School schedules

I'm just up with a baby who can't sleep, thinking about school schedules.

Bridget mentioned that schedules in Finland aren't as cut and dry as they tend to be here. You don't necessarily have the same class at the same time every day, whereas here, my kids can look at the clock on the way from the doctor's office to the school and tell me, "Oh, drat! I'm missing [insert subject here] but I'll be right on time for [this other subject]."

No time for losers

This evening the kids and I went to Rachel's award ceremony for soccer. Her team (aptly named Team Burn*) won the championship title with 7 wins, 2 loses, and 1 tie (the championship game).

Here they are in their championship t-shirts:

Rachel is third from the left (her friend Tayah is giving her bunny ears)

Everyone got cookies at the end and there was a raffle in the beginning. Rachel's team had their moment of glory and that was exciting but otherwise the event was a complete snooze-fest (so boring (no offense, Rachel (in fact, I was glad I got to come see you get awarded since every single one of your games overlapped with Benjamin's so I farmed you off on Tayah's family))).

Ukuleles ltd.

I am finally starting up our little ukulele group again, slowly. Today it was just me and the kids but hopefully we'll find others to join us in the coming weeks. It was nice (and chaotic) getting them all settled in with their ukuleles after our long summer hiatus. 

Alexander was jealous that everyone else had a ukulele so he went and got a hairbrush from the bathroom to strum on (which was hilarious and adorable). It's definitely monkey-see-monkey-do with this little guy!

That Mothering Instinct

Miriam has never been one to play with dolls. I mean, she has dolls and she will play with them. She enjoys dressing them up and so forth (especially when Naanii was sending matching outfits for her and her American Girl Doll). She just never attached to a doll. She had no real desire to carry a doll around all day or sleep with a doll or anything like that. She had her thumb and her (billion) blankets (that had to be layered on top of her in a specific order) and she was good to go.

Rachel has slept with Baby Norah every night since she opened her on her first birthday. 

Zoë has adopted a doll Miriam got for her second Christmas as her favourite doll (because Miriam never cared very much for it (or any doll)). She carries it around everywhere and must have it before going to sleep (which means we often turn the house upside down looking for it because it's been everywhere any given day). It has no name; it's just Baby Doll (she looks at us like we're crazy every time we ask her if she's given her doll a name). She often will sit on the couch beside me to nurse her baby while I nurse Alexander. It's always near.

Miriam was never into dolls like that, but that doesn't mean she's not nurturing!

Look who she made a little bed for and tucked in for a good night's rest:

Hint: It's the book Little Women

I'm glad to see Miriam's got that mothering instinct after all...

However (or, Sometimes We Are Slightly Irreverent)

Emily came down for her ten-year high school reunion, which doesn't seem remotely possible but is also an irrefutable fact. When Emily's here we play hand-and-foot in the evenings—she loves that game—and this trip was no different.

Last night while we were playing we all got a little loopy. Emily was talking about how she calls her mom for everything. When she's at the grocery store, for example, she'll call her mom to ask what cut of meat she needs for a certain recipe.

Andrew and I are less like that. We're more study-it-out-in-your-mind (or at least google it) before you ask about it people.

Neither way is right; they're simply two ways of being.

Talking about cuts of meat, however, reminded Andrew and me of the time Andrew agreed to make tamales for Uncle Trevor's family reunion. Aunt Linda found us at church the Sunday before she needed them, just to check in with Andrew about what groceries he needed.

"...and I thought I'd get a pork shoulder or two for the carnitas," she said.

"Okay," Andrew said. "I've only ever used pork butt for this recipe but I can try a shoulder."

"Really?" Aunt Linda said, giving us some serious side-eye.

Andrew and I looked at each other.

"What?" Andrew asked.

Conrad gathering

A short disclaimer: For my purposes, regarding the 10-day fast from social media, I've decided that blogging isn't really social media these days. My readership is mainly family (because I'm really not that interesting and didn't think to ever hire an SEO, my blog traffic is mostly made up of crickets chirping in the night which actually makes this blog highly unsocial media). But I've deleted Facebook and Instagram from my phone and so far haven't logged on my desktop computer. So we're doing this.

Also, I promised myself I wasn't going to be one of those people who made a big, public announcement about starting their 10-day social media fast. Yet, here I am, making an announcement. It's just...my girls know that I'm participating in the fast and have been chastising me every time I touch a phone ("Mom turned on the white noise app on my phone last night," Miriam tattled to Andrew. "She's supposed to be off social media!" He had to tell her that a white noise app isn't social media and, as far as I'm concerned, neither is this blog (which very technically could also be called white noise)).

This evening we got together at my Uncle Bruce's SLC house for a family dinner since my Auntie Colleen and Uncle LeRon are in town for general conference and a mission reunion and all sorts of things. They're really quite busy so we were glad we could snag them for the evening.

Aunt Sara made a beautiful dinner for everyone, of course, and we gathered around the table to visit and eat. Josie joked to Austin that when Albertans get together they always talk about two things: the weather and death. And it's kind of true. They're unavoidable subjects. And it's not like we even are bored when we bring up the weather. It's simply a universally appealing subject in Alberta. Also...death and dying. We're an odd breed. 

This weekend, boy...I dunno.

So many earth shattering things have happened in the past two days that I'm not even sure where to begin or even how many details I'm supposed to divulge (a few of these events were purely spectatorial) so I will be brief for now. 

The first, for me, was that my big brother got married on Friday afternoon! We met Ruth when we went up to Canada in June and the children (specifically Zoë and Benjamin) immediately fell in love with her (we thought she was pretty cool, too). They got engaged at the end of August and set the date for late December but then the weather has been so dreadful already (Calgary got 9 inches of snow on Tuesday, for example) that they decided making the nine-hour drive to see each other every other weekend was too perilous to continue for the next three months so...on Friday David booked it from Prince George to Calgary so he could pick up his bride, get a marriage license and head to the temple. 

Adjectives that describe me...

Benjamin brought home a paper from school yesterday listing adjectives that he thought of to describe himself:

He says that his is nice, playful, helping, and loving. His spelling of "play foul" made me laugh, along with his explanation of why he's loving (he has a crush on a girl named Charlotte, so basically he's pretty loving). My favourite part, though, is that he so honestly (and accurately) described himself. 

Follow the Prophet FHE

Last Sunday Aunt Linda assigned the song Follow the Prophet for Miriam to learn on the piano, so Miriam practiced it until she had it memorized and could play it up to speed (sometimes practicing for an hour a day). She really wanted to sing it for family night tonight and that worked out just fine because with General Conference coming up I wanted to do a lesson about following the prophet, anyway.

Here's our opening song, take two (because I forgot to record it the first time; Miriam played it a little slower this time around because she found it tricky to play while we were all singing):



Calendaring is a lengthy process at our house these days, even with the end of soccer (hallelujah). The kids were quite excited to move onto the lesson because I'd prepared two mystery bags (inspired by this post) and they were sitting there at the front of the room being all mysterious and stuff. There was Mystery Bag A, which I'd decorated with stars, and there was Mystery Bag B, which I'd decorated with butterflies. Their job was to choose a bag to open without knowing what was inside.

Before the closing prayer

Last night I went to the adult session of stake conference with Grandpa, leaving Andrew and Grandma home with all the kids (plus Riley). Alexander screamed almost the whole time, so Andrew was super excited when I told him that the stake choir had been invited to sing at a missionary fireside this evening. I promised that we'd leave as soon as our number was over, so that's what we did even though I felt a little guilty skipping out on the mission president and leaving before the closing prayer.