MaeLyn's Musings

A week or so before school began, I brought John and Joshua to the eye doctor. Both had been complaining about not being able to see well from a distance through one eye. I watched as they were brought back one at a time and asked to look through various gizmos and read letters through another contraption. Eventually the eye doctor wrote each up a prescription and they picked out lenses. A few days later the glasses were ready to pick up. John is near sighted. He can see perfectly fine when he's on his computer or reading a book. He has a little more difficulty seeing long distances. The eye doctor said that he doesn't need to wear his glasses all the time, just when he feels like he needs them. (They would have come in handy at the baseball game...) He will definitely need them anytime he is behind the wheel when he starts driving.  Joshua's eyes have a different issue. For him, the difficulty comes when he has been focusing on something close up, and then need to f...

In April of 2011, we were sitting in our living room watching General Conference when it was announced that they were going to build a new temple in Fort Collins, Colorado. We cheered, and were excited at the thought of having another temple in Colorado. We wondered if we might be in the Fort Collins temple district. It was exciting news! Some time later we drove out to where the temple was going to be built. At that point it was just an empty grassy field across the street from a church building. But it was less than an hour drive from home. Maybe it is a little farther away from us than the Denver temple, but with the traffic that we usually experience driving through down town, going to Fort Collins would probably take about the same amount of time.  Last summer we returned to the temple site to see the progress. We could see it was a beautiful building, even with the scaffolding that was still up. The angel Moroni was not yet on top, but the outside looked like it was ge...

Every year, Steven's work (MDC Holdings) has some activity that they invite their employees and families to attend. Last year we got to go to the Denver Zoo. This year it was a Rockies game at Coors Field. The Rockies were playing some random team. They lost miserably.  If you want more info about the game itself, Click Here . We didn't really come for the game. We went to be together as a family, to have a new experience, to try the food (we each got $20 of food money with our tickets!). Our seats were on the west side of the stadium. The hard green plastic seats soaked up the warm sun's rays, but as the afternoon progressed some clouds rolled in and we got some showers to cool things off a bit. We were close enough that we could see the ball if we looked closely. We could see the pitcher throw it, the batter swing and sometimes hit it. We could see the ball flying through the air and usually get caught by someone in the outfield. Then we would watch the ball fly...

The squirrels in John's teacher's quorum advisor's neighborhood have been trained well. I dropped John off for an activity this morning and as I was returning home I saw a squirrel crossing the street -at the crosswalk!

John turned 15 in July. He wanted a raspberry pi for his birthday. (And no, that's not a typo.) Apparently a raspberry pi is a type of tiny computer, and not something to eat. John managed to attach a keyboard to it and use our TV as a monitor, and he has been able to program some things for it. He still wants some buttons that he can attach to it, and i'm not sure what all else. Hannah made his cake. It was supposed to be a train engine, I think.   Josh's birthday was just a couple weeks ago, and he turned 13.  What Josh wanted for his birthday was Dungeons and Dragons stuff. He participated in a D&D club last year and was looking forward to school starting again so he could play some more.  I actually got to make his cake, and yes, it is a lot more boring than Hannah's creations, but it was swirly on the inside. John is currently serving as president of the Teacher's quorum at church, and Josh was recently called as the Deacon's ...

Today is the first day that all the kids are back in school. The house is quiet. I get to be on the computer again. It's been a good summer. Besides spending lots of time on the computer (Most of the kids playing Minecraft, and John programming) and watching movies (we've watched a lot of Doctor Who in the last couple months) we've gone to the park to play tennis or just to play and we've gone swimming. We've gone to the library for books to read each week. Peter learned how to bake muffins all by himself. Josh has gone for long bike rides. The kids have all gone to various summer camps, and John even managed to catch a fish. Hannah visited a few colleges in the area. We've played lots of games and made crafts. The summer passed quickly, and it was fun. Here are a few pictures from our summer. Hannah's somersault dive  Joshua John's somersault Josh, John and Hannah having an underwater tea party Hannah and John at the tennis c...