The Group Effort

There's nothing better than a good friend, except a good friend with CHOCOLATE


I made the cookies
Eric did the artful arrangement (with ice cream and hot fudge they brought)
Adam provided the mint (and took the picture)
Janet cleaned up the kitchen (even though I told her not to)

The kids brought their hearty appetites

And David played the piano

There may be more pleasant ways to spend an evening

But I don't know what they are

I'm Feeling Pretty Safe

Yesterday we cleaned out our garage. Phew. It's an easier sentence to type than it was a task to complete. We sifted through too small shoes and mismatched gloves and got rid of a bunch of stuff. A lot of what we got rid of were things given to us in an act of "here you throw this away."

note to self: say no thanks next time

This was monumental though: Adam decided it was time to bid a fond adieu to his hiking boots. The ones he's had since high school.

Adam is not what I would call a pack rat or even very sentimental. There are a few things however, that he holds onto. Mostly they're things he values because they've served him well and faithfully and it's hard to let them go.

Allow me to illustrate:


These are Adam's scriptures. He takes them to church every Sunday. He reads from them to our children every night. He used them as a seminary student in high school. He took them to Finland. They are marked and cross referenced in his tiniest neatest handwriting. And he's had them since he was eight. Yes, eight.

I have on more than one occasion recommended he get a new set.

You may know about our Saturn and Adam's affection for it. It's every bit as dog eared as Adam's beloved scriptures yet Adam drives it on.

So what does this all mean to me?

I feel pretty safe.

I am quite sure that Adam will not decide to trade me in for a younger sleeker model. He'll hang onto me when I'm old and in tatters.

And that's a good feeling.

Beautiful Words

Marine Air Conditioning.

Those may be some of my favorite words in the English language.

That's what the weather man calls it when things will go back to normal: "our marine air conditioner will kick back in".

Lovely. Lovely. Blessed marine air conditioning.

Last night at 10:00 it was 80 degrees in our family room. It was hot yesterday. It doesn't get very hot very often and we a) can't handle it and b) don't have air conditioning.

Adam and I were catching up on our day. I was contemplating whipping up some frozen hot chocolate. Suddenly the curtains billowed. The box fan in our upstairs window tumbled to the floor from the gust of wind.

And the air blowing in? Cool. Our marine air conditioning had come riding in on its white horse.

And saved the day.

P.S.

Adam's putting the new blinds up and I'm helping him. Sometimes I'm not really all that helpful.

Here's what we did today:

slipped and slid




Sometimes it can be a painful experience:






Sometimes getting a sliver in your foot from the deck and having your crazy aunt Thelma who's deadly with a needle and tweezers pluck it out is plenty dangerous in its own right.

This is my nephew Jackson...(I'm pretty sure) he has forgiven me

Braeden was there for the water time...he just took all the pictures so isn't in any of them.

My School Room

I would take a picture but it would wound my pride too much.

I remember years ago telling my friend Apryl in Connecticut that my desk was a reflection of my well being. When it was neat and tidy I was feeling good and on top of things and when it was a deep pile of books and papers and detritus, I was not doing so well.

I now have a much bigger barometer. My school room.

And let me tell you. Things are not looking so great. I point to too much to do and general slovenliness to blame. (Does placing blame help? Maybe.)

There are stacks of papers on every flat surface except for the floor. The final frontier. There's a sheet tacked in the window. The old blinds collapsed in a dusty frightening crash and the new blinds are sitting in their long narrow box, waiting for Adam. He's busy too.

The sun is filtering in through the sheet.

It's hot.

We're not used to hot here.

And there's also a smell. I don't even know what it is. It's not coming from the laundry room which is nearby and seems a likely culprit. It's not even coming from the kids' bathroom which is further away but not the cleanest spot in America either. I've tried to follow my nose all around the room to no avail. I sprayed air freshener. Braeden said, "Mom, don't cover the smell, eliminate it with Febreze." (Febreze can feel good about its marketing campaign.)

I still smell something.

And my kids don't. I keep demanding of them, "What is that?!" and they look confused and say, "What?"

Grrrrrrrrr.

I could stay here and clean and straighten (and find the smell?) or I could take my children over to Grandma and Grandpa's to their shady backyard to run in the sprinklers.

Pardon me while I go gather swimsuits.

(This school room did not get this way because I'm disciplined.)

Six

There's enough distance and time between Emma's ten and Mark's six that six seems novel and like uncharted terrain.

Maybe it's just Mark's version of six.

There are a lot of inconsistencies:

When Mark wants to do something he's too young for, he says, "Mom, I am six."

When he needs to do an unsavory task like clean his room, he says, "Mom, I am only six."

He never (no never) wants to have school.

When he is doing school work, he gets unsettled if he doesn't do every single part of every single page.

There's predictable stuff like enough questions to make me cross-eyed. Then there's the unpredictable stuff like the other night when Adam was telling a story. Mark said, "Who in this story has swine flu? Because it seems like someone is missing."

There's a lot of sighing deeply from me as I have yet another strong personality to deal with in our little school of strong personalities.

Today Mark was learning how to count by two. He figured it out then said, "The problem with this is when you count by two you have no way of knowing how many there are."

I explained that yes you do. I demonstrated by spilling some colored pencils on the table and counting them briskly by two. Then I had him count one by one. See? We got the same number.

He said, "Well it doesn't work for large numbers."

I spilled more pencils on the table. We counted them.

His next argument: "It doesn't work for people that don't know how to count by two."

I told him I wasn't worried about them. I was worried about him and he was smart and knew how to count by two.

He sighed. "Not everyone is smart."

I sighed more deeply.

It's what I do many many times a day.

See This Ammon?

I may have once or twice grumbled the teeniest bit about the weather around here. (who me?) By doing so, I sort of shot myself in the foot.

When it came time for me to convince my brother and his wife to move here (because everyone else is in Nevada and how fair is that?), he laughed at me in his Ammon way.

Following is my photo essay: Seattle's Splendid Weather.

I'm hoping to undo some of the damage.

my three: notice Emma at water's edge...that's the best place to start looking for her if you need her

checking out Mark's spoils

And to prove the above pictures were not an isolated incident, here's from a different day:


So, Ammon? I'm waiting...