A Special Day

 Last Sunday my twin eight-year-old nieces were baptized members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

They were baptized by my younger brother Peter, who also happens to be their Daddy!    

They were so excited to take this special step in their lives and as they stood in the baptismal waters giggling happily together, it was hard not to be enchanted by the deep bonds of friendship they share between them.

After their baptisms they dressed in the beautiful dresses homemade by their Grandma Baldwin, who sadly had just had surgery and was unable to attend. 

We were so happy to be a part of that wonderful day, along with my brother Matt and his family, my parents, my sister AnnaLisa, my Nana, and Mika's father, Lonnie.    

The boy cousins (minus Spencer and Andrew)  had a fun time running around together.

My mom and dad with 10 of their 13 grandchildren.  

Traveling was tiring for my Nana (and my parents), but it was such a joy to have them there!

More guy bonding...

and looking all GQ...

My mom's still got the moves too!

My Dad with Adam and Davin.  And Ellie having a chat with Bridgette.  

My Nana, Mom, and Dad with Lauren and McKenzie.  

Mika's dad came all the way from Washington State to be there. 

It was a privilege to spend the day with family...

and we've got a little nine-year-old girl in our family, who loves playing "big sister",  who's really hoping it won't be long before the next family gathering.  

My Mother

My mom is the 9th of 11 children born to poor, but hardworking parents, Fay and Florize.  They lived on a small dairy farm in picturesque Grover, Wyoming, a tiny little speck on the map near the border of Idaho.    Growing up on a farm meant that my mom and her siblings learned to work hard from a very early age.  Starting in elementary school she was feeding the cows, making sure they stayed out of the haystacks, picking up the hay that had dropped from the buckrake, mowing the grass, weeding the garden, peeling fruits for canning, and helping harvest some of the vegetables.  In 8th grade she started milking the cows and making the haystacks.

Although not as common in her generation, the sea green painted, tin-roofed house she grew up in still did not have indoor plumbing.  She told stories of her and her sisters running to the outhouse in the middle of freezing Wyoming nights and meeting little critters along the way.  Other times they would painfully hold their bladders until morning, just to avoid the trek out in the dark and bitter cold.   Bathing was a treasured luxury that did not happen often enough for mom's taste.  As an adult, long, hot showers continue to be one of her guilty pleasures in life.

In that rural farming community where she grew up, women were still basically second class citizens.  Legally they could vote and attend school, but inheritances were traditionally only passed on to sons, because the daughters would one day be taken care of by their husbands and when my mom signed up for trigonometry in high school, her counselor discouraged her from it and told her that she shouldn't bother taking such high level math, because women didn't need math.   She was one of two girls in that trig class and she aced it.  She later graduated as salutatorian of her class, again an unusual feat for a girl back then.    Several years after that, with four kids in tow,  she graduated with a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University.  All of her siblings, except one, are college graduates.

My grandfather did not believe it proper for women to drive and although my grandmother  signed my mom up for driver's ed behind grandpa's back, my mom never did get her driver's license until she was married and had a few children.  I remember my mom's driving lessons--always starting in parking lots and ending with a bit of shouting from my dad.   Although she spent many years toting eight kids around to their various activities, mom still does not enjoy driving much and will always eagerly pass the steering wheel over to anyone else who might be willing to take over.  

One of the greatest lessons my mom instilled in us kids was the value of making do with what you have.  You don't need expensive containers to organize your pantry when a soda bottle or a mayonnaise jar will work just as well.  Who needs fancy end tables when you can stack up a few boxes of food storage and throw a pretty table cloth over it? And don't get her started on shoes.  She is an adamant believer that all anyone needs is one pair of tennis shoes to wear six days a week and one pair of sensible dressy flats for Sundays.  Anything more than that is frivolous.  Although most of us are anti-soda bottle pantry organizers, I do tend toward my mom in the shoe philosophy department.  I  own more than two pairs, but each pair is extremely sensible (meaning comfortable and unstylish) and worn until they fall apart.  Recently I replaced a worn-out pair of shoes and later discovered during a visit from my mom that they matched a pair of my mom's almost exactly.     In my younger years that might have embarrassed me at least a little, but fact is I don't mind anymore and I am proud to say that I even wore those shoes to church today.

My mom's legacy is one of hard-work, intelligence, frugality, and unconditional love.  Although her life has never been easy, she has always made the best of whatever it's thrown at her.  I am grateful for the way she's always risen above what was expected of her and shown by example that we can accomplish anything that we put our minds to.

Happy Mother's Day!  

I love you Mom! 

School Prom 2014

Cami hadn't planned on attending her school prom this year, but about a week ago this handsome guy asked her and she changed her mind.

She had to scramble to borrow a dress and order a corsage, but in the end she looked stunningly beautiful and was excited to go with her friend, Ruyer.  

They both seemed a tad nervous while I was taking pictures, but after some dinner and some dancing they ended up having a wonderful time! 

FCHS Prom 2014

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Four Generations

It's getting to be THAT time of year again.  The time when our normally busy, but somewhat manageable schedule goes LOCO!  We've been doing end of year testing (required by Virginia law even for homeschool!), having planning meetings for next year, planning girls' camp crafts again, collecting youth conference registration forms, picking up Spencer from JMU, preparing for giving a talk in sacrament meeting this Sunday, going to a memorial service for a beloved former teacher of Adam's, and eating up the couple of days that my parents were in town.

All this extra stuff going on in addition to my normal running kids all over creation for 2+ hours a day  means that my own home has become a mere stopping place in the endless merry-go-round that my life has become.    I've spent no more than a couple of waking hours home each day of the last two weeks.

Tomorrow has the potential to be the first normal day in a while (except for the 4:00am drive to the school to drop Emma off on her field trip, the mommy-daughter activity day activity with Ellie in the evening,  and the extra chauffeuring duties I have in the afternoon), but all in all I am very much looking forward to some good old fashioned bonding time with washing machine again...at least for a few hours!

So I sit here tonight, eyes drooping with sleepiness, and the responsible side of me thinks I should be trying to dig out of the pile that my house has become or work on my talk or something, but instead I forgo sleep and sensibility and am writing this blog post instead.    I was worried that I would forget and let these precious pictures get buried into my computer files.  After all, it's only a few times a year that we see my parents and even less often that we see my last living grandparent, Nana Crain!  Four generations together is definitely worth staying up to commemorate!

 I had to share their visit with my two brothers and their families, so all in all we spent less than 24-hours together.   Luckily the weather was lovely,  and we took our lunch from Plaka (a greek restaurant) and headed to the park.

Ellie so loved seeing her grandparents and great-grandma again and I do have to say that I think she bonded with all three of them while they were here.  

Luckily my sister, AnnaLisa, lives close to me, so she  got to share in our time with them.

Adam's a little shyer about jumping into pictures, but I love how this one of Nana and them turned out!

My dad recently had knee replacement surgery and was hobbling around a bit while he was here, but that didn't stop him from being Silly Grandpa still!

I can't believe how tall Adam looks next to my mom in this picture!

Right after lunch they drove to Maryland to spend a day with my brother Matt and his family.  We loved having them visit and hope that they will be able to come again soon! 

At first I thought that we wore Ellie out with fun.  Turns out though, her fever (after the poor reaction to her medication) had returned.  The poor girl has now been spiking low fevers almost every day for about three weeks now.  Most of the time she acts pretty normal, but collapses once it hits 100º every few days (like in this picture).

Safe to say, she will never be trying that medication again!


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Mormon Prom

So some of you non-Mormons out there are probably wondering what Mormon prom is and why is it such a big deal. It's a HUGE production that took dozens and dozens of people thousands of hours of work to put on.  My friend Cindy was the director of it and she has been working on it well over a year....all voluntarily and without pay.   The end results were absolutely phenomenal and after all the hours and hours of work, it really was the "Dance of the Decades."   

The entire church was transformed into a breathtaking walk through time and nearly 700 juniors and seniors from the surrounding 6 (or maybe 8) stakes showed up to participate in a magical night of good clean fun.   There was no drinking, no dirty dancing, no skanky clothing, and no offensive song lyrics.  It was simply a night when a big group of youth seeking to live with high moral standards could enjoy an evening together.   

The 1950's room bedecked as an old-school diner was one of  my favorite rooms.  My friends Ellen and Kylee designed this room and the details they put into it were mind boggling to me.  I can barely even decorate my own house...in fact I still haven't decorated months after our renovations ended...and together, they transformed our very vanilla YW room into an amazing step back in time to the 50's.  

Even the waiters and waitresses (which included three of my beautiful young women and a good friend of Adam's) looked like they stepped right out of an episode of "Leave it to Beaver".

The 1970's room, designed by my friend Linda, was another one of my favorite rooms. It had a  lava lamp lounge and an almost life-size VW bus for people to pose in!

Of course the room I related to the most was the 1980's room!  I felt right at home with the familiar movie posters, the Super Mario cut-outs, and 80's vernacular hanging around the room!  I daresay I also would have done much better on the 80's quiz that Cami said she failed miserably at.

It was a whole lot of effort put on by a whole lot of people, but it was worth every second of it for these wonderful youth! 

Last, but not least,  the reason why you're here in the first place....Cami's prom pictures.  She and her date, Matt, are good friends who have been in the same seminary class for the last three years.

 Cami originally forgot the boutonniere at home, so I had to make a mad dash home so we could get the proper picture of her pinning it on him.  It turned out to be one of my favorite pictures of the night.

Sadly Cami proved no less forgetful with the corsage he gave her. Shortly before taking off for dinner she took it off to wash her hands and forgot it on a friend's counter, so she went flowerless for all of about 30 minutes of the night. 

It's too bad too, since the ribbon matched Cami's necklace perfectly! 

Here are all the young gentlemen in their group...

Graham, Matt, Cole, Frank, Sam, Jesse

and the beautiful young ladies!    I seriously don't think they could have been any more gorgeous!

Faerlan, Maddie, Katy, Cami, Hannah, Jordann

Here are a few more pictures that I liked from the night!

Mental note for next year...before taking a group photo like this I will make sure that all the girls have their corsages on the same wrist!

I love how this one of Katy and Frank turned out.  They are seriously adorable! 

I take partial credit for the cute chalkboard in this group photo!  I saw a prom picture online that I liked with the chalkboard, so Cami grabbed hers off her wall and made it look cute!  I personally liked the fun touch it added.  

And here is one last glimpse at a few more of my beautiful young women... 

(NOTE:  a few of these pictures were taken by Bro. Nielson)!

Kate and Mary Kate

Meagan and Sarah

Cami, Ashley, Katy

Maddie, Faerlan -- Maddie, Hannah

I only donated a paltry couple hours of hanging up balloons and that token glimpse I got at the efforts that went into this night, made me all the more grateful for all those who sacrificed and worked for so long to make this happen.  

Thank you, thank you, thank you!  

And thank goodness that it's another 6 years before it's our stake's turn to host again!   

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NOTE:  The pictures of the decorations at the beginning of this post were taken by either Bruce or Ellen. 

Also a few of the pictures of the young women and their dates were taken by Bruce, since they did not end up in the same group as Cami.