What a blessing it is in my life to always have had a beacon, a righteous and steady man to look up to.

I'm grateful for Adam's dad.  I honor him as well.  Not only was he one of the kindest men I've ever met, he grandfathered our children like it was his job.  Also, he, along with Geri, helped shape Adam into the good man he is.

I'm grateful for Adam.  I am a lucky and blessed woman.  He loves us and works hard and sacrifices in a million ways for us.  Also, he's really witty.  And smart.  And patient.  And makes any mundane thing you're doing fun somehow.

You get the idea.

I love that guy.

Adam got a leaf blower for Father's Day and tried it out on our kids.  They may or may not have been exaggerating just a bit...

Friday, June 15, 2018

Grateful Friday

It's the little things, you know?  Here's what I'm grateful for today.

Air conditioning

Fresh blueberries

My desk chair

I am not at Girls' Camp.  My sisters are.  Solidarity, my dears, but I'm glad I'm not camping.

Taking a morning walk with Mark.  Or Mark or Braeden.  Or Mark and Braeden and Sam.  I just like a morning walk.

Finding enough hangers when I'm hanging up clothes after doing laundry.  Feels like winning.

Getting snapchats from Emma.  She delights me.

Early mornings and evenings on the deck. (I'm there right now.  There's a cool breeze and I can smell the neighbor's roses and hear the wind chimes and birds.)

*
**

Last night I was asked to go to the Family History Center to help some kids from "the other stake" with family history.  When I got there, I asked which stake they were in because the other stake could be one of many.  (It was the Timpanogos Stake.)

I started working with Anne, who was about 12-13.  She was smart and good on the computer and knew her login information which frankly is half the battle.  Her family history was complete as far as the eye could see.  I saw some Egberts on her tree and after a few clicks, realized we were related!

We searched for about an hour to find a name she could take to the temple with zero success.  At one point she said, "So I'm seeing that this is a tedious process that requires patience."

I agreed.  But then I told her that when you do find something, it is exciting.

Across the room her brother was working with a much more expert expert.  She said, "My brother's finding names and we have the same family.  Shouldn't I be finding names?"

"Well," I said, "your brother has a lot better helper than you do."

She stared at me for a beat, then started laughing.

I sort of loved Anne.

And finally, finally we started finding some names.  She said, "This is exciting!"

Then she said, "I feel all warm inside!"

When her parents arrived to pick her up she said, "I don't want to go home! I love this!"

The Spirit of Elijah is real my friends.

Driving down to the Family History Center (which is 2 minutes from my house) to work for a few hours felt like a little thing.  But sometimes the little things are big things after all.



Thursday, June 14, 2018

Today was amazing

Braeden told me about a missionary who wrote "Today was amazing" on the top of his journal every day.

And when I was thinking about it, I think it applies.

Here's what's been amazing me:

The sheer volume of food Braeden and Mark and Sam can put away.

Those three boys woke up before 7:00 AM to help with flags (flag day).  I thought I was done when I was released as YW president but now Adam is YM president.  So we're back.

Mark's YM leader had donuts for them at 7:00 AM.  People are awesome.

It was 77 degrees outside at 2:00 AM when I opened the windows but then decided against it.

Things still smell a little skunky.  How long does that last anyway?

I guess the world is amazing.  You just have to look around.

Last night we went to SLC and watched Isaiah play basketball.  That kid is amazing too.  I enjoyed seeing Luke and Savannah and chatting with Jennifer and my parents and hugging Enoch around the waist (which is where I can reach).

The boys had each had multiple pulled pork sandwiches for dinner and then after the game we went to McDonald's for hot fudge sundaes (they were out of ice cream!  The humanity!).  Each boy got a McDouble.

I said, "We just ate!"

Sam said, "But that was like three hours ago."

Amazing.






Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Some summertime happenings

Emma and Rose and Fiona finished their masterpiece.  (I told them to do something on our driveway next but it hasn't happened yet.  Emma said if I bought Diet Dr. Pepper it might entice Rose and Fiona.)



This guy got his braces off.


The boys and I went to Salt Lake City (Emma was working).  The boys went to the movie with Hyrum--a.k.a. the birthday boy--and Marianne and I went looking at flooring samples.

Doing anything with Marianne is pretty much fun.

Adam joined us after work and we went to World Market for tikka masala sauce and Walker shortbread cookies and ginger mints and a free shirt.  (It's a long story.)

We briefly visited our grandma and then the movie was over so we went to dinner.  Marianne told Hyrum, "You should enjoy this because it may never happen again, but you can order whatever you want."

The boy got a big steak and shrimp.

Sitting with Marianne and Adam across from our handsome and witty sons, I had to think, you know, we didn't do half bad here.

(I wish I had a picture.)

Sam is staying with us for a few days...a week?  I don't know.  Both Braeden and Mark were unreasonably excited for him to come.  To help with staying up despite jet lag, Ben and Alexa came from Provo for the evening (and Taco Tuesday, which is a thing for us this summer).



I like my kids' friends. And I'm not just saying that because Sam brought me an enormous bag of chocolate from Switzerland.  Swiss chocolate!  Why can't America do better?

It's not all fun and games though.  Last night the kids were eating their ice cream and playing a Swiss card game on the deck and there must have been an altercation with a skunk and the neighbor's dog.  They came in quick but our house smelled skunky (sad but true, it's a sort of porous house).  We had to sleep with the windows closed which was sad.  I went out this morning to turn off the deck lights.  No one was brave enough to do it last night.

Sometimes I think there's too much wildlife and not enough suburbia around here....


LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails