May 6: We started this day with a whole bunch of running around to pick up fans from people. Our basement is sloooooooowwwwwwly drying out.
Then Cami made me an early Mother's Day breakfast and presented me with this beautiful gift! I LOVE IT!!!
The rest of the day was spent cleaning the house like crazy and packing--only one backpack per person!
Then eventually we left the fans blowing and headed to the airport...
...for the trip of a lifetime! We've been planning and saving for this for many years and we couldn't be more excited! Stay tuned for many adventures to come!
May 5:
Today while we finished up our end of year testing, the pipe behind our washing machine became clogged and started spurting water everywhere.
It was a gross mess and I decidedly did NOT take a picture of it.
Luckily the plumber was able to come somewhat quickly and for a small fortune snaked the clog away.
Tracking down fans and pulling up carpets was definitely not something I wanted added to my already monumentally long to-do list tomorrow, but, hey, on the bright side...we did have a great mutual activity tonight.
And Cami has awesome friends who all three received full-tuition scholarships for after their missions!
May 4: We took a short break from being productive today to go on a little walk while Emma was at voice lessons. It's been gray and gloomy lately, but the beautiful wildflowers along the way brought us a jolt of color and beauty to our day.
I am grateful for the springtime, for Cami being home, and for the joy that is all around when we pause to notice it.
SONNET TO SPRINGTIME
by Lara, age 17
The sky is azure blue, the grass is green.
The hyacinths are peeking through the ground
The hibernating animals are lean.
The sounds of songbirds echo all around.
The golden sunshine bathes and warms the earth; A gentle shower washes dirt away. The rain gives nature and the world rebirth, And a radiant rainbow arcs its way
Over the mountain and into the trees, Reminding the world of a promise made; Never again would that gentle spring breeze Be drowned in a flood, for a price now paid.
Spring will always come in life giving cheer; Just remember who made all we have here.
May 3:
Tuesday was spent making final preparations for our trip, including ordering a few last minute items, which will hopefully make our trip a lot more pleasant.
I've been VERY distracted lately with trip planning and the house is an absolute disaster, however it is my optimistic (and hopefully not too unrealistic) wish that I will still be able to get everyone packed, finish administering their end of year tests, and get the house clean before we go. Will it actually happen? Let’s look at my next book title and find out….
May 2:
On Monday we drove through a crazy thunderstorm,
including a deluge of HAIL....
to get to the US Naval Observatory in downtown DC.
The observatory is home to a very large (and somewhat old) telescope which is famous for its role in discovering the moons around Mars. Because of the aforementioned storm, we didn't actually get to see anything through the telescope, but we did learn a lot about it. For instance, it was built in the 1873 and was the largest refractive telescope in the world when it was first built.
Later on the tour guide took us to the USNO library, which in addition to holding one of the world's most premier collections of books on astronomy and physics, was also a very architecturally beautiful building.
It was difficult to capture the scope of this amazing round room in my camera lens, but suffice it to say, this room ended up one of our favorite parts of the tour.
The last part of the tour was about what the USNO is most famous for (besides being the site of the home of the Vice President of the United States).....keeping time! It was fascinating to learn about how time keeping has changed over the years. As they've moved from tracking the movements of the earth, to pendulums in vacuums, and finally to cesium based atomic clocks, time keeping accuracy has gone from 1/10 of a second per day of variation to 1/1000 of a 1/1,000,000,000,000 of a second per day.
It ended up being a late night, but, heck, since time is apparently a human invented concept anyway, we could all sleep more soundly knowing that the timekeeping ability of our clocks are in good hands!
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Random Quotes of the Day:
"If you have one clock, you think you know what time it is, but can never be sure.
If you have two clocks, you don't know which one is correct.
So you need at least three clocks, so you can find a mean average time."
Fact: The US Naval Observatory has hundreds of atomic clocks.
"NASA determines how long a second officially is. USNO determines how many seconds have elapsed. Therefore NASA is like a stopwatch and USNO is a clock."
April 30:
In honor of Spencer's 21st birthday on Saturday, here are 21 random facts about Spence: 1. He's the only one of the kids who inherited my dark brown hair.
2. When he was in elementary school, he would read so much that I'd sometimes have to tell him to stop reading and go play outside for a while.
3. Spencer absolutely hates fajitas with a vehement burning passion.
4. Unlike the rest of the family, he does not have much of a sweet tooth.
5. His debate teacher in high school said that he was one of the most talented debate students she'd ever taught in her three decades of teaching. I wasn't surprised at all by this declaration.
6. He's broken more bones than anyone else in the family (2).
7. He's got a gift with words.
8. He's spent waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more nights in the hospital than everyone else in the family combined.
9. Because of how polite and funny he was, the nurses in the hospital used to fight over who had him as their patient.
10. He one time made his English teacher cry because she was touched by what he'd written in his essay.
11. In elementary school, he was obsessed with the Utah Jazz.
12. He played the clarinet through middle school, but hasn't touched it since then.
13. Spence is the pickiest eater of all my kids.
14. He has no natural propensity to stay organized in the slightest.
15. He isn't a fan of breakfast and often just grabs a glass of milk on the way out the door to work.
16. One of his favorite parts about homeschooling in 8th grade was the opportunity it gave him to learn to rock climb. He hasn't done it much since then, until we just recently joined a gym that has a rock climbing wall. Now it's one of his favorite things to do after work.
17. He's made me cry 10,000 more times than any of our other kids combined.
18. We knew what we were going to name him several months before he was born.
19. When he was about 8-14 years old, he would change out of his church clothes so quickly that most of us hadn't even walked in the door from the car yet.
20. Spencer has a love/hate relationship with attention being paid to him. On the one hand, he has gone to great lengths in his life to avoid being in the spotlight, but on the other, he definitely has started to seek to impress the ladies!
Meet Adam-- the newest (and cutest) flag stealing football player this side of the Mississippi.
He had never played flag football (or even regular football) before this, but after the two practices/games he's played in so far, he is really, really enjoying the experience.
The practices are a little further away than I would prefer, but I am such a fan of the practices and games being on the same night, I don't care much about the distance at all.
He's a little bummed that his season will be cut short because of our trip, but I'm excited that he's excited, and I'm thinking we may have to try this again in the fall!
A lot of planning came to fruition tonight, as about 20 teachers/coaches/mentors from our community showed up to be honored at our 2nd Annual Teacher Appreciation Dinner.
The youth invited people who played a role in impacting their lives for good.
It was great to see the sense of pride on the youth's faces....
as they interacted with and honored the men and women who work so hard to teach and mentor them.
The menu for the night was lasagna, breadsticks, salad, and berry topped cheesecake. Ellie enjoyed helping in the kitchen.
And it was fantastic to see Mrs. A and Ms. P again! Emma had Mrs. A TWICE as a teacher (Kindergarten and 5th grade) and Adam had Ms. P in 2nd grade. They're both talented and dedicated teachers and we were excited to honor them tonight.
It was kind of crazy to see how much Adam has grown in the last year...
2015 vs 2016
Ms. P brought her guinea pig, a fact which delighted Ellie immensely.
It was a lot of work, especially with two members of my presidency out of town for it, but I had a lot of people chip in to help and I thought it turned out beautifully well. Though I homeschool my kids now, I am immensely grateful for those who have worked so hard to love and teach my children over the years.
It was a dark and dreary day and my sister texted to say she was having a bad morning.
Another sister and I texted her a few funny memes to her to try to get her to laugh, but ultimately I decided that the best way I could help her feel better was by putting on our best "sunshine in my soul" shirts for her and singing her a song.
Why?
Because a little dam sunshine in your soul is always a good thing!
Here is a video of the song Emma sang in sacrament meeting on Sunday. We loved hearing her practice it for the last several weeks and we were not surprised that we got many compliments that she sounded like "an angel."
Although she actually performed it on Sunday, I'm putting this on for Tuesday's "picture", because it took me way too many hours on Tuesday trying to figure out how to actually capture it on video.
I know well how to take a video, but trying to do it while even semi-preserving the clear sound quality of her voice was actually rather difficult. We decided that the poor quality video was the trade-off, so you can hear her voice without too much of the tinniness that our electronics kept adding.
On Sunday morning, we woke up refreshed with the woes of yesterday forgotten and so excited to just to be all together again!
It was the first time we'd all been to church together in quite a while...
and I was a proud mama as I sat there with all my little ducklings lined up on the bench next to us.
Emma also sang a solo and sounded like an angel, which made my mother heart swell even more! I have an audio version of one of her practices, but I'm still trying to figure out how to share it here on the blog.
After 6 weeks of painting, oodles of reorganizing, and having 2 kids displaced out of their bedroom,
we got a 3 hour window on Saturday for getting 2 new beds and 1 desk delivered.
After the delivery we went to work and spent the next 10 hours moving kid #4 to his own room and kid #3 out of her own room to share with kid #5, after which kid #2 promptly came home from college and displaced kid #4 from the room he'd had for himself for all of 2 hours, so she could take it over for the next 3 months before she goes on her mission to France for 18 months. It was a long day of being on task and I am a little embarrassed to admit that every single 1 of the 6 of us that were home most of the day were well past our threshold of being well functioning and happy by the end of the day. In fact, at 1 point, we sneaked away from the work for a quick dinner at a local Italian place, and I may or may not have burst into tears in the middle of dinner when kid #? broached a subject about which I was very sensitive about. That was the first time I've hard a good hard cry in public in like 43 years, which ironically is how old I turn on April 25.
Ignore the lack of decorations, poor quality of picture, sloppily made beds, and the extra mattress in the middle of the floor. That's just how we roll around here.
Welcome to our family blog where you can find the latest on our family and read all about Spencer's battle with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (subtype M5). He was diagnosed in January 2012 and has been in remission about 13 years now. Every day he is in remission is a gift to us.
In amongst the leukemia updates you'll find a random conglomeration of humorous, boring, goofy, and inspiring tales (with photos of course) from the adventure of our life with five kids. An adventure that we're taking ...a day at a time.
Posts About Our Son's Experience with Cancer (AML)
