Eve

We have always planned on acquiring a second vehicle by the time Jay starts middle school, or fall of 2020. We have always planned on saving up for the car and then buying it outright. We thought we'd be happy to wait until summer of 2020 to get the second car, but then a few months ago Jeff got a church calling that requires him to stay after church on Sundays (financial clerk). Bumming rides off of people (no matter how kind and willing they are) gets old really fast as an adult. So we moved up the timetable, buckled down on our savings, and decided to get the car in December. Jeff has been researching electric cars for the past year, so he knew exactly what he wanted. A few weeks ago in preparation for our December car purchase, he reached out to a dealership in the tri cities, letting them know what he was looking for. Things were moving along right on schedule.

XC State

Cross country season has been officially done for over a week now and it is time to round out the story of our season with a few final thoughts. Here's what I wrote the day after our district meet: Coaching is such a rollercoaster. It's like suddenly having 50 kids when I am barely figuring out how to bet here for my three kids at home. What do I say? What do I do? What do they need? This team was so silly, goofing off before practice that I was laughing every day...then someone threw a punch and I felt terrified...then too many people slacked/skipped practice and I felt annoyed...and then they raced their hardest and I got weepy all over again.  guess I'll stick around, Sunnyside cross country. You're a worthwhile rollercoaster. 2 years of coaching done, 30+ to go! 

Laurs

She came! My former college roommate, teammate, and best friend Lauren (aka Laurs) visited last weekend, on November 9th-12th. I was a bit concerned about being a good hostess and remembering to get things like enough towels and water and blankets all while figuring out how to squeeze her into our small space, but the good thing about best friends and old roommates is we are comfortable living in close quarters. It felt like the most normal thing in the world to have her stay at our house. We talked and talked and talked for four days straight--it was lovely to have so much time together! 

Laurs brought her 3 year old son, Lukas, along while her excellent husband kept their two older daughters at home. The first order of business when they arrived at our house was a backyard ramble. Then we loaded up into the van and drove an hour to Pasco for the state cross country meet. Jeff drove a school van with our single state qualifier as well as six of his supportive teammates, and we met them there. It was fun to be back at a cross country meet with my dear ole teammate Laurs. The race was quick and afterwards we went out to dinner at Red Robin with the team. After that, it was go time for whatever we wanted to do together for the rest of Laurs' stay. We walked and talked a LOT. My legs were sore from all of the walking we did! It was awesome.

Birthday Birthday

To tell the story of our double birthday week, I'm turning to journal excerpts, because why reinvent the wheel?

Sunday, November 3rd: We had Amber's birthday dinner tonight with the full White family coming over. We set up a folding table in our family room, end to end with our kitchen table in the kitchen, and everyone actually fit! We couldn't use the front door (everyone had to come in through the kitchen door), but it worked great. Amber was so happy and excited. We had mac and cheese, apples, white store bread, and oven roasted kielbasa, cauliflower, and yams. (Amber didn't eat that last dish, haha, that was for my dairy-free needs). The Gibbons and Whites stayed for one hour. The pink strawberry cake (mix) with unicorn star sprinkles (and canned frosting) on top that I made for Amb actually turned out! It was a relief because I have been struggling to get my 9x13 pan items to bake all the way through the center. I wish I could have managed to take a few more pictures of the gathering, but I did get one of Amber with her cake.

Fall fun

Colorful leaves. Apple cider. Kids in costumes. Pumpkin carving. Witch fingers. Cross country meets. The Great Pumpkin. The Were-rabbit. Hocus Pocus. Donuts. As usual, we crammed in all of our favorite October traditions during the last week of the month. The temperature suddenly dropped and the wind howled all night on Sunday night (Oct. 27th), blowing most of the leaves off the trees and freezing the world at a rock solid 12 degrees. Fall left in a hurry! Here are some pretty pre-freeze pictures of our truncated fall fun.

Mulish Monday

Journal entry from Monday, October 21, 2019, edited for grammar and readability: This morning I barely had time to read 2 verses of Thessalonians before Amber and Rose had their first argument of the day. Right afterwards, Rose had her first meltdown of the day, over her socks not fitting perfectly as usual. I used to accept effort over duration with scripture study, but now with Come Follow Me, that feels like failure and slacking. I did read one paragraph of a conference talk too--the one by Elder Peter M. Johnson about the power to overcome the devil's three D's (deception, distraction, discouragement). He said that we need to do the everyday spiritual work so we can "resist the discouragement that diminishes our capacity to feel the love of our Heavenly Father and His Son." I need to read that part every day! While I am rather resilient to the other "wiles of the devil," I get discouraged too easily.

And yet right after reading that, I got discouraged again. Ugh. Monday. Cloudy, cold, and gray all day.

My Mom

My dear Mom visited on Friday! She drove down from Seattle and stayed for 5-6 hours before driving home. While she was here, I tried my best not to think about how sad it was that this was her last drive-down from Seattle, since she and my Dad are moving to Denver in a few weeks. She brought me pretty flowers, a homemade birthday cheesecake threee weeks early (since she will be in Denver on my actual birthday), and lots of other yummy foods. She's a genius at feeding my weird stomach. It was SO nice to have my mom visit, especially without all of my children stealing her attention the whole time. I must be a rather selfish second child, because I treasure alone time with my Mom so much!

Max Jensen 2019

On Saturday, October 12th, we went to the Max Jensen Invitational in Richland, WA. This meet has become a family tradition since Jeff started coaching. Saturday was the fourth consecutive year that we have gone to the Max Jensen meet! Since Richland is only 45 minutes away, we did not have to be at the high school until a luxurious 7am on Saturday, so that was a lovely change after the past 7 weeks of early early Saturday mornings. It was FREEZING for the first few hours we were out and about, so I wore several quality layers. I worked up quite the sweat in all of those layers while I filled and lugged water jugs and other team equipment out of the toasty-warm high school. I was thankful for my layers when we were outside at the meet, but before we left I was roasting! Once everything was loaded into the bus and attendance was taken, we hit the road.

Weekly Album

Another week (and a half) has sped by, and I am barely keeping my head above water without blogging! But I still value tracking life in our corner of the world, so in place of a thoughtful witty wordy post, here's an album of everyday pictures which provide a sliver of a peek into the past ten days:

Apples and donuts

Journal clips from last week, interspersed with relevant pictures:

Sunday, September 29: Sacrament meeting was just awful today. I could barely sing or listen thanks to my children--all 3 of them-- misbehaving. Jay and Rose were squabbling and poking and fighting. Amber was being extra stubborn and kick-y climb-y. She pouted through the sacrament because I wouldn't let her draw, and I had to threaten to take away computer time later if she didn't sit down quietly and reverently during the sacrament. It took me the entire sacrament hymn to get her to sit down and stop attacking Jeff, who had hidden her notebook behind his back. The whole meeting was draining in a way that I haven't been drained in a while. I think it tapped out my patience reserves and made the rest of the day harder as a result. Anyways, sacrament meeting was a trial. We survived. Barely.

This evening Rose and I made an apple cake that did not cook all the way through (of course we didn't realize that until the cake was cooled). While we were making whipped cream for it, I tried to help Rose position the beater more centrally and ended up causing it to spin out of control, spraying our clothes and the entire kitchen vicinity in whipped cream. It was a huge mess. It took a while to clean up. I was even more drained afterwards. I felt like all I was doing was failing and things that are supposed to be simple. Ugh.

The Pee-ple

Jay has started a new nightly routine which is true to his sweet self. Most nights after a little computer time, he reads his scriptures (currently he reads one chapter in the Book of Mormon per night--he says it is SO much easier to understand after trying to read the Bible for so long, haha). Then he comes into my room, sits next to me, and just talks. He is so cute and clever and interested in weird fantasy books with dragons and epic battles, which he describes at length. I do my best to keep up and make relevant comments.

September's end

Well September sure sped by! Here are pictures from the last week of September. I may add more words to this post later, but I really wanted its publishing date to be in September so I'm posting it unfinished at the very end of the very last day of the month. September was so busy!