Sherpa

There are two words that make my blood pressure shot sky high.  Luckily, my two older boys have taught these two words and their irritating usage to Ben, so now I have three children throwing these words in my face.  The words are:

"I can't!"

It turns out, in my house, that these words don't actually mean "I am physically incapable of completing that task."  Because in that case it would be understandable, rational and a reasonable assessment of a situation.

No, those words mean "It doesn't matter how often in the past you have seen me successfully accomplish that task or how long you spent teaching me how to do that until I could do it on my own or how long I spent begging to 'do it myself', I am now ar this exact moment of greatest irritation to you and greatest drama for me now emotionally, psychologically, spiritually and cosmically unable to accomplish this one simple task well within my ability to do."

From my perspective, this is all about attempted regression.  Which is extremely frustrating to me as I feel like every milestone we reach is a Mt. Everest of parenting.  So, after we struggle to get to the top, I feel like the Sherpa kicked me back down the mountain when I hear the words "I can't."

Our 8th Anniversary

Eight years ago today, Jason and I were married in the Denver Temple.  Most of that day is a blur, but then again with three boys the better part of the last eight years have been a blur as well.

When I was in Young Women's (our church's youth group for girls ages 12-18), we were often asked to make a list of qualities we wanted in our future husband.  I know people who have those lists and bring them out and get teary-eyed comparing their husbands to that list.  I always thought making that list was kind of lame.  I didn't really see any point at that time when I wasn't interested in getting married and got back to my homework.  But, as I got older and started dating, I did actually make a list, half in jest and half serious, of what I was looking for in a spouse:

1.  No curly hair - Both my parents have curly hair so none of their children had a chance of escaping a curly fate.
2.  Last name in the first half of the alphabet - I've never been very attached to my maiden name (sorry, Dad!), but I was tired of being at the end of the list.  Please note that Jason just barely made the cut on that one.
3.  Honors priesthood - Okay, so if you are LDS then this one goes almost without saying.
4.  Less of a girl than me - I added this one after dating a few guys who had so much more emotional drama going on than I did.  I don't think that I am super high maintenance in the drama department and didn't really want to deal with someone more emotional than me.


It was a pretty short list that I tried to keep to the basics.  The first time I saw Jason he was giving a talk about his trip to Morocco and the second time he had chocolate, so I guess it was only a matter of time before we got married after I found out he met all my other qualifications.

As I like to tell Jason, I thought he was pretty incredible when I married him and like wine (which we don't drink actually) he gets better with age.  Eight down and forever to go.

Difficult Question

Michael:  How come Oma's bum isn't bigger than Opa's bum?

Me:  ......What???

Michael:  Well, your bum is bigger than Daddy's bum so how come Oma's bum isn't bigger than Opa's bum?

**silence**

Trendsetter

Next thing you know, all the boys will be wearing miniature clip-on ties with their polo shirts.

Hill Cumorah Pageant

 We returned last night from a very quick and very lovely trip to New York.  We were invited to go up with friends to see the Hill Cumorah pageant up near Palmyra, New York.  There was incredible amount of driving, but the boys really did great (except for this one hour in Maryland on the way back).

Before we left, Jason spent hours cleaning out the van.  It probably hasn't looked that good since it was brand new on the lot.  Jason is incredibly thorough and meticulous.  Needless to say, it took less time for me and the boys to mess it up than it took him to clean it.  Which is kind of how things go with kids.

While he was cleaning out the van, he found some sunglasses.  The van belonged to my grandparents before we got it, so I can only assume that these glasses belonged to one of them.  They were designed to fit over large glasses and so they are huge.  Jason looks like a bug when he wears them.  Jason loved them as he found they were tinted perfectly to his tastes and fit over his glasses.  I think they belonged to my grandmother and therefore dubbed them the "granny goggles."  Of course, everyone had to try them on.

After our drive, we dropped our gear at the cabin (more about that in a later post) and went over to claim seats as the seats at the pageant are available on a first come, first serve basis.  We got there a few hours before the start and had some time to kill.  Some of the cast were mingling with the audience and were kind enough to let us take their pictures.  Below are Josh and Michael with King Noah (I thought it was interesting that all the bad guys had the best costumes).

Ben, our social butterfly, was quite taken with this lady's shiny broach.  

So we got a picture with her.  I have no idea who these people were cast as, but they were very nice.

So, the pageant is basically a play version of the highlights of the Book of Mormon with a volunteer cast.  They did a wonderful job.  Below is the set, which was used quite creatively to depict scenes in towns, boats, wilderness and waterfalls.  The special effects were pretty cool and included an actual waterfall, fire and explosions.  Josh was most concerned about the swords (were they real? no) and the fire (was Abinadi really being burned? no).  Michael was most impressed with Christ's appearance (on a zip line).

But, back to before the pageant.  Up on the hill was the statue of Moroni who showed Joseph Smith the location of the gold plates.  That area was closed off because of the performance, but our super zoom camera  took this picture of it.

And down in the field behind the chairs, Jason and the boys played with their friends, the Vs, and got the chance to work off the 10 hour car ride with a frisbee and balls.

While Josh and Michael played, Ben made some new friends.  Jason told me Ben went up to three different elderly couples and made friends.  He touched their shoes and their watches and told them that he is "Ben" and that he is "two."

Then, the boys got all snuggled up with crackers and water to watch the pageant.  It got a little cool up there in New York at night.  Luckily, we brought lots of blankets with us.

I don't know how much the boys understood or learned from the pageant, but Josh and Michael did sit through the whole thing.  Only Michael fell asleep at the very end snuggled on my lap.  Ben ran up and down our row getting high-fives, saying hello and touching the Bishop's and his wife's shoes.

I think we may have finally produced an extrovert.

In any case, it was a great experience.  We got back to the cabin at midnight and spent an exciting night (ever shared a twin bed with a 2-year-old?  No?  Don't.) before getting up the next morning to see some of the historical sites in the area.

Do-It-Yourself

I am not really a do-it-yourself kind of girl.  Particularly in the kitchen.  Which isn't to say that we eat out a lot, I just enjoy cooking with foods that come in a bag, box, jar or can.

For example, if Betty Crocker and her crew want to make a chocolate cake mix that makes a perfectly moist cake with the simple addition of oil and eggs, I am a fan.  If the nice people at Costco want to make a rotisserie chicken for $5 a pop, that means I feel like chicken tonight.  If the Jolly Green Giant has the time to put some frozen vegetables and Orville some popcorn kernels in a microwaveable bag, then I get to count those as vegetables and whole grains in our diet.

So the gluten-free diet has been a little bit rough for me.  There are plenty of gluten-free items that come in a bag, box, jar or can but they are all so dang expensive.  Then, to make life even more exciting, I decided to take processed sugars out of my diet as well.  And because if it doesn't have gluten, it probably does have sugar, my prepackaged food days have come pretty much to an end.  Not to mention everyone else's in the family as I try to remove as much processed sugar from their diets as possible as well.  Having spent the last couple of weeks reading labels for sugar has been very disheartening.

All that explains why I found myself making my own spaghetti sauce and bread this weekend.  The sauce turned out pretty well, except I could not find any sausage that didn't have sugar (or MSG) in it - even at Wegmans!  I was able to use fresh, sun-warmed basil from the pot on my deck.  The fragrance of fresh basil is positively intoxicating.  The bread was solid as a rock, but according to my critics (Jason and Michael) it tasted pretty good.

The bread is definitely a work in progress as I try to adapt recipes so I can use my bread machine to do all the work, but then bake it in the oven.  While I am sure that homemade honey 100% whole wheat bread is best for my family, I hate the mess of making and kneading bread.  Not to mention the problem of getting flour all over the kitchen.  So the quest for bread that tastes good and looks like sandwich bread rather than focaccia continues.

Next on the list are sausage and ketchup.  Either I will figure these things out or we will all eventually forget how the real foods taste.  And really, I'd be good either way.

Mommy Gap

My resume has a problem.  I call it the Mommy Gap, because my resume looks something like this:

Graduated from college
Temped in Colorado
Temped in Virginia
Quit
Had 3 kids and was never seen again.
The End.

You can see where this isn't the most, um, accomplished of resumes.

My problems actually start at the very top with my degree in Anthropology, which I lovingly refer to as my "Would you like some fries with that?" degree as it pretty much qualifies me to work in fast food.

In any case, I am pretty sure that if someone can see past my liberal arts degree with no real-life application that he or she probably assumes that after 7+ years out of the workforce and in The Mommy Zone that my brain is either as mushy as soggy Cheerios or as scattered as the Legos in my frontroom.

Not to mention what the Mommy Gap has done to my professional wardrobe.  Pulling nice slacks and a blouse out of the Mommy Wardrobe isn't impossible (thanks, Mom!) but is pretty much a one shot deal.  Everything else is machine washable and has probably had a run in with Shout more than once due to close encounters of the mud, vomit, grape juice and graham cracker kind.

It isn't so much that I am looking for a job now, but the bigger the Gap gets, the more difficult reentry into the workforce appears.  In the meantime, I am going to have to come up with some more professional sounding terms for scheduling play dates and doctors appointments, providing three semi-nutritious meals a day, wiping bums, and using coupons to beef up my resume.

Water and Mud

Sometimes I get so caught up in keeping the van and the carpet clean that I don't let the boys get dirty at the park.  Okay, most of the time I get caught up in keeping the van and the carpet clean so I don't let the kids get dirty at the park.  But I do realize that they probably need to get dirty sometimes and just explore to their hearts' content in water and mud.  Today I tried a different tactic and attempted to schedule getting dirty time. Armed with a towel and crocs/flip flips, we went to the park.  At first, scheduled getting dirty time didn't seem as appealing to them as spur of the moment getting dirty time, but they warmed up to it eventually.

It was interesting to see the boys' personalities play out in the creek.

Josh, the scientist.

Michael, the explorer.

Ben, the....well, Ben, the soaking wet.  Ben just focused on experiencing the water all over his clothes as he crouched in it and then fell in it.

The boys had such a great time that I will probably just keep a towel in the car for future aquatic forays.

The 4th

The 4th of July is one of those holidays that I really need to work on.  I struggle with motivation to be anywhere outdoors in July in Virginia, so this is a difficult holiday for me to try to make exciting plans.  Jason and I did watch the movie A Few Good Men, but I am not sure that fits in the category of patriotic even if there are a bunch of soldiers in it.  

Lucky for the boys, we had a few sparklers leftover from last year so they did have some sort of pyrotechnic experience to celebrate our freedom.

 

Hope you had a wonderful 4th of July!

Germany: Day 6: Salzburg

Okay, so technically most of day 6 was actually spent in Austria.  

Salzburg.

Salzburg is lovely.  There is no other word for it.

And it is in a most lovely location.

Some of the statues, not so much.  Seriously, some of these statues are crazy and tortured.

Then, after klettersteiging two days before and hiking to two castles the day before, we decided to hike up to the fortress in Salzburg.  Calvin was voting strenuously for the funicular, but Rachel and I had read Rick Steve's who claimed that the views on the hike up are spectacular.  He fails to mention that you can get the same and better views from the top and that the hike will take your breath away...literally.

We saw this on the way up.  I think it is a place for people to stop and pray that they will make it to the top.

This was our target:

It was cool.

We took an audio tour of the fortress which was very informative.  The fortress was, like most large structures in Europe, built in stages.  The building was mostly ornamental as it was rarely used as a fortress.  Apparently it was imposing enough that its very appearance deterred invaders.  Convenient that.  So when Napoleon came through, it seems that the people in Salzburg had forgotten due to misuse how to use the fortress and surrendered it without a fight.

Rachel, our resident artillery specialist, sat on some cannonballs for us.

Here is some sort of sundial beautifully painted on the wall.

Inside of the fortress there is a marionette museum.  These, surprisingly, were the least disturbing puppets there:

Rachel and the fountain.  I just liked this picture.

Here is Rachel checking out where the cannon was aimed.  I think she dealt with slightly more advanced equipment in Iraq, but she did manage to ascertain that these cannons were aimed at the civilians and tourists that the fortress was intended to protect and as such would do the most damage.  Then she started throwing around some military terms and my concentration drifted.

Anyway, we had a wonderful time in Salzburg.  We drove home that night and got in really late.  Day 7 in Germany was spent sleeping, packing and meandering around Amberg.  My SD card was full at that point so I have no pictures.

I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to spend some time with Rachel in Germany and that various people were willing to watch my children so I could leave.  I am so excited that she will be home soon, but sad that she will have to leave all the fun travel she has been doing.  Europe is pretty dang cool.

Decades

This summer my dad and grandfather each had a birthday that was also a significant decade milestone.  Dad turned 60 and Grandpa turned 90.  

Pretty big numbers.

Luckily, Grandpa was here en route to visit great-grandbaby number 4 so we could have a party for him and my dad.  Diane put together a lovely dinner including a dairy, gluten, sugar and egg-free chocolate cake that was divine.

Since having Grandpa here is not an everyday occurrence, I tried to get a multi-generational picture.

But either the boys were blurry,

or one of the adults was.

Twelve pictures and this was the best I got.

I love them all!

Happy Father's Day!

Better late than never, HAPPY FATHER'S DAY to an incredible father - he's the best of the best of the best with honors! 

And yes, these are the goof balls we take to church every Sunday.