Ups and Downs

It has been a long time since I wrote a letter. My first excuse is that the hard drive on our computer failed. You don’t realize just how important your computer is until it gives you the dreaded blue screen. All the pictures, all the letters, all the recipes...I was so nervous until blessed Time Machine restored them all! After that little hurdle I guess I ran out of excuses, but still I managed to postpone writing my letter. I have intended to sit down and write it several times, but I am functioning in survival mode these days. Sometimes I just have to flop in bed even though I know I have left many things unfinished.

When we used to drive down to Arizona to visit my Grandparents the final stretch of the journey was on Camelback Road. It was several miles of undulating hills. Up and down, up and down, up and down. The rise and fall wasn’t enough to give you a thrill, just enough to make it seem like a very long road. I feel like our little family is riding down the Dallas version of that path. Here is an account of our recent trip on Camelback Road, the ups and downs, the good and the bad, nothing dramatic, just an undulating journey.

Good - I hope you all received Kate’s riddle.

At the very end of August we will be welcoming a new little one into our family. Josh is thrilled. Kate is thrilled. Jane is thrilled. I am...looking forward to September.

Bad - My body is handling this pregnancy as well as it has handled pregnancy in the past. Ugh. We went through some pretty intense times at the beginning. Every time I am using the bathroom now, Jane knocks on the door and says, “Mom, are you puking?” Fortunately, Josh came on the scene just when I was in desperate need of him. He got me in to see a doctor. Now I’m on Zofran, my favorite drug, and am very careful to drink all I can stand. I’m surviving. I just take one task at a time until I make it to bedtime and then drop into bed and pray for a good night. I’m hoping on the other end of DELIVERY things will look better.

Good - Josh is on a really interesting project right now dealing with coal mines in West Virginia. I never imagined myself married to a coal miner, but I am certainly not above it since that was the profession of my ancestors. I love the stories of his adventures riding through coal tunnels on a man ride and talking with miners. He brought us some coal samples this week. He is loving this project! How else could he be having experiences like this? In many ways, consulting is the best job ever.

Bad - Coal mines make a lot of dirty, dirty laundry and as BCG tends to do, they are working Josh like crazy. We always have great intentions of talking and texting but once he is gone, he is gone! They are working with night shifts starting at 4 am and day shifts after that. I have received texts from him at the oddest hours and sometimes I don’t hear from him for days. I guess that’s the flip side of the consultant coin.

Good - Kate started playing soccer. She was getting tired of gymnastics, so we decided to try something new. She looks so cute in her uniform! The name of her team is the Rainbow Unicorns. That just about captures the aggressive and ferocious level of play.

Bad - There is something inside me that comes to life when I am watching a soccer game. I have to make a conscious effort to control myself. Kate’s first game was on a week when Josh had to work Saturday. The soccer games are all played at a huge sports complex, 105 acres packed with soccer fields. I pulled into the parking lot only a few minutes before game time. We ran around until we found the right field, I tucked Kate’s shirt in, gave her a kiss and sent her onto the field to play. Ummm, I think I could have done a little better in the preparation department. She had no idea what was going on. My soccer instincts kicked in and I wanted to help her understand what to do. Then I realized I was making too much noise and I sat down. Painful, painful 40 minutes. We have been playing family soccer games and she’s learning the game and having fun now. That’s what it’s all about, right? FUN, Sunny, it’s just for fun.

Good - Jane is really hitting her stride. She had a rough time when we first moved here, but she is back to her normal self now. She is happy. She has made new friends. She gives hugs and kisses to everyone she sees. She loves to learn. (Kate started teaching her to read Dick and Jane.) She is just in one of the cute phases of life. We were coming home from walking Kate to school the other day and Jane was riding her skutt. She slowed down to talk to me for a second and asked, “Mom, what’s faster than a cheetah?” I answered, “Nothing Jane. Cheetahs are the fastest animal.” She came back with, “No, Janes are!” and took off ahead of me on her skuut. Cute thing.

Bad - The preschool group we had is falling apart. Two of the families moved and one of the other mothers is sick. We had to regroup and make another plan. We came up with a good schedule of outings mixed in with our regular routine that should get us through the end of the school year.

Good - I made the decision a few months ago that I needed to start exploring Dallas. I have been missing Philadelphia and all of the fun things we did there. So, instead of moping, I decided I needed to get out and explore. We went to the Dallas Arboretum. It is beautiful. Something about spring flowers and green grass renews my soul. We have also been to the Dallas Zoo and made a return trip to the Fort Worth Zoo. We found a fun children’s museum in Waco. We discovered a really nice Nature Preserve close to our house with great paths for riding bikes. I also heard about a planetarium and a puppet theater that I hope we can go to see soon. We are on our way!

Bad - I don’t know if Dallas and I are kindred spirits. I have to search a little harder to find places I want to explore. The vast majority of groupons that come through are for spas or concealed weapon permits--not really my style. You just have to dig a little deeper around here to find the right kind of adventure.

Good- We had a really fun Spring Break. Kate had a whole week off of school and my mom came to play. We had a good mixture of adventures and laying low at home. The girls adore their grandma and were so happy to have her to play with them. They played hopscotch and did sidewalk chalk, played chinese jump rope, cooked, read books, had several sessions of preschool taught by Kate, flew kites, etc. I recovered a little sleep and was very grateful for the help. We even made it through my mountain of mending that I kept managing to put off for another day. Moms are the best!

Bad - Josh missed out on most of the fun. BCG forgot it was Spring Break. And the worst of all, however, was when my mom left. I tried to be brave, but wasn’t very. Kate started crying in school because she knew I was taking Grandma Shelly to the airport while she was there. Her sweet teacher picked her up in her arms, comforted her, and then let her sit out of math stations and write a letter to her grandma. It was one of the sweetest letters ever written. We keep reassuring each other that grandmas and grandpas love us every second of every day even when they can’t be with us!

Good - This is a beautiful time of year in Texas. The Spring blossoms are out. We have had some great thunder storms. Everything is turning green. The birds are singing and the temperature is just about perfect.

Bad - A little of the excitement of Spring is lost when you never really had a winter. The tree in our yard lost its leaves the same day the new leaves budded.

Good - Kate has caught the vision of Family Home Evening. We moved our FHE to Sunday. I was doing it alone with the girls on Mondays and realized we were missing something...Dad! We moved it to Sunday so we can have our Daddy with us. Kate prepares something every week. This week it was a lesson on baptism. We each made a collage of a child being baptized, then she asked us some questions about baptism, then she showed us the picture of Jesus being baptized and asked Jane to tell the story, then we sang a primary song about baptism.

Bad - Her lessons can get rather long. I know I deserve it after all the LONG family home evening lessons I made my family sit through--sorry siblings. I also remember, however, that that is where I learned to love studying and teaching the gospel. I hope her lessons have the same effect.

Good - We have made a lot of progress on our house. We found couches, patio furniture, and even hung a few pictures on the wall. It almost feels like civilized people live here.

Good - The good should always outweigh the bad, so we’ll stay on a good note and end with a couple stories. Kate is very excited about math right now. In school they are learning a practical approach to math that includes estimating, doing math in your head, and then thinking about the answers to see if they make sense. I bought a stuffed snake at the zoo to use in sharing time and Kate immediately started counting its spots. Then she asked us to guess how many spots there were. Grandma Shelly guessed 50. Kate put a hand on her hip, looked at Grandma with an incredulous look and said, “Grandma, is that reasonable?”

My mom was on her hands and knees helping me clean up a pile of elastics that I spilled all over the floor. Jane trotted over and climbed up on her back thinking, I’m sure, of the daddy horse we corral here on the weekends. We were laughing about it and my mom said, “I don’t know. I feel more like a donkey.” The conversation went on and then out of the blue Jane dug in her heels and said, “Come on, Donk. Let’s get going to soccer!” If it weren’t my mother in question, I would make sure that nickname stuck. It seems only fitting the the descendant of Hunky, Gi, Po, and Retta should have a name like Donk.

I taught sharing time in March. The topic was choosing the right by following the prophet. I loved teaching sharing time, but it is a challenge. Some of my lessons went really, really well and some of them fell really, really flat. The best week by far was when I taught some stories from the scriptures about following the prophet. I used the story of Moses and the serpent and the story of Elijah and the widow who gives him the last of her bread. I talked about how sometime the prophet asks us to do easy things and sometimes the prophet asks us to do hard things, but either way if we listen to the prophet and follow him we will be blessed. I also told them to watch for the story of Moses and the serpent while they were reading the Book of Mormon this year because it was in there over and over again. This week as we were preparing to start sharing time one of the boys came up to me and said, “I found the story about the serpent when I was reading the scriptures this week!” I had him stand up and read the verse to the whole primary. It was one of those heart-warming moments when you realize that what you do makes a difference.

The last story is about my brother, Alan. After Grandma Shelly came and discovered Kate’s riddle hanging on the crib we sent an email out to the rest of the family with our announcement. I heard back from a lot of you really quickly. Alan didn’t call until the next morning. He said he had been working on the riddle all night long! “I couldn’t imagine what would have 5 feet and say waaah. The best he came up with was an amputee holding a kitten.

So, there you have a general view of what we have been up to. We love you all and are praying for the eyes of both Grandpas this week!