Half of Us

Today was a day of see-ya-later's as we had three kids leave home. First was Wesley's departure at 6 am. He is off for a week of a high adventure at Lake Powell. We trust that it will be less brutal than King's Peak was in 2019. 🠈Look at that first picture - oh my goodness, Wesley! You've grown so much the past two years! He felt very good about himself over the weekend when I was out running errands and called home and he answered, but I was stumped as to who I was talking to: "Hi... uh, is this Hyrum or Corey?" "This is Wes!" "Oh! Wes!" He said that made him very happy. He's becoming a man. 

Wes printed off his Driver's Ed handbook to study on the drive down to Southern Utah and back. He is taking his permit test early next Monday morning at 7am before he goes to his first day of Drivers Ed. He is missing the first week of Driver's Ed classes, and it only goes through June 30th, so... despite his poor track record over the past year for being able to catch up with late work, we're hoping he is able to get and stay on top of it after he gets back. So this summer Wesley is doing 1) Driver's Ed   2) an online fitness for life class, doing a Chemistry packet to make up his F in there Quarter 2 this past year, and he is taking a BYU Independent study class to make up for the 4 Fs he got in Math this year. Sorry, W, I'm not trying to rub it in by bringing up that you got Fs. Just telling it like it is. Have a good break this week and be ready to come hit it hard on Monday! Bye Wes! 

 

Since I was awake I took a long 90 minute bike ride that was really fun. I got home and got Lily was awake and started doing some chores. She's our new oldest kid this week and she was highly motivated to work, because she had a birthday party at noon today. I was so proud of her, she had all her stuff done before noon: reading, practicing, and cleaning. She cleaned up the whole kitchen which was a big mess after last night. She is stepping up to be a big helper like a big kid. 

Hyrum headed back to Philadelphia today. His flight was at 1:00 pm. I tried to wake up Hyrum as soon as I got back from my bike ride so that we could go by the orthodontist to get a quick peek at his bite, cause Hyrum's poor teeth don't line up. When we took his mission pictures and I was trying to help him smile naturally, I told him to close his mouth and he couldn't cause his teeth are totally misaligned. I don't know how that happened but I was hoping Dr. Dave could just take a quick look and give us some counsel. But H thought it was stupid to try and go by before he goes to the airport and didn't know what the point was and yada yada and he dragged his feet and so we didn't have time, so I gave up and we loaded up the little boys in the car and left around 10:45 to take him to the airport. Dropping him off at departures~ everyone say "Bye Hyrum!"

My parents came by yesterday to say bye to him too. That looks like a genuine smile Hyrum! There ya go! Good job.

While I was taking H to the airport, Corey was on his way down to BYU for an EFY camp that she will be at all week. They did a little walking around campus before she checked in so Corey could plant seeds of Cougar pride in her heart.

Check in was at 11. 

She is attending a Habits for Life youth camp down there, and we'll pick her up on Saturday. Hyrum loved his EFY experience, We never our oldest 3 to EFY, but I know Joseph, Mel and Ethan all went to Summerfest at BYU. I can't find the blog posts though - Corey probably went and documented them, so those pics are somewhere in our cloud storage. I think Ethan might have gone twice? So that will have to count as their fun pre-college experience in Happy Valley. We're hoping Abi has a great time. 

So we "only" have six kids at home this week! Wow! Lily was with friends most of the day, since they kept hanging out after the bday party. Corey got home and played a little bit of soccer with Sophi, but then decided he can get more playing done with more kids by biking. So I took them up the canyon and dropped them off. I was going to park at the bottom and bike up, but I figured they'd be down before I got very far coming up to meet them. 

But then I thought "No... I rode with Daniel last week, so I know that Corey's not going to get anywhere with him..." So I was happy to see I could park very close by at Grit Mill and I rode over and caught up to them, cause they hadn't gone far at all, and we tried to help D for a bit but he was pretty discouraged and scared. 

We knew one of us should catch up to the rest of the kids, so Corey and P hurried ahead and Daniel and I very slowly followed them. Daniel does not trust the hand brake yet or now how to use it, so he cried and complained, poor kid, as he walked his bike. Daniel you're doing great! You just barely learned to ride without training wheels anyway, don't be hard on yourself. He wasn't ready for Slickrock and might not be ready for Tahoe next month, but he's doing great. When we finally got to the bottom we waited for them to come back. 

They had crossed the canyon to do the fun little trail I showed them on Saturday. I didn't catch them on camera, but Owen and Sophi looked super cute in action, biking back up to us. Today Daniel did his best moving up to Owen's bike, Owen moved up to Natalie's, Natalie to Sophi's, Sophi to Lily's, and it was good that Lily was with friends cause we wouldn't have a bike for her. 

Actually I guess she could have just used mine (which is Abi's) since I ended up walking anyway. When they got back, they were ready for some water, but it was up in the car! So they timed me and I happily rode up the canyon, and it took me about 10 minutes to get back to the car. I drove down to pick them back up. We loaded up the bikes. The kids like to help with that. 

So this is kinda fun and feels somewhat manageable with just half of us! I called Nicole today (trying to not fall asleep on my drive home from the airport) and she laughed that a friend with 3 kids told her yesterday "I can't keep on top of it with my three, and you have DOUBLE that!" And Nicole said "Well, I have a friend who has double my kids!" It was funny. It's all relative. Also, no matter how many kids you have, they take 100%, so expect to give it your all. So six kids is nice. We haven't been here since 2007 when Abi was born! This should be easy right? Lily Sophi Natalie Owen Daniel Peter. Sweet Peter asleep this morning. Corey brought him into our bed while I was gone biking.

Oh, I also shared this picture with JMEH over fb messenger - this was Peter when I found him on Saturday morning. I said it looked like he fell asleep saying his prayers!

Joseph said "I fell asleep saying my prayers like that all the time on my mission!" I think Lily is excited to be the oldest. I am hopeful that this week I will be able to exercise every day, keep on top of housework, and maybe completely catch up on the blog. I don't really expect to have any quiet time or for listening during scriptures to improve much. But it's fun when things get changed up a bit. 

And our rose bushes are in full bloom, I'll put my plethora of pictures on my naturer blog - they are so lovely!

Saturday Outings

School is out and summer weather is officially here. It was pretty hot today, so we thought we'd take a bike ride at noon. Corey just couldn't stand staying home with hyper active children, so they loaded up the bike rack. Owen's bike is pretty small on him, so Corey had him try to ride Natalie's bike and it was a success! That means Daniel could use Owen's bike. And he could ride it fine, but he can't stop. Corey took WSOP on a little trail that runs along the canyon road and they started to bike up to the Quarry Trail. Peter waiting for everyone to get the bikes down. 

Corey with Peter riding shotgun, Owen and Sophi ahead of him. Can you see their little heads?

After they were on their way I drove over to the Quarry Trail with Daniel to help him practice braking. It didn't go well. 

It was hot, so soon we were done and headed back home. The kids' heads were soaked with sweat, so I thought we should go swimming. So we did. But first I gave Owen and Daniel their summer haircuts. Then sunblock on Daniel's scar. Off we go! Peter fell asleep on the way there and through the transfer into the pool area and onto the grass. 

They had fun. We got there at 5 and stayed until 8. Every hour on the hour they have everyone get out for a pool check. My sister thinks they started doing that after a little 7 year old drowned in 2014. Very sad. 😢 My kids were a little concerned when, only like 2 minutes after they got in, the water got turned off and everyone was getting out. I think it's a good precaution, but yeah I have to be careful watching these kids. That boy was 7 years old, I was there with 4 kids under that age. It helps that ODP all wear their arm swimmers the whole time, and I did my best to keep an eye on Natalie and Sophi. At the 7:00 pool check, Daniel was hungry and had had enough fun and was ready to be done. 

I said we'd get pizza on the way home and we waited. Peter was cold and sat with me. His hands were all pruned up... he was a little concerned.

Cute little boy.

Around 7:30 I caved and decided to get two cinnamon pretzels for the kids to share. D and P waiting for me to go get them a snack.

I failed to let Daniel and Peter know that they had to share these with SN&O. 

They were a little ticked when, after their siblings noticed their bounty, they came and tore off some and gobbled it up. Ok, that's all, we're going to get pizza, go get in your last swim!

Owen in the floor fountains, Sophi and Natalie in the medium pool.

Then off to a drive through Little Caesars for pizza at the park. I drove further to use the drive through, since I didn't bring a change of clothes and was still in my swimsuit.

They grabbed a slice and ate it as they played. Not the French way of dining: Eat when you're eating. Play when it's time to play. Don't mix them together! Sorry, we'll try to do better. 

They ran up a little hill, I was like "You guys could be in Costa Rica right now with that forest around you!" (see pic 1)

It was fun. The missionaries came over at 8, so I missed that but Corey and Wes and Abi were able to visit with them. We need to be more prayerful about how and who we can share the gospel with. 

Our Home = Soccer Stadium

Hi there. Today is October 30, 2023. I am coming back here to June 4, 2021 to try and recreate a little bit, at least, of a post that I had here. I made this post in 2021 after Corey and I were talking at Hyrum's graduation (at Rio Tinto Stadium) about all the things we need to do and how we were kind of failing at a lot of them and how we felt sorry that our kids were not striving academically and it was our fault. It was a pretty good post of me trying to advise myself on what to do, but I found out several months ago (spring 2023 I think) that Wesley got DELETED it, cause he was embarrassed by it. And Wes I don't mean to throw you under the bus by recreating this post, but this was an important part in our story as a family and in your story too. AND it wasn't just about you - our family was dysfunctional on many levels. For example - on this same day, we were trying to figure out why the new lawn mower wasn't working... Abi had been mowing the lawn the week before, it started blowing smoke, we took it back in, the people at Home Depot/Lowe's said it was weird and that they had never had something like that happen before... They allowed Corey to exchange. We take another new lawn mower home, and it starts acting all weird again too! That was when we came to find out, it wasn't the lawn mover. Turns out Abi was putting gas in the gas take AND gas in the oil! Here we are dumping out the gas from the oil onto the driveway (prob not good for the gutter/environment) and teaching her what to do to help a lawnmower function properly, and hoping the lawnmower can be revived.

So Wes, it's not just you, or just Abi, it's all of us together - learning but getting it wrong a lot on the way - It just felt like we were a mess! A pen that Wes got from his counselor summed up what we needed nicely: GET SOME HELP!

So my iphone didn't have the pictures back to 2021, but google photos did, so I was able to find these pictures from that day. So Wes deleted this post originally because was embarrassed (and all this is from rusty memory now...) but I THINK he was embarrassed cause I talked about taking him to school at the end of the year in a last ditch effort to help his very poor grades. His pottery teacher was not sympathetic and didn't let him turn in his assignment late and gave him a lecture. But his history teacher was miraculously there and said Wesley's grade was bad for several reasons, but allowed him to take/retake a test that could help his score. 

And for another quiz or something, she offered to let him do it orally with her right then and there, cause anything would get him up to passing. Doing the oral quiz -

You can tell by his posture that he was not feeling like a champ. Wes was embarrassed and crying, but she helped him and he got enough to pass the class. Then we went to see if his math teacher was there and his counsellor. He was just dying inside at his situation in school and how it got to this point. I had been super frustrated before, but found myself feeling compassion for him and trying to comfort him.

Ok, so back to Hyrum's graduation. We went out to eat on Friday night with Hyrum for date night, with Corey's parents, before Hyrum headed back out to Philadelphia. 

While we had been at the stadium the night before, talking about our kids and the reasons we seemed to currently be struggling on several levels, and Corey was like "We just need to do it!" Which made me want to scream, cause that was not advice that was going to help me. I wanted to get into some of the specifics and talk about the obstacles and why it was hard and complicated, and Corey was like "just do it" and I was like "HOW?!?! I honestly don't know how..." I recognize there is a lot that we need to do, but I need a PLAN in place, and a system of ORGANIZATION to help me function as I try to do all the things!!!  And then I looked around at the stadium that Hyrum's graduation was in. And sure, a manager or owner could say "Just do it - make and run a sports stadium" but there are a million things that go into that! Building it first of all would be huge, and then the maintenance too - you've got lights, painting the field, mowing the field (or is it turf? grass? water?) you've got people to clean the stadium, sweep up, trash to empty, bathrooms, power, security, parking, welcoming teams, banners, the jumbo tron, like there are a hundred big things, and a million little things behind all of those. I felt like it helped me gain evidence for myself that it wasn't just a matter of doing it or not, there really were a lot of things we needed to figure out. And this seems to be a recurring theme for life - just trying to figure out how to do all the things. So just fyi, here I am in October 2023, and still wondering the same thing. We need to hire an experienced stadium manager, or with some help, hopefully I can still become one. 

2021 Grad

Hyrum graduated tonight. 

He flew in from Philadelphia yesterday, arriving here around noon. Today he took his AP Psychology test from 2-5. I bet he was the only graduating senior today that was still doing work up to hours before walking. What a committed student, no? He took that over at Corey's parents house and then got a ride with a friend to graduation. He had to be there 45 minutes early. Corey and I left late but got there in time and didn't miss anything important. We were there to see when he walked in front of the camera... he is the grad right in the middle of this pic - right after the guy with the white V-back thingy.

So once I saw him I was able to follow him and see where he was sitting, and then we were able to wave to each other during the program. 

There are three guys under the "U" and Hyrum is one of the, he's the one on the right. Do you see him?

I got a few pics of him on the jumbotron. It didn't occur to me until now that instead of taking a picture of that picture, it would be better to take screen shots of the livestreamed video recording on youtube. We were easy to spot because we were in the front row with Corey's parents. It was a nice program, you can watch it here. 

Last night I was feeling a little sad for Ethan that he didn't come out for his graduation walk. He had already moved on, and it was almost all virtual anyway, but still I was happy that the 2021 gradation seemed to be pretty normal and I felt a little bad for the 2020 grads. I hope they have an awesome 5 year reunion (that's your job, Eth, as Senior Class President. The 5 year, 10, and 20 year reunions are all on you (I warned him when he ran for that office!) 

So we watched the presentation of the graduates for a while. Hyrum's name was read 22 minutes into the presentation of the graduates, exactly an hour and a half into the graduation ceremony.

(You're welcome for my finding that exact spot for you.) He's a cute kid. He seemed genuinely to enjoy the fist bumps!

I walked over to try and get a closer picture of him. I don't think he saw me.

After he got his diploma he was in a new seat on the front row of the middle section.

Before Hyrum left for graduation, Corey took him to Skyline to get a few cap and gown shots. 

Corey had a picture taken at this same spot 27 years ago with the same... metal "thing". 

I don't know what it is, but it was a gift from some graduating class. And it was there by where we have picked up and dropped off for carpool for the past 4 years. 

Hyrum's class is the first class to graduate that spent their freshman year at Skyline. So they are the longest time attending graduates ever in Skyline's history, so far (unitl next year) ...but they were the FIRST!

This is Hyrum's "I can't pretend to smile anymore... are we done yet" expression.

Ok, yes, you're done.

All the kids were so speedy at turning in their cap and gown that we didn't get a picture of that after the ceremony was over. Maybe cause it was almost 9:30 and all the kids were ready to go party.

So that's good that we got the pictures of him before. 

We gave Hyrum a ride home, he changed clothes, and then his friend Aidan game to pick him up and they headed over to a friends house where they are probably playing video games. 

But his body is 2 hours ahead, so he was pretty tired on the drive home. We'll see how long he lasts. We left the door unlocked. 

Last Day of School

Sophi, Natalie and Owen finished school last week. Abi and Lily are done today. Hopefully Wes and Hyrum will be done tomorrow. 

I helped host a bridal shower for one of Joseph's BFF's fiance. (Talmage's bride Cami). It was fun, and my first time helping do something like that. I suspect there will be more opportunities like this in the future! I mostly helped with sending out invites, counting the RSVPs, and collecting money for the group gift. It was fun. I bet we'll be there with Joseph soon. Joseph's other BFF Scotty and his wife Xani (who ran for SBO with Joseph) are expecting! I'm excited for them. 

Abi and Lily got their yearbooks yesterday. Lily still went today, cause she had made a poster to give to Ms Reeves (?) who might be leaving. Abi sluffed and spent the day with her friends. 

Here are a few pictures of their fun. They went to Holladay Center and had their scooters stolen by some boys, but they chased them down and got the scooters back. Something like that.

At home, I was talking with Hyrum about how sometimes you feel like a failure and like you don't know what the heck you're doing or how to do it... (I feel like that a lot) and I was sharing this so that we could try to help him do better at sales when he goes back out to Philly. But he might just change from sales and be come a technician. But you have to be 21 to be a technician, so he'd be an assistant technician. But anyway, as we were talking, and I shared how sometimes I feel like I'm failing as a parents, well Sophi heard that, and ever the sensitive one, she wanted to let me know that it was NOT TRUE and that I am a great parent, Corey and I are AMAZING parents! And so they made this poster for the front door. Super cute. 

Thank you Sophi. I probably do an ok job, but it's also ok to be honest when you are struggling. I hope I can demonstrate that. Be positive - be grateful and humble about your blessings and face trials with courage. 

Sun Mon Tues

I'm catching up on the blog. On Sunday, I did like 7 entries, trying to get through May, which has gotten away from me. Corey took the kids downtown and they went by the Salt Lake Cemetery. Any other day of the week, they'd think that was a really lame outing, but on a Sunday, they are happy to take what they can get. Corey said they were all very interested in the cemetery and who was there and they were asking all sorts of cute questions. I stayed home and blogged away. After they got back, I went down to help and be a mom. Corey had put on The King's Speech, then he took Peter up to change his diaper, which must have been bad cause they took a bath, and then they went to bed. When I went in our room to check on them, Corey was asleep but Peter was still awake. It's all right, Corey had put in his time. So I took Peter away and the kids dilly-dallied and stayed awake too late for a school night. But it's the last week of school, so they'll catch up on sleep after it's over. I just kept blogging and one by one they fell asleep. I left the lights on so I could see the keyboard better. Peter gave up a little after midnight. 

On Monday we talked to our missionaries and Hyrum. We sure love these kids, out there getting life lessons.

Yesterday I was still in the blog zone so I finished up another 7 entries, yay. Abi apparently took this picture of me blogging while the kids took a bath...

Natalie was helping me supervise them. I have a lot of good helpers around here. 

Abi had a life lesson Monday night - she heard back that she did not win SBO. She took it very well.

They had the election assembly today. She texted the winner and was a very graceful second place winner. Sophi to a soccer tryout tonight. 

She really enjoyed soccer and she is pretty good, so when I saw that there were tryouts for her age group, so I figured we'd give it a go. I don't know what it entails, but I dropped her off and waited until Corey came to be there with her, and then I went back home so I could leave again and take Wes and his friends to the yearbook stomp. Wes took a break from his studies to attend, we carpooled out there - I took and his friends mom is bringing them back. He promised he'd be back in time to finish a 3D design sculpture that is due tomorrow morning. After I got back, I took the little kids to the school park. Natalie showed me a trick. 

Owen playing some tetherball, Daniel on the spider web course.

Peter was concerned for the ball. "Ball stuck!"

So here we are. It's past midnight and Wes is keeping his word... I just took some pictures of his head for a self portrait he needs to do out of clay. I'm about to head to bed but I guess he's staying up again. 

He promised he'll finish it in time. We're crossing our fingers for him and his grades.