MaeLyn's Musings

 Earlier this month on a Thursday afternoon, Steven and I headed to Idaho to pick up Hannah from school and bring her home for the summer. It was an enjoyable drive with just the two of us. We spent that night at a hotel in Rock Springs and continued on our way, arriving in Rexburg in time to help Hannah load her stuff into our car and take a walk while she and her roommates finished cleaning the apartment for inspection. We had lunch there and then started the drive home.  Late in the afternoon, Steven was driving along the I-80 when I glanced over and noticed that the tire pressure light was on. I asked Steven about it and he shrugged. It didn't seem to be a problem. A short time later there was a bit of a jolt and a thumping noise: we had a flat tire. Steven pulled over and we climbed out of the car to inspect the damage. Yes, it was definitely flat. Hannah volunteered to change it, although Steven helped with instructions and jacking the car up. When the tire came off, the...

I just got home from dropping Hannah off at the airport. She is flying to Salt Lake, where my sister Lindy will pick her up and take her to the MTC in Provo. She enters the MTC at 12:30 this afternoon, and will officially be Sister Hiatt, missionary. I don't know how I feel about this yet. It doesn't seem real that I'm not going to see her for eighteen months, that she'll spend most of that time *hopefully* on the other side of the world. I am grateful that she made the decision to serve a mission, and I think she will be amazing. She seems so self-confident and grown up - much more so than I felt when I left to serve, and I was a couple years older than she is now. Last Friday, we received an email from our stake president to inform us that Hannah's visa hadn't arrived yet, so she was being reassigned to the Provo MTC. It was a bit disappointing that she wasn't heading to Brazil immediately, but this gives her a little more time to learn some Portuguese...

One of the scariest texts I ever got was while I was out shopping with Steven a few days ago. I had promised Steven a new suit for Christmas and we were at Men's Wearhouse picking one out. We were in the process of paying for our purchase when I received the following text from Hannah: "Peter hit a tree sledding and i think hes really hurt." I'm sure you can imagine the thoughts rushing through my head. How bad is "really hurt"? Broken bones? Concussion? Do I need to call an ambulance? Then again, she was texting, not calling... Surely she would call if she thought he was dying? I quickly sent a text back: "Paying now. Is he bleeding?" Can you give me more information about how bad it is? Please? Response: "No. but hes crying and moaning and he says his back hurts, like the center of his spine" Okay. He's not bleeding. He's conscious. But he's moaning? Is his back broken? Is my active boy going to be paralyzed for t...

"Are you sur e the car will be okay?" "Yes!" Steven assured me. "We replaced the radiator and got it all put back together before I drove it home last night. I added coolant this morning. It should work just fine now." Neither Steven nor I know much about cars, but we are lucky to have a friend who does, and he had helped us when our only car's radiator got a crack in it. With increased confidence, I gathered the library books and the kids who wanted to accompany me and headed out the door. The day was warm; we wouldn't need jackets, but there were storm clouds looming on the horizon as John and Joshua and I climbed into the van and set off. As we approached the library less than ten minutes later, however, I noticed that the car’s temperature gauge was creeping upward, and was nearly to the red by the time I pulled into a parking space. I'd had experience with cars overheating before and I knew that was bad. As we headed into the li...

Today I got to accompany Peter's class on a field trip to the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum . We arrived after a standard (noisy and bumpy) school bus ride, left our coats in a small room and then enjoyed a pizza lunch. After lunch, we got to explore the museum, which is inside a giant hangar. I shepherded my four assigned boys around, first to look at the many airplanes, and play with a couple flight simulators, and then we got to explore the math midway exhibit, which had a lot of fun activities, that didn't really seem much like math to the kids. Eventually the teachers gathered us all together again to find our coats and load the buses for the return back to the school. It was a lot of fun! Peter and the other kids had a chance to see how Orvil and Wilbur Wright's plane was steered, by leaning one way or the other and pulling up or pushing up on a bar. The progress of the plane was shown on a screen in front, and I observed one boy steer the plane dire...

Yesterday, Hannah and John got to go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead . This was John's first time, and I was excited for him. They both had a good experience. They returned home around noon, Hannah went into her room to change, and after a few minutes, she started screaming - there was a bird flying around her room! I went into Hannah's room, and there was the bird, a tiny sparrow, sitting quite composed on her curtain rod. We found a bucket with a lid that we thought was big enough to get the bird into, and I started to creep up on the bird. The bird sat there calmly, waited until I was close enough to almost reach it, and then flew right into my face! Aaaaaaargh! When it got out of my face, it flew into Hannah's closet and perched on the top shelf. Again I slowly approached it, only to have it fly back to the curtain as soon as I got close. Eventually, the bird hid under Hannah's desk, in a back corner. The round bucket I had been using wasn't working,...