What a week! There is so much I want to write about this week that it's shaping up to be a pretty long post. Some of these subjects I have been "saving up" for a slow week, but honestly, we don't have those in the summer time. We like to stay busy and we are pretty good at it.
This week, the biggest thing that happened was Rachel's trip to Oregon. Some college down there was hosting a "Silent Weekend" for ASL interpreters, and Rachel decided to attend. From talking to her it sounds like she had an awesome time, learned a lot of cool stuff, and made some great friends. The most significant thing she said to me about the conference, however, was that "I feel empowered."
As she should.
Rachel is an amazing mother and wife who has chosen to stay home to raise her kids. As a part of this, she has used her degree and experience in elementary education to start her own preschool, not just for our own kids, but for others as well. She is also an excellent and highly credentialed sign language interpreter who is quickly building a name for herself in the Spokane area. After just a little over a year, she is already widely recognized throughout the deaf community and requested for some of the top jobs because of her ability to adapt her style to that of her clients. On top of all this, she has totally jumped into her job as marketing coordinator for our business, and has demonstrated that she can do as well (and sometimes even better) than those who have gone through formal training in marketing. Because of this I am convinced that her efforts, more than any other single factor, are to account for the fact that Heartwood Family Dental is still here. I am continually amazed (though I shouldn't be) at what Rachel can do. She is empowered, and it is right for her to feel that way.
In the meantime, while Rachel was playing in Oregon, I was hanging out with the kids. The first morning we all sat down together and made a "Papa list" that included things like a movie night, beach, school lunch, camping, park, church etc. We also planned our meals (fish, pizza, cereal, crepes, pasta, and french toast) and drinks (strawberry daiquiris, orange Julius, Brazilian lemonade, and watermelon coolers).
Since Rachel had the van, we got around town via bicycle. This was at first, a trick, and took some experimenting to get everyone comfortable. Here's the procedure: Addy holds the bike up while I buckle Maren into the trailer. Evelyn then buckles herself in beside Maren while Jack and I load stuff into the back of the trailer (this must be done after Evelyn is seated or else there won't be enough space for the next step). We then confirm that Addy is holding the bike tight, and Jack gets in the trailer on Evelyn's lap. Evelyn then secures the final buckle across everyone's laps while I close the trailer top and buckle everything down. Finally, I get Addy and, while holding the bike up with my leg, buckle her into the child seat behind me. After one final check, we are off and moving. Getting out is the same process in reverse order. As you can imagine this took a while in the beginning, but by Sunday we were pros and could go through the whole process in under a minute. That's when, as I was puffing my way up a hill on the way home from church, the kids took a spontaneous vote and came to the unanimous decision that the bike was way funner than the car. Evelyn even moved to make the bicycle our regular form of transportation, dispensing with the car entirely except in cases of emergency. I, through exclusive executive order (and through grunts, groans, and desperate gasps for air), said no.
We were able to get around though, and we did everything on the Papa list. Overall, I have to say we have pretty awesome kids and they make it easy to have fun. They are still little children, of course, and so there are still definitively times when things get frustrating. But that is expected and usually easy to overlook in light of how good they usually are.
Also, on the Saturday that Rachel was gone we had an Elder's Quorum move. Briefly, for those who might not know, the Elder's Quorum is a men's group that is run through my church. The group is centered around doing service, and one of the ways we do this is by helping people move who are coming into/out of our area. We do A LOT of this. Some moves are easy and take, literally, just a few minutes. This happens when we are able to get a lot of people out to help and the owners have done their work ahead of time by packing up their stuff. Other moves, however, are long, tortuous ordeals that make me think I would be better off sawing off my left arm just to have an excuse to leave. This was the sort of move we had on Saturday.
When we arrived at the house the owner was lounging in his living room in a Lazy Boy, reading the paper. Looking around, I wondered if we were in the right place. NOTHING was packed. Nothing was even moved. The closets, dressers, cupboards, etc. all looked exactly the same as if we had come over for a nice breakfast or something- that is, they were full. The house, I imagine, looked no different than it had any other day in the past six months. Had we, in fact, been coming over for breakfast, this would have been fine. As it was, we were supposed to take all this stuff, one item at a time, and cram it into the back of a truck, only to unpack it a few short minutes later at his new house.
Wait- did someone say something about a truck? What truck? There was no truck. The owner figured that with this many people it would be just as easy to put things in our cars, one item at a time, and drive back and forth. This way he could save the nineteen dollars it would take to rent a U-haul for the morning. We had one car, one van, and 4 people. Doing some quick calculations in my head I realized that, with the people and vehicles at our disposal, this move was going to take roughly fourteen and a half days. And to make matters worse, I had just barely recovered from the last move we did, which was even worse because we were moving out of an apartment on the third story, and into one on the second.
I started looking for a saw.
But then I thought better of it. See, I have come to a strong belief that one of the main, and maybe even the principal way that God helps us grow, is by putting learning opportunities in our path. These opportunities may come in a Sunday school class, but more often than not I think they come in the form of experiences that test us. It may be calling in church, a wayward child, financial hardship, a job promotion, a difficult co-worker, or even being asked to help with a move that seems comparable to the Bataan death march. In the end, however, I think it is how we respond to these opportunities that builds us into who we are.
Put in this perspective, I actually felt myself becoming less irritated about my situation. I decided that if the savior were asked to help on this move, he would probably not only help, but would "go the extra mile" as well by offering to bring dinner over that night. And so I did just that. And even though they declined my offer for food, (maybe they knew my wife was out of town and didn't trust my cooking?) I actually started to enjoy the work a little bit. I'd even say that it became enjoyable. I guess that what I am saying is that I felt a change in myself that couldn't have happened unless I consciously chose to let it happen, and that I'm glad that I made that choice. It was probably a lot better for everyone involved than it would have been if I had found that saw.
Alright- I know this is getting long, but there was one other topic I wanted to bring into this post. Well, it's not a topic really- it's a book. Literally. See, a while ago we were eating dinner and Adalie started telling a story. It evolved into this whole conversation, and afterwards Evelyn had the great idea of writing it down into a book.
So we did. We actually printed it out on papers and stapled it together in book-form. Evelyn was/is going to draw pictures for it and everything. Seeing how that hasn't happened yet, however, I want to at least write the story down somewhere permanent so that we can remember it. Really, it's kind of cute, very creative, and totally, one hundred percent, a product of my children's imagination.
Not In This Story
By Evelyn and Papa
Hi. My name is Evelyn
.
>> (This means that in the book you turn the page) This is my sister, Addy. She loves to tell stories.
>> One day, while we were eating our dinner, she started to
tell a story…
>> She said, “Once upon a time, there was a little girl who
went to the mall. Then she came home, and guess what happened?”
>> I know, I said. A giant fish came and swallowed her, and
then swam away to the ocean.
>> My sister looked at me and said, “Not in THIS story.”
>> “Okay,” I said. “I know. A giant bubble came and trapped
her inside and then she got sucked up the chimney into the sky and was floating
around forever until she got into outer space!”
>> My sister looked at me again.
“Not in THIS story,” she said.
>> “Oh, I know,” said Papa. “She decided to go for a walk
and she met a flying unicorn who took her to a beautiful land where flowers
were as big as houses, and unicorns filled the sky.”
>> “No. Not in THIS story!”
>> “Well, I know,” said Mama. “She went to take a bath and accidentally got sucked down the drain and she had to make a boat out little
sticks so she wouldn't sink.”
>> “NOT IN THIS STORY!”
>> Then, my brother Jack said, “I know. A fireman came and
set her house on fire and she didn’t have any water so she had to use gallons
and gallons of chocolate milk to put it out.”
>> “NOT IN THIS STORY!”
>> "SO WHAT HAPPENED?" We asked.
>> “Oh,” said my sister,
>> "She went to bed."
The End.
So, I thought it was a pretty good little book. With illustrations, it could be great. I especially like Jackson's line, since in his little world firemen are actually arsonists who go around burning innocent people and their homes. For this reason, I wonder if I should be concerned when he says he likes firetrucks and wants to be a fireman one day. Also, the last line had to be modified. In the real-life dinner conversation, Adalie ended the story just as abruptly, but with a somewhat darker conclusion. Addy's actual ending would read as follows:
"Oh," said my sister,
"She died."
The End.
Maybe another cause for concern? I don't know. Anyway, I've gone on long enough. I should probably stop writing now and wrap this blog up with some pictures.
We discovered Maren's new favorite food. Watermelon!
This was cute. At the beach, the three oldest were swimming out in the deep water with each other and some new friends they made. Meanwhile, I sat in the shallows with Maren. Well, at one point Jack waved goodbye to his friends and swam over to us. He told me he wanted to play with Maren, and spent the next 10-15 minutes playing with her on her level (repeatedly filling a bucket up with water, dumping it out, and giggling over it). Could it be that my future arsonist is actually developing some empathy? Maybe there is hope after all.
Camping in the back yard.
