Goodbyes and hellos

We've had a lot of fun things happen the last few weeks of summer. Here's a recap.

Goodbye to . . .

1. Temperatures in the 90s. It's still been an incredibly warm and dry month, but at least we're done with the major summer heat! The mornings are cool and getting cooler, but that means the afternoons are glorious.

2. Naps. Matthew has mostly abandoned his nap and Jacob generally takes just one nap a day. We can still steal a few minutes of peace during quiet time, but it's not quite the same. Rest in peace, naps.

3. Teeth. Joseph has lost two now! The first one he might have swallowed on Pioneer Day, so we forgot about putting a quarter under his pillow. The second one he put under his pillow but we forgot about it for a few days. So I sneaked in right before bedtime and put a quarter under his pillow and told him to check what the Tooth Fairy brought. "Ooohh!! Mon-ay!!!" he said.

4. Peaches. Despite initial appearances, there were in fact only a finite number of peaches on the trees, and they eventually were all canned or eaten. So far we haven't said goodbye to tomatoes or raspberries yet, but that'll happen soon.

5. Kevin's grandpa. Last weekend we went down to Duchesne to attend the viewing and burial of Kevin's grandpa. It was a really lovely service and it was great to hear stories about him we'd never heard. It was nice to see a lot of family that we hadn't seen in years.

Hello to . . .

1. Underwear! You know, I feel like there are about 10 steps it takes to potty train a child. The child has to like underwear, has to develop awareness, etc. With Joseph I felt like we spent several months working through steps 5-9, so it took a lot of work to get it done. With Matthew, I feel like we were stalled forever on steps 1-4.
But one day he finally decided he liked the feeling of underwear, and after several, several, several torturous days (it wasn't accidents making things torturous, fyi  . . . it was worse), he just up and decided he knew how to do it. So that was that. It's been mostly a good development, especially since he doesn't have accidents, but he's become really sensitive to clothes now that they fit differently on him, so getting dressed is an agonizing endeavor most days.

2. Grapes and apples. Bring on the juice and the applesauce.

3. School! Joseph started 1st grade and has been doing great! I've been walking him to school most days and it's been fun having telling him stories about the houses we pass or memorable walks to school I had as a kid. Matthew and Jacob also started a fun music class, too.

4. And speaking of walking, Jacob does it all the time now! He is so delightful to watch. And he sure knows how to move fast!

5. Music! My mom has been great about watching the boys a set time every day so I can transcribe/practice. I decided now is as good a time as any to get things in motion, so I have started taking piano/composition lessons, too.

6. Construction! I've been a bit coy about this on my blog (especially because it's been such a slow process), but we started construction on a house! We're excited. (And a little terrified.)

It's a little small, and when the snow comes we might get a bit wet, but other than that it's a great house!

8. Spencer! After two years of serving a mission in Spain, he's back! We were able to have the whole family up for the weekend to celebrate. (In total there were 19 people in the house . . . don't tell the TLC network.) It was a fun weekend of cousin time, family pictures, and delicious tacos. It's all good to be on the same continent again.

We're excited to see what the fall brings!

Visions by night

General Conference is coming up, and since last session had lots of changes, I've been preparing myself for a lot more. I guess my thoughts have seeped into my subconscious because last night I dreamed all about it.

In my dream, President Nelson got up and began to talk about new exciting revelations. "If you put a bobby pin on a light fixture, then you can hang things off of the bobby pin!" "Bobby pins have lots of other great uses, let me tell you about them." We all sat there riveted as he listed off more life hacks.

When I woke up, I realized that those weren't the kinds of revelations we normally get. And actually, you can't do any of those things with bobby pins.

But hey. If we don't get 2 hour church (with the expectation that another hour is spent at home studying with family), a significant restructuring of missions, or the merger of YSA branches into family wards, maybe I'll try the bobby pin trick after all.

Jacob's theme song

Climb every mountain,

Ford every stream,

Follow every rainbow

Till you find your dream.

Definitive infinitive

Matthew had lots he wanted to say during Sacrament Meeting today and when we tried to remind him to be more reverent, he yelled, "NO! I don't be reverent!"

Between his continuous commentary on everything and Jacob´s squirminess, we definitely get finitely less out of church than we used to.

But we´re still infinitely grateful to have them.

Free food

Over the years, Kevin and I have honed our ability to find free food. Today was a great example of how to shamelessly obtain free food.

1. Decide to go to an open house celebrating the wedding of a friend you knew in high school 11 years ago.

2. Drive past the park, then change your mind about where you park. Ignore the crying of the 3 year old who just woke up from a nap at 6 pm and the indignant whining of the 1 year old who can't believe he still has to be in his car seat.

3. Park on the shoulder of a busy road and try not to let the 3 year old automatically open the door that opens into traffic. Then wade through uncut grass to the park.

4. Get in line for food before realizing that you don't know anyone else, and you certainly don't see the bride and groom. Maybe they were at the pavilion?

5. Walk over to the pavilion. It's a psychology major get together. Never mind.

6. Walk back to the line, frantically checking your phone to make sure you have the date, time, and address right. Second guess yourself again when you see crockpots labeled "YSA 6th stake."

7. Finally ask someone else in line if they're there for the same thing as you. Yes. Proceed as planned. (This step can be skipped if you care more about free food than belonging.)

8. Obtain free food. Attempt to obtain it for your children, but instead watch as tantrums commence about the lack of chocolate chip cookies (????).

9. Spend 15 minutes calming the tantrum as the other attendees do their best to ignore you. They all have newborns. They don't know what's coming.

10. Realize that you are enough older than everyone else there that your husband might end up being their professor. Continue eating your barbecue pork sandwich to dispel that thought.

11. Say hello to the bride and groom when they show up. This step could have been skipped if you didn't know the bride and groom. Realistically, no one would have known that you didn't belong.

12. Eventually, once he's calm enough, feed the hangry child a roll. All the embarrassment and hassle of obtaining free food has not been in vain.

I guess we ought to scour the local wedding announcements to see if we can try this again next weekend, whether or not we know the couple.

A few good reads

I've read a few nice things lately that I thought were worth sharing. Here you go.

Hard Sayings and Safe Spaces -- I tried to listen to this devotional the day it was given, but I didn't have byuTV on my phone, so that didn't work. Then I tried to listen to it one morning, but Jacob decided that I didn't really want to listen to it. So I decided to wait until I could just read it. And then I did.

I know that when I've grappled with really hard theological problems, what's helped most is having people to talk to about it openly and safely and just hear things like, "Yeah, that is a really good question." or "That's a hard thing I wonder about too."

And yet . . . even with that firsthand experience under my belt, I still want to swoop in and throw explanations at people. I don't, but I sure want to sometimes! What do you think? When do you think it's actually helpful to go in and correct someone? And here's an unrelated question . . . If someone is behaving unkindly or in an emotionally abusive way and justifying it because they're in pain (and feel rightfully angry and betrayed), I think that they should be called out . . . but how? And by whom? Just stuff I wonder sometimes whenever I peek at the garbage fire called social media.

And speaking of social media, it's just not great.

A brief summary of the social media reform movement

I still miss the comments and validation I get from Facebook, but I think it's better to just plain not expect them anymore, which is why I'm posting here.

Becoming an Intentional Community -- I thought there were lots of interesting points here.

Marriage Laboratory -- another good post from Marriage Laboratory. Thinking about it, it actually ties in with my previous link. Becoming an intentional community means becoming close to other people despite differences. And, as this post states,

" . . . We are able to get close to each other only to the degree that we are able to not react to each other. The more people can regulate themselves, the closer they are able to get to others. Otherwise, uncontrolled and unbridled reactivity act as a roadblock to intimacy."

Sin -- I haven't read all of Adam Miller's Letters to a Young Mormon, but this one was available online so I read it. I thought there were lots of great insights in it.

Honestly, since I am a storyteller at heart I sometimes catch myself making up stories and narratives about myself (especially since moving back to Cache Valley). And I've discovered that when I become dissatisfied in my life, it's because I'm expecting my life to match a story or expecting others to be who I want them to be in the story. So I was struck by this quote:

When you sin, you sin not because you’ve failed to measure up to your story but because you’ve privileged your story in the first place. Privileging your story, you don’t treat others or yourself with the care life requires. By freeing you from your story, Christ frees you from your guilt. He saves you by revealing that even your own life was never about you. Bought-back and story-poor, Christ frees space in your head to pay attention to someone other than yourself. You don’t need rigid rules and expectations, you need Spirit. You need to be sensitive and responsive. Rather than filtering other people’s voices through the shame-making screen of your story, you must learn to be responsible for the work of caring for what you share with them.

Sensitive, responsive, and responsible. I think we could all work on that!


In terms of books I've read lately, I have started about 12 and finished 1 -- the newest Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, aka the most perfect description of air travel. Most of the books I've tried are YA fiction that's just boring me to tears or LDS books that aren't interesting to me right now. I also tried reading a little bit of Charles Lamb since my dad checked his essays out after we watched Guernsey Potato Peel Pie on Netflix. He said that he was the E. B. White of his time, but so far I like E. B. White about 60 times better. I'll let you know if I find any essays of his that I like.

Wake me up when September ends

Tonight Kevin and I saw a boat on a trailer attached to someone's car as we were driving home. We started listing various nearby lakes and reservoirs it might have come from. Then I thought about the work it took to get that boat to and from the lake and all the preparation that might go into a day boating. Honestly, right then, it seemed like a lot of work.

So does skiing, for that matter. Or biking. Or running 24 miles in the mountains. Or, for that matter, blogging most every night. (Okay, that one isn't that hard, at least not physically, but it's not quite as easy as just browsing the Internet.)

So why do people boat or bike or blog? Mark Twain spelled it out for us in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer:

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.” 

I realized recently that if I were being paid to blog or knew that I had an audience beyond family and friends, it would be a lot harder to do, and it might take the fun out of it. So I'm fine keeping it a hobby. (Plus, when it's a hobby it means I can keep posting in Comic Sans or whatever font I'm using right now because changing the layout would turn it into Work.)

I also realized that music isn't a hobby for me. It might seem like one since I like to just sit down and improvise, but I do feel a real obligation to do something real with it. So I've decided to stop treating it like a hobby, especially for this month. I am going to spend an hour every day transcribing music so I finally have something to share with people.

There is no way to turn transcribing into a hobby, so I'm not even going to pretend that it is. But it's important to get it done.

Point being . . . blogging might take a bit of a hit this month. Unless I desperately need it as a hobby to make up for the complete torture of transcribing. (It would be easier if I didn't have to hook my laptop up to an external monitor. My goal is to make enough money from transcriptions to buy a new laptop. Or at least pay for a domain name, haha.) We'll see.

And to keep myself accountable, here's my list:

• The First Noel (piano solo) [I want to get Christmas music done first] (update 9/5 -- 90% done with transcribing, but I still need to add dynamics and articulation)
• Silent Night (alto/bass solo with piano) (update 9/6 -- 95% done with transcribing)
• Our Savior's Love in the style of Brahms (piano solo) (update 9/3 -- 40% done)
• More Holiness Give Me in the style of Rachmaninoff (piano solo,)
• Popcorn Popping in the style of Debussy (piano solo)
• In Humility, Our Savior/Amazing Grace (piano solo  . . . and an interesting combo doctrinally) (update 9/6 -- 20% done)
• Finishing up Sunbeam Waltz transcription
• Cleaning up My Heavenly Father Loves Me transcription
• For All the Saints (men's part is written, but I need to do the accompaniment)
• The Lord's My Shepherd (vocal solo + accompaniment)
• I have some other mashups that I haven't transcribed which aren't priorities because they're not hymns/classical, but if I run out of things to do I could work on transcribing those.

And, if anyone is interested, here are a few more things I'm working on:

• Souviens Toi/Nearer My God to Thee (probably piano solo, but maybe duet)
• I Need Thee Every Hour in the style of Beethoven (piano solo)
• Something in the style of Mozart (not K535 or Alla Turca)
• I tried writing a few hymns a month ago, and now that I've let them sit for a month I'm going to be able to revise them more easily.
• I hope to have a website soon to put the music on. I've looked into a few options but will take suggestions.

Anyway, I'll keep this up to date as I finish transcribing. I think comments are working again so if you want to send me pep talks I'll probably need them!

(Of course, if someone wants to pay me for the privilege of transcribing resplendent music, I won't turn them down. I learned my lesson from Tom Sawyer, after all.)