Month: August 2020

Lily has been taking the kids on more walks recently. Today, the kids picked strawberries and ate them at our Bishop’s house (per their permission) and they also found some beautiful roosters and chickens. What fun!

Recently Lydia, Mary and Ammon, have been interested in roller skating. They have a day dream of all having real roller skates, but in the meantime, they took some magnetile pieces (4 wheels each) that are meant to be the bottom pieces for trucks and they used rubber bands to strap them to their feet. Here is a picture below. They are so sweet:

Georgia has had particular challenges with her Parkinson’s disease lately and the anxiety that is connected to it. The biggest challenge recently has been that noises in the house trigger her panic and anxiety, and her room is right in the middle of all of the commotion. Our house is very noisy considering the children’s comings, goings, playing and fighting etc. Georgia has been retreating to the garage and sitting in her car, and that helps some, but it also didn’t feel like the best accommodation to her, and it wouldn’t be sustainable through winter.

Today Georgia hit a breaking point and said she was thinking she might need to move out and live with her friend Nelly. The idea was that even if she still lived here much of the time, she could still have a place to go where it would be quiet. My dad graciously drove down on short notice to show us some nearby places. Mary was super sad at the thought of Georgia not being around all the time and suggested we just soundproof her room. That kindof went in one ear and out the other at the moment she said it, but then later in the evening, I realized that a large section of our garage is connected to Georgia’s bathroom. We all started talking and we realized we could build her an additional sound proof room that would be surrounded by quite on all sides, floor and ceiling, and would have sound proofing on top of that and we could also soundproof her current room. That would give her space for a care taker as well when that became necessary. We called our dear contractor friend Moroni and walked through plans. At the end of the day, we decided to go that route and not have Georgia get a place on her own, especially given the amount of needs she has when she is not feeling well. We even mutually discussed the possibility of a care center before we realized the home addition was an option, given that some care centers are quite nice and just like little apartments with helping hands. I’m so glad we found a solution to keep her here! The thought of her leaving is very sad.

As a side benefit to all of the house-hunting, it was a delight to see my dad. He was up-beat, kind and delightful and everyone enjoyed his company. Here are some other pictures and a video from the day:

In the video below Clarissa is unsurprisingly talking about BooBoo Bottom. I think that originated from “BooBoo Butt” from a page in The Book with No Pictures by B.J. Novack. Clarissa is super silly and it’s no wonder she has fallen in love with talking about BooBoo Bottom (and also underpants).

Recently I stumbled upon the song Ablaze by Alanis Morisette:

I fell in love with this song recently and shared it with Lily one night and she loved it too. We are basically now both mega-fans of Alanis Morissette. We don’t know too much about her, but what we did learn we loved. She’s in a committed marriage with two beautiful children and she homeschools her children in California. In her interviews she comes across as delightful, normal, humble and fun. I’ve definitely been on a bit of an Alanis Morissette kick recently!

I love the song because does a great job expressing the joy of parenting as well as parental hopes for their children. Recently in my night prayer I prayed that I could be as much of a light to my children as they are to me. They are so joyful and bright and add so much light to our lives.

I’m writing this a week later and the main thing I remember about Saturday is that I did a lot of cleaning. Cleaning is easy for me after a hard week of work. My brain is usually too burnt out to engage much with the children, but my body is dying to move from sitting in a chair all week. That is a perfect recipe for cleaning a ton on Saturday. It’s actually therapeutic, and the hope is that with the house in order Sunday, and my brain a little more energized, I can spend more of that day focusing on the beautiful family in my home.

Here are some pictures of the children being so cute and sweet and also a video of them dancing to “Ablaze”.