A summer day at the White house

August has not been a very bloggy month for us White things. We have been home hanging out and relishing our lack of schedule for as long as we have it. Five mornings a week, Jeff and I take turns running before it gets too blazing hot outside. Then we spend the rest of the day avoiding the sunny outdoor heat by watching what Olympics we can find, getting things done around the house, and hanging out together. The kids have been playing outside, inside, downstairs, and upstairs all day every day. Three days a week we watch Spencer (age 9). We love having him over--he's a great guy and he get along so well with Jay and Rose. Most days that Spencer is here, the two kids next door come over to play too, so we have a houseful! After lunch when Amber goes down for her nap, the big kids go downstairs for some (usually) quiet computer game time. We have our summer groove going, and life is good.

Let the photo backlog commence. I'll arrange this set in a "day in the life" order:

1. Thoroughly, loudly wake up the parents and take over their bed.

 "I'm Mount Rose-more!" (Rose's version of Mt. Rushmore, haha)

2. Parents take turns running and showering, and then collapse/rest/recover. Amber spotted a jungle gym.

3. Sometimes the mother remembers to have the kids do some chores.

4. Spencer arrives at 8am and playing commences. Sometimes Rose doesn't get dressed in time.

 {Amber follows the big kids and observes everything}

5. "Bike ride of the day"--Jay and Spencer like to go on a morning bike ride to visit Spencer's mom at work (she works at the school half a mile away). They also ride to the park and play sometimes.

6. Rose is not allowed to go on the bike ride of the day because she's to young. We told her when she learns how to ride her bike without training wheels really well, she'll be allowed to go with the boys. We hoped that would be a good incentive to get her practicing, but she hasn't really caught the bike riding bug yet. She can ride without training wheels, but she lacks courage to do it without a fatherly safety net. And she gets IRATELY, flamingly frustrated when it doesn't go smoothly...

[Rose feels every emotion with her whole entire self. This one is pure frustration and anger.] 

7. Snack time! In an effort to avoid fielding requests for food every minute of every day, I have decreed that kids get one snack between breakfast and lunch, and another one snack between lunch and dinner. The morning snack falls around 10am--I told them to wait till then one day when they started asking for snacks at 8:30 (an hour or so after breakfast), and now they often sit watching the clock at 9:50am, waiting for it to become ten so they can have their beloved snack. Their self-imposed time frame cracks me up! When we have Cheezits, practically the whole neighborhood comes tromping through and it becomes something of a piranha-feed with orange crumbs scattered far and WIDE. [Well, it feels like the whole neighborhood, but it's really our kids, Spencer, and the two kids next door. Still, that's a lot of Cheezits. When Jay and Rose went next door for a birthday party a few weeks ago, we wrapped up a Costco box of Cheezits for the gift.]

 If nobody gives Amber a snack fast enough, she takes matters into her own hands. This particular time I found her eating butter, just like her big sister did at that age.

 Sometimes I make a good snack like a smoothie and share it with whoever comes running.

8. Sometimes we go on an outing, but usually we just stay home. One day we met some friends at the Prosser park and there were a ton of kids running around that Jay, Rose, and Amber did not know. So they retreated to a tire swing hidden under the playground. I'm glad they've got each other's backs.

9. Amber's naptime (usually around 1pm) and the much-anticipated video game time for the big kids! They disappear to the basement and I either collapse into a chair and read or try and finish a project. Over the past week, Jeff and I rearranged our upstairs family room furniture and re-did our kitchen desk area. I spent hours online searching for arrangement ideas since I have next to no inborn sense of style or vision, and we are all pleased with how it turned out. The best part was that I used things that we already had. The only supplies I bought were: photo prints, a world map, some extra pencil/marker holders, and a new wall calendar. It is immensely satisfying to create a new arrangement out of the same old frames and shelves. After much drilling difficulty, we hung a shelf at desk-height to save mucho dinero since desks are so expensive. I love refreshing our home with a little rearranging!

The kitchen shelf-desk area. It's designed so everything (including the laptop) can be stored up high out of Amber's reaching little fingers. She still climbs, but it's not as easy for her to destroy this way. Also: the map is a peel-and-stick dry erase world map, so we put an arrow labeled "Mel" pointing to Cambodia so the kids know where their missionary aunt is. We also put stars on Rio de Janeiro and south-central Washington.

The slightly wimpy lil TV gallery wall area--ideally I would put a wider set of shelves under the TV since the wall is so big, but this was a low cost rearrange, so all I did was print a couple new pictures for the frames.

10. Amber wakes up and requires snuggling. Sometimes she cheers up and sometimes she doesn't. Spencer goes home at 3pm.

11. The witching hour begins:

12. Somehow we do dinner and eventually wrangle everyone into bed, hopefully by 7pm. Lots of summer nights, Jay and Rose have sleepovers. This week they cleaned the playroom in the basement and slept there for two nights. They are best friends. They argue and wrestle and disagree like siblings do, but they are true blue friends and spend all their time together. (insert glowing motherly heart)

And that's an average summer day at the White house.

Bee-bo!

The Parade

It's the second week of August, and in Grandview that means it's time for the Yakima Valley Fair and Rodeo. Quite a few people from our ward are very involved in 4-H and FFA and this fair. I feel kind of bad that I've never actually been to the fair because I would love to support everyone--but August here is HOT and admittedly, most summers that we've lived here I have been either pregnant or taking care of a baby in August. So I don't feel too bad for not going. It will happen one of these years, I just know it, and we will be drenched in sweat when it does. But not this year--track and field started up in the Olympics on Friday, so we're not going out in the evenings for the next five days. In spite of our non-fair attendance, we always go to the parade, which was conveniently the night before track events started down in Rio.

On Thursday evening during the week of the fair there is a fun little 45 minute parade through Grandview. This year we managed to get seats in the shade at the very beginning of the parade route, about a quarter mile from our house. We strolled down the street, parked in the shade, and watched the parade in relative comfort (as comfortable as you can be in the shade on a 97 degree evening). Sitting at the beginning of the parade was great. We avoided the big crowds downtown AND all of the people in the parade were fresh and full of enthusiasm right there at the beginning. Jay and Rose would want me to add that they also had bulging bags of candy to toss out, joy of joys. I let the kids eat two or three little parade candies and even got into the spirit myself with a small pouch of Sour Patch Kids gummies. I'm not sure what got into me because I've never liked non-chocolate candy much, but I rather enjoyed my sugar coated gummies. I regretted eating that candy almost immediately, however when we were all suddenly ravenously thirsty from the combination of sugar and blazing heat! Talk about cotton-mouth thick-tongued THIRST. But we toughed it out for the sake of the parade.

We went to the parade with Grampa Dan and Grama Leslie, while Jeff stayed home sick. There were beauty queens from all over the valley on sparkly floats in sparkly gowns wearing sparkly crowns. Rose really liked them. There were cheerleaders and marching bands from local middle and high schools. Amber started jumping excitedly when she saw their shimmery pom-poms. There were fire trucks and tractors and miniature cars and old cars and loud cars galore. Trucks pulled trailers full of football teams, swim teams, and cub scouts. There were a few horses pulling carriages. Our LDS missionaries were allegedly supposed to be in the parade, but I never caught a glimpse of them--maybe I was too distracted by the handful of preachers with megaphones quoting the Bible loudly and calling people to repentance. They saved the best for last: the dancing horses. I think they are Andalusian horses--Spanish horses. They are tall with arching necks and lonnnnng flowy manes and tails, and they prance with this floating trot type gait where they lift two legs, hold, then switch and do it with the other two legs. Horses make me happy!

 Sitting with Grampa Dan and Toby the dog.

 Grama Leslie sat in the sun on the curb with Rose while the rest of us huddled in the shade 20 feet behind them.

 Giant blow up apple from Yakima! 

 Amber waved back at paraders every now and then.

 Toby the dog, sitting nobly in the late sunshine near his master, Dan.

 A politician handed out paleta popsicles at the parade. Those politicians were a smooth talking lot. Jay and Rose ended up not liking their popsicles and we stashed them underneath the stroller to keep Amber from playing in their fast-melting puddle.

Amber loves sugar! And mean mother that I am, she doesn't get it too often. But I did let her enjoy a Dum-Dum pop at the parade. She loved it, and got ALL sticky ALL over while she ate it. 

 Not so sure about the paleta popsicle.

 The kids gathered so much candy, plus two t-shirts and two plastic footballs. Groan. I need to lighten up! But I don't love sugar and cheap junk making my house crazy/messy! That sounded harsh. I'm not trying to be harsh. But McDonald's toys, parade loot, school fundraiser awards, trick or treating spoils--even junky plastic road race trophies--all of it makes me cringe. {see exhibit A below}

Exhibit A: This is one of the t-shirts that the kids got during the parade. Delfina's Day Care, with the phone number written underneath. The entire message on the shirt is written in puffy paint by hand. I will say no more on the subject.

 Amby's fingers reached critical sticky mode about half way through her Dum-Dum pop. She said "dih-dee!" and waved her sticky hands in my face over and over. She kept trying to touch my shoulder or my hair and I kept scootching out of her reach. Finally she finished the lollipop and I dumped precious water from our water bottle on her hands to remove the sticky-ness.

And now: beautiful dancing horses!! The sun was low on the horizon shining behind the horses, making photography tricky. And Grandview Middle School isn't the most artistic background. I still could not resist taking a few pictures of the gorgeous horses!

 Rose wore our corduroy cowgirl hat for the occasion.

 Tousel headed blondie watching the horsies.

 Rose pointed out that there were more horses coming.

MANE PERFECTION!!

 The "tail end" of the parade, prancing off down the street.

The loot! They have way more fun collecting the candy during the parade than they do eating it, thankfully. I let them each pick out five pieces to eat this week and saved the rest to hand out on Halloween, and they were just fine with the arrangement.

Rose knows that I love horses and she was SO excited for me to see them. 

"Mommy! Are you so happy? Is this the best parade of your life?" 

Hurray for the parade!

Language

One day when I was eleven years old, I was riding my horse bareback in the woods of west Tennessee, down the infamous Pond Trail--it was about a quarter mile stretch of trail through the trees that eventually opened up at a pond. For some reason, our horses always bolted down that trail. It was downhill and towards the barn, but not really that close to the barn (they always went faster towards the barn), so the reason probably was because we thought it was fun at first when they ran that fast so we encouraged their habit of galloping down the Pond Trail until they did it whether we wanted them to or not.

I was a very scrawny little eleven year old on the back of a big strong quarter horse who was practically flying down the trail that day. I had no saddle and I started feeling myself slip with the jolting downhill motion of the horse. Yikes! I rarely fell off of our horses, and so this was an unsettling feeling. I gripped with all my might, tugging at the reins as hard as my bony arms could while my out-of-control horse hurtled onward, but I kept on sliding. Since we were going downhill, the horse's neck was stretched out and tilted down, so instead of slipping off sideways, I was sliding up towards her head. As I slid up my horse's neck, I remember clearly thinking "This is the kind of situation where some people would swear. I wonder if that would help." I decided not to swear--I didn't have the energy to spare for a moral debate as I was about to slide over my horse's neck and off in front of her lashing hooves. Plus I knew that swearing was not good, so I left it at that and focused on stopping the horse. By the time I finally managed to reign my horse to a stop, I was sitting/laying halfway to her head, with my legs wrapped around her neck. I dismounted shakily and decided that swearing would not have helped, and I have not wondered about or experimented with swearing since. I knew it was not a good habit or something I wanted to do, and I think the fact that I had managed to get through that scary situation without resorting to swearing made me realized that I would never need or want to swear. 

11 year old Shaina riding Molly the horse. 

Riding bareback, age 13

As an amateur writer and seasoned bookworm, I value good language. It affects me. I relish an eloquent speaker, a kind word, or a clever paragraph. When I hear or read wonderful words--whether they're from a dear friend, a well-written book, or a religious source--I'm walking on sunshine. I feel light and happy. But when I hear or read things that are lame, rude, or bad, I feel dark and uncomfortable and all I want is OUT. I'm a picky reader, a careful speaker, and a sensitive listener. Officially my classifications are: highly sensitive and introvert, with "words of affirmation" as my love language. I guess that's part of why language and words affect me so deeply, whether it's negative or positive.

Oh, language. I've been thinking about it so much and actually worrying about it a lot lately because Jay and Rose seem to think it's fun/funny to say either mean words or swear words, and I don't know how to get them to stop. I want them to make good choices on their own without my long parental shadow looming over them threateningly! It's utterly baffling that they are even experimenting with swearing because Jeff and I don't swear.

A quick disclaimer: I know that lots of very good people struggle with swearing and I know plenty of other good people who don't mind swearing at all. While I myself feel strongly about swearing, I do not think that those who struggle with it or those who don't mind it are bad people in any way. I don't want to sound all preachy or prideful when I write about this! I'm just trying to express my personal opinions and thoughts in a respectful way. When those opinions and thoughts are less mainstream, I worry about coming across wrong. I know and love so many people who swear, and I must confess that in some instances (aka in a small handful of books and movies) I find a well-placed mild swear word rather amusing. But not every day, and especially not from the mouths of my sweet kids!

This makes it sound like my children are swearing like sailors--they aren't! They only know two swear words (thankfully) which they heard from movies, and they've only used those words 3 or 4 times each, over the past few months. So it's really not too terrible, but I want them NEVER to use those words! Jeff and I never have been in the habit of swearing, so to me swearing feels extremely invasive and damaging to the spirit in our home. I know the kids are still super young, and they are just experimenting and testing boundaries, but I want them to know that swearing is not ok in our house. 

All of our serious talks with the kids about not swearing during the past few months seemed to have worked until out of the blue just last week, two days apart, Jay and Rose each said a bad word. They didn't swear in anger, but for fun, like they were doing it because they knew it was naughty and they were trying to think of the worst thing they could say. It is a small comfort that they don't seem to have any malice or even a long term habit of swearing; I just don't want it to become a habit. I know that swearing isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but language and words are really important and I don't want my kids to get into the habit of swearing.

My favorite explanation of the power and importance of using good language is Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's April 2007 General Conference talk. He is equal parts bold, eloquent, and accessible:

“[James 3:3-10] 'Behold, we put bits in the horses’ mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body. Behold also … ships, which though they be … great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm.'

"Then James makes his point: 'The tongue is [also] a little member. … [But] behold, how great a [forest] a little fire [can burn]… So is the tongue [a fire] among our members, … it defileth the whole body, …For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, … hath been tamed of mankind: But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.'

"Well, that is pretty straightforward! Obviously James doesn’t mean our tongues are always iniquitous, nor that everything we say is “full of deadly poison.” But he clearly means that at least some things we say can be destructive, even venomous—and that is a chilling indictment for a Latter-day Saint! The voice that bears profound testimony, utters fervent prayer, and sings the hymns of Zion can be the same voice that berates and criticizes, embarrasses and demeans, inflicts pain and destroys the spirit of oneself and of others in the process. 'Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing,' James grieves. 'My brethren [and sisters], these things ought not so to be.' " (The Tongue of Angels, by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, April 2007 General Conference)

Those words have really stuck with me. The same voice that speaks to God in prayer can be used to speak unkind or bad words. That really hit me in the heart. It applies perfectly to swearing as well as plain ole kindness. I want me and my family to use our words and voices for good! Not defile them with unkind or bad words. I have felt especially strongly about the power of words ever since I heard this talk. 

When Rose said a bad word last week she lost all screen time for the next day. This summer the big kids play computer games while Amber takes her nap every day, and they always look forward to that indulgent time, so it was an effective punishment. I hope Rose remembers not to say bad words anymore, especially at school! Ahhh! School! While I'm slightly anxious about what Rose may do and say on the playground at school when she's trying to assert her natural desire for dominance, I think she's still so young that teaching her not to swear doesn't feel as urgent as Jay. She does need to learn the lesson, but since she's only five she has plenty of time to learn it before she's eight and officially old enough to know right from wrong. Does that make sense? Is it a legitimate reason for me to be less concerned about Rose because she's younger? I don't know. So much of parenting feels like shooting in the dark! I'm making this up as I go along--trying to figure out what will help my kids learn the best and going with what feels right.

Jay is much closer to his eighth birthday--less than a year--and I feel a sense of urgency when it comes to helping him not only know what's right and what's wrong, but also understand why. Not that I think swearing is a grievous sin or anything, I just know that I'm responsible for teaching my kids right from wrong. We gave Jay the same 24 hour screen ban when he said a bad word two days after Rose, and I had a serious talk with him about swearing because I still got the feeling that he didn't understand the reasoning behind not swearing. A good thing about Jay is if he gets a reasonable explanation of why something is not good/allowed/kind, he will commit to staying away from it. He's got a good moral compass; it just needs to pointed in the right way with motivating, informative reasoning so he understands the reasons behind the rule or standard. This time I mounted a three-pronged defense:

1. Just because you hear other people swearing in movies or in real life, it doesn't make it ok for you to swear!
2. Jesus doesn't swear and he doesn't want us to swear.
3. I have heard swearing lots of times in my life, in movies and from people around me, and I never swear. 

Jay was intrigued by #3, that I have never sworn in my life, even thought I've heard plenty of swearing. I could see the wheels turning that over in his mind, so I asked Jay to promise me that he would never swear again. He promised. I hope that means I finally reached him and that he's committed to his promise! Time will tell. We decided to stop watching ANY shows or movies with bad words in them for a while until Jay and Rose can prove their commitment to keeping their language clean and kind. Why do so many good family movies have to have bad words? They sneak them in all over the place! We resorted to watching an episode of Star Trek Next Generation for our most recent family movie night, and guess what? Captain Picard swears too, along with Commander Riker. Fail! Jeff and I had to chuckle at our botched attempt at profanity-free media.

Set a course. Engage. Language aside, I guess Jean Luc Picard had a few things right.

_________________________________________________________________________________

PS The few, the proud who still read this blog are people whose opinions and thoughts matter to me--what do you think about this subject? I'm interested in your views.

Hops Props

A few weeks ago, Jeff set up our TV antenna which receives about one channel in English (the rest are telenovelas and Spanish spiritual channels). We can pick up the channel that counts though--NBC! Cue Olympic fanfare. Jay keeps asking to watch the local news so every now and then Jeff turns it on and watches some news with Jay. One day this week when they were watching the news, a commercial came on for the Moxee Hops Festival, advertising various forms of live music, a parade, a 5k race, and other activities. We decided to go! Moxee is a tiny town about 45 minutes northwest of us, and its claim to fame is "The Hops Capital of the World" --hence the hops festival. I had NO clue what hops were before we moved here. Wikipedia says that hops are a plant used "primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer." The fields are everywhere around here--rows and rows of poles with strings stretching down to the ground for the hops vines to climb up. Right now the hops are flourishing--perfect time for a hops festival! 

Saturday morning at 7:15am, we picked up Grampa Dan and Grama Leslie and drove to Moxee, WA to the Hops Festival. It was a gorgeous, cool, and fresh sunny morning--the kind that makes me love living in the Yakima Valley. We registered for the festival's 5k at a tent and then wandered around some large farm equipment on display and over to a big fun playground. The kids played under Grama and Grampa's supervision while Jeff and I warmed up for the race. Then we were off, running at high speeds through the quaint small town of Moxee, and off into the hops fields. It has been YEARS since I ran a 5k race, and I could tell. But it was still super fun to do such a short race after all the 10ks, 15ks, and half marathons I've been favoring in my "old age." It was also fun standing next to Jeff on the start line. I don't normally get to do that because he's so much faster than me. But this was a very small town race, with less than 80 runners, so there was space and I snared it right next to that handsome hairy husband of mine. 

After the first quarter mile, I settled into a comfortable, heart-pumping 7:10 mile pace and did my best to hold it. Miraculously I did, even among the dry dusty rutted paths through the hops. I am currently training for a half marathon, so the 3.1 miles of this 5k flew by and were over practically before I could even huff and puff. The last quarter mile or so was along the Hops Festival parade route, and people were already staking their claims to watch the parade along both sides of the wide road. I was running alone by the end of the race, but I did my best to kick it in and not feel too self conscious running in front of so many people (who were hardly even watching/possibly unaware that a race was going on). I pretended I was at the Olympics with all those spectators--haha. I saw Jeff waiting near the finish line cheering me on, just like he has for the past twelve years, and I managed to cross the line just under 23 minutes--22:51. Wahoo!

Jeff and I Adam and Eve'd the race--we were the first overall male and female finishers, and we're married, so that makes us the Adam and Eve of the race, haha. Jeff ran a respectably speedy 17:21 (first place overall finisher) and felt rather pleased with himself. I got 6th overall with my 22:51 (first woman). We have both been doing rather a lot of running this summer, because we can (since Jeff is off work) and because it's fun. Jeff has been running 50-60 miles per week and I'm almost up to 40 mile weeks. It's satisfying to be getting into good shape again after so many years of off-and-on, iffy physical fitness between babies and pregnancies. Since I'm training for a fall half marathon, I do a long run every week, usually on Friday or Saturday. Since I didn't want to do my long run the day before our 5k race, I opted to run 12 miles on Thursday instead. I failed to consider how running 12 miles two days before race is still tiring! 

This race had a fun quirk: they crowned the first overall male and female finishers with hops halos, Julius Caesar style. It was the BEST race award I've ever received. Thankfully the crowns were woven out of plastic hops vines, not real ones, so we didn't have to deal with the smell or ticklish bugs. They also insisted on giving us plastic and faux marble trophies AND medals. It was a bit overwhelming and what do you DO with stuff like that? Ours are stashed in the basement for now, but we hung the hops halos over our bed. Bahaha! 

We had to go back up a second time to get our medals--I hate going up in front of people! And the medal wouldn't fit over the giant crowns, so we kind of snagged them Christmas tree-style in the foliage and let them dangle by our chins like beards. I wish I brought our good camera and took pictures of the cute kids playing on the awesome playground under the big bright sky, or of the wide leafy hops fields stretching around the edges of town, but this was a morning to soak up the moment and not worry about documenting it...until they crowned us with these ridiculously amazing halos and I scrounged out my cell phone for a quick picture. Somehow between the first and second pictures, my phone's camera lens got a big ole fingerprint on it so the second picture turned out blurry. Let's pretend it's an artistic choice rather than a misplaced sweaty finger.

On the way home from Moxee on Saturday, we swung around to Union Gap and went shopping for back to school outfits for Jay and Rose--Grama Leslie likes to get her grandkids an outfit for the first day of school every year--and then we stopped at McDonald's for lunch on our way home. The kids had a great day, romping all over new playgrounds and climbing farm equipment at the Hops Festival. It was so nice having grandparents to come with us and watch the kids while Jeff and I both ran a race, and even better--we all fit in the same van together. We crammed the three kids in the back row, the grandparents in the middle captain seats, and Jeff and I took the helm up front. Family outing supreme! When we got home we showered and then collapsed in front of the Olympics to watch other people wear themselves out in athletic endeavors.