6th Sense

Today John had a "6th Sense" moment with Whitney. She looked at him and said, "Daddy, dead people can talk." He was worried that her next words were going to be, "I see dead people." "What do you mean?" he asked. Then she proceeded to close her eyes, stick her tongue out sideways and repeat the word "hello, hello, hello".

Denver

One day, on his way to scouts, the person driving Bryton to his Den meeting was in an accident. Fortunately no one was hurt and as they were getting insurance and police reports settled someone else driving to scouts picked up Bryton and brought him the rest of the way which was only about a block. As soon as they drove into the parking lot they were in an accident. Again, no one was hurt. Just a fender bender. When he got home and told me this I kept waiting for a third accident to happen. You know the superstition that deaths always come in sets of three? I apply that to accidents as well. Sure enough there was another accident of someone I knew. It's been a few months so I can't really remember if it happened that same day or the next day. I also can't remember who it happened to. I'm thinking maybe my sister-in-law but I can't say for sure. I just know that it happened. Well, now I can apply trips to Denver to that superstition as well. We can go months without going down to Denver to visit John's family but once we get the ball rolling again our trips down there seem to come in little clusters of 3.
A little over 2 weeks ago we went down there for Stake temple day. We were fortunate to run into some of John's old friends from school and we went out to dinner with them after. They are living in the Springs. Afterwards we exchanged blog addresses, etc.. For some reason I gave out ours but didn't write down theirs. Tamsen, if you are reading this shoot me your blog address because John and I would really like to keep up with you guys.
Then a little over a week ago was our RV trip to the Sand Dunes that I mentioned in a previous blog. Hmmm. Perhaps I should have gone with my gut feeling. It was raining when we picked up the RV and that rain soon turned to snow. We spent the night at Sterling and Lisa's and decided we would head out the next day because the weather was supposed to warm up at the Dunes. We didn't know that it was going to keep snowing, and snowing, and snowing in Denver. As soon as we headed out our RV started sliding on the road and we ran up onto a curb. That's when we realized we weren't going to make it out of Denver. We drove over to John's mom and dad's house and waited out the snow storm. Probably the longest snow storm of the season. I can't complain about it snowing in April because we've had such a mild winter and we could really use the precipitation. Let me just say that April is really taking that saying "April showers bring May flowers" seriously this time around. Out of 5 scheduled flag football games that Bryton was supposed to play in 3 have been cancelled due to weather and the other 2 should have been.

Anyway, we waited out the snowstorm at John's parents' house. Because his parents were out of town and the only ones there were the Garner family we stayed inside the nice warm house and just let the RV sit at the curb for 2 days. The kids had a ball sledding down the ravine that his parents' house backs up to. Since we didn't anticipate snow April came up with the ingenious idea of wrapping the kids up in grocery sacks so that they could go sledding.




They had a ball sledding and spending time with their cousins. I think they would really rather be hanging out with their cousins than just about anything.
On Sunday the snow had let up so we headed over to the Ivory's house to go to church with them. We took all the kids to church in the RV. It was fun having an RV stocked with snacks that we could retreat to after sacrament meeting. It's probably not a good idea to bring a big RV to church every week because I think Sunday School attendance would go way down. After church we spent the rest of the day with the Ivory's and played a fun game which I did not win.

The last day of our vacation (Monday) we thought we would take the kids somewhere exciting in Denver like a museum or aquarium. However when we woke up in our RV that morning Whitney was complaining of being car sick even though we weren't moving. Not a good sign. (She's so used to getting car sick that when she's feeling nauseous in the house she calls it "house sick". This time we happened to be in a vehicle so the term "car sick" still applied.) That put a halt to proceeding with any play time in Denver so we returned the RV and went home. Since the rental was free, I still feel like we got our money's worth. And then some. :)
Now for the highlight of our Denver trips. Just 2 days ago we returned once more to Denver for Kelsey's wedding which turned out so nice and was just so much fun. Kelsey's lucky that she was the first grand child. By the time my kids get married the novelty will have worn off and everyone will be like "Oh brother. ANOTHER wedding??" (They will have over 30 cousins to compete with.) Anyway, as I mentioned in my last post we just got a new camera and John had so much fun walking around behind the actual photographer and pretending to be THE photographer. He took over 400 pictures. If I could I would post at least a quarter of them on this blog. (They are so photogenic that it's hard to get a bad shot of them.) But, since I can't do that I'll just post a few favorites and then if anyone wants to see more we'll send you a CD or something.

Yay! We Got A New Camera

This one was taken right before the tree branch broke and he fell on his rump.

Recess

Have you ever asked a child what their favorite subject in school is? If so, did you ever get an answer that didn't include recess? I haven't. It doesn't matter what kind of child it is. Introvert, extravert, brainy, athletic, artistic and every other kind of child out there will list their preferences which vary greatly except in one aspect. Recess. They may all like to play different things. For some it's boy chase girl. For other's sports. And still for others it's swinging, sandbox, jungle gym, tag, going to the library or staying inside and helping teacher. Everyone has different ideas of fun but the love of recess in general is something that is universally agreed upon by school children everywhere. And just because a person graduates from elementary school doesn't mean that this love comes to an end. I haven't been in elementary school for a good 25 years but recess is still my favorite subject. My ideas of what's fun to do during recess have changed but my love for it has not. My recesses are not as frequent as they once were but every time I see an opportunity to go out to recess, I pounce on it. Usually I go out to recess with my family, but sometimes I still get the opportunity to play with my childhood friends at recess.


In this case It's more accurate to say "friends of my youth" than "childhood" friends. And even though they don't really have recesses in high school some of us took the liberty of creating our own together during Algebra or P.E.. I had so much fun going out to "recess" again with these guys over Christmas break. In the top picture is Amy and me at the beach. (Please do not compare smiles or you will think that I am frowning.) I had not seen her since the cruise that we went on together in 2004. It was great hanging out with her and Brian and being reminded of why John and I like them so much.
The bottom picture is of us at Jennifer's house. Jennifer and Shane are as up to par as Brian and Amy on their hosting prowess. Besides the great lunch Jennifer made, one of the highlights of the visit was becoming acquainted with her many dogs and chickens. Since my kids are all animal lovers they automatically felt right at home and it was fun watching them get acquainted with the (many) other kids that were there.

Another highlight of our Christmas "recess" was going to Disneyland. My kids are still in the stage where they want me to come to their school and go to recess with them. I have no doubt that they will eventually outgrow this but if I am lucky, after they're done with school and married they will start asking me to go to "recess" with them again. I know I was thrilled to have MY parents come along with us to Disneyland. I had never been there during Christmas or taken part in the whole business of using Fast Passes. Not having to wait in lines and seeing how they had decorated it for Christmas made it my favorite trip to Disneyland EVER!

One of my favorite memories of the day was running into the D's who live about a mile from us. We had no idea that they were planning a trip to Disneyland so that was a fun surprise. The park was filled to capacity and yet we still managed to cross paths and have dinner together.

The recesses that I take as an adult are quite a bit longer than the ones I had as a kid. (Not to mention way more expensive.) I guess that makes up for the infrequency of them. I can't wait to take my next one. If you read the entry: RV 101 you know that we're in for an adventure. We're using the free rental that we won and heading down to Sand Dunes National Park. Even though everything in my gut is telling me not to go anywhere near another RV, I ask you, how can I pass up an opportunity to go out to recess for FREE?!?!?

Life: Meeting Expectations

Now onto more things that we do to keep ourselves occupied. I've posted a few pictures of Bryton's projects that have been assigned to him in the last few months. These are all things that are completely impossible for him to do alone so basically his school and scouts den are subtly giving these assignments to parents. I'm not complaining. (Yet. I'm going to save that for the end.) These are worth while projects. They're fun and good learning experiences. Definitely time consuming though.

The cake that you see up on top was for the annual Blue and Gold Banquet for scouts. Every boy is supposed to make a cake going along with whatever theme the leaders come up with. This year it was the "American Alphabet". Bryton was assigned the letter "D" so he had to come up with a patriotic cake that started with that letter. We decided to go with Declaration of Independence. Notice the blueberry topping with a "feather quill" spoon. We decided this year to go for taste because while the Hawaiian Luau cake we made 2 years ago was very cute and the rat cake we made last year was fun to make, both years we ended up taking practically the whole cake back home with us. This year we wrote the Declaration on cheesecake. I'm proud to say that it was the first to go.

On the bottom is the picture of his science experiment he did for school entitled "Wiiflexes". This was a winning situation for Bryton and Sydney because it meant that they had to play the Wii for 15 minutes 5 days a week. Normally they're only allowed to play it on weekends. The experiment was to see if playing the Wii actually improved hand/eye coordination. I was the control. I never played. He tested hand eye coordination by dropping a ruler between a person's thumb and forefinger and recording where that person caught it. As it turns out, I showed the least improvement so as far as this scientist is concerned, yes, it improves hand/eye coordination and is therefore a worthwhile waste of time.

The picture in the middle is of his pinewood derby car. Bryton decided he wanted to make a bowling pin. He did not win anything but that's not why he looks sad in the picture. He looks sad in the picture because he is posing and trying to pretend like he's concentrating on playing with his car.

I'm going to go out on a limb and admit to everyone that pinewood derby is something I just don't get. What's this obsession about? Is it really something that has to be done every single year? (Which to me actually seems like every few months.) Why not let them go out with a bang and have just the Webelos do it? Like a graduation from cub scouts celebration? Really, how many times can a boy stand to lose? More importantly, how many times can parents stand to watch their child lose? It gets old watching the same people win every single year. (I sound more bitter than I actually am.) This year, because John has been so busy and I don't have a clue how to make a pinewood derby car and because Bryton really seemed indifferent about the whole thing we initially decided to opt out of the derby. After all, hadn't John just spent 2 months in the fall coaching Bryton's Lego Robotics Team without the consumption of any alcohol? Because of that, we figured he should be granted clemency for at least a year from anything remotely stressful. We didn't realize that by making this decision we would automatically be inducted into the Parenting Loser's Hall of Fame. We started getting phone calls and emails and comments like, "You didn't do a derby car? How sad." I had to wonder who exactly it was sad for. Certainly none of us were sad about it. In fact we were feeling pretty ecstatic about our decision. Like a giant weight had been lifted from our shoulders. As luck would have it, we had a snow storm the night of the derby. Scout leaders started calling us. "Hey would it help you guys out if we were to cancel tonight and put it off for another week?" If we didn't care so much about what people think of us we would have told it like it is. "No, actually that would be doing the opposite of helping us." Instead we went along with it as though the heavens had been on our side. "Definitely. You can count us in."

You here people say all the time that it's just about having fun for them. They don't care if they win. It's just for the experience. Not so with me. If we're going to have a derby car then I want to win. Otherwise, what's the point? So I sat down in the basement the day of the derby polishing those axles over and over. Even though I pretty much knew from previous derbies what to expect, in the back of my mind I kept thinking, "Maybe. Just maybe." And then the visions of winning district started settling into my mind and I went back and polished those axles some more.

I'm glad to say that out of the 4 races that the bowling pin took part in it did come in first once. And that's all I have to say about it. Except this: to me, so not worth it. So, I guess it's a good thing it's not about me, isn't it?