Angela – Page 165 – Letters from Home

Fun

While at the Church garden last night the boys discovered this tomato. We think it looks a like a profile of Piglet from Winnie the Pooh.

Our theme is fun this week. We ate shaved ice from a stand down the street. I took the younger boys to shop for Legos. They saved a lot of money over the summer and were itching to spend it. To commemorate their new love of Hobbit-lore, Timothy bought the Lego set of Bilbo Baggins’s home which includes a round door, maps, a garden, lots of food, Gandalf, and several dwarves. Mark bought a Ninjago Lego set with a front-end drill that works by a gear mechanism. He loves gears. Left on our bucket list of summer is a trip to the pool and completion of a reading goal for Timothy.

I’m going to throw a back to school party this year. I’ve never done it before, but I think we could all use a pep rally and some homemade ice cream.

So much, but nothing

I feel a bit burned out. It’s the last week of summer and I am so glad that we canceled our trip to Yellowstone this week. We need a chance to breathe before school begins.

I’ve been thinking about all we have done since school got out in June. We sent Paige to EFY, Girls’ Camp, and Youth Conference to paint a house and spend time in the mountains on canoes and a ropes course. I went with her to Youth Conference. We sent Daniel to Scout Camp and Richard went along for part of the week. We traveled to St George and sped around on wave runners. We went to Fish Creek and rode motorcycles. We camped in our backyard, read The Hobbit aloud, and made about 20 trips to the library. We spent several days at Spring Lake, celebrating with family and working on projects with concrete. Richard overhauled two motorcycles and fixed up the tent trailer. I painted doors and baseboards. Daniel painted the walls of his bedroom. Richard and I got new callings at church (ward missionary and YW secretary) and spent many late nights editing my book. We sent Timothy to Cub Scout camp and Richard went with him. We spent about a week in the mountains at the family cabin with 20-40 people, depending on the day. We saw moose and a bear. Mark started piano lessons, so piano music is almost always in the background with four piano students practicing each day. I finished my first quilt. We watched the neighbors’ quadruplets. We read a lot of books. Daniel joined an orchestra and mowed the lawn each week. Timothy tended the garden. Mark and Timothy hunted almost daily for wasps. We have had a steady queue of guests stay in our home and we have learned that Salt Lake City truly is the Crossroads of the West. This is where our energy has gone this summer.

Perhaps I have earned the lethargy that I feel this morning.

I wrote, nurtured, and edited 120 pages about my grandmother. I wrote 14 posts about my experiences as a Mormon and why I love my church. Perhaps these were all of the words I had to give this summer.

It’s been a good time and I get emotional when I think of school taking the kids away each day. We’ve been in Utah a year now (as of this weekend) and one of my favorite things about Utah is that there are distinct seasons and something special to look forward to in each. My task today is to find something to look forward to about school beginning. It might take me all week to do it.

Weber 2013

We had a wonderful time at the Weber cabin with the Sanchez family, with lots of cousin play and sibling reconnection.

One morning Paige took a group of little girl cousins down by the spring and they found a bear… 10 feet away from them. Later that day we spotted the bear again. We think it was attracted to all of the wild raspberries in the grove. Scary. Richard got 3 photos as it ran away the second time. The kids spent a lot of time in the river.

We raced rubber duckies in the river and three of our kids won medals.

We danced the Virginia Reel. The dogs joined us.

(I fiddled.)

I distributed my grandma’s history. Richard and I stayed up so late every night leading up to the week of the cabin trying to finish it. For me, the week was spent recovering (napping and going to bed early) in our tent trailer.My parents were the rock stars of the week. They planned activities with vision and they served us and loved us in hundreds of ways.

Happy, happy memories.

Cover

Here’s the cover of my little book unless I change my mind (again).

That is all for today. Send me happy graphic design wishes. I’ve got 3 more photo family trees to design today.

We have a little cousin staying with us for a while. He is a great companion for the boys so perhaps they won’t notice that I’m a bit busy today.

What’s next?

Today Mark came up to me as I sat typing at one of two desks I have jammed together with three computer screens to navigate my final steps in the book I am writing and asked with a little trepidation, “What’s your NEXT big project?”

He continued, “I mean, you had your quilt, and now the book. What’s next?”

I wished that I could tell him, NO MORE PROJECTS this month, but I can’t. I just got a new calling at church and it’s going to take some time to get situated. At least I still get to work with the Young Women. But I don’t want to talk about that now.

I took the afternoon off and we all played Scrabble on my bed. This evening, we snuggled and read some more of The Hobbit. It’s taken some time to get back to the way I used to feel with the kids before I sent them to public school. We’re comfortable again, and the school stress is being held at bay by a big dose of denial clothed in the idea that summer isn’t coming to a hasty end. Daniel’s camping in the woods all week, produce from gardens keeps showing up at our house, and the kids are sleeping in.

My “book” is the memoir of my grandmother that I was trying to finish in April. It’s 100 pages and I am finally feeling happy about the writing which I have worked so hard to craft into a readable narrative instead of a choppy collection of disjointed ideas from my notes.

I wrote the introduction this weekend and I began to list all of the people who have worked on different aspects of the project, from scanning photos, collecting genealogical information, saving and writing letters, to collecting keepsakes and documents. This family has been saving memories for over 100 years and I’m attempting to bring it all together. So many hands, a good amount of disappointment, and long hours have been the price to make a tribute to my grandmother and her ancestors.

I worry that it won’t be read and cherished. Writing with my heart has made me feel vulnerable. I want it to be appreciated, but I suppose no one will love it in the same way I do. Perhaps that’s okay, though; my relationship with the story is the gift it gives back to me.

Quilted

My friend spent 3 hours standing as she tended my quilt while her machine made row after row of roses across the fabric. That’s a nice person.

I realize that quilt posts are probably boring, but lately I’ve got nothing to give to this blog. Life is like that sometimes.

You know it’s been a busy month when…

…Church magazines for August arrive before you even open the July magazines.

…last Monday feels like 6 months ago.

…the carpet begins to get dirty from all of the barefoot adventures in the backyard.

Happy day to you!

Quilt update

I have learned a lot from the ladies in my neighborhood quilting group. I have very little quilting experience and I am surrounded by women who can whip out a quilt in an afternoon. There are even some purists in the group who make their quilts entirely by hand. I slink in the door and dine on the scraps of their skill and inspiration.

I read that the “Disappearing Nine-patch” (the pattern of my quilt) is a Novice pattern, which is even easier than a Beginner pattern. With that information to quell my pride in the project, I finished sewing my quilt and I’m having it quilted on a friend’s machine on Thursday. Hooray for me!

Twenty years from now

I think the kids will remember the night we brought home our new tent trailer and let them sleep in it in the backyard. I think they might also remember that I read aloud from The Hobbit that night, and it just happened to be the chapter with Gollum and Bilbo doing riddles in the dark. I did my best to do a worthy Gollum voice. Good times.

Fish Creek

Grandpa always knows the names of the plants.

We spent a day up in the mountains this week with some of Richard’s siblings and his dad. We sat by the creek and rode motorcycles. When we reached the meadow, I sang the entire Sound of Music song because I felt like it. We found flowers, insects, and colored glass. It rained on us and it smelled heavenly.