Thanksgiving!

So we piled the family in the Tahoe and set out over the river and through the woods to Amy and Dave's for Thanksgiving. We went with Tony & Cindy and their kids and my mom and dad too. A great time was had by all. Selected highlights:

-Although Wyatt wasn't the happiest camper in the car, he officially reached the 20 pound mark at the pediatrician's and can now face forward in his big boy seat. It helped. He did throw up and spent some time bucking around against his straps and screaming--but he spent less time doing that than I thought he would, which I count as a success!

-We drove on I-70 on the way there and saw some beautiful sights. The traffic got kind of backed up as we reached Denver, though, and at the end I felt like I was on one of those Disneyland rides where you think you're near the front of the line, but then you turn and notice 14,000 people still ahead of you. We finally staggered into the Chick-Fil-A near Dave and Amy's house, starving and racing to the restroom . . . but once we made it to our destination it was worth it.

-Amy and Dave have a beautiful home. I love their neighborhood, and Amy has done such a good job decorating. And it's so CLEAN. I noticed that even all the jeans and t-shirts in her closet were nicely folded and stacked in neat rows. She always was the most organized sister in the family.



-Wyatt and his cousin Jack were old enough to actually interact, although I wouldn't call it playing on Wyatt's part. Maybe next year for that. But it will be fun for those boys to have each other as cousins. And don't they both have the most beautiful eyes? Brownie Brown and Bluie Blue?

-For a 25 year old hosting her first Thanksgiving for a TON of people, Amy did an awesome job orchestrating everything and fitting us all and having enough pots and pans and plates and forks to go around. Here are some shots of all the hullaballo:




-Thanksgiving dinner was delicioso. Also, it was one of the only Thanksgivings in the last 8 years that I haven't been in charge of, so it was mucho delicioso for me!! Since Amy and Dave aren't big turkey eaters, they have a tradition of eating Chinese takeout from Panda Express, so we were able to enjoy some orange chicken along with our yams and stuffing and potatoes. Mmmmm!

-Thursday night we went bowling. I am a terrible bowler, and no matter what advice anyone gives me ("turn your arm this way!" "aim at this arrow!" "tuck your leg in!") I guttered one ball of the two EVERY SINGLE FRAME. The weird thing is that I only guttered one. I never guttered both. Isn't that strange? Probably psychological on my part. But it was fun to watch everyone else bowl, and the kids absolutely loved it. We had bumpers on the kids' lane and they had a riot. Good times.

-One of my only hesitancies about going to CO for Thanksgiving was that I would miss Black Friday shopping. (I know people think I'm crazy, but I think it's fun). But it turns out that Amy likes Black Friday, too, so she came and picked me up from the hotel on Friday morning at 5:45 and we hit the Target and the outlet stores. There was a line wrapped around Target and I didn't get EVERYTHING I was looking for, but almost everything. When we got home at 8:00, I'd expected to see all the cousins up and running around, but everyone at Amy's house was still completely zonked. Here's a pic of the kids, sleeping underneath Amy's ginormous Christmas tree:



-Later on that morning, we went to a fun indoor community water park. The kids had a BALL. Here are some more pics:




-After the water park, we dried the kids off, fed them peanut butter sandwiches, and were on the road back home by 12:30. We decided to come home on Fri. instead of Sat. because we had so much to do this weekend and Forrest was heading out of town on Monday. The ride home was pretty easy, except for occasional Wyatt screaming episodes, but those were to be expected--and we made good time, pulling into our garage by 8:30 without any negative incidents to report.

-And it was a good thing we came home when we did. We were awakened at 2:00 a.m. by Elise throwing up, and later on that morning, Jonas, Wyatt and I were all pukey and crampy and miserable. Can you imagine what it would have been like driving across the country in such a state? Count your many blessings indeed. I bet Elise alone threw up 5 times. We heard that Amy's Jack was sick, too--but luckily, Tony and Cindy's family and my Mom and Dad were able to make it home without any ickiness. I was glad to hear it.

-And now I'm home, surrounded by piles of Christmas boxes and a half-decorated tree and mounds of paper for this PTA thing I'm doing (I had to staple over 1,000 packets, which is very tedious to describe but much more tedious to do). Forrest was a gem and did ALL the laundry in the house on Saturday while I was sick, though. He is a good man.

And that's it for now. I've got to get to the Christmas decorations! So thanks, Amy and Dave, for a GREAT time!!!

Wyatt the Walker (kinda) and Wyatt the Talker

So Wyatt has two new feats to show off on the blog. One he's been perfecting for a few weeks now, but I'm just getting around to posting it. Here's Wyatt the Walker (kinda) And please excuse the bad mommy singing:




But even better than that, today Wyatt officially said his first word. Although he's been saying lots of Da Da Da's and Ma Ma Ma's (and he also loves "Wow!" and "Hey!"), he hasn't said anything purposeful until today. I was mopping the floor and he crawled over to the Swiffer Wet Jet and knocked it over. I said "Uh oh!" and looked right up at me and said "Uh oh!" too! For the rest of the day, he's been performing his new skill. He even said it to Grandma Sweat on the phone. So here he is, Wyatt the Talker (and please excuse the less than G rated bath footage):




As far as other news goes, we went to the kids' Reflections Contest awards ceremony last night, and both Ethan and Jonas won first place! Elise was up against some stiff competition and didn't win a medal--but I told her that she got 1st place in Best Attitude of All as she was complementary of both her brothers and gave a friend who won a hug and didn't get upset even once. Good kid. So here are all three of my good kids:




So this is a good Proud Mama post.

In other news, I've been asked to post once a month on the Segullah blog. If you want to visit, you can see my first post about LDS lit (the niche I was asked to blog about) here. Much different writing for a "public" blog like that rather than my little family and friends blog here. But fun, too.

And last but not least, we had Mindy and Pete's girls for a couple of days and they went home last night. Mindy and Peter were visiting their old homestead in Seattle. Such cute kids. (Bella and Ayva, not Mindy and Pete--although they are both very attractive as well.) But I'm also glad I don't have six kids every day of my life!! It is fun to be an aunt, though. I have THREE pregnant sisters in law who are all due within a month of each other (Mindy's first, then Cindy, then Andi--all in May). What a fun month that will be! I get to visit new babies and not be the one giving birth and nursing in the middle of the night!!!

That's about it from here. The weeks keep rushing by so quickly that I go to check my blog and I'm amazed it's been 7 days. Life.

Tonight I Am Tired

I realize that I should probably be going to bed. But I haven't posted in over a week, and I know from my experience reading others' blogs that you get about a one week grace period without a new post before loved ones start getting irritable. (I assume that only loved ones care enough to get irritable. The random guy from Venezuela who did a blog search on "sumo costumes" and ended up here probably doesn't care so much.)

This week has been another busy one. The last week off track. The kids went fishing with Forrest on Monday, so that was a highlight for them, and I took them to the skate park and swimming lessons and they had a sleep over and went to Thanksgiving Point with Grandma--and I know that sounds like a lot but it really wasn't that much. But I still feel like I've been rushing from the proverbial pillar to the proverbial post and I'm not entirely sure why. I can say that having a house full of kids and husband (Forrest hasn't traveled much the last couple of weeks) has given me a hankering for peace-and-quiet. Not that I don't love them. Of course I love them. But I also love my peace and quiet--my ability to decide what I want to do for the day and then do it without being pulled in 10 different directions. (Okay, now I know Ethan is probably reading this, and Ethan suffers from Oldest Child Parent Pleasing Syndrome--OCPPS--and I recognize the symptoms because I had it too. I would like to officially assure Ethan that I love him dearly and that of all the children that could be rampaging through my house all day long, I would pick the four I have out of a lineup, because they truly are good kids. So no guilt, Ethan. This is just your ol' Mom who likes a little alone time, just like you do.)

Anything else exciting? Hmmm. Some neighbors of ours turned in some other neighbors of ours (the family of Ethan's friend, whose mother happens to be the District Attorney) to all the major news outlets, writing an email with the heading "Please Help!" that went on to describe how Ethan's friend's family had wild parties and unruly teenagers. Although these things are probably true, the news organizations ran like dogs to vomit to the completely un-newsworthy story, only because the mom is the D.A., of course (what neighborhood doesn't have unruly teenagers???) and parked out in front of their house all day doing foreboding "breaking news" segments about beer bottles found in the gutter. It was all disgusting, and I felt particularly embarrassed that our neighborhood and some members of the church would stoop to such a level. Ethan's friend came to our door the night of the incident, crying (Ethan was fishing) and told me, "Some people in the neighborhood called the news to tell them that we're a bad family, so now we have to move," and I gave him a hug on the porch and thought about the parable of the woman taken in adultery and casting stones and all that. The poor kid. The poor family. But then I also realized that I had been guilty of some gossip about this family myself (although I didn't call the news) and needed to repent, too. It's so easy to be judgmental, though. Righteous indignation is one of the easiest--and most potentially destructive--emotions we humans can fall prey to. So easy to be prideful, and offended, and call for justice. So easy to forget the eleven year old boy who's had every news station in SLC aiming their cameras at his front door to let Utah taxpayers know that the D.A. has a "bad family."

Sorry. That story was kind of a downer.

So I'll finish on an up note. I went to the AML Writers Conference today--for a little while at least--and enjoyed it. In between AML conference sessions, I headed back up Redwood Road and went to the boys' karate tournament. They both did particularly well in board breaking and came home with second place trophies in that event. (Sorry no pictures!!) Also, Tony came by and dropped off the gorgeous cover he's created for my book and I love it. Can't wait to see it on the book in real life.

And now I've done my duty and updated the blog and can go to bed in peace!!

Hallstromween

When I started typing the word "Halloween," my ever helpful computer automatically suggested "Hallstrom" . . . so I thought I'd combine the two. Although the word "Hallstromween" sounds strangely like what Wyatt and I did about three months ago :-).

Halloween was a success around here, though, and we have the mounds of candy to prove it. The festivities started on Tuesday night, when I earned myself the motherhood badge of honor and took my three kids and three of their friends to the "Haunted Corn Maze" all by myself. (Forrest was out of town so I got a babysitter for Wyatt). I was a little nervous about it at first because we went to this same corn maze last year with Cindy and her kids and my Mom and got hopelessly lost--I still have flashbacks of us hacking through the corn with crying children in our arms--and that was the NON haunted version. So this year Ethan decides that he wants to go to the haunted version--even though he was decidedly spooked by the Party City Halloween display . . . so I gave him credit for trying to overcome his fears. He tells all his friends about his plans and even invites a couple, which makes it pretty much a given that I can't back out. Then, of course, I put it off until the DAY BEFORE HALLOWEEN. But I followed through (yes, I'm switching back to past tense. I don't know why I popped into present tense for a while back there, but I don't have the time or wherewithal to change it, so you can mark me down 1/3 of a grade if you'd like). The kids had a lot of fun, and it was scary but not TOOOO scary, and we didn't get very lost. Just lost enough to have fun with it. And Ethan and Elise and Jonas did their little "1-2-3 THANK YOU MOM!" chant that they save for times when I've gone particularly above and beyond (this also applies when I buy them Slurpees for no apparent reason and also when I let them stay up 30 minutes later than normal to finish watching a show.)

So here's the rundown of actual Halloween:



I took Wyatt, all dressed up in his Spidery goodness, to see Great Grandpa and Great Grandma Hiatt. Elise came along for the ride too. Grandpa treated us all to a great tune on the piano, and Elise was duly impressed. We also went to my Mom's work (Elise called it "spacious") and showed Wyatt to all the incredibly nice women in the office who will take a baby in a spider costume over a sheaf of heath benefit paperwork any day.

Then the kids got ready for trick or treating. This year marked a milestone because ALL THE KIDS WENT WITHOUT US!!!! Elise went with some girls in the neighborhood and Ethan and Jonas went with some of Ethan's friends. (Ethan didn't seem to mind letting Jonas tag along. In fact, I think he WANTED Jonas to come. I don't know if Joe realizes what an anomaly it is to have a brother in 6th grade who will let his 1st grade brother go trick or treating with him and his buddies.)

Here's a shot of Elise with four of her girlfriends. Elise and her friend Tayler dressed up as twinner "Punk Pirates":




I also included a close up of Elise, simply because this is probably what she'll look like when she's 16 and going through her Goth phase. I think I'm going to have to be vigilant about the 16 year old Goth boys.

Jonas dressed up as a Ninja. Luckily for me, he was perfectly happy to wear a costume that Ethan had worn a few years before, just so long as I bought him a $3 pair of "Ninja swords".




And, as you can see above, Ethan was a Sumo wrestler this year. His costume was hilarious. It came with a little fan that you stick in a mesh pocket that kept the costume inflated, and a very itchy wig. The little fan occasionally got knocked off kilter and would start buzzing like a warplane in a nosedive, and the neck strap was really tight. The costume wasn't the most comfortable thing Ethan's every worn, but I think he believed it was worth it for the humor factor. But barely.

And here's one more cute picture of Wyatt. Since Forrest and I stayed at home and handed out candy, Wyatt didn't do any trick or treating . . . but I don't think he minded. He was ready to get out of his spider getup a few minutes after I wrestled him into it for picture taking purposes:



And that's it for October 2007. Can you believe it's three weeks to Thanksgiving??? Then it's Christmas??? Then Wyatt is ONE!?!?! Amazing.

I'm Done! I'm Done!

I'm done I'm done I'm done!

I just send in my final edit to Parables. Woo hoo! There will still be some ticky tacky editing to do, of course, but the big job is done now.

Hooray hooray hooray.

Now, to celebrate, I will share with you the writing talents of my progeny. These are the entries they wrote this week for the Reflections Contest at their elementary school (literature category). The theme is "I Can Make a Difference By":

Jonas (the ruminator)--For first graders, they can dictate to a parent who types it up.

I Can Make a Difference By
Learning How to Eat Healthy

A long time ago, there was a boy named Jack that eated a lot of junk food in his life. He started eating junk food when he was four years old. He got really sick. He loved to eat gummy bears, and suckers and candy bars and chocolate, and he especially loved brownies, cookies, and ice cream.

But, when he turned thirteen, he was driving in a car and he saw the fire department take this really really sick kid in an ambulance. This kid eated a lot of candy, just like Jack. The guy that got sick, his parents talked to Jack and said that he was eating too much junk food. And Jack thought, “Just like me!”

So Jack started to eat good food. He eated broccoli, carrots, meat, and a lot more good food. Now he was just like a plain kid. He felt really good, so he kept doing it for the rest of his life. He was a really good person.

**Any of you who know Jonas understand how hilarious this story is. This is the child who will stuff a single pea inside a roll so he doesn't have to feel the texture of it on his tongue, and if he eats it that way, we're all glad. Do you think this has been affecting him psychologically at all?? :-)**

Elise (the poet)--

Our Earth

I can make a difference by
helping everyone worldwide.
Keeping our world nice and clean,
and never being rude and mean.

Everyone should help out
And when we’re done we’ll scream and shout,
“Keep our world a tidy place!”
And we’ll have a smile on our face.

So when you think about this rhyme
don’t commit any crime
against the Earth or its land
and all the Earth will be hand in hand.

**She wrote it all by herself, except for one instance where she was stuck on the line "So when you think about this poem" and couldn't find a good rhyme. So I suggested changing "poem" to "rhyme". Hopefully that's not against reflections contest rules. If so, it's here on the blog and I'll be busted. Good poem, though, don't you think?**

Ethan (the fiction writer). This piece is a little longer but it's worth it:

I Can Make a Difference by Helping Animals


Kevin needed some time alone. The day had been stressful. He forgot his homework and had to face the seemingly always agitated Mr. Benson. He got an F and two D’s in Math and History. Sometimes being a 13 year old can be difficult. That’s why Kevin had his haven, the forest behind his woody Minnesota home. Nobody else lived in that area except his best friend, Chris, and his family. And Kevin preferred it that way. That’s what made his forest hideout so peaceful.

Our main character forged his way to the familiar secluded area by the creek. As he lay there, half conscious of the woods around him, that is where it all changed. Kevin heard a rustling noise in the bushes somewhere. Trying not to think of wolves or bears he made his way toward the shrubs to his right. Kevin cautiously parted the bushes and found not a deadly carnivore but a small rabbit.

The small creature was brown and looked young. It was laying on its side and kicking its leg somewhat sadly, rustling the bush. And to Kevin’s surprise, there was a small pool of blood under it. Kevin slowly turned the injured animal over to discover a deep gash on the poor rabbit’s left leg!

“Oh, what happened to you little rabbit?” Kevin asked the small animal in his arms, not expecting an answer but soon discovering one. To Kevin’s left, large doglike prints trailed away from the bush.

“A wolf!” muttered Kevin under his breath. Being very careful not to hurt the wounded rabbit cradled in his hands, Kevin raced towards home. His parents weren’t there at the moment, which made this all the easier. Kevin snatched a shoebox from the closet and covered the bottom of the inside. He then set the rabbit on its right side and filled two bowls with food. One had water and the other chopped carrots and cabbage.

“Now to name you,” Kevin told the rabbit. “I know! I’ll call you Lucky!”

And from then on, Kevin cared for Lucky. He fed him and cleaned his cage. The day after he found Lucky he took him to the vet to have the recovering rabbit’s leg cleaned and healed. As Lucky became more and more active, Kevin allowed him to explore more and more of his house. Lucky especially enjoyed Kevin’s room. After 6 months, Lucky’s leg had recovered completely and it was time to let him go.
So Kevin sadly carried his rabbit friend back to the spot by the creek. Kevin slowly walked towards the bush where he had met Lucky and set him down.

“Goodbye Lucky,” said Kevin miserably. “Try not to run into any more wolves ok?” Deciding not to talk in fear of accidentally crying, Kevin turned and ran home.

The next day, Kevin walked back to his forest area with his mind on Lucky. He lay down and sighed. Just then, he felt a soft, warm weight on his stomach. Kevin sat up. There was a rabbit sitting happily on his stomach with a scar on its left leg.

“LUCKY!” cried Kevin in delight.

From that day on, for the next two years, Kevin visited Lucky every day. After Lucky had passed away, Kevin schooled for 3 years and went to college. When Kevin turned 28, he started the Lucky Animal Shelter for injured or abandoned animals. After 2 years, the LAS had over 4,000 different animals all inhabiting 42 different shelters in the U.S! Ranging from Armadillos to Yaks, this company was truly exotic. And what about Lucky? Well, he had 7 offspring with a rabbit named Lucy and was buried outside of the first ever built LAS building.

Moral: Helping another creature, whether human or animal, can pay off.


THE END

**I know I'm prejudiced, but Ethan has a more inherent understanding of how to write fiction than almost any high schooler I ever taught. He's got the dialogue down, the use of "significant detail," how to move the story forward using action instead of summary. He wrote this completely all on his own in about an hour--even typed it. I didn't see it until we sent it to the printer. And what kind of eleven year old uses words like "haven"?**

Check out my new website

I've been thinking about putting up an author website before the book comes out, primarily for advertising purposes (in case anybody googles me) and to allow for book clubs to contact me (I'm hoping to use book clubs as a way to spread word of mouth) or any other opportunities that might arise. I made it myself using Yahoo. It's not very fancy . . . but it looks pretty good to me. And, of course, there's not much on it yet because there's not much to PUT on it yet. But it's a beginning. What do you think?? Check it out at angelahallstrom.com.

Quickies!

So, I just finished the chat for my class and have a ton of papers to grade before tomorrow and have to get my final edits in to Parables by the end of the week and have been staying up at night waaaaaay too late writing and thinking about how I'm going to get people to buy my book once it comes out and what the cover should look like and what the font should look like and how I'm going to ever answer the question "What is your book about?" and tomorrow I have an Enrichment committee meeting to plan the Christmas party and Presidency visits and ahhhh . . . so I don't have a lot of time. But I do want to post (quickly!) about our fun last weekend, just so I don't leave you all hanging while I am in extremis.

1. Went to Darlene's condo on Friday night to work on my book. Darlene is awesome and just wrote the first draft of a novel in a month. Hooorraaay Darlene! I stayed up way late working and had so much fun chatting w/ a good friend in a super duper clean condo and eating yummy Mexican food. Thanks, again, Darlene!

2. Went to kids' piano recital on Saturday. So cute. Here are pictures documenting the cuteness, as well as video of my talented and beautiful progeny:










3. Took the kids to Regional Conference on Sunday at the Conference Center in SLC. (My sainted mother stayed home with Wyatt and CLEANED THE BASEMENT while he slept. Did I say she was sainted?) What a great experience. Not only did the kids get the chance to experience the gorgeous new conf center, built while we were in MN, but we got to hear the prophet speak live and in person. It was a long talk, too. Longer than I've heard him speak in quite some time. Lots of good advice about marriage and loving each other.

So that's my weekend nutshell. More, soon, when I have a minute . . . or a half a minute . . .

My Name is Wyatt and I . . .

. . . love a nice tasty meal of floor food

. . . automatically reject anything I would have eaten off of the floor if it's given to me in my high chair

. . . have seven teeth

. . . bonk my head at least three times a day

. . . like to take all of the books out of my Mom's shelves

. . . have a love affair with shoes. Dad's are the tastiest

. . . still wake up at least twice a night and regularly rise for the day at 5:45 a.m. My parents are easy targets and just give me a bottle in bed. Victory!

. . . am the loudest baby in the Country Crossing 1st Ward. And there are LOTS of babies in the Country Crossing 1st ward.

. . . get this big, goofy, happy grin whenever I see my mom or my dad.

. . . have discovered toilet water. Almost as tasty as floor food!

. . . have also discovered toilet paper. So many fun things in the bathroom.

. . . but nothing's as fun as the kitty's room. Kitty food to eat, PLUS, kitty water to knock over, plus Kitty herself to chase and grab. I dare her to retaliate!

. . . am almost too big for my car seat, and I AM too big for my Baby Bjorn. I'm so big, in fact, that I'm almost not a baby anymore!

Isn't he cute??

You know how I said I wasn't going to stress out about losing 20 pounds?

Not working.

So tell me if this is irritating, or if I'm just in denial.

Yesterday I went to my SIXTY MINUTE LONG BUTT KICKING, DRENCHED IN SWEAT, PUSH MYSELF SO HARD THAT I THOUGHT I MIGHT PUKE cycling class. Taught, by the way, by my lovely and very sweet neighbor Stephenie. Who has very nice legs.

Afterward, I went to the dreaded locker room scale (meaning: accurate) and weighed myself. I'd been feeling a bit cheerful since when I weighed myself the week before, I'd lost two pounds. I was daring to tell myself, okay, get your butt kicked three times a week, watch what you eat, try not to eat after 7:30 p.m., seriously cut back on the Diet Coke and drink more water . . . maybe, just maybe, you can lost 1 or 2 pounds a week. Maybe. And wouldn't that be great.

And then I saw the scale.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, not only had I gained back the two pounds I'd lost the week before, but I'd PUT ON TWO MORE. So now I officially weigh 2 pounds more than I did at my 6 week postpartum checkup. My pants do fit better and I know all about muscle weighing more than fat and all that BALONEY, but seriously, I should be seeing some kind of progress. Give me SOMETHING. Five pounds, even.

So now I'm done ranting. See how well I take my own advice???

And I think I'm going to have to start keeping a food journal or go back on stupid Weight Watchers and force myself to be the party pooper lady who won't eat the cake at the party. Wah, wah, poor poor me and my poor poor metabolism.

I guess I wasn't done ranting. Now I am.

Changing It

Okay, so I spent last night thinking about my little story intro an I've decided to change it. The main reason for this is I have too much gratitude in my heart for Hamline to disparage them publicly. Even though it was just one teacher who made some thoughtless comments, Hamline works so hard to be inclusive that I just don't feel it's fair to paint them with that kind of a brush. (Even though it is a good story, no?) So here's the new version:

==
Throughout my life, I’ve had a number of small crushes on favorite teachers. Although I never resorted to stalking any of them, like Beth does in this story, a word of praise or encouragement from a teacher (particularly a teacher of the intense and intellectually passionate sort) could keep me buoyed up for days. When I eventually became a high school English teacher, I never forgot the kind of power an educator can have in shaping the way a student sees herself. Because of these personal experiences, the idea of writing about a girl who moves from admiring and respecting a teacher to obsessing over him had been rolling around in my head for years. I’d just never found the right combination of story and thematic juice to make it work.

After teaching high school for five years (and no, no one ever stalked me . . . that I know of), I quit my job and moved with my husband and two small kids from Utah to Minnesota. I was lucky enough to find a fabulous MFA program at Hamline University in St. Paul. I loved everything about the school: the students were smart and creative; the faculty was stellar. I wanted more than anything to impress all of them—to feel as if I belonged. But as Mormon from Utah who lived in a split-level in the suburbs, drove a minivan, and spent most of her day sweeping up goldfish crackers and rewinding Blue’s Clues videos, I wasn’t Hamline’s typical student. I imagined my classmates and professors heading home to artistically decrepit Minneapolis lofts, gazing out the window at the snowdrifts and contemplating the great philosophical ideas of our time while I fit writing into the nooks and crannies of my day—during naptime, late at night. Although the vast majority of people in my MFA program were unfailingly kind and generous to me, I often struggled with feeling like a bit of an imposter. Could a person with my biography ever be taken seriously?

“Who Do You Think You Are?” was written during this time in my life. It arose out of my desire to explore our need for validation from people we respect, but who we fear secretly dismiss us because of who we are. Or who they think we are. Then, of course, there’s the ultimate loneliness that comes when a person discovers how difficult it is to really know anyone—even someone you think you love. Even yourself. It’s a hard lesson, but I hope it makes a good story.
==

Plus, the other version was waaay too long. I do tend to go on.

Who Do You Think You Are?

WARNING: This post is long and full of psychological rumination. Avoid if you are not in the mood. Or simply skim, if you feel like humoring me. Also, no pictures. Sorry.

So the title for this blog post is interesting because it describes my psychological state over the past few days, and it's also the actual title of a story I wrote about a high school girl who stalks her English teacher (it's not as creepy as it sounds). I found out yesterday that the story just won first place--and 500 smackeroonies!--in a fiction contest sponsored by a SLC Lit Mag called Salt Flats Annual. Because I'm not too hip to the Salt Lake writing scene, I wasn't familiar with the magazine before I submitted, but I noticed an item about the contest in the SL Trib right next to the Irreantum Fiction contest call for submissions waaaaaay back in May and thought I'd give it a shot.

And I won! I couldn't (and still can't, quite) believe it.

This will be my first official publication in a non-Mormon magazine. I've sent out a few stories to other mainstream lit mags here and there, but no luck until yesterday. And now the editor has asked me to send in a few paragraphs detailing the writing process--basically the genesis of the story--and this story has a much more interesting, and potentially volatile, genesis than a lot of my other work. Here's my rough attempt so far at describing the experience (I'm still not quite ready to send it off, because I need to mull and fiddle a bit more):

===

Throughout my life, I’ve had a number of small crushes on favorite teachers. Although I never resorted to stalking any of them, like Beth does in this story, a word of praise or encouragement from a teacher (particularly a teacher of the intense and intellectually passionate sort) could keep me buoyed up for days. When I eventually became a high school English teacher, I never forgot the kind of power a teacher can have in shaping the way a student sees herself.

After teaching high school for five years (and no, no one ever stalked me), I quit my job and moved with my husband and two small kids from Utah to Minnesota. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have school to look forward to in September. I started to feel a bit frantic. Who was I without school? So I decided to take a community ed creative writing class. Although I’d puttered around writing fiction here and there, I’d never considered myself a serious writer. But my creative writing teacher felt I had potential (see what teachers can do?) and referred me to an MFA program at Hamline University in St. Paul.

I loved everything about Hamline. The students were smart and creative. The faculty was stellar. I wanted more than anything to impress all of them—to feel as if I belonged. But the truth of it was that I was a Mormon from Utah who lived in a split-level in the suburbs, drove a minivan, and spent most of her day sweeping up goldfish crackers and rewinding Blue’s Clues videos. I imagined my classmates and professors heading home to artistically decrepit Minneapolis lofts, gazing out the window at the snowdrifts and contemplating the great philosophical conundrums of our time while I boiled macaroni noodles. Although almost all of the people in my MFA program were unfailingly kind and generous to me, I often struggled with feeling like a bit of an impostor. Could a person with my biography ever be taken seriously?

“Who Do You Think You Are?” was inspired by a day when my perceived otherness became starkly real to me. I was sitting in class listening to a lecture by a professor I didn’t know well, but I liked her and admired her. The topic somehow turned to Mormonism. She related a story about a negative encounter with Mormonism that some of her Native American friends had experienced and said, “I just don’t see how anyone can be involved with that church.” Although this professor had no idea I was LDS, many of the students in class did, and it seemed like every gaze in the room turned toward me. My heart pounding, I raised my hand and told the professor that I was in fact a Mormon and proceeded to stumble all over myself explaining why the experience she recounted wasn’t indicative of the way most Mormons behaved, and certainly didn’t represent my own beliefs. Of course, the professor apologized profusely (with so few Mormons in Minnesota, who would think that one would wind up in an MFA program??), but I spent the rest of the day with feelings of embarrassment, guilt, indignation and sorrow roiling around in my gut.

“Who Do You Think You Are?” arose out of my desire to explore this experience. The year before, I’d started a story about a high school girl who stalks her teacher, but it didn’t take off until I coupled it with the idea of being rejected by someone you respect because of who you are. Or who he thinks you are. Then, of course, there’s the ultimate loneliness that comes when a person discovers how hard it is to really know anyone—even someone you think you love. Even yourself. It’s a sad lesson, but I hope it makes a good story.

===

So that's my rundown. Reading it again I realize it needs a little work--first drafts and all.

At any rate, I said at the beginning of this post that I've been struggling with the whole idea of who I am--or who I think I am--all weekend. Julie Beck's talk in Sunday conference gave me a lot to think about. So I went to bed Sunday night, my mind spinning about how I spend too much time writing and reading and teaching and not enough time preparing healthy meals and cleaning the house and reading my scriptures. (Yeah, yeah, I know my house is in fine shape and I try and make sure that my kids at least get some canned peaches with their potato chips and hot dogs at lunch and even though I haven't quite made it through the Gospels yet--and I started in January--at least I'm trying, yada yada yada). But the truth of it is, I was telling Forrest just last week how I think we women in the church need a good butt kickin' every once in a while--that maybe folks should stop being so scared of hurting our feelings. So I felt like a bit of a hypocrite when the butt-kicking started and my initial reaction to Beck's talk was, "True, yes . . . but that doesn't apply to me, really, because I'm trying and I'm doing my best and I'm not a natural homemaker," and on and on with the same little januty tune I hum to myself when I start feeling guilty.

I have an amazing ability to do a little mental jig and dance my way straight through guilt to justification. It's true!

So I decided Sunday night that a little priority rearranging might be in order. The problem was, the idea of the priority rearranging made me sad. But I wasn't sure if I was feeling sad because I truly didn't want to give up what I was doing because it was important to me, or because I was simply being rebellious and didn't want to change.

Then . . . I open up my email inbox Monday morning and there's the email from Salt Flat's editor and a nice note from the contest judge and the scaffolding of reason I'd so carefully constructed the night before came down and landed with a poof at my feet.

Sigh.

Here's what I really believe. I think. We juggle a lot of balls as moms and every once in a while we drop one. It's important not to drop the children (ouch!), or the husband, or the gospel, or the little fragile ball made of glass that contains our own spirit. Sometimes we bobble these balls, but dropping them is very messy and involves a lot of time and energy in clean-up. Some of the balls I'm juggling are extraneous balls and can make it even more complicated to keep the important ones safely off the ground. (These balls could be called, say, "Oprah," or "Spending lots of time reading the blogs of people I've never met and never will," or "Wasting precious psychological energy worrying about the twenty pounds I want to lose.") But here's the rub! What if I decide to do a switcheroo add a "dusting the baseboards" ball and delete the "working on my writing" ball? My writing ball is very pretty and light and relatively easy to catch. The baseboards ball is very heavy and liable to crash into other balls. It might even fall to the ground and stub my toe. Therefore, perhaps it's wise--for me--if the baseboards ball only come out very rarely. If at all. :-). For some people, the baseboards ball is very important because if they're not juggling it, they feel icky and dirty and unworthy and can't live with themselves. But then there are other people (like me) who didn't even KNOW there was a ball dedicated solely to baseboard dusting until a year or so ago. (Yes, this means I never dusted a single baseboard in my life until 2006.)

So enough with the metaphor. The point is, even though I think I'm a mature 35 year old woman with a mind of her own and a little bit of confidence and experience in her pocket, sometimes I feel just like I did in high school, where I spent part of my day with the drama crowd, part of my day with the Seminary/Madrigal kids, and part of my day with the cheerleaders. (I'll never forget the dirty looks some of those drama kids game me on the first day of acting class when I showed up in my cheerleading skirt. They came to put up with me eventually, though). I still don't know who I am sometimes, or who I want to be, or how I want other people to see me. Today I worked on the piece about my story (the drama kid part of me), went to a Relief Society Presidency meeting and helped put up the chairs in our new building (Madrigal/Seminary part of me . . . you see where this is going), and dropped Wyatt of in the childcare at Lifetime Fitness so I could lift weights in the barbell strength class with a bunch of smooth skinned chicky babes (cheerleader).

But we're all complicated. We all are. Just not everybody blogs about it. :-) I was hoping to tie this rambling post up with a nice little bow, or at least with a final thought about identity and purpose and choices and obedience . . . but I've written so much that it's now 11:30. I will sign off with this:

The t.v. is on and Jennifer Lopez is a guest on David Letterman. I think she's pregnant. She's trying to hide it, but her dress is waaaaay to billowy. Good for J-Lo! Now she can start juggling, too.

School Pics

The kids came home with their school pictures today, and they're so cute I thought I'd share:





I went against my innate desire for control and let them pick their own background colors. I think the pictures turned out well, though. Ethan looks so studious and mature, Elise looks loverly with her looooong pretty hair, and Jonas is the picture of first grade with that missing front tooth.

So, two other short items. First, if you haven't read it already, the cover story for this week's Newsweek is "A Mormon Journey: The Making of Mitt Romney." Give it a read--it's interesting. There's a practicing Mormon on the Newsweek staff--Elise Soukup--and she's noted as one of the contributors to the story. As a result, they get most of the facts straight, imo. Don't know about the interpretation of the facts, but that's an individual thing.

Also, as some of you know I'm no longer working with Irreantum, primarily because I've been soooo busy lately and needed to let something go. I've loved my time with the magazine, but after about three years it seemed a good time for me to move on. But, because I can't leave well enough alone, I've joined the editorial board of another LDS magazine called Segullah. You can take a look at the Segullah website and link to the blog here. I won't have nearly the workload I did with Irreatum, and the three women in my writers' group, Darlene, Sharlee, and Kathy, are already involved--so I'll be able to associate with some really cool chickies. It should be fun.

And now it's conference weekend. Hooray! I'm even kind of glad that it's rainy and cold. I'm looking forward to holing up in my house and listening to the talks and eating soup. Mmmmmm . . . Fall.

Jonas Leo

Jonas Leo Hallstrom, 4 months old, Topsail Island, North Carolina


Today Jonas was the V.I.P. in his 1st grade classroom, and his dad and I got to come to class for 30 minutes and tell everybody what's so cool about him. And there's plenty cool about him! It was fun to spend some time with him at school and listen to him talk about what he likes, what he thinks, what he's good at, and what makes him happy.

Here's a shot of Jonas waxing philosophical about karate (or how one of his favorite animals is the Phoenix--didn't know that; or how his best friend is his brother, his sister, and his cat; or how his favorite fruit is the grape):



Notice how he's holding his hand and there's a band aid on his finger? This was the best story of the day: Forrest and I pull up in front of the school and start walking toward the front door when who comes screaming around the corner, crying, holding his hand, and missing one shoe, but Jonas! It was almost surreal. We were 10 minutes early for the VIP presentation, and apparently Jonas was playing at recess and got stung on the finger by a bee. (One of his biggest fears has now come true!) He was so freaked out that he just started running for the front doors of the school (and ran right out of one shoe) and ran straight into us. Pretty amazing timing, I'd say. So we took him into the office and they put a paste of baking soda and water on the sting--I cure I hadn't heard about, but that seemed to work great. Then he calmed down and was able to use the story as an excellent opener for his VIP presentation. (I think the kids liked the closer better, though, because he passed around one of his favorite candy bars--Kit Kats.)

One of the other highlights of the presentation was during the Q & A period, when one of the kids asked Jonas, "Do you like Jesus?"

Another kid in the class: "He does like Jesus! Everybody likes Jesus!"

Jonas's friend Kyle: "I don't. I HATE Jesus!"

Entire class: Collective gasp.

I do think that Jonas likes Jesus, but he never officially answered the question . . . :-)

Jonas is such a good kid--smart, confident, great at math and making stuff with legos and snow skiing and Nintendo. Most of all, he's kind. He cares about his family and his friends, and even though he can be silly at home--and still won't eat more than his repertoire of 12 things, no matter how hard we try to break him--he's been such a joy to parent and it's been so fun to watch him grow up. We were proud last week that he got the "Student of the Month" award in his class for the month of September. They give out Student of the Month awards according to a theme, and the theme that month was "Respect." Jonas's teacher wrote on his award that Jonas is thoughtful and kind and treats his teacher and all his classmates very well. We're proud of you, Joe!

BANG!

The other day, I was driving down the street at the same moment Forrest was driving up it (he was just coming home from the airport after being out of town), and as we passed each other and waved, in that split second I could tell he'd shaved off his goatee. Only rarely in the last ten years or so has my beloved been clean shaven, and the sight of his vulnerable upper lip remains a shock. He looks, oh, 19 to me now :-). Although I do like my hubby's face, hairless or not, I'm a big fan of the goatee myself, as it gives him just a little bit of edginess. I'm one of those girls who likes guys who are mostly nice but not so nice as to make me feel guilty for my own lack of constant niceness.

(Sidenote: Forrest was ruminating the other day as we were out on a walk with Wyatt and passed the house of the nicest, Molliest-Mormon couple in our ward, that we should start a website called MormonFlanders.com, after the Simpson's character, where folks can post humorous and anonymous stories of Flanders-like characters in their own wards and neighborhoods. Our own Mormon Flanders recently declared the following two gems: "I frequently visit Providentliving.org for up-to-date food storage tips. It's the best website ever!" and "My children love going to the cannery! It's fun for the whole family!")

So aaaannnnyyyywaaaayy, I was starting to feel like Forrest had turned back the clock a bit, walking around looking like his early-90's self, so I thought I'd join him and give myself some early-90s bangs, making the two of us a matched pair. Here they are, in all their glory:



Now all I need to do is whip out my acid washed denim jacket and I'm good to go.

(Sidenote #2: I tend to look better in pictures I take of myself at arms length. I think it's because I point the camera down and it minimizes the Sweat Chin. And if any of you are from Bangladesh and accidentally happened upon this blog, no, I do not have sweat on my chin. Sweat is the family from which I hail, a family with with many members who sport what my sister-in-law calls a "sloping esophagus," or, in other words, a double chin.)

So here are some random updates:

1. Over the last five minutes, the phone has rung 4 times. It is the cell phone of Elise's friend, Tayler (yes, she's 9 and has a cell phone)and all I hear are children screaming and shrieking. Either they are on the bus and messing around with the phone, or there is some kind of horrifying hostage situation going on at the elementary school. I should know in, oh, 4 minutes.

2. I had my Super Saturday on, you guessed it, Saturday. Went swimmingly. (For my Bangladeshi reader: Super Saturday is a church sponsored event where women get together and make handcrafted knick knacks.) Was supposed to end at 12:00 and ended at 2:30. Dried flowers and blobs of paint and sawdust EVERYWHERE. Bought fruit and sweet rolls and muffins and, at the last minute, chocolate chocolate donuts, and the chocolate chocolate donuts were the first to go. We say we're calorie conscious, but when faced with a chocolate chocolate donut we simply cut it in half and demurely eat the first half, then fifteen minutes later demurely eat the other. I made myself a magnet board (cute and hard to explain) and I have walked around my house with it and can't find a single, solitary place to hang it.

3. Still no bus.

4. Wyatt is getting cuter by the day. He loves to crawl and is much happier when he's mobile. He's working on tooth #6. We have installed a remote control gate at the top of the steps to the basement and the kids love to press the remote button and open and close the gate repeatedly. Yes, they are 6, 9, and 11.

5. Still no bus.

6. Things are going well with my online class. I kind of like it. It's funny how different it is to "lecture" in a chat, typing as fast as my fingers will let me, and there are some things that are harder to teach. But overall, it's going well.

7. Bus. But no Elise. Turns out she and Tayler got off at the stop before ours because they wanted to walk a little bit. And Elise thinks the phone is broken. Hmmm. But all are home, safe and sound.

So here are some pictures of Wyatt to prove how cute he is. Note the teeth:





Now I must go rifle through the kids' backpacks and assess what kind of homework we have going on tonight . . .

Chuga Chuga

Yes, I have finally gotten around to updating my blog after the trip Forrest and I took with the Wilkey family to Colorado last weekend. Here's a play by play:

Thursday:

Woke up and cleaned. I am grateful with all my heart for the wonderful folks who took care of my kids while we were gone . . . and I had to make sure there wasn't any ring around the toilet and whatnot while they were here. So I cleaned and prepped and wrote my little "Mom's List of Instructions" until noon, when I dropped Wyatt off at my friend Karen's place. (She has four boys and her youngest just went to Kindergarten . . . and she actually said "Thank You" to ME for asking her to watch Wyatt. She says she's baby hungry, but I say she's just really, really nice.)

So Forrest and Darrin and Katie and I settled into the Tahoe and took off for Colorado. We had an excellent time yapping and snacking and spotting UFOs on the seven hour drive to Durango.



See that shiny white speck in the sky? We couldn't figure out what it was, either. UFO, we figured. I took four pictures of it, by the way, and three of the four mysteriously disappeared from my iPhoto application on my computer after I deleted them from the camera. Mysterious, mysterious.

Also, on the way there we got a call from my Mom and Dad--who had taken over from Karen later on that afternoon, thanks guys!--letting me know that (of course) WYATT WAS SICK! So I moped for about an hour, feeling sorry for myself and my little guy that he can be perfectly healthy for months on end, and on the very day I leave him for the first time, he comes down with a fever.

He has recovered, however, and all is well.

We also received a call from a very conscientious older Wilkey brother who checked on our reservations and discovered that we, in fact, did NOT have a reservation at the General Palmer hotel that night. (Long story, but we'd asked them to cancel Friday, and they canceled Thursday instead.) After many attempts to call other hotels and finding them all booked (and getting continually disconnected from the ever-patient hotel personnel, because every time we would go up or down a hill our call would drop, even with three different wireless providers represented in the car) we finally finagled a way to get two rooms for the same price we'd been paying at the initial hotel, even though one of them was a suite. Sweet! we said. Well, Forrest and I said, because Darrin and Katie let us have the suite. Nice guys.

We pulled into Durango, which is kind of like Park City on Cowboy Steroids. Cool town. We had an excellent dinner with 20 other Wilkey family members and I enjoyed one of the best chicken dishes I have ever eaten. Plus I was really hungry. We stayed that night at the General Palmer--a 120 year old hotel--but it was a really nicely kept-up, modernized 120 year old hotel. Unlike the Friday night hotel. But I'll get to that in a minute.

Friday:

That morning we woke up to a tooting steam engine and little flecks of coal dust in the air. Here's a shot of Katie and me that a.m., if only because 1. we liked posing under a sign that said "Quiet Ladies" and 2. Forrest says I have Jennifer Aniston hair. (Circa 1999, maybe.)



And here's a shot of Forrest and me in front of the rail car that the Wilkey clan (and two other unrelated, and probably a little frightened, women) occupied. It was the last car on the train, which was great because we could step out on a little platform on the back and take excellent photos and enjoy the gorgeous air. And when we were near any roads, everyone would wave at us like we were celebrities.



Here's a shot of Darrin and Katie from the interior of the train. Not only is it a delightful photo, but it also shows off some of the woodworking and craftsmanship inside the car, which was built in the late 1800s.



The train ride to Silverton was gorgeous. Gorgeous! Here are some pictures to prove it:





Here's my favorite picture from the ride. Since we were in the end of the train, we could see the front of the train as it turned. I think it looks like a toy train on a track, or a Disney ride, don't you??



When we got to Silverton, we moseyed around town for a bit. It's a very small town, and probably would have disappeared by now if not for the tourist trade. Silverton actually closes down completely in the winter months. The train ride back to Durango from Silverton wasn't quite as exhilarating as on the way up--we humans are so easily bored, aren't we?--but it was fun to listen to assorted Wilkey family members sing morbid songs about the Titanic at the tops of their voices. (I wish I remembered what the song was called, but one of the lyrics I recall is "glug glug.")

We'd decided to stay Friday night in Silverton instead of Durango (which caused the initial hotel reservation confusion in the first place) -- and once we got to Silverton we immediately began second guessing our decision. The Silverton hotel was also a 19th century "classic" hotel like the Durango hotel, but it had slipped a couple of notches from rustic and charming to creaky and haunted. And I mean it when I say haunted. The lady at the front desk told us that she had seen the ghost herself--a Dr. Luigi, an unfortunate M.D. who had killed himself in the hotel over a hundred years before. "He's a nice ghost, though," she told us. Apparently he goes around healing people of their ailments. (Darrin's usually very reserved oldest sister mused that she might wake up with bigger breasts, then. Hilarious.) She also informed us that there had been a number of murders in the hotel, and that the most recent had taken place "a couple months ago." Hmmmm . . .

The floorboards creaked with every step, but Forrest and I lucked out once more and got one of the nicer rooms. (Darrin and Katie were bummed that they didn't get rod iron canopy beds.) Here's Forrest looking spooked in our haunted room, and a shot outside our haunted window:




Saturday:

We woke up in the morning refreshed and unharmed, although I was disappointed to find that I hadn't been healed of my stretch marks. Dang!

We took off that morning for home. The drive out of Silverton was one of the most gorgeous (and scary) drives I've ever taken. Apparently Coloradoans don't think guard rails are necessary, and we snaked our way through one of the most beautiful canyons I've ever seen. I kept telling Forrest to stop looking at the scenery and keep his eyes on the road, though. Here's a picture of Katie and me against some of the only fall color we saw on the trip (too early), and a cool shot of an old, run down mill up against the mountain:




We also saw three young bucks (literal young bucks!!) crossing a river. (We also saw antelope and wild elk actually frolicking, but didn't have the camera ready in time):



The final great story of the trip is how I ran into my old elementary school friend, Stephanie Reiva. Quick background: Stephanie and I were best friends in 3rd, 4th and 5th grades. Her dad was in the military, though, and they moved to Denver when I was 10. It was one of the saddest days of my life. I went and visited her when I was in sixth grade, but we haven't seen each other since. Amazingly, we've stayed in touch all these years by sending Christmas cards, even though Stephanie lived in Boston (working as an engineer on the "Big Dig") and Puerto Rico. She got married about five years ago, and she and her husband finally decided the wanted to settle down and picked a small town in CO called Montrose and bought a business that builds cedar homes. So, as we were driving through random small Colorado towns, we passed a cedar home builder on the outskirts of one town and it reminded me of Stephanie. "Will we be passing through Montrose?" I asked Forrest. "Sounds familiar," he said. Well, a few minutes later I had to go to the bathroom, so we pulled over at a gas station. While at the gas station, we discovered we were in Montrose at that very moment. Darrin pulled out his Mio, a very handy/annoying GPS tracking gadget, and punched in Stephanie's address. Lo and behold, the cedar home business we'd passed was hers! So we flipped back around and walked in, their secretary called Stephanie on her cell phone (she was taking her son to the pediatrician to check for an ear infection) and fifteen minutes later, there was Stephanie Reiva! In the flesh! It was so fun to see her and meet her husband and her two little boys. Fifteen years is a long time, but I would have recognized her anywhere. Here's a picture of the two of us (even though I look TERRIBLE and blame it on the haunted hotel because it didn't have a hair dryer, so I couldn't wash my hair and I was all greasy and limp, but I must get over my pride):



We pulled into home at about 6:00. I was more than ready to see the kids, and I'm sure that Forrest's Mom and Mindy and Pete (thanks, guys!) were more than ready to see us. We had a ball, and we're so grateful to the Wilkeys for inviting us and for our marvelous babysitters for allowing us some badly needed Mom and Dad time.

And if you've read this whole thing until the end, congrats! (And I mean you, Dave. I know how you hang on every word I write :-).

**Addendum: I am a lot older than I think I am. It has actually been TWENTY FIVE years since I have seen Stephanie, not fifteen. Sigh. Why am I not 25 still????**

Fall is in the air . . .

which is nice since our air conditioner is broken . . . again. We've been patient w/ the Dick's Heating and Air Conditioning people, but after about seven or eight freeze-ups since we moved in, we think it's time to get a new one. (Especially since it's been broken since Wed. and they still haven't returned our calls). The heat is supposed to be back later this week, so hopefully they'll get sick of us calling everyday and fix/replace it sometime soon.

The other reason I say fall is in the air is because it's time for the kids to get back on the school/extracurricular activities bandwagon (and Mom and Dad, too). Jonas is playing soccer again, Jonas and Ethan have gone back to karate, piano is starting up, and Elise is going to do a Children's Community Theater this year--I think she'll like it. They're doing a "Pirates of the Caribbean meets the Little Mermaid" play. She has her first class tonight. She's also participating in the Monte Vista school choir and has to go to school 1 hour early on Tues and Thurs, which shows how much my girl who loves to sleep in wanted to do it. This morning, after dragging her out of bed and watching her droopy, grumpy face stare back at me in the mirror while I was doing her hair, she demanded to know why, exactly, they start school so early? "It doesn't make any sense!" she said. When I told her that junior high and high school were even earlier, she groaned and said, "Well that's not good news." I agree, sister.

Ethan also just graduated from Cub Scouts and got his Arrow of Light. Here's photographic proof:




The first shot is of Ethan and obviously me--with a loverly spit-up stain on my chestal region--holding the really cool plaque a nice woman in the ward makes for all the boys who receive their Arrow of Light. (For those of you without Scouts, it's an award you can work toward once you graduate from Cubs and move on to Boy Scouts.) The second shot is of Ethan walking across the "bridge" from Cub to Boy Scouts--a highly symbolic and emotionally weighty moment that, as you can tell from Ethan's stance, he wasn't taking quite as seriously as his mother and the Scout Master would have liked. But what are you going to do? I suppose the line between stand-up and somber symbolic moments can get fuzzy at times?? We discussed it and hopefully it is now clearer :-). I was still proud of him for getting the award. He worked hard in Cubs and did a lot of cool things. And now he's an official Boy Scout, and next year he'll be in the Young Men's program with his Dad, now that Forrest is the secretary. Hard to believe.

To conclude, I should probably say something about Jonas, since I've touched on Ethan and Elise (and I touch on Wyatt all the time--who by the way is having a rapturous love affair with remotes, shoes, and keys). He's doing great in 1st grade and his reading is really taking off. He's reading stuff all the time now. He had his first soccer practice on Sat. and did great. The more he plays, the more aggressive he gets about going after the ball -- but he still hates it when other kids take it away. I think he's spent too many years being the youngest and having a Mom who tells the older kids "just give him what he wants!" or "Maybe let him win!" in order to keep the peace. Bad parenting, yes. But I don't do it all the time. Just when I want some peace.

So that's it for now. As of yesterday, I have collected $1,779 dollars for our upcoming Super Saturday. Even though it's in check form, it's making me very nervous and I can't wait to hand it off to the woman who's buying all the supplies. Now that's really it for now.

Why do we hate Hillary Clinton again?

Good Hillary:



Bad Hillary:




I'm asking this question in all seriousness. I saw her on Ellen yesterday and she seemed quite nice. Although I can understand not liking her politics, or not liking her personality, I know there are quite a few people out there who don't find her simply unlikable. They think she's evil. And my question is . . . . why? I read the paper every day (almost), I read Newsweek every week, I watch the news, I read a lot of online stuff, I even listen to the occasional right wing radio program, and I'm wracking my brain to come up with why she's the fourth horseman of the apocalypse. I can't seem to put my finger on anything specific.

And you can't say it's because she's calculating (ambitious) or a flip-flopper (a politician) if you plan on supporting Mitt Romney, since he's both of these things.

I'm not on a pro-Hillary bandwagon or anything. I don't know if I'd ever vote for her. But it was a bit unsettling to me yesterday when I realized I'd dismissed the possibility of voting for her right out of the gate (when I haven't done the same with Barak Obama or John Edwards). When it comes right down to it, the reason I'm so skittish about the possibility of voting for her is I'm afraid some of my friends and family members will think I'm voting for a minion of Satan. Vote for Edwards or Obama and I'm simply a silly Democrat (like James E. Faust :-). Vote for Hillary, and I'm contributing to the constitution of this great nation hanging by a thread.

I don't think it's because she's a woman. Is it because she's a woman? If it is because she's a woman, would we even be aware that it's because she's a woman?

So . . . . lemme know. I won't jump on anyone's case or anything. I'm just curious, truly.

Kinky Neck

Yesterday we went on our final boat trip of the season with the Wilkeys and their five kids and Forrest's sister Mindy and her family. Lots of fun but supercrowded (and I mean super--it took us over an hour waiting in line to get our boat out. Should we have reminded ourselves not to go to Pineview on a holiday?? Hello.) I also had a pretty wicked wipeout on the waterskis and woke up with a sore neck for my trouble. My spell checker is underlining both "wipeout" and "waterskis". Are these not compound words? Hmmm.

Here's a cute picture of Wyatt and the Wilkey's little boy Isaac. They were both eating crackers at the time, so excuse the food remnants on the face. Our kids match up so well with the Wilkeys'--it's a lot of fun. They have FOUR boys and one girl, though. Thank heaven our two girls have each other to hang out with:



Right now I'm listening to Wyatt upstairs in his crib as he babbles and yells. He's supposed to be going down for his nap but instead he's saying "Bap, Bap, Bap" very loudly. But at least he's not crying, right? We've gotten to the stage where we can hand him a bottle at night. Very bad habit, but oooh, so nice to get right back in bed. Don't tell my pediatric dentist. My kids also rarely floss. Aren't I bad?

So a few quick updates. First, Forrest and I both got new callings at church. He was released as the ward mission leader and put in as the Young Men's secretary. I think he'll really like being in the young men's--he's never done it before. And I was released as the Enrichment Leader and put in as the second counselor in the Relief Society presidency. I think it will be fun, too. I'm happy to be a counselor in a presidency any day. It's being El Presidente that makes me feel woozy. So these changes should be fun.

Next, I have decided to drastically reduce my Diet Coke intake for a little weight loss experiment. To my dismay, I find that even though I stopped nursing (which always makes me lose a little weight--or at least, it did with Jonas) and I'm exercising regularly and trying to watch what I eat, I still weight exactly the same as I did at my 6 week postpartum doctor's appointment. My pants do fit better, but the weight itself is still so discouraging. I hate my dumb metabolism. So a friend of mine said she gave up Diet Coke and lost 5 pounds. We'll see. So far it's mainly making me grumpier and martyrish (I realize that is not a word.)

Ooh, also just finished reading a really good book, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaleed Hosseini (probalby didnt' spell that right), the author of The Kite Runner. I think I liked this one better than The Kite Runner, which I liked quite a bit. It's so interesting to learn about Afghanistan--the things the women went through under the Taliban are breathtaking. Like they were taken out of a horrifying post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel. I remember reading A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood ten years ago or so and not believing that such things could happen to women--and they were happening to women in Afghanistan and we didn't even know it. Anyway, the book is a page turner and fascinating and well written, and you'll learn something, too. Recommended highly.

Speaking of reading, a story of mine, "Accusation," just came out in the most recent issue of Dialogue. I'm sure that very few of my regular blog readers actually subscribe to Dialogue . . . but the story will be in my book when it comes out, so you can read it there. (Because you're all going to buy my book, right? :-).

So that's it for now. Wyatt has stopped "Bap Bap Bapp"ing, so hopefully he's decided to go to sleep. Now I gotta get to work!