Fall Break

James is part of a club called Service Bros Jr. Basically it's his group of friends that get together but instead of just hanging out, they do something meaningful every other month. This month they toured the MTC in Provo.

Future missionaries, right here.

We didn't go out of town for fall break this year. Instead Justin and I tried to plan some fun things in the midst of them hanging out with friends. Thursday evening we went to a Korean bbq place in Springville. The kids didn't know what to expect but we knew they'd have a good time.

James especially loved cooking the food right at our table. Henry said he wants to go back every week and Erica wants to go here for her birthday.

There were a couple of UVU museums I've wanted to go to for awhile. The first one was an art museum in a mansion in Orem. While I didn't really like most of the art, this piece made out of ammo brass was cool.

Erica got extra credit in her art class with this photo.

The mansion was built in the 90s (Bastien family of Wordperfect fortune) and is visible from the freeway and intrigued me all growing up. Kind of fun to actually go inside.

90s folklore was they moved the floor from the Delta center to the basement. We weren't able to go down there but from the outside, we peered in the windows and look what we saw. Rumor proved.

I was more intrigued by the house itself than any of the art (largest bathroom I've ever been in). It's a relatively new museum so maybe the collection will improve with time. It was free.

From there we went to UVU campus. Here's their mascot. Does it have a name? Justin attended UVU before transferring to BYU and a lot has changed since then.

The Roots and Branches exhibit isn't in a museum but the first floor of the library. It's a huge stained glass installation that shows the history of knowledge. I love stained glass so I've wanted to see this for awhile too. We actually spent a lot longer here than at the mansion, partly because we took the hour-long guided tour and because it was so interesting to look at.

It's a timeline of history, basically.  My kids impressed the tour guide with all their knowledge of world events. 

This piece of Alexander the Great was my favorite.

They replicated the style of the original mosaic.

After that we went to Leatherby's to get ice cream but everyone was so hungry we also got fries and other food.

When we got home most of the kids ran off with friends but Justin and I drove up Diamond Fork canyon so he could look for deer.

Saturday Justin and the girls went hunting. Sarah had a deer tag.

They didn't get anything but they enjoyed being in the mountains.

It was Erica's first time on a real hunt--not just scouting or camping. She's been saying she wants to be put in for a deer tag next year but I wanted her to tag along at least once so she knew what she was getting into. She says she liked it.

Ups and Downs

8am, October 1. I discover water in our family room.

I spent the next hour moving furniture and pulling back carpet and setting up fans. How did this happen, you may ask. I overseeded the lawn and have been running the sprinklers for 5 minutes four times per day. Combined with a deluge of rain the past few days, what have I done?

9:15am Sis M. whom I minister to called me to report that her husband had fallen the night before and they had gotten home from the ER early that morning. I desperately needed to go to the grocery store so what can I get for you? Bro. M would like some popcorn and applesauce. You got it. I raced around Costco and Walmart and stopped at their house on my way home. Poor Bro M, broken ribs, a black eye; he's having a worse morning than me.

10:44am I raced home figuring if I just put the cold food in the fridge and leave the rest for after work, I have 22 minutes to finish getting ready and eat something before I have to leave for work. Just as I brought in the very last thing from the car, I got a phone call from James's school. Uh-oh. Never good. "James hit heads with another boy during recess going for a football pass. He's bleeding. You'll want to come take a look."

So off we go to urgent care. Third time having stitches. 

Poor guy. As his best friend previously said, "James doesn't get hurt the most but he does get hurt the worst."

Stitches 31, 32, 33, 34 for those of us keeping track. Can you see the scar right below this cut where his last stitches were?

All done. He was feeling better by the time we got home and ate lunch. He got to hang out with my dad for a couple of hours while I went to work and Sarah picked him up on her way home.

Oh and Justin was on a work trip for all of this. Did I mention that? 

6:25pm. What does one do at the end of a day like that? Order pizza. Make rice krispie treats. Watch Hocus Pocus. 

When I talked to Justin that evening I told him I'm hoping for a regular day tomorrow. It doesn't even have to be a good day, just an uneventful one.

****

My sister does some pretty random and deep research into newspaper records and she came across this ad taken out by my dad in 1986.  He has listed the VW van for sale.

5 years later in 1991, he relists the same van. What once was in excellent condition now needs work.

What happened in those 5 years? My three oldest siblings got their licenses and drove it, that's what happened. 

I feel like these ads could be an art piece titled "Teenagers"

****

Since the family room was still drying out and in disarray (and noisy from all the fans) we gathered in our bedroom again to watch general conference. We figured it would be cozy and memorable.

Look how cute this puzzle is. I bought it like in August and saved it for this day.

Saturday, once the floor was dry, I decided to run the sprinklers station by station to see which of the three on that side of the house was causing the damage. One, nothing. Two, nothing. Three, a flow right into the room beneath the tv. That really confused me because I had meticulously moved heads and adjusted the spray so that water never ever touched the house. Well that only works if the head isn't broken and not shooting a geyser at the house. Gosh dang it. Since I keep several sprinkler heads on hand, this was a 5-minute fix.

This did make me feel better: The basement flooded because of a broken sprinkler, not because I had set the sprinklers to water too often and too much. So it was due to my obliviousness and neglect, not over zealousness and ignorance. Wait. Is that better? Well, I still choose to feel better about it. (My satisfaction is short-lived. Keep reading.)

Saturday evening Erica's friend came over and they built this little house for their little cow or duck or something.

Sunday between sessions I was checking on the drying state of the floor, carpet, and pad in the family room when I discovered a different corner was soggy. Oh no. I pulled back that carpet and chased another flood through Sarah's bathroom and into her bedroom. What the heck? This flood was unrelated to the other. There was like 10 feet of dryness between these two soggy spots. What is weird is that months ago I discovered wet carpet in this exact spot but could never find the source nor recreate it through sprinklers or detected anything after rain. It dried up, I put back the carpet and figured it was all a misunderstanding. Why had it happened again and where was the water coming from?? I said a prayer and then almost immediately heard a drip, drip, drip sound in the wall. Water wasn't seeping in from outside, it was dripping down the wall from above! Huzzah! And then like a minute later, Erica says, "Mom, I don't know if this is a good time to tell you, but under the bathroom sink is all wet." I was so  happy to hear those words! 

After some inspection, we concluded that the bathroom faucet above was leaking and a smallest of drips was running down the pipes under the sink, down through pipes in the floor and down the wall to the basement floor directly below.  There are no signs of water on the ceiling or wall. It is so weird and I really hope there's not more damage that we aren't seeing. It was the slowest of leaks. It's crazy to me how much water can accumulate by the tiniest of drips. One new faucet, several days of fans and drying and a visit from a carpet guy, we are all back in place. I bought some water sensors that scream like banshees when wet and placed them around. Can we please be done?

In other news,

Henry got his learners permit!

James got his stitches out! It never did turn into a black eye like we thought.

These are my pantry doors. They are always open like this because no one really takes the time to close them. It looks messy and it such a pain to walk around sometimes.

I feel like Vanna White every time I walk through here as I close the doors. "Who's Vanna White?" Sarah asked.

I finally decided to try to fix this situation. I ordered some self-closing hinges from Amazon and this afternoon I got to work replacing one on each door. Justin came in and helped me which was a good thing because we also needed to bend a few of the old hinges to make the doors swing without hitting.

Here's the after. Yes, it is just closed doors but NO ONE had to close them. This is the default setting.

I will say it is also inconvenient to have to hold the door open while throwing away garbage, emptying the dustpan or getting food in and out of the pantry. But those inconveniences come with cleanly closed doors so I'll take the trade-off.

School, sports, dances, and a snack that shouldn't

Aww that one time my kids were in the same class in high school. They told their business law teacher they needed to use their phone for one second because their mom wanted a photo. It's one of Henry's favorite classes. I know it's because Sarah is with him.

I started a new job as an instructional technician at a nearby elementary school last month. I only had a vague idea of what the job entailed so my first day of meetings and training was full of thoughts like, "I don't know what I got myself into" and "I have no idea what any of these words mean." So much jargon.

But then I saw my name on the wall and got enthusiastic and optimistic.

I had no idea of what these posters below meant on my first week. I know and use the closed syllable now! During training at the district and with the interventionalist, I had to remind myself daily that this isn't hard, it's just new. It's not hard, it's new. I can do new.

If you asked me the first 4 weeks of my job if I liked it, I would tell you so far so good but I don't really know because I'm not really doing the job yet. We had to be trained and then the kids had to be tested and then put into intervention groups. I've had 2 weeks of actually doing all the things and I can say I work with grades K-4 in reading in math plus a half hour of SPED each day. I feel like a middle schooler going to a different classroom every 30 minutes. The afternoon goes by pretty fast.

This is my half of my classroom that I share with another technician. I'm only in here an hour per day as I go to classrooms the rest of the time. At this table I teach reading in a way I didn't learn, using a method I've just been trained on. Do you remember learning how to read? I don't but I now know how to teach it.

I love all the wonderful adults that I work with. It's a very supportive and positive environment. I like most of the kids.

Speaking of kids I like, I am already sad that the years of my kids dragging all the squishy stuff out onto the tramp early Sunday mornings will end. It's a rare sight nowadays. It's pure playing magic all morning long that ends when I call out the window that it's time to get ready for church.

If you like it when you chew a food and it collects and thickens and gets stuck in the space between your gums and cheek, you know, nice and high and deep and stuck, I have the snack for you. 

My love of cinnamon rolls takes me down some ridiculous paths, sometimes. Let me know if you'd like me to try more things I find on clearance at Walmart.

Saturday was Homecoming! Sarah got asked by a boy named Ryan from her seminary class. I had never met him but she said she was pretty good friends with him.

Henry asked a girl in their friend group. In addition to chauffering them around all day (another reason kids shouldn't date until they're 16) I got to take their group photos.

I have like a million more poses of these boys being goofy.

Proof that Sarah and Henry were at the dance together and acknowledged each other's presence.

Erica has some oral surgery coming up! She is not excited. I had to take a picture in this creepy procedural room while we waited for her consultation. When we met the doctor, we told him we were coming up with all the movies that have scary scenes in rooms like this. He was a good sport but I hope he does something about it. At least change out the creepy bluish lights.

James had his last flag football game tonight. He was supposed to have his last game on Monday but it got rained out

He plays football like he plays chess. Strategy, anticipation, precision. 

He always had at least one big play each game: interception, pick 6, touchdowns, big run. He had best friends George, Calvin, and Eli on his team so it was a great season.