Apfoowah

Benjamin is always so excited to go outside. He loves watching butterflies and walking on the lawn barefoot, letting the grass tickle his toes. Yesterday when we went out to meet Rachel's bus he started kicking his legs, pointing at something very important and yelling, "Apfoowah! Apfoowah! Apfoowah!"

Monkey Bars

This morning everybody slept in, except for Rachel who woke up with her alarm (or "timer" as she likes to call it (it's her preferential way to wake up)) but then instead of getting up and getting ready for school stayed in bed and read. By the time Andrew woke up Rachel had already missed the bus. He got her started on her morning routine before hopping into the shower. I woke up at 8:30 and kind of panicked but he assured me it was alright.

I did her hair and then crawled back into bed.

Miriam woke up at some point but instead of waking me she put away the clean dishes, coloured some pictures and taped them to the walls, and then built block towers on the kitchen table (so that Benjamin couldn't get them). Benjamin and I didn't wake up until around 10:30 (so imagine how the night went).

We did some yoga to get our morning going. I insisted on doing "grown up" yoga, rather than the kid yoga that we usually do, simply because I wanted a nice yoga routine that wasn't based on the alphabet. The children endured my yoga session and when it was done I popped on on of our kid yoga DVDs.

Benjamin claimed his spot on the mat and started dancing to the music (though you can't tell he's bouncing in the picture). A is for alligator, awesome and strong. B is for butterfly, fly all day long. C is for caterpillar, crawling a long. D is d-d-driving and singing this song. *musical interlude* R is for rocking horse. Rickety-rack. Forward and back. T is for Tarzan yell! Do the thymus tap. I can't tell you how long I've had that song memorized—just know that this DVD has been a huge hit at our house since Rachel was Benjamin's age. It was $10. I think we've gotten our money's worth.

Stale Bread for Dessert

"Can we have dessert tonight?" Rachel asked hopefully during dinner.

I don't make desserts very frequently so she was quite surprised when I told her that I did have dessert planned for tonight.

"Really?" she asked.

"Really?" Andrew and Miriam echoed.

"Really," I assured them.

On Monday night in a fit of home-economical frenzy, I made cookies after I put the kids to bed, perhaps mostly because I wanted some cookie dough. It was so easy to make cookies without 2–3 little people underfoot wanting to "help" that I briefly considered doing all my cooking after bedtime.

Andrew and I enjoyed a few cookies while we watched an episode of Star Trek (I'm open to suggestions for other shows on Netflix—anyone?). Yesterday Miriam and I had a cookie after lunch. This morning Andrew grabbed some cookies for breakfast on his rush out the door. Somehow Rachel's missed out on all of this.

"Oh, I know what it is," Andrew said.

"Me, too! It's cookies!" Miriam chirped.

"Let it be a surprise!" Rachel pleaded. "Don't tell me what it is!"

"I already did! It's cookies!" Miriam repeated.

"Okay, but don't tell me what kind."

The girls finished their dinner, changed into their pyjamas, and sluggishly cleaned up the house before meeting back at the kitchen table for dessert.

Andrew got down the bowl of cookies. He made a big show of fishing around, letting the girls hear the baked goods knock into each other, before fishing out a piece of somewhat-stale bread.

"What?!" the girls said.

I'd thrown a piece of bread into the container yesterday when I noticed the cookies were getting a little hard. That happens to my cookies sometimes. Deal with it.

"Mom made hard bread for dessert! Yum, yum!" Andrew teased.

The girls started panicking.

"No, she didn't!" Rachel said. "She wouldn't!"

"There's cookies in there, Dad!" Miriam insisted. "I know it!"

Andrew dropped the bread back in the bowl and fumbled through the cookies again before pulling out the same piece of bread.

"It's just bread," he said sadly, handing the bread to Rachel.

She took the bread, pouted for a second, gave a heavy sigh, and bit off a corner. She swallowed hard, choking down disappointment, tears, and bread.

"Just kidding!" Andrew said. "Here's a cookie!"

Our family hasn't laughed so hard in a long time.

Splash Pad

Yesterday we were invited to a little friend's birthday party but unfortunately that little friend lives quite far out of my driving bubble and I just couldn't summon the courage to drive all the way out there, so instead we stayed home and played the day away.

Carvings

Due to our exciting—and apparently exhausting—afternoon, Miriam fell asleep before Rachel's school bus arrived (at 4:30) and I didn't wake her up until shortly after 5:00 (Rachel was snatched up by Diego, who had a round of chemo today and was looking for a buddy to sit on the couch and play Wii with him). That's terrible timing for a nap.

We let her decide what to make for dinner. She knew she wanted breakfast for dinner but had trouble deciding between pancakes and waffles. In the end we convinced her to do waffles by telling her she could turn the waffle iron. She made a beautiful batch of blueberry waffles (with a little help from Daddy). We were just cleaning up from dinner and getting on our pyjamas and so forth when my cell phone rang.

It was the primary president wondering if I wanted her to swing by and pick me up for our meeting tonight. I had completely forgotten about this meeting and scrambled to get both me and Benjamin ready to go. I would've loved to leave Benjamin behind but the semester has started, which means homework is here again, and Benjamin wasn't nearly ready to go to bed so he got to tag along. The girls were a little distraught about story time being cut short ("No Narnia?!" Rachel wailed) but I left them in the very capable hands of their father, halfway through The Very Clumsy Click Beetle.

Unfortunately/Humorously I neglected to warn him that book was equipped with an electronic "clicker" and when that clumsy click beetle learns to "click and flip" there are sound effects that go along with it.

He said he nearly dropped the book with fright and that both girls jumped. Miriam and I have read through that book a time or two before, so either she forgot that it makes a clicking sound or she was reacting to Andrew.

Park walks

I finally charged the battery to our camera so naturally I took a billion pictures today, which was a perfectly normal day with no new announcements about deaths or horrible accidents or anything.

Benjamin's new favourite activity is pushing around stools, chairs, and other such things, and then climbing on them to add some height to his small stature. He can even pull himself onto the couch.

Sweet and Sour

On Wednesday Rachel didn't have school. It was lovely to be able to spend the day with her (for the most part; she did through a couple of minor fits but overall it was a good day). In the afternoon we went to the pool for a swim—the forecast told us that it would be cloudy for the afternoon, despite rain in the morning. Andrew had left us the van for the day and had taken his scooter to school (during a break in the rain) so we drove to the pool.

Rachel's been begging to walk to the pool lately. I'm all about walking places but, honestly, with three kids, four towels, two floaties, and a swim/diaper bag in tow, not to mention the heat, humidity, and either an obnoxiously long walk on the road (no sidewalks here) or a short walk through long tick-and-maybe-snake-infested grass under overhanging trees dangling with spiders and things, not to mention that everyone will be wet/cold/hungry/tired/whiny on the way home...when I think about it, walking is suddenly not a high priority.

A girl on our street (around the corner), who we've discovered goes to Rachel's school and is in her grade, goes swimming with her dad and we've run into them on occasion when we're out for family walks (because I love going for walks). I think she's part of the reason Rachel wants to walk to the pool so badly. But as I pointed out to Rachel, it's just that girl, her dad, and two towels. That would be a completely different trip. But our family can't seem to leave the house without packing for a week.

Anyway, we got to the pool and had a nice swim but then these scary looking clouds rolled in, so even though I assured the girls they'd just roll right on past us (forecast said so) I changed my mind and ordered everyone out of the pool. No sooner had we gotten home than did the clouds unleash their fury.

It was raining cats and dogs, thundering so loudly that it shook the house, and go so dark that the girls asked if they should get into their pyjamas—and it was only three o'clock in the afternoon. Even though we were all dripping wet we ran from the van to the house covering our heads from the rain.

I texted Andrew to tell him about the storm but he saw no evidence of it from campus. It eventually hit him, though, so he was late coming home since he waited out the storm before attempting the drive.

Right now I am tired

We've been bingeing on our museum pass lately and on Monday arranged to visit there once again. This time it was somewhat of a business matter. I was asked to be the co-room mother for Rachel's class because someone else backed out and so the trained room mother wanted to give me some information and so forth. We had planned to meet at the park after school but it was a bit soggy so we changed the location to the museum, where the kids could play inside.

I sent a note with Rachel in the morning to tell her teacher that she'd be a car rider but after waiting in line to pick her up I learned that she'd mistakenly been put on the bus anyway.

It was a moment of slight panic for me. I already hate driving, as you know, and now my plans were changed which meant that my pre-mapped route would change and it was momentarily rather stressful. In the end I just called Andrew, who thankfully was at home, and told him to pick Rachel up at the bus stop—we'd be continuing on without her.

Both Rachel and her friend were a little sad that they didn't get their playdate after school but they both handled it maturely. Her friend is having a birthday party on Friday, anyway, and Rachel's going to that (and has been looking forward to it for weeks). Her friend has a little sister who is just Miriam's age so the three of them played nicely together at the museum while I talked with the mom and Rachel sat at home and read.

We had a quick dinner when Miriam, Benjamin, and I got home and talked about the Plan of Salvation
and what it means for us in times of sorrow before heading off to Pelican's for dessert. Even though it's been less-than-hot and more-than-rainy lately (and perhaps because of that) Pelican's was giving away free kiddie cones. They have a freebie every Monday throughout the summer, though some freebies are better than others. Sometimes they'll just have an extra flavour for free (so you can choose three flavours instead of two) or they'll give you an add-on (like gummy worms...or...I don't know what else they have) but it seems like on miserable, drizzly Mondays they just start handing out free cones.

Apple core

This evening I read the most difficult book to the children—Bubble Trouble. I was tripping over my tongue the whole time and that's not only because my mind is numb, or, as I told Andrew yesterday, "My numb is mind." This book would be difficult to read under any circumstances. Let me give you a snippet:

There was such a flum-a-diddle (Mabel huddled in the middle),
Cannon Dapple left the chapel, followed by the chapel choir.
And the treble singer Abel threw an apple core at Mabel,
as the baby in the bubble bobbled up a little higher.

I had to laugh at this verse because of the apple core game Reid and his siblings played as children.

"Apple core!" one would shout.

"All the more!" another would chime in.

"Who's your friend?" the first would shout. Then a different child would be named and *SMACK* they'd be hit with an apple core. This seems to be a game they stole from Donald Applecore (see 2:50), though it seems Donald actually says Baltimore.



I don't know where Disney got the idea from but apparently "Apple core! Baltimore!" is a classic children's game from the 1900s, perhaps in use as early as 1920, though the Wikipedia page about this game has since been deleted because it was an "unnecessary article which has become trivia." Hogwash. I'm pretty sure that if we can have an extensively researched article on Wikipedia about Pat-a-Cake or a collection of skipping rope rhymes we can have a page about Apple Core! Baltimore! especially because it's not exhaustively researched. I saw plenty of people wondering about its origins but the only mention of the game on Wikipedia is on a Chip'n'Dale page. There's a better explanation of the game Yahoo than there is on Wikipedia and that just seems wrong on so many levels (even if the answerer used the deleted page as a reference (I think the full text of the article is quoted here though)).

But who knew it was actually a thing? Not me.

Anyway, the story was rather cute, though quite a challenge to read aloud. 

Gift of God

We met up with some friends at the museum again this morning and enjoyed wandering through the indoor exhibits, playing on the spaceship, flying paper airplanes, shooting stop motion films, and so forth, until the children started clamoring about going outside. So outside we went, of course, because there is even more to do outside the museum than in.

The children shot off to the playground while I moseyed over to an unclaimed bench and got ready to nurse Benjamin. I pulled out my phone for some reason—I'm not sure why because anyone who knows me knows that my phone is more often than not left neglected in my purse and that's only if I remember to take it with me in the first place. Whatever the reason, I pulled my phone out and saw that I had a new text message from Andrew.

"WHOA!" he wrote. "Sister Gillespie died in Grover. No idea how yet."

Ten words brought my entire world to a screeching halt. Around me children were climbing, jumping, screaming, banging on drums, and ringing bells while parents were scrambling after toddlers and hollering at escaped preschoolers. The world seemed to be spinning a thousand miles an hour (disclaimer: I'm not actually aware of how fast the world spins) but I was frozen in time. All I could do was stare at my phone screen while my mind filled with questions and my eyes filled with tears.

Piece by piece—truncated text by truncated text—the story came to me, while I typed my responses back with shaky hands, begging for more information.

Everyone—Grover, you see, is an annual pilgrimage for the Heisses and Gillespies alike—had gone to Goblin Valley except for Brother and Sister Gillespie. They'd gone hiking somewhere else. Somewhere remote. Sister Gillespie began to exhibit symptoms of heat exhaustion. Brother Gillespie headed out as fast as he could but it was a three hour drive to the nearest town—Boulder, UT (population 180)—to get help. A search and rescue team was organized; they recovered her body around 2:30 this morning.

Frankly, I'm still not sure I've got the story right.