crazy 'bout elvis, loves horses

Ever since I started blogging I've been terrible at keeping up on my journal. I kept a journal in spurts while I was growing up, only recording memorable experiences like the first time I bobbed my hair, or the first youth dance I attended, where I danced with an older boy from my ward (a quote from that entry: ". . . and I think I am falling for him in a big way"--horrors!). But when I graduated from high school I started dating a boy who was, quite honestly, above my pay grade. He was ambitious and responsible and funny, and when he left for his mission he gave me a journal. After that I wrote in a journal every day until I got married and had kids and then it all went down the crapper. But then blogging came along, and I've been doing that, but it's not journal-ey stuff. I feel kind of bad about that.

Grant is adjusting so much better to big kid school than I did. I spent six years in a constant state of anxiety about lockers and friends and P.E. He is in my mom's class, being smart, making new friends, enjoying the cachet of being a locker user, and generally being the best he's been since he was born, I think. I always want a well-adjusted eleven-year-old at my house.

Emmett is gifted, LIKE YOU DIDN'T ALREADY KNOW THAT, sometimes practices the piano, and knows all the Value Tales backwards and front. I'm hoping he'll learn compassion and empathy, since currently he has all the signs of a Bond villain in the making. He is very happy, but he is the smartest bear in any given room.

Ike is motivated by positive reinforcement. When he wants to do something he begs and pleads and pesters like a dog with a bone. He will not shut up about it even when we make ridiculous threats, like "If you ask me one more time if you can play with a friend today, you will never have another friend over ever again.!" He has finally figured out syllables, which were just about the death of both him and me last year.

Willa loves school, and so far has only had to sit on the Naughty Chair once. There is a Power Pillow, which I remember from when Ike was there, but evidently Mrs. Jones has added the Naughty Chair--for especially egregious offenses, I guess. She sucks her fingers all the time, so I've started in with the Prince Charles technique (patent pending). It goes like this: "If you keep sucking your fingers you'll look like Prince Charles when you grow up." It worked like a charm to get Ike to stop sucking his thumb.

planning ahead

Willa: "Mom, will you sign me up to ride a sheep at the county fair?"

Me: "Sure."

Willa: "Okay. I might need a hat, so the sheep doesn't stomp on my head."

and under the steak is a scabby bandaid

Once while teaching a RS lesson I was trying to say that it's unfair to marry someone who can't take you to the temple, and then move the goal posts on him and expect him to change into a faithful member of the LDS church. What seemed to come out instead, according to the heated responses I got in class, was "if you marry someone who can't take you to the temple he'll never change and you'll never be happy." It was a real mess. I still feel awful about the whole thing.

The Sunday before last we had a surprise stake conference. We were stoked, because what if they were telling us to pack up and head to Missouri? We'd get all the good houses, score! What if the prophet came? Or at the very least, an apostle? The YW second counselor and I told our Beehives to be sure to go to stake conference, and Ellen said it would be an experience they'd never forget. Well, we got a couple of seventies. They gave good talks, as did a girl from Honeyville First Ward, but I'd be lying if I didn't say it was a bit of a letdown. I felt bad that we oversold it to the Beehives so bad. Oh well, at least they didn't group-excommunicate our stake.

I wish moms would stop buying skanky clothes for their daughters.

The end.

baby ride your firebolt

At the beginning of the summer I was a little worried. Last summer went really well, and I enjoyed the time with my kids so much that I wasn't even counting the moments until they went back to school and left me the hell alone. It seemed too much to hope, too greedy, that this summer would be equally pleasant.

But maybe what they say about attitude determining your altitude which gives you the latitude of verisimilitude blah blah blah . . . how does that go? Anyway, maybe if you have a good attitude you have more fun, because I have been pretty happy this summer. It helps that Grant is old enough to keep an eye on everybody for a little while here and there if I need to step out, so I don't have the albatross of four children to take on every single errand into every single store with me, because that is a big old drag.

We've gone here and there and had vacations and family reunions and drive-in movies and water parks and cookouts and fun with cousins and productive time spent weeding and doing chores, and it's all been pretty great. They get so useful as they age! Plus kind of fun to be with, and not in a "I'm their mom, so I love them" kind of way, but as actual companions, people you'd purposely choose to spend time with! I'm sorry to have to go back to emptying and refilling the dishwasher on my own again. I'm sorry to have to start making sack lunches again. I'm sorry to return to the punishing schedule of school and extracurricular activities. I'm sorry I'll have to resume detoxing their brains and spirits at the end of each corrosive day in our public school system.

But onward and upward, I suppose.

we sing with one accord

This weekend at our family reunion we were doing some reflecting.

Normally for the Herd reunion we go camping in the semi-wilderness, with no shade, no grass, and no indoor plumbing. I was brought up this way, and have used many a fallen log as a makeshift toilet, and many a leaf of mullein or lamb's ear as toilet paper. We used to sleep in tents, even. Paleolithic! But nowadays everybody has trailers (except us, because: poor) and portable stoves, so it's really not even camping. We have become so coddled, in fact, that we complain about the amount of dirt at our usual reunions. But you have to understand: the dirt in question is that fine, soft, silty stuff that gets everywhere, and with which you become one on a molecular level.

So this year, when we got to spread out all over my aunt Lorraine's acre of backyard grass, was a marked improvement. I want to always have our reunions there. Everyone else agreed, except maybe my grandpa, who is embarrassed by how soft we are. We talked about how important it is to us to have nearby running water, and plumbing, and shade and grass. We are used to these things, and we don't care to go without them, even whilst camping.

This is the fault of the pioneers. If they hadn't sacrificed, and worked themselves raw trying to create a better world for their children, often dying in the effort, we'd be sweating and struggling in primitive conditions, and we'd probably be better people for it.

I just feel disappointed that they robbed me of my chance to be a good person.

the drum beats on two notes and only on two notes

I was going to post photos of our Yellowstone trip, and maybe someday I will. But that day is not today. My remorse is minimal.

We have done a lot of stuff so far this summer. I can't even remember it all right now, but there was a family reunion in there, which was fun. We've gone swimming to Cherry Hill and Seven Peaks. We completed our first session of swimming lessons. Everyone did well, even Grant with his curly, infection-prone Eustachian tubes. Those little rubbery earplugs that look like tiny Christmas trees were the ticket.

Willa might be our best child. She is surprisingly helpful, and often really obedient. I don't know what's going on there.

Ike knows how to ride a bike, which he often does barefoot or wearing irrigating boots.

Emmett is a champion hair grower, and likes to ride his bike with Ike. He wears irrigating boots, too.

Grant has taken over his piano instruction and is progressing rapidly.

I have been amazing at taking care of our goats and weeding the garden with the kids. It's a watershed year.

John's heart may or may not be exploding. He's downplaying it. Other than that he's doing a lot of singing and letting me talk him into running for city council.

And that's all the muck that's fit to rake for right now.

suddenly the wheels are in motion

Yesterday I gave the boys haircuts. When I started cutting Ike's hair he asked me not to buzz it, and I said "I'm just going to give you the same haircut as Dad." He said, "Okay, but don't do the hole in it (pointing to the top of his head). Don't do the hole right here that Dad has."