Monday, August 16, 2010

Catching up

So when you don't find time to blog for 3 months, there is NO catching up. Apparently this is the quarterly blog. I will be catching up on you all yearly :). I will try to give a Reader's Digest version of life here.
I tried to write more about the twins, so I'll just paste it on here and then work my way up the family.

My babies were baptized in May. I wish I could remember all the crazy things they say. As I was asking them questions about baptism, they said some interesting things. Like comparing the Holy Ghost to the ghosts on "Ghost Whisperer", sometimes you can feel Him touch you.. Or comparing Jesus to Superheroes. I thought their baptismal interviews should be pretty interesting. Thing 2 hid behind the desk and stuck up his hand to answer the questions for the bishop, moving it like a mouth. When the bishop asked Thing 1 to tell him about Jesus, he said, "He has powers!" Oh, boy! Here we go... but then he said, "He died for us". The bishop started to ask him something else and he interrupts, "Wait, there's more! He's the Son of God!" Too cute! Their baptism day was fun, they were their own nutty selves, but it went well. Thing 2 has decided to leave the dark side and follow Jesus instead of "Decepticons"since then. Erin gave a good talk and Tim and Emily sang, with Erin accompanying them. I interpreted, we had another Chilean girl getting baptized so we had a need to interpret both ways. Their dad baptized them and we had Grandpa and uncles to help with the confirmation. I forgot my camera but uncle Nate and aunt Rachelle helped out there. Now I just need to clean up my computer so I can put them on here.
They are working on Spanish this summer. It's so hard for them, but it is coming along ever so slowly. Enigma gave them haircuts that make them look so much older now. I'm realizing soon I won't have little boys anymore. They will start getting tougher and stop talking so cute one day. Thing 2 has already made a habit of saying "That's just stupid" for anything he doesn't like. Soon they will lose all the baby-ness. Gone will be the days that computers are "peeters" and marshmallows are "smishmallows" and hand sanitizer will no longer be "hanitizer" and so many other expressions I wish I could remember them all! So I'm savoring how nutty and cute they are now. I just loved overhearing a snitch of a bedtime prayer the other day. Thing 2 was saying, "Thanks for making us and for making the Earth, it's really cool! I like it here!" It made me smile. Glad he's finally acclimatizing here on planet Earth.
Recently they caught a dragonfly in their room (window open, I imagine) and it laid eggs on a paint stick sitting in a cup of water. They have since taken it upon themselves to take care of the eggs because the dragonfly obviously chose them to be the guardians. Does anyone know when dragonfly eggs hatch? Or if they fertilize their eggs before or after laying them? Because this could be a REALLY long project if we don't find out. I convinced them to keep the cup outside, since that would be the natural habitat. Such fun. Why was the cup in their room with the stick? Apparently it was the home of a poor water beetle until he died. I readily admit I'm just not up to keeping on top of their room. I had them keeping it clean for a while, but it requires constant vigilance, and we all know how good I am at that. So I continue to learn to walk on Lego pieces.
Now the twins are in 2nd grade, in separate classes, which they are doing just fine with, but it doesn't seem to help them stay on task too very well, so it should be an interesting year. Probably I should just buy stock in Concerta.
The other twins are decidedly fraternal. Buckley has much longer legs than Hurley, enough that I wonder if he's part regular goat. They have gotten so big, they now have beards and Hurley has a lot more spots, brown around the black, it looks real cool. Buckley has a mohawk from his head on down his back, but lately it's flattening out and parting in the front. They both seem to be growing their horns back. They are the biggest nuts. Papi finished the garden fence, but all I got planted was tomatoes, bell peppers and potatoes. I'm cultivating tons of weeds, not to mention manure for the compost pile. Hurley nibbles on everything, and devours anything to do with berries or grapes plus they reduced our fig to a stick in the ground. Papi is done with them, but Enigma loves them so much, she wants to take them with her when she goes. Too bad they can't live in an apartment. We are concerned about winter with the lack of adequate shelter so we hope to find somewhere nearby that would be suitable for them soon. Enigma taught the goats to teeter totter and they are just crazy animals who climb on anything and everything.
One day we woke to Buckley crying. It sounded like an elephant in labor. He had jumped from a table to a tree and got his front hooves stuck in the crook between the two main branches where they meet at the trunk and he was just hanging there, so I had to run out and try to dislodge him. Enigma maneuvered the last hoof while I hefted him up. His foot was pretty lame so we had to take him to the vet. He already visited them the beginning of the summer for ear mites, this time he had to have x-rays and get pain killers.. Luckily, since he's still young, it was just stressed along the growth plate but not broken. The vet told Enigma if he went jumping around he could still break it so to keep him mellow for a few days. How exactly we were supposed to do that,???- but we managed and he seems no worse for the wear.
Carino is in sixth grade and has lots of news. He fell out of a tree at our church and somehow landed on a lower branch before falling to his death. He has had scratches all up and down his stomach since then. He also has been working on Spanish and he and the twins went to summer school. He finally learned to like science. He did baseball this May/June. He was the star of his team, but it was quite an underdog team. He wowed his cousins with his break dancing skills this summer, and in general played hard. Meanwhile, I spent all summer trying to get him in to see some doctors but I guess if I was hoping to get that done during the summer I should have started in January. In any case, just in time for school, he got a prosthetic ear. It is amazing! Now if I can just get him to stop playing around and taking it off for people to see that it comes off, (and stop playing with the glue) maybe it would stay on all day... And in September he is having an operation to get a post put on his head to attach his BAHA (hearing appliance) onto so he won't have to use the band. If I can just get him to change that batteries and keep it on his head and adjust it as needed, that should be great. He's also going to need to keep the post area cleaned every day so we add that to our routine. This is a kid who can get distracted and take 15 minutes to actually get in the water after turning on the shower, or to start combing his hair when he means to start, so adding all these routines is stressful. It is very nerve wracking every time he misplaces these two very expensive items, but I think this is better than any other alternative for now. Also, he is getting an evaluation to see how we can help him more in school. His jaw is a mess but we are in a holding pattern because most people think it would do more harm than good to operate again before he is fully grown and needs to have a final operation. Eating and cleaning his teeth are not that simple. If that isn't enough, he needs glasses. Initially, I thought we would have to do contacts, seeing as he didn't have an ear to hang the glasses on, but after I tried contacts and didn't have the patience for them, there is no way I can see him doing that too, so glasses it will be, but I'm going to hold off till after the operation so we can pick glasses that don't interfere with the BAHA.
Gigio is in 7th grade, and handling it just fine. Apparently it doesn't matter that he's half as tall as the girls because 5 of them have already said he's cute or have a crush on him. He just turned 12 and will get the priesthood on Sunday. He gave a testimony two weeks ago and it was amazing. Who'da thunk that pestery kid was a deep thinker? Last week he went to his first Young Men's activity which was combined with the Young Women and they went somewhere that had a ripline and a creek and some kind of bungie cord type thing. Later the girls told me he's crazy, he was a human slingshot. O.K.... He didn't weigh enough to lower himself and it took awhile to get him back down and somehow he got a rope burn on his arm, but he had a really good time.
Enigma just got back from her cousin's wedding which sadly I had to miss, (but I had fun taking care of my nephews) but she had fun, after MUCH drama, but that's par for the course. She was also in an accident in St George with a friend when she went on vacation so just stopped seeing the chiro for that. They were rear ended and her friend's car was totalled. The week before she was in a fender bender with a friend and the other guy was a jerk, she stuck up for her friend and got the police out there, and the guy got arrested because he had warrants out for other stuff. Kinda creepy. She has been doing photo shoots and is now in the salon area of the school plus is mentoring the newbies. She's going to start going nights too so she can finish in November. She recently did another makeup workshop and she's hoping to get financing to learn to do eyelash extensions and to go to Makeup Artistry School in California in January. Everything else about her life changes on a dime so I can't really say much else or it won't be accurate anymore. She's had migraines and is learning to deal with that. Has a small pharmacy now.
Me? I'm thinking I should have gone into the pharmaceutical business. All my money is going into meds and ER visits. Our whole family had fun with my extended family when we got together for a family reunion in June. Good times. Just wish we could have spent more time together. In July I went to Las Vegas for an interpreter training that was really good and had fun with the other interpreters. We went to see the Phantom of the Opera there, It was AMAZING! The special effects were the best. Then when I got back we had a major activity in Relief Society, a LUAU- social/visiting teaching conference. We had a blast! We had a spoof of Johnny Lingo called Juana Lingo and a girl in our ward that does Tahitian dancing did some number s and taught us how to dance. We also did limbo and hula hoop contests, and of course ate lots of yummy food and we put together a video of the sisters and had a little program. We had it all set up outside when a storm blew in so we had to super quick like move everything inside. Fun, fun. Relief Society has been a lot of work, there is a lot of drama in people's lives and tons of work to do. I just do what I can and somehow so far it all works out even though I stress out about it all. I keep trying to do things to help everyone else and then it ends up teaching me something or helping prepare me for something and so I've realized this is all out of my control anyway and I'm just trying to go with the flow.
Not only did I miss my niece's wedding this month, I missed my Uncle Fred's funeral, who finally no longer suffers from lung cancer. I heard it was good and wish I could have seen my relatives in Arizona and been there for that, but I couldn't get away. My cousin's daughter was married here the same day as my niece, but I was so busy with the boys and trying to keep the house (which had been neglected while I spent too much time in Salt Lake at appointments) from being condemned, that I forgot to go to that till it was ending. Probably it was just as well because moving the 6 boys playing Star Wars into her reception just might have been disruptive. Maybe.
I am sick of school, which is too bad because it only started a week ago. It is KILLING me. Just the getting everyone ready and there on time, back home and ready for the next day, and all they have for homework so far is reading, and stuff they didn't finish in class just wait till next week when math gets going. I can't even go into all the details because it would be a page in and of itself of the things I've had to deal with between the four boys since going back. Add to that Papi is supposed to be doing 2 online courses and is starting classes next week and I am also taking a class. I might just die. I'm taking a class to start working towards certifying as a mediator. Should be fun but, the time? Not sure where I'll get it from. Have you noticed the story about the miners trapped in Chile? We can't miss it here since we get the news from there on a big screen in my living room. Amazing, and it totally creeps me out to think of being trapped down there. I sure hope they get out sooner than they think and get out OK! I'm reading about Inez de Suarez right now too. Totally amazing woman. Another sad sad tale here locally is a couple of women died in a plane crash in Nepal. They were going to climb to the base camp of Everest. My daughter called to tell me because one of the husbands was her teacher in high school and his son is her friend. Turns out the two women work at one of our law offices locally and the other husband is one of our prosecutors so I feel really bad for all of them. It is so very sad, my heart just goes out to all of them. And speaking of my heart going out to people,
Papi has also had an operation on his knee again, and he is almost back to speed from that. But, he's having a lot of problems with his ears lately and hasn't felt good at all-emotionally or physically, but he hasn't seen a doctor yet, mostly because he's being a grumpy old man. Hope he gets over that sometime soon. He does have an appointment soon. Other than that he's been busy at work and at church and taking the boys to scout camps and all that good stuff he usually does.
Yesterday (just to bring this current) we went to 7 Peaks and we had a blast. The boys loved it! We got passes from school for their reading and they were about to run out. We ended up getting a real good deal but I probably shouldn't publicize the details since I promised not to tell. That is the story of my life lately, too much of it is confidential so I have nothing to say and what I can say, I don't have time to write, but hopefully somehow I will keep this blog from totally dying for good. Maybe I'll even say something funny next time, since I was too busy trying to remember what I don't want to forget so I could say it here and preserve the bare bones of the last 4 months or so to think of anything entertaining to say or to even say it in a very entertaining way. Such is the life of an overextended forty-something scatterbrained person. My plan for next time is to post photos. Then, I hope to someday write some things about what I think about our society at large. Because if I don't say something, I am being complacent. And someday maybe a great granddaughter will read it and it will answer the question she had been dying to ask me but obviously couldn't because I will be long gone by then, just like happened in reverse to me when I was reading a book about one of my great something grandmas and something she wrote just jumped out and answered what I wanted to ask her about. Not that I wouldn't have about 400 more follow up questions if she were here, but it was very very cool to read that. But I digress. First, I need to finish taking my pictures so I can post them. So, Off I go!

5 comments:

The Cranes said...

Thanks again for watching the boys. They had so much fun and you even managed to find all their stuff that I'm sure they had thrown all over your house and sent it back with them. I owe you one! (And sorry you missed both wedding receptions!)

4boyzmdmom said...

It's nice to get caught up on your life, even if it is the condensed version! I love the baptismal interview stories--priceless!

4boyzmdmom said...

Oh, and which great something Grandma answered one of your questions? And what was the question and the answer? I'm always wishing I could talk to some of those grandmas of mine! Maybe that's why I keep writing boring weekly reports of all we do--because I'd love to know what an average week in my grandmas' lives were like!

Darla said...

super fun catching up on you again!!! I love the pics and the stories. I've been slacking on posting too and have just recently posted a few times again.

Have a nice fall!!!

Shellie said...

Sorry Annette, I never even read my comments! The book that just came out this summer with histories of BFJ's family is where I read my answer. I have many many questions, but I wondered how the wives felt about what they got themselves into with plural marriage, if they were happy, if they felt short changed, etc. In the book the only wife they had something written by herself and not her children about her was Sarah and she had written a letter to her children that went in a time capsule. She basically, because I don't know where anything in my house is to quote directly, that she was happy. I'll have to find it and post it sometime, but it was electric to have her reach out across about 100 years to answer my little question. :)