Friday Food and Fun

Back in college, our local LDS Institute program hosted a weekly lunch on Fridays that some alliterative leader named Friday Food and Fun. Free lunch? Yes, we were regulars. The "fun" part of the Friday Food and Fun involved ping pong and/or Foosball. While I am not much of a ping pong-er, I happen to be something of a snazzy Foosball player (or at least I was ten years ago), and some of my best, most exciting, well-fought battles of games were played in that tiny institute game room. These were the good ole days before the church built an official institute building/student chapel at SVU, and the institute classes were held in a converted house called Landrum Hall (it was a tiny house, not hall-sized in any way) in the corner of campus. Friday Food and Fun. Acronym used on advertising posters: FFF. The triple F. Good times.

Last Friday (June 3rd) the girls and I had our own version of Friday Food and Fun. We ran some errands around our cute little town and I savored the simplicity of small-town living. Then we headed out towards Bill's Berry Farm for the food and fun portion of our Friday. I had learned earlier that week that June 3rd was National Donut Day and that Bill's Berry Farm would be cranking out hot fresh raspberry donuts in celebration. Bill's is about 8 miles from our house, conveniently located in the countryside nearby for all our fresh fruit and donut needs. 

At the edge of town on our way to Bill's, we noticed that Grandview's rose garden was in full bloom. Rose and I have been wanting to stop there for weeks, ever since we ended one of our bike runs there and all the roses were still in tight buds. So we pulled over and took a stroll through this gorgeous nook of Grandview. My one regret was that I did not have the good camera and there was so much artistic scope for a good camera to capture with all of those beautiful flowers. Oh well, cell phone to the rescue!

Rose in the roses. 

The roses smelled so wonderful!

After shredding a couple of flowers behind my back, Amber caught on to gently touching and smelling the delicate velvety blossoms.

Rose was definitely still the sweetest, prettiest Rose in the garden.

Pink and yellow: my personal favorite rose color combo.

After the rose garden, we drove on over to Bill's for some playing and donuts. While we were there, we were pleasantly surprised to see some old friends who used to be in our ward. The donuts were hot and sweet. The shade was cool and fresh. The views of Mt. Adams were far and clear. There were only a few other people around. It was peaceful and refreshing.

Mt. Adams is on the horizon to the right of Rose's head. I really wish I had brought the good camera--it was a perfectly clear day and the views were spectacular.

 Amber liked the view from the treehouse platform.

Tire swinging with some of our favorite Watkins boys!

Ok, that's what I started out to post. If you want White Things extra credit, read on. Otherwise, that's the end of the pictures. I sat down to do a quick post with a few cute pictures: check {see above} As usual, however, once I started typing, all of these thoughts flooded out of my fingers. I've been considering these ideas on one of my brain's back burners, but I didn't know that they wanted OUT so badly! Hah! Some people think out loud; I think through my fingers (aka, typing).Since these thoughts are only very slightly related to this post and they aren't really important enough for their own post, I tacked them onto the end here for interested parties only.

Lately I've been marveling at how much I like living here in Grandview...

When we decided to move to Grandview, my heart was still back in Virginia. I thought there was no way I'd ever honestly come to like living in Grandview. While I'm no stranger to small town living, Grandview feels SO foreign to me, mostly due to three factors: the location, demographics, and climate. It's in the wide, wild west! I lived the first 21 years of my life east of the Mississippi River. Everything is so much BIGGER and farther away in the west. From where we lived in Virginia, we could drive to nearly 20 states in twelve hours or less, depending on which direction we wanted to go. From Grandview, we can only reach 6 states in a 12 hour drive radius. It is just BIG out here. 

Grandview is at least 80% hispanic. The sister missionaries in town here have Hermana____ on their name tags and teach primarily Spanish speakers. Mariachi music regularly blares during backyard barbecues. Sunnyside High School, where Jeff teaches, has a 24 piece mariachi band that serenaded Monsiuer Le Blanc (aka Jeff) the French teacher on his birthday last week. The three elementary schools in Grandview have dual language Spanish speaking classes. It's awesome--I do have a degree in Spanish Language after all--but it does contribute to the feeling of foreignness. In Tennessee and Virginia, the racial diversity was present, but with a different distribution. Most people were native English speakers, but the way they spoke was slow and southern, rather than speedy and Spanglish. To this day I instantly feel at home whenever I hear a southern accent, and I haven't been to Tennessee in ten years! (I love listening to Sister Niell Marriott speak in General Conference)

Grandview averages 7 inches of rain per year. I grew up in west Tennessee, which averages 55 inches of rain annually. My true love, Virginia, gets at least 39 inches of rain every year. (I just barely googled these stats to illustrate the difference in climate) To me, home equals lush, green, self-watering, and humid. The only trees and plants in Grandview are man-planted and lavishly irrigated. Watering the lawn feels so wrong! But we have to or else the thorny desert weeds creep in. Grandview took a whole lot of getting used to for my eastern humidity-greenery-loving soul. Yes, we can visit the fern and moss-swathed west side of Washington, but it's no Shenandoah Valley! 

Grandview has so much tucked into its small self. The three main parks are beautifully maintained. The dentist and Jay's school are half a mile from our house. The eye doctor, post office, and the library are a mile away. We have a Safeway grocery store and a branch of the community college. Hugo's Appliances sells quality refurbished used washers, dryers, and refrigerators--love those guys. There is a disproportionately large selection of barber shops, salons, and carnicerias to choose from. The local Nazarene church puts on a darling little kids soccer league. There are only six stoplights. I just love small town livin', and this is a good small town. [population: just over 10,000]

Ever so slowly, I have been growing accustomed to the cool summer mornings, the nearly nonexistant humidity, the mariachi music, the Spanglish, the low probability of a rainy day. I have started liking all of these things about this place! All of it still feels foreign to my "roots," but there is value in blooming where you're planted. For some reason I have been guarding my heart against opening up and letting myself love Grandview. It's almost like I would feel disloyal to my beloved Appalachians if I decide to love the Yakima Valley as well. But love doesn't work like that! Every time I had a baby, I didn't love the older kids less--my heart grew and I loved all of them more because of the growth. God created this world in all its variety, and that variety makes it glorious and beautiful! Basically, I've been realizing lately that it's ok to love two different kinds of places. Just because I love trees and thunderstorms doesn't mean I can't also love big bright skies and dry dry days in their own way. We aren't meant to love every person, place, and thing in the same way--that would be wrong! I love different things different ways for different reasons--I don't have to rank my feelings or decide which part of each person/place/thing is better than the others. I can just let myself love the good and be patient with the less-good.  

Five years ago, when we were still newbies to this town, I wrote this list:

TOP 4 things I dislike about living in Grandview:

1. The lack of trees.
2. The sharp, thorn-throwing, tire-popping goathead weeds.
3. The stinky cowpee winds that blow in from Sunnyside.
4. It hardly ever rains!

TOP 4 things I like about living in Grandview

1. The SKY. It’s so big and beautiful.
2. Living close to so many family members
3. Most things are within walking distance.
4. The fresh fruit.

Those opinions are still true for me, but my heart has grown around the dislikes and covered them in more likes.

My favorite preacher is Sarah Bessey. Yes, I'm a Mormon and I have a favorite preacher--she's a Canadian mother, writer, and woman-preacher, and while I'm not too interested in her theology, I really enjoy reading what she has to say about motherhood, family life, living joyfully, love, and being true to yourself. [I first discovered her two years ago when I read her piece about learning to live with the ache of motherhood.] She recently wrote this amazing article about change and growth, called Off Brand. She wrote it looking through the lens of motherhood and talked about how she resisted doing things differently with her last baby than she did with her first babies because it wasn't true to her original mothering "brand." The idea of sticking to my own original brand and never allowing for change really resonated with me. We are not bound to our past opinions! Sarah Bessey realized, as I have over and over, that we are here to learn and grow and change is part of that process. 

"Going off-brand can be terrifying. Daring to change our story when we find our primary identity in that particular story feels like we are losing our own sense of self. It’s more than just changing an opinion or a way of life: it’s changing who we thought we were.

I thought I was always going to mother in one particular way always: instead I changed.

It’s the same way in many areas of our lives.

...if we aren’t changing or evolving, then we aren’t paying attention. If we pay attention to our life, we will change. We will change in ways that we never imagined and even though there is grief to leaving behind that old story, there is freedom and life and space waiting on the other side of the threshold. 

...I always thought that I would be one sort of person: but now I'm someone else." --Sarah Bessey

No, this doesn't apply to every situation, (while I hope my faith develops and grows over time, I fully intend to stay true to my faith/LDS church--there's no way I'm going off that brand, haha), but I find that, like she said, the idea of self-imposed brands does apply to many areas of life. We can choose to hold ourselves back or choose to free ourselves and live, love, and progress! 

While I was thinking about how I love Grandview, the thoughts in this article came to mind. My brand was Virginia, but I haven't been there in nearly ten years, so who knows if it still is my brand? Yes I will always cherish my memories from Virginia and I would jump at any chance to visit that beautiful place, but right now my brand is Eastern Washington. I have had all three of my kids here. Their grandparents live close by. We bought a house here. We have built our life here. We are HAPPY here! 

It's time to stop holding back and start loving where I live right now, so I'll say it even though it kind of scares me: I LOVE GRANDVIEW! 

Auroramber

Amber seems to have had one of those huge leaps in development this week. She is such a little person these days! She can climb almost anything and she enjoys dragging stools and chairs over to shelves and counters to reach off-limits objects. She builds towers out of blocks. She can open our back porch door. Yikes! If she falls asleep in the car for more than 10 minutes, she WILL NOT go back to sleep ever again that day until bedtime. She has finally started enjoying reading stories together, and even has a few favorites: Pout Pout Fish, Chugga Chugga, Belly Button Book, and The Hungry Caterpillar. She never used to sit still long enough to listen to even a short little board book, so it's fun to finally have her "on my side" book-wise, haha. Her raspy weird breathing that we have had checked out by two different medical professionals five times is starting to fade ever so slowly. They never figured out what was making her breathing sound so congested, but it's so much better than it was two months ago. I love watching Amber's facial expressions while she plays. It's fun to practice my feeble photography skills on her while she plays. Most of the time she's a blur, running back and forth all over the house playing. 

 It's only a matter of time before she'll be able to undo the deadbolt too. Then we'll have to install a chain lock up high to keep her from escaping and walking through the thorns in our side yard. She did escape once last week and I rescued her with two feet FULL of thorns which I had to pick out with tweezers and a needle. It was all very tragic, but I have to say I'm glad those thorns stopped her from going out into the street before I dashed outside after her! 

Tippy tippy tiptoes.

Heavy blocks

Those puckered lips of concentration! 

Rose on the left, Amber on the right. This is such a funny little hand-me-down dress. I'm not sure how old it is, where it's from, or what those little circles on the collar are exactly, but it's still cute on these little blondies!

And now...

Please welcome PRINCESS AURORAMBER

The other day Rose was dressing up and I thought it would be cute to force Amber into a princess costume too. Most Disney princess costumes are ridiculously small, and I had no trouble unearthing this little Sleeping Beauty costume from our dress-up box. Amber was a little sparkly pink blur, eluding my photo-attempts and causing me to take a huge pile of blurry-but-still-cute pictures.

I tied the back flaps together to keep the dress on her shoulders, but the rest of the dress fit quite well.

Dazed and all dressed up. This picture cracks me up. They were so out of it!

Smiling through their glazed eyes. HAH!

Owning her throne.

Playing with rocks on the driveway

Amber likes playing with these magnetic "paper" dolls--wooden two sided dolls with magnetic clothing.

Those lips of focus!

It's amazing how easy it is to take 50 pictures in a mere matter of minutes.

When I came in from my run one morning this week, Amber greeted me with a cheerily inflected "Mama!" She rubbed her hand on my leg, saying "ooooh," noticing how wet it felt. Then she dabbed her finger on my sweaty leg, popped it in her mouth, and said "mmmm!" Hah! She did it again right after that. Yuck! No wonder she likes pretzels so much--yum, salt!

MILESTONE alert! This week she wore her first ever BRAID in her hair--a braided ponytail.

Sisters with braided ponytails. 

A little trampoline wrestling to celebrate

Amber started calling Jeff "Dah-dee" instead of "Dada" this week. At this rate, she'll be ready to start kindergarten along with Rose this fall! 

Bike run

Only five more days of school left! I love summer. I love having Jeff and Jay home every day. I love being able to go on a run all by myself whenever I want. I love when kids troop all over the yard playing. This week is kind of big in my parenting career: it's the last week that I will EVER have two kids home with me during the school year. Sniff, I'm still wrapping my head around that. Starting this fall, it'll be just me and Amber together during the day while everyone else goes to school, for five whole years. Then Amber will start kindergarten and my entire world will combust since I'll have zero sweetfaces home with me during the day and I may become either an ultramarathon runner or an ultrahousecleaner to cope with the loss. That was an intentional run-on sentence to show my distress. I'm choosing not to think about this time five years from now when it'll be my last week home with ANY kids during the school year. One snipped motherly heartstring at a time, thanks.

Even though we've rounded the last curve and we're on the home stretch to summer vacation--I can see it straight ahead at the end of this week's row of boxes on the calendar--I still took Amber and Rose with me on a run last week. It was Wednesday and I did not want to wait for Jeff to get home to run that afternoon because it was getting hotter by the second. So, I tied up my running shoes, buckled Amber into the stroller, and checked Rose's bike tires. We were ready to run, ride, and roll!

Rose started off a little slow and then gained confidence and zoomed ahead of me on the sidewalk, training wheels buzzing. We set a course for the bike path, which is one mile away from our house. I was hoping to run at least 4 miles, so out 2 and back 2. After years of pushing the 100 pound double jogging stroller, the single feels light as a feather. We cruised along all the way to the railroad tracks that are right before the bike path access point. The sidewalk ends just before the train tracks, so we had about fifty feet of gravely slightly uphill roadside to navigate before we reached the sanctuary of the bike path. We crossed the tracks and then Rose had to pedal harder up the incline. As she labored with her pedals, she ignored the handlebars and drifted into the middle of the street. A giant pickup truck was coming! Thankfully the driver saw Rose and slowed down, but Rose did not see the truck and the people were waiting to get past. I called out to Rose, but she was too focused on being stuck on the uphill and did not respond, so I left Amber rolling slightly in the stroller and dashed over to rescue Rose. Once she was safely on the side of the street again, I dashed back and grabbed the drifting stroller. At last we made it to the bike path and cruised along for another half mile through the only shade for miles. 

We crossed a crosswalk and left the shade behind. When we were two miles away from home, Rose was still looking strong, pedaling up ahead like a little engine, so I thought maybe I'd try for five miles instead of four. Bad plan. About two minutes after I had that thought, Rose suddenly slowed down and said "I'm TIRED and THIRSTY and HOT." Oh boy: 2.4 miles from home on foot with a stubborn, tired five year old. We turned back and headed home right then. But the thing about Rose is, once she decides something, she is set on it and she becomes quite intractable. (In fact, if she decided that she wanted to ride without training wheels, she would be able to do it easily. She's totally ready, just not decided.) She had decided that she was tired and hot, and she did not want to ride her bike anymore. Oh boy. With great effort, dipping deep down to the bottom of my patience bucket, and lots of pushing Rose on her bike while wildly steering the stroller at the same time (and crashing the stroller into Rose's bike a few times--ha), we covered the half mile back to the crosswalk. Unfortunately, Rose hit the lip of the curb at the crosswalk, and she had a spectacular wreck--training wheels and all--right next to me. Her handlebars were bent sideways and she was half under her bike. I helped her up and somehow wheeled her bike and the stroller to the shade to recover and fix the handlebars. 

There we were, a mile and a half from home and it really was hot and we were all quite thirsty. We got drinks from the convenient water fountain on the corner and then I spent the next half hour coaxing Rose along the rest of the way home. She kept stopping and saying she didn't want to go any further. I kept telling her that the only way was to keep riding. It was very frustrating for both of us. I felt completely torn between pushing Amber in the stroller and pushing Rose on her bike. I couldn't keep them both together! It was a ridiculous, maddening situation.

Rose's frustrated face is hard to see in this picture, but you can see her leg-flop. She would kick her feet off the pedals in anger and just flop her legs down and refuse to pedal. Sigh. Grr. 

About a quarter mile from our house, we started to walk the rest of the way in. Rose pushed the stroller and I pushed her bike. When Rose nearly drove the stroller off the sidewalk curb, I reclaimed the stroller and let Rose push her own heavy bike, which she was very unwilling to do. Finally, I was just too hot and thirsty to bear taking another million years to walk a quarter mile, so I loaded Rose's bike on top of the stroller and had Rose sit in the stroller, holding Amber. I flexed my arms and pushed that load home. 

We arrived back at our driveway having traveled 4.8 miles in 65 minutes. One of the main things that kept me going during the whole ordeal was the knowledge that it was probably the last time I would ever even need to attempt such a run again! Oh, and somehow our stroller survived load bearing to the max with only a bent sunshade.