Of course we always have reason to celebrate because we have that adorable face around, but this week offered a few extra reasons. Most consequentially, Monday was Chocolate Cake Day! Our favorite real estate agents send us a Celebrate Every Day! calendar at the beginning of each year and then a monthly newsletter that includes five stickers to put on the calendar so you can choose which days to celebrate. With five children able to have a say at home, everyone gets to pick one day, and someone wisely chose Chocolate Cake day. We say wisely, because Monday afternoon Katharine received news that she was selected to attend Founding Forward in Philadelphia March 13-16th! We were all so excited for her and dubbed this chocolate cake Katharine's Chocolate Cake.
Not to be outdone, and completely inexplicably, Elisabeth's Tuesday mission call arrived just a few hours later on Chocolate Cake Day. Elisabeth is not one to hide her emotions well, and as the State World Languages Sterling Scholar, the stakes felt higher for her to serve at least a foreign-speaking, if not a foreign-serving, mission. When she proposed opening the mission call on her own before deciding whether to invite friends, neighbors, colleagues, and farm animals to a grand opening, we consequently agreed that that might be a good idea. The family felt privileged to actually join in the opening at Family Home Evening, though, and we were absolutely thrilled (and shocked!) by the call.
With a little tart cherry sauce and whipped cream, Katharine's Chocolate Cake quickly became a make-shift Black Forest Cake to celebrate Elisabeth's call. Sometimes the fates are cruel and ironic; sometimes they're accommodating. Thank you, Fates!
Tuesday at 11 am Justin had the highlight of the year introducing Jeff Rosen at the BYU Forum. The highlight for him--and perhaps all in attendance and all watching afterward--was directing the recitation of D&C Section 4 by a Marriott Center full of BYU students. Justin is doing good things in good places.
Tuesday night we once again forgot Gwyn's 6 pm basketball practice. This girl has yet to make it to a practice, which makes her Saturday games pretty painful for her since basketball is a skill she is still acquiring. Rushing to get dinner made, Katharine and Abdiel to 7 pm Mutual, and people out the door to the 7 pm BYU Men's basketball game, Lia announced exasperatedly, "Ah! Gwyn! You had basketball practice at 6!! We never remember basketball practice!" The next words out of her mouth, "Okay, go change, Gwyn!" But as soon as Gwyn was up the stairs, "Actually it's fine, Gwyn! You can just go in that!" (meaning her logoed long-sleeved polo and blue pleated uniform skirt). Gwyn dutifully huffed down the stairs and got in the car with Justin. Several minutes later Justin called home to report that Gwyn had been all storm clouds and thunderbolts over in the passenger seat en route to the game. "Gwyn, do you not want to go?" Justin asked, completely befuddled, since Katharine and Abdiel had been begging not to go to Mutual in order to get a seat at the game.
"NOO!" Gwyn harumphed.
"Well, I can take you back, Gwyn, we don't have...."
"No! Mommy will be SOO mad at me if I don't go," she sulked back.
"I don't think she really cares if you go, Gwyn, someone el...." Justin challenged.
"Yes, she will! She wants me to get good at basketball," Gwyn retorted.
The beginning of a lightbulb began to flash.
"Gwyn, where do you think we're going?" Justin asked.
"To BASKETBALL PRACTICE!!!" Gwyn thundered.
"Gwyn, we're going to the BYU basketball GAME--President's section? All you can eat treats?? Quality time with your good ol' Dad???" Justin questioned.
"OOOOHHHHH!!!!!" Gwyn laughed, totally relieved. She was still laughing at the mistake when Justin called to report it.
After making an appearance at Mutual, Katharine and Abdiel were dropped off at the game while Lia took Elinor, Gabriel, and Miriam to buy ice cream and toppings for the opening party to be held the following evening. All went off without a hitch, until the next day. Now lactose-intolerant after so many babies (for some reason--is this a thing?), Lia bought what promised to be lactose-free vanilla at Walmart along with the toppings and a package of gum that Katharine had asked her to buy the next time she went to Walmart. It being very late when they returned home, and the thermometer registering 28 degrees outside, Lia decided to leave all the purchases in the car and get them out the next morning.
The next morning, after mentioning to Katharine that there was gum in a Walmart bag in the car for her, Lia stopped in the laundry room to get something for Gabriel. There sat two Walmart bags, each with a box of ice cream in it. "Oh, no!" Lia exclaimed, noting that everything in the bag was now covered in a lactose-free slime. She hurriedly put both cartons in the freezer, then went out to retrieve the eight cartons she had left out in the "refrigerated" car. Lia doesn't know what she didn't know, but every single carton was as mushy as the most perfectly softened butter. A well-timed phone call from an Arts Council related contact kept her despair in check as she whisked all those mushy contents into the downstairs freezer. If any of the neighbors who showed up at 7 minded, or any of the freshman ward to whom Elisabeth announced at 8:30 minded, they didn't let on.
As luck would have it, the first meeting of the Mother-Daughter book club that was part of Gwyn's Christmas present was scheduled to take place on the same day as the mission call, at 7:15. The other members graciously offered to have a shortened and earlier version to accommodate. We still had a lovely, albeit brief, time discussing the intricacies of Edward Eager's book, Half Magic. 
Thursday Justin put Lia down for a much-needed nap and then took Gwyn, Elinor, and Gabriel for a quick cameo at the Timpanogos Academy Art Show. Here are some of their pieces. He had to hurry because the art show went from 5-7, Gwyn had a violin lesson at 6 pm, and Lia was supposed to meet up with a friend at 7. Master Time Mind that he is, Justin managed to hit all that and more. He even brought home croissants for us to celebrate Croissant Day. When Gwyn and Lia arrived at her new violin teacher's house--a woman who also teaches viola at BYU and has her educational pedigree framed on her wall, her teachers were such big deals--they were greeted with a hearty, "Happy National Viola Day!"
"Oh!" said Lia, embarrassed that she's so uncultured, "I thought it was National Croissant Day, so we just ate croissants!" This was not that big a deal until the next mom brought her child in and was haled in the same way. Having played with several symphonies across the U.S. herself and everything about her appearance and manner just screaming "culture," Lia felt gratified to hear her respond, "Oh! I thought it was National Brussel Sprouts Day!"
Earlier in the day, Lia checked Abdiel out a little early from school so he could do temple baptisms in fulfillment of his temple and family history goal. He and Katharine have determined to do temple baptisms twice a month leading up to the time that the Lindon Temple will be dedicated. Lia had dropped him off in a sweater and coat. He returned in a T-shirt. Since there has been no end of sickness at the Collings home since about last October, Lia interrogated Abdiel about this.
"Did I drop you off in that?" she asked.
"Uh, no, I was wearing a sweatshirt before," Abdiel answered.
"Where's your sweatshirt?"
"It got mud all over it."
"At recess?"
"Yeah."
"But did you make the catch?" she offered, trying to be understanding and encouraging.
"It wasn't from football," he said.
"Then how did you get mud all over it?"
"Oh, well, we were walking down to the other end of the field for the kickoff after someone made a touchdown, and these other kids, not in our grade, were playing soccer, and the ball came over toward me, and they were playing World Cup, so I ran at it and kicked it really hard while yelling, 'NORTH KOREA!' but I slipped in the mud and fell when I kicked it." Huge smile from our resident stoic Abdiel. "It was really funny."
"Did everyone think it was funny, or just you?"
"No, everyone thought it was funny. The whole field was laughing."
We guess we'll forgive him another week of cold, muddy sickness since he went down with a (nuclear) bang.
Saturday, we cleaned the house and played our own basketball games. Justin also took Gwyn to the Orem Rec Center to have a little one-on-one practice so she wouldn't dread her 2 pm game too much. She made excellent progress and Justin is resolved to make her his female T.J. Hawes through daily summer practice sessions.Cleaning the house was made much more interesting by the arrival of a gift from the Egans: a Roomba! The robotic floor cleaner drove all the children to hide out in the living room (see above) while it spent two hours and fifteen minutes mapping a cleaning route for the main floor of the house. Katharine is in love. She thinks she may just grow up to be the proud owner of a Roomba instead of a dog, they're both so cute.
"D&C 4, 5-7: “Have faith, hope, charity and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify him for the work. Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence. Ask, and ye shall receive, knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
I think this means that we must serve the Lord with all our hearts, mights, minds and strengths.
I have two sisters—one preparing to go on a mission, and one currently on a mission, both in Germany, one of our families’ most heart-felt places. When Julia
was preparing to go on a mission, she was very nervous. Having a mission president would not be very easy to her, because she found it rather hard to share her feelings, which would be a problem while she was on a mission.
Even before her mission, Julia was doing the work of the Lord as much as she possibly could, being kind to everyone, sharing the scriptures with her little siblings, and doing baptisms for the dead as much as she could.
When Julia opened her mission call, to Frankfurt, Germany, she was overjoyed and knew that the Lord knew she was doing his work, and so sent her to her favorite place in the universe. Julia is currently doing very well on her mission right now, and comes home in March—she wanted to do more on her mission, so she extended.
Elisabeth is a talented harpist and language-speaker. She had no problem sharing her feelings, but she had another problem. Elisabeth speaks around seven different languages, including Italian, German, French, Latin, Spanish, and, worst of all, Russian.
She was very worried she would get called to a boring mission in the U.S. Worse, Julia called her with the bad news that the church had sent mission Presidents to Ukraine and Russia both. Elisabeth’s main focus in her languages was Russian.
What was Elisabeth going to do if she found herself stuck in a bombing when she was supposed to be sharing the scriptures?!!!
Elisabeth then opened her mission call, and was delighted to find that it was in Berlin, Germany, where she had spent the earliest years of her life with her parents and her beloved older sister. She could also practice her Russian, too, because of the many immigrants in Germany desperately in need of help that Elisabeth would happily provide.
Elisabeth is now preparing to go on her mission, reading scriptures, practicing German, and doing endowments and baptisms for the dead.
I know the church is true and that if we serve the Lord with all our heart, might, mind and strength as Elisabeth and Julia did, we will receive blessings from our Father in Heaven.
I say these things in the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen."
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