Little Black Rain Clouds

It's been hard to sleep.  I lay down and my exhausted body rebels.  It's too hot.  My skin itches all over.  There are too many blankets.  It's too noisy.  The fan tickles.  My legs feel twitchy.  It's too bright.  My mind whirls with a million plans, worries, and disappointments.  Slowly, everything unravels and relaxes, and at 3 or 4 am, I sleep.

My thoughtful husband stayed home this morning and made breakfast so I could keep sleeping.  I woke up to a small boy snuggling into my bed before he ran off to play.  Then I woke up to the neighbor's muffler pointed into my bedroom window.  Then I woke up to little footsteps skittering through the kitchen.  It was glorious to fall back asleep after each interruption.  When my eyes finally opened, I felt rested, beautiful, light, and hopeful - things I haven't felt for a long time.

Within a few minutes, however, I feel the weight crushing back on my shoulders.  Life is heavy right now.  I'm struggling with the stress of an all-consuming, life-changing project foisted upon me for the convenience of others.  I think there is a little black rain cloud hovering over this part of town.  A girlfriend is dealing with her husband's invisible injury.  Another is dealing with heartbreaking family relationships.  A neighbor worries over a possible major life upset and what that means for her delicate children.

I don't know any way to go on but to just go on.  One foot goes in front of the other as we drag ourselves along.  We all have black rain cloud periods, don't we?  I'm exhausted.  But somehow we make it through.  There is nothing so wonderful as a warm summer thunderstorm, as wild and turbulent as it begins.  There is a promise of a rainbow at the end of the storm - or at least clean-washed air and a peaceful stillness.  And then we will rest.

Labor Day Chill

I guess it is the end of summer.  Sigh.  I love having my kids at home.  I love not having to get up at any particular time.  I especially love not having to get up early.  Like before 9 or 10.  I know, I grumble too much.  But I am excited for this new year.  I am so glad that my children have the opportunity to go to school and learn.  I am looking forward to having a quiet house.  I like having these changing seasons in life - it's never boring!

basking in the sun, and pretending I'm warm

To celebrate Labor Day (and to make up for not using our season passes, not once!), we went to the waterpark.  It was to be a day filled with water slides and lazy rivers and wave pools and laying in the sun and trying to avoid sunburn.  Unfortunately, the day was cloudy and unseasonably cool, which meant that only the most daring of the boys even wanted to get in the water.  The wave pool was somewhat warm, but the breeze was uncomfortably cold.  It didn't take long for the littlest ones to get chilled through, and want nothing more than to be swaddled in a big, dry towel.

We even managed to visit with Ben, who has spent his summer with crazy-busy hours as a manager of the food areas.  He looks good in his no-nonsense black non-slip shoes!  I'm glad he got a good job for the summer and has been able to save up money for college.

Yeah, we didn't last very long.  Hooray for not getting sunburned, though!  And now the kids can't say I never took them to the waterpark.  It was just too much of a challenge to gather up the strength, all of them, and Opa.  He didn't want to come today, so that made it possible for us to come.

I was able to snap a picture of everyone but Ben, who was busy working, and David, who had a splendid time on the water slides in spite of the cold.  He is our most adventurous one, after all.  Sometimes I wonder if the effort to have a family outing is worth it, but I love to see the happy in their faces.  We're making memories, at least!

The End of School

I didn't record the end of school here, but it was a happy time.  I love getting my kids home for the summer!  Check out these cute little faces.  Maybe they aren't being so cute right now!  This will be the first summer vacation for the twins, and they aren't really happy about it.  Freddie will not miss walking home after school every day.  But they think they will miss their friends, and they love going to school.  They don't understand why they have to stop going to school for a few months.  I'm glad they have had a good experience in kindergarten.

David just finished his last year at the junior high, and Eddie his first year there.  I loved just sitting back and watching the two of them flip through the junior high yearbook together.  I don't think either of them budged for hours.

I didn't get a picture of our girl, but her world is falling apart!  She is in mourning for her little friends that she won't be able to see all summer long!  You should hear her lament.  With a pouty face, it's "alllll summer loooooong!"  Like they were dying or something.  Pretty pathetic.  I'm sure she'll manage, because she's not generally looking for drama, but her friends are important to her and she loves being with other people.  Like her daddy, she is.

Here is the biggest change at the end of this school year.  Chris is done - oh happy day!  He has not been fond of being in high school, and really couldn't wait to get done with it.  I'm glad he managed to finish all of his requirements anyway.  He hates having me take his picture, so this is a splendidly pleasant face.  It will be fun to see where he chooses to go in his life.

And that is the end of the school year.  Some summers are full of goings, some are more lazy.  As much as I would love to just relax and vacation at the beach this summer, I know it will be more on the busy side.  My oldest three boys will be working, Ben will be coming home, we have a wedding coming up, and at the end of the summer, all three of them will be moving out.

This is our last summer together, and I plan to cherish every little tidbit I get.  We will have 11 people living in our house for a few months, and after this, the whole dynamic of our family changes.  Not in a bad way, but change is often fun and melancholy at the same time.  Who knows what we will look like next summer?

Yard Sale

When we moved last year - yes, it's been an entire year - we had two weeks to empty out a spacious house and move into a much smaller one.  Most of our stuff went into a storage garage that was literally packed to the ceiling with all our stuff.  What on earth could we have owned that took up that much space?  As a minimalist, I was quite disgusted with all of it.

A good deal of it was large furniture items that we could not shoehorn into my dad's already-furnished house.  We planned to go through it the garage and clean it out, but it was just crammed in there too tightly packed too efficiently to be able to get anything out.  Finally, the day came when we were tired enough (me:of having so much STUFF! and him: of me complaining about it!) that we just had a garage sale.

We hauled load after load of furniture and big stuff from the garage out onto the lawn where passers-by could see it.  We set out signs and advertised.  We brought water and set up canopies so we could sit out there all day long.

The stuff slowly disappeared.  People drove by and slowed down.  An older man, on vacation from California, packed more things into his car than he would be able to drive back home.  A couple slowly talked down the price of a tandem bicycle they would ride together.  A group of college boys together carried away a heavy side table that they thought looked like a treasure chest.  A neighbor girl went home and back three times until she had found enough money to buy an old blue bike.  Women wheedled, babies cried, little children carefully counted their coins.

At the end of the day, we loaded up what didn't sell and took it to the thrift store dropoff.  We were a few hundred dollars richer and a few thousand pounds lighter. Whew.

I thought I'd be jumping-up-and-down happy to see it done.  I wasn't.  Glad to be done with it, yes.  Relieved, yes.  But it took more emotional energy than I counted on to let go of things I had loved.  I'd paid good money for that stuff - picked it out carefully and lovingly.  I wanted it!  And the memories attached to each piece were substantial.  The ghosts of happy family times pressed thickly on my sentimental heart.

I'm sad that I don't have room for some of those nice things, but I'm not willing to store them.  Maybe one day I'll have my own house again and I can pick out just what I want to put in it again.  Until then, I'll just have to see what I can do to make happy family memories today, with what I have now.

First Day of School

What happened to the summer?  I blinked and it was gone - and now it's time for school to start.

This year, we have a senior in high school, a freshman, a seventh grader, a first grader, and two kindergartners.

 We wake up early, have breakfast and make lunches with the high school and middle school kids.  We read some scripture and say our morning prayers.  That seems to make the day go better.

Then Trent and I have half an hour to talk and plan the day before we start the second shift.  The elementary school kids get up and dressed.  Opa comes out and we have second breakfast.  We should be Hobbits.

 
We talked about having the little kids get up with the big kids, but decided that this was a more grown-up time we could spend with the big kids, and good, uninterrupted discussions don't happen very often with them.  We cherish those moments.

Before we know it, they are all off to school.  Before we know it, they will all be gone, just like the summer.  Love these kids, and I'm so grateful I get to be their mother!

Family Reunions at the Temple

The whole reason we were able to pull in 6 families from more than 3,000 miles is this.

 

The first grandchild was getting married, and he and his wife-to-be decided to get married here, in the temple.  We believe that there is a scared sealing power in the temple that can tie a family together for eternity.  It just doesn't make sense that something you worked so hard on for your whole life would just be gone when you die.  We believe that families are forever.

One of the things we did at the reunion (or rather, as we were traveling to it) was to take pictures of your family in front of any temple you passed. 

 

All together, I think we got pictures of  14 different temples.

 It was fun to see the different families as they sent in their pictures.  We went out of our way to be at the temples, but it wasn't a trouble.

 Because really, this is all worth it.

 

For more information about forever families, click here.

Family Reunion Shirts, Part II

And here is the result of our family reunion shirt-making that we started back here. 

These are the grandchildren in this family, minus Alec and Ben of course, and one other  granddaughter who just graduated from college.  They are all numbered in age order, and it's fun to see them all lined up like this!

This is the family of Jay, my first husband.  There were five children in his family, and he was the second.

I like how the colors show when Jays' siblings started their families.  The older sister's family is the bright green.  I'm sorry that they were not fond of their color, but we will give them a different one if we ever do this again.  She was married first, and had two children before Jay and I were married.  Alec and Ben are numbers five and six, and other missing grandchild is number three, so there that bright green chunk at the beginning is a little misleading.  My kids pull the #5, 6, 8, 12, 14, 18, 21, and 22 spots.  Our family has the aqua shirts, and the next brother's family is in the darker green shirts.  Child #4 brought a husband and a daughter in the family at the same time, and you'll just have to imagine that cute girl in baby blue at the #3 spot.  The baby of the family is sporting dark blue, and you can see his cute little redheads at the end of the line.

What a bunch of wonderful people we have!  Thanks, Jeanne and Dallas, for the love and support you've given all of us over the years.  Look what you started!

Summer Rain

Oh, how I love a summer rain!  I love watching the clouds pile up and the wind whip in.  I love the power of the lightning and the roar of the thunder.  Living in a mountain valley, it is magnificent to hear the thunder roll across the sky, crash into the mountains and come booming back.  Sometimes you can hear an especially rowdy thunder ricochet off the mountains several times.  Awesome.

And then the rain comes.  Big pelting drops pummel the ground and wisp up in steam.  Soon the puddles collect and the air freshens.  The cool rain refreshes, but the air is still warm enough to not cause a chill.  The children collect jackets and umbrellas and explode outside to dance in the warm summer rain.

It's one of my favorite times of the year.

Playing in the Summertime

Oh, what do you do in the summertime, when all the world is green?

We sing old songs, that's what we do.

And we play dressups with our dollies.

And we play Legos. Lots and lots of Legos.  The older boys play with Magic cards, or play games on the computer or watch funny movies on TV.

We do that, of course, after we get our chores done.  It's a nice, kick-back kind of summer.

Happy Grandma Day

We get to have Grandma Jeanne here this week.  Lucky us!  Every year, she comes down from Alaska and spends a week with us.  It's a big sacrifice on her part to come all this way, but she is as reliable as could be and never skips.  I love her for the love she shows to our family.  I love how she brings a bit of Jay back to us.  I especially love that she has accepted Trent and the little people as her own.  She truly has a heart of gold.

We love having her with us, and it's never quite long enough.

Summer Melodies and the Pursuit of Harmony

I surreptitiously snapped this shot during family scriptures the other day.  I love having my family together in one room.  I'm always impressed that they come for family time without complaining.  Most of the time.  To be real, occasionally we'll be missing someone who chose not to be with us, but most of the time it's good and they all come.

This is the first summer we've been with my dad, living in our new, cozier (realtor-speak for smaller) digs.  As a mother, I know that the tighter my kids are packed in together, the quicker they will annoy each other.  So I've been curious - and a little nervous - about how this summer would play out.  Will our home-song be lovely, or filled with jangly emotions and cacophony?   So far, most of our interactions seem to be smooth.  The kids have regular disagreements, especially the twins.  They don't know how to deal with negative situations as well, and it appears that they are a little perturbed with all the older kids invading the turf they have quietly enjoyed while the other kids were off at school. 

This morning, I had to have a frank talk about the importance of respecting our family rules with one of our older boys.  He'd been slipping into a bad habit of ignoring the rules and needed some correction.  Bad behavior is harmful to the individual, to his relationship with the parents, and can be contagious to other family members.  I hate having these talks.  I was as forthright and unemotional as I could be... and it was not received well.  Not at all.  He turned on his heel and stormed off to his bedroom where he cranked up some loud music.  

The few times he came through the kitchen for the rest of the morning were filled with angry looks, stubborn silence, and a roar of disharmony swirling about behind him.  Gah.  I hate this part.  Playing the firm parent, the disciplinarian, is one of my least favorite parts of parenting.  I know they need to learn and be corrected, but I wish they could somehow figure it out for themselves, instead of me needing to dole out negative consequences.    They won't learn solo.  I know that.  Phooey.

A few hours later, all three of my big boys left for youth conference.  The dark cloud left with them (after being passed on to three more people).  Harmony is restored. Sometimes I wish mothering was easier, but 'tisn't.  Still worth it.

Hope he feels a little better when he come back!

A Party in My Front Room

After a brief book pause for the end of school hubbub and the beginning of summer crazies, I've started reading again.  I'm happy when I have a book - when no one is bothering me.  So, nearly never!  But I can snatch a few minutes at night while Trent unwinds with a movie.

I've been reading my house book, "Love It or Leave It."  No, that's wrong somehow.  It's "Love the House You Have," and I've been loving it - the book and the house I have.  One suggestion she had was to schedule a party, invite people over, and let that deadline be a good incentive to get your house looking nice.  I'm more of an introvert than the author, and I don't really want to throw a party.  I'd rather just stay at home with my family. We are having company in a few weeks, so I guess there is my incentive. 

And I can invite you over, too!  Here is my living room last night.  I'll work on quieting and prettying the room today, and hopefully I'll get a nicer picture posted tonight.  See you then!

It's Suuuuuuummmmer Tiiiiiiimmmme!

Yeah, it's officially summer.  Graduation is over, field day is done, grades are posted, the parking lot is empty, and the office is shuttered.  As if it knew about this, the sun has come out and heated the earth.  We've had such a nice spring, with cool temperatures and cloudy skies and lots more rain than normal, but suddenly we've been thrust into summer with its baking-oven temperatures and unrelenting sunshine.  I'm not complaining too much, because this is where we usually are.  It's just the quick change from one to the other that makes me lose my balance a bit.  So now it's hot, and the tomatoes will grow and the watermelon seeds will sprout.  Summer is good, too.

We started off the summer on an exciting foot by an impromptu stay at a ski resort.  The mountain air was cool and refreshing, the beautiful trails beckoned, and it was good to have an itty bitty change of scenery.  Even though we spent all the time watching the kids get sunburned in the pool or cleaning up.  All good.

Today, Eddie got right up and did his chores, even without the help of my handy dandy chore charts - because I hadn't gotten around to printing them off yet.  Or maybe I did but I put them in the safe place where I lose important papers.  David was running a fever (from the sunburn), Chris was spending the night with his cousins, and Angel and the twins were a touch grumpy (from the sunburns).  Remind me to throw out the expired sunscreen and buy a fresh bottle.

And so we got the house mostly tidied up, two gardens watered, another garden weeded (they each have their own garden to tend this summer), and helped my dad on a project he's been wanting to do.  We had lunch, and now... now... now we're bored.  Now we're tired.  Now we have no more energy to do anything more.  (Maybe from the sunburns).  The kids are watching odd youtube videos and I'm reading the news.

Maybe we'll start being really productive tomorrow.  For now, I think I'll go switch the youtube channel to Studio C and we'll laugh together.  And then we'll make a blanket fort on the couch so we don't get sucked into the hot lava floor.  Summer is good.

Overly Organized?

I'm working on what summer was going to look like for my family, and I am starting to worry about myself.

Seriously.  Who makes their kids' summer chore lists in Excel?  What a nerd I am.

But don't they look all nice and orderly?  It makes me happy to see the patterns - but mostly to know that I don't have to do all the work this summer.  THAT makes me happy.

And a little bit OCD.

Back Home

I've been gone.  Gone from my writing, gone from my routines, gone from any shred of schedule.  It feels like I've been gone from my brain!  I've missed it.  The brain.  And everything else.  I thrive best on a regular plan of action; a flowing stream that keeps right on flowing.  My goodness, we have been disrupted!

First of all, the summer happened.  It does that every year, I'm told, and every year I'm less prepared for the change in routine than I would like to be.  That disruption is just fine.  It just means that I am spending more time with my kidlets and less time alone with my thoughts.

The next change was our missionaries.  It's been a flurry of getting ready and shopping and preparing and gathering things and packing up a childhood's worth of memories.  They will be men when those cardboard boxes are opened again.

The last change was the one that turned our worlds upside-down.  In the space of two weeks, we went from happily living in our spacious home to paring out, packing up, and moving away.  We moved in with my dad, to care for him and his Parkinson's disease.  It was not completely unexpected, as I look back.  I was feeling a bit of wanderlust, to the point of checking out houses for sale, and I specifically wanted to find a place to live on my dad's side of town.  But the suddenness of the whole thing was dramatic enough to take my breath away.  I dragged my exhausted body out of bed every morning, hollered, "This is crazy!" to no one in particular, cried, and then packed like a mad woman.  I won't attempt write about the insanity of moving 10 people's things to a house half the size - I would not even be able to use complete sentences.  (But I did write about it in my letters to my missionary boys, and that's where many of the summer posts come from.)

After all the hubbub of moving and the logistics of building walls to accommodate our family in what was then a two-bedroom house (besides my dad's room) died down, I expected to feel cramped and distraught.  But I don't.  I am at peace.  Maybe moving back into my childhood home has something to do with it.  Maybe having lived in this neighborhood only five years ago (although in a different house) has something to do with it.  Maybe living in a quieter area, where my children play with new friends in the street in front of the house has something to do with it.  Maybe it's all of those things, combined with the quiet assurance that I'm where I ought to be, doing what I ought to be doing.  That Heaven-sent peace has been such a blessing in the middle of our chaos.

I'm back - back writing, back thinking again, trying to get back into a routine.  And back home.

Spoons my Oma collected from her native Germany, and a few here in America

P.S.  I actually have been writing over the summer - letters to my missionary boys.  I think I'll post parts of them and back-date them over the last couple of months.  Because I can.

Sad Chicken Day

We had my dad this weekend while my brother and sister-in-law went on Trek, a recreation of the experience of pioneers coming across the plains in a handcart.  My sweet sister-in-law is quite pregnant, and my dad told her not to start anything... meaning having the baby, of course.  No one could believe that she would actually do Trek when she only has a few weeks left until baby day, but they were so excited to go.  Honestly, I would have gone, too.  It sounds like they had a great time and many memorable experiences. I'm jealous.

Our big news today is that the neighbor's dog got out and went on a rampage in our yard.  Feathers everywhere.  He killed Ebony and we can't find Amber.  It was pretty traumatic for the kids to come running down the hill and see that scary-looking dog with a limp chicken in its mouth.  Even Chris was mad about it, and held him in a corner with a big stick.  I'm not sure what to do about it now - the dog has the taste of blood, and I'm sure he'll be back any chance he gets.

Next up, loads of apricots to process.  The joys of summertime!

Backyard Fun

We have a few pyromaniacs in our house.  I haven't met many boys who aren't.  Well, and I like to burn things, too.  There is just something about fire that is awesome.  So we collect branches and old cabinets and twigs and old homework papers and just burn it all up occasionally.

S'mores are optional, but just barely.  Marshmallows are mandatory.  We are all stocked up, and keep a big cupboard full of them for the summer.  Yum!

Summertime

I wish it could always feel like this.

Weather Change

No drive.

No motivation.

No oomph.

All I want to do is wrap up in a fuzzy sweater and watch a movie.  Or read a book.  Or just sit in front of the fireplace.  Alas.  I don't own a fuzzy sweater.  And I don't have the mental reserve to start a movie when I know I'll have to clean up the messes that were made while I was an absentee parent.  And I don't have any novels I'm wanting to read right now.  And the fireplace has been shut down due to a gas leak.

Guess I'll just read the newspaper online, and then do my housework.  Or not.  Maybe I'll just sit.

Must be a change in the weather.  It just makes me feel antsy and blah all at the same time.

Where in the World?

Man, we went all over the place.

In almost 2500 miles, we crossed 10 state lines.  We probably spent 50 hours on the road.  But we made it to Paris.

And Garden City and Green River (in two different states).  Gould and Moriarty.  Opal, Diamondville, Groom, and Mead.  Kirtland, Monticello, Jamestown, and Memphis.  Trinidad!

Cheyenne, Las Vegas, Denver, Albuquerque, Amarillo, and Salt Lake.  We drove the Oregon Trail, Route 66, and the Lincoln Highway.

We saw Rocky Ridge, Mesa Verde, Arches, Castle Rock, Pike's Peak, Signal Mountain, and the Rocky Mountains.  Shamrock, Price, Cache, and Helper.  Victory.  Three Air Force bases, several Army outposts, and a half dozen Indian reservations.  And we visited Sinclair (the town and the gas station).

I love looking at the names of places and wondering how they got them.  History - the real what-happened-to-people-here history, not the names-and-dates-of-rulers-and-wars history fascinates me.  I loved looking at the ghost towns, the deserted homes in the middle of the prairie, the old pioneer trail tracks.  I like to think of who would have wanted to live there.  What were they like?  How did they live?  The empty villages depress Trent.  He thinks I'm crazy that I'd like to camp in one.

Mostly, I loved seeing a different part of the earth.  Mountains, mesas, plains, and flatlands so flat I felt we'd fall off in a few more miles.  Loved it all.

We wrote down a list of "Family Choice Awards" as we went along.

Best Rest Stops: Texas.  Hands down.  I could spend a day just there.
Most Unique Snack: Garden City, ID - pickle sicles
Best Free Stuff: our British neighbors in the Fort Collins, CO campground who had spent weeks touring America in an RV and were giving away all the stuff they bought before they flew home.  Toaster!  Chairs!
Biggest Bug Party: crickets at the Texas rest stop at night.  There were everywhere!
Biggest Bug Party runner-up: flies in our van.  Always.
Best Windmills: Wyoming

Best Roadside Snack: fresh frybread made by a Navajo lady at a garage sale.  Yes, she taught Trent how.  Score!
Worst Breakdown: tent trailer latches failing on the freeway in WY, making our pop-up pop up.  So glad I married a handy-man who can fix just about anything!

Worst Breakdown runner-up: tent trailer door slowly swinging itself open in the middle of the night and freaking Mom out.
Most Heart-Happy Sight: (besides our home at the end, and besides seeing Alec!) watching Trent sing-sign songs in American Sign Language. Makes my heart melt every time.

Least Favorite Food: the dozens and dozens of hot dogs we had left over from the family reunion - and ATE.  All of them.
Best Establishment Names: "Suds UR Duds", a coin-op laundry; "It'll Do Motel", and the "Cotton Pickin' Festival" in Hollis, OK.
Most Interesting Comment: "These past two days of driving have been WAY more interesting than those first three hours were!"