One Saturday in February

Today....

I had a YW camp meeting,

4 of the 5 kids had a service project (mulch flyer distribution),

Glen ran an 18-mile training run,

I took Adam to the Pinewood Derby district championship where he raced 25 other pack champions.

He made it to the finals and ended up taking 4th place!

Glen took Cami to the DMV where she passed her written exam and now is the proud holder of a learner's permit....

While Glen was at the DMV I started getting phone calls and texts from concerned friends who noted that Glen's email had been hacked.  Within about 2 minutes of the hack (by some idiot in Turkey), I changed the password to his email and facebook accounts.   We hope that that's the end of it.  In the meantime, he is annoyed and embarrassed. 

I went to the consignment store to do a cheap mid-winter wardrobe update.

While I was at the store, Glen was grilling some burgers and brats for dinner.  Randomly the grill burst into flames singeing the hair on Glen's arm and completely torching the food. 

We went out to dinner instead. 

We came home to find that Rocky had helped himself to his own dinner when he pulled a rotisserie chicken off the table and ate it in its entirety, all the way to the bones.   It was meant for tomorrow night's dinner and was forgotten in the hubbub of the flaming grill.   He totally knew his own guilt and hid from me when I walked in the door.  I think he was surprised when I refrained from getting annoyed at him and instead pulled him back over to the scene of the crime, so I could take a picture of him.

While the kids were all off at evening activities, Glen and I had an at-home date night while we waited for kids to come home. We watched, "Here Comes the Boom!" and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now I am typing, playing with the photos on Photoshop Elements, and thoroughly enjoying the memory of a totally normal--the good and the bad--kind of day! 

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Pinewood Derby 2013

Ahhhhh, it's that time of year again.   The time that parents of Cub Scouts everywhere either love or hate. 

It's time when you get to help your son turn a block of wood into the car of his dreams. 

I wish I could say that we were the kind of parents who love and look forward to breaking out the power tools with our children, but as any power tool will kindly attest, Glen and I are a bit on the inept side when it comes to anything handy.   

After a couple of years of middle-of-the-pack finishes, this year Adam finally recognized that  relying on parental advice for designing his car was perhaps not entirely wise. 

Cue an impulse purchase from Michaels, a paperback book confidently titled Pinewood Derby Speed Secrets. 

Adam was enraptured to know that there were actually tricks to the trade and studied it diligently before completely designing the car himself.  Glen helped him with the power tools and with tweaks, but the ideas were all Adam's. 

There ended up being a few hiccups on race night, but after drilling a few holes in it to help it make weight and using a little glue to reattach the wheel which had broken off,  Adam and his car (which he dubbed, "The Tornado," were raring to go! 

Then something weird and unexpected happened....

Adam's car averaged 158+ mph and never lost a single race the entire night...

Now he and The Tornado are off to districts to race against the winners of all the other local packs....  

Now if only I could get him to use some of his sweet skills to fix up a few things around the house...

Time Still Flies...

I've always heard that time seems to stand still when you're in a crisis situation, but after almost a month in our own crisis,  I believe that that statement is only partially true.  Although nearly four weeks have passed since Spencer's diagnosis, I still find myself reliving some of those early moments (like hearing my pediatrician say the word, "leukemia" for the first time) over and over again.  It's not that I'm dwelling on the past, more than I still feel like I'm trying to wrap my brain around it all.  

For the most part though, other than those quiet reflective moments, I've discovered that time still flies!  The days blur together and I can hardly believe that we hit our month mark later this week.  Here are some of the things (in addition to taking care of Spencer) that are keeping us busy: 

Temples and Tombs:  Third Grade Musical--Glen attended this very cute performance of the third grade musical at the elementary school.  I had helped Adam put together his costume for it, but never actually got to see him wearing it, so I was grateful for a friend who thought to take a couple pictures of him, since I always have the camera with me (whether I be at home or the hospital). 

Can you name that costume? 

He's an Egyptian rapper of course! 

District Indoor Track Meet--As a fellow runner, I was so excited when Cami decided to join her high school cross country and indoor track teams this year.  It's her first year of running  (other than a year of Girls on the Run in elementary school), and I'm so proud of how hard she's worked through the season.  It seems that almost every race is a PR for her and I look forward to watching her continue to improve in future seasons.  

This was another event that happened on my night at the hospital, so Glen was there to cheer her on.  Thank you again to friends who took pictures for us. 

Pinewood Derby--I have a confession to make and I hope you don't think less of me for it....

For as much as Adam loves everything about making his own car and racing it against his friends in his scout troop's Pinewood Derby, I find everything to do with Pinewood Derbies to be insufferably painful.  Not only are the actual races somewhat anticlimatic in that it takes 2+ hours of sitting, while each car races for a total of 10.2 seconds over 4 or so races.  But I find the actual process of making the cars about as tortuous as cleaning my fridge and for anyone who's seen the inside of my fridges, knows that that's really saying something.  So although Spencer's diagnosis came a mere two weeks before the Pinewood Derby, we honestly hadn't even given making his car a second thought at that point. 

Thank goodness for awesome friends!  I'm fairly confident that without the help of Garrett and his dad, Scott, that there's no way Adam would have been able to participate this year.  They had him over for several hours over the course of two Saturdays and helped him to create this fine looking masterpiece (probably much finer than if we'd been leading the charge).   It finished very respectably in all the races and Adam was thrilled!  This was the only one of these events that I actually attended and I can say without a doubt that it was the least stressful Pinewood Derby I'd ever been to!  Thank you to the Woodhouse family!     

 

Winter Beginning Band Concert--This is Emma's first year of playing in the school band and I won't lie and say that I was not disappointed when she followed in her big brother, Spencer's footsteps by choosing the clarinet as her instrument of choice.  Not only do I love the music of the clarinet, but it also meant we didn't have to rent or buy a new instrument. 

By pure fluke of the calendar, once again this event fell on a night when Glen was home with the kids and once again I am grateful for a nice friend who snapped these shots for me.  I guess people know me well enough, to see if I'm not there that I'll always be grateful for a picture.  Someday I hope to think about our calendar well enough in advance to actually leave the camera at home for this kind of event, but then again, that would require brainpower and forethought, two things that happen to be in pretty short supply right now!

Now if I could just figure out how to fit a few more of these into our schedule....

Ellie snuggles make everything seem a little better!

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Today's Update:

Same old, same old.  Waiting for his blood counts to go up, so we can take him home.    He's still feeling pretty good comparatively speaking.  He's still on a gazillion medications.  He's still waiting for the county to send over some school work.  We're going to start some home study seminary pretty soon.  Watched the Super Bowl with Glen tonight.  They're both happy with the outcome!

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“God expects you to have enough faith and determination and enough trust in Him to keep moving, keep living, keep rejoicing. In fact, He expects you not simply to face the future (that sounds pretty grim and stoic); He expects you to embrace and shape the future--to love it and rejoice in it and delight in your opportunities." 

Jeffrey R. Holland