Tuesday, April 29, 2025
2025 MFECOE Poster Contest
Yellow Flamingos
Today I was reading Can You Dance Like a Peacock? with Phoebe and she got really excited about the flamingo page.
"Can we get some flamingos at the store?" she asked.
"I...don't know...that you can really get flamingos at the store...?" I said.
"You can!"
"Where?"
"Just at the store! They have them! But not usually pink flamingos."
"Yeah, see...I didn't think they had pink flamingos at the store."
"They have yellow flamingos. Can we get those?"
"Yellow flamingos?"
"Yes! I love them!"
Monday, April 28, 2025
Frog update
Maypole
Me: It's math hour. And I need to finish writing a paper. You guys need to be focused on your work right now so I can focus on mine.
Also me: I wonder if we can fashion a maypole out of items we have in our house...
Sunday, April 27, 2025
Easter Sunday
We had to be at church early last Sunday to rehearse for the Easter program, which went well. The primary children sang, and then the young women sang a piece Miriam selected and which they learned all on their own, and then the ward choir sang a few pieces as well.
Miriam stayed to play the organ for the Spanish ward. Rachel stayed to drive her.
Then when she got home we had to leave for Grandpa and Darla's for Easter dinner, which was lovely. But we didn't get home until it was nearing bedtime. And the Easter Bunny had not stopped by yet.
Our children were incredibly patient about this. They hardly asked when or whether the Easter Bunny was going to come. Benjamin and Zoë did drop some hints about their expectations, like, "Gee...if we took the little kids down to the basement to play for an hour do you think the Easter Bunny might how up thing?" But they were very mature when I turned down their "offer," reminding them that their older sisters weren't at home and the Easter Bunny probably wouldn't drop by when it thought it might get caught by children coming home.
Anyway, Rachel was in charge of dessert for Easter dinner and she needed to put some frosting on the carrot cake after she got home from church (which took her forever...wink, wink), but the kids were already getting anxious to leave for Grandpa and Darla's, so we told them to each grab a book and head out to get buckled in the van. They did. And then they waited while Rachel first iced one cake, which Andrew brought out to the van, grumbling about how long Rachel was taking in the kitchen. And then Rachel got the other cake ready (she'd also made a lemon-glazed vanilla dessert). And then we finally, finally got in the car to head to Grandpa and Darla's.
We ate, we visited, we played some catching games in the backyard...and then we headed home and...the kids were so surprised to find that the Easter Bunny had come! Phoebe thought it was magical while Benjamin, Zoë, and Alexander were perplexed about how we managed to pull off a surprise like this.
I am not a very surprising person, it seems, so this was a smashing success.
Friday, April 25, 2025
Georgia Botanical Gardens
I had to go to campus again today on a two-fold mission: (1) to attend the awards luncheon for my program (I didn't win anything this year...but they wanted people to come support those that did), and (2) to pick up the poster I had printed for a conference on Tuesday.
The awards luncheon was at the Botanical Gardens and...wow!
I mean, we've seen the signs but we just...never knew. It's like Duke Gardens...but better somehow? Except that it's not connected to campus directly so it's a little less accessible. But it's pretty awesome.
They have beautiful plants...
Turns out...
Yesterday Phoebe wanted to go to the park, but it was too wet for that. In the afternoon when we went for a walk, however, there was a beautiful rainbow in the sky.
"It's a rainbow for real life," Phoebe told us.
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Phoebe and Alexander on campus!
One of my earliest memories—or perhaps one of my earliest memory of a memory—is attending a horticulture class at BYU with my mom.
What I remember remembering is that I was sitting under a desk eating Froot Loops from a little cup. The classroom was dark, except for a screen at the front, which was showing slide projections of various plants.
That's it. That's the memory.
After verifying this memory with my mom, I learned that I would have been about two years old when that memory occurred. The teacher of the class was Dr. St. Clair (who I would later work for in the Integrative Biology (or "InBio" as it was then called) department shortly after Andrew and I got married).
I wonder why that memory stuck with me so firmly through all the many years that it did—and the feeling of the memory as well...just of...feeling content and safe.
And I wonder what memories my children will take with them moving forward.
Will Phoebe remember getting to come to campus with me today? She was terribly excited to get to come...only to be required to be still and quiet. She played with her felt boards and drew on her drawing pad quite happily through most of the poetry readings.
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
2025 Easter Egg Smackdown
Eggs. Boy, I dunno...
They're about $6 per dozen right now. We boiled 25 eggs for Easter this year, so it cost us about $12 for an afternoon of family fun—and that included dinner! Not too bad.
Do I wish eggs were cheaper? Certainly.
But I also think there are bigger fish frying here and that in spite of—*waves hands vaguely*—all this it's good to be together, it's good to enjoy each other. I got to read some of Delores Williams' Sisters in the Wilderness over the Easter weekend and particularly enjoyed this passage: "the text [scriptures] suggest that the spirit of God in Jesus came to show humans life—to show redemption through a perfect ministerial vision of righting relations between body (individual and community), mind (of humans and of tradition) and spirit" (p. 146).
Righting relations. What a beautiful summary of everything the Saviour asks us to do—to love others, to mourn with those that mourn, to find what was lost, to just...go about doing good...to make things right. That's it. That's the message.
I'm not sure where to go between this point and the next, so before I tell you the first (and perhaps only) miracle of our 2025 Easter Egg Smackdown, I'll tell you that this week was Easter Sunday, so we only had one hour of church. Last week was our ward conference (and the week before that was General Conference), and two weeks before that was the week Benjamin spoke in church.
Anyway, a major highlight of his day last week—during ward conference—was that the bishop quoted him in the middle of his talk. Bishop Dallin said, "As Benjamin Heiss advised us all a few weeks ago—do what you can do!"
That also happened to be the message of Andrew's underwear talk during FHE this evening.
But I digress...so now I suppose I can tell you the miracle of the 2025 Easter Egg Smackdown: not a single egg was cracked during the egg dying process. No one dropped one or accidentally put all their weight on one or knocked one off the table or anything. We usually lose quite a few in the process of dying...but I guess the kids are growing up or something and now they all (mostly) know how to treat eggs with care (that is, we are no longer quite as outnumbered by chaos-makers as we once were).
Everyone got three eggs to decorate (with one egg designated the emergency back up egg...which we didn't even need).
Saturday, April 19, 2025
Phoebe Narrates the Easter Egg Hunt
"Take, take, take, take, take!" she said as she gathered the shiny plastic eggs (that were expertly hidden by the young women earlier that morning).