First a link I love. It is a video from lds.org called “Moments that Matter Most”. It is cheesy, lovely, sappy and makes me cry every time I watch it. You can find it here.
I don’t want to forget the little details of my children and what makes them individual so I guess I ought to write them down as I remember them or experience them:
William prefers to eat lunch/dinner foods for breakfast. He has been known to have turkey sandwiches, lasagna, spaghetti, anything I am making that morning for the kids lunch. He will eat cereal only if he is really in the mood and that is only rarely.
William is very cautious. He will walk his bike down hills even very little ones because he knows he hasn’t quite mastered bike riding yet and doesn’t want to take a risk.
Lizzie is the delight of Anna’s life when she tries to be. On Friday night she helped Anna clean up her room and then they played hospital. Lizzie has the most amazing imagination (it reminds me of Lex and the games she used to direct). They went all out with their imaginative play. About 20 minutes into it William hurt his foot and so we picked him up on a “stretcher” (my old blankie), carried him into Anna’s room and put him on the “operating table” which was two little tables put together with a blanket over it, a pillow and a lamp shining on it. I left the room then and when coming back ten minutes later discovered a happy little boy laying on the bed with his foot wrapped in an ace bandage eating “medicine” (smarties). About five minutes after that Matthew Saxey got whacked on the head by the disc swing and so he was whisked off the the hospital too. He was treated so well (blue scarf head bandage and smarties) that Sam and Andrew Saxey where trying to storm the hospital with their own “injuries”. Lizzie just instinctively knows what children will like and how to make the world interesting for them. I appreciate that talent in her.
Anna and William are our best eaters. They both even like salsa.
Lizzie is asking for a combined birthday/Christmas present. She wants and I pod touch. Sam recently admitted that he didn’t want Lizzie to get one because as the only child with an I pad he likes the power he wields of having everyone have to come to him to play games/ listen to music. I liked his honesty.
We carved pumpkins tonight. I loved the sweet enthusiasm and excitement we all felt. William’s was a scared pumpkin, Anna’s a happy one, Lizzie’s was a triangle eyed classic, Sam’s was a rocket ship blasting off that didn’t turn out how he liked, (I thought it looked fine), Grant’s was a big green squash with a curly looking roll shape on top that made it look like it had hair, and Rebecca’s was a cute cat. Lizzie kindly donated her second small pumpkin to Sam so he could try again. I was remembering the time many years ago when Isaiah was living with us before his mission and we carved pumpkins. I was newly pregnant with William and our family was so much smaller! Isaiah always made every activity so much fun. I was thankful tonight that Rebecca is here. Whenever we have one of our extended family living with us it adds so much richness to our lives.
Yesterday was a glorious, fall day. We took the kids and dogs on a hike up the Horsetail Falls trail. Sam brought a chisel and his rock hounding hammer that has a very sharp spike on one side. He was swinging away at a rock and ricocheted off it and sent that pointy end right into his shin. He made an interesting hole in his shin that bled like crazy. He is still in some pain but I think he will be ok. Too bad he has basketball tryouts this week.
Last night Grant and I had a great date. We went to Happy Sumo – one of my all time favorite restaurants and talked. We had some decisions to make:
1) Should we spend any more money on treating Charlie’s health problems. (He has had awful skin issues and has almost died twice from a staph infection.) Or should we just put him down?
2) Should we buy season ski passes? Or should we even ski at all?
3) Should we buy a gun to have with our 72 hour kits? We decided against it – I don’t think I’d be able to take down that moose if we are starving anyway! And neither of us are really gun people.
4) How do we go about having a budgeting discussion with our children? And how to include them in some of our efforts to economize? How much financial information to give them?
I appreciate that Grant and I can peaceably make decisions together. Big and little ones. I’m sure we have some bigger ones coming up in the future. The Charlie question is surprisingly big for me and very emotional. I think I would feel both sorrow and relief if we had to put him down. But we will cross that bridge when we get there I guess. We decided to do one more test for him and if the treatment isn’t too bad we will go ahead with that.
One last thing. Recently I heard an interview on NPR with the author of the book, “The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America”. The author’s name is Langdon Cook. He made mushroom hunting and wild food foraging sound so appealing that I just wanted to take our kids and go live in the forest together and search for roots, berries, leaves and fungi for our sustenance. Then I remembered that our children wouldn’t touch a mushroom with a ten foot pole and decided that that will be for when Grant and I are retired empty-nesters. I swear there are twenty different people inside of me who want twenty different lives. I’m not worried so long as none of the other 19 people start talking to me.
Leave a Reply