Young Women Activities

Went ice skating last week with the youth.  We have a family who lives up Dayton Canyon and every winter they build an ice skating rink in their front yard.  They've been collecting ice skates from the DI and by now they have about a hundred pairs, enough to outfit all the youth in the ward.  They do a really good job.  Every year the youth goes up to ice skate and have hot chocolate and donuts.  

Brigham and Ellie tried to ambush me, pushing me into a snowbank.  Their own mother!  I was able to stay vertical - most of the time.  I remember going ice skating back in high school at Merlin Olsen Central Park in Logan.  I'm not very good anymore.  After twenty minutes my ankles were pretty sore and tired, so I hobbled back into the house and took them off, then joined the other leaders at the hot chocolate table.  

We have a great group of youth.    

Sunday Skyping

After stake conference today we all sat down to eat dinner and somebody mentioned something about Reese.  All of a sudden I missed him and wanted to talk to him so I went and got my computer and we skyped him.  He answered, rubbing his eyes and looking groggy.

He looks good and says he's doing good.  He says track starts in three weeks and that he's doing good in all his classes except math and that's because it's the teacher's fault.

Typical teenage boy.

It was good to talk to him.

Then after that we skipped Hayes.  He had just gotten done with church and was walking back to his dorm.  He showed us what his dorm room looked like - it was pretty messy.  He started cleaning while we were talking to him.  He said that he wanted to go eat dinner but that the line to the cafeteria was always really long right after church so he was going to wait a while.  He said everything was going pretty well.  He said that the past week he was trying to figure out how to remember when everything was due and what assignments he needed to work on, and that it was a hard adjustment, but that he was doing better this weekend.  He said nothing had changed, that he was just seeming to do better with it.  

He looked good too.  

A Vision

The phone rang this morning at 2:30 am.  It was the wife of Mundo, our employee who milks.  She said that he was sick with a high fever and wouldn't be able to come in to milk.  I reported this to Craig and he sighed and got out of bed to go put on his work clothes and milk the cows.

The other day Craig was stressing about the barn and I was stressing because he was stressed.  I thought, "Wouldn't it be nice if Craig had a regular job and we didn't have all this worry about barns and animals and employees?"

Right after I had that thought, I had another thought.   A kind of vision.  In my vision, we didn't have the barn and the cows and the employees.  Craig had a regular job.  In his regular job, he had to travel and was gone for weeks at a time.  Just like his brother Joshua.  And I had to handle the house and the kids and my teaching and my calling all by myself without him nearby to help me.  And I missed him.  And I wished that we could go back to our old life when we had the cows and the barn and the employees, but at least he was nearby all the time and we could go to bed together at night.

It was a thought provoking vision.

Barn Heaters and Lights

See how the barn has doors?  Those garage doors are on each side so that they can open them during hot summer days and ventilate the barn.  I think they are nifty.  

The interior framing is just about done.  Right now they are working on the electrical, with heaters and lights being installed.  The holding pen still has a dirt floor but Mark said that gravel and cement should be coming in the next couple weeks.  That will be great.

It's plugging along!!

Hayes has not yet broken his leg on his slackline, but it's early days.

More Snow

It's snowing.  AGAIN.  They cancelled school today.  AGAIN.  Guess how many school days we usually have cancelled during a school year because of snow?  ZERO.  Guess how many we have had so far this year?  THREE. 

Crazy.  

Brigham didn't come down this morning and when I went up to check on him, he said that he wasn't feeling good, that he had been up in the night with diarrhea.  I told him that he should probably stay home from school today and he gratefully snuggled under the covers.  

Hee hee.

Speaking of Brigham, he got the lead in the school musical!!!  They are doing Les Mis and he is Jean Valjean!  I am so excited! I love it when my child is the star!!

               

This cast list was posted when I got to school on Wednesday and I saw Brigham's name at the top and got so excited.  Les Mis is such a wonderful story, such a wonderful musical and the music is so great.  I think we're going to be hearing a lot of it around the house the next couple months.

See Hyrum's name on the cast list too?  He's got a couple parts and is part of the ensemble too.

So excited!!!

Hayes

Hayes is doing well.  He's been at school now for almost two weeks.  The other day I was talking to him and he said, "You know how you and Dad have been telling me for a year now that I would do so much better once I was out of the house and independent?"  and I said "Yeah" and then he said "You were SO RIGHT!"

Ha.

He likes him roommate, Jace.  I've talked to Jace a bit over Skype when I was talking to Hayes and he seems like a good kid.  He's an 18 year old freshman like Hayes.

These are the classes Hayes is taking:

American Heritage
Anatomy
Writing and Rhetoric
History of Civilization
Yoga
Book of Mormon

He talks a lot about his anatomy class.  There is a lecture and also a lab and Hayes has talked about the lab portion quite a bit, about how challenging it is.  He is supposed to memorize every little bit of the human body.  They have cadavers and everything but right now they're working on bones.

He seems good, happy and excited.  He went on a date last week, something that Jace had set up for the two of them, and said it was fun.  He calls at least once a day to tell me some new thing, something that happened or someone he met.  I'm glad that he is such a talker.  I can just picture when Brigham goes away to school.  I'll finally call him up and ask him questions and get one word answers.  I can see it now.

Hayes is a BYU Cougar

Well, he is there.  Hayes is in Provo.

  

See him in his dorm room?  Last Friday he and I and Brigham drove down to Provo to drop him off.  We located his dorm room and put away some of his things and I made his bed with his new sheets.  We went to the bookstore to try to buy some of his new books but they were closed.  We ate at the Brick Oven, our family's favorite.  And then we took him back to his dorm and said goodbye.

I thought I would be fine.  He's been basically driving me crazy for months.  When Heather said I was going to cry when I dropped him off I said NO I WASN'T.  And I meant it.

But she was right.  I was okay until I drove away and left him there.  Brigham and I stopped at Krispy Kreme for donuts and I broke down.  He got back to the car with his boxes of donuts and saw that I was bawling.  He tapped on my drivers side window and said, "Ma'am, do you need a donut?"

The next three days I was so sad!  I missed him so much!  He's so talky and energetic, such a presence in the family.  It was such a hole to have him gone.

I'm doing better now.  It took a few days but I'm doing better.  He skypes every day and that's nice.  We met his roommate over Skype and he seems nice.  They seem to be getting along.  They went on a date over the weekend with a couple girls that Jace knew.

And I think his classes are going well so far.  He just seems to be doing well.  Last week he said, "Mom, you know how you and Dad have been telling me for a year now that I wanted to be independent, that I would do better when I got out on my own?  YOU WERE RIGHT."

So Much Snow

Oh my goodness, I've just never seen so much snow.   The past ten days have been crazy.  The weather reports were lighting up with warnings about winter storms and how Idaho has never seen anything like this.  A week ago, school was in session on Wednesday and the snow was falling fast.  I got to Preston and all the teachers were bellyaching about the superintendent and how he should have called off school.  On Thursday, school was cancelled for snow.  On Friday, school was cancelled for extreme cold.  My phone read -17 degrees.  Craig has been pushing snow off the driveway with the backhoe and I've never seen the pile reach such a height.

 

AAAAAARGH

Aaaaaaargh life is just so busy but I want to post something new but I can't right now because I am just so crazy busy because the new semester starts on Tuesday and my new room isn't ready yet and I have about a thousand papers to print out for my new students and the old semester at Preston isn't yet, they overlap with WestSide's for two weeks which is crazy and dumb and it means I will be teaching in two places at once for two weeks and the New Beginnings program is in two Sundays from today and I am in charge of the program and even though I delegated a bunch of stuff I am still mostly in charge and I want it to be nice but I don't have the time to make it nice and Hayes is leaving this Friday which is exciting and I think he mostly is ready with his stuff but I am still stressed about that and Mac and Josh keep fighting and calling each other poopy pants which they think is the worst insult ever and I just don't have time to do everything I want to do!!!!!  AAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!