the retrograde plight of a young man asking for a title transfer

Oof, so much time since last I updated.

In June we went to Mexico where we ate paletas and fish tacos like bosses, then we went to the Utah Summer Games where Grant's soccer team took the silver medal in their division, then I went to girls' camp where I got out of crafts by being in the kitchen, then John got knee surgery, then we went to a family reunion near Evanston where we kayaked and rode horses, then we went to another family reunion where we learned how to applaud growth, and that took us into July.

In July we watched fireworks and ate many meats, then Grant and Emmett and John went to scout camp where they got very very dirty, then Grant went to Boston and New York for his cousin trip with Elain where he saw the sights of Boston and went to Wicked and the sacred grove and has returned to us a very sophisticated young man (not really), then we went to another family reunion where we patted ourselves on the back about our kids, who are second cousins, playing so well with each other.  Later this week I'm flying to Orlando to meet John at his work conference and I am going to be the weird lady tooling around Harry Potter land by herself.

In August we are going to Port Townsend, and I think we might try to pop over to Canada for a minute, because why not?  Then it will be the county fair, then school starts, then Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and so on.

major undeserved award

There is a bird refuge near here, and every year the kids in the local elementary schools draw a picture of a bird and submit it for the chance to do a big version on a street banner.  Grant got to do it when he was young, and both Emmett and Ike got chosen this year, which I am stoked about.  A few days before they drew their pictures I had this conversation with Ike:
Ike:  "I'm going to draw a toucan for my bird picture."
Me:  "Well, I guess you can draw a toucan, but you're supposed to draw birds that live in Utah."
Ike:  "I don't care.  I want a toucan."
Me:  "Okay, but you won't get picked."

Weeks pass, and we get the letters that say Ike and Emmett both get to go draw bird banners.  We went for the party yesterday, and they were having a little bit of trouble finding Ike's original picture.  He didn't remember what the bird's name was, but he remembered that it was black and red and yellow, so of course we all thought, "Oh, a red-winged blackbird," but Ike said, "No, it definitely wasn't that.  I don't remember what it was called, but I'd know it if I saw it."  We had to go through the folder three times before we found his picture, and darn if that little rascal hadn't drawn a toucan, but then written "Lazuli Bunting" at the bottom of the paper.  And I was like, "Nope.  We're drawing the real bird."  The Bunting turned out pretty nice, but Ike did have to threaten to fire me if I didn't stop trying to draw it for him.  Emmett drew a Belted Kingfisher, which he has drawn every year, and he finally won.  The posters go up on June 16th, so if you're in the area keep your eyes peeled for ours.

Willa got her tonsils out last month, and the doctor said they were so huge that if she'd gotten sick it would have been life-threatening.  She was a great patient and only missed a week of school.  She hardly ate any popsicles or ice cream, mostly she just wanted chicken and stars soup.  Stars are the best noodle shape when you're sick.  I can't remember where I bought them and now I am sad because we've eaten the whole package.

well there's no fire in the fireplace, there's no carpet on the floor

Ugh, kids learning to play an instrument are THE WORST.  Maybe I was just as bad when I started piano, but I don't remember resisting counting the music the way my kids all have.  They just plow doggedly ahead, playing it incorrectly, refusing any attempts at correction, and insisting that they are playing it the same way I am.  Spoiler:  THEY'RE NOT.  My experiences with Ike have set back my course for the celestial kingdom by a good five years.  There have been some regrettable words and actions concerning the counting.  Any piano folks out there:  how do you get them to count?  Without murdering them in the process?

Grant is playing early morning basketball at the high school gym three times a week (when he gets up), is doing one last basketball league before summer, and has started spring soccer.  He had to write three poems for his Language Arts class and he was a giant baby about it because he says he hates poetry.  Pfft, who doesn't?  That's rude--some poetry is very nice.  But just like owning a camera doesn't make you a photographer, knowing how to rhyme does not make you a poet.  He recently read the Maze Runner series, and now we're reading "The Jungle" together.  I have warned him that it's going to be a total downer, but he is going to thank me when he gets to a class that makes him read it.

Emmett got up last night to watch the lunar eclipse.  He says it was cool.  He has applied to be a Peer Sports Adviser at school, and we like to imagine that it's not only because he likes to have control over other people.  He loved P.E., except for the wrestling segment, because wrestling is weird.  Who wants to wear a swimsuit and roll around in somebody else's sweat?  Emmett is playing rec soccer and scored last week.  He is reading another of Carl Hiaasen's books--I got him "Hoot" for Christmas, and now he's reading "Chomp."  They seem like a lot of fun.

Ike has started playing comp soccer and wants to wear his uniform all day every day.  He loves school, loves his teacher, and loved taking his core test yesterday.  He wants to play the trombone.  He is a very passionate, tenderhearted and obstinate little fellow.  He likes things to go his way, but not in a spoiled way.  He just doesn't like change or uncertainty, and is very hard to talk down once he gets upset about something.  He is reading "Flush," another by Carl Hiaasen.

Willa is getting her tonsils out next week.  She got tonsillitis a couple of months ago, then got it again a few weeks later, and the swelling never really went down.  Her tonsils are so big I don't know how she eats or breathes.  We would have liked to keep them in, but when your tonsils are not performing their duty, and in fact are actively working against you, then it seems like maybe they should go.  I have had a number of older people say they wish they had gotten theirs out as children because they have so many problems with them now.  Willa, like Bill Cosby before her, is very excited about the popsicles and ice cream and pudding, but I'm sure she will suffer a similar disillusionment when she wakes up from the surgery and finds that the world is naught but misery and woe.  She is also playing rec soccer and scored last week.  I'm going to start her on piano lessons soon so she can eventually move up to the banjo, which is her new obsession after we went into KSM last week to buy guitar picks.  She said, "I can learn to play the song that Frog plays!"  Because she calls Kermit and Miss Piggy "Frog and Pig," which is awesome of her.  She is reading "Little Bear" by Maurice Sendak.  She wants a chapter book with no pictures, so we'll be on the lookout for that.  I don't know if she's ready to read "My Father's Dragon" by herself quite yet, but we could probably read it with her.

I am still practicing the guitar and learning Spanish and attempting to be a halfway decent Young Women's president.  Nothing else too exciting.

John is coaching Willa's soccer team and has grown some pointy sideburns that some people say make him look like he's in a play.  He is still the Primary chorister and still feels like it's the best job in the church.

Groceries keeps barfing on the floor, Rex keeps being good, the goats are pregnant, the chickens are not laying eggs, and the rabbits and bees are all still alive.

blacker than night were the eyes of felina

Boy, if only I had a dollar for every time I've called John to say, "Read my blog and see if it's offensive."

Grant is doing basketball like always, and soccer.  He did Honor Band last week, his birthday is this week and he can't think of anything he wants because he is "at the age where everything sucks."  Poor lamb.  He is doing well in school and is trying to become a quadruple threat--academics, athletics, music and something else as yet undetermined.  I will try to steer him toward "treating others kindly."

Emmett is trying to bear his burden of crooked refs at the intermediate school who seem determined to hold back Emmett's handball and dodgeball teams.  He is trying to get away with as little piano practice as possible.  We are going to get him some solid foam tires so he can start riding his bike again.  He is also doing well in school, even though he has to write essays in Language Arts and he hates writing essays because they are so dumb and they are about the dumbest things, even grandma agrees it's a stupid topic.

Ike is trying to train to swim in the Utah Summer Games, and has started playing competitive soccer.  Grant does it for the shoes; Ike does it for the jerseys.  He is pretty willing to practice his piano.  He is doing better in school now that he doesn't hold a book inside his textbook and read while he's supposed to be working.

Willa has had tonsillitis twice in the past month, and her tonsils are still almost touching in the back, but we are going to do our best to prevent a relapse.  She thinks her voice "sounds cuter now," and I was like "Um, that's a bunch of snot in your throat making you sound like that."  She loves her school teacher and I am so, so thankful we transferred her out of that other class.  She has excelled in this class and progressed really quickly.  She'd probably still be trying to figure out how to read her first sight word page if she hadn't switched.

John and the boys went to Mexico to help build a house for a family whose house burned down on Christmas Eve.  It's through a charity run by John's former boss, and they all loved it and are begging to go on the family trip in June, but I think we'll wait until next year when Willa will be old enough to come along as well.  But we are going back to Mexico this summer--just not to build a house.  I love Mexico!  Finally our stupid time shares are starting to pay off.

whoops there goes another rubber tree plant

John and the boys went to Mexico last week to build houses for a charity run by one of John's friends.  He takes a group of people, sometimes families, sometimes fathers-and-sons, sometimes corporate groups, down to Tijuana about nine or ten times a year and builds houses for people.  Nothing fancy, but with a cement floor, running water and electricity.  Emmett and Ike were not technically old enough to go, but they got permission and it turned out just fine.  Grant impressed everybody, and people were saying to John, "I can tell you guys live on a farm, because that boy can work."  Ha, not really.  There are some farm boys around here--the ones that live on real farms, not this loser of a fantasy farm experiment we're conducting--who would put Grant to shame in a big hurry.  One boy in particular who just left on his mission would be basically like having Thor help you build a house.  But if Grant can outwork a bunch of doughy subdivision boys then my mission is successful.  Emmett and Ike didn't quite blow everybody away with their sheer brute strength, but they were good, willing helpers, and I'm sure they'll come into their own.

Willa and I hung out here and didn't do anything too exciting.  We went to a toy store, got some horrible Chinese food, went to the Idle Isle candy store, helped my mom make 300+ cinnamon rolls for a wedding reception, and watched a fair amount of figure skating.  She and Ike have dreams of skating in the Olympics, which is neat.  They can put them on the dream shelf next to Grant's of playing in the NBA.  Emmett does not have any such pie-in-the-sky hopes, because he is eminently practical.

how could she treat us so thoughtlessly

This weekend we went up to visit Grandma Maxine, and stopped to say hey to Grandma Herd while we were at it.  Ike wants to follow my uncle Craig around the ranch like a little puppy dog and "help" him do all the chores.  I joked about having Ike go do a ranch internship there when he graduates from high school, but we all know that John and I have robbed our children of the opportunity to learn thrift and industry, so he would probably be the worst intern ever, aside from me.  Grant got introduced to both "Downton Abbey" and "Sherlock" in the same night and is now obsessed and ready to jettison "Agents of Shield" in favor of watching through the "Sherlock" catalog.  I think he could tell that it was Grown Up television and it made him feel smart.  I always love visiting Grandma Maxine, because it reminds me that if you are awesome people will visit you even if you don't have an enormous fancypants house.  We are holdouts, Grandma and I, with our cute little old houses.

Grandma Herd is motoring along like usual, and seems to finally be getting over the awful cough she got over Christmas, so I guess it wasn't whooping cough after all, which means all the weird anti-vaccine people in Utah County have not earned painful retribution from me . . . yet.  Emmett and Ike and Willa climbed the mountain while John and Grant and I visited with Grandma and lamented our respective ward choir difficulties.  The kids didn't bring back any reports of dead deer in the cave, but the season is young yet, and so far the winter has been mild, so there's still a chance.  Grandma let the kids pick a little present, and the boys each got one of Grandpa's pocketknives.  I like that they'll have a little something to remember Grandpa by.  Grant has already had his taken away and a figurative corner torn off his Totin' Chip (oh, the unending lameness of the Boy Scout dialect) because he insisted on playing with it open on the leather couches.

Emmett and Ike are finally going to start swimming again, which is good, because they are both little slug people.  Willa is playing basketball and is so self-conscious that she runs around on her tiptoes during the games.  I'm glad we're addressing this now, because I was forever turned off of sports when my friend teased me about the terrible layup I did when I was thirteen.  I don't want Willa to feel like failure once means failure always.  If we can keep our kids from becoming locked in a fixed mindset it will be a monumental achievement.

say, you think santa likes gumbo?

This morning when I got up I started a load of darks, and then twenty minutes later when Ike finally dragged himself upstairs he looked at the washer and said, "Well, now I don't have a way to have my legs not freeze!"  You see, he had been keeping all of his jeans in the dirty clothes basket, and they weren't dirty.  I asked him why he was keeping his clean pants in the dirty clothes basket instead of in the drawer with the other clean clothes, but he was past reason.  He spent the rest of the morning sulking and stomping and decrying the unfairness of it all--the unfairness, let us not forget, of me washing the pants he'd put into the dirty clothes basket.  Finally, as the bus was making the stop right before ours he decided he would rather wear a pair of pants one size up than wait for the dirty clean pants to finish washing and drying and pay me three dollars to drive him to school.  Then I got to drive Grant to school ($5) because he waited until his bus was coming down the hill to tell me that the goats were out of water, and p.s. he hadn't eaten breakfast or brushed his teeth or washed his face or combed his hair.  But it's not HIS fault he feels like crap in the morning (I'm sure it has nothing to do with refusing to ever go to bed on time).  So it was a party, is what I'm trying to say.

We had a delightful Thanksgiving, and are now becoming ever more agitated in our anticipation of Christmas.  I think I bought too many presents this year.  I feel gross.  And although it's hard to backpedal on an arms race, or for the president to give back powers that he has previously enjoyed, next year I am going to do just that--one present, one book.  So get ready to be deprived, children.  I don't need to be raising superconsumers.

John went to New York last week for work and went up to the Statue of Liberty's crown.  He saw Newsies.  He looked at a bunch of buildings.  He did not eat a cronut, because it would probably make him die of diverticulitis or something.