Sunday was our last Sunday in our ward (and our last Sunday at church for a while since our ward in Doha will meet on Fridays). Nothing too far out of the normal happened, except our primary children were each gifted a rather large bag of leftover Easter candy (which they were thrilled about).
.jpeg)
Downsizing is an incredible amount of work!
I suppose one could simply rent a dumpster and empty the contents of their house into said dumpster and call it a day. But even that would take a bit of work (unless one also hired workers to carry the contents of the house to the dumpster for them). We don't have the luxury of a dumpster—and doing something like that would eat away at my conscience forever—so we've had to figure out what to do with everything.
We took a load of old paint cans to be recycled here. We took old electronics to be recycled there. We took 20-year-old towels to the animal shelter. We took dozens of loads of stuff to goodwill. We've given away a billion items on the Buy Nothing Group. We left a bread machine in the kitchen for a friend who is in Mexico until after we leave. We meticulously disassembled our broken organ and snuck it piece by piece into the church dumpster over a number of weeks. We sold a few things. And yesterday we took all our glass to the park to recycle it.
*****
Years ago—in 2022—we got a case of ginger beer for Christmas. We kept the bottles so that Miriam could make a xylophone. By October 2023 she still had not done this, but she did manage to smash an entire box of said bottles on the cement floor of the basement while we were recovering from the Great Flood of 2023. That experience must have really taken the wind out of her sails because the rest of the jars sat for another nearly three years.
I came very close to simply loading them up to take them out to recycle but then I thought to myself, "Come on! It will take all of two minutes to make a xylophone!"
So I grabbed the cracked funnel (that we haven't tossed yet but which we knew we weren't going to pack halfway around the world with us) and filled those bottles with varying levels of water.
Boom—xylophone done!
Extremely scientific.
If I had wanted to take more time on this project we could have used a tuner to get actual notes. Or I could have used a larger variety bottles to make it trickier to know what order they would go in (though we did throw in an experimental bottle or two into this activity). Or, I suppose we could have done any number of things.
After holding onto these bottles for, oh, four years, however, I was simply proud of us for doing anything with them at all (aside from smash them on the floor).
Alexander had the most fun playing with them, I think.
This morning Zoë sat down to make a "welcome" sign for her friends (who are coming to sleep over tomorrow—because sleeping in an empty house sounds so exciting for any of the neighbourhood kids to pass up).
This morning Andrew also had the follow-up appointment for his toe and the doctor thinks it's coming along nicely. I think so, too. Andrew has other feelings about it, but also is noticeably in less pain so overall I think he's improving. He just doesn't like to look at it.
He picked up doughnuts on his way home and while we were enjoying them together we...fell into what we call "lecture mode."
Let's just say that Zoë and Benjamin are transitioning to being the oldest and most responsible young humans in the home and it's been a rough transition. They've been used to having four older humans waiting on them hand and foot so perhaps haven't realized that they've become capable older humans, themselves. That comes with great expectations.
For example, Zoë was like, "I want half of that doughnut and have of that doughnut."
And Andrew was like, "Great, go for it."
And Zoë was like, "Like...what do you mean?"
And Andrew was like, "Cut the doughnuts you want in half and take them."
"By myself?"
"You're eleven!"
Yes, we cut a doughnut in half for Phoebe, who is four. But you're eleven. You can cut your own doughnut!
It's just been a bunch of things like that that they haven't ever considered doing because their bossy older sisters would step in to cut doughnuts (or whatever) if we as parents didn't do it, ya know? So we had to clue them in that they were getting older and wiser and needed to just step in and do...stuff.
In their defense, we took the chore chart down (and with it went any sense of responsibility, apparently).
"Like, if you see something that needs to be done, you can't just say, 'Someone else can do that!'" Phoebe added.
Exactly.
At least she's been listening to our "please do stuff" lectures.
Of course, the dishwasher is still full of clean dishes, so she's quite happy to ignore her own assigned chore...but...growing up is a process.
Anyway, we were deep in lecture mode and then—still in lecture voice—Andrew said, "And you're going to want to remake that sign, Zoë."
"What? Why?!" she asked.
"Go ahead and read your sign out loud."
"Welcome. Come and find me."
"Try again."
"Wel...oh."
Benjamin was asked to give a talk on July 12—the Sunday we were busy at county—so I asked if there was another week he could possibly speak. We only have 10 youth speakers (on a good year) and 52 weeks in a year, so it's pretty easy to find an open week...but although I was told they'd try to rearrange things, we never heard back. He wasn't on the schedule the following week (which was good because we ended up going to Sam's homecoming instead of attending our own ward) and then we just didn't hear and didn't hear and didn't hear about anything this week, so we figured Benjamin was off the hook (since next week is fast and testimony meeting, which has no assigned speakers).
But then the ward bulletin was sent out on Friday and, lo, Benjamin was on the intended program.
So he got to work writing and came up with a decent draft. I read that draft and discussed it with him, noting areas he needed to explain things better, craft some segues between ideas, and more clearly develop the theme running through his talk. He was miffed, but sat down to write a second draft, which was much better than the first. I read that draft and discussed it with him, noting areas where he needed to back up huge claims (such as "the phrase 'fear not' can be found in every book of scripture"—do you know that? Or are you just saying it? You're just saying it...okay...perhaps do a little more research before saying it) and tell enough of a story that people can understand what's going on and glean the message from it, but without reading the whole thing verbatim. He was quite upset about this feedback but agreed to give his talk another round of edits.
You can imagine how he felt when I sent him back for a third round of edits. Pretty darn frustrated, that's what! Let's not even talk about the fourth...
.jpeg)
I'm kidding! I'm kidding! But it is kind of surprising how curly Benjamin's luscious locks get when they get lengthy. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't believe in combing his hair so it eventually ends up getting chopped. Lucky for all of us, it'll grow back.
I saw this picture of Benjamin and thought again of the poem about the girl with the curl and my brain immediately inserted the word "churl" for "girl" (but churl is a little too negative of a word, don't you think?):
We have been blessed with a very wet summer, filled with plenty of thunderstorms. It's sometimes made our walks a little difficult to take, but it's been lovely to literally soak in all the rain while we can.
I took Alexander and Phoebe for a walk last week after a storm and they enjoyed exploring their wet world. Here's Alexander pointing to a little herd of deer wandering through our neighbourhood (they've eaten everything in my garden that we would have liked to eat—such a nuisance).
.jpeg)
Miriam had Andie and McKenna over on Thursday night (July 16) to play a few games and say goodbye. Tonight the kids are having a sleepover down there because that room is 100% empty (except for all the stuff the kids just dragged into it, I guess). After this picture was taken I made Andie and McKenna fill a box of food to take home to their families.
.jpeg)
Between the county swim meet and attending Sam Lewis's mission homecoming/report, we've missed the last two Sundays at our ward, so I'm sure we'll surprise some people by showing up again!
.jpeg)
I had my consult with the surgeon this morning and he feels confident this is not a hernia and I am not in need of surgery immanently. I'm also free to resume regular activity. So that's all good news.
He thinks it is simply a lipoma (that is causing discomfort because it is attached to my chest cavity...like perhaps was inside my chest cavity...and then slipped out...I dunno...because it wasn't there before and now it is there). Whatever the case, I probably will have it removed eventually because it is uncomfortable to, like, lie on my stomach, for example.
Plus, he can't guarantee it's benign so suggests eventual biopsy and the way they would biopsy a growth like this is to...remove it.
But I don't have to squeeze in a surgery in the next 15 days...so that's good, good news.
In other news, we left this morning before any of the kids woke up. They all knew the plan this morning (that Benjamin and Zoë would be collectively in charge), but I left them a reminder note on the table, just in case:
.jpeg)
Approximately six weeks ago, Andrew ever so lightly smashed his toe (his words, not mine) and has been in abject agony ever since (my observation, not his). Last week it was so very sore and swollen and he decided to clip his toenail to see if that would release any pressure. He was unprepared when pus started streaming out from under his nail after he disturbed it.
.jpeg)
Swimming is an interesting sport because we spent approximately 15 hours at the pool over the past two days (5 on Saturday and 10 on Sunday) to watch our three children swim a collective grand total of approximately 5 minutes.
It was certainly a marathon...for the spectators!
Fortunately, they do allow swimmers to leave after their last event and they always schedule relays first (at regular meets they are last) which meant we got to leave "early" after Zoë's relays. Still, it was a lot of hours at the pool!
I took this top picture because it shows our coach (Amy) as a child swimming for Gwinnett county and now as an adult coaching for Gwinnett county. There are 5 coaches featured on this slide for the same reason (and there seemed to be multiple slides of this nature). Such a thing is unfathomable for me (I currently live 2221.66 miles, as the crow oryx flies, from where I first joined a swim team) but is apparently the reality for many people. The Census Bureau claims that in the United States "nearly six in 10 young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up, and eight in 10 live within 100 miles," while this Pew study claims approximately 40% of people remain in the community within which they grew up.
Anyway, Andrew and I were both surprised by how many coaches in the Gwinnett county swim league were also young swimmers in the league.
