At night, when I go to tuck Olivia in, jammies on, teeth brushed, Daisy curled up beside her, her room awash in the pink of her Ikea daisy night light, Olivia always asks:
“Tell me a story of when you were a little girl.”
Sometimes she gets specific: Tell me a story of when you were a kid and you had halloween – or a birthday – or you were my age – or you were Abbey’s age – etc. etc.
But she wants to hear tales of my own childhood. I don’t have any idea where she got the need to hear the lores of her own parents youth. I don’t know why she thinks they make the best stories. But each night I am stumped.
I try to remember – interesting things that I have done; fun things I have done; great things that I have done . . . that don’t include ridiculous mischief that will spur on the mischief in my own children.
One time Wyatt told the kids of how he and his brothers used to play king of the hill on the bunk bed – throwing each other off onto a pile of blankets below. The very next day I came in to find the kids doing the exact same thing. Seriously, Wyatt!
So I try to think of things that won’t induce my own children to wild and reckless behavior. They can come up with that sort of stuff on their own.
Trouble is, such stories are hard to find.
The ones I remember involve search and rescue, or calls from the school, or trips to the ER, or a neighbor’s roof.
But then every once in a while I have fleeting moments where I remember a little something – a story to tell Olivia.
I’m going to write those down – stories for her, and for me, so she will have a part of me forever, and I will remember that not all my life involved ill conceived mischief of one kind or another.
That lives behind my house – just on the other side of the fence. I love her. Ironically, in my mind I call her “the Spider tree.” I don’t exactly know why. But she’s gorgeous. And she makes me happy. Like when I look over and see her autumn leaves in the late slanted afternoon sun, I think how amazing it is to see all those colors glowing, glowing, and I know that little tree is doing her very best to make her small spot of the world so much the more beautiful.
One thing about my life the past year or so, is that I have no time for photography. Even if I happen to get a picture, and so often I don’t, having the time to put the picture on my computer, edit it and upload it for printing or blogging is almost impossible! So I do photography is sporadic spurts. And the quality of the pictures is going down . . . down . . . down.
Here is a sampling of what has happened in the past three weeks -
I have a goal to start writing posts without parenthesis (I use them a lot to explain things that don’t really need to be explained.) Do you think I can do it?
This is a digital illustration I started years later of the Lemon Galleon I made on the reservation. I obviously never finished the illustration, but you get the idea.
When I lived on the Indian Reservation I made a lemon galleon out of paper mache.
And then I made fish to swim along side.
Paper mache fish with giant kissy lips and beauty marks and fake eyelashes.
And jellyfish with irredescent tentacles.
And then my friends made some too. Between all of us we made a plethora of fishies in a variety of characters. Emily made me my own bride fish and groom fish.
It was glorious.
And then, because we lived in a double wide with a vaulted ceiling, we hung our lovely creations from the ceiling with fishing line.
So that when we sat up at night and discussed the heavy things twenty year old philosophers carried, there was a whimsy of water love above our heads.
Remember that part in The Hiding Place where the sister, the one who isn’t in the book very much, well, the Nazi’s show up at her house, and ask her point blank if her housekeeper is a Jew.
And the housekeeper is more than an employee, she’s a dear and loved friend. And the sister is horrified by what is happening to the Jews. And the whole situation is just tragic.
But the sister has such faith in God, such total belief in Him.
All she knows is that God told her not to lie.
So she tells the truth.
And they immediately take the housekeeper away.
And later the housekeeper is let go. And she’s never bothered again, even though they know she’s a Jew.
And it’s because God intervenes – he shows his hand to those with faith.
That part made me cry.
I wonder if I know anyone, anyone in my whole life who believes God that much.
in highschool, I had silver shoes. Not grey, mind you, not pewter. Sparkly shiney patent leather silver Mary Jane shoes. Platforms, of course.
I wore my silver shoes with my tie-dyed tights. Bright color splashed across my calves, over my knees, and up my thighs under my dress.
A silvery-golden moonlight colored dress . . . think of the glimmer left behind by a snail in the mornings on the sidewalk. The skirt of the dress was polyester, the sort that doesn’t wrinkle, even if you wad it up into your suitcase. The bodice was satin and shimmery.
Over the dress I added another skirt – strips of shear organza in every color: pinks and yellows and blues and purples and every color in between. The colors fell over my hips and down my legs, and as I moved another color would appear as they combined together to create new layers of transparency.
On my head I wore a crown of star confetti in a wreath; with ribbons of all colors cascading in curls and streamers down my back.
And around my waist I wore a golden cord, with a bag of three goldfish swimming, suspended from the knot tied at my hip.
When I walked into school that day, Mr. Rosett stopped me in the hall. “What are you?” he asked.
“A rainbow.” I told him.
I think that might have been the only time I met Mr. Rosett’s approval.
That was the last year I went trick-or-treating too.
As one final hurrah to summer we went to a cabin with my family.
We:
fished on the lake in canoes did art projects watched old Disney movies went shooting went 4-wheeling sat in the hot tub explored played in the fort outside made blanket forts inside ate mo’ yummy food played games generally hung out
It was a great weekend. At one point Wyatt and I had gone 4 wheeling, and we found this really long, crazy trail into the BEAUTIFUL mountains, and we stopped and talked about how glad we were that we did fun things! HURRAY for summer.
Plans for this weekend: sit at home and do nothing!
Labor Day weekend was everything it was supposed to be – a holiday of relaxing.
Wyatt worked on the roof a little. Then we were going to go to the mountains for a hike. But Wyatt remembered last minute that the BYU game was on . . . so a quick trip to Sonic for some drinks and a trip to the park was it for us. Then we came home and Wyatt watched the game while the kids played and I slept.
Sunday we were invited by our friends, the Engh’s to have dutch oven dinner in the canyon. They were more gung-ho than we were, and actually camped all weekend. We just drove up for the evening (and the next morning too for breakfast). We sang campfire songs and told stories (no ghost stories for the littles though!) and Kellie and I made dutch oven brownies which was a riot because 1) Ejo took the margarine, so we didn’t have that – 2) Kellie scrambled the eggs instead of tempering them first (but we didn’t tell anyone and no one commented. Good thing it was totally dark so no one could see to closely) and 3) we didn’t have a measuring cup for the cocoa, so um – they were a little bitter. But with the ice cream they were great! Kellie and I just laughed our heads off while we were making them, which made people a little suspicious. But everyone ate them, and there weren’t too many complaints. It was a lot of fun! Thank you Engh’s for the invite!
And Monday we went to Jena’s house for a fun BBQ. I’ll admit I was mo’ tired (something about being up with a newborn all night). But everyone had a good time, and the kids LOVED playing with the new kittens.
As a final hurrah we went to the Dinosaur Museum one last time. It was, as always, tons of fun. Afterward we got ice cream played in a kid water feature that I never knew existed until Emmett showed it to us. Lovely end to summer.
This year Olivia will start kindergarten. I’ve already spent my tears on this reality.
Not only that, but my buddy, SuperCal will start pre-school. I will miss him so much.
So it has been a busy two weeks trying to get them both ready for their new adventures while taking time to enjoy my little Roo and also their last few days of freedom.
I started a tradition last year of a back to school dinner. It was a lot of fun to do last year, and so I planned another one this year. But, are you surprised, it was even BIGGER this year!
The theme for our 2011-2012 school year is “Seek Learning” from the D&C – because the first step in education is wanting to be educated. I know Olivia and Calvin both have a thirst for knowledge and a pride in their progress, so I think this will be a great focus for our year.
This year’s dinner featured:
Lime Chicken Tacos
Spanish Rice
Summer Salsa
Corn on the Cob
Watermelon
Raspberry Lemonade (real raspberry lemonade)
& Summer Peach Pie a’la mode.
YUM.
Our theme is "Seek Learning"
I decorated the table with all things kids - and I laughed at this vignette.
Our beautiful flowers were provided by my dad.
Our table with Olivia & Cal's back to school gifts - friendship balls. (I made the gift boxes myself!)
In preparation for school to start, I told Olivia she would be doing her kindergarten testing. I meant for it to be exciting – something to look forward to. I’m not sure it had that effect. All week she prayed to Heavenly Father in her nightly prayers – “Please help me to do well on my test so I can go to kindergarten.” I explained to her that it wasn’t that type of a test, and that she would get to go to school for sure. But still, every night she prayed.
So today I took her to her test. My mom watched the boys and just Olivia and I drove up to the school. She got to meet her teacher, and then took the test, which took all of fifteen minutes.
Afterwards we went to Old McDonalds because there was a new playground and Olivia has been asking to go to it for weeks. I think she was pretty happy with the whole event. And it was fun to spend some special time with my girl before school starts.
Last night Leslee came over and painted my toes. I’ve always made her give me a pedicure before each baby. I think this time she was sick of it because she bought me a gift certificate for a mani/pedi. But alas, I was too late to make my appointment, so she came and gave me one anyway. We’ll go for the salon treatment after the baby comes.
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After she left, I was in tears. I was so sore, and I just wanted this baby to come, and my doctors appointment earlier that day had been so discouraging. I finally asked Wyatt for a blessing.
In the blessing he told me to be patient while I wait for this baby to come (and lots of other comforting things). I tried to imagine baby Boy, his last moments in Heaven, receiving his final instruction. I don’t know if that’s how it goes down or not, but I was sure I didn’t want to be the cause of a sooner-than-planned send off from Heaven.
So I decided I could be patient.
And all night while I slept, I thought about how I really wanted to go into labor, to have this baby. But then I kept remembering that I was supposed to be patient. And the conflicting realities made my sleep rather restless.
Finally I got up at six am, no longer willing to have this mental battle while trying to sleep. I came and sat on the couch and watched the grey morning light and listened to absolute silence and tried to figure out just how one goes about being patient for something one has NO patience for.
And I decided that gratitude is the key.
Gratitude that even though I’m not going into labor, I’m not one who is in labor for a month before the baby comes (that sounds really uncomfortable and annoying. I’ve always been able to be active all they way up to the very very end).
Gratitude that my sunflowers are blooming, because all winter long when I was sick, I imagined what it would be like to bring my baby home to a backyard of sunflowers.
And gratitude that I do have more time to finish more projects. Because certainly, the projects never end.
And gratitude that Wyatt is getting so much done. Good grief, the list goes on and on with what he’s done around here the past two weeks. (As I type this he is assembling three new dressers, one for each boy).
Gratitude that there is still a constant flow of help and service by those around me – friends who take my kids while I nap, or are available on a moments notice for fun maternity pictures, and sisters who paint my toe nails, even though they didn’t want to.
And especially gratitude that I have three healthy, happy, rambunctious children, who have been drilled all week to not make a mess, and still are happy as can be.
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After I determined all this, I decided I would fill my time with work – the surest way to distraction and satisfaction. So today I set about again to accomplish things:
-Really put the baby room together, cleaned out the closet, set up the baby monitor, hung new mobile, washed chair cover and newborn clothes.
-Cleaned the house to a respectable level, including this mess . . .
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I think of this every time I clean my kitchen.
-Got three new dressers for boys rooms. YEAH!
So all in all it was a good day. Hurray for babies – coming in their own due time.
Projects continue in flurry around here. Yesterday Wyatt painted and trimmed the shed. Tonight he put the shingles on it. He also put the washer/dryer up on their pedestals (that have been sitting in the basement for three years). In the mean time, I ran errands like a crazy bird, getting everything ready for Olivia to register for kindergarten in two days, and taking Calvin to choose his birthday present, as per the gift card he received in the mail yesterday from Grandma and Grandpa Brock (THANK YOU!) and other things that just need to get done.
And we went to the Dinosaur Museum.
And as I came home, I decided I am done. I am . . . s0 . . . tired . . .
So I’m going to stay home until baby comes. The little ones are going to have to play at home for the rest of the summer, which when I say it out loud, doesn’t sound so bad. I mean, do kids really need to be carted somewhere for some activity every other day? (I don’t even post about half of the activities we do – trips to Wheeler Farm or the pool or the park . . .) Can’t they just enjoy the reality of boredom. It will be good for them I think.
The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grass uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again. Sometimes I followed the sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that the sunflowers were introduced into that country by the Mormons; that at the time of the persecution, when they left Missouri and struck out into the wilderness to find a place where they could worship God in their own way, the members of the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sunflower seed as they went. The next summer, when the long trains of wagons came through with all the women and children, they had the sunflower trail to follow. I believe that botanists do not confirm Fuchs’s story, but insist that the sunflower was native to those plains. Nevertheless, that legend has stuck in my mind, and sunflower-bordered roads always seem to me the roads to freedom. — Willa Cather
Artsy Fartsy
Now I’m on Instagram! {Even More Pictures to Take}
As a final hurrah we went to the Dinosaur Museum one last time. It was, as always, tons of fun. Afterward we got ice cream played in a kid water feature that I never knew existed until Emmett showed it to us. Lovely end to summer.
