People Doing Notable Things

Of course, Malachi is always doing great things. But one particularly great one was that he won first place at his final Speech and Debate tournament in oratory. Sam and I went to hear the last several rounds and had to concur that he really was the best! 😄 From a very good field, I might add. There were about 250 competitors in just the oratory category (which is writing and then giving an 8-10 minute speech entirely from memory). I loved Malachi's speech about facing in to the people close to you rather than facing outward to an "imaginary audience" (it wove in all kinds of surprising connections and metaphors; I can't do it justice in a summary) and was just so impressed with his maturity and thoughtfulness. He is so smart. Such a deep thinker. And he works so hard.

Even more impressive was the fact that he kept competing in debate tournaments this year at all, since he was also a full-time student at BYU! He came back home from college on Thursdays to be T.A. for his debate program in spite of a busy college schedule. He really is quite remarkable. He even got ranked 3rd overall (out of a huge group…over a thousand, I think) for his performance in tournaments all year long! It was fun to cheer him on and see the huge, screaming, standing ovation he got from his peers. I suppose it was a "high school graduation" of sorts for him and I'm glad he got to pause and have that celebratory, look-back-over-what-you've-learned kind of milestone, even though he has technically already moved ahead to the next stage.

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Malachi also went to Prom with cute Jordan (did he go to every dance with her this year? I believe he did…) and they made a very handsome couple! The mom who was supposed to take their group's pictures couldn't come at the last minute, so Malachi took them himself, and boy did he not let anyone forget it. He was praising his own photography skills to the skies for the next several weeks. (He had someone else actually click the camera shutter on these pictures of himself, but still claimed all the credit, naturally.)

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The next notable thing is that Junie turned 15, which, granted, she could not help—but she's such a good 15-year-old, she should surely get some credit. She has already had several driving lessons from Sam, and drove me around to several stores grocery shopping the other day without me even fearing for my life once! Her birthday was quite a Day O' Fun, because it was on a Tuesday (which is our Math Class and Field Trip day) and we had to stay in Provo all day so we'd be there to take graduation pictures for my niece and her family in the evening. So, we met Sam and went to Cafe Rio for lunch…

…and played games with my mom at her house…

…and went to the Provo Rec Center and swam (the place was practically deserted on a Tuesday afternoon)…

(Clementine acted just like one of the big kids and wasn't scared a bit on the waterslides!)

…and then we had a picnic dinner in the park with my brother and sister-in-law and nieces! Chicken salad and flavored milks (from Gossner Foods, of course) and rainbow jello and clementines and oatmeal lemon bars. So all that was fun.

But THEN of course Junie still wanted her "real" birthday dinner at home, so we had that the night before, and she wanted to watch Pride and Prejudice so we did THAT the night after…and of course we had to make little treats for watching such a long movie (gyoza and cucumber sandwiches and cracker dip and flourless chocolate cake)…so, all in all, I think it was more like three birthdays Junie had this year. Which would make her 17. Which sounds just about right (and she would be pleased to beat Daisy to it).

After such eventful birthday festivities, one might be forgiven for falling asleep in the chair next to one's sister!

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We had an Etiquette Unit for school, and at the end of it I promised lunch out somewhere fancy to practice our excellent manners. We went to a buffet at a hotel up in Salt Lake City, and it was fancy and expensive, so definitely an out-of-the-ordinary event! The children acquitted themselves nicely. They thanked the waiter every time he appeared in the vicinity, waited politely in the buffet lines, used the correct silverware, and made pleasant conversation. A random guy at another table came over specifically to tell me "Your kids are so well-behaved!" and I was quite pleased…since that was the very reason for which we had come! Ha!

Yum, look at the pastries!

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Teddy's on a neighborhood track team this spring, so we got to go to a track meet! It has been a while. I forgot how long (and boring, haha) they are. It always seems to take forever to get to the event you're waiting for! I took the younger kids and hoped we'd be home after just a couple hours. Ha! Silly of me. Teddy was fun to watch, though! He ran the 100 m. and the 800 m.

We saw a baby of our acquaintance, and played with him. Cute little Alfie!

Clementine ran down the hill many times, and one of the times she didn't so much run as…fall. She got quite a scrape on her head and nose. (She wanted me to take this picture so she could inspect her wounds and determine how sad to be about them.)

Yay for Teddy!

The afternoon quite wore us all out!

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Lastly, here is Clementine's friend Luna with the little loaf of bread Clementine made for her…

…a picture Clementine drew…

…and another picture Clementine drew! (Ballet dancers, Clementine and Gus on the swings, and Clementine and Evie eating ice cream.)

Joy guaranteed for the faithful

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Morning Session of the October 2013 Conference.

Elder Eyring seems to have such a deep understanding of what people worry about. Or at least of what I worry about. Although it's called "To My Grandchildren," I thought his talk in this session had such wise and comforting words for parents and grandparents who wonder and worry how their loved ones will ever make it safely through the challenges of this modern world.

First of all, I thought this was a surprising "great key to family happiness":

That great blessing [of feeling love for the Savior] has come by encouraging people I care for to go to the Savior for relief from pain, a relief only He can give. That is why I urge those I love to accept and to magnify every calling offered them in the Church. That choice is one of the great keys to family happiness.

Accept and magnify every calling offered them! I have heard that advice before and always tried to follow it (of course knowing there may be appropriate exceptions)—but I have never tied it to "family happiness," let alone to being one of the "keys" to family happiness! Very interesting.

Then he gives this great quote by George Q. Cannon:

Life in families will test us. That is one of God’s purposes in giving us the gift of mortality—to strengthen us by passing through tests. That will be especially true in family life, where we will find great joy and great sorrow and challenges which may at times seem beyond our power to endure them.

President George Q. Cannon said this about how God has prepared you and me and our children for the tests we will face: “There is not one of us but what God’s love has been expended upon. There is not one of us that He has not cared for and caressed. There is not one of us that He has not desired to save, and that He has not devised means to save. There is not one of us that He has not given His angels charge concerning. We may be insignificant and contemptible in our own eyes, and in the eyes of others, but the truth remains that we are the children of God, and that He has actually given His angels—invisible beings of power and might—charge concerning us, and they watch over us and have us in their keeping.”

I just love that statement "there is not one of us that He has not desired to save, and that He has not devised means to save"! If God Himself devised means to save one of His children, surely He, knowing each of us so well, provided for every stumble that child might make, and figured out a way back to Him from each individual point on the path that child make take! I think about this all the time—the fact that God knows how to get from anywhere back to Him. I so often can't see the through-line. I see no possible way some people might get from where they are to where they should be. (Even myself, at times). But God has "devised means to save" each of us, which means He always knows a way! That is amazing to me.

I also liked this:

God has devised means to save each of His children. For many, that involves being placed with a brother or a sister or a grandparent who loves them no matter what they do.

Years ago a friend of mine spoke of his grandmother. She had lived a full life, always faithful to the Lord and to His Church. Yet one of her grandsons chose a life of crime. He was finally sentenced to prison. My friend recalled that his grandmother, as she drove along a highway to visit her grandson in prison, had tears in her eyes as she prayed with anguish, “I’ve tried to live a good life. Why, why do I have this tragedy of a grandson who seems to have destroyed his life?”

The answer came to her mind in these words: “I gave him to you because I knew you could and would love him no matter what he did.”

It's sobering to think about that, because…can I be the kind of person who loves others no matter what? I'm not totally sure. But then I think about my children, and the underlying love I always feel for them (even when I'm mad or hurt), and I think I can be that kind of person at least for them. Or I can learn to be. And Elder Eyring gives us exactly the hopeful words we might need to do it:

My message then to my grandchildren, and to all of us trying to forge eternal families, is that there is joy guaranteed for the faithful. From before the world was, a loving Father in Heaven and His Beloved Son loved and worked with those who They knew would wander. God will love them forever.

You have the advantage of knowing that they learned the plan of salvation from the teachings they received in the spirit world. They and you were faithful enough to be allowed to come into the world when many others were not.

With the help of the Holy Ghost, all truths will be brought to our remembrance. We cannot force that on others, but we can let them see it in our lives. We can always take courage from the assurance that we all once felt the joy of being together as a member of the beloved family of our Heavenly Father. With God’s help we can all feel that hope and that joy again.

So much hope and goodness in those paragraphs! ("Joy guaranteed"??? That is such a bold statement!) I love it and I love Elder Eyring for helping me believe it.

Sam's work

 

All during the time that everyone else in our family is doing every other thing, Sam is just quietly working, working, working to make it possible. He works all the time. [Though not on Sundays! He is…religious…about taking Sundays off of regular work (ha ha) and I love him for that. Also for usually cooking Sunday dinner.]

But other than that! So much work. Class prep, teaching, department meetings, "citizenship" (BYU's word for all the random extra stuff you have to do), committees, and constant freelance work on top of it. I'm grateful that he can work and has enough work to support us, of course! But I'm even more grateful that he is willing to do all those things, and do them so well!

Sometimes the freelance work he does is repetitive (cards for trading games😵). Sometimes it's interesting (book covers, game trailers, ads). And sometimes it's actually something lots people get to see, like for the Mario movie. A few years ago he did a ton of concept art for another movie. He did SO MUCH art for it—just pages and pages of folders and folders on his computer. A staggering amount of art, really. And of course with movies, you never even know if they'll actually be made. He is always working at the very beginning of the process doing concepts. Sometimes they scrap the characters he was working on. Sometimes they scrap the whole movie. But this movie finally came out, and it is actually pretty cute, AND so many of his characters and designs actually got used! We were all so happy to see them, after seeing them on his computer and iPad for so many months while he was working on them.

This is the movie. It was called "Pookoo" when he was working on it but now is called "Swapped." It was the #1 movie on Netflix for a while!

He didn't know if he would be in the credits (sometimes artists aren't, if it's not in their contract) but he was!

He did a million designs, most of which I don't even have pictures of, but these are a couple of the cutest ones. The little baby pookoos (?), based on baby bunnies, of course!

These little pinecone hedgehog guys were super cute too (especially the babies).

To me it seemed like a cool movie to do concept art for because the whole aesthetic was so original. All the animals are designed like plants. I love the aspen-tree deer at the top of this post so much! I have never seen any other animals like them! There were fish that looked like lily pads, and snails that closed and opened like flowers, and birds that seemed to be made of leaves, and a bunch of interesting things like that. Somehow they made them all just look cool and not strange. And then even all the tiny details—their life cycles, how they move, the little backpack the guy carries, the way the light comes through the skin of the fish, the insides of their mouths when they yawn or speak—all those things have to be thought about and drawn and iterated on. It is an amazing amount of work, and I'm happy Sam got to see it go toward a finished product he liked!

And, while I'm at it, here is some other tangible artwork Sam did recently. These were advertising posters for an ice cream shop in Vienna, Austria. Their ice cream looks amazing. (I told him to tell the company he had to go there and try the ice cream in order to do the work, but he wouldn't.) It was nice of the ad agency he worked with to send him photos of some of the posters up all around Vienna! Fun to see! This was a cool job because it wasn't like he was one of a huge team. It was all just him!

And that's all I have. Good job, Sam!

Blessed by being asked and blessed by not being asked

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Priesthood Session of the October 2013 Conference.

Daisy is the choir director for our ward, and she's doing great at it, but it can be a very discouraging calling! I know just how she feels. I think I have never felt so discouraged in a calling as I did when I was choir director. There really are only a few people that ever come. They are the same 4-5 people. And no matter how much you invite, and make treats, and tell people "you don't have to be a great singer! All are welcome!", and try to sing fun music, and ask the bishopric to keep announcing choir practice—all the other people in the ward seem to think of themselves as "non choir people" and be perfectly at peace with leaving it to others. And for those who have, somehow, established themselves as "choir people"—not even necessarily because their voices are great but just because they are willing to sing, I guess—being one of the 4 people that supports the choir is its own kind of burden, knowing that if you don't go, no one will!

It seemed extra hard to me when that was my calling, because I hate asking people to do things they don't want to do. (I have to do enough of that with my own kids to truly detest doing it at any other time.) I hate "recruiting" or feeling like I'm imposing or seeming like I'm criticizing or judging someone. I get that for some people, it's just too hard to make choir practice right now. For some, it's super intimidating and they feel self-conscious. For some, their other duties won't allow it. I know all that only too well because I've had times of life where I just can't handle choir either. It's not like I think no one has a valid excuse. BUT, as choir director, if that's your calling, you can't just NOT ask anyone to come! You can't just make do with a choir of two people—or at least, it's hard to! And surely not everyone is so busy they can't possibly come? But I hate being that person who everyone else starts to want to avoid because they feel reluctant/guilty/hesitant about what they know you're going to ask them. UGH. So hard. (And poor Daisy! The bishop thought maybe people would support her more because she's a young woman. But no. They do not. I mean, some do! And everyone means well! No one is TRYING not to support her—but the fact remains. And her discouragement makes my own heart hurt extra!)

Anyway, in context of all that, I thought this section of Elder Eyring's talk was interesting:

You asked others of the Lord’s priesthood to help, with confidence that they would respond with compassion. You were not afraid to ask those who have responded most often in the past…You asked them, knowing that in the past they have felt the Lord’s generosity when they chose to help. You asked some already heavily burdened, knowing that the greater the sacrifice, the greater the compensation they will receive from the Lord. Those who have helped in the past have felt the overflowing gratitude of the Savior.

You may [also] well have been inspired not to ask someone to help load and then unload that truck. As a leader you know your quorum members and their families well. The Lord knows them perfectly.

He knows whose wife was near the breaking point because her husband was unable to find time to do what she needed done to care for her needs. He knows which children would be blessed by seeing their father go one more time to help others or if the children needed the feeling that they matter to their father enough for him to spend time with them that day. But He also knows who needs the invitation to serve but might not appear to be a likely or willing candidate.

You cannot know all your quorum members perfectly well, but God does. So, as you have done so many times, you prayed to know whom to ask to help serve others. The Lord knows who will be blessed by being asked to help and whose family will be blessed by not being asked. That is the revelation you can expect to come to you as you lead in the priesthood.

I wish so much that I could have this type of revelation better! I don't know that I have yet experienced that gift. And I get discouraged easily when trying to balance "don't ask too much, don't annoy people" and "people will be blessed by helping even if they don't want to at first!" But this gives me hope that it is possible to find that balance. Maybe someday??

Intentions, Murderous and Otherwise

Have you seen Giselle? It's one of those ballets one always hears of, but I had never seen it before the girls' ballet studio put it on this year. The story is a bit horrifying, I must say! Giselle is betrayed in love, dies of a broken heart, and then after her death, she (for some reason??!) saves her faithless lover, barely, from being danced to death by the ghostly wilis in the forest! And whom do you suppose were two of those vengeful wilis? Daisy and Junie, that's who. Tsk tsk!

Even though I didn't think I'd seen Giselle or the wilis before, I was somehow familiar with their signature step, this strange flattened arabesque that the wilis do while hopping across the stage (arabesque chugs, they call them). You will perhaps be shocked to hear that this move "signifies their murderous intentions"! Yes! They are quite evil! Not a role I can condone at all.

But let us leave this ghastly scene and go back to earlier in the ballet.

Thank goodness Goldie remains sweet and innocent. A charming village lass. (I suppose Daisy is one too. But not for long!)

Here is one of their pretty peasant dances

Junie had a part in the pas de trois and also a long solo!

j

Watch her, if you'd like! She is so good! (link: https://youtu.be/RNuIESzD2Rs)

https://youtu.be/XEB5g-Aces8

I like this picture of Junie and Brynn just standing casually in midair

Such high leaps!

In the last few performances, someone (another mother, I'm afraid😬) has been VERY ZEALOUS about the costumes—excessively zealous, we might say—not wanting the dancers to so much as set FOOT in the lobby while wearing them, and since they also didn't have any dress rehearsals to speak of (they had them, but no one dressed for them)—it was very difficult getting pictures of Daisy and Junie in costume. We had to sneak out the back door like thieves in the night! (DO thieves in the night sneak out the back door? They probably have to sneak IN the back door first, but then surely they must then sneak back out again?) But I'm glad we did it because their costumes were very pretty and they wanted a record of them!

The wilis do this low, cradling-arm pose a lot too, and we read somewhere that it might represent the babies they will never have.😢

It doesn't excuse their murderous intentions, though!

The Second Act of Giselle looks really spooky and cool. The backdrop is all black and the wilis, with the spotlights on them, really do look like glowing ghosts against it.

The girls have these long veils on at the beginning of the Act. They tied fishing line to the tops of the veils and then at a certain moment, people backstage pulled on the fishing line and all the veils just whisked off their heads and disappeared behind the curtains. It was really cool to watch!

(Like this)

It was so dark, and their dresses were so white, I had a hard time even taking pictures of them.

https://youtu.be/4YCa0g0eecM

Here are those murderously flat arabesques. They're so interesting to watch. So distinctive. And the girls have to do it without crashing into the lines of other dancers going the opposite way!

https://youtu.be/6vLxL3mrrTw

Sometimes their murderous intentions are emphasized by a red light from below. Scary! And they do not smile. Never. It wouldn't be fitting for such murderous young ladies.

Poor Hilarion pleads with the queen of the wilis for his life. But she refuses. She is heartless. They're all heartless. (Except Giselle, of course. She manages to save her own [unfaithful!] lover, Albrecht, when he shows up later. But Hilarion has no such luck.)

The queen of the wilis dooms him to dance until he dies!

And then he is forced to do so, hemmed in on every side by the unrelenting wilis!

Very sad!

Clementine wore her tutu to the ballet and enjoyed it very much! I can only imagine what valuable life lessons she was learning from the story.

She was definitely paying attention, as evidenced by this dance she did for me me later the next day!