Puddle Jumping.

This was my favorite thing to do as a kid. 

Do you remember doing it?

I’m pretty excited to do it with my kids.  Well, I was so excited about it that I’ve been doing it since they were babes!  And now we have a cool camera that can get wet.

Then Nick found a better setting for the camera:  Pet Portrait.  Who knew?

And since the camera can get wet, I can get wet too.

The boys told me they were doing puddle yoga. 

Roz especially liked running back and forth over and over.

This is some baywatch running.  They both have it down to an art, no?

The Spring Chicken’s Scout

So by now you remember that to coax The Spring Chicken to your house you must offer up dyed eggs in good faith of her coming. 

It’s worth it to have The Spring Chicken come.  As we discovered last year, she’s generous with the candy and Cheetos. 

Take notes from our extremely efficient egg dying production line. 

If you looked back at last year, you’ll notice that unlike last year, my kids are clean and clothed.  I’m not going to place value judgments on that, but it is something to notice. 

All the kids enjoyed adding their own dyes and I was kept busy helping them control their enthusiasm. 

But this year, after our offering was made and waiting in the fridge, this creature showed up in the back yard:

We think maybe he’s Her scout or something, we must have passed inspection because a day or two later this came in the mail:

Dear Grandmas, thanks for your contributions.  The kids loved it all.

Some serious strategy was being discussed in this picture.  Egg hunting is a serious sport.

Enjoying the spoils:  But note to The Spring Chicken, Everett does not prefer Cadbury mini eggs or jelly beans.    If you could somehow jam lollypops in those eggs he’d be extremely happy about it. 

The chocolate mazes were well received by all.   And the Spring Chicken must have taken my letter about junk food into consideration, for this year the Cheetos had been replaced with Annie’s organic-or-something bunnies. 

Or maybe it was a subtle jab at the Easter bunny?  Who knows?  Here: eat bunnies, kids. 

They called it a snowpocalypse

They called it a snowpocalypse around here, and yet when I wrote to friends out of town about how we were weathering the weather they’d be like “Pax?  What is that?”  The way they were making things sound down here I figured the whole country was watching the winter superstorm.  They’re prolly all watching the Olympics or something like that.

Well, apocalypse on its way or no (it had just begun to snow), I wanted to make lolly-pops like my Mom used to around Valentine’s so I headed out to the craft store for a tiny vial of flavoring, it was the only ingredient I lacked.  Since I brought all three kids with me I ended up getting three vials of flavoring, since they were so fun to hold on to.  Cherry, Raspberry and Orange, yes sir.

 

When we marched out the doors with our tiny vials there was an inch and a half of snow on the ground!  We piled in the car and headed home – a short distance, no problem.

Well, it’s no problem if you’ve grown up driving in snow and driven in snow all your life.  Poor southerners, bless them, they just don’t get a chance to practice all that much, you know?  So, within a minute of driving, I witnessed my first accident right in front of me.  It wasn’t a bad one, just a guy slowly skidding into the lady in front of him.  I made sure they were okay and then proceeded around them.

I turned left onto a slight hill and traffic was at a standstill both ways.  After a bit I decided I would get out and see if I could help a bit.  I approached the guy in the lead as he spun and spun his tires.  I got his attention and he rolled down his window.  “I don’t think any one of us are getting up that hill,”  he says.  “Oh, we’ve got this,”  I reply.  “I grew up in Colorado and lived in the Midwest for a while.  Tell you what, you try again but this time just ever so slightly push on the gas – just give it a tiny bit – and I’ll push a bit and we’ll get you going.” 

He looked at me like I was a crazy girl.

I reassured him some and he assented, however he was clearly convinced that I was misinformed about hills in the snow.  He spun the tires, I reminded him “nice and gentle” and then a little push and a shove and he was on his way.  That made me feel good – like I know something about life.    I turned to walk back and the truck next in line started spinning his tires.  *tap tap tap* on the window: repeat the conversation from before.  He sort of listened for a moment and then *spinning tires, spinning  and ended up sliding off the road, A few people and I helped him out, then on his ‘way up the hill’ he slid around so much he tried to make it look like he meant to do a u-turn and then headed back down the slope.  Next person in line: you guessed it: spins tires: repeat conversation.  I felt like a really really useful person during that half hour or so. 

A little more drama ensued on the way home, but we made it safe.  As long as no one was around I felt very comfortable.  I got home sent the kids outside, and got to work making lolly-pops:

I think I called my mom every 10 minutes while I did this.  I was convinced that I was going to botch it up in a real way.  For some reason that big fat fancy newly purchased candy thermometer really intimidated me.  You see those staring eyes there on the handle?  To me they were saying: Do you really think you can do this?  I mean, I’d proved I was a useful winter driving coach, but candy making?  Dicey.

So while I harassed my mom and ended up successfully making lollypops, Nick walked four miles home in the snow.

Yes, that’s right.  Nick had taken the 11:55 bus to campus.  It had not started snowing at this point.  Well, once on campus and a check on his email revealed that at 12:05 UNC had shut down.  “All classes canceled it said.”  Well, there you go.  What timing.

He stayed for a couple of hours doing homework keeping an eye on the bus schedule.   However he soon noticed that the live bus updates stopped and when he looked outside traffic was grid-locked and it was snowing like crazy. 

He decided to walk to the bus stop to see if it was still running.  It may have been, but traffic wasn’t moving.  So, he did a few calculations, pulled up his hood, looked at his shoes and started walking home.  It was about 2:30.

Evidently traffic was crazy all the way down the main street in town.  He kept checking over his shoulder on the way down a slight hill to make sure no one was going to slide into him.  He realized as he passed the bus he had intended to take, there stopped on the road, that it was probably the 1:30 bus and not the 2:30 bus he would have caught.  This made him feel pretty good about his walking home decision.

When he knocked on the door at home I was finishing my candy and he was soaked through, with snowflakes in his eye-lashes.  But he said the walk had been nice enough – it wasn’t windy and he hadn’t gotten too cold.  Chapel Hill pretty much shut down and we got excited about a snow day off.

The next day around lunch time we noticed it was getting a bit chilly in the house.  A quick check on the thermometer revealed that though it was set to 70, it was about 66 degrees.  Our landlords brought over a small space heater and told us they were in the process of calling someone to get things taken care of. 

I spent some time thumbtacking every blanket we own over all the windows.  Then, not an hour later, we had a knock at the door and she was saying that the furnace fixer man couldn’t get in today, but he thought he might make it over tomorrow, but might not be able to buy the parts tomorrow, and therefore not be able to fix it.  So, she called around and found out that the Ace nearby was selling a fancy infrared heater, but the place wanted to close so she’d have to go get it NOW.  Nick felt like we would be fine, however I wasn’t as convinced, but I wasn’t saying much – though you can read my thoughts in my eyes.  (I mean I did want it, but I didn’t want her to go out to drive to get it, you know, and she didn’t seem keen on us driving to get it).  So even though we told her that we’d be good I get a knock on the door not too long after and there she is with this huge box.

It’s a fancy heater.  I feel like it’s a nice little grandma sitting in our house.  If you met it you’d think the same thing.  It’s all wood-encased and on rollers with a fancy remote.  But anyway, our landlady was saying that, on account of her fix-it man not being sure he could get the parts to fix the furnace, she just felt better knowing that we’d be warm and safe during the rest of the storm.  So, I totally cried and told her thank you and may have made her a little uncomfortable.  I didn’t mean to cry, it just happened.  I mean, that was a really nice thing she did there.  So, the grandma (heater) is amazing and we were all nice and warm.

I spent some time making little rice hand warmers out of my old socks (just the upper parts, not the gross-o feet parts) and the kids really liked those.  Once we had that heater I felt more comfortable letting them go outside to play so they sledded a wee bit on our modest little sloped yard and got ridiculously wet and those are the pictures you’ve been looking at throughout this post.

We came in, had a hot bath and then ate muffins and candy that Grandma Empey had sent for Valentine’s day for dinner. We played games, read books and put them all to bed in the boys room since it’s in the middle of the house.  Roz’s room gets really really cold when the heater is working even.    They were pretty excited about their ‘sleep-over’ and Brookston kept asking for me to re-heat his rice warmer.  *knock knock knock* “more hot bag, please.  I need it roasted and toasted in the oven.”  Ha ha ha, he really said ‘roasted and toasted.’

The ‘sleep over’ got a little crazy.  Evidently the novelty of sleeping with their door open and all together was just too fantastic and around 3:30 I woke up to a raucous party of kids running back and forth and all over the house happy-screaming and laughing like no adult can understand at that hour.  So cranky mom rounded them back into bed and the night passed okay from then on.  I had on practically everything I own but I was cozy.

The next day the fix-it man was able to get in a fix our heat (evidently our igniter had failed) so that was good.  Though I almost miss the heatwave our little grandma heater puts out.  Sometimes I just plug her in again and sit right in front of her for a minute or so.

Well the snow is melting and now our back yard looks like this:

I ordered those rain boots just in time, and lucky for all of us they just barely beat the snowpocalypse of 2014. 

Motivation

Motivation comes in various shapes and colors and around here Motivation looks like this:

Before this I found myself constantly saying “Boy, if you do that again then … (fill in negative consequence).”  Well, a little ‘parental skills’ research online (and in good old fashioned books) made that type of phrasing out to be simply ‘making threats’.  Drat.  Well, so what then?  What could I possibly do to encourage good behavior that was simple, did not require some sort of easily destroyed paper chart with stickers, that wouldn’t break my bank and that left us all happy?  I still am not quite sure how I arrived here with that glassy, googly eyed companion up above, but there it is.  Motivation.  So, now a good deed is rewarded by a noodle in a jar. And, if enough noodles are accrued over time there’s a colored star to reach with a reward attached. And doesn’t that jar just look so proud of you?

The little jar is to keep track of my progress – that guy just looks a little more crazed than proud and I find this fitting.  But it is really wonderful when I do something like pick up a lego that someone dropped and I hear “Mom, that was so nice!  You get a noodle!”  Oh, good.  Thanks.

Also, I do really enjoy yelling across the crowded park “BOY!  IF YOU COME TO THE CAR YOU EARN A NOODLE!”

Rosalyn does not seem particularly swayed by the promise of noodles.

And going back to that previous statement about earning things, earning noodles in that case, do you find yourself ever adopting a life motto that you repeat sort of often?  I do.  I say “You have to earn it to own it.”

Here’s B earning some noodles by helping me to put the Christmas tree up. 

He owned that tree.  I wish he could have put the lights on it too.  Do you find stringing the lights as cumbersome as I do?  If you can keep your Christmas cheer up whilst tangling the tangles then you are golden.

So, what motivates you and yours?

Catfish Courtesy

That, my friends, there in the center is Nick Empey as I first met him.  A long haired, bracelet wearing, strolling in Vans the size of your head, rock-star.  That was a previously unimpressive mix to me.  But, if you’ve met Nick, you know he’s charming.  And he charmed his lopsided punk grin right into my heart.  Out went my notions of the typical clean cut, white shirt & cargo short wearing, ever ready to go hiking colorado boys of my high school days and in came a romantic and creative crooner.

But this isn’t a sappy blog post about Nick.  This is to tell you about the genius of one of his old band mates, Tom Kenning.   Tom recently put together a fantastically well done Oral Documentary of Nick’s high school punk band, Catfish Courtesy.

I’m telling you, it is worth the half-hour of your life, and I don’t just think I’m saying that because Nick wooed me. 

Let me be real up-front and honest about my views on Catfish Courtesy’s body of works.  It goes like this:  Nick and I are still dating at this point and we’re driving from Muncie to Valparaiso, Indiana -- it’s a three hour drive that feels like four.  I’m driving the old Colorado Sunset Purple Neon and Nick is happily working his way through all his old punk rock CDs, carefully placing them in and taking them out of the CD player.  He takes out The Get Up Kids and slides in a CD that, unlike the others, he does not announce who is playing. And I hear: …  Noise.  Mindless Chanting….   That’s what it is, (and that is what Tom calls it in his documentary). 

“What is this?”  I say half laughing and he half laughingly responds “one of my old high school bands.”  Yes. More and more clear that Nick and I wouldn’t have worked out in high-school.  I hate to say it, but I may have made fun of Nick if I had known him in high school – but I wasn’t my nicest back then.    I’ve repented.  I’ve changed my ways.  Now I know everybody is cool.

Anyway,  back to me in the car listening to the band and I don’t think I lasted too long before I asked if we could maybe like, listen to Debussy for a moment?  and began fumbling amongst my own stash of CDs (all classical except for Ace of Base, oh hah hah ha).  But don’t worry, those two kids in the car still got married in the end.

So, there you have my feelings about Nick’s basement punk band.  BUT, as I said before, this is about Tom Kenning’s genius, and if you take the time to listen to his oral documentary you will know what I am talking about. You’ll feel like you’re listening to This American Life. I finished feeling like I had listened to something really important.  This oral history is for artists of any sort.  I wish now that I had known Nick in high school and he could have taught me a thing or two about how to say goodbye to my inhibitions.  

So, listen to it and let’s chat.  What does it say to you and what are you waiting for?  Permission?

Nicole gives the sermon on Sunday

Hello and welcome back to the blog.  Today I’m going to do something I’ve never done before and post the talk that I was asked to give in church recently.  If you don’t know much about Mormons and how members of the congregation give ‘talks’ (or what you may call the sermon) go here to read where my friend explains this ‘strange Mormon custom’: 

I’ve added a few pictures from way back in 2007, so, there’s that too.  Without further ado:

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Thirst After Righteousness.

I like this imagery.

Thirst is compelling. It is recurring. Thirst has a simple fix: drink.

I want you to take a moment to think about how it feels to be thirsty, and while you do I’m going to tell a little story.

My husband and I took a road trip one summer that included a stop at Yosemite National Park. While we were there we camped overnight and then decided to hike up the Upper Yosemite Falls. I’m going to go ahead and admit that we were not well prepared for this hike. That’s hard for me to say out loud, because I grew up in Colorado, and not to many years previous to this little road trip, I had lived in on Mount Desert Island in Maine for a few summers, and I hiked twice a week. My favorite was a hike called Precipice which was 1000 ft pretty much straight up. I guess, I thought I was good to go.

We can’t remember for certain, but we may have only brought 1 Nalgene water bottle full of water. I know I know, this is so hard for me to admit out loud. Anyway, let me read what they say about the hike to upper Yosemite falls:

“Consider this question: would you climb the stairs all the way to the top of the Empire State Building? Well, in the course of your hike to Upper Yosemite Falls, you'll climb the equivalent of just over two Empire State Buildings.

I hadn’t read this beforehand. So off we hiked, with our one water bottle. Most of the way was in the sun, switchback after switch back at a steep incline. Again, from Yosemite’s website:

“This hike is a challenging workout. You won't make it unless you're in decent shape and you've brought enough food and liquid to carry you through a long, hard climb.”

So, this was probably the time of my life where I can look back on as my most thirsty. My thirst was compelling and there was only one fix: drink. I couldn’t eat a granola bar and be satisfied, I couldn’t imagine drinking water and be satisfied, I would have to drink.

In Matthew we are given one of the beatitudes: Matt 5:6 “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”

And in 3 Nephi 12: 6 “And blessed are all they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost.”

So, we can all look back on times in our lives when we were really thirsty. Each of us will have different moments, different circumstances and varying degrees of need. But we will all remember how beautiful it was when we finally found that refreshment.

And so too I think each of us can look back and see a time when we had a different thirst; a thirst of the spirit. And I think we are here now because we realized at some point in our lives that Christ was the one that filled us.

But as beautiful as that moment of refreshment is, the satisfaction abates and again we are thirsty. Thirst is compelling. It is recurring. Thirst has a simple fix: drink. And so this becomes the pattern of our lives. It is a cycle. And it is a cycle God intended.

The beatitude says we must thirst after righteousness. We can thirst after things that are not nourishing. Once Nick and I were at the top of the mountain there was the river leading to the spectacular Yosemite falls. I could have run over and dunked my head in and drank and drank. But like I said, I did grow up in the mountains of Colorado, and I know that that would not have been nourishing. I needed pure water, or else I could have become very sick. Nick and I were fortunate to find another hiker who had a fancy military grade water microfilter who happily purified the river water for me while he talked about how fancy his purifier was. It was the best you could get, he says. It removes 99.99% waterborne bacteria he says. It tastes the best, he says. And he was right.

There are things out there that we may take hold of and figuratively ‘chug,’ thinking that it will work, but it is short term, or it comes with negative side effects. What are those things in your life? Maybe it’s thinking that personal time will satisfy our emptiness, a good book will fill us, or more popularity will fill us, whatever it may be. But you drink and you drink from these things and it does not satisfy; or worse, it makes you sick.

There’s a scripture that illustrates that in

Jeremiah 2: 11 Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. 12 Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord. 13 For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

We must be careful that that which we drink nourishes.

I have this quote from Oswald Chambers, he was a Scottish Baptist, back in 1874 he said

"There is only One Being who can satisfy the last aching abyss of the human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ,"

Back to me on the mountain: When he finally filtered that water and handed it over I was shaking to have it. Thirst is compelling. Our thirst for righteousness should be similarly compelling.

I think this quote Jospeh B. Wirthlin: describes what our compelling desire should look like. He says:

“I have known many great men and women. Although they have different backgrounds, talents, and perspectives, they all have this in common: they work diligently and persistently towards achieving their goals. It’s easy to get distracted and lose focus on the things that are most important in life. I urge you to examine your life. Determine where you are and what you need to do to be the kind of person you want to be. Create inspiring, noble, and righteous goals that fire your imagination and create excitement in your heart. And then keep your eye on them. Work consistently towards achieving them.[1]

Richard J. Maynes agrees that we must be diligent in our righteous efforts. He states:

How can you protect yourself against the pressures and evils of the world? Three hours of church on Sunday? Not likely. A concerted daily effort is the only sure way to come out victorious. The Lord wants you to succeed, and He will be with you. He will help you and support and sustain you in your time of need if you are true to His plan. If you stay close to Him on a daily basis, He will stay close to you, and you will reap untold blessings in every aspect of your life, especially the most important, the spiritual. Brothers and sisters, it will ultimately be your love of the Lord which will help you commit and then stay true to your celestial daily plan. [2]

Thirst has a simple fix: drink.

It says in 3 Nephi 12 that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness will be filled with the Holy Ghost. And Henry B. Eyring has told us that “when [The Holy Ghost] is your companion, you can have confidence that the Atonement is working in your life.[3]”

When we have the Holy Ghost we can be filled with peace and joy even amid our trials. The Holy Ghost testifies of Christ, it tells us that the atonement is working in our life.

I bear my testimony that if you ache, if you feel you are missing something, if you know you could be more than you are, if you want to see your life become better, then God and Christ are the only place that you will be filled.

I promise that if you will exert yourself, and take the steps to know God, then you will be filled. I believe what is says in the Doctrine and Covenants “Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”

And I bear my testimony that part of being filled is simply knowing who you are, who you really are, a daughter or a son of God and that you are infinitely loved. And that Infinite Being sees you as you can become. Your circumstances don’t even have to change but with that knowledge you can be filled with peace and joy; hope.

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[1] Joseph B. Wirthlin, “Life’s Lessons Learned,” Ensign, May 2007, 45–47

[2] Richard J. Maynes, “A Celestial Connection to Your Teenage Years,” Ensign, Nov 1997, 30

[3] Henry B. Eyring, Come Unto Christ, BYU Fireside, 29 Oct 1989

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Well, there it is.  And the very next week Nick spoke in church too!  We’ll get that up soon.