Nothing

Yesterday Andrew returned from campus and deposited his stuff in the office, which had been perfectly clean when he left for school in the morning. When I saw him standing in the kitchen I gasped and asked him if he had been into the office yet (because Rachel had been using his desk and had scattered papers and crayons and junk all over it. I had meant to have it cleared off before he got home).

"Yeah—I just dropped my backpack off in there. Why?" he asked.

Oh, no reason.

Just paper and crayons and dress ups and Barbies, ponies and staplers and glue sticks and markers...

You know...nothing.

Now I know not to worry about what state the house is when he comes home because he won't notice.

Pilgrims

Today the girls are being pilgrims. I'm the storekeeper so they keep buying things from me—blankets and clean water and bottles for their babies. I don't quite have the heart to tell them that the pilgrims didn't have a store to buy things from because they're playing together so nicely. 

Rachel's first primary presentation

As I've mentioned a couple of times in the past few weeks, the children's primary presentation was today. For those of you who know what a primary presentation is, you know it can be very nerve wracking for those poor little primary children. For those of you who don't know what a primary presentation is, I'll tell you. That was you can be equally aware of how terrifying it is for children.

Once a year the primary children in our church (children ages 3–11) are asked to give a presentation in front of the entire congregation. The primary presentation gives the primary children the opportunity to bear testimony to their families (and the entire congregation) about what they've learned about the gospel throughout the year. They sing songs, recite scriptures, and give talks. In front of the entire congregation.

It's that last part that is the scariest, I think. I remember walking through the church halls when I was little, trying to make my way through the sea of legs to find my parents. I knew who a few adults were—my teachers, the bishop, my friends' parents—but beyond that everyone else was stranger-danger.

Rachel was as nervous as a girl could be—crying through rehearsal, needing her mommy, mumbling through her talk—but when she got up to give her talk today she marched up to the stand brimming with confidence and started her talk without any prompting from me.

"Today I want to talk about temples," she said, "The Nauvoo temple. Because my family went there for a fwip [trip] and saw many places that were special to my ancestors."

She was on fire. I only helped her a few times. I was so proud of her.

Stomach Flu Revisited

The night before last I was up with children from 1:30 AM until around 4:00 AM. Miriam woke up at 7:20 AM. Rachel woke up at 7:30 AM. Last night I was up with children from midnight until 3:00 AM. Miriam woke up at 8:00 AM. Rachel woke up at 8:40 AM.

Oddly enough I'm actually feeling a lot better today than yesterday. I guess 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep is one of those wonderful things you can't go without.

So Miriam has diarrhea. Rachel has diarrhea and has been throwing up.

It's been glorious.

This morning when we were all still snuggling in bed, we reminded Miriam to be gentle with Rachel because Rachel is sick(est).

"Rachy's not sick!" Miriam insisted. "Rachy's just sad! Me make Rachy feel happy!"

Then she hugged and kissed Rachel over and over again, repeating, "I'm loves you, Rachy. I'm loves you. I'm loves you, Rachy. I'm loves you."

It was one of the sweetest moments of my life.

You know, in comparison to full throw-up buckets and the like.

Remembrance Day: World War II vets

My grandma's brother Leo served in World War II, from April 1942 until January 1946. "Leo landed on Juno Beach in Normandy, France on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and was at Caen, France, when it was captured from the Germans. He was also at the battle of the Falaise Gap and was in Ghent, Belgium and fought into Holland."* My grandma's mother died on July 2, 1944, when my grandma was sixteen years old. Uncle Leo wrote this letter home to my grandma and her sister, Ila June, the following month, on August 31, 1944.

Dearest Sisters,

Hi kids. I'll write you a little private letter to-night. I wrote so much to our dear Dad that I can't think of much more. I'm sending you a few stamps Pearl, I couldn't find any of the ones I wanted to, they had old Hitler's face on them, and I have only seen a few of them over here.

Well I sure hope you are not working too hard altho [sic] I know you have lots to do. I hope it won't be long before I'm home and then if any one bothers you all you have to do is tell me and I'll stop them in a hurry. And I sure hope I'll be able to help you in every way possible. I sure hope that you can manage and go back to school this fall Pearl. Well I hope you are both well and happy. I'm well and safe as possible. I'll say cheerio for now. Keep smiling. 

With loads of love. Your loving brother, Leo.*

As good as a rest

Today I read Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins—the whole thing, from cover to cover. It was the kind of book that I knew I had to read completely before I'd be able to go to sleep. Not that it ended on a terribly happy note. Now I need to read the third book before I'll be able to sleep well. I suffer from nightmares.

Unfortunately I don't have the third book on hand. Oh, well.

Today was rather nightmarish, even without the book. It shouldn't have been, really. Rachel was gone from 9 AM–3 PM today and Miriam and I had a peaceful day at home but Rachel started crying before we'd even left her friend's house, she cried the whole way home, and alternated between crying and screaming for the rest of the day until I put her to bed at eight. I even tried to be fun and make some crafts—hand turkeys and a Thanksgiving wreath—I fed her a snack because she had eaten her school snack and her after-school lunch both during snack time so didn't eat lunch (even though I know she had a snack at her friend's house), I read her stories, Grandma ordered pizza for dinner. Nothing we tried could really douse her anger. She fell asleep relatively quickly though, and that was a blessing because Andrew wasn't here for bedtime. Having her drift off to sleep without the usual fight meant leaving me time to just relax and read without having anyone jump on me.

A nice, but chilly, fall day

Before it got cold I had decided that, this year, winter would be different. I was going to take my girls sledding! I was going to have snowball fights! I was going to make snow angels and snowmen and do all that "fun" winter stuff before winter disappeared because last year I fully intended on introducing Rachel to the joys of sledding but kept waiting for it to get "just a little warmer." And all of a sudden, before I knew it, I had waited all the way until it was spring and the snow had melted away. 

That's my idea of "just a little warmer."

But Rachel likes winter. She enjoys playing in the snow. And some small (very small) part of me feels that she deserves to go sledding at least once this winer.

Unfortunately my resolve is already faltering.

It is so cold outside that I don't even want to venture outdoors at all. Miriam feels the same way, it seems, and has been requesting to "stay home a-Grandma" when I start bundling up to fetch Rachel from school. There isn't even snow on the ground—it's still crisp fall weather—but it's getting to be a little too crispy for my liking and I usually put on a coat over a sweater just to keep warm.

Today we had playgroup at the park once again. We're still trying to give our kids time run-around-in-the-sun time. I'm glad about that because I think sunning and running are very important things to do. The sun just isn't cutting it in the warmth department, though. We were freezing at the park. 

Then we stopped by my parents' house and had lunch with my dad and Auntie Josie (who was home sick from school) and stayed to visit for a while and by the time we went back outside (at nearly 2:00) it was finally warm enough to shed our coats. I insisted the girls stay in their sweaters, though. 

Thankful Tree 2011

Yesterday for Family Home Evening we talked about the first Thanksgiving in Utah. Then we went around and said some things that we were thankful for. When it was Miriam's turn she paused to "hmmmm" before saying, "I am sankful for mine samily!"

It was very sweet. Her family loves her, too, that's for sure!

Then Miriam decided she was cold and climbed into my sweater.

The good, the bad, the ugly

There was one day this month that Andrew was not available to interview for the PMF position. One day. Out of thirty! On that particular day he was scheduled to deliver a guest lecture at Weber State University. It's been on our calendar for months. So when Andrew got his interview date for the PMF was it any surprise that it was on the very same day? Not really. Murphy's Law, right?

Fortunately, Weber State was gracious enough to reschedule his lecture for the following day.

When Rachel started complaining that she didn't feel well on Thursday she mostly mentioned her head hurting, but she had a fever, refused dinner, and has a long history of throwing up for absolutely no reason. After I helped her into her jammies and tucked her into bed I decided that I would give her a throw-up bowl, just to be safe. She started throwing up around midnight.

Fortunately, Rachel is now old enough to effectively wield a throw-up bucket—she didn't miss a single time which means that I didn't have to do any emergency sheet-changing in the middle of the night!

The days are getting shorter. Winter is coming—the wild geese know! They've had a long fall and it's time to go... There isn't really any way to avoid it and yet we keep trying to switch around the time. My friend on Facebook posted a quote, apparently by a Native American/First Nations/Indian, who said, "Only a white man would believe you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket." Daylight savings time never used to bother me, though I must say that I always preferred falling back to springing ahead—because it meant an "extra" hour of sleep!

Unfortunately, my children can't read clocks.

They were falling apart at "bedtime" yesterday, which was an hour later than their little bodies were expecting (because they got up at their regular time yesterday morning, which was an hour "early" by the clocks) and then this morning managed to get up an hour "early" once again. It's sadistic to inflict "jet lag" into the schedules of young families across the world.

Fortunately, we'll get over it. We always do.

Thumpkin, bumpkin, diddle-diddle dumpkin, pumpkin!

This week we turned the girls' jack-o-lanterns into several beautiful pumpkin pies—I made three pies today and ended up freezing the rest of the pie filling to use later (it should make two more pies). 

I thought Rachel would be opposed to the idea of cutting up, baking, and pureeing her jack-o-lantern but she surprised me.

"Are we going to make a pie?" she squealed.

"Actually, yes," I said.

"Then, yes!" she said, shoving her smiling pumpkin into my arms. "You can have it!"