Bits from my day

My first day of school do-over day went great. Last night Randy gave both Landon and Whitney blessings for the new school year, so I can exhale now. Also, I asked Whitney what she would like for her special breakfast and she said, "cinnamon rolls, 3 of them." That was easy for me since we buy the tubes of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls. This morning all I had to do was preheat the oven because she wanted to put them on the tray. Nice. She also had cantaloupe (which she loves) and was so happy about it that she used her fork and cantaloupe as a microphone and ran around singing to the song on the radio.

This is her giddy face, but with her missing teeth and squished posture she looks like a constipated vampire. Hopefully it's just temporary.

Today was the first time I ever experienced excitement about being the one to open a new jar of Nutella, but after Kristi's cute post last week about leaving a message in the new jar of peanut butter I couldn't help but try it out myself. I couldn't get a very clear picture of it, but you get the idea. Nutella is a bit goopier than peanut butter so I hope it's still there the next time Landon goes to use it. Thanks for the cute idea Kristi.

This afternoon the kids and I went to visit an old lady from our ward. The compassionate service committee is scheduling people to go visit her once a day because she's home alone all the time, doesn't see well and fell last week and hurt her leg. The kids and I have visited her before to take her dinner awhile ago so we felt more comfortable this time around. She's pretty chatty and can remember things from a very long time ago. I asked her about the enormous tree in her yard because she's lived in this house so long I figured she could have planted it. It turns out that she and her husband moved into this house in 1938 and planted the tree in 1939 (I didn't have my purse with my camera in it with me or I would have taken a picture), it's a remarkable tree.

After visiting May we hurried home to get Whitney ready for her soccer pictures. She actually hurried! Whitney has never successfully hurried before, so this was a monumental day! I think she looks so cute in her soccer ensemble. She looks like an official player, especially in comparison to all the crazy kids who wear their shin guards on the outside of their socks, or with ankle length socks, or one little girl was even wearing them over her knees, it's so funny!

After the soccer game Randy took the kids home and I ran over to the school for Back To School Night. I'm still pretty much freaking out about the 28 kid-class size. I talked to my friend Betsy (who is a first grade teacher in Michigan) and she said it's illegal for their kindergartens to have more than 20 students! I didn't feel better about it after listening to the teacher tonight. I asked her if she had an aide come in at all and she said she gets an aide for a "few minutes each day so I really heavily on the parents. " Does that sound sick and wrong to anyone else? I realize it's only day 2, but I'm not feeling good about things. (By the way, the photo is of the wall in the school with all these little people made by the kindergarteners. They were given the paper and told to make them at home and then bring them to school on their evaluation day. Guess which one is Whitney's? The huge one of course! She insisted on making a skirt and legs. A lot of the little people on the wall were darling but looked like their moms made them. I couldn't tell if Whitney's indicated that I was a good mom for letting her make it herself or if I was a bad mom for not being more involved.

After Back To School Night I decided to press my luck and go to DI for a scan of the book section. I actually got a cart this time because it wasn't crowded in there and because I always end up with more than I can comfortably carry. Tonight was my best score yet! I filled almost half the cart and was so excited about it that I was overly chatty with the sales clerk who really didn't understand or share my excitement. I got all of this for $24.75!!! This means good mail for you guys in the near future.

I saw this dresser at DI tonight and can't decide if it's heinous or if it has potential. I'm not a thrift store queen when it comes to furniture, but I also don't ever have the money to buy nice furniture so I was wondering if this was decent. It's only $55 and the drawers work pretty well. I was actually thinking about it for in the dining area under the picture frame wall because I always want a buffet-type thing there. Please tell me the truth so I know whether I should be there when they open at 10:00 tomorrow morning or if I should steer clear of it.

**What do you think about all of this?**

Book Club Birthday Dinner

So last night was my belated-birthday extravaganza with my book club friends (they're really so much more than that, but that's how we're friends so I keep calling them that) at Amy's house. She had the table all decked out and beautiful, and they'd made pork carnitas with all the fixins. I love Mexican food so I ended up eating too much feeling that awful full feeling.


The girls gave me this cute envelope with a $100 gift certificate to Paper Source! I can't seem to get enough of Paper Source cards and envelopes lately and have had Pam bring me supplies her last two visits to Utah (she lives down the street from a store, lucky girl). My goal is to make more than 24 hours without spending it because I tend to blow through gift certificates so fast that I didn't even get to enjoy the anticipation and mental pre-shopping. I only have another hour or so to go to make that goal so I think I may actually make it until tomorrow (because Randy works on the computer at night). Such self-control.

This is the awesome book Jenn created for me. She made six envelopes out of this really cute cardstock and then connected them together to make an accordion book. The girls all created an insert to put in their envelope. The theme of the book was good mail so there were addresses and postmarks and all kinds of fun postal-related things. It was so perfect for me, I just love it.

These are the pages they made. My favorite thing about these is how thoughtful and personal they are, then how cute and creative they are. It means a lot to me to read the kind things they have to say and the quotes they choose to use. It's really a priceless gift.

Inserts in order are from Amy, Collette, then Jana.

Inserts in order are from Collette, Jana, Michelle and Jenn.

We also had Michelle's fantastic vanilla-cream pie for dessert while we watched Collette's slide show from her cruise to Greece. This will come as no surprise to anyone that knows me, but I have no desire to travel to exotic places! I don't know if it's because I'm a homebody, a chicken, a chaos-a-phobe (new word), or what but I don't like to go far from home, and I especially don't like the thought of international flights, foreign languages, dirty places, and shifty foreigners. Collette's tales of Egypt did nothing to change my mind about this. I was happy to see her photos and hear about her experience, but basically felt recommitted to my nontravelling ways.

So thanks to my Book Club friends for their thoughtfulness, generosity, time and effort. It was worth the wait and I absolutely love the gift certificate and the book. Click here for the rest of the photos.

**What do you think about my birthday good fortune?
Are you a world traveler or a homebody or both?**

I need a do-over!

This morning was Whitney's first day of school and I didn't do ANY of the things I wanted to do. I blame my book club friends for keeping me out too late last night with my belated-birthday dinner. I didn't get to bed until 1:15am and then couldn't sleep! I tossed and turned for an hour and then came out onto the couch to watch tv and get groggy (Have any of you seen that infomercial for that awesome spray painting system?) I started to feel sleepy and turned off the tv, but still took awhile to fall asleep, so I think it was around 3:30 or something. Why oh why must it be this way?? I've been doing so well with going to bed at a reasonable time.


So since I was gone last night we didn't have a quiet evening at home with a night-before-school blessing for Whitney. Also, this morning I was so tired and hadn't planned well so I didn't have anything special for breakfast. She didn't expect anything, so she wasn't disappointed, but when Landon started kindergarten a couple years ago I made bacon, biscuits, hashbrowns, chocolate milk, grapes and took pictures of every moment of his morning. So pretty much we're going to treat tomorrow like the first day of school and try this again. She will get her blessing tonight and I'll make her a special breakfast tomorrow and decorate the door and have freshly baked cookies when she gets home. It's not like she's my 6th kid or anything, why is this so hard for me??

(Notice Whitney's head as she's lost in the crowd.)

The actual drop-off at school was pretty traumatic for me. It was chaos, which everyone knows I don't handle well, so it was rather off-putting and crazy. The two kindergarten classes were supposed to gather outside one of the entrances, so all the kids were there and all their parents were there, plus the first graders were there. It was crazy. Whitney actually started to follow the first graders into the school but I had to run after her (ever seen a fat girl run?) yelling her name until she turned around and was all startled and confused. Then the two kindergarten teachers came out and had their classes line up to go inside. I have to say my tears were flowing because I was sending her into an unorganized mess, and not because she was starting kindergarten. That was a moronic display. Why didn't they have them come like 10 minutes after everybody else so we could avoid the confusion? Why weren't the teachers out there to begin with? This was not a good way for me to start my public school experience. Well have to see what she has to say when she gets home.

I started writing this earlier this morning while Whitney was gone, but then Jenn stopped by to bring me a jar of homemade salsa and a bag of chips, so we ended up talking until it was time to go get Whitney. This is what Whitney looked like coming out of school. She looked happy and was holding the communication envelope I'll be passing back and forth every Wednesday with her teacher.

She didn't have much to say in the car, but then we ended up going out to lunch and she chose IHOP (I was thinking a Happy Meal at the Drive Thru, but oh well). We ended up being at the restaurant for over an hour (can you say slow?) so Whitney had plenty of time to tell me about her day. She says she has 15 boys in her class and 13 girls (this is a shockingly large class size in my opinion so I'm not happy about this). She said a boy in the class wouldn't sit down when the teacher asked him to and then he scratched the teacher and made her bleed! What in the world? She said they're only allowed 3 seconds at the water fountain for a drink, and that 4 kids had to use the bathroom. Hmmm.

I'm not comforted by any of this information and can't wait until I can spend some time in the classroom and see what really goes on in there. I know it's only the first day, but 28 kids is a lot for one teacher to handle, and they're only there for 2 hours and 52 minutes so what's the point if there's too many kids to accomplish anything? I'm wigging out.

**Do you need do-overs very often?
How was your child's kindergarten first day?
How do you feel about IHOP?
Am I overreacting?**

Taking Care of Business--The Sequel

I took Whitney to the school for her kindergarten evaluation this morning. She did well, though she forgot what a rectangle is. (What?!) Oh well. I signed up to help in the class for just about everything offered so I'm hoping to be involved enough that I feel like I know the kids in her class, her teacher, and what goes on there. I may be experiencing some separation anxiety with this. It's weird because I'm not really ever like that, I tend to go with the flow and feel like it's all part of growing up. I'm hoping it's just because I'm not familiar with the school or anyone there because I'm experiencing a strange melancholy today and can't identify its source. I hate that. Her teacher is super nice, and Whitney is very excited for school tomorrow, so hopefully my feelings are just hormone-induced. As we were walking out of the school it smelled so good. I asked Whitney what that good smell was and she said, "It's the mow-lawner." She was right, the lawn was freshly mowed and the lawn-mower was coming around the corner, too funny.

After Whitney's evaluation we dropped off the film from Ethan's photo shoot and then had to go to the PG Police Department to take care of my speeding ticket. As we were walking in Whitney said, "we're not going to jail right?" I forget that she's only 5 sometimes.

I could have just paid the $82 for the speeding ticket, but I can keep it off my record by going to traffic school in a few weeks. So I ended up paying $142. I guess you can't fight city hall (ha, I've never had a reason to say that before), but it sure feels like extortion to me.

I've talked to Kristi and Tasha today, picked up Ethan's photos and put them in an album, talked to a couple people from church about various activities, and have a few more items to prepare for church.

Tonight is Enrichment and I'm in charge of the car pool drivers and organizing rides for the activity, then I'm cutting out early to go to Book Club Amy's for our book club celebration of my birthday (6 weeks after the fact). I enjoy these things and look forward to them, but definitely experience some anxiety because I don't like being the center of attention. I'm trying to get over that and just be a grown-up, but I tend to experience some self-sabotage when it comes to events like this.

I haven't gotten any good mail or sent any this week so far and I want to remedy that. I have a couple things in the works, but have let my mind get cluttered with all the details of everything I have to do this week. Annoying.

**I can't think of any questions, but surely you can say something.**

Last "free" day

Today was my last free day before I have to start having Whitney ready for school each day. She doesn't start until Wednesday, but tomorrow is her evaluation/testing in the morning so I'm counting that as a scheduled day. She's really excited to start school, but I'm feeling a little hesitant. My primary lesson yesterday was on peer pressure (from the example of King Solomon's son Rehoboam) and as we were discussing examples of issues that might arise in the kids' lives (i.e., friends tempting them to smoke, steal, disobey parents, etc.) the kids ended up telling me all kinds of horror stories about kids from school. Every single one of them (they're 10-11 year olds) had stories about kids bringing guns to school, cigarettes in the bathroom, and other scares at school. I actually said, "that's why I home school my kids" but then felt flushed with panic that I'm sending Whitney out into it. I go back and forth from thinking it's not that big of a deal, everyone sends their kids to school to thinking it's a huge deal and why would I ever let them out of the house. Do you guys worry about that?


Whitney wanted to paint with me this morning. I don't know what's up with her the past week or so, but she's suddenly interested in doing things with me. She'll come up to me while I'm on the computer and say, "mom, can we hang out?" or "mom, what's something we can do together?" I have actually been good about getting off the computer (though I'm bummed out about it) to go do things with her. She was so delighted this morning that I wanted to paint this little ceramic ladybug we'd bought at Wal-Mart last week. I always end up enjoying the time I spend with her, I just don't always want to do those things right then. I just keep thinking how glad I am that she still wants to do anything with me at all.


We went to the new Costco in American Fork today. It had finally calmed down enough that it wasn't crazy busy in there. It's very bright and sunny in there because they have tons of skylights. It's a nice store and is only about 7 minutes away from us so we're pretty psyched about that. I had them develop some of my digital photos today for the first time. I got my camera on June 2nd (I'll always remember the day because it was the blog party) but have never gotten any prints made. That has always been my main complaint about digital cameras and yet now I've gone and done the same thing. I only ended up getting some of the ones I took of Landon for his baptism developed and I'm not very happy with them. They look digital to me.

Speaking of Landon's baptism, my cute friend Jen sent Landon an awesome gift today. She embroidered white lettering on a white towel for him to use after he gets baptized this Saturday. It's a beautiful towel and she included a nice note and a sweet poem about the towel. It is such a nice gift. Thank you so much Jen!


This evening I met my other cute friend Jenn (two n's) at the park so I could take her son Ethan's 2 year old pictures. I basically followed him all over the park as he climbed, jumped, ran and fell. He wears me out quickly. It's hard to focus on someone who never stops moving! I had my camera on the action setting just in case. It's really quite something to see him now that he's 2, because I took pictures of Jenn when she was pregnant with him, pictures of his birth, his first few weeks, his first year and now his 2nd year, my how the time has flown.

**What do you think about sending your
kids out into the world?
Do you have any baptism traditions?
Do you have a lot of friends names Jen?**

Time

I finished listening to The Screwtape Letters this week and must say this is one of my all-time favorite books. I have listened to it before, read it multiple times, and yet still feel enlightened and delighted each time I read or hear something from it. It was written in 1941, yet is fresh and applicable to our lives today. You gotta love that.

As I was listening to it this time I kept thinking, “oooh that’s so good, I‚’ll have to remember to look that up,” the silly thing is I had that thought pretty much the entire time I listened to it. This makes me want to read it again so I can mark up my book properly. I wanted to share my favorite quotes with you, but that would pretty much mean retyping the entire book, so I'm only picking one.

This passage is about time. I have been feeling so busy lately with all the running around I've been doing with my callings, preparing Whitney for school, and especially with soccer. I haven't minded it too much, but I'm definitely feeling stretched thinner than usual (if only that meant I looked thinner too) and am actively trying not to get upset about everything I HAVE to do. This passage from the book is fantastic and is a great reminder to me that my time is not my own.

Note from Amazon.com for those of you not familiar with the premise of the book.

Who among us has never wondered if there might not really be a tempter sitting on our shoulders or dogging our steps? C.S. Lewis dispels all doubts. In The Screwtape Letters, one of his bestselling works, we are made privy to the instructional correspondence between a senior demon, Screwtape, and his wannabe diabolical nephew Wormwood. As mentor, Screwtape coaches Wormwood in the finer points, tempting his "patient" away from God.

"Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend's talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tete-a-tete with the friend), that throws him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption "My time is my own." Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of 24 hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright."

"You have here a delicate task. The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defense. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels." Pages 79-80

{Playing Operation as a family was
not my first choice of activities today.}

I feel like I have go back and forth with my issues about time. I love to have free days with no obligations, but I like to busy sometimes too. I don't like feeling like my life is full of obligations, but I do feel like I want to serve others, fulfill my church callings, and take care of my family.

One of the girls in my primary class has missed a lot of church the past few months and I've been wanting to ask her about it, but don't want to put her on the spot. She came today and I told her I'd missed her and was wondering where she'd been. She said that the baby had been sick one week, that they were too tired from a camping trip another week, and that sometimes her parents just want to take a break. I think they're having some "time" issues in their house because I've had conversations with both the parents before where they've indicated that they feel too busy and like something has got to give. It's interesting and sad that church is the thing they're letting go, rather than some of the other activities they participate in. I guess what I'm saying is, their experience has made me think. I feel like I owe the Lord "my" time and want to do the best I can with the jobs He has given me to do, and I can't help thinking how different things would be if everyone felt that way.

**How do you feel about "your" time?
Where do you draw the lines in your schedule?
How do you decide what's most important?**

Happy 30th Elisa!

A Perfect Saturday

I got up at 7:30 this morning to get ready to go to Landon's soccer game. He had practice a half hour before the game, plus I was in charge of the fruit for half-time, so I needed to be organized and ready early. It actually felt great being out and about early (Anyone seeing a pattern with this? Why is it always such an epiphany for me that I like early mornings?) The weather was so nice today it only got up to 76 degrees, so this morning was actually cool and wonderful. I felt like I was trying to soak it all up. Randy and I hung out at the soccer field and read our books while we waited for the game to start, it was highly enjoyable. Landon was a bit more active during this game, but seems concerned about staying in his position more than actually doing something with the ball.

I ran errands after the soccer game and returned home to some good mail. I got another Audio Book "Gap Creek" and 2 new Netflix DVDs, I just love getting this stuff in the mail. What a brilliant idea.

I also got this wonderful package from Michelle. I've never seen any of these items before (except the sponge brushes of course) so it was quite a delight. Thanks Michelle!

Collette stopped by to bring me her copy of Gilead so I could loan it to someone from church for our book club discussion in 10 days. It was nice to sit outside and chat with Collette for a few minutes, we live pretty close to each other but really don't see each other much except for our book club gatherings. We should remedy this.

My brother Adam and his family came over this evening for dinner and games. They brought Whitney home with them. It's so funny that she's been playing with their girls since Thursday night but they still got busy playing some more as soon as they got here. I love it that they get along pretty well (though Megan drives them all crazy), and especially love it that Whitney and Bella are best friends/cousins. They're so cute together. They were playing with the dress-up stuff outside for a long time tonight and I took this picture of them in their gear.


We played Settlers of Catan for the first time in months. I was totally in the mood to play, but Adam conquered as usual so we only played it once. I think I enjoy the building of settlements and cities so much that I don't really strategize a way to win. It's kind of like how I only like playing Monopoly for the first half hour when all the properties are being bought and organized, I don't like it at all once I have to start paying people for landing on their properties. What does this say about me? That I'm not competitive? Or that I'm not competitive if things are really challenging? (Don't answer that.)

The weather today was so fantastically breezy and cool that I actually had all the windows open. I haven't done that since April or May. Amy was actually cold and wore a fleece pullover and had a blanket wrapped around her legs! That's just plain crazy. I guess since she doesn't have any fat on her body she must chill easily. No worries here. I think I could brave 50 degree breezes and still be okay.

**What did you do today?**

Feeling Good

Today I'm feeling good. I don't know if it's one of those rare times when the planets align and my biorhythms are in sync or what, but I'm headache free, I slept great, and it's raining. All is well. It was weird to get up this morning to a quiet house. Landon slept in until 9:00am (which he NEVER does), I think it was because Whitney wasn't snoring in the bed underneath him. (This may be a good reason for looking more seriously into tonsil removal.) I headed straight for the computer and blogged happily for an hour or so.

I talked to Michelle for awhile this morning and we decided against a Creative Friday because of Eva's bowel issues and possible flu situation. I then talked to Amie for a bit and our conversation somehow jogged my memory about needing to go to The Franklin Covey store to get my sister Robyn's mother-in-law (from Australia) her planner refill so I could drop it off with some of her friends who are in town for Education Week at BYU. So Landon and I went to the mall to get the planner refill and to look for suits. Mr. Mac's was too expensive so we ended up talking all of your good advice and went to Burlington Coat Factory. We got a suit and two ties for $72. (That's less than most of the jackets at Mr. Mac's.)

So Landon and I dropped the planner pages off at the hotel, got a Krispy Kreme donut at the drive thru for a special treat, and braved the hellish Wal-Mart in Provo because I needed some supplies for my Activity Day water party this afternoon. I don't know why that Wal-Mart is such a melting pot, but good grief I felt like I'd left the country. I heard some sort of Slavic language, some Caribbean island language, Spanish, and something else I couldn't identify. There were beeping loaders, crying kids, and all manner of chaotic noise contributors. I made it through with only feeling slightly clammy and anxious. I kept thinking "this is Provo right?" Fortunately our stop was brief and the line wasn't long. I wanted to run to the safety of my car and take some cleansing breaths.

The skies were looking cloudy as Landon and I drove home, and by the time we were almost to our freeway exit it had started to hail! Not good when you're supposed to be hosting a water party in an hour. Wouldn't you know it? Don't I wish for cloudy skies and rain almost every day and am always rewarded with sunny skies and irritating heat? Go figure. So I had to scramble to come up with Plan B, so I opened a bag of Starbursts and a bag of dum dum suckers and set out a stack of board games.

The girls decided to play "Life" and had so much fun. I was the banker and we had just enough girls (6) so that everyone could play the game. It ended up being educational really because they had to decide whether to go to college or not, whether to buy car insurance and home owners insurance, whether to borrow money for a house, to pay their debts in a timely manner, and so on. It was fun listening to them.

Our very nice old lady neighbor from across the street brought over a bag of tomatoes yesterday, and then my visiting teacher brought me more tomatoes, 2 cucumbers and a huge zucchini today. Oh dear. I don't have the skills to manage this produce. Help!?

The house is so quiet without Whitney here it's kind of weird. It's not that she's so loud, it's that she has such a colorful presence that just having her gone changes everything. There's just so much of Whitney. It's so nice to have the chance to miss her and appreciate her quirky self. I think that's one of the reasons I love solitude and breaks from the kids. I enjoy missing them.


I got some great mail today. Remember yesterday I said I was insulted by the lame junk mail I got, especially since it was only 1 item of junk mail, not even the usual full load. Do you ever wonder if the post office holds the rest of your mail on those days? Why aren't good things mixed in with that crap? I don't know, but I don't like it.

Today I got a package from Diana, a card from Tasha, a new audio book, a DVD from Netflix and the new Pottery Barn Kids catalogue...now that's what I'm talkin about. I don't have to get a package every day, but even a new Netflix or audio book is better than a mailer from The Mattress Factory. So thanks to Diana and Tasha for their nice mail items and for thinking of me! I really appreciate that, and Twix are delicious.


Randy took Landon to the movies tonight to see "How To Eat Fried Worms." That's not a movie I could even consider watching. Just the preview makes me want to hurl. I'm still not over seeing that funky worm/caterpillar creature in the yard the other day. Gross.

**Thoughts???**

You take the good, you take the bad...

My photo shoot this morning went very well. I was taking pictures of a boy from our ward who is turning 8 tomorrow. He was wearing his new suit and looked so cute. He was very cooperative and sweet, so it was a fun experience. I took 3 rolls of film in about 45 minutes. You can see the pictures I took here.


The kids and I went to Kohl's to find Landon a suit since his baptism is next Saturday. I really should have learned by now not to get my hopes up where clothes shopping is concerned because it always ends badly. Landon is not a freakishly huge boy, so I don't know why we can't find something that fits. The size 10 jacket was tight enough that he wouldn't have been able to close the jacket or fold his arms, and the size 12 jacket drowned him completely. Do they make a size 11? Of course not! I was so discouraged and irritated. Don't they know how much I hate taking my kids to try on clothes? Must they play jazz muzak while I'm shopping? Can't they have more than one cashier working? (I only ended up buying a little photo book to put the pictures I'd taken in.) Lame. We ran into my mom at Kohl's, which was a little weird, it was just so out of context.

I'm trying to figure out what I did this afternoon. I emptied the dishwasher, talked to Amie, Jenn and Amy on the phone, sorted through all the pictures and put them in the little book then organized the negatives and cd for them. I guess that's where my afternoon went.

We got the lamest mail in the world today. It couldn't even be considered a proper junk mail day, it was just ONE mailer from a mattress company. I found it insulting.


Whitney had a soccer game at 6:00 tonight and Landon had his first Pack Meeting, so Randy and I had to divide and conquer again. I took this picture of Landon (which sadly is blurry) just before I left for the game and I said, "Aren't you excited? Because you don't look very excited?" and he said, "I'm excited on the inside." He definitely fooled me.

Whitney's game wasn't as fun as last week's game. Several kids who must have been on vacation or something showed up to play so we had 5 kids at a time on the sidelines. That's not so fun. I know some of them don't care and are happy to pick the grass and daydream, but it made it seem like the game was stopping and starting a lot. Also, Whitney played well but the other team had this kid on it who was unstoppable so our team didn't ever get very close to the goal. Apparently she was so exhausted at half-time she just had to lie down.


After the game I drove Whitney up to Salt Lake because she's staying over at Adam and Amy's house so she can have one last sleepover with her cousins. She's staying until Saturday so I'm sure they'll have a great time. Thanks Amy!

So that's my day, another busy one. I must say the drive home from Salt Lake was wonderful. I brought my iPod and iTrip and listened to Winter Solstice, and I stopped at Iceberg to get a caramel praline shake. Good times.

**Where should I go to find a suit that fits Landon?
Why must stores play jazz muzak?
Are caramel praline shakes the best thing ever?

Free day?

I was so happy that I didn't have anything scheduled today! It seems like a rare treat these days. I still ended up feeling kind of busy, but at least none of the things were obligations or major responsibilities.

What is this creature? I was outside watering the flowers today (while on the phone with Michelle) and saw this thing inching its way through the grass. I was fascinated, but sicked out at the same time. It looks a bit wormish in color, but more caterpillar-like in movement and face. Gross. Also, if this is a funky caterpillar then what sort of giant-albino butterfly is it going to turn into?

This is the mail I sent today. I'm always writing notes to people in my head, especially at church on Sundays because that's when I see a lot of people. But then I forget that I wanted to write to tell them I enjoyed their talk or I love their teaching or song leading or whatever. So today I finally wrote 5 notes to people from church, plus a few more to some of you guys. The package is for one of you. Need I tell you again how much I love the automated machine at the post office? When I ran into the AF post office the line for tellers was like 10 people long. I used the machine and was done in 30 seconds. That sort of thing makes me want to skip and hum (but I kept it all inside).


Look at this cute stuff I got from Angie today! She commented just a week ago that she'd never sent or received good mail, so apparently that has changed. The polka dot flip-flops are a cute ceramic magnet, and the blue striped flip-flop is a note pad. How cute is that? I love the striped cards and gel pens as well. Thanks Angie! Speaking of good mail, check out Tasha's blog for a great opportunity.

I ended up taking Landon to Great Clips because his hair was so shaggy I couldn't deal with it any longer. Randy has been cutting Landon's hair for the past year or two, but he can only maintain a really short, almost buzzed style so now that we've been growing it out Randy doesn't have the skills to make it look non-shelf like. (I really wish he did though because paying for boy hair cuts ever month is a pisser.)

I made Landon pose for some photos after we got home because I realized I have to get his baptism invitations out in the mail tomorrow. I thought I'd use a picture of him. I took about 40 pictures and got like 2 decent ones. It's so hard for me to take good pictures of my kids. He kept looking sideways or doing weird smiles or looking like he smelled something stinky. This isn't the one I'm using for the invitations, but I thought he looked kind of cute.

Tomorrow I'm taking pictures of a kid from church for his 8th birthday, Whitney's got a soccer game, and Landon has his first pack meeting. I bought some of that iron-on adhesive (thanks Jen for the info) but haven't tried it yet. I wanted Randy to do it because he's so much more precise than I am. I don't think the patches are supposed to be on an angle dang it. I didn't have any class at BYU on essential mom skills like this. Drat.

P.S. My mouth chunkies have healed! Hooray. I never realized how many jagged foods I eat, who knew a bowl of Wheaties could prove so dangerous?

**Do you know what that creature is?
How goes the good mail planning?
Why must life be so busy?**

Housekeeping Quotes

I finished the book Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson yesterday. I read it several years ago, but remembered NOTHING about it. I wanted to read it again because I loved Gilead so much and she wrote both books (though over 20 years apart). I get to read Gilead again because we’re reading it for our Ward book club September 5th and I’m leading the discussion (yikes).

After reading Housekeeping I decided that I just love the way Marilynne Robinson writes. This is the kind of book where not a lot happens, and yet major events are there. The writing is beautiful, descriptive and involved.

One of the quotes on the back of the book says,
“I found myself reading slowly, then more slowly—this is not a novel to be hurried through, for every sentence is a delight.”
–Doris Lessing

I would say that’s a very accurate statement. It’s definitely not a book to skim, of course I’m incapable of skimming because I feel like I didn’t really read the book and that I miss too much, but just in case you’re a skimmer you’ll know not to try it with this book.

Here are my favorite quotes.

“Of course they pressed her and touched her as if she had just returned after an absence. Not because they were afraid she would vanish as their father had done, but because his sudden vanishing had made them aware of her.” Page 12

“When she had been married a little while, she concluded that love was half a longing of a kind that possession did nothing to mitigate.” Page 12

"The years between her husband’s death and her eldest daughter’s leaving home were, in fact, years of almost perfect serenity. My grandfather had sometimes spoken of disappointment. With him gone they were cut free from the troublesome possibility of success, recognition, advancement. They had no reason to look forward, nothing to regret. Their lives spun off the tilting world like thread off a spindle, breakfast time, suppertime, lilac time, apple time.” Page 13

“But Sylvie had fallen silent again. Guessing that she must be listening to something, we were silent, too. The lake still thundered and groaned, the flood waters still brimmed and simmered. When we did not move or speak, there was no proof that we were there at all. The wind and the water brought sounds intact from any imaginable distance. Deprived of all perspective and horizon, I found myself reduced to an intuition, and my sister and my aunt to something less than that. I was afraid to put out my hand, for fear it would touch nothing, or to speak, for fear no one would answer.” Page 70

“For why do our thoughts turn to some gesture of a hand, the fall of a sleeve, some corner of a room on a particular anonymous afternoon, even when we are asleep, and even when we are so old that our thoughts have abandoned other business? What are all these fragments for, if not to be knit up finally? Page 92

“For need can blossom into all the compensations it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing—the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing like an angel, fosters us, smoothes our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.” Page 152-153

“Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. Those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them. You simply say, “Here are the perimeters of our attention. If you prowl around under the windows till the crickets go silent, we will pull the shades. If you wish us to suffer your envious curiosity, you must permit us not to notice it.” Anyone with one solid human bond is that smug, and it is the smugness as much as the comfort and safety that lonely people covet and admire.” Page 154

“I have often noticed that it is almost intolerable to be looked at, to be watched, when one is idle. When one is idle and alone, the embarrassments of loneliness are almost endlessly compounded.” Page 158

“For in fact I wore her coat like beatitude, and her arms around me were as heartening as mercy, and I would say nothing that might make her loosen her grasp or take one step away.” Page 161

“If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected—an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I had got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows. That most moments were substantially the same did not detract at all from the possibility that the next moment might be utterly different. And so the ordinary demanded unblinking attention. Any tedious hours might be the last of its kind.” Page 166

“And any present moment was only thinking, and thoughts bear the same relation, in mass and weight, to the darkness they rise from, as reflections do to the water they ride upon, and in the same way they are arbitrary, or merely given. Anyone that leans to look into a pool is the woman in the pool, anyone who looks into our eyes is the image in our eyes, and these things are true without argument, and so our thoughts reflect what passes before them.” Page 166

“No one said anything for a long time. Finally someone said, “Families are a sorrow, and that’s the truth,” and another one said, “I lost my girl sixteen years ago in June and her face is before me now,” and someone else said, “If you can keep them, that’s bad enough, but if you lose them—“ The world is full of trouble. Yes it is.” Page 186

I know that's a whole lot of quotes and you probably didn't read them all, but I want to document the quotes I love in the books I read, so I didn't edit any out. I'm anxious to read Gilead again and to see how many more I find that I didn't catch the first time.

**How much to you love reading and why?**

Taking Care of Business

Today was all about taking care of business. Getting Whitney's hair cut was the first thing on our agenda today. It's so cute how she loves to go to the salon to do this. She no longer needs me to sit back there with her. She now talks to the beautician (is that the right name?), and feels comfortable being back there on her own while I sit in the waiting area reading my book. I love it when she gets a great hair cut like this one. She came out of there beaming.


The 2nd thing we had to do was to go to the Elementary School open house to find her classroom and meet her new teacher. It was so fun. Her teacher had a little scavenger hunt for us to do. It had things like finding Whitney's mailbox, the drinking fountain, the bathroom, the calendar, the number 5, something yellow, etc. What a great way to help the kids feel like they know where things are so they'll be comfortable on the first day of school (which is the 30th). Her teacher is very cute and very nice. (I didn't take her picture though.) Whitney left there so excited for school!

Our 3rd task was to go to the Boy Scout store to get the stuff Landon needs now that he's 8 and goes to Cub Scouts. Good grief, all of this ended up costing $55.41! My only comfort is that he'll be wearing the shirt for 3 years so we'll definitely be getting our money out of it. I have to sew those patches on the shirt and I'm not feeling qualified to do that. Oh dear. His first pack meeting is tomorrow night so I've got to figure that out quickly.

Our last item of business was Landon's soccer game. This is the view from the parking lot! Gorgeous isn't it? I love having somewhere to go and a reason to be outside. (Otherwise I'm always hibernating in my climate-controlled house.) Fortunately the game wasn't until 7:00pm so it wasn't nearly as hot as the rest of the day had been (98 degrees).

Landon's team has kids from ages 8 to 10, so he and Benjamin (our next door neighbor) are two of the youngest on the team. It was interesting to watch his team because they actually function as a team (especially compared to Whitney's young team that still clusters around the ball and steals it from their own teammates). Landon's team stretches together, runs drills, and knows their positions on the field. It was a little upsetting to see how zoned out Landon was during the game. He stayed exactly where he was supposed to based on the position he was playing. That meant that he wasn't running around much, he sort of waited for the ball to come his way. It was making me crazy. I guess it's our fault for not signing him up for soccer the past few years, he hasn't played since he was 4 years old. I think we cheated him out of some quality zone-out years of on the field chaos, so now that he's on a team with many kids who know what they're doing the contrast is rather stark. Fortunately he doesn't seem aware of that.

It was a good, busy, productive day that also included the neighbor kids over to play for awhile, then a couple other friends from church over to play, my visiting teachers came, we returned library books, got shave ice, and had the power go out for about 30 minutes! No wonder I was ready for bed by 11:00pm.

**Comments on haircuts, soccer, school, being busy, etc??**