Weekly

It was another long week, but long isn't always necessarily negative. Long weeks are tiring, though. I just glanced through my journal entries for the week and I saw lots of positives mixed in the negatives. That's encouraging! Jeff had two moderately late nights of parent teacher conferences and two very late night track meets, so he was only home during the wild witching hour (before 8pm) one weeknight this week. We were/are both exhausted from it! Track season ends in two weeks. The story in John chapter 9 about the blind man receiving his sight really seems to describe my week...


The blind man was still blind while he made his way to the pool to wash. It was probably hard for him to find his way to the pool, but he obeyed Jesus Christ and made the journey anyways. Even when life is going well, there is still hard, confusing work to be done. The blind man was promised healing if he washed in the pool, but he had to find the pool first! It all goes back to the basic principle that there must be opposition in all things. What I realized this week was that there is even opposition during good moments!

Our Monday night family New Testament lesson was a good moment (even without Jeff). I took the kids outside, made mud, and painted Rose's arms and face in the mud. Then we read John 7:24 "Judge not according to the appearance," and talked briefly about not judging people from the outside--it's the inside that counts. That was a good moment. During that good moment, however, Rose was completely distracted by the mud slowly drying onto her arms and face, Jay kept missing the point of my basic questions and Amber got overly enthusiastic about the use of mud and dirt. She kept throwing shovelfuls of dirt around us. I kept pausing/losing my train of thought to ask her to stop. My Bible had dusty fingerprints all over its black cover when we came inside five minutes later.

Monday night was a simple relatively low-key example of opposition during goodness. The week was just beginning, and Tuesday upped the ante. Of course Tuesday was Jeff's only evening all week that he was home before 8pm. Journal clip:

Tuesday, April 30th
My emotions have been close to the surface all afternoon and evening. At 2:50pm today (before track practice), Jeff texted me asking for a ride home. Immediately I knew that he was having a rough time with more anxiety. Immediately I started worrying and stressing and dreading.  On the drive, I brought up the possibility of seeking more medical help with Jeff's anxiety, and when we got home I asked if he wanted me to make him an appointment. He agreed, so I called the doctor's office right away and got Jeff and appointment for Friday. Jeff disappeared into our dark basement bedroom to recuperate. He emerged at dinner time and I could tell he was making an effort to act more like his usual self. I could also tell that he still was nowhere near feeling like his normal self. For some reason, fake shell-Jeff's attempts at acting normal often irritate me! Ugh, I must be a terrible person. He's trying for goodness sake! The kids got ready for bed and Jeff retreated after family scripture/prayer.

After I brushed Amber's teeth and made sure she peed and said her prayers, I got out the ice cream and then went down to check on Jeff while it thawed to scoop-ability. We ended up talking about his anxiety and other stuff for close to 30 minutes, and I completely forgot about the ice cream. But it was good to understand more about where Jeff thinks this newfound more constant anxiety is coming from, (it has been annoyingly persistent for the past month), and feel more united about finding answers at the doctor. I felt much relieved after our talk, and ate my melted ice cream feeling much more calm.

{end journal entry}

The rest of the week passed with similar ups and downs. Some of the ups include: watching Amber fly through the sky when I pushed her on our rope swing; exchanging Marco Polo messages with my friend, and pounding out wild Jon Schmidt music on the piano. Some of the downs include: missing too much sleep, painfully sore quad muscles limiting my running (hello, Mt. Si!), and Amber's relentless appetite/food demands. I am still marveling at the idea that ups and downs can be simultaneous. Just because something good is happening, it doesn't mean every single aspect of life is good or easy. Good and bad, hard and easy are all mixed together every day in a big tangled web. Life in general is going along fine, but hard confusing things still happen every day in the middle of the good happy things. I think that's how it's supposed to be.

This tree at the park was pluming perfect pink blossoms on May Day. Springtime beauty comes with a price: Claritin for me, Zyrtec for Jeff.

Jay stayed home from school with a headache on Monday. Luckily it didn't turn into anything worse, and Tylenol plus hydration cured him quickly. Amber was ecstatic that "my brother is here!" Looking back, it's amazing Jay's headache went away...

Mud-painted Rose during our Monday night lesson. It's amazing how difficult it is to teach and photograph an object lesson all on my own, haha. 

 Sometimes the day has two witching hours: waiting for the school bus in the morning and the space between dinner and bedtime at night.

Upland Park is a small grassy area in the middle of the neighborhood at the top of the hill in Sunnyside (it's called THE hill because it's the only hill in town). Amber and I decided to go on a park quest this spring and visit all of the local parks. Upland Park may be tiny, but the flowers there were a beautiful, unexpected surprise.

 The perfect pink tree was at Upland Park: Amber climbed it and picked flowers, copying Ariel from The Little Mermaid as she plucked petals off one by one: "He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not. HE LOVES ME!" I asked who loves her, and she said "YOU." I love how pronouns are gender neutral to this girl.

 Lilacs were tumbling over the park fence from someone's yard. I drank in their purpley fragrance.

 I love how soft trees with blossoms look: all fluffy like a pillow.

That fence along the right of the picture was a floral jackpot. 

Playgrounds don't have to be fancy to be fun, and I actually prefer old school playground equipment because the safety regulations these days make playgrounds kind of boring. This metal slide was HIGH, and Amber relished the risk of climbing that steep steep ladder. 

 She wouldn't slide down the sunny metal slide in her shorts because she said it was too hot.

 One more pink petal picture before we headed home.

Another day I took Amber to the church parking lot to ride her bike. Training wheels are a whole lot easier to ride on smooth pavement than our rutted gravel driveway, and she zipped around joyfully. These pictures are actually from last week. We went back on Thursday this week, but after less than half an hour, Amber somehow managed to tip her bike over, training wheels and all, in the middle of the flat sidewalk. She scraped her elbow and simply couldn't face any kind of FUN after that. I sent a message to Jeff asking if he had a bandaid in his classroom (the high school is just around the corner). It was his lunchtime, so we drove over to the high school and Amber felt much better with a bandaid covering her small scrape. 

That same day, I left the van at the high school and ran home with Amber in the stroller. It was a classic van dropoff that we've done several times. This way Jeff could drive home in the dark at 10pm after the track meet and I didn't have to figure out how to go pick him up. 

My quads were painfully sore all week, after my run up and down Mt. Si last Saturday, and while running home from the high school on Thursday, I ended up walking the last half mile home. Amber walked it in with me on the annoyingly soft loose new gravel that was put down in long sections of the canal road. I could barely push the empty stroller over the bumps!

 Amber is on the TOP OF THE WORLD every afternoon when Jay and Rose get home from school. She hugs and squeezes them super tight till they squeal. 

 Saturday morning: after cartoons, they all went to the playroom to build.

 Saturday afternoon: we played several games of catch outside with various implements: football, whiffle ball, frisbee, and my favorite scoop ball. Jay improved his football arm.

 Amber loved the scoop ball.

 Rose honed her frisbee throwing skills.

When Jay and Amber were done throwing, they went back to their favorite activity: digging. 

Bowling or frisbee-ing?

On Saturday evening, we went to Sunnyside's big Cinco de Mayo celebration for half an hour. The city closed off several streets, vendors set up tents, and carnival rides were cranking. We tried to go see the kids' cousin Layne perform a dance with her class in the gazebo downtown, but got mixed up and missed it. Instead we listened to the fun LOUD high school mariachi band and tried street tacos. Even though noisy crowded overpriced events aren't usually my thing, this felt so happy and unapologetically cross-cultural (funnel cakes and street tacos were sold side by side), and the good vibes pulsed through my bones in those booming mariachi soundwaves. We live in a neat town!