MaeLyn's Musings

The sun is shining and the kids are back in school today. But they were late. Our school has a "gentle start" policy. Kids are supposed to arrive between 7:35 and 7:45am. If they are not at school be 7:45 they are late. Usually we try to leave home at 7:30 so we have plenty of time for things forgotten at the last minute and to pick up the little girl up the street. Today was no different. We went out to the garage at 7:30; the girl was waiting a few buildings up the street; we were on time. Unfortunately, as I was backing down the driveway, another car turned onto our street and I had to stop halfway down the driveway for them to pass. Unfortunately that meant I lost all my momentum and I was stuck. For the next twenty minutes the girl's great grandmother and I pushed, pulled, dug and salted, trying to get the car out of the driveway, over icy ruts, and onto the street. Eventually another car paused to give some helpful advice (I imagine they were Colorado natives and no...

The kids have a snow day today!!! I'm so glad. That means I don't have to go anywhere at all today. I can stay home, read, bake, clean, deal with bored, sopping wet, freezing children. Hmmmm. Maybe it won't be so wonderful after all. Oh well. Here is the view from our front door this morning. Our flower pots look like ice cream cones! Yesterday wasn't as bad as I feared it would be. I was able to renew my library books online so I didn't have to go to the library. My Visiting teaching companion called to say her children were sick so she wouldn't be going, and when I called the sister I was going to visit, she encouraged me to stay home and we had a nice long chat on the phone. John's scouts was canceled last night too so the only place I had to go was to school and back. Dropping the kids off at school yesterday wasn't a problem. I managed to get up the hill and back down without much difficulty. Picking the kids up was a little more of a challenge....

It's snowing this morning. It may not stop until tomorrow afternoon. If I could just sit inside, curl up with a book, and maybe sip hot chocolate, I would really enjoy it. It is pretty where it hasn't been walked on yet. I like looking at the smooth expanse of blank snow, like a canvas waiting to be painted on. Unfortunately I had to take the kids to school this morning. I usually go to the library on Wednesdays, and I have a visiting teaching appointment in a few hours. Then I'll need to pick up the kids from school, and I'll need to take John to scouts tonight and then go back an hour later to pick him up. I'm going to see if I can renew the library things that are due so I can cross that off my list for today, but the other things I can't really cancel. I am grateful that our new van has front wheel drive instead of rear wheel drive like our old van had. I don't get stuck nearly as often. It is kind of scary though when I'm pressing on the brakes and ...

I hate it when my husband gets sick. I know he can't help it usually. I know that I shouldn't get upset at him, especially when he needs my sympathy and help more than ever. I still don't like it. Yesterday Steven came home from work, and without saying a word, without even letting me know that he was home (Dinner was ready; I was back in the bedroom wondering what was keeping him) he just sat down at the table for dinner. He could have sat there for five minutes before I finished what I was doing and came out to the living room and saw him. I gathered the rest of the family for dinner and we ate, but there was an oppresive silence over the table. I asked him how work went, and apparently something had happened at work and he'd had to redo some project he'd been working on. He said he was tired. He looked like he was tired- that heavy, sullen kind of tired like he wished the world would let him off for a while and he could get back on in some other universe far away...

Friday evening we went to the furniture store to buy a bed for Peter. It's about time. Way back when John was a tiny baby sleeping in a bassinet, we bought a Little Red Bed (LRB). It was a toddler sized bed. I think it was used because the mattress was already a bit torn in spots. Hannah loved it because it was just her size. We moved Hannah out of the crib and onto the LRB so that John could have the crib. Life was good. She slept on that bed until we moved to our condo here. By then John was ready for a real bed, and Josh was getting close to needing the crib. So we aquired some bunk beds. The LRB went into retirement. Eventually Peter came along and needed the crib and Josh was old enough for a bed. Hannah was reaching an age where she didn't want to share her room with her little brothers, so we bought her a day bed (without the trundle that fit under it) and moved her into the room that had been our office. Josh skipped the LRB and went straight to the bottom bunk of the b...

Lately I've been reading a lot. Most of the books I've read recently are geared towards young people, and I've been borrowing Hannah's books to read while she is in school because they are good! If anyone is interested, (and has similar taste in books, and would like some light reading) here is what I've been reading: The Cat Who .... series by Lilian Jackson Braun.  These are detective/mystery type books, but there are actual cats involved. The books in the series stand on their own and don't necessarily have to be read in order, but sometimes it helps because it gives you more background on the characters involved. Eragon by Christopher Paolini. I read this a long time ago along with its sequel, but I wanted to refresh my memory before I read the third book in the series. Strong influences from Tolkien and David Eddings. Percy Jackson and The Olympians   series by Rick Riordan. It helps if you have some basic knowledge of Greek Mythology because in the ...

I have a lot on my mind this morning. Yesterday afternoon I had two girls over from the family up the street. I was watching them so their Grandma could get a chance to rest. They had a blast playing with my kids. Apparently their mother is still in the hospital, and their dad has bleeding ulcers. I wish there was more I could do for them. Our bishop also is in the hospital suffering from complications of the H1N1 virus. He has viral pneumonia, was having a lot of difficulty breathing, and is now in a drug induced coma for what could be a couple weeks or a month. We are praying for him and his family. As a result of all this, he was unable to participate in setting me and my counselors apart for our new callings last night; his counselors had to do that instead. While I was being set apart, one comment that was made in the blessing struck me particularly. I was told that the Lord has been preparing me for this calling for a long time. I guess that is why so many of my callings so f...

Yesterday I found out about a family that very recently moved into our ward and is now living on our street. The mother was in critical condition in the ICU with the swine flu. She has three children, ages 8, 4 and 9 months. Our Relief Society president had asked one of my counselors to watch the children this afternoon, and she left our presidency meeting that morning with the intent to go buy diapers for the baby and then go watch the poor kids. They were in my thoughts that afternoon. Last night as we were putting our kids to bed, I received a phone call from the RS president telling me that the children were now being watched by a couple of 18 year old girls in our ward, but that the baby was running a fever. She asked if I had baby Tylenol, and if I knew what dosage to give him. I have children's Tylenol, and I found a dosage chart, so I grabbed the medicine, the book containing the chart and my bathroom scale and headed up the street to their home. The baby was warm, but had ...

Today was our ward primary program. It went wonderfully well. Except that I almost skipped the fourth verse of the first song. Whoops. Oh well. Everything else went well. I even played the piano for "Baptism" without a hitch...up to tempo. John memorized his part this morning before church sometime and I didn't realize he had it memorized until he did it and he was outstanding. Hannah gave a short talk about her baptism, describing it in detail. Josh and Peter both gave their parts. The primary children sang loud and clear, especially the one seven year old boy who always sings loudly, and with lots of enthusiasm. The closing song was Families Can Be Together Forever. The primary sang the first verse, the congregation joined in on the second verse, and then there was a little interlude (which I wrote) and the primary sang the chorus from "The Family is of God". It was awesome, and I cried through the closing prayer. Earlier in the meeting, I was sustained as t...

This morning Peter came to me with his hands full of his stuffed animals (his four favorites) and told me that it was their birthday! "Penguino is 4, Little Blue Bunny is 3. Monkey is 2 and Chippy the Chipmunk is 1." He proceeded to have a birthday party for them, wrapping presents in things he found around the house, and then he made me take pictures of the birthday boys with their gifts. Then he brought me a piece of paper to write about the party. First I had to list the animals having the birthday(Chippy the Chipmunk, Little Blue Bunny, Monkey Down and Penguino), then list the presents they received (ball, checker, bear) and what the presents were wrapped in (blanket, boots). When we left to do some grocery shopping he insisted on bringing all four animals along, and stuffing them all into cupholders for their car seats. He was disappointed when I wouldn't let him take them into the store, and so he sat them all on my drivers seat to wait while we were in the stor...

There is nothing like the adrenaline rush of waking up 40 minutes late to get a person moving in the morning. Especially when that means I have only 20 minutes to get three kids dressed, fed and packed up to leave for school. Steven has been sick the last few days. His upper back and neck have been bothering him for a week and a half. It feels like he has been miserable forever. Yesterday he came home from work early and spent the evening reading in bed. Last night he kept making noises in his sleep: something half way between a grunt and a groan. Anyway, it was keeping me awake so I went to sleep on the living room couch. I kept waking up out there too, because one of the cats decided to come lay on me and purr and give himself a bath, noisily licking himself until I pushed him off. I wasn't laying in a position where I could see the clock, but suddenly I opened my eyes and realized it was light already. Suddenly I jumped off the couch and looked at the clock - 7:10, the time we...

I feel sorry for my fish. We have had fish for the last five years, ever since our neighbors gave us a fish tank they didn't want anymore. One of the first fish we got was a black molly that had babies the first day we had her. Only one of the babies survived to adulthood, the others getting stuck in the filter or being eaten by the other bigger fish in the tank. Over the years we've had mollies, guppies, zebra danios, neon tetras, catfish, snails and a frog. We've had fish in stripes, solids and with spots. We've had fish in almost every color. When they died (after a couple weeks or a couple years) I'd scoop them out and eventually replace them with something new. I've cleaned out their tank about every other week for years, fed them every day with fish flakes or freeze dried blood worms, and spent a lot of time watching them, counting them, and searching for the hiding ones amongst the big rocks and plants. They don't demand attention. They don't remi...

The weekend is over. I really enjoyed having Kendra visit with us. She spent most of her time with her dad in Longmont, but we had time to chat and she entertained the kids with games on her phone and computer. It was good to see her again. While Kendra was here she asked what my kids would like for Christmas, so she could tell their paternal grandma. I'm just over birthday season, and I'm not really ready to think about Christmas yet, but here is what I've come up with: Hannah - craft supplies. [A knitting loom (like the kind you make hats on), yarn, fabric, tape, pinking shears, ribbons, crochet hooks] Books. [Horror, fantasy appropriate for a 10 year old advanced reader.] Clothes. [size 8. Long pants but NO jeans. Maybe twill or corduroy? long sleeve shirts] John - Books. [mystery, fantasy appropriate for an 8 year old advanced reader, he also has interest in electricity and magnetism, magic tricks and origami] Clothes. [size 6/7, pajamas, long sleeve shirts, jeans...

Kids are out of school today. Hannah says it is a teacher work day and the teachers are tired of the students. My sister in law, Kendra, is coming to visit tonight. Her Dad, who lives in Longmont, had a heart attack a week or two ago and she is coming to visit him, but staying with us. So, I need the kids to help me clean the house today. How do I motivate them? I don't know. It is a cold day and I feel sleepy and my head is aching slightly. I need to wake up and get moving. Can you jump start a person without using caffeine or drugs? It snowed for maybe twenty minutes yesterday, but there wasn't enough to stick. Today it is clear and cold. We may get more snow over the weekend. I don't mind the snow when I don't have to be out driving in it. I love it when I can stay at home, wrap myself in a blanket and read a book all day. It would be wonderful if we had a fireplace we could light and enjoy while reading a book, snuggled in a blanket while drinking hot chocolate. H...

Have I mentioned here the deal with the cats? I mentioned that my sister April brought them over when she came to babysit while Steven and I went on the Pioneer trek. I don't think I explained all the details. April's husband Dean left in May for a year's tour of duty in Afghanistan. April moved out of her house on base and moved in with my other sister Heather in Colorado Springs. Heather's husband is allergic to cats so she couldn't keep the cats with her there, so we took them in. When Dean returns and April and Dean find a home of their own that accepts cats, they will get the bigger cats, Ishmael and Abish, back. We will keep the kittens, Moroni and Lamoni, who are now as big as their mother. In the meantime, we have four cats in the house. We love the cats. They are soft and cuddly sometimes. They are all young and playful and provide hours and hours of entertainment, chasing strings, marbles, wiggling fingers, whatever. Ishmael loves me and frequently when ...

We turned on the heat this morning for the first time this season. It was cold! Tomorrow we may get our first snow. I enjoyed the summer. I wish it had lasted a little longer. Yesterday I cleaned out my laundry room. Today I've been cleaning out the hall closet, organizing the games, and gathering up a bunch of stuff to take to Good Will. I had a bag in the laundry room, a box in the garage, coats that everyone has outgrown in the hall closet, odds and ends throughout the house. I'm really in a decluttering mood right now. I wish I lived in a bigger house, but I don't, and I don't know when I will, so I need to get rid of the extra stuff that is helping to make this house seem so crowded. (Not counting the four kids, four cats, etc. that I can't get rid of.) I am gathering up library books for a run to the library today. I'm still missing one that is due today. I'll probably just have to renew it. It is a "Bob book", about the size of a piece o...

I had a wonderful weekend. My sister April was here to visit. I got to watch all sessions of conference (all right, I kind of dozed off a bit at the end of the Sunday afternoon session... but I think that is all I missed.) The kids were surprizingly good for the most part. Hannah and John drew pictures and played Conference Bingo and Joshua and Peter mostly played in their room. I am grateful that we have the means to watch General Conference in our own home. Many of the talks seemed to focus on bettering our lives, becoming a true disciple of Christ by doing our best, living what we know, developing Christlike virtues and especially, by loving and serving others. That reinforced the feelings I've been having lately, that I need to find more ways to be of service to others, instead of being so wrapped up in my own life. I'm still trying to figure out how I can do that. I found the first couple talks Saturday morning to be especially meaningful to me as I seek direction for ...

This year we have had frequent house guests. April comes for a couple days every month or so. My mother in law has been here. My parents and Heidi were here for almost a week. Amber and her husband came. April is coming again today. My sister in law Kendra is coming next week. Lindy and her husband are coming in November. Thinking about all this makes me feel like we are running a hotel: The Hiatt Hotel, with complimentary airport shuttle. So, welcome to the Hiatt Hotel! We apologize that we don't have a private guest room for you to stay in. The hide-a-bed in the couch in the living room may be increased in comfort by removing the mattress from the couch and placing it on the floor. You might want to reconsider your lodging choice if you are allergic to cats, because we do have four of them right now, and they have free range of the living room at night. We'll do our best to help you be comfortable. We have plenty of blankets if you get cold. We have a swamp cooler if you ge...