مريم غبية

I've been teaching the kids (Benjamin, Zoë, Alexander, and...Phoebe) the Arabic alphabet this year. We liked to make fun of Miriam—and Miriam makes fun of herself—because she can consistently recognize alif...and that's about it. It's just a straight line. And it's the first letter of the alphabet, corresponding to the letter A in English. 

But last night at dinner Miriam proudly announced that she knew how to introduce herself in Arabic. 

"اسمي مريم," she said (ismi Miryam).

"Or..." Phoebe said impishly before breaking into maniacal laughter. "Are you غبي?" (ghabi)

"Wha...what does that mean?" Miriam asked. "Wait...I know this... Are you...are you calling me stupid?"

"Hahaha! YES!!" Phoebe shrieked with glee.

"Rude!" Miriam said (with mock offense—she tends not to take Phoebe's insults very seriously).

"Okay, okay," I said, trying to redirect the conversation and get Phoebe to settle down. "Miriam—what do you celebrate today?"

"I celebraaaaaate..." Miriam said, pausing to think.

"Doing stupid stuff?!" Phoebe said, without missing a beat (and once again dissolving into uncontrollable giggles).

I don't know what to do with this child, honestly. 

Phoebe's a reader! She reads things!

Here's Phoebe and the kitty enjoying the sunny window together: 

Wow. Such enthuse. Very yay.

Zoë is in Washington, DC, at the moment, so she missed her gymnastics class on Wednesday—the first day of a new session. 

This afternoon we got a text message from the mom of Zoë's friend M:

"I think you guys are in DC, in which case, hope you are enjoying your time. Today at gymnastics coach Emma said she wants to invite M. and Zoe to the homeschool team class [at a time] on [a day]. Would this be something Zoe would be interested in? M. is a yes but she still wants to do gymnastics with Zoe."

Now, we're not in DC. Only Benjamin and Zoë are (with Grandpa and Darla), see?

A poem draft from today

The day to come out

of hibernation is today,

so say the twenty-seven 

Dandelions and hen-chicken

Today we went on a bit of a foraging walk for Gary's lunch. Gary is a bearded dragon, just to clarify. A bearded dragon who only sometimes likes to eat dandelions. Phoebe wishes he would eat dandelions a lot more often than he does. He can be a pretty picky eater. 

We try to convince Phoebe to leave some dandelions for the bunnies—she wants to pick them all!

At least she does her part to replant...I guess...

Here she is blowing on her wish...

Viewer discretion advised

Before we had FHE, we were invited to watch a little production that Phoebe and Alexander planned. 

I may go find a few more little tidbits in the future (see below), but for now I share this clip with you—a warning about their use of flashing lights that they felt they needed to include (and...honestly? It was probably necessary): 

Mostly we got to enjoy a chronology of Baby Doll Princess's day/life. 

Act one was her birthday, so Phoebe had to go to the LEGO/prop room to find some birthday cake. Then she put her baby to bed. Then it was time for "brekky" so she had to go find some breakfast for Baby Doll Princess.

"What should I get for her brekky?" Phoebe asked.

"Eggs?" Alexander suggested.

"She doesn't like eggs!" Phoebe moaned.

I don't remember what she grabbed for Baby Doll's breakfast. For lunch, though, she did grab eggs and Alexander (the light man) was like, "I thought you said she didn't like eggs..."

"She likes eggs sometimes," Phoebe said. 

Andrew's Talk: God will bless me for my faith and righteous desires, even if it doesn't seem like things will work out

When I was in primary and in young men's, the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price was my favorite book in the scriptures. I didn't like it necessarily because of any of the specific scriptures or teachings in it—though there are some good ones in there! We learn about foreordination, the premortal life, the council in heaven, and lots of other fundamental doctrines.

I liked it because it has neat pictures.

I've long been interested in Egypt—while some kids love dinosaurs, or trains, or Greek mythology, I was an Ancient Egypt kid. There are three facsimiles from Egyptian papyri included in the Book of Abraham, and I would pore over the symbols and little interpretations during boring talks and lessons. I would try to replicate the little pictures and include different hieroglyphics in doodles. I just thought they were cool. They made the Pearl of Great Price feel ancient and special.

As an undergraduate student at BYU, I majored in Arabic, which meant that we lived in Jordan for a summer to study Arabic in the Middle East. During our time there, we got to visit Egypt for a week, and I loved it. We got to see the pyramids in Cairo, of course, as well as a bunch of ancient temples and other religious and royal complexes in Luxor. There's a modern Egyptian saying that once you've metaphorically "drunk from the Nile," or been to the country, you're hooked and have to get back to Egypt. After graduating from BYU, we did just that—we moved to Egypt for two years for graduate school.

During our time in Cairo, we traveled all over the country and visited as many ancient sites as possible. I particularly loved going to the different ancient temples and looking for temple symbolism in the architecture and art. During one trip, we rode on a rickety little minibus for an hour up the Nile to visit Dandarah, one of the best-preserved ancient temples in Egypt. The art still has bright colors and most of the buildings are intact. Surprisingly for me, one of the Dandarah temples has a large mural that—with some differences—is essentially Facsimile 1 from the Book of Abraham, which Joseph Smith interprets as the story of Abraham almost getting sacrificed to heathen gods in Babylon. I was so excited to see it!

Nancy's Talk: Of Wells and Arks

Here is the talk that I gave in sacrament meeting:

Of Wells and Arks: Doing the Next and Necessary Thing

Since I’m speaking first, I’ll take a few minutes to introduce our family. We moved here in July of 2019, so we’re coming up on seven full years here, which is the longest that I have ever lived anywhere in my entire life—and by extension it’s also the longest my children have lived anywhere. Although I’m sure many of our children—particularly our youngest few—feel as if we’ve been here a lifetime, I don’t actually feel like we’ve been here very long at all. I’ve just never felt very settled here. Perhaps I don’t know how to settle. I don’t know…

But, here we are! We’re the Heisses. We have six kids. Our oldest Rachel is a freshman at BYU. Then there’s Miriam, who you hear at the organ each Sunday. Next is Benjamin, who made a goal this year to bake bread whenever he’s assigned to bring bread for the sacrament. Zoë is enjoying her last year of primary; she’s very excited to enter the Young Women program next year. Alexander was baptized this past November. And Phoebe is four and…we just…celebrate…that we’ve been able to get her to attend her own class. She’s very clingy. 

She describes herself as “snuggly,” but she’s clingy. 

Church, the work of Sunday

I was trying to schedule a time to video call with Uncle Patrick (in Austria, GMT+1) and Auntie Josie (in Utah, GMT-6) while being here (in Georgia, GMT-4). It can be tricky to find a time that works for everyone, but Patrick, being mindful of my church schedule, suggested 2:00 pm my time (noon Josie's time, 7:00 pm his time).

He and I were texting before Josie was even up. 

"We should jump on a call and talk about train tickets..." he suggested (Josie and I are going to visit him in May).

"Rushing to get ready for church atm" I said (atm = at the moment). 

We've been going early for morning choir practice, which already feels like a bit of a sacrifice. With daylight savings added on top...and with some late night excitement at our house (prom, among other things)...it felt like a real sacrifice this morning. We managed to get the choir people up and out the door in time to be just barely on time for choir, if not a minute or two late, which I felt was really pretty good, all things considered. 

But the joke was on me the whole time because I was accidentally left off the group text informing everyone that choir practice would be moving from 9:30 to 9:00 to allow us a full hour in the Relief Society room before the other ward kicked us out. 

So we walked in at 9:30, quite proud of our timeliness, only to be half an hour late. Not that I'm very sad about having missed out on that text message...because I didn't have to feel guilty about not being ready in time for 9:00 since I didn't know about needing to be ready by 9:00.

Prom: Under the Sea

Miriam's at prom tonight with a bunch of friends, who all decided against dates (which I'm not opposed to—pairing off can make things awkward at this age, especially with so few youth in our area). So, these three girls spent the afternoon together and are meeting up with other friends at the dance.

One of their YW leaders did their hair, and then they had dinner and took pictures at the park: