Hello, Summer!

May was busy, May was fun.  Let's review now that it's done.

Of course the best thing about May was MOTHER'S DAY!  I love Mother's Day.  I told my kids it must be because they're all so awesome that I love it, because I hear stories of moms who spend every second Sunday in May beating themselves up and offering apology prayer vigils, but I have no desire whatsoever to do those things.  Bring on the socks screen-printed with lovely poems and pictures (Julia)!  Hand over the linen bread-cloth with a hand-sewn heart on the corner (Eli)!  Read me that adoring letter and let me see your hand print one more time (Katharine)!  You want some of the large stash of Jelly Belly jelly beans you just gave me (Abdiel)?  Of course!  I love to share!  Because I LOVE MOTHER'S DAY!  The heart-shaped pancakes you made for breakfast were delicious, Julia!  The hugs, kisses, and beaming faces were all so sweet, Kinder!  There's nothing like a squishy baby to squeeze on a day celebrating moms and families.  And there's nothing to make one anticipate the coming years like the joy found in duets of "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" (harp/flute), "Long, Long, Ago" (cello/piano) or  "Gavotte" (violin/piano).  There was more--like two books of talks by Pres. Packer and a cloth-bound copy of Mark Twain's Mississippi Writings from Justin or a gorgeous bouquet from Edible Arrangements from my grandma--but the description provided will suffice to remember that May 10th, 2015 was terrific.

Besides that, it's jumping the gun a bit.  Before we arrived at Mother's Day, in fact, just the day before we arrived at Mother's Day, Eli performed in her first harp festival.  She did fantastic!  We arrived through the rain and after a violin lesson and grocery shopping with just enough time for Eli to select which of the 10 harps available she would use to perform her prepared pieces of Go Tell Aunt Rhody and London Bridge.  The choice was an easy one; the very same Lyon & Healy Ogden on which she is accustomed to practice at home sat front and center in the middle of the line-up.  Any nervousness she may have felt vanished at this windfall.  She performed her pieces with flair and pizzazz, earning a gold star Superior at the performance (secured by receiving a perfect score from one of the judges and very high scores from the other two judges) and a medallion after the scores were all tallied (secured by receiving one of the highest scores among her competition).  Go, Eli!

The weekend after
Mother's Day we headed down to St. George on a mission, a mission to send my dad off to Toledo, OH for his last year of law school feeling amply loved and supported.  We spent the week preparing our ammo: enough freezer meals to fill the little ice chest in his above-a-gas-station apartment, and a custom-fit book on tape.  The book on tape was actually a CD, of course, with the funniest of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories read by Julia, Eli, Katharine, me and Justin and other inspiring selections from other great authors, like the section about Abdiel from Milton's Paradise Lost read by Justin and Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" read by me.

At some point while making final preparations Friday morning and early afternoon (we picked the older girls up from school as soon as Eli returned from a field trip and headed out) we learned that Justin would have to stay behind to offer comfort to a friend whose baby had just passed away.  Down-hearted but undaunted, I mounted the captain's seat of the Silver Bullet and headed south.  Despite the little tyrant in the back forbidding most music and all books-on-tape, the trip passed nevertheless with little incident.

In fact, there was little incident at all until about 2:43 the next morning.  At that unseemly hour I was awakened from what had been a very short and uncomfortable slumber anyway (I had flung away a small spider when lying down for the night in the first place, which made me very wary of the night ahead!) to the loud squawkings of two children who shall remain unnamed.  I emerged from my room to find all the lights in the center portion of my parent's home lighted, the suitcase dumped out in the middle of the floor, one of my children stripped down to her underthings in the midst of said dumping, loudly pontificating on the mysteries of the universe to her younger sibling.  "What on earth are you doing?!"  I whispered fiercely.  What they were doing was changing clothes, because what they had been doing was playing in the garage with the kittens, an activity which had been forbidden even during business hours due to my naked child's allergic tendencies after contact with animals.  In the daytime she had scoffed at such allergic assertions, but here in the wee hours of a May morn she had discovered what one immortal had said to equally ill-effect, "Mother knows best, listen to your mummsie."  With nose running, sneezes mounting, and eyes watering and puffing like so many blow fish, she was now trying to change her clothes in the hopes that these alone were effecting such ill-desired responses upon her person.  All while haranguing her sister whom she had dragged into this mess.

Soon after putting down this rebellion, another erupted, though this was a simple matter of a baby needing to be fed and changed.  After that, with head to the pillow a little after four am, it was at first with chagrin and then with relief that I realized the new squawkings emanating from some corner of the homestead were not another renegade, but only a rooster.

Despite extreme fatigue, the next day was lovely.  We helped Beau weed his watermelon farm, spent more time admiring the masterful make-over my dad was working in the master bath as a goodbye present to my mom (complete with sauna and jacuzzi tub!), and generally enjoyed the gorgeous weather that is the unique offering of a desert in a very rainy May.  We picnicked in the park next to a baseball field, played catch in the front yard, and tried to keep Abdiel from killing any small animals.  (Not an exaggeration.)  We made what would be my dad's last meal at home and sat down to it rather late, but he had disappeared on some errand and was not yet returned.  With an 8 o'clock bedtime and it already being 8:05, we reluctantly thought we had better sit down without him.  Not too long after we heard him walk through the door.  "Opa!" we cheered.  "Give me an 'O', give me a 'P', give me an 'A'," we chanted.  He ate it up, and then started in on his own cheer, "Give me a 'D', give me an 'A'" I thought it was for the sake of Beau, who though certainly ousted by nine and counting grandchildren still had the right to call his father "Dad".  But, lo and behold, who should come walking through the back door at that last D but our very own Justin!  Justin!  Hooray!  What a good joke and what a surprise!  My dad's errand had been to retrieve Justin from the home in Cedar City to which he had hitched a ride with his sister and family who had been in Provo the same weekend.  And my parents had known all along, too, since Justin arranged the whole thing just hours after we had left Friday afternoon.  What a great husband!

We didn't know whether my dad would leave that night, in the wee hours of a Sunday morning, or after we'd returned from 1 pm church.  It turned out to be early enough that Beau and Abdiel were still abed, but late enough that the rest of us could send him off with a hearty, "He's our grandpa, he's our hero, he's a jolly good fellow, he's the very greatest Opa that we've ever come to know.  Opa weeeeeee love you sooooooooo, Opa we-we-we-we-we-we love you sooooooooo!"  (Sung to the tune of the German Ob-la-di).  He listened to the first verse, drove off during the second, then threw the car in reverse to catch the chorus and then truly hit the road during the third.  It won't really be too long a parting since Davy is getting married June 20th and Chari almost a month to the day after that.
After a late afternoon sacrament meeting we made it home in record time with Justin at the helm of the Silver Bullet.  We opened the door to a second surprise--the house I had left pretty close to shambles on Friday afternoon was now spic and span from top to bottom.  Justin had spent five solid hours Friday evening cleaning everything!  From organized music baskets to mopped floors, the house looked fantabulous.  What a superbly great husband!

From here we will resort to highlights:  Julia and Katharine were part of a small ensemble performing Irish Dance at their school Art Gala.

Julia also performed with the choir and all three girls had their art on display.  

Katharine performed in her Kindergarten plays.  She dazzled crowds large enough to fill the Colosseum with her performance as Mama Monkey, a role in which she encouraged her young son to "Stand up to bullies!  There's room enough for two in that pond!"  

We hosted an end-of-year party for Julia's female classmates.  It was supposed to be a water party.  The temperature hovered around 60 degrees and the skies poured down rain just as they had done for the previous four weeks of May, so we instead had an outdoor obstacle course during the brief rain respite, a couple indoor games, and homemade pizzas and ice cream floats.  A good time was had by all.  

The next day we had a play date with the Clarke girls while their parents and ward packed their moving van.  Anne has been Katharine's best friend since we moved from Connecticut so this was a very sad service we performed.  Luckily they're just moving to American Fork.

Finally, after field days and 3K races and movie parties and pizza parties and ice cream parties, school is out for the summer!  We all have big plans for it.  Hopefully we can keep a timely report on how it goes.