Flashback Sunday: Stupid Moms and Preschool

While enjoying a nice Sunday dinner, courtesy of Karen who gets home from church a few hours before we do, we were chatting about the upcoming week. Tomorrow’s a holiday—Labour Day—so we have some fun things planned and then on Tuesday Rachel is going to try out a preschool at a neighbour’s house, just around the corner from our house. Exciting times.

“Who will be my teacher?” she asked.

“Her name is Mrs. O,” Grandma told her, “And she’s very smart!”

“Oh, my mom’s not,” Rachel felt the need to point out before carrying on with the rest of the conversation like she hadn’t said anything the least bit offensive…or hilarious.

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Layton Reunion

We went up to my Uncle Bob’s house yesterday for a family reunion. My Aunt Tami was in town for the BYU vs. Washington game (among other things) and it was decided that it would be a good time to get all of my dad’s siblings together with my grandparents. Naturally this included grandchildren and great-grandchildren, too.

Rachel was so excited to play with her cousins. Kelli brought matching shirts for all her kids so they could take family pictures and Rachel wanted so badly to be in the pictures with them, which is odd because recently she hasn’t ever wanted me to take pictures of her. There was plenty of picture-taking and cousin-playing going on.

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Running-Libraries-Public Transportation

On Thursday I ran to the library with the girls in the jogging stroller. The distance I covered roundtrip was roughly 10.5 km and I averaged a 12-minute mile, which sounds pretty slow unless you know I was pushing a 28 lbs stroller holding 50 lbs of children and hauling 10 lbs of library books and 10+ lbs of other sundry items (diaper bag, lunch, water, and a snowsuit we picked up at Savers on our way home). In total I was pushing close to 100 lbs, which closely approximates my avoirdupois, in front of me.

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Not about busses this time…

I may as well admit it—we are using government-funded insurance. Not for us, but for the girls. Andrew doesn’t qualify for state-funded insurance because he has a student health plan available to use so is required to do that, which is fine because that’s only about $97 per month. To add the girls and me onto the plan would bring our premium to $315.50 per month.

Without being too frank about our finances, I can tell you that the maximum gross income a family our size can have while maintaining eligibility for government-funded health insurance is $3,675. We don’t make anywhere near that amount per month, even when Andrew was working full-time (without benefits, of course) this summer we were shy of that amount by at least a grand. Now that the semester has begun Andrew has had to drastically cut back his working hours. He went to the MPA orientation two weeks ago and this past week was the first week of real classes. He’s gone before the girls and I get up in the morning and comes home in time for dinner before sequestering himself in the office to do homework. Rachel has already asked why Daddy lives at school instead of at home so if that’s any indication of how the semester is going to be…well, yeah. It will be tough.

I’m working, too, though not very much. Before we had children I worked approximately 40 hours per week—not all at the same job, of course, because no one ever seems to be hiring for full-time positions—but now that we have children I’m lucky if I work 40 hours in a month. Being a work-from-home/stay-at-home mom is a tough job but we figure it is worth my staying home to avoid child care costs, which can be quite astronomical. Also, so that I can raise our children. That’s good, too.

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Miriam at 10 months

I have no statistics for this girl since we haven’t taken her to the doctor since the nebulizer incident. I’m fairly confident she’s healthy and growing but, good news, we finally have insurance for the girls so I can take them to the doctor again. Now I just have to get around to making appointments.

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$2 Tuesday at Thanksgiving Point

Throughout the month of August Thanksgiving Point was doing a promotion allowing patrons to enter any attraction for only $2 instead of the ghastly exorbitant amount it usually costs. Since the offer is only good through August and since today is the last day of August, Grandma invited the girls and me out on a date.

It was fun to have a day out, even though we weren’t the only ones to have the idea. Somehow we figured that since school had already started it wouldn’t be too crowded, but it was a complete zoo of strollers, mothers, and preschoolers. That was fine. We had fun despite the crowd.

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Busy Sunday

Today was one of those busy Sundays. Andrew and I both spoke during sacrament meeting in our ward—my mom and Karen helped out with the girls, which was so amazing of them to do, not only because Miriam was such a handful today but, because both my mom and Karen had already sat through three hours of church at their own wards. Karen and Reid both spoke in their ward today and Emily played the cello for the special musical number.

As a finale to our Sabbath day, my brother Patrick was set apart as a service missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’ll be volunteering his time and talent down at the LDS Motion Picture Studio for 12 months.

My mom and dad, auntie Judy and uncle Wally, brother David, sister Josie, and Andrew and I all came to support him.

I thought it was funny that my mom and I both wore the same skirt today, though hers is orange and mine is blue. Josie has one, too—hers is purple—but she didn’t wear it today. My mom got them in South Africa when she was there for a conference last summer before she visited us in Egypt. If I was Andrew I would have either died of embarrassment on the spot or ran home as quickly as I could to change my clothes. But I’m not Andrew, so instead my mom and I just laughed that we wore the same skirt on the same day—besides, they’re different enough that I’m sure no one noticed except for us. And Josie.

We also got to visit with my mom’s cousin Marie, her husband Steve, and their son, Eric. They live in Ohio so we don’t get to see them very often—the last time was at my cousin Mary’s wedding nearly 5 years ago—but Eric will be attending BYU starting on Monday so they were in town “dropping him off” at university.

It was definitely one of those Sundays that makes you wonder where the phrase “day of rest” came from…

Rexburg

Andrew was worried about getting lost in Rexburg so I made sure to have addresses for all the attractions we wanted to see. Turns out that in Rexburg addresses are for pussies. We could see the temple long before we arrived in town and easily found it from the highway.

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Still in Bear World

After driving through the park once we got out to play for a while. After all we’d been sitting in the car for hours on end and the girls were going a little stir-crazy.

Rachel and Miriam measured themselves on the ride sizer and we found out that Rachel is taller than 36 inches so she could go on most rides by herself. We weren’t brave enough to do that, though, so we mostly accompanied her. Sometimes Miriam got to go on the rides, too.

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Yellowstone Bear World

Our first stop was Yellowstone Bear World, a drive-thru adventure. 

I must admit, we were both a little nervous about this experience. I felt kind of how I felt before I went snorkeling for the first time…or how one might feel going down in a shark cage.

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On the road again

I have so much to say about our trip to Rexburg that I am even surprising myself. Rexburg is in The-Middle-Of-Nowhere, Idaho. How is it even possible that we took hundreds of pictures and will likely have to draft several posts to justly cover our experience?

I don’t know, either.

The whole trip was rather spontaneous. Emily came home from her mission on Tuesday and informed us that she was going up to Idaho on Saturday to meet up with a special friend of the male persuasion. It’s a long drive—four to five hours each way—so for her to go there and back in one day by herself was a little nuts. She certainly didn’t want her parents tagging along so we volunteered to go up with her, instead, and made a little vacation out of it. A final hurrah, if you will, before the semester started.

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Flashback Sunday: Lions & Bears (but no tigers)

The only way this flashback thing is going to continue is if we do it on Sundays. I realize that kills the alliteration but it simply must be done. I started doing Flashback Fridays in Egypt where Friday happens to be the day reserved for worship and I got so used to drumming up a flashback in the quiet afternoon after we’d come home from church. For the life of me, I can’t remember to do a flashback on Fridays in America. Flashbacks are too deeply associated with the Sabbath for me, I guess.

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Breaking water and procreant primates

I went to the Relief Society enrichment meeting last night while Andrew stayed home with the girls. It's kind of strange being in this ward--Andrew's family's ward--because everyone seems to already know so much about me while I know so little about everyone else. There's this one young mother in the ward that I've been meaning to talk to but haven't yet. We each have two children who are similar ages so I often see her in the hall or in the mother's lounge but we've both been so busy wrangling, hushing, nursing, and lulling children to sleep during those times that we've merely exchanged understanding glances.

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My little ball of sunshine

Miriam is cheerful, sunny girl. My friend Sara once described her daughter Megan as her “ball of sunshine” and I might just have to steal that phrase from her because it fits Miriam perfectly. She really is a little ball of sunshine.

Lately she’s been working on several variants of her usual machinegun-fire laugh and they’re all quite funny. Her smile, too, is changing as she’s getting her teeth in. She likes to scrinch up her nose and grin while showing all of her teeth. It’s adorable.

She’s got the most contagious laughter, the silliest grins, is happy the majority of the time, and she’s cuddly to boot. We won the baby jackpot!

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Swimming and Singing & Dancing in the rain

This afternoon we filled the pool up with fresh water and the girls got in for a swim. They actually played together nicely for once in their little lives, which was so nice. They shared toys, blew bubbles together and only splashed responsibly.

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We’re so glad when Emily comes home…

Auntie Em arrived home from Nauvoo yesterday—she was there serving a summer service mission for the church. She played flute and piccolo in the brass band every day except Sundays when she would work as a “pioneer” in Historic Nauvoo. She had a great time but we’re so happy she’s home!

Between our time in Egypt and her mission this summer it had been 2 years and 4 days since we last saw her. Rachel and I made a sign for her. It’s festive.

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Life in these United States

Living in the States is different. For example, I find that I don’t need quite as many things. Like peanut butter. I no longer need peanut butter. There’s something about living abroad that causes an intrinsic need for peanut butter.

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Spur-of-the-reunion (Conrad-style)

I have seen so many people this week, it’s been a little crazy. We had a family reunion of sorts on August 11th, which was fun. A lot of my cousins were in town, anyway, having an “immediate family” reunion so we decided to have a dinner with extended family to have a chance for everyone to visit. I’m so glad we did, though Andrew was dreading trying to keep everybody straight.

Our family likes to repeat names.

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Ready to run

Last night I had a nightmare that I kept running and running but couldn’t find the finish line. I was completely lost so I started following this other girl who had a number on and we ended up running through some buildings with classrooms and things inside. We ran until it was dark and when we finally found the finish line there were only a few people left but I couldn’t see who they were because it was too dark. I asked them for my time but they just laughed at me and said that the race had finished hours ago. The man in charge said, “Why did you think you could do this?”

This morning I still had that thought running through my mind. It’s been years since I’ve run a race…or even gone running, for that matter, aside from the handful of times I’ve gone since we’ve moved here. But when the alarm clock went off this morning I dragged myself and Andrew and two little girls out of bed, anyway, and got ready to run.

Registration began at 7 AM. We never leave the house before 7 AM but we did this morning. And it was cold! I just can’t believe how cold it is already—I dressed the girls in long sleeves and pants and brought blankets for them to cuddle up with. It was that cold.

I originally was going to wear sweatpants but Andrew convinced me to change into shorts before the race. He wanted to take a picture of me in my “running pose.” I look much less apprehensive than I felt, especially after seeing dozens of runners suited up with their hydration packs and official-looking outfits. I’m quite sure I was the only one wearing their younger sister’s (or brother’s) gym shorts from junior high.

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StarTalk Banquet/Happy Ramadan

Ramadan began yesterday at sundown. As happenstance allowed it was the closing banquet for Josie’s Arabic StarTalk program at BYU. Though the food was not quite Middle-Eastern we still enjoyed ourselves and it was fun to go support Josie.

Rachel wore her outfit from Morocco. She looked very cute and everyone was jealous of it. She was only sad because we had to go home which meant that bedtime was eminent. Naanii is wearing her shirt from Egypt.

Miriam wore an Egyptian shirt, too, though it was far too large for her since Grandma bought if for Rachel when she was about 15 months old. Unlike Rachel, Miriam was anxious to get home. My mom sat in the backseat between them and on one side a child was howling about not wanting to go to bed, while on the other side a child kept dozing off.

I wore an outfit I picked up in Jordan and Andrew just wore (boring) Western clothes. I tried to convince him to wear his gallabia, but he wouldn’t.

Kirk had us stand up so everyone could look at us—one of those “this could be you” moments for the students while he explained that we just got back from spending two years in Egypt.

All the kids went up to get their certificates and after one girl responded shukran when Kirk said mabrouk, he went on a tangent about God-wishes and how the correct response was Allah ya barak fik and made all the kids say that instead, though I have known real Arabic speakers to answer mabrouk with shukran. Still, I suppose it is a good phrase for the kids to know.

Josie was sad to say goodbye to all her friends. She stayed an extra night even though the camp is technically over because her roommate didn’t fly out until this morning and didn’t want to stay in the dorms alone.

We were worried when we didn’t see any native Arabic speakers that we recognized because that meant we were getting too old, but then Laila walked in (*phew*) so we still had a connection. We also ran into our friend Ibrahim—we knew his family in Jordan, though not him personally because he was in Ghana while we were in Jordan, but we later met him when he came down for a YSA conference in Cairo that we helped out with. It’s always fun to see old friends!

We enjoyed speaking a little bit of Arabic, a whole spread of food including pita bread and hummus, with baklava for dessert.

It was a great way to ring in the Ramadan Season.

كل سنة وانتو طيبين! رمضان كريم