Introducing…
from The Hobbit
and…
from Star Wars
Daniel dressed up with his friends and roamed the neighborhood.
I went trick-or-treating with the little boys. I have learned that this is the best way to overcome my aversion to Halloween. I don’t have to deal with kids in horror costumes knocking at the door and I get to see my kids having a great time with our neighbors. Our kids are the best company.
The kids are posing with their piano teacher at the Fall Recital, which also happened to be Mark’s first piano recital. The younger children in the studio played Halloween pieces and dressed up in their costumes. Mark is Boba Fett from Star Wars. He played a spooky song called If You Dare! and he did a great job.
Daniel played Rondo Sonatina Op. 20 #1 by Frederic Kuhlau and The Entertainer by Scott Joplin. Daniel is very expressive and I don’t think I will ever get tired of hearing him play Joplin.
Timothy played A Neat Beat by Mier and he rocked the house. He is a wonderful pianist. Just… wow!
This is a picture of Paige and her teacher rehearsing the Shostakovich Concerto No. 2 Op. 102 for two pianos before the recital. Paige has two performances in the next few weeks for this piece. It’s beautiful.
Paige played Sonatina Op. 88 #3 Mvt. 1 by Frederik Kuhlau for the recital. She did a lovely job and she always has the grace to smile and give a confident bow after her performances. That’s hard to do.
Watching our four children perform at this recital was really something special.
At the beginning of January I began a project to keep my daily TO DO lists in a planner. I know that I am not original in doing this. However, I didn’t appreciate the patterns that I would see emerge from my lists or the story that they would tell.
Here are a few randomly picked dates from the past 9 months and what I listed along with a little commentary.
Saturday, January 5
Piano lessons 10:45-12:45
Piano lesson 2:00 (Timothy)
3:00 Paige and Dan
Pay piano teacher
Apparently the only thing I did on this day was drive kids to and from piano lessons over a span of 5 hours. Even if this was actually all I did, I think that it would be enough.
Saturday, March 23
SPARKS This was the day we drove from Elko to Sparks to visit my Stewart Grandparents.
Thursday, July 4
Paint trim (2 coats) in Daniel’s room
Integrity goal #5: Stand as a witness day 4
Family barbecue 1pm (Spring Lake)
Summertime brought a lot of painting and Young Women Personal Progress goals. The Stand as a Witness goal that I mentioned was to write about my experiences as a Mormon on the blog.
Tuesday, August 13
library
lego shopping with little boys
work on Knowledge #9
type out YW calendar
vacuum upstairs
garden assignment: 3 needed
Summer was winding down; I was trying to make the most of the last days with my little boys by shopping for their favorite toys with them. Knowledge #9 was a Young Women Personal Progress goal where I collected and compiled my favorite quotes from General Conference talks by topic. The garden assignment was for the Church garden which supplies the nearby Bishops’ Storehouse. The big boys and Richard took the assignment.
Thursday, September 5
Drive Richard 5:45 am
Drive Daniel 6:50 am
30 minutes Virtue project
Pick up Richard at work–sick day
YW presidency meeting
10% of Richard’s group laid off today (notation on the side of the to do list)
Costco trip
Bring doctor’s note to school for Mark’s absences
Piano lessons 5:30-7:30
continue paint work in craft room
This was a very stressful day on many levels. There were extra errands because of illness and there was worry about Richard’s job. The Virtue project is my current Personal Progress goal to read the Book of Mormon. Thank goodness most days are not this busy.
I love my life, but I don’t always see the beauty in the little pieces. Keeping my little planner has been a good exercise to help me see that I’m going somewhere in all of my circles of errands and small efforts.
I’ve been hoping for some photos from the Scout Camp that Daniel attended this summer to add to this post, but my feelings for what occurred with Daniel don’t require a photo to convey.
Scout Camp was just what Daniel needed and I will always be thankful for his leaders.
Parenting has made me feel very inadequate lately. Some of this feeling comes because I know that I am a flawed person. Some of this feeling comes because the kids don’t need me in the same ways that they used to and I’m trying to figure it all out. The kids are trying to figure out who they are and some days they long for more independence, but on others they need extra support.
I will admit that one of my biggest challenges in parenting is how to handle all of the technology that my children want to use. Some days it seems like all I do is monitor time spent on the computer, Wii, and watching Netflix. We have set time limits, but screen time tends to blur capacity for self control. It’s no fun being the screen time sheriff, but I am diligent. Some days I feel like a martyr. I sacrifice my easy tone and adopt an uncomfortable iron will to keep them from being tied too closely to the computer and television. It’s parenting in the trenches. The enemy is in the house and it takes courage to keep it at a distance.
Daniel has needed some space and I have struggled to help him find the it while still parenting and guiding. We sent him to Scout camp hoping that the time away would nurture his need for independence, challenge, and friendships with other young men.
When he saw me for the first time after camp he gave me a long hug. I don’t know why. Whether it was the corny songs and cheers, the camaraderie of leaders and friends, the nights under the stars, particularly poor cooking, a week away from the computer, or a combination of all of these things, I was grateful for whatever it was that brought Daniel to a place that he wanted to give me a hug.
This state of grace that Daniel was given at camp was a magnet for the young cousins at our family reunion. He spent time wrestling and nurturing them. He caught them in the freezing river and waded them to shore; he was helpful and he was magnificent.
Daniel is an amazing young man and he has grown more patient and unselfish this year. He’s also grown about 5 inches. Anyone under that kind of physical stretching is going to have some adjustments to make in the way he moves, talks, sits, and interacts with the world. I’m cheering for him all the way.
This morning I am finishing my conference notebook. I got this idea from a religion course my mom took at BYU. The idea is to find the quotes that are meaningful to you from the words of the prophets and compile them by topic into a document.
This summer I read the General Conference addresses from the May Ensign and marked the passages that meant something to me. Next, I went through the marked passages and placed a post-it note at the top of the page with a topic written on it. I color coded these post-it notes, pink for motherhood, yellow for revelation, etc.
Using an electronic version of the Conference addresses, I am copying and pasting the quotes by topic into a Word document.
Through this exercise I have discovered that these are the topics that were important to me this year:
Today I may have unpacked the last box from last year’s move. It is another one of those unsung triumphs in my work.
Such as…
a sink with no dirty dishes,
a well-stocked bathroom cabinet with clean towels and plenty of t.p.,
an organized storage room with labeled boxes,
a room with a year’s supply of basic food items, well monitored,
clean baseboards,
functional light bulbs in each fixture,
a child’s closet with neatly folded hand-me-downs ready for use in a couple of years,
bills paid and checks deposited,
freezers full of meat, bread, and vegetables,
a carefully curated gallery of artwork by the children,
family photo albums intact and up to date,
rotating decorations on the mantel to celebrate holidays and changes in season,
magazines prominently displayed for use and old editions filed away,
jackets on hooks and shoes in baskets, laundry carefully folded (and unfortunately never ironed!),
the dog fed,
the humidifier cleaned,
the awards, programs, report cards, assignments, and papers are sorted and saved,
sugar and flour bins stocked,
seeing that the bookmarks in the children’s scriptures move steadily forward,
and so on.
My quiet life feels even more quiet this week with the kids away at school, but I know that this collection of small tasks that I do each day makes our lives better. What a blessing to be the one who gets to have so much time to reflect and ponder, to work and develop talents in the quiet of the house, all the time looking forward to the hour when they all come back through the doors and begin pounding on that piano, ringing on that cello, running through the yard, and crashing within the bins of Legos.
Someday when the kids are grown and out of the house, I’m quite sure that after the piano music I will miss the sound of crashing Legos in their bins. Echoes of this sound will always remind me of my boys.
I said goodbye to the kids this week and I am a little sad. Someone gave me an unexpected discount at the store and I sobbed for 5 minutes in my car about it. I hyperventilate when I hear a song on the radio that matches my mood. Every emotion is ready to jump out with any provocation, especially when I am alone.
Who knows how many hours I agonized over the decision about schools this summer, but peace eventually settled in my heart. I’m not sad about the decision. I am sad because I miss the kids.
They are going to have a good year. They have friends, they have goals, they are great students.
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.
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.
We have been on a small family vacation and returned last night to some sad news. Mark’s first grade teacher, Mrs Alice Crankshaw, passed away early in July.
Mark is not upset, but has wondered aloud, “Where do you think she put the present we made for her?”
I am very sad that she is gone; we had hoped that she would be Mark’s second grade teacher. I respect her so much for the way she worked to meet Mark’s needs at school. She called us four or five times throughout the year to talk to me about things she had observed about Mark. This meant a lot to me. She welcomed me to her classroom to teach art and read with her students. I observed that she loved her students; I observed that she was very dedicated and generous.
I will remember her as a blessing in our lives because she made the transition to a new state and public school much easier to bear.