something, anything

in 10 minutes or less…

a lot going on around here.  where in the world did i find the time to blog last summer?  school has been out for 2 weeks, and i feel like it’s been a non-stop party at our house the entire time.  i’ve got {the younger} kids up before 7 and {older} kids up past midnight and i have no time to myself to have any of my own thoughts.  it’s lovely and ridiculous at the same time.  life. 

father’s day, our anniversary, damon’s birthday, mother- and father-in-law birthdays…all within one weeks’ time. 

elli and holly left for girls’ camp yesterday so life has slowed down a bit for a few days.  elli woke up cranky yesterday and wouldn’t eat the breakfast i made for her, and i dropped her off at the church at 7 am in a bad mood.  which affected the rest of my day.  i’m sure she’s way over it by now, but it really bothers me when my last interaction with one of my kids is negative when i send them off to school for the entire day or camp for an entire week.  what could i have done differently?

mariokart and lego rockband scratched beyond playability.  wii and xbox consoles needing to be sent in for repairs.  possibly 3 weeks without gaming systems.  good news or bad news?  depends on who you ask.

we’re getting ready for our annual ensign ranch camping trip next week.  and by “we”, i mean me.  it’s a lot of work, but always worth it.  i am so over-organized that i think i’m starting to get disorganized.  i have a lot to do.  and i can’t quite think clearly when i have so many things on my to-do list.

several of you have e-mailed me regarding savannah.  i’m not avoiding responding to those e-mails, i am just still thinking about the right words to say.  the bottom line is that i am still dealing with many of the emotions that were created when we got her.  i have not “overcome” anything.  things have improved, but i have made a lot of mistakes and i still struggle daily.  more on that later when i can write with a clear mind.

10 minutes are up.  the kids are starting to annoy me with their questions/neediness, which is my signal that i’ve been on my computer for too long.  

hello summer.  goodbye sanity. 

five years, times 3

today, we have been married for fifteen years. 
unbelievable to me.    
fifteen years of  marriage
was like how long your parents were married;
not how long regular people are married. 
but now that we have achieved the fifteen-year mark,
it really doesn’t seem that long.  

when we got married, my mom gave us a little framed saying that said, “the hardest year of marriage is the one you’re in.”  which i thought was funny at first, but now i know how true that is.  i don’t know if marriage can be defined in any other way:  it’s hard.  but so worth it. 

the first five years of our marriage

were hard.  but so fun and exciting.  it was lovely to be newlyweds.  having damon as my roommate was a welcome change from selfish, catty female roommates.  but there were adjustments.  it was much harder for damon to adjust to living with me than it was for me to adjust to living with him.  he was a dream roommate.  he picked up after himself.  he was courteous and respectful.  he kept his dirty clothes neatly folded in a pile inside the closet.  he didn’t use all the hot water right before i got in the shower.  he didn’t eat all the good food in the fridge.   he cooked for me.  he did the dishes.  
what wasn’t there to love about the adjustment to suddenly living with someone you loved?  {apparently lots of things, from damon’s perspective}

but those years were hard, too.  damon was still finishing up his bachelor’s degree at byu.  i was working 2 jobs.  and then i was{ecstatically} pregnant and sick all the time.  we moved from a tiny 275 square foot apartment to a luxurious 800-square-foot apartment.  we had our first baby (on my lunch break from my job at SOS Staffing).  and, all of a sudden, i was a stay-at-home mom.  there was adjustment after adjustment to our marriage and our relationship.  damon graduated from byu and we moved to washington state to work for microsoft.  and just as we were learning to adapt to these new changes in our marriage, we added another baby to our family.  a lot of change in those first five years.  boy, were we looking forward to the next five years, though. 

the next five years

were even harder.  we got out of debt.  and then got into more debt with the purchase of our first home.  i experienced the incredible pain of an ectopic pregnancy.  and the joy of becoming pregnant again after wondering if i would ever be able to conceive again.  close friends’ and siblings’ marriages ended in divorce.  we saw how little it took to have a marriage fall apart, and we made changes to our own relationship.  we treated each other a little more kindly and were a little less selfish.  my dad died unexpectedly.  and with that came a lot of doubts and fears and sadness.  and then we had our fourth child, named after my dad.  a lot of learning and growth occurred in these five years.

and then the next five years came. 

and they have been the hardest.  when ray was 9 months old, savannah (almost 22 months) joined our family very unexpectedly.  and life was, quite suddenly, hard.  i never knew hard like this before.  our relationship changed once again.  savannah brought out weaknesses in me that i didn’t realize were there; damon dealt head-on with personal struggles of his own.  we hung on.  we adapted once again.  we moved out of our home for 8 months and attempted a major remodel/addition to our first home, which never fully got completed because we ran over-budget.  we decided to get pregnant again.  we were stunned to discover that getting pregnant wasn’t completely up to us.  we waited.  we went on with our lives.  elli turned a reasonable age to babysit (10 1/2?), and we started to faithfully date each other again- the best thing that’s ever happened to us.   i started my blog.  we sought infertility help.  we finally got pregnant.  calvin died.  it was like starting over in our relationship, in a way.  only we had 6 six kids now.  and nearly fifteen years of life experience together.  things we’d struggled with in our relationship for years had suddenly been fixed.  we had the perfect family vacation of our marriage:  disneyland without any strollers.  and our perfect couple vacation of our marriage:  hawaii without any strollers or kids.  these last five years have been the best and the worst.  the hardest and the most rewarding. 

i’ve started several different blogposts about this milestone in our marriage this week and haven’t been able to quite get out what i want to say.  when we were first married, i was pretty convinced that damon loved me way more than i loved him.  i thought he was whipped.  fifteen years later, i’m in awe of how whipped i am. i can’t possibly express how much i have grown to love the man that i was lucky enough to marry.  my eyes are tearing up just thinking about my feelings for him.

he is my best friend.  he is someone i look up to.  he is someone i trust.  he is the perfect balance for me.  he is someone that makes me laugh.  he is the one that i want to spend all of my time with.  he is the one that makes every hurt and trial and bad day seem like no big deal.  he teaches me.  he is an example to me.  he is the one who gives my life perspective. he is the one i love. 

and he is my husband
of fifteen years. 
and that makes me so happy.

here’s to another fives years, times eternity. 

stuck.

right now i’m stuck in between feeling obligated to blog and feeling motivated (by my obligation to my blog) to record my thoughts and feelings and memories that i want to have documented.  i’m no longer committed to blogging daily and while that is wonderfully freeing some days, it also comes at a price. 

ever since hawaii, i have been less connected to my laptop.  which i love.  i am still not even fully caught up with my blog-reading on google reader.  surfing the internet seems completely senseless to me and i’m finding it more and more annoying to be tied down to my computer. 

i’m constantly asking myself this question, “am i blogging just to blog or am i blogging because i want to remember this moment/story/event/emotion/season of my life?”  and if what i’m feeling like blogging about right then doesn’t make the cut, then i pass on blogging for the day.  sometimes that’s great.  i usually feel great about that choice.  passing on blogging usually frees up more time to spend with damon or to read.  but it’s getting easier and easier for me to justify not blogging.  which was my fear when i decided to not re-commit to blogging daily. 

i have a lot of things on my mind that i want to take the time to think about and write about.  i want to write a birthday letter to emma.  i want to write about the things i love about the father of my children.  i want to write about my own dad.  i want to write about my feelings and experiences as a newlywed.  i want to write about my hopes for the summer.  i want to write about where my heart is regarding calvin. i want to write about lots of important things, but i can’t seem to find the frame of mind to do so.  i can’t seem to find the time to clear my head and close myself off and just write from my heart. 

and i think (i hope) it’s because i have healed a bit and i am more engaged in my life with my family again.  but i fear it’s just because i’m tired and the kids are out of school and i don’t feel like blogging and so i let myself off the hook.  so i write this post tonight with renewed effort to just write even when it just seems like babbling and is disorganized because i don’t want to let this healing habit of writing from my heart slip away from me.  i’ve worked too hard at it to lose it now.

you’ve got a friend in me

in preparation for seeing toy story 3 tomorrow,
we all stayed up way too late
watching a toy story/toy story 2 double feature tonight. 

the evening ended on a sweet note
when we were singing “you’ve got a friend in me”
after the roundup gang was reunited in andy’s  home. 

and then i asked ray, “do i have a friend in you, ray?”

and he- very seriously- replied, “no, mom.
i only have the holy ghost in me.”

[the worst kind of] parenting moments

we had some at breakfast this morning.  right after nolan asked how you could still have babies even if you weren’t married.  i started to answer that question honestly, but then he got distracted and i didn’t feel like pulling him back to the original topic.  so i dodged that bullet.

but then ray asked me where his big stegosaurus dinosaur was.  you know the one he won at the school carnival last fall?  the big, huge [life-size] orange one that was his favorite that he played with “all the time”, but he couldn’t find it lately?

[the same one that i never actually saw him playing with, but was always on the floor taking up so much room.]

i tried to be soft and evasive with my answer, “i think i gave that dinosaur to a little boy who didn’t have any other stuffed animals or toys.  he really wanted that stuffed animal, and he’s so happy that you were so nice to give it to him.”

but nolan saw right through that answer.  “why are you always giving our stuff away, mom?  we like our stuff!  you gave away our blocks (that were always dumped all over the floor) that we like.  and our k’nex [that had tiny pieces that were always falling apart and getting lost] that we still played with.”

and then ray, in [the worst pathetic kind of ] tears [that make me feel like a complete failure as a parent], chimed in, “but why did you give it to another boy when it was mine?  i needed it more than him.  why didn’t you give him my frog instead?  can we call him and ask him if he’ll trade the dinosaur for the frog?”

the truth is, the frog is much smaller than the dinosaur- so no, we can’t trade, but if you aren’t attached to your frog, i’m happy to get rid of that too.  and the other truth is, there isn’t an actual boy per se that i gave the dinosaur to.  and the truth also is i don’t even know if he was a boy that needed that dinosaur more than my ray.  or if he was a boy without any other toys.  it’s just something i like to tell my kids out of desperation for why i gave away their junk to value village.  usually it gives them perspective and they recognize how much stuff they have and it’s ok that i “shared” their wealth of toys with someone else.

except for those times when i give away something that they actually notice is gone.  and they miss it.  and there’s nothing i can do about it. 

loser parenting moment.

but have no fear:  nolan is here. 
to bing “stegosaurus stuffed animal”. 

 

and of course he finds it. 
the exact same animal. 
and of course ray is ecstatic. 
and of course nolan has offered to buy it for ray with his very own money. 
and of course the stupid gigantic stuffed animal is forty dollars.  forty dollars. 

and, of course, i put salt in the wide-open wound, and said NO. 

and that’s when nolan saved the day again and agreed to be ray’s pretend dinosaur stuffed animal.  and ray was happy again.

until he wonders where his lightning mcqueen car pillow went….

cousins adjusting to seattle life

the cousins are here! 
the cousins are here!
we are thrilled to have 2 extra teenagers in our home. 
even if it means we have 2 extra teenagers in our home. 

top 10 adjustments holly and andi will need to make
while living in our home:

10.  sleeping during the night- instead of during the day. 

9.  getting woken up to eat breakfast together.

8. 52 degrees in redmond vs. 104 degrees in phoenix.

7.  electronic devices have bedtimes, including andi’s mac. 

6.  i like to take [a lot of] pictures.

5.  living in elli/emma’s pigsty:  an adjustment for andi, no big deal for holly

4.  savannah likes to stare and ask questions;
ray likes to jump.  on you

3.  sharing a double bed with 2 other people

2.  we don’t have cable.  translation:  we can’t watch so you think you can dance.

1.  monster energy drinks are not eligible items to purchase at 7-11 (or anywhere) at 10 o’clock at night (or anytime).

      as you can see,
they’re adjusting just fine so far.

and my favorite pic i took this morning
{before i woke these girls up}: awww.  aren’t they cute all cuddled up together?

was it for me?

8 months he’s been gone.

and today there was a beautiful
FULL rainbow
proudly displayed across our seattle sky.

which i didn’t get a picture of.

but i definitely noticed it.

and it was beautiful.

a Family Home Evening Lesson,

as taught by nolan.

a husband who is working late.

a daughter who is asleep on the couch.

another daughter who went to a graduation ceremony.

a sick boy who is watching sponge bob squarepants.

a daughter who is in bed already.

a mother who fell asleep in her street clothes with her glasses on.

and a boy who won’t take any or all of those things
as an excuse to skip FHE. 

so he’s taken matters into his own hands
and e-mailed me the following lesson,
which he taught to me and the sick boy in the comfort of my bed (after the discomfort of being woken up
to open my e-mail on my laptop):

“I’ve noticed that sometimes I want something and I don’t get it. Well, mom always says that it costs money. Well, that’s true, but you might say “but everything costs money.” And mom say’s “Yes, everything costs money. And eventually she’ll say no. But don’t get sad. Remember, you get everything else, like Hot wheel cars. So be thankful. You can still have fun. Remember you get stuff on your birthday and Christmas. Be happy you at least get something. And last you get something right now. Be thankful.”

and then he proceeded to hand each of us (me and ray and him) peanut m&m’s that he’d taken from my scrapbooking stash as something to be thankful for right now. 

and we were all thankful
(ray, especially, once he saw the m&m’s). 

thankful that my second-grader can spell and use punctuation better than my seventh-grader.

thankful that my second-grader was persistent enough to create his own FHE lesson because his mom is lazy.

thankful that my second-grader made a 180-degree turnaround from his earlier accusation that
i “just made those dumb words up just to make people unhappy.” 
those dumb words being “life isn’t fair.”

thankful for a simple blogpost tonight
that i had already given up on because i was too tired to post.

thankful that i can now put my pajamas on
and officially call it a night,
complete with an FHE lesson
and blogpost within my day’s accomplishments.

what dumb words have you made up
just to make your children unhappy?

{before} family pic {after}

immediately preceding this picture:

• we ate a smokin’ dinner that included chicken teriyaki meatball shish kabobs and frozen strawberry lemonade
• i actually cleaned the kitchen after dinner instead of leaving it for the morning like i usually do. 
• damon foiled my plan to stage our weekly picture surrounding him as he snored away on the sofa chair…in full boy scout uniform
• emma got kicked in the shins by elli while they were playing soccer
• emma was gifted a nearly-brand-new pair of rollerblades by our kind neighbor that was cleaning out her shed in a neighboring backyard.
• elli was gifted a pink locker shelf by that same neighbor
• nolan started complaining that he never gets any rollerblades!
• i gave my neighbor a dirty look and declined the loads of stuffed animals she had to offer. 
• nolan and ray discovered several of pebbles’ hidden secrets on the lawn
• pebbles put her paw on nolan’s arm, which scared him and he reared his head back…just perfectly into emma’s lip
• emma was in a less-than-lovely mood
• elli contributed to emma’s less-than-lovely mood by laughing at her and calling her a baby
• ray disappeared underneath the deck
• nine previous pictures were taken
• i jumped off the deck and popped into the picture

immediately after this picture was taken:

• damon left for an eagle court of honor, his seventh meeting obligation of the day.
• ray and savannah forgot it was sunday and started jumping on the trampoline
• jazzy (our cat) scared the bajeebers out of pebbles and then made a giant leap onto our deck and booked it inside (and pebbles cowered underneath the deck)
• i came upstairs to download pictures to my laptop and i was reminded of our fabulous trip to the (very NOT hawaii) beach we took yesterday, in the form of several pictures i hope i will find the time to blog about this week
• elli started playing her guitar (because she’s supposed to be cleaning her room that she started to re-organize today, but lost her steam after the mess-making part of re-organizing)
• 4 of 5 children were sent to their rooms to read until bedtime because they were complaining about how “starving” they were.

let the holy spirit guide…

5 weeks ago,
i compared the holy ghost to a traffic light
in a talk i gave at nolan’s baptism.

earlier today,
nolan came running down the stairs excitedly shouting my name:

“mom!  mom!
I just felt the holy spirit guide me!”

me:  “how exciting!  what did it feel like?”

“well, i just went to the bathroom
and i tried to leave the bathroom
without washing my hands,
but then i remembered
the holy ghost could give me signals
so i closed my eyes and i saw RED
and i knew i wasn’t making the right choice
so i went back in the bathroom and
washed my hands.

and then i closed my eyes again
and i saw GREEN!

and i know it was the holy ghost guiding me!”

TIR: aaron and trina’s wedding

• it was hot.
• and humid.
• trina’s dress was very southern-belle:  lots and lots (and lots and lots) of ruffles.  it was exactly what she wanted.
• trina’s mom was up all night the night before finishing up her dress
• trina and i stayed up late the night before talking about how excited we were to marry the Barry twins.
• the air conditioning in trina’s house was broken.
• it was hot.
• and humid.
• i thought i was going to die trying to sleep in that heat.
• trina’s sisters and mom were eager to accommodate me as their guest and were so friendly and sweet.
• the drive to the washington dc temple was a long one. 
• i wrote in my journal about how excited i was to be marrying damon in just a few weeks on the ride to the temple.
• we went with aaron and trina to wendy’s for lunch after they were sealed in the washington dc temple…where aaron and trina pretty much rubbed it in our faces that they were married and we were not.  something really funny happened at wendy’s because i can remember all of us totally cracking up over something (probably something aaron said), but i can’t remember the details.  good times.
• i was so grateful and happy that we were able to attend their sealing and that things worked out the way they did for me to be able to be in the temple with them.
• i was very envious that we still had to wait 17 more days to get married.
• aaron and trina came back to damon/aaron’s parents’ house in virginia beach the day after their wedding, and we all talked and had a fun time.
• trina and aaron had matching denim overalls that they liked to wear all the time.  not for their wedding, but so many of my “aaron and trina memories” involve those overalls.
• trina and aaron liked to move. 
• a lot.  damon and i have lived in 5 places in 15 years.  i’m pretty sure they’ve lived in close to 20.
• trina did not appreciate when damon and i dropped by their house unannounced (we did it a little too often.  sorry about that trina.)
• i still remember the “huge” apartment with the forest green carpet back by Utah Valley Hospital and the “humongous” farm table that they got some kind of deal on that they probably still use. 
• trina and aaron always had a new pet that trina had rescued somewhere or talked aaron into getting.
• trina and aaron actually liked bob (mine, aaron, and damon’s [horrible] boss at sub-zero) and donna (trina’s boss at their other business:  a ceramic studio in orem).
• it was fun being newlyweds together in utah while we were all in school. 
• we were both poor.
• trina has always been a wonderful example of a loving and devoted wife to aaron- right from the start.  she has always expressed in words and action how much she loves aaron and i love watching how happy they still are.

happy 15th anniversary, aaron and trina!

the value of a case of pop

you, too, could have your very own case of pop
if you just…

volunteer to sweep the cafeteria floors everyday after lunch.

who knew child labor was so cheap these days?

a boy and his dog

ray is whipped.  he loves that dog.  he can’t stand to hear her whimper and whine and begs to let her out of her crate when she’s whining.  “mom, she cries whenever i shut the door!”  i even caught him sneaking some of his snacks from his backpack to her today.  he loves to make her happy.

Pebbles reciprocates ray’s affection and loves to follow him around.  she is a very mellow/lazy dog and doesn’t really like to go on walks.  the only way to get her off her bottom is to have ray run in front of her.  if ray stops, she stops.  it’s pretty funny (and annoying, if you have a destination you’re trying to reach).

today, we drove to the park and ray actually buckled pebbles into the booster seat next to him.  and she stayed.  the older kids were all at school so it was just me and ray and 2 of ray’s friends (mandy’s asher and brett’s sam) and the dog.  ray even insisted that we pack a lunch for pebbles, which pebbles enjoyed (along with my peanut butter and honey sandwich that she ate while i wasn’t looking). 

the boys took pebbles for a walk around the soccer fields in the center of the park, and i just walked behind them the entire time giggling because ray would not let pebbles be.  he kept insisting that he pick her up and carry her to “give her a break” because she was walking so slow and he assumed it was because she was so tired.  the kid can barely lift her, and she has body parts poking out all over, but she totally doesn’t even care and just puts up with ray’s loving arms wrestled around her. 

i had to get some of it on video.  repeat this about 20 times and that is what it is like walking anywhere with the dog and sympathetic ray.

other pictures we took today

in the car:
 

pebble’s picnic lunch we packed, at the insistence of ray:

the reason behind the purple moustache:

can’t resist the urge to “giver her a little break” and pick her up:

trying to force the poor dog to look at the camera:          
 

the “baby watermelon” the boys found on a bush (which i think is still in my  pocket):
 

why we might be in need of a chiropractor tomorrow:
 

cute boys:
   could the boy and his dog be any cuter?