Category: Adventurous kids

Treasure of the week

This week while sorting through boxes, I discovered these kid quotes I scribbled down during the first few months of 2009. Mark was 2, Tim was 6, and Daniel was 9. I don’t know if they are entertaining to anyone else, but they still make me laugh. 😃

1/09:”My legs love to fight,” Mark admits as we try to pull him away from Timothy.

1/09: “Get your fingers off!” Mark screams as we try to help him steer the mini jeep.

1/09: To Mom, sitting at the school table, “Hey, I was sitting in that chair. Can you sit on my lap?” -Mark

1/30/09: “This is my room where I fight and build things and take naps and get changes.” -Mark

1/09: “It’s not really comfortable to play computer games before your first jobs are done.” -Timothy, discussing his daily moral dilemma.

2/09: Mark: “We need to go to Grandma’s house.”

Mom: “Which grandma?”

Mark: “The one with all the Legos and the sewing and the snacks and the little red cups!”

2/18/09: On the way to church on a cold February morning, Daniel says, “We wouldn’t want to send Cupid out in this weather. It would be hard to shoot an arrow and make anyone fall in love.”

2/20/09: Daniel, after viewing a stern photo of his ancestor, Daniel Spencer, said, “If great-grandpa Spencer were a dinosaur and they found a fossil of his skeleton, they would have a hard time knowing what he was really like because he would look pretty vicious. Thank goodness we have family history because he was really a good guy.”

3/1/09: Tim, on the carpet, “I’m making a snow angel. It’s not working.”

3/4/09: “When I wake up, I want to be in a jet. A red jet.” -Mark

3/5/09: Mark, handling a toy cement mixer, asks what it is called.

Mom: “It’s a cement mixer. It mixes cement.”

Mark: “And diapers. It mixes diapers.”

Mom: “How did you come up with that?”

Mark: “It’s just my observation.”

Mark, hearing Mom tell Dad about his “observation” quote asks, “Am I significant?”

3/6/09: Mark, displaying two of his Lightning McQueen cars, tells Paige, “These ones are sweet. But you don’t eat them.”

3/9/09: Mark, looking at the messy table after dinner, exclaims, “There are chili dots everywhere!”

3/10/09: Mark asks, “Are you the singing mommy?”

3/10/09: Taking in hand his electric toothbrush, Mark exclaims, “Start. Your. Engines!” and begins to brush.

3/21/09: Daniel, after spilling a little lemonade, remarks in a frustrated voice, “I just wish gravity wasn’t so strong. I mean, I’m grateful we’re not just floating around (although that would be fun sometimes) but I wish it wasn’t so easy to spill.

3/22/09: Discussing possible musical selections the kids can do for an upcoming sacrament meeting,

Mom: “Paige can play piano and Daniel and Timothy can sing.”

Mark: “And I can do flips!”

“Marked”

At the family cabin last summer, Mark hid and posed about 50 tiny monkeys for people to discover. I found one wrapped in twine attached to a plastic spider, as if it had been captured by the spider. When my mom found one in a funny place, she told me about it. I confessed to her that the whole cabin had been “Marked.”

Monkeys. Googly eyes on pictures. Funny scenes made with toys. Steadily, these things are spreading wherever Mark goes in the world. At home, I keep in place these little pieces of his humor. It is fun to be “Marked.”

Moving day

Daniel and McKenna are now Provo residents. We are thankful for all the pieces that came together so they could make this move. Daniel will no longer have that long commute to school at BYU.

We also had a video call with Elder Ross, so it was a bit of a reunion this afternoon.

Fun fact: I think that Tim is Daniel and McKenna’s landlord. 😄 Tim’s new adventure is that he is a property manager at my dad’s company.

MMSK and Conference

Before Mark was set apart as a missionary, he wanted one last gathering with his Sanchez cousins who are his age, so we invited them to spend part of conference weekend here. MMSK is pronounced “misk,” and it’s an acronym of their names. Mostly, there was a lot of nonsense going on as they “watched conference”, but I think that the time together was important.

Mark and Richard attended a session of General Conference on Sunday. They brought the binoculars, which was a great idea.

Mark’s last traditional general conference tower for a while.

When Mark sent in his mission papers last spring, I assumed he would be on a mission long before now. We’ve had a long preparation period, which was good in many ways and challenging in others.

We had time for more spiritual preparation and temple worship. Mark received mentoring in Preach My Gospel and got some work experience from his Sanchez grandparents. We had time to travel this summer.

The long wait means that the bandaid is being removed very slowly. I am pretty fragile lately.

Now that Mark has had a few days of home MTC, he is excited to go to the Provo MTC next week. Everything is as it should be: the wait, the anticipation, the emotions accompanying a goodbye, the excitement, his assignment. Everything.

Mark’s Woods Project 2024

Mark made this bed frame and two side shelves with cabinets during the 2023-24 school year. Getting everything set up in his room has taken some time this summer, and the furniture is beautiful.

The painting was a gift, a very generous gift, and the mountains remind me of our trip to the Grand Tetons this summer.

I have learned a secret about the spaces and rooms that missionaries leave behind. They are holy places because they represent many of the things they have sacrificed in order to serve.