So Close and Yet So Far (an update)

The fascination with Avatar continues:

Miciah drew these lines on Elijah. You probably can't tell completely, but there is an arrow on his forehead, and then an arrow on both hands and both feet. The lines on his legs go up past his knees. The lines on his arms go past his elbows. And the lines on his head go THROUGH HIS HAIR and down his neck. Pretty sweet.

She also drew lines on herself for Katara. Katara doesn't have any lines on her body in the show, but Miciah thought it would be more dramatic to draw the lines anyway. There are circles on her cheeks and then spirally lines on both arms and both legs. ... Needless to say, people were noticing and talking about those lines for a while. Miciah washed hers off before going in public, but Elijah left his on. Some people recognized who he was: Aang. Someone mentioned something about water bending to him. He just scowled at her (he's anti-stranger, remember).

Elijah will also do this windmill motion with his arm and say that's his air bending. Pretty cute.

That day, when they drew the lines, C came over to watch our kids. It must have been, hmm, 2 Thursdays ago. Anyways, she just casually said, "By the way, rubbing alcohol will take off pen." I replied with, "Why would I need to know that?" :) "Oh, you're telling me that so I can store it away until I need that information, like 6 months from now. I get it." We had a good time with that. ... I never did rub them down with alcohol, though. I just let it fade away.

Sadly, the Avatar series has ended. We watched the last 5 or 6 episodes on-line. It's awesome! I can't wait to own the last season on DVD. And then in summer 2010 the first live-action Avatar movie should come out.

I had to show off this picture of Teancom. A rare grumpy face.

Haircuts All Around

We cut the boys' hair, obviously. I didn't want to--it was so cute longer! But it was driving Rob crazy, and it really did need to be cut, I'm sure. It was over their ears. ... Elijah had asked me how long it would take to grow his hair long like mine. I was willing to see how long. Rob would DEFINITELY not have gone for that. :)

I also cut Miciah's hair. She was a little sad about that, saying she looked like a clown. She hadn't even seen her hair yet when she said that. So to help her feel better about it, I let her cut my hair. I told her I just wanted a slight trim, and she did a pretty good job. A few days later I touched up the kids' haircuts, and she insisted on also touching up my hair. She took off another inch or so. But it looks decent, and I get compliments on my haircut. ... The pictures from Mammoth show all of us with our haircuts. Rob got his haircut, too, but I didn't do it. We actually paid for that one.

Olympics

For 2 weeks all we did was watch TV and get on-line updates on the Games. I love the Olympics.

My favorite great moments were: the swimming 4x100 m mens' relay, Micheal Phelps winning by 1/100 of a second for his 7th gold, Nastia having an amazing night to win all-round gold, a man from Togos winning his nation's first Olympic medal in white water, watching May and Walsh win their 2nd straight Olympic gold, Jamaica's 'Lightning' Bolt running away with a new 100 and 200 m world record, an Australian man winning the last platform diving competition with an AMAZING dive to steal away China's 8 for 8 gold, and the American men winning indoor volleyball after what their coach has been through.

And my favorite low moments were: Lolo losing the 110 m hurdles because she biffed it on the 9th hurdle (she would have won by a ton, but instead came in 7th), BOTH 4x100 American relay teams dropping the baton and not qualifying for the finals, wondering if the whole Jamaican sprinting team is doping, watching Nastia come in 2nd in the uneven bars because of a tie-breaker rule, seeing one of the American water polo teams lose by 1 point in the last 30 seconds to the Netherlands even though the US had one last opportunity to score in the last 5 seconds and it hit the post, and following the controversy of the under-age Chinese gymnasts (they are SO underage. Whether or not that's the final "official ruling", they are and everyone knows it).

I would like to believe the Olympics isn't tainted. But I know, deep in my heart, that it is. And it has been for a long time. The fact that China came out so strong with just stupidness this Olympics makes me sad. I don't understand the win-at-all-costs mentality. But, I can hope for a time when people compete fairly and judges judge fairly and no one has sold their vote or score or soul to win.

C's Visit

C also watches soccer highlights for every soccer game in the world that's worth watching. So I enjoyed that a LOT. Rob asked if I was done watching them and I told him, "Look, when C leaves, how many soccer highlights am I likely to watch?" None. That's right. I watched like 100 over the week, and it filled my quota until C comes to visit again.

So not only did we watch the Olympics for the majority of C's visit, we watched good soccer highlights on top of that. Good times with my brother.

We had a lot of downtime, though. I planned that because in the past Miciah has monopolized all his time and forced him to do just about everything with her. And this visit, she almost didn't even notice he was around. I mean, she loved having him here, but it wasn't the same. She spent an entire day playing with her neighbor friends. She almost seemed annoyed at times when I suggested she do something with C. Weird.

We did go to Mammoth Cave, as I've already written about. We spent that night camping on a guy's farm land. It was fun. We were EXHAUSTED by the time we got home on Sunday around 3pm. So we laid low on Sunday evening and all day Monday to recover. C and I also took lots of naps--I don't know how Rob survived the Olympics without taking naps, honestly.

We went swimming one day at the W's house while C was here. They have a heated pool, which is good, cause it hasn't been that warm lately. The week C was here, it was 90 and 95 degrees some days, but the rest of August has been almost cold! That week was the only week all month I've had my AC on. Anyways, it was SO NICE swimming in a pool that was almost as warm as the air around us. If we ever own a pool some day, it will be in-ground and heated.

C and I got to play a soccer game together while he was here. My indoor soccer team. It was fun to have him play with me and get to show him off to my friends. :) They seemed to be a little skeptical at first about his ability to play (not because of him, but because that's what you do when someone says their brother is good), but by the end they were complimenting him almost every moment and asking if he'd be around for any more games. He and I played killer defense together, and that rocked. I also was happy to show off for him. Not that I show off, but I played a really good game that night. I had an assist on the first goal of the game which was on the first PLAY of the game. So our team was up by 1 in the first 20 seconds, and it was on my excellent assist. ... It's nice, actually, to play and feel like I play well. My style of play has changed, and C noted that I'm not as fast on the ball as I used to be. For sure. But I've never been that fast on the ball, really, and I've never been a good dribbler. I've only used my speed and kicked the ball in front of me. In indoor, and against men, it's almost impossible to do that. So I've transitioned my game and I'm now an excellent defender and passer, and I create plays and assists. I used to be the scorer, and I could see that as I play more I will eventually be scoring more, but I am just as happy, in fact happier, being the play-maker. ... One of the guys on my team was looking for people to play on another team he has, just for one game. He said to A, our team leader, "And ask that new girl (referring to me). She's got some skills." :) Soccer is my weekly ego boost and I quite enjoy it.

We also went to the Children's Museum with the kids. Elijah was horribly behaved, but Miciah was mature and understanding and willing to compromise. Not only was I shocked, I was amazed and proud of her. She is a really good kid, even when she drives me crazy.

School Starts on Tuesday

And lately, her driving me crazy seems to be a daily thing!! We're both ready for her to be in school. I kept thinking, "Just a week after C goes home. That's not so bad." Woah. It's been a LONG week. By the end of Monday and Tuesday I was ready to cry. Not only is Miciah fairly whiny and ready to get out of the house, the neighbor kids have been over to play near-non-stop. Which is totally fine, but there are 4 of them. So I'm having to figure out how to parent kids that aren't mine, which is a new thing. And it's amazing how quickly 7 kids can trash the house. :) I keep telling myself, "Just till Tuesday. School starts on Tuesday." So close, and yet so far.

Hanging Out to Dry

For fun we started a clothesline. It's an idea I've had since the start of summer, but only implemented 2 weeks ago. That's about par for ideas I have. :) But it's alright that I waited, cause we used the swingset as the pole instead of having to buy a new pole. We have 2 lines up, and it's fun to do. It's different and it makes me think about things I've never thought about before. Like the significance of "landry day." And why you had to iron so much (it makes EVERYTHING wrinkly!)--not that I intend to iron more, cause I'm lazy. And the phrase about dirty laundry out for everyone to see. Granted, I knew about all these things, but I sure think about them differently now.

We started the clothes line for fun, truly. It takes a little bit more time, but not a lot. Plus, my kids think it's fun to run through the clothes when they're hanging up. And it saves on energy and hence money, which will figure into a good story I'll tell in a minute.

Elijah

I was taking the boys somewhere in the van and Elijah yaked my ear off. He was trying to get me to guess something he was thinking off. I couldn't guess it. Now, normally if we're trying to get our kids to guess something and it's a word we know they know, we will give them the starting sound. You know, like, you want them to think of turtle, so you give them the t sound. This works marvelously for Miciah, and Elijah just looks at us like, "And that's supposed to be helpful?" So Elijah was trying to get me to guess his word, so he gave me the starting sounds for t, p, k, and t again. Then he said, "It's a hippo!" ... It occured to me in that moment that he has NO IDEA what we're giving him the starting sounds for. It cracked me up.

Teancom

Teancom's speech is getting clearer and clearer, which is wonderful. He now says everyone's name, including his own. Miciah is Mi-Tiah. Elijah is E-wi-dah. And Teancom is Tay-come.

Miciah

Miciah is having a hard time with life lately, it seems. While C was in town, we went to a friend's house for FHE. We were on our way over and she was mad at us for not letting her play with a friend instead of going to FHE. She declared, "You're the worst parents ever!" I just looked at Rob and said, "That's not the last time we'll hear that, I'm sure." She said she wanted to go live with the W's and we told her we'd ask them if they also had rules. JW was really good when we got there telling Miciah all about the rules they have, including some of the very same rules we have.

We've been making some financial decisions lately. For instance, we've decided to take down the fish tank (that will happen today or tomorrow) as well as give Cleo away to someone else. We told Miciah that we were going to give our fish back to the pet store and she started crying a lot. She said, through tears, "My life has never been as horrible as this!" We brought her into our room and sat on our bed with her. Rob then told her about the decision to get rid of Cleo. Miciah started bawling hysterically. Rob and I felt kind of bad, but it's a good decision and feels right, so we tried to be as strong as possible. I held Miciah for a good 15 minutes letting her cry and talking to her. I told her that I've been stressed and sad lately, too. I told her that there are decisions we've had to make that were hard decisions. I told her we were also getting rid of one of our cell phones, and that's partly why we were using a clothes line. She said, "Well, the clothes line is fine, but I don't want to get rid of the fish or Cleo or the cell phone." It was interesting watching her sadness and disappointment and seeing how much of it reflected how I've been feeling through these last few stressful months. Granted, I haven't bawled like a baby over the fish tank and my "best friend" Cleo, but I have cried. And it was a good moment.

Well, that's pretty much life here. There are probably stories I meant to tell that I've forgotten about by now, who knows. But that pretty much gets us up-to-date. Pray that we will survive till Tuesday, and that our house will be a happy one.

Tamra

A Mammoth Adventure

My brother C came in town and we took the opportunity to go to Mammoth Cave. I figured having 3 adults for 3 kids was a pretty good ratio, perhaps the best we were going to get. So we went down early-ish last Saturday. We forgot about the time change (it's just barely into the next time zone, and only that because the time zone slashes diagonally across the state of Kentucky), but it gave us time to eat some lunch when we got there.

We had only bought tickets for 1 tour because we wanted to also do the self-tour, and you can't get self-tour tickets on-line or in advance. So we changed our day around a little so we could do the self-tour first. In the future there are a few things I will DEFINITELY do when I go to Mammoth:

#1- Do the self-guided tour second.

#2- NEVER EVER GO TO MAMMOTH DURING PEAK SEASON!

We missed peak season by a few weeks. Not on purpose, mind you, it just happened that way. But in the future it WILL be on purpose. The lines were almost non-existent. It was lovely.

Anyways. We had a little down time while we were deciding on tours, etc. Rob took this picture of the group of us looking really bored. It's a plus and negative for Mammoth, really. You can do a lot of things, and there's as much down time as you want, but figuring out exactly how much down time to plan and how to do it, that's harder. ... Note the older couple sitting next to us. They were super nice and were trying to get Elijah to talk to them. He scowled at them. It was funny. While Miciah will talk to everyone (if you have a pulse, she will talk to you until you're BFF), Elijah will talk to almost no one. It's funny.


Down into the Historic Entrance of the cave. It's awesome! You can feel the cold air from a fourth of a mile away, maybe more. Then as you're walking down into the cave, it's blasting cold air at you. Let me tell you, 53 degrees F feels REALLY NICE in August (even though this has actually been a really pleasant August)! And the entrance is huge. Just huge.

We saw a bat on our way in. Have to take a picture of a bat when you're in a cave, right! Incidentally, the nice older couple from our wait? They're the ones who told us where the bat was. So you CAN benefit from talking to strangers.

We saw people walk into the cave wearing shorts and T-shirts. Don't do that. 53 degrees is colder than you think. Especially when you're in there for a few hours. For instance, one of the rangers we saw inside the cave was wearing a coat and gloves.

Caves are dark. C took this picture before remembering that my camera has a flash. I liked this picture anyways. Kind of hauting. It's me in the middle (the sort-of image blur you almost see) and Miciah on the side.

The first "room" you come to once you're a good ways inside the cave is the Rotunda. Wow. It's amazingly huge. I remember as a kid looking up at that ceiling and thinking, "It's going to crash down on me, I just know it!" It was hard, even as an adult, to NOT think that. :) Really, anyone who goes inside a cave is an idiot. But they're so cool! How can you resist the beauty, scope, and history of a place like Mammoth Cave? You can't. So you become okay with being an idiot and you walk inside the cave.

Inside the Rotunda is lots of history. During the War of 1812 they mined saltpetre for gun powder. Two cool things about that: 1- saltpetre is bat poop. 2- They made these long pipes out of WOOD. All the way from the Rotunda to the mouth of the cave (and possibly up the hill, too? I dunno about that part). Wicked cool. The pipes are still in tact for part of it.

Part of the history of Mammoth Cave is from thousands of years ago. Native Americans came inside the cave, took gypsum from the walls, left artifacts, and at least one even died in the cave. One of the artifacts left behind was a pair of shoes or slippers. They had a pair on display--they were remarkably well-preserved, we thought, so we asked about them. The original pair had been on display in a glass display box. The box was broken and the slippers stolen some time in the 80's. I asked the ranger if they had another pair. Nope. And that's sadness.

This picture is a near-repeat from the picture above it, but I included it so you can see a little bit of the scope I'm talking about. You can just make out the ceiling and far wall. And this isn't the Rotunda. It's just a passageway.

The self-tour isn't long. Like 3/4 mile. Enough for you to want to go further and see more. I liked this picture. The sign says, "Do Not Enter", so of course that's the place my kids wanted to go.

After the self-tour we had to walk all the way back up the huge hill. I remember that hill from when I was a kid. I hated it! :) But it wasn't so bad this time because I was accompaning Teancom who insisted on walking by himself. He didn't just walk by himself, but by himself on the curb. The itty-bitty curb. It was a leisurely walk. ... Any other kid who was walking down the hill on the curb got yelled at by a cute little 2-year-old boy who thought he owned that space. To one kid Teancom said, "Hey! You're in trouble!"

The next tour was the New Entrance Tour, which was previously called the Frozen Niagra Tour. This is one of the COOLEST tours to do because it has pretty darn neat formations in it. Most of Mammoth Cave is cool because it's so, well, mammoth. But it doesn't have many formations. This part of the cave does. It's intimidating, though, starting the tour. You start by going down 250 feet on these wicked-cool stairs. Here's a picture of me on part of the stairs.

These stairs, honestly, are a little scary. You weave through the cave's 14 vertical shafts. There are drop-offs. You can hit your head at almost every turn. Miciah, who was very brave, kept saying, "I can't believe I'm doing this." Some interesting history of the stairs: They took 20 years to build. Usually in caves, she said, you blast the cave to fit the stairs. They didn't want to do that, so it took them a long, long time to build. I would NOT have wanted to be a part of that project. There are 280 stairs and they cost $3,000 PER STAIR--that's $840,000 total (and they were built between 1960 and 1980, so imagine that number with inflation).

It takes quite a while to get down the stairs, so we had some down time waiting for the rest of the group. So we got to take some pictures. Miciah took pictures of rocks. I didn't include those pictures on this blog, sadly. Another sad thing: cave pictures don't turn out well. Bummer, too, cause caves are freakin' awesome! I liked this picture, though:

Miciah and C as we waited. Notice his sweatshirt. He came from Utah and totally forgot to bring a sweatshirt for the cave. So he got to be a Thacker for the day. :) ... The first picture I took, C looked like he was on drugs. To that comment he said, "I am on drugs." I said, "Oh. Well then it turned out perfect." And then I took another picture.

We should have done this tour first if we expected to have decently behaved children. :) But it was not to be. The kids weren't horrid, but they could have been a lot better. It struck me as they all melted down in their own way that if C hadn't been with us, we would have been toast. Elijah started going crazy. I chastized him for it finally and he did his Elijah withdraw thing. Normally there's time to deal with that sort of thing, but not when you're in a cave tour with 113 other people. So Rob took Elijah and I took Teancom, who he'd been carrying.
We went from happy children, like Teancom on Rob's shoulders (picture taken during the self-tour), to children like this:

I love Rob's expression in that picture. Priceless. Honest. By the last half hour of the tour Teancom was asleep in my arms, Elijah was exhausted, and Miciah was uber-whiny. C's job was to carry the camera when I didn't have it. My camera is my other baby. And let me tell you, it's SO NICE to have pictures of me with my family, and pictures of me at angles I've almost never seen before. So THANK YOU, C!

The best part of the New Entrance Tour is Frozen Niagra and the curtain room, I think they call it. We didn't get any decent pictures of it (cause NO ONE does except the professionals), sorry. I didn't go down to see it, though, because Rob and I went to Mammoth two years back, and C hadn't been for years and years. So I held Teancom and didn't walk down the 50 stairs (that's 100 total. With a sleeping baby. No thanks). And that is what Miciah cried about the whole time: I want my mommy! You just can't win.

People passed me holding my sleeping toddler. Most of them chuckled or smiled. One woman, a grandmother going through with her pre-teen granddaughters, said, "Are your arms cramped yet?" I told her they weren't. She said, "I remember those days. I remember my arms cramping! It hurt!" My arms didn't hurt then. They didn't hurt for the rest of the day. And then the NEXT day: Wham! I could hardly use my right arm! :) Good times.

On the way out of the cave we saw these 2 cave crickets. They looked more like spiders, really, with these long spindly legs. ... I like this picture because you have to orient yourself a little. Those crickets are on the ceiling.

So even though we did the tours in the wrong order, it was way fun and totally worth it. I have a love for Mammoth Cave that would be inexplicable if so many other people didn't have it. :) It's just a cave you fall in love with, I think. Well, at least I fall in love with it again every time I go.

No taxation without representation! (an update)

This is from a series and was by far the best photo of the group. He looks like such a T in these pictures! I can see some of my brothers in his face.

Work for Rob

Rob has been working in Dr. J's lab now for 3 weeks and he's still coming home saying, "I'm stupid." :) Dr. J's lab is an immunology lab, and Rob hasn't been working in an immunology lab for the last 4 years, so he feels pretty far behind in terms of knowledge base. He's been on a mad dash to learn all he needs to know so he can run experiments well, and there's been a lot of time spent learning how things run in the lab.

Of course, Rob is not really stupid. I told him that if he were to start talking to Dr. J about the ins and outs of fibrinogen, Dr. J would be the one feeling "stupid". Plus, every lab does things a little differently, so there has to be some expected learning time. ... Pretty soon Rob will come home talking about his new knowledge and the experiments he's running, and he'll sound dang impressive.

... And it's been a transition to the word "work." The answer to "Where's Daddy?" has been, for years, "At school." And so my response now is usually, "At school.work," about that fast. Spit out 'school' and then correct with 'work'. :) It's nice that he's done with school. And Miciah likes to call him Dr. Thacker, which I think is cute.

Girls Camp

I went to Girls Camp for 2 days, which was fun. I love camping. Not that Girls Camp is really anything like Scout Camp (for you people out there who don't know that, I'm telling you now. Girls Camp and Scout Camp are NOT comparable), but it's fun anyways. Though I could do without the cheers every 3 seconds. Anyways. One of our jobs on set up day was to make sure the little bank of the river by the "water hole" was safe. I checked out this small piece of tin sticking out of the sand. I figured we needed to cover it up or dig it out. And digging it out sounded much more fun. So I started digging. And digging. And digging. Half an hour later, we pulled out a piece of tin that was a few feet wide and 8 feet long! So somewhere upstream is a shed missing a piece of roof.

Family Camp Out

After we got home from Carter Caves, Elijah asked where we went. I told him we went camping. He wanted to know where. To keep it simple, I told him, "In the woods." He said, "I want to go camping in the woods, too!" Then Rob went on a camp out with the Scouts. And then I went to Girls Camp. He was feeling terribly left out. I looked at Rob and said, "You are not allowed to go on a camp out with the Scouts until you take this boy camping!" I would LOVE if Rob were able to take Elijah on the Scouting outings (tee hee: Scouting outing. Say that 10 times fast), but alas it's not allowed.

So we went on a family camp out. Just one night at Miami Whitewater, a campground about 20 minutes from our house. It's in a nice park and the kids loved it. On Saturday, as we were prepping to go back home, Elijah said he wanted to stay another night. Camping 2 nights in a row! Crazy fun! I told him we had to go home. Camping out on Saturday night and then getting ready for church on Sunday morning? No thank you. And then it hit me. I asked him what camping was to him. He said, "A tent and marshmallows." :) I told him we could do that 2 nights in a row in our backyard. So that's on the schedule for sometime in the near future.

I really do love camping. This weekend we're going down to Mammoth Cave and we'll be camping overnight Saturday to Sunday. I asked Rob it if it would be okay if we took a break from church for one Sunday. :) Sometimes his calling feels like a job. ... The other thing Elijah wanted to do, when he heard about our fun trip to Carter Caves, is go inside a cave. Rob and I have wanted to take the kids to Mammoth Cave for 2 summers now, and we're finally going to do it when C, my brother, comes in town. That'll be an adult per child, and that sounds totally managable. So C comes in town on Friday, and we'll leave early Saturday morning for Mammoth. ... We figured it'll be a fun trip, and relatively inexpensive. Mammoth is only a 3 1/2 hour drive from Cincinnati. And the camp site we found is an out-of-the-way place. I think it's just some guy who owns land near Mammoth and lets people come camp on it. Our choices were this nifty backwoods place or Jellystone. If you've ever stayed at Jellystone and enjoyed it, I'm sorry. Jellystone goes against everything I think is good and right in this world. :) Okay, not quite, but close.

You can't take baby backpacks inside the cave. Which is a bummer, cause we had one lined up for Teancom. As it is, I guess we'll be carrying him most of the time, and Elijah some of the time. Fun!

A Swingin' Good Time!

For my belated birthday gift, my Mom sent us money for a swing set. She said she figured it was as much a gift for me as it was for the kids. Perfect! We found the set we wanted on-line and had it shipped to our house. It arrived last Wednesday and the kids were excited. I asked Elijah, "Elijah, what is it?" With excitement in his voice he said, "It's a big box!" :) Guess we could have paid a lot less for just a box and he'd have been happy.

Elijah and Miciah playing in the box and with the paper that came in it:

It just so happened that Wednesday our Home Teacher called and asked if he could come by that night. I told him that was fine, so long as he wanted to help put up a swing set. I lured his wife into coming, too, with the promise of ice cream (which we forgot about in the end--we'll have to make up for that), and they were tremendously helpful! The directions were pretty lousy, so D had a full-time job interpreting them (seriously, the directions weren't even in the right order. Our first directions went from step 1 to step 6 and then backwards from 6 to 1) and arranging the hardware. The rest of us put it together. B came home and walked out to the back to help saying, "I walked in the house and the kids said, "You might want to go back there, B. They need help."" I thought that was funny. So the 5 of us worked and got it together in one night! By the end Rob and B were out with a lantern, finishing the last of it, until 10 p.m.

Teancom "helping" with the wrench.

The kids have been super happy to have a swing set. And it's way nice to say, "Go outside and play on the swing set" and to have them answer, "Okay!" and then run outside to play. The first day, Teancom stayed out there for almost the whole day. He gets on the lawn swing and he'll prop his feet up on the seat across from him and sit that way for a long time. That day he had a bowl of cereal that he ate at a leisurely pace while he sat on the lawn swing. ...

Teancom on the lawn swing.

Otherwise, he'll get on a swing and ask me to push him. I have a low endurance for swinging my kids, unfortunately for Teancom. I'll push him for a while and then go do something else. Then, when the swing comes to a stop, he'll say, "I'm done." Then he'll take a few steps over to the other swing and demand to be pushed on THAT one. :) I try to tell him that it's the same thing, but he doesn't believe me.
Miciah hanging from the trapeze bar. The other day Miciah said, "Mom, was I meant for the circus?" I told her I didn't think she was, but I didn't know. She said she felt like she was, because of all the acrobatic stuff she could do on the swing set. Funny, I remember thinking that when I was her age.

And since the swing set is outside now, we moved the smaller slide thing downstairs. It required us to take away some toys from downstairs. We decided to rotate them through. Our toy room just isn't large enough to keep all their toys. ... It's funny. I suggested to Rob that we could just get rid of most of those toys. And even though he's always bugging me to get rid of more toys, he wasn't okay with getting rid of them on a large scale. They're still good toys, sure, but do they need so many? No. The rotation thing, though, sounds great. And they think having a slide inside is really cool.

Cleaning and Scrubbing

The whole swing set venture prompted a huge organizing and cleaning effort by me and Rob. On Saturday we cleaned out the garage, the back shed, the downstairs play room. Plus we did all the laundry and dishes. We did several small projects that have been on our list for months--mulch rings around our bush and tree, the pipe under the kitchen sink. It feels NICE to have these things done. I've gone through almost every corner of my house, throwing away or giving away things that aren't needed or useful, and then re-organizing the things that are left. It's amazing what we don't need but that we've kept around anyways. :) And Rob finally replaced the serpentine belt on our van. Though the guy that helped him do it said we should get a tune-up on the van as soon as possible. Figures.

And that's life here.

Rob and I have been working hard to make things run smoothly around here. His calling, though lovely, is time-consuming and stressful at times. It's interesting the process we're going through to make everything go right. We have different expectations and we're having to compromise. Someone compared it to marriage, and I think that analogy is dead on. You compromise and work together towards a common goal to keep each other happy. So we're working on that with his calling in particular. We've come a long way in just identifying what it is that's not working and coming up with a game plan to make it better. So far it's working nicely. So we'll hold our breath a little and pray it continues in that direction.

Miciah

This is from a reading time night in July. It was late-ish and Rob told Miciah that, even though she's a night owl, she wouldn't be able to have that much reading time because it was late. And she wrote us this note:

She has written us several other notes during reading time, which she takes on our bed (3 kids in 1 bedroom means we put our kids to bed in shifts, and using our bedroom, too). She isn't allowed to come out of the room once she's in there unless she has to go potty or get a drink. (She routinely breaks all bedtime rules or abuses all bedtime priveleges we give her.) One night there were 2 notes waiting for us.

The first:

On the front of the card: "To Mom and Dad"

On the inside of the card: "I went in the dinning room last nitte to get the pappr." Then in a box: "Sorry" signed "Miciah"

The second note:

On the front of the card: "You'r loved giis. Miciah"

On the inside of the card: "nuthing to say"

Miciah is bored out of her mind and SO ready for school to start. She'll have a friend over almost all day and then fall to pieces when the friend has to go home. I told her one day that she should take some quiet time to cool down. She replied, "I want to take quiet time with a friend!" :) She's lonely and ready to see her friends again. I remember feeling like that at the end of summer when I was a kid. ... I'm happy that C is coming to help her be happy for a week plus. It'll really be a blessing to our end of summer.

I got her a 1st Grade workbook to try to help her be less bored. I brought it home and for a moment I was the best mom ever! It's amazing to me how much she likes to learn. And she wants to do things perfectly and hates making mistakes.

I've been working on getting a lot of Miciah's artwork scanned in to the computer. I'll post some of the best stuff eventually.

Miciah recently lost her other front tooth! So she's now got the cutest smile ever. Here are 2 pictures of her with the tooth so loose it was almost gross. I remember when I was a kid, being able to gross out girls at school by turning my loose tooth in circles and pushing it so far and then making it stick that way. That's what Miciah's tooth was like.

Miciah, unprompted, did that face. She called it her pirate face. Arrr!

And the side view.

The day after these pictures were taken, the tooth fell out. Thank goodness. It was driving me crazy!!

Elijah

Elijah is a good kid. He is still into clothes. I swear I wash all of his clothes in a week and a half. :) And he's funny about what he wears. He'll insist on wearing pajamas all day (and sometimes want to stay in the same pee-soaked pull-up, and that's just gross). Or just underwear and a T-shirt. Or it'll be blazing hot and he'll be in a sweatshirt. Don't ask why. There is no reason that I can tell. It does crack me up, though, cause people will think that I dressed him that way. And I'll say something like, "Yes. In 95 degree weather I thought he might be a little cold." :)

He is learning a lot of his letters and actually repeating them correctly to us. On the camp out, for instance, I put EZ cheese on their Ritz crackers. I spelled out their names, one letter per cracker. Elijah recognized all the letters of his name, which kind of surprised me. I think he knows more than he lets on. Same with counting. I KNOW he can count to at least 12 because I've heard him do it. But if you ask him to count to 10, it'll usually be something like, "1, 2, 3, 7, 5, 1, 10!" I don't get it. I am certain he is not stupid, though, so I don't worry much about it.

The other day Miciah asked how to spell Elijah's name. Before I could answer, Elijah said, "E-I-P-T." And that cracked me up.

Teancom

Teancom is still the world's happiest, easiest child. I count my blessings every day. He's a cuddle bug and needs a lot of down time, which is really really nice. He's not the off-the-wall 2-year-old that he should be, and I love the calmness. He listens when I speak, and that's just weird. He does what I ask him to, and that's even weirder. ... I should sing that song. You know, the one from Sound of Music: "Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could. So somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good." Probably not, though. God is just a very very very merciful God.

Teancom is a very sensitive soul. He still cries when Rob raises his voice, even if it's directed at the other children. He also cries at any ogre or giant in any movie. Even in Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus where the giant is funny. Or the ogre at the start of Enchanted: animated, kind of cute-ish. And he cries hysterically. Cute, cute sensitive child.

No taxation without representation!

We've been paid for 4 years through non-taxed means. We have forgotten what it feels like to have the government take your money before it's even in your hands. :) The first instance felt like a punch in the gut. But we're recovering. Slowly. And without much bitterness.

Olympics Junkie

I'm an Olympics junkie. It's the only time EVER that I will turn on the TV, just to see what's on. Our TV (except for PBS kids and movies we own) has been off since summer started--my evenings are too valuable to spend them zoned in front of the TV for hours.

But all that changes for 2 weeks every 2 years. The Olympics!!! What an event! There are reasons upon reasons why I love the Olympics. The competition is amazing, of course. But the Olympics is a coming together of countries. That flag and what it symbolizes. The spirit of cooperation, unity. The flag may be the ONLY truly international flag there is. Stand aside United Nations, you have nothing on the Olympics.

And I'm writing this post to tell you that if you missed the 4x100 relay last night, YOU MUST WATCH IT!! They're calling it the most amazing relay in swimming history. It was incredible. Not enough superlatives to describe it.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/share.html?videoid=0811_hd_swb_hl_l0194

Watch the race!!

Tamra

Adam Lowry Rankin's Conversion to Abolitionism

Reverend John Rankin lived in Ripley, OH, at the top of a steep hill overlooking the river. Over his lifetime, he helped thousands of runaway slaves on their journey North to Canada. Rankin preached against slavery, wrote books about the abolitionist cause, and endured hardships because of his stance.

Rankin employed his entire family in the Underground Railroad. His wife made food and clothing for the people who made it to their doorstep. And his children, particularly his boys, helped in the efforts, too. They helped the slaves hide. They transported them to the next station in the Underground Railroad. They risked their lives almost nightly in a family effort to help runaway slaves.

The oldest of John Rankin's sons was Adam Lowry. As a young man Lowry had been intricately involved with his father's cause, but it was never LOWRY'S cause. Though Rev. Rankin wanted very much for Lowry to follow him into the ministry and the cause of abolitionism, Lowry wanted to be a carpenter. At 17 years old, he took an apprenticeship with William McNish, a carpenter and architect in Ripley. Lowry studied architectural drafting, and worked on the architecture and building of steamboats.

In December 1835, when Lowry was 18 years old, he experienced what I call his "conversion to abolitionism." The largest steamboat in the nation, the Uncle Sam, was docked at Ripley wharf. Lowry and his co-workers were eager to tour the magnificent boat. While he was on-board inspecting the boat, this transpired. In Lowry's words:

I saw two long chains, extending from the forward to the rear of each side of the steerage deck. The ends were bolted to the sides of the boat about four feet above the deck floor. To these chains, at about equal distances apart, were attached twenty-five shorter chains with a handcuff attached to the loose end. The handcuff was locked on the wrists of the right arm of each slave. The short chain was just long enough to enable the slave to sit or lie down on the deck, and in weight and size was that of the ordinary chain used in plowing with horses. No seat or bed was provided; they were compelled to use the deck floor. When I came on the scene some were sitting as best they could on the floor, others were lying down and some were standing. It was an unpleasant picture.

The men were of sullen countenance and the women appeared to be stricken with a hopeless grief. Farther from them at my right at the extreme end of the long chain was a woman, young, not more than twenty. She had a pretty face, it might with propriety be called beautiful. She had long, fine, wavy, shiny black hair put up with care and taste and she was as white as any woman of my acquaintance, requiring the closest scrutiny to detect the least touch of African blood.

I said to myself, "Can it be possible that she is a slave, bound for a Southern slave mart to stand on the auction block and be knocked down by some brutal auctioneer to the highest bidder. Yes, that handcuff and chain proclaim that she is a slave, a young woman, beautiful in feature and form that has no more rights of person and soul than the beasts of the field."

As I leaned against a stanchion for support I asked myself why let all my sympathies be expended upon that one woman. Were the women, her companions in slavery, though they be of a darker hue than she, any less the daughters of the Lord Almight? Were they not as well as their white sisters the objects of Christ's redeeming love? For a time all I had forgotten of Theodore Weld's descriptions a few weeks before of the horrors of American slavery came vividly to my mind as I looked at the picture before me. Yet I might have gone away with my dislike of slavery a little more intensified and nothing more had I not caught a fragment of a conversation between two men who were approaching.

The words I heard were, "Ain't she a beauty?" The men passed by me, scarcely noting my presence, and stopped in front of the woman I have just described. One of the men was coarse and hard featured. He carried in his hand a small rawhide cane that could be used in the place of a common "rawhide." He was the owner of the slave and had the usual characteristics of the "negro trader," fond of whisky, rough, profane and unchaste in conversation, brutal, and passionate in disposition. They were a class of men that were a product of slavery, dreaded by the slaves and despised by the slaveholders. ... The other was a tall, well-dressed young man, not bad in feature, passably good looking, with a little outcropping of the sensual. Under proper influences he might be an honorable, moral man who would command the respect of the good. I gathered from the conversation that he was a single man, engaged in some business in New Orleans, and the son of a Southern planter. his conversation was free of profanity and obscenity. As far as the circumstances would admit I inferred from the first part of the conversation that he had some conscience about the propriety of the business in hand, the purchase of the woman.

I decided not to leave my post but to watch the transaction. The trader used the vilest language, proposing the woman as a mistress for the young man and insisting she was worth more than he asked, $2,500, and swearing he could get $3,000 for her in New Orleans. He knew young men, he said, who would jump to get such a well made and good looking woman as she was.

All the time she had her face covered with her hands and was crying as if her heart would break. The other women were crying also and more than one man muttered curses and I saw clenched fists and angry eyes, all showing how helpless they felt to protect the women. As the trader, with an oath, said, "No more of that, you black sons of -------," he struck the woman on the shoulder and ordered her to take her hands from her face and stop crying or he would half-kill her. She obeyed, and after a little more talk the young man offered $2,000. This was rejected at this stage of the proceedings and the trader played what might be called the last card in this game of debauchery.

He asked the young man if he was the only occupant of his stateroom, receiving an affirmative reply. He then said, "How fortunate. You have to go to your room by the door that opens on the deck and no one will be the wiser and you can have a splendid time. It will cost you nothing. I have paid her passage and bond."

The young man was evidently tempted but shook his head. The trader then ordered the woman to unfasten the front of her dress. She declined, but a stroke on the shoulder brought a reluctant obedience, a second expedited the work. When done, her hands lingered, but pushing them away he exposed her bosom to view and induced the young man to feel of her breast, then of her thighs. By this time the young man was carried to the point of yielding and the money paid, the woman relieved of her chain, followed her new master to his room.

As I left the boat my indignation reached the boiling point over the wicked transaction and, lifting my right hand toward the heavens, I said aloud, "My God helping me, there shall be a perpetual war between me and human slavery in this nation of which I am a member and I pray God I may never be persuaded to give up the fight until slavery is dead or the Lord calls me home.


By the next morning he had decided to go back to college and become a minister, dedicating his life to the cause of ending slavery. After the apprenticeship was over, he went to college in Cincinnati. During his years of schooling there, he would go to school during the day, and many nights would be up all night assisting runaway slaves. When reading his story, I often thought, "How did he do it?"

A picture of Adam Lowry Rankin, scanned from Beyond the River by Ann Hagedorn.

A link to Adam Lowry Rankin's account of the Rankin's dealing in abolitionism. It's lengthy, and includes what I put above:
http://publications.ohiohistory.org/ohstemplate.cfm?action=detail&Page=007918.html&StartPage=18&EndPage=55&volume=79&newtitle=Volume%2079%20Page%2018

Sunday Widow

Rob and I have had discussions lately about making his calling work. We are both grateful for his calling, but it can be hard sometimes to manage time correctly and keep everything in balance. It's been a learning experience for our whole family.

And not that we're handling it poorly. I think we've been doing a good job. We've figured out sacrament meeting (thanks to the W's who love our children), and that was a stressor at the start. We've figured out the main time commitments and Tuesdays run pretty smoothly now.

But it seems there are moments, just brief moments, where we fail to communicate, and then it feels stressful. So we've been tackling this. I talked to my Mom about how I was feeling, and asking her for good ideas. She gave some very helpful advice, and also said that Sundays can just be hard. She said, "You really do become a Sunday widow."

I've heard the term "Sunday widow" before. I dislike the term and had decided to never EVER use it to describe myself. I didn't sign up to be a single mom. I would be shouting at people and calling out my needs before I EVER let myself feel like a Sunday widow.

So we had Miciah's cousin, M, over for the weekend. I'd had my discussion with my mother on Wednesday, maybe, and now it's Sunday morning. Rob has been at church for meetings since 8 a.m. We're driving to church. We're early (a fanTAStic suggestion from my mother). I'm telling the kids, "Alright. When we get there, I need the girls to come with me to do the program, and Elijah, you need to find Daddy and help him do whatever he needs you to do."

Miciah says, "Yeah, and then we have to find someone to sit with us, right?" I said, "Sure." M looked at Miciah and said, "Someone to sit with?" Miciah explained to her that on Sundays we always sat with another family because, "On Sundays, our family is like your family."

What is "like your family"? M is one of 4 children, and her mom is a widow.

I sighed when Miciah described our family as a Sunday widow family. And I smiled a soft smile. Even though I was determined to never EVER use that term, my own DAUGHTER called it like it is. :)

And that makes a good story.

Virginia Tech - Liviu Librescu

Liviu Librescu

In April 2007, Time magazine put out a special report about the Virginia Tech shootings. They talked a lot about the shooter--how to stop such things from happening in the future, what made him do it in the first place, stuff like that. They talked about the events of the day--how it all went down. And they also highlighted several of the people who had been killed. One of those people was a professor: Liviu Librescu. Librescu had survived the Holocaust as a child.

When his Solid Mechanics class heard the shots, "he braced his body in front of the door, yelling to his students to head for the window. They pushed out the screens, jumped or dropped into bushes below to escape. "I must've been the eighth or ninth person who jumped, and I think I was the last," said Alec Calhoun, who landed in a bush and ran. The two students behind him were shot, he said, and as he climbed out of the window, he turned and looked at his teacher, who had stayed behind. Librescu was shot to death through the door."

I thought about this man. He had experienced unspeakable things during the Holocaust when he was just a child. Then he moved on with his life and was successful. He married, had children. He became a professor, moved to America. And then this scene of death comes upon him again, at Virginia Tech. He didn't run. He didn't tell everyone to get out and then run to get out himself. He barred the door, trying to save the young men and women in his class. These weren't his own children. These were students. And he gave his life trying to save theirs.

The young lives snuffed out--sad and senseless. It is tragic to have lost all of these lives to a madman's gun. But Librescu's story stood out to me. I hope that someday, if it ever came to that, the person blocking that door would be me. I would hope to have that kind of quiet courage.

Read a good, short biography of his life at:
http://www.vt.edu/remember/biographies/liviu_librescu.html

Caving Pictures

Us in all our caving gear. Head lamps and bike helmets (mine is a kid's helmet--adult sizes were too big).

The pictures we took while caving didn't turn out great, but they didn't turn out horrible, either. Definitely was worth the $10 spent for the camera and developing. Some of the pictures are really blurry. There are a few reasons for that:

1 it was misty inside some of the caves we were in.

2 it was a throw-away camera to start with.

3 the camera got muddy. By the end our fingers, shirts, and everything were muddy. So we were wiping off the camera with our muddy hands and shirts, and I shouldn't have to tell you how well THAT worked.

4 The camera even got misty on the INSIDE of the camera. It was sad that it made the pictures blurry, but there was no way that I would have allowed that to happen to my good camera. So really, that's the best we were getting.

5 These are scanned images from the prints.

So enjoy the pictures of us caving, as good as it's going to get.

...

Me, as we started caving. We tried to capture some of the depth of the cave, but turns out caves don't turn out well in pictures taken with crappy throw-away cameras. Anyways, behind me a few feet is about a 4-foot drop. The outcropping of rock that you can see by my shoulder is really like 12-foot tall.

Rob, as we started caving. Look how clear the picture is (our camera was still clean), and how clean Rob is.

This is my Tamra actually went caving action shot! Rob was trying to crawl down into this itty bitty hole. He stopped and then sent me through to see if it opened up again. No, not so much. That was the answer almost every time he sent me ahead!

Rob at the waterfall inside the cave. It was gorgeous, though it didn't capture well on film.

Me at the waterfall inside the cave. This is looking back at the passage we took to get into the waterfall area.

Rob posing at the entrance to the Birth Canal where he got stuck last caving trip. Remember, this entrance is a whopping 9 1/2 inches from top to bottom. Insanity!

Pretty sure this picture was taken right before we slithered through the last cave. I took every opportunity I could to take that helmet off. Though with our crazy, messy hair, maybe we should have left them on!

Me sitting at the edge of the cave. This is where it ended in a 5-foot drop down to the waterfall. It was a gently sloping waterfall and was very pretty. Of course we took pictures, but you can't see anything at all. Figures.

This is a picture of Rob after we were done caving. It's from the perspective of me, at the end of the cave (where I was in the previous picture), looking back into the cave we just came through. Check out how covered in mud Rob is! Head-to-toe mud.

And They All Lived Happily Ever After...

The Story of Thomas L. Martin

If you've been to BYU, you've seen or been in the MARB. The MARB is named for Thomas L. Martin. I knew nothing about Dr. Martin until a BYU BioAg magazine came to our home in the Spring of 2007. In it was an article about his life. His story shocked and amazed me--and inspired me. I gave it a quick paraphrasing and wanted to share the story with you.

Thomas L. Martin was born in England in 1885. He had four older siblings who had died of malnutrition because his family was so poor. His mom worked in a factory and his dad worked in the mines. A wet nurse took care of him while his mom went to work. The conditions at the wet nurse's home were horrible--his mother actually discovered maggots on his body. So she decided to stay home and take care of her baby boy.

Thomas was sick a lot. So sick, in fact, that he didn't walk until he was almost 6 years old. When he did walk he was very bowlegged and walked very low to the ground. He only ever reached a stature of 5 feet tall.

He struggled in school and after 3rd grade his schoolmaster called him "hopeless." He dropped out of school after 5th grade so he could work in the mines. His family was struggling to earn money so they could emigrate to Utah (they had converted to the LDS faith a few years before). The mine supervisor told him to go back to school--he wasn't big enough to work in the mines. Thomas was determined, though, and told the supervisor that he was a Mormon earning money to go to Utah. The supervisor let him stay.

In 1902, at 16 years old Thomas made it to Provo. He worked for another 3 years so that his parents and siblings could join him in Utah. At 19, despite deep financial strain, he went back to school--entering the 7th grade.

He graduated valedictorian of his 1912 class of BYU. His wife (another student at BYU) encouraged him to continue to pursue his dream of a PhD, saying, "We have sacrificed too much to give up on this PhD idea." He graduated with his PhD from Cornell in 1919.

He taught at BYU for 37 years and mentored many students along the way, encouraging many to go on to earn their PhD's.

The original article can be found here:

http://lifesciences.byu.edu/Magazine/Default.ASPX?ID=18