Wif, Food Logs, and Lehi's Dream

Starling always says "wif".

"Wif we go to the store, can we get cotton balls?"

"Wif we go to the library, how many books can I get?"

"Can I paint wif I clean up the tea set?"

(Cowgirl with blanket horse.)

(She lost her cat-cat hat the other day. She was so beside herself, and I was so tired of looking while having her sob, "but I want cat-cat hat" as I repeated that I knew she wanted cat-cat hat but I could not find cat-cat hat, that I finally said a prayer that "wif" it was anywhere in this little house, I could please find it. It immediately occurred to me to check some dresser drawers--where I found it bundled in with some fuzzy socks.)

Also, here is the "bird fan" (and some other hanging thing) she called for me to come see in the girls' room yesterday. She is forever taping and snipping and cutting and coloring--turning cotton balls and sticks and paper plates and scraps of paper into whatever she dreams up. Fun little four-year-old person.

Jesse has to do a three-day food log for his health class. For every single thing he eats he has to record "like one million nutrition facts" (as he puts it). He finds it so unbelievably tedious that he has mostly preferred to just ... starve himself. Hahah. Poor kid. I'm guessing that won't quite teach him what his teacher hoped he'd learn from this experiment; but I wonder ... if that's how diets that have you log all your food and calories into an app prove to be so successful? By just being so tiresome that it becomes easier to ... not eat at all?

But Jesse. Look at this picture I recently unearthed of him for something his seminary teacher was doing. Dearest little boy on his baptism day. Oh how I miss every single past age of each of my kids!

I was telling the kids about Lehi's Dream in the Book of Mormon the other day. They've heard the elements of his vision many times, but, perhaps because we were studying the New Testament just prior to our leap into 1st Nephi, Hans declared, "This should be in the Book of Revelation!" Indeed it would fit rather perfectly there. (Why, at the end of Nephi's similar vision he actually sort of passes the baton to John the Revelator if you recall, so Hans was fairly spot on!) Anyway, I loved that my little seven-year-old was making connections about symbolism in scripture. I generally fret that I have taught them jack squat in our 5 minutes of scripture time before school, so seeing that any of it is planted in their little heads is a great reason for rejoicing--even if all that is planted is, "This story seems just as crazy as that other story!"

(Hans and his siblings having me send a picture to their Aunt Megan to show her how they felt when they heard she'd stopped by ... while they weren't home to see her.)

Making magna-tile maze houses for Skittles the hamster. (Also, my favorite area of this rental [not that there are many areas to choose from mind] is the girls' bunk-house room and its accompanying little ... I don't know what you call it--it's the area beyond those French doors you can see that they use as a little playroom. Starling just calls it "the fuzzy carpet room". [It does have a very fuzzy, shag-style rug. Bits of that fuzzy carpet are always somehow all over the house.])

Hey Skittles. I'm glad Biscuit, who they hadn't realized was sleeping on a nearby chair when they got you out, didn't wake and gobble you up. 

Some sort of after-baking shenanigans going on.

This fog! Will I never stop posting it? No. I don't think I can.

And lastly, Anders looking through his Pokémon binder when he should have been sleeping. It occurred to me, while looking at these pictures, that I have been trying to get kids to go to bed for over 23 years now. Ah well. What else would I have been doing. (Well, perhaps sleeping myself. But never mind that.)

Backhoes and Birthdays

We've had a great deal more snow since my last post. This morning Mike's uncle showed up to dig us out! Not with shovels or a snowblower like I'm accustomed to, but with the way I quickly noticed, as we drove through the snow to church yesterday afternoon, is the way I will grow much more used to seeing out here in the country:

Tractors, skid steers, and backhoes seem to be the way.

Thanks Uncle Lynn! What a relief to not have to have done that all by hand!

In other news:

Hansie boy had a birthday!

Seven!

He keeps talking about how Goldie will, hopefully, be back just in time to see him baptized next year. 

In the meantime, we are back to that little trio of children all being a year apart (7, 8, and 9) which I always like. And seven seems like a pretty good age for a boy to be.

I love that little phase of missing front teeth.

And, before we leave off this post, two last photos:

Starling and Mette. I don't know anything else to tell you. I just found it on my phone. (I only know it's Mette because she got those roller-skates for Christmas and they have pretty much replaced her actual feet. She has them on at all times.)

We found a bin of $4 ties at the BDO recently. When we showed Anders the original $70 price-tag on his tie, he highlighted the price and said he was going to wear it with the tag still on for all to see that he had such a rich-boy tie. Classy.

Wind, Snow, and Prayers

Friday evening.

The wind has crashed and whirled--mercilessly--for the last 24 hours. All Thursday night I woke expecting (though never finding) a "school is cancelled" notification on my phone, and the fields behind us look swept and barren (though gusts of snow keep blowing--tumbleweed like--over the brittle and dusted grass).

The snow wasn't simply wind-swept off into the sky, however. In fact, it appears that all if it--from all of the stretches of open pasture behind our house--was blown to one central gathering spot at the end of our driveway just where it dips up to meet the road. And three times today (one of the times in tears of frustration) I've found myself desperately shoveling packed and heavy snow away from the tires of cars stuck trying to go into or out of our driveway. 

But, as we drove to school this morning (too cold to walk to the bus stop), I looked over my shoulder to see Summer with her head bowed and eyes closed--clearly in a quiet little prayer for our safety and the safety of Mike and Penny and Jesse who had left to work and school before us. And when it appeared the wheels were going to start spinning, one of the other kids said an out-loud prayer that we wouldn't get stuck (and that time we didn't). 

Later when we were stuck and I'd shoveled till I could hardly move my arms anymore--only to get just as stuck after two more feet of driving--and it was clear I was near tears, Penny said matter-of-factly and reassuringly, "Well, we just better pray then." (And then, when the shoveling and kids pushing from behind on the second attempt was successful, reminded me that I needed to thank Heavenly Father. [She often reminds me to pray my thanks when prayers have been answered.])

And of course I know as well as anyone knows that prayers are very often not answered the way we hoped. Still, I thought of Lehi--who wasn't able to really give Nephi all of the things he knew and had experienced but who was able to teach him "somewhat in all [his] learning"; and it seemed a small miracle, worth rejoicing over, that somehow I'd managed to teach my kids somewhat of my learning and that they know, instinctively, to pray. They might forget or doubt in periods of their life. But I've seen it in all of them. It's something they know.

Out with the old and all that ...

Dec. 28th was my 47th birthday. The 29th was our 24th anniversary. And the 1st was ... well, the New Year! (Welcome 2024.)

I like celebrating a new year of life for me, a new year of being married to Mike and the new calendar year beginning all as one big event, but I can't say I did a lot of thoughtful reminiscing about the old or pondering and planning for the new. Most of my birthday was spent in a state of packing and readying everything for a trip to the cabin (and then unpacking everything upon arrival at the cabin), and most of the New Year's celebrations were spent with both Mike and I feeling a bit sick but still trying for some bit of "Happy New Year!"ing with the kids.

Still, just a moment's pause to think about it all even just right now, as I type, does remind me that last year was quite a year for us. The packing and uprooting of all our lives and all that had been familiar to all of our children, the adjusting to new places and new people and new schools for all of our kids, our Goldie not only making the move with us but also leaving on her mission. It certainly wasn't nothing. That much is true. And it's remarkable that we lived through so much change when none of it was even known as we rang in the last new year. It's boggling to me whenever I've experienced a year of so much change to think back on year-ago-me and think, "And she knew none of this! Think of that! None of it!" Well. What an interesting business this living life is.

Anyway. From the birthday/anniversary/New Year's weekend (in a bit of a mixed order as I didn't take many pictures and have grabbed this assortment from the few I took mixed with ones from Mike and Daisy):

Snap circuits.

Mike took the kids sledding on one of the days when I was feeling the most unwell.

New Year's Eve is primarily a night of playing an assortment of games (and having root beer floats). (This year New Year's was also on a Sunday so we attended the Garden City visitor's ward--which was woefully unprepared for the enormous number of people that showed up. They said they set up 920 chairs, and there were still people standing everywhere anyone could stand!)

I mentioned these aren't in a tidy order. Here I am with the very fuzzy Wrangler blanket Mike gave me on my birthday. (It made the weekend up there much cozier to be sure.)

Mike and some of the kids wandered about Garden City one of the days while I went on a run in town (as the roads by the cabin were too icy). I found them again after by this bear.

There isn't much open in Garden City in the winter, but the kids did tend for Mike and I to go to dinner on our anniversary, and Mike did buy me an extra-large amount of chocolate covered raspberries as well as this lovely Beaver Mountain snow cap.

I love my kids laughing together.

After our game playing and root beer floats we drove into town to watch them light that year's giant Christmas tree on fire (no rules against burning pines in proper Sabbath-day observance I don't suppose :)).

A few of the kids even managed to nab the last of the free hot cocoa cups.

And that appears to be the end of the pictures. So happy 24 years to me and Mike (now officially married longer than we were single), happy nearly one billion years to me (how can I still think I'm relatively young when I'm nearly an old old woman?), and happy New Year! 

And with that a prompt adieu.