Drew's Off and Away

After much deliberation last spring, I opted to send Drew to preschool this fall. Last Wednesday was his first day. I've waited for this day for almost 14 years--the day when all of my children would be occupied at school for some amount of time....

As Drew walked into school on his first day, he ran 6 feet ahead of me. I couldn't for the life of me get him to slow down and walk by my side, let alone hold my hand. It caused all sorts of mixed feelings as I turned around and saw him not even look up at me as I did my best to get his attention as I waved goodbye. I kept my sunglasses on, despite being in the shade, to cover my eyes. Not because I was embarrassed for anyone else to see my tears, but because it felt like too private of a moment. I didn't want anyone intruding on such a personal occasion.

I felt as though I had climbed to the peak of a mountain. I felt as though I had arrived at some sought after destination, only to be reminded that really I'd only made it to a small plateau, and I still have several mountains to scale. But that's ok--I'm getting stronger at the climb every day.

As I turned and looked at Drew one last time, knowing I had stiff competition with the play-dough already being molded in his little hand, I waved one last time, blowing a kiss that went no further than the sliding glass door.

I returned to the car alone. Essentially, alone for the first time in almost 14 years.

Today I took my baby to preschool. It's a day that will be etched into my heart forever.

Yes, Megan

Eleven years ago Megan, with her almost 3 year old faith prayed, "Please bless the broken buildings and the people that cried and died."


The days and weeks that followed, flags were flying at many places. Each time Megan would see a flag she would ask, "Do we think about the broken buildings today?"

Today we do.

 (Originally posted September 11, 2009)

Here's to a GOOD School Year

Last Monday night I was pretty ornery. Actually, I was really ornery. I'll tell you a couple of the triggers...

After finishing up day 8 of Drew having diarrhea, I realized I absolutely had to make a trip to the store to purchase new underwear for him. After hearing (and dealing with) "I just popped (that's our term for passing gas) and now there is poop in my underwear" for the bazillioneth time last week, there were very few pair of underwear of Drew's left in the house. Yes, I'll admit, I'm a waster. Cleaning poop out of underwear is not something I do.

I can't believe I just wrote a whole paragraph about that.
Anyway-back to the fact I absolutely had to make a trip to the store to buy new underwear. In an attempt to avoid all the last minute back to school shoppers last Monday evening, I grabbed Drew a packet of assorted Disney underwear and came home. I usually have a rule about underwear needing to be washed before wearing, but Drew couldn't wait and on the new underwear went. As we all know, Drew wears only underwear and there was a slight problem.

The coverage wasn't great, and I'm not talking about my cell-phone that incidentally during this same hour, had to be taken into the cell-phone store THREE separate times.

Use your imagination if you'd prefer, but I'm not going to spell it out. All I'll say is the coverage wasn't great, and Mike and Luke were laughing their heads off every few minutes, and Drew, bless his heart kept having to make some adjustments to keep things tucked in.

Back to the store I went, to get the next size up.

By the time it was time for our annual Back to School Paper Doll Family Home Evening lesson, I was not very happy. The last thing I wanted to do was sit around as a family talking about the importance of being nice to others, when I clearly hadn't said a nice word to anyone for the last couple of hours.

Of course, tradition reigned. We've had the same Back to School Paper Doll lesson every year since the night before Megan started Kindergarten in 2004. Megan couldn't bear the thought of not having the lesson, and so out came the paper dolls, and the card stock for our one word reminder, and off Megan went with the evening.

After singing a few songs, and talking about our paper dolls without hair, or missing an arm, or wearing glasses, it was time to settle on a good word for the 2012-13 school year. Although Mike is still struggling with the fact the kids haven't mastered the word  we repeated for several years (OBEY), and we weren't exactly feeling the word from this last school year (LOVE), we still opted for a new word. The children offered some great suggestions, and with some guidance from Mike, came up with our new word.

We keep nothing on the front of the fridge but our one word reminder, each letter written by a child so they can "own" the word. We're thinking by next year we're going to have to move up to a 5 letter word, so Drew can participate in writing a letter too:

(And yes, in case you are thinking the "o" looks like an "a" it does. That was Joshua's letter, and Megan was not happy with his attempt. We had already had to start over a second time because the first "G" (by Ellie) didn't meet Megan's approval. Mike and I both snapped an overly loud "NO" at the same time, when Megan began suggesting starting over a third time. As you can see, we didn't exactly get off to a GOOD start!)

We're committed to making good choices, finding the good, getting good grades, being good friends, having good friends, being good examples, you get the idea.

Hopefully, the children will too.

And now, in all their sprinkler valve box glory tradition I present...

Joshua--kindergarten

 Ellie--3rd grade

Luke--5th grade

Megan--8th grade

Oh, and we couldn't exclude Drew.  More on him later...

All About Me

I feel kind of honored to be spotlighted over at The Power of Moms. Completing the interview/questionnaire was a lot harder than I would have thought! I spent days poring over the thoughts of what it is about motherhood that I love, or have learned, or makes me unique, etc.

You can see the spotlight HERE.

I do love being a mother, and I think this spotlight captured my thoughts and feelings well--there was less of the snide, snarky remarks I make too often here on my blog.

I quote myself, " Despite it all, I wouldn't trade being a mother for anything in the world."

I Have No Idea

My two younger brothers and their families came into town last weekend. My children were thrilled to have their favorite cousins come and play for a few days.

One thing I DO NOT take for granted is how nice it is to be at the stage where I have a built-in babysitter. Megan is so good to babysit for us, and 81% of the time has a pretty decent attitude about it. The one exception for a guaranteed fabulous attitude about babysitting is when cute little cousins are in need of being babysat too.

While the adults all enjoyed dinner out last Friday night, the cousins enjoyed playing...

exploring...

and who knows exactly what?

I can't quite get a straight answer as to what exactly was going on when the photo was captured. I think it is because the children stand in front of the computer screen laughing their heads off every time they see it. Supposedly, that was NOT the point of the photo, it just happened to have been captured at the exact moment Drew decided to bend down and retrieve something from the nearby swamp.

Goes to show, we don't always know what our children do while we're away!

Trendy or Not

I don't exactly get into trends of any kind. I'm the one that will refuse to read a book simply because everyone is reading it, or if I do, I read it years later. (Note: I have never seen or read a Harry Potter or Twilight movie or film.)

Up until two weeks ago, I had never taken trendy back to school photos either. Not that "trendy" is necessarily the right word, but you know what I mean, right? I mean, I'm the mom that takes my kids' first day of school pictures on our sprinkler valve box.

That all changed when Megan discovered Pinterest this summer. (Which I may add is one of those things I refuse to do because of the same reasons as Harry Potter or Twilight, etc.) For those of you that "follow" my name on Pinterest. It is 100% Megan. I've never clicked on the link in my life, although I have sat by her side as she navigates through it. (And I might add, it gives me mild anxiety to do that.)

I'm way off the subject.
Well kind of.
Megan decided it would be oh so fun to get creative and take "Cuter pictures than the valve box pictures you take every year."

Somehow, I got roped into doing it with her. It was actually kind of fun. Well, as fun as it can be trying to get kids to smile, and then act natural, then do this, then do that.

And Megan wasn't exactly happy when Joshua moved wrong.

Ellie kept getting in trouble for being too "posed."

Of course Drew didn't want to be left out. Megan was less than thrilled to be taking "posed" photos of Drew while wearing only underwear, but I insisted to avoid a tantrum.

Of course I insisted Megan participate. Except I didn't have as much patience as she did, so there are far fewer photos of her.

Luke wasn't home when the photo shoot occurred. But when he saw the photos being uploaded to the computer he looked horrified as he declared, "I am NOT doing that."

He didn't have to.
He'll get to stand on the green valve box instead. Along with everyone else on the morning of the first day of school.
It's tradition.
Stay posted.

We Went Inside One Day

Last week we had the opportunity to take our little family to the Brigham City Temple open house. It is a newly constructed temple, and before it is dedicated as a holy place where only certain individuals can enter, members of the public are invited to take a tour of it.

As members of the LDS church, we believe temples to be sacred buildings where eternal ordinances are performed, one of them being the marriage sealing, which we believe seals couples and families for eternity. As such, we thought it would be a great experience to take our family there.

It wasn't exactly the private tour we had of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple back in 2009, (you can read about that HERE) as you can tell from this non-private photo. At least we got one shot that didn't have that little girl's (to the right of us) underwear showing.

As we were driving the hour or so journey home, I did actually wonder if our family being together for eternity really will be a good thing. (I'm hoping at least if we ever have to be in the car together in the eternities, we have a large bus and each child will have their own row. That would be a start in helping us want to be together.)

Drew obviously wasn't the problem on the way there.

I really shouldn't joke about such things, but sometimes as I anticipate events, I envision peaceful, spiritual experiences as a family. They rarely happen, but I can't seem to stop my habit of having high hopes for my little family. This little tour of the temple last week was close, oh so close to my imaginations becoming a reality.

My children walked reverently and quietly through the temple. Just as he did three years ago, Joshua held the temple pamphlet tightly in one hand, while he held Mike's hand with the other. Drew walked quietly and reverently (with the exception of when he bumped his head on a stair railing). As we approached the marriage sealing room, I wanted to pause and stand in front of the mirrors that symbolize eternity. I wanted our family to stop and get a visual picture of our family for eternity.

It didn't happen. Mike and Joshua in front of the rest of us, barely even paused to look in the mirror as they continued to walk ahead. I like to think Mike didn't want to hold up the "procession", but I have a hunch it was really because Mike wasn't actually in the mood to be reminded we were all stuck sealed together for eternity. (A car journey longer than 5 minutes with all seven of us in one car don't exactly cause feelings of love, harmony and peace.)

Regardless of not pausing to reflect in front of the "eternal mirrors", I was still having high hopes that this was a spiritual experience for my children and we would drive peacefully home discussing the aspects of our temple visit that touched us the most.

That didn't really happen either. I mean, I did ask the children what their favorite parts of the temple visit were, but none of them seemed to say anything resembling what I had "imagined" their answers to be.

"Why don't we each tell what our favorite thing was about visiting the temple today?" I asked the children as we drove home.

Drew: "The white things on my shoes and the cookies." (Everyone wore shoe covers on their shoes.)
Joshua: "The cookies at the end, and riding the bus." (Buses shuttled us from a parking lot to the temple.)
Ellie: "The gold tissue box."

Megan and Luke's answers did have a little more depth to them:

Megan: "The two mirrors."
Luke: "The mirrors that went on forever."
(Even if they didn't get to stop and gaze into them with their family!)

I failed to mention the part when Joshua was handed his pamphlet at the very beginning, before the tour even began. Seeing a picture of the baptismal font, he said, "Look! There's a hot tub." "Can we bring our swimsuits next time?"

Unfortunately, Joshua was serious.

There you have it.
That concludes our tour of the Brigham City LDS temple.


You can read more about LDS/Mormon Temples HERE.