MaeLyn's Musings

It's funny what a difference a month can make. A little over a month ago, I would walk my boys to school and return home to a quiet house for the next seven hours, and I would find things to do to keep myself busy for most of the day, and not really think anything of it. This morning around 9:45, friends came to pick up Josh and Peter and took them to their house to play for the day. At 11:15, Hannah and John were picked up to go to the church for Youth Conference, which will continue the rest of today, and most of tomorrow. Steven is at work. I have the house to myself for the next six hours, and already I'm scratching my head. What do I want to do today? The last couple days the kids and I have played with LEGOs. We've watched movies and played Life and Monopoly and Rack-o and Pit. Yesterday I took the boys to the pool. So what can I do when I don't have anyone else around? Do I start a new project? Do I have an old project around somewhere I can finish? Do I have...

Last night for their Mutual activity, the young men and young women in our ward went to the park near our house to go ice blocking. Hannah and John walked down lugging the ice sleds they made in our freezer along with some old towels. Shortly after they left, I received a series of texts from Steven, who had followed them down: The sprinklers are on at the park! They may have to wait a bit... Oops. Nope, kids going down in the sprinklers anyway. First two down the hill - Hannah and John. Sounds like fun. Just a warning, two kids are going to be completely soaked by the time they come home. Do I need to bring down some towels? They can walk home wet. Whether they will be allowed to come inside is a different matter... We could hose them down if they're muddy. Sounds like fun. Are other kids ice blocking in the sprinklers too? Everyone, yeah. You didn't bring the camera did you? Just the camera on the phone. The sprinklers have stopped now. They got home s...

Tuesday felt like a busy day. As usual, Steven got up and was on his way to work before 7am.  Around 8:15, two cars pulled up in front of our house. The four kids climbed into one to  a friend's house to play. I climbed into the other and went to join some of the Relief Society sisters in a trip to the Denver temple. We arrived at the temple by 9:30, and attended a 10:00 session. Afterwards I joined some of the sisters for lunch at Cafe Rio, and enjoyed the time  with friends. I didn't get home after 2:30pm, and the kids were still at their friend's house. Enjoying the quiet, I made hoagie rolls for dinner, and did some other chores around the house, but I had a headache and didn't feel like doing a lot. Steven and the kids returned home within ten minutes of each other, around 6pm. We had hoagie sandwiches for dinner, then set off to go to a cub scout pack meeting. Our summer cub scout attendance is very, very low. There were only about four or five families at the...

In the Doctor Who TV series, there is an alien race called the silence. According to the show, they have lived here on earth since the dawn of time. However, the silence have a strange defense mechanism - as soon as a person looks away from them, he forgets the silent's very existence. The silence use post-hypnotic suggestion to manipulate people to do what they want them to do. A few minutes ago, the boys climbed into a car and drove away to spend the rest of the afternoon playing at a friend's house. Hannah was in her room, and the house was silent. For a moment, it reminded me of what it was like when school was in session, when all the kids were at school and I had several hours of silence during which I could think, and blog about what I was thinking of. It reminded me of someone seeing one of the Doctor Who Silents for the second time and saying, "Oh yeah! I remember you! How on earth could I have forgotten you?" Except that my re-encounter with peaceful sil...

The kids with the friends who helped make the cupcakes. (Steven is working on the pizzas in the background.) Yesterday was Peter's birthday. He still wasn't feeling the greatest, and so he spent most of the day lying around watching movies and playing a few games. Hannah and Josh went to a friend's house for the afternoon, where they made monkey cupcakes for Peter. Steven made pizza for the birthday dinner. It was great, but poor Peter only managed to eat a little less than one slice. His cupcakes are still waiting for him. After dinner, Peter went on a treasure hunt to find all his gifts, and then opened them. He received a red duct tape fez, a yellow boomerang (a bananarang... which later got lost on a neighbor's roof), a pool noodle (or "poodle"), some origami creations, some gummi bananas, a book (Diary of a Wimpy Kid 8), a movie (Frozen) and a couple games (Rack-o and Pit). When the gifts were opened, some of the kids went outside to play with the...

You know how I mentioned yesterday that Peter took a nap on the living room couch at 10am yesterday? Did it sound strange to you that my active almost nine year old would take a morning nap? Well if so, you're right. He spent the rest of the day either laying there on the couch with a headache, or else in the bathroom throwing up. (I'm so glad that he is old enough to get to the bathroom when he needs to throw up!) He sipped from a water bottle throughout the day and watched movies from the couch. He had a fever that got up to 103*F last night, and he went to bed early instead of attending cub scouts. This morning his temperature was back down to 99*F, but he has already thrown up once so far today. (It couldn't have been much because he hardly ate anything yesterday.) I convinced him to eat a bite of toast and drink a cup of milk for breakfast before going back to bed and he was busily snoring away last time I checked on him. The sad thing is that he seems to take it a...

Yesterday morning, I received a call from a brother from church. He told me that his two children who were visiting from college or wherever they are now had come home and had cleaned out the piles of junk in his basement and storage room, and that he was going to give a whole bunch of stuff to the local ARC, but if we wanted, we could come over that evening and look through it, and we could have anything we wanted. I'm always a fan of free stuff, so last night Steven and I drove over to his house, where he was out in his garage dismantling a TV stand. Half of his two car garage was full of boxes and bags. There was a huge television, stuffed animals, baskets, dishes, videos, games, decorations, water bottles, about a five-lifetime supply of toothpicks, three Christmas trees, enough decorations for five Christmas trees, and enough lights for at least three houses. Steven and I picked through it, and eventually brought home two games: Monopoly (Deluxe Edition) and Life, one Christ...

Every year, our stake has a picnic sometime during the summer. The stake provides fried chicken and hot dogs,  lemonade and water, and people who come bring chips or a salad or a dessert, and we eat and play games. This year, the stake picnic was last Saturday.  It was a bright, sunny day - warm, but not really hot. We sliced up a watermelon and then hopped in the car and drove the fifteen or twenty minutes to the church building in Arvada where the picnic has been held the last few years. This church building has a park behind it, with a covered area with lots of picnic tables and a baseball field, complete with bleachers. Hannah painted Peter to look like a pirate, complete with hook and crocodile hand. Shortly after we arrived, a prayer was said and then we piled up our plates with whatever we wanted from the assortment of potato chips, tortilla chips, and corn chips, potato salads, pasta salads, green salads, and fruit salads, fried chicken breasts, drumsticks and ...

I was asked to speak in sacrament meeting yesterday. I spoke using just a brief outline, but here is the draft that outline was created from: In a 1993 Conference talk , Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin quoted a woman who described her feelings about a winter storm in Canada. She said, ““I love a winter storm. … When the wind starts to blow and the snow begins to fall, a feeling of excitement starts to build. … When I can’t see the trees at the neighbor’s farmyard, … I phone my husband! … He then picks up the children who are at school. … It is hard to describe the feelings I experience as our family is gathered home, and the storm rages outside. … And I love it! Everyone is safe; we are together. We have lots of food and water. The longer it lasts, the better. … We are shut off from the world. … We bask in the warmth of our home and in the warmth of our love. My heart is full, and I am at peace. Sometimes, I wish I could just stay like that forever, with my family gathered around me, pro...

When I was a little kid and I caught my parents kissing in the kitchen, I thought it was gross. When our family went for walks around the block and my parents held hands, I was a little embarrassed. And then one day, I met Steven. I'm not sure how it happened exactly. I think it was at a stake dance when we were fourteen or fifteen, and the slow music stopped and I took his hand as we walked back to join our friends. It became a tradition, holding hands. Twenty five years later, we still hold hands. With his left hand on the steering wheel, he reaches out to me with his right as we drive down the highway. We stroll through the park with fingers interlaced. Our kids may be embarrassed by it, but I still enjoy holding my sweetheart's hand. Happy 16th anniversary, Steven!

I just waved good-bye to Joshua and Peter as they set off for their last day of Senior Boys' Day Camp. Dressed in T-shirts and jackets against the cold weather they hopped in our friend's car with their water bottles and lunches. They have enjoyed their last two days, and are excited to find out what they will be doing today. I love seeing that kind of enthusiasm!   In past years, our boys have attended the District Cub Scout Day Camp, which traditionally involved five days of rotating between six stations in a huge mass of boys, indistinguishable in their matching shirts and hats, with only a different colored bandana to tell which group the boy was supposed to be traveling with. Three days into the camp, our boys were tired and exhausted, sick of wearing the same stinky shirt, moaning about having to attend one more day. This year, frustrated with the official scout bureaucracy and the high costs, our stake decided to break away, and have their own day camp for the cub s...

A game which several members of our family enjoy playing is Apples to Apples . In this popular game, there are green apple cards that have descriptive words written on them (eg. dainty, intelligent, sensitive) and there are red apple cards that have places, events, or things on them (eg. going to the dentist, rolling the car, bombs, inside the sun.) Each player is dealt five or seven red apple cards. For each round, one player is designated as the judge. He or she turns over a green apple card from the deck, and all the other players submit one red apple card from their hand to be judged. They place them face down on the table so the judge doesn't know who submitted which card. The judge then looks at the cards and determines which of the red apple card best fits the green apple card. (eg. Going to the dentist might be judged the most intelligent of the four red apple cards mentioned.) The player who submitted the chosen red apple card gets to keep the green apple card, and the fir...

Yesterday, I got to teach lesson 11 and 12 of Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Fielding Smith, entitled Honoring the Priesthood Keys Restored through Joseph Smith and The Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood. The priesthood is something that I've always appreciated, but as I was preparing to teach this lesson, I realized how little I actually know about how it works. I was grateful for a reason to learn more about this amazing power. Below is the outline I prepared to teach from. It includes some of the questions I asked as well as the sections of the lessons that we read out loud. Before I began, I showed the sisters the talk given by Dallin H Oaks in the most recent General Conference , as well as the article in this month's Ensign about the Priesthood and recommended that they read them because they explain so much about the Priesthood and how it works. What is the Priesthood? "The priesthood held by man is the power and authority of God delegated to ...

Peter borrowed Steven's hat at the rest stop. Wednesday morning I awoke bright and early. We had breakfast and loaded the car and set off when our car's clock read 8:00 exactly. It was a long drive. We watched "Annie Get Your Gun" and "Megamind" on our car's DVD player along the way, and stopped at a park in Del Norte for lunch and a chance to stretch our legs. We made it to the Lightner Creek campground just outside Durango around 3:00 in the afternoon, arriving at the same time as Grandma Kathy and Grandpa John who came up from Phoenix, AZ. We pitched our tent and set up camp and went swimming before returning to a delicious dinner of ribs prepared by Grandma Kathy. We played games and eventually settled down for the night. The Rio Grande ran right behind the park at Del Norte. Outside the sweet shop in Durango Thursday morning we went into Durango and looked around. We toured the railroad museum behind the depot, and enjoyed looking at t...