The Seven of Us

Christmas Day is winding down...our kids are in bed, prayers are said, food eaten, and gifts unwrapped, played with, scattered, and put in order again. But this year Christmas has been much more than today.  Christmas was a feeling I had last week as I reflected upon some of the blessings I have: health, the gospel, and my family.  As I've watched friends struggle with health challenges I've realized that I don't control my health; God does.  As hard as I may try, I can only influence my health.  At some point I will be asked (in a big way) to exercise my faith that through the Savior I will be made whole, in whatever way He sees necessary:  physically, emotionally, or spiritually.  Christmas is the gratitude I've felt as I've felt the full magnitude of being healthy. Christmas is the feeling I've had as I've read Christmas stories to my kids; it's the feeling they reflected as they looked for gifts for one another and willingly spen...

blog again before the end of the year. Just not at 1:35 am.  I took 2 melatonin, but tonight my over-the-top type-A psyche trumps supplements.  I just can't turn my mind off.  Hopefully it'll turn back on tomorrow for my mid-term. Merry Christmas!

Last night my parents, Jared and I went to see the movie The Secretariat.   My dad treated us (Thanks again, dad.), and he told the  ticket-taker that our group consisted of 3 adults and one student.  I was puzzled for a moment, then realized that the student is me.  I marveled at my dad's ingenuity, wondered if the ticket-taker would ask who the student was, and I said to myself--as I have for several weeks now-- I'm a student again. Wow. And I smiled within myself. This is probably a good place to explain that I've wanted to be a student since I left BYU.  Upon being transplanted to Colorado, I found that I was extemely lonely and very bored.  As much as I love my family and have tried to be consistently and conscientiously devoted to them, I have always wanted to go back to school.  I barely had time to think that thought during my novice, busy, and draining parenting years, but I did.  I dreamed o...

When the Wray Pool opened in 2003, we took Caleb and his friends Ace Conger, Tyler Loutensock, and Tayton Noyes, along with McKenna and Taylor,  and celebrated Caleb's 5th birthday there.  We all loved the pool (even me, although I was only 18 days away from delivering Isaac), and we've gone to the Wray Pool almost every year since.  Quite often the kids and I go with  my parents.  Here are the photos from this year's trip. Here's Taylor (now 14) with Corbin, age 2.  Caleb catches Corbin as he comes down the slide. Once Corbin discovered the slide that was all he wanted to do.  McKenna and Corbin These pictures are all from our ward Pioneer Day activity in July: From these photos you'd think that we like watermelon.  That's mostly true; even Caleb eats it.  (He's not a fruit or veggie fan.)  The interesting thing is that Caleb ate so much of it at this activity. Of course, a little competition usually helps--h...

Two great things happened today:  1-Isaac's teacher allowed him to check a Junie B. Jones book out of the library!  A couple of days ago he took some of our Junie B books to school; they caused a big problem, as kids were racing to book cubbies to grab their own copies of Junie B. to read at their desks.  I spoke with Isaac's classroom aide, whom Isaac reported  had said that "Kids in the red and yellow groups need to read their  leveled books", implying  that Isaac wasn't capable of reading Junie B.  Mrs. Cox and I had a nice conversation in which I expressed my concern about squleching his budding desire to read, explained how well I feel she and his teacher and title teacher are doing & how empowered he's feeling, and appealed to her to understand his desire and support us.  (I wanted to say, Good grief!  the kid reads all of his leveled books every night and reviews spelling words and does his math homework and alternatel...

 One July morning around 5:30 I stepped onto my back porch, which faces east,  and took these photos.