Faster and Faster

Cooper had another cross country meet today. He continues to do well. He ran an 18:54 and placed 15th overall, 6th from his school. We arrived just a few minutes before the race ended, but we were there to see him cross the finish line!

A Full Social Calendar

We had a weekend full of events.

Friday night we went to a Hobbit party and ate and visited until late.

Saturday night we went to a Ukulele Orchestra party and ate and visited and played music until late.

Sunday night we went to a missionary homecoming and chatted until late.

And that led to Topher asking this morning, "Do we have another party tonight?"

We did not.

Only homework and sleep.

And that's okay.

One Year Closer to Driving

Phoebe is 15! The week of her birthday I asked if she wanted to invite some friends over to celebrate. She said yes and this fun group came over in advance of her actual birthday for games and pizza.

That meant she got multiple days of birthday awesomeness.

But she still just got the same batch of birthday cupcakes for both.

 Happy birthday, Phoebe!

Glee Club Rehearsal

This season, in addition to our full choir numbers, we added small group songs that included costumes and choreography. I played this song for my codirector when we were in the planning stages and she immediately loved it. But we knew this one would take a lot of extra work. The solution? We put our own kids in it, that way we didn't need to make space for it in our rehearsal schedule, we could just have several playdates/rehearsals to work on it. And that's just what we did.

I was standing in the back of the house next to the sound booth (aka Bryan sitting at a folding table with the sound board) when I realized that Linus' mic was turned off. You can see the moment that Cooper saw me frantically motioning for him to reach over and flip the switch on the mic pack. Charlie Brown was the hero of this number.

Phoebe lost most of her voice the day before the concert. Thankfully, she had enough for her low solo line in another song and for her duties as Snoopy.

See that skirt Sophie is wearing? She and her friend spent at least an hour on Saturday making those fluffy tutus. I think they really completed Sally and Lucy's looks.

Love Note

Topher left me a sweet message with his afterschool snack today.

Picture Day!

Organized Chaos

We had our summer concert for our kids choir tonight. We added some new performance elements like costumes and wireless mics. It's was chaotic, but it turned out well overall. And I took zero pictures of the actual performance because my phone was being used to run all the audio tracks. I do have these pictures of what the space looked like today after we finished setting up. And hopefully the other parents will share the videos and pictures they took.

Also, Topher was so excited that he set out his choir clothes before he went to school.

To Go Inside Someday

Cooper and Sophie both gave talks about the temple on Sunday. Cooper jotted a few notes, but didn't write the whole thing down. He did a great job, I just don't have the talk to post here. Sophie also did a great job and she wrote down what she was going to say. And now you get to enjoy it, too.

“I love to see the temple I’m going there someday. To feel the holy spirit, to listen and to pray.” A few weeks ago I had the privilege to go to the temple. I love going to the temple, every time I go I feel so peaceful and calm. I love that I get to go with Phoebe and Cooper. When I was too young to go to the temple I was always sad when my older siblings got to go in but I didn’t. I remember waiting in the foyer of the Manhattan meeting house-which is in the same building as the Manhattan temple-waiting for them to be done, it felt like forever. I wanted to be inside, I wanted to see what they were doing and I wanted to help as well. The words of I Love to See the Temple described the way I felt, I wanted to go inside someday and be there with my siblings. Now that I am old enough to go inside, serving in the temple goes by so fast, I wish it lasted longer. Whenever I hear that there is an upcoming temple trip I am overjoyed to go. I can’t wait until Topher is old enough to go inside. I bear my testimony that going to the temple is important and it is a very positive experience. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

The Voice of the People

On Tuesday afternoon Phoebe told me that she felt really strongly that she needed to throw in her hat for a student government position. The application and video (less than a minute about why her classmates should vote for her) were due at 8:00 that evening. She worked out what she wanted to say, practiced, I recorded her, then she uploaded everything. The time stamp on the message with the video was 7:59. She literally did not have a minute to spare.

And guess what?

Tonight she found out that her peers voted her in. She's one of seven students representing the freshman class at all planning meetings and events.

Congratulations, Phoebe!

Up and Up and Up

Cooper had another race today, this time at Sophie's school, and we went to support him. Cross country runs are 5Ks, so we had some time to wait for him to finish. Thank goodness Sophie's school has a playground.

Also, Cooper shaved 30 seconds off his time and crossed the finish line at 18:42!

The Harvest

We spent Labor Day having a very long dress rehearsal for our next kid choir concert. When the singers went home and just us directors and our kids were left, we had a picnic on the back lawn of the church building. Topher and his friends took it upon themselves to start cleaning out the church garden. They insisted that they were picking wheat and were going to make bread.

It was not wheat. But I don't know what it actually was.

In related news Topher came home very itchy and needed a shower. 

Barely There

Topher asked me last week when he would be old enough to shave. I said maybe when he was Cooper's age.

I should have recognized his question for the warning it was.

During his Saturday evening shower, Topher took a little (cough*almost all*cough) off the top of his right eyebrow.

I wonder how much it'll grow before picture day.

Day Off

The kids had a good first week of school. Our district starts with a four-day week and then a four-day weekend. We celebrated our first day off of the year with some mild sleeping in, one early cross country practice, and a few free donuts from the summer reading program. And lots of chores.

Bryan was well enough to go outside for a few minutes today. Progress is good, even if it's small.

Brain Glitch

Today Bryan and I tried to catch up on sleep while the kids were at school.

And yet I'm so tired that after more than seventeen years of blogging regularly, I almost forgot to post.

I guess I have more catching up to do.

FYI, Bryan is feeling better. He's okay standing and sitting, but switching between the two is pretty rough.

Rock and Roll

This is me at 3:11 this morning. It's the only picture I took of Bryan's stay in the ER. He was in so much pain, I didn't think we would appreciate any pictures I took of him.

Last night the kidney stone pain combined with medication induced nausea to create a perfect storm. He was back forth about going to the ER again. After he threw up for the third time in less than an hour I said it was time to head to the hospital. He checked in just before midnight. Around 3:30 in the morning we were told that he was being admitted and had been put on the list for surgery. They were going to remove the stone.

Nearly twelve hours and several anti-nausea and pain medication doses later, a nurse arrived in his ER room to wheel him to surgery. Just over an hour later he was out of surgery and in the recovery room. The surgeon found me in the waiting room and told me the stone was so big Bryan likely wouldn't have passed it on his own. They were able to blast the stone and break it into smaller pieces. Then they endoscopically used a tiny basket to scoop out the pieces.

He was finally able to eat food after he came out of the anesthesia, roughly twenty hours after he had started feeling so intensely awful. He has a stent, which is both supposed to help the process and will really hurt over the next five days.

Thankfully he's home. He's still in pain, but hopefully that pain has an end date. And he's really glad to be in his own bed.

Twenty-Four Years and Counting

We were finally able to have our family birthday dinner last night! Does that mean that Bryan has passed the kidney stone? No, it does not. But thanks to some strong pain medication, he joined us for the picture and the meal.

First Day, Again!

This is the first time we've had kids transport themselves on their first day. Cooper and Phoebe both got to skip the bus this morning.

Sophie loved both her first day outfit and her first day hair.

Topher was glad we made his bus on time.

Happy first day, all!

Run, Run Cooper

Cooper had his first Cross Country meet of the season today. It was a huge invitational, thirty schools were invited. Because he took a week off from running due to a foot injury, he was assigned to run in the JV race. He guessed that there were 200 guys that ran that 5K with him. Only the top 15 runners placed.

And looked who placed 15th with a run time of 19:12!

Great work, Cooper! He's had two very good days in a row.

On the Road

We have another driver in the house! Cooper passed his driver's test this morning!

He celebrated by driving to the store and buying himself an Eagles keychain.

Congratulations, Cooper!

Overheard

Cooper: (to Phoebe) Hey, don't shoot the messenger.

Phoebe: I'm not going to shoot the messenger. I'm going to correct the messenger and then educate the messenger.

To Be Connected

Topher gave a talk in primary last Sunday. I've been so busy driving kids around, getting them ready for school to start, that I wasn't home to help him. Bryan took over that job this time. He said he and Topher studied the lesson, watched a few church videos, and discussed. This talk was the result. He did a great job delivering it.

Heavenly Father told the Saints to keep journals. In D&C 85, it says the saints should keep a history of the things that happen in the church, how they lived their faith and what they did. Journals are where we write the things that happen to us.

My Mom has a blog that she’s kept for almost 20 years with pictures and stories of us kids and our family. It talks about important times for our family – like when I was born, or went to the hospital – and also about the things we do together. It’s a history of our family and we all like to read it. It is her journal.

Even if we can’t write words, we can keep journals. There’s a poem in the July 2006 Friend that says how:

I can keep a journal,
And I can't even write.
But I can color pictures—
I do it every night.

Special things that happen
And special things we do,
I draw them in my journal.
And you can do it too.

I have my own journal, it's black and white. I draw pictures of things I experience or imagine.

Even if you can't write a lot of words yet, you can still keep a journal like me. When you grow up you can look back and remember all the things that happened when you were little, and share those things with your family.

Heavenly Father told us to keep journals so we can be connected to our families. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

A Long Long Time Ago

Today is our 24th family birthday. We had planned to eat our traditional family birthday meal, but we needed to postpone it to Wednesday. Bryan woke me up at 6:00 in the morning to tell me that he was having a kidney stone. We think this is his ninth, but that's just a guess since we've kind of lost count. He spent the morning in the ER getting some very strong medication and the rest of the day going in and out of sleep, still on very strong medication.

This is not how he wanted to spend today.

Since the day went sideways, let us instead focus on this day twenty four years ago.

Aw, look at those cute kids.

Keep Out

I found this sign on Topher's door. I understand that he wants us to know that his room is private property. I'm not quite sure what C8T means.

Snip Snip

I kept putting off Topher's haircut because I knew we were getting closer to school and I figured it would be better to send him to second grade looking tidy and not with a few weeks of growth. That meant that his hair got longer than I intended. Yesterday he went from this:

To this:

He looked through a book of haircut ideas and he picked this one. I think he looks very handsome and ready for school.

Fresh and New

We're getting closer to school starting. Miss Phoebe went to freshman orientation today.

Parents were invited into the school at the end of the orientation to find their student's classrooms with them. This high school is kind of a maze of add-ons, and neither of us has a great sense of direction, so I'm not sure how productive it was. But I'm glad I could be there with her. And we get to try again tomorrow when the school has an open house for all the incoming high school students.

Jump Right In

A few weeks ago a friend told me that she'd asked a mutual friend if she could bring her kids over to use their pool. They had a great time swimming. And for some reason this kind of broke my brain. Our friend had said the words "You guys are welcome to swim anytime" but I hadn't really believed her. It felt like one of those empty offers that people say. She actually meant it though.

 I've been thinking about it ever since and finally texted this week to ask if we could do the same thing. She said yes!

We had a fun few hours in the pool this afternoon.

Read for Your Breakfast

These two completed the summer reading program at our library and earned two free donuts in the process. They cashed in their first coupon today and enjoyed fancy donuts for breakfast.

Fancy Friends

Sophie had a grand evening yesterday. She attended a fancy dinner party that her good friend threw. There were four attendees (including the hostess) and two parents who acted as waiters. We (yep, I was one of them) even costumed in white dress shirts and blacks slacks so we could be totally in character. 

Sophie was given the assignment to contribute potatoes to the meal. I talked her through how to cook them in the instant pot and Bryan supervised the mashing and seasoning. They were the perfect compliment to the pork tenderloin main dish.

After the fancy dinner, the girls decorated masks, had a dance party, covered their faces in glitter, made raspberry frosting for their brownie dessert, and sang in harmony. It was a grand night for all.

And they've informed the moms that they plan to do it again next week.