Tiny tiny Clementiney

I'm writing this sitting up in bed, laptop balanced on a pillow, trying to move my fingers as little as possible as I type, lest I disturb the sleeping baby lying on my arm. Her breathing is calm and sweet, and every now and then she breathes a set of those quick, shuddery, panting newborn breaths. Each time she startles, jerking up her legs or flailing out her arms, I spread my fingers across her chest, trapping her tiny hands and shoulders close together in my hand, and hold her still until she settles into peaceful sleep once more.

You'll have noted the "she" in those sentences, and so you know more than I did, that hot smoky August night as I paced around and around our hill, waiting for her to come. And you know her name, too, which came to us so easily this time (so unlike last time!) and still brings me a little shock of happiness every time I hear someone say it.

So we're starting this story from the comfortable perch of hindsight, you and I, but I can remember so clearly how I felt the weeks before she came, and every time I think about it, I feel torn between a mostly-unwarranted wistful nostalgia, and a slight superior smugness toward my previous self—what was that woman so worried about?

Which is suppose is as good of a place to start as any.

I was so worried! It was a little embarrassing. It had been a joyful pregnancy—such a blessing, ten babies, who could have ever imagined such a thing! But it was a difficult year as well. I told a similarly-situated friend that I could hardly remember a single day in months where I hadn't shut myself in the bathroom so I could cry unobserved. "Is this what we have to look forward to for the next twenty years?" I asked her. "Is this just what it means to have ten children?"

Don't misunderstand: I don't think that the exclamations of other parents, the I-don't-know-how-you-do-it's and the You-must-be-a-saint's, have any weight to them. Of course parents of any number of children know love and confusion and heartache! But being the mother of a large family just carries a lot of…magnitude. Life starts to feel like a tightrope you might fall off of any minute. Perhaps the forceful independence of your young adults makes the innocence of your babies and the sweetness of your toddlers more precious through contrast, but the constant necessity of holding so many emotions at the same time—happiness for one child, fear for another, sympathy for another—is exhausting. It all swirls around in your heart at once: the helplessness of watching teenagers make dumb choices and wondering which ones sprouted from sins of your own omission or commission. The engulfing minutia of keeping the younger children alive, mingled with constant looming uneasiness about the suddenly-imminent futures of the older children. The tension between knowing a child doesn't mean to hurt you, and being hurt all the same. Add all this and pregnancy to a year full of change and uncertainty in our family's little world and the world at large—and I found that "I contain multitudes" described me rather accurately.

As the baby's arrival became imminent, I became aware of a constant haze of worry about the labor and delivery. It surprised and unnerved me. Hadn't I done this nine other times? That was probably more often than I'd made lemon bars in the last nineteen years, and I wasn't terrified of doing that. And furthermore, I am fully aware that being terrified makes labor harder, so you think I'd have developed the discipline not to let my thoughts spiral down that path. Well, no. Apparently I hadn't. I lay awake nights, heart pounding. It wasn't that I feared some terrible outcome. I just knew it was going to be hard, and I didn't WANT it to be hard. Knowing that I had gotten through other hard things didn't make me feel any more enthusiastic about this one.

I tried not to dignify my fearful thoughts with too much attention, but they hovered close anyway, swooping down in the dark of night or whenever I was alone. And then, a week before the baby's due date, I got sick. I thought it was the smoke at first, that ever-present haze that had obscured the mountains and reddened the sunsets since mid-July. I felt like I'd breathed in sand and it had rubbed me raw inside—lungs, throat, chest. Sam and I were enjoying a rare quiet Sunday night, Daisy's birthday festivities finished, sitting in his office doing family history on our laptops and looking out at the city lights. Then suddenly I started coughing and couldn't stop. "Soon the air will clear," I told myself after the first hour or two, "and I'll feel better."

I coughed all night and by the next morning I was afraid it was sickness after all. Maybe it was because I hadn't been sick at all for the past year and a half, but it hit me hard. After a few hours of forcible hopefulness, I gave up and slid into the abyss, lightheaded and feverish and my throat raw from coughing. I'd cough till I couldn't breathe and that would trigger my hyperactive gag reflex and then I'd throw up. Throwing up would make my pelvic muscles ache and then they'd cramp and get even sorer. I was so miserable. It occurred to me for the first time ever that it might be possible to go into labor while being sick. I don't know why I'd never thought about it before, but I immediately felt huge and overarching sympathy for anyone to whom it had ever happened. How could any woman bear to go through labor like this, half-blind from headache and coughing till her insides throbbed? It made me realize (for the millionth time) how many blessings I take for granted.

It was a grim sort of week. It probably wouldn't have been easy at any time—you always try to tell yourself that your baby won't come early, but when some babies have come early it is very hard to keep your brain from reminding you frequently of this fact, in a helpful "I-just-thought-you-should-be-aware" sort of way—and sickness-misery combined with normal end-of-pregnancy misery made it extra discouraging. Of course there were the usual things that had to be done—orthodontist appointments, rides to physical therapy and cross-country practice, youth activities, meals and baths and laundry. Abe helped when he wasn't at work and Sam helped more than he probably should have, with the number of class preparation and freelance jobs he had looming (blessedly he didn't have to be at BYU much), but whenever I could I would collapse into bed and lie there thinking about how hard it would be to have a baby in this state. It was a constant fight not to sink further into fear.

At last I had the sense to ask Sam for a priesthood blessing. There was so much comfort in it. Heavenly Father spoke, through Sam, of strength and healing; of respite that would come when needed; of health and wise purposes and being in God's hands. But He asked some things of me as well, and these were things I knew would take effort—faith to be healed, trust in God's timing, pondering what I was to learn. I wasn't sure I had those things sufficiently in me to receive the blessings.

Last of all Sam promised that with enough faith, I would be able to "perform the service God had laid out for me to perform." That promise lodged in my heart. I didn't know exactly what it meant, but as I pondered the words they made a sort of picture in my mind of a choice and a burden waiting to be taken up. I could almost see this handpicked service "laid out" on a table in front of me, vast and shadowed, yet within reach. Was it labor? Delivery? Caring for the baby? Something more? It seemed if I just stretched out my arms I might lift it, but not knowing its weight I pulled back, afraid.

It was only a few days earlier that I had read Elder Scott's talk, "To Be Healed." Now, seeking literal healing, I was drawn back to his words again. I even wrote about it on my blog that week. "Love is a potent healer," Elder Scott had said, and I felt the compelling weight of those words. I was convinced they related to the charge in my blessing. I pondered laid-out service and healing love, trying to understand. 

I have lost the thread of narrative here; we don't know what day we are on, but neither did I at the time—that week felt like ten weeks, each endless night full of waking and aching and pacing the floor trying to escape the pain in my body and the turmoil in my mind. Sebastian's birthday emerged as a landmark in the fog—we celebrated modestly—and then there were a hundred weeks more, during which I existed and tossed and turned in bed and took cooling baths and prayed for relief. I felt a conclusive certainty that this sickness would never end—the baby would never come—and I fought that despair by praying for something, one tiny thing, I could do—something to show that I did want to pick up the service laid out for me, I did want to access that healing love.

Almost just as I sought them, tiny promptings began to come, suited to my literal weakness, and I followed them one by one like stepping stones across an angry sea. "Listen more carefully." "Send this text." "Do this task willingly." "Say this prayer." "Go talk to those ladies screaming obscenities at each other in the grocery store parking lot." (I was really scared to do that one. But I did it.) I kept my gaze fixed on my tiny path, not trusting myself to know what further to ask or to receive.

It was early Sunday morning, a week after Daisy's birthday and two days after Seb's, when I woke up feeling disoriented and realized that it was because I'd slept for more than a few hours without waking up to cough. I felt slow and clumsy, but not dizzy or feverish. Strangely, I was more tired than ever, as if all the hours of lost sleep were now descending on me at once. It felt ages since I'd done more than drift in and out of uncomfortable restlessness, but now the day lay beautifully empty before me. Sam was home and we had nowhere to go. I went back to sleep, dimly aware of the noises of breakfast and the children waking up. We watched our Sunday morning Stake Conference broadcast from home, and then I took a nap, emerged when Sam called me for dinner, and fell asleep again until 7 or 8 p.m. It felt so good to sleep.

I finally woke up as the sky was darkening, just in time to help put the little ones to bed, and then I thought I'd spend the evening writing something or doing some homeschool preparation. But after an hour or two I couldn't concentrate. I had a strange cyclical discomfort—my back aching, then feeling better, than aching again. I started pacing around to ease the ache. Sebastian asked for help with some English homework, so we worked on that for awhile, and then I was up again, pacing around the house as if carried by waves of uneasiness, unable to sit down for more than a few seconds at a time. When Seb called me back in to ask for help with another assignment, he took one look at my face (I don't know what he saw there) and said, "Don't worry about it. I can finish it myself." I was too focused inward to demur. Sam had gone to bed by now, and the house was quiet, and I knew these waves were carrying me toward a specific end.

I drifted outside, up the hill, and looked up at the heavy gibbous moon while I prayed. I felt somewhat rested for the first time in a week, and I hoped that gift had been given for a reason, but I was still worried about capacity and endurance for the hours ahead.

Around 11 p.m., I went down the hill and got out my phone and called Cathy as I rocked on the porch swing, seeking any breeze under the heat of the August night. I so wanted her to get to me in time, after two previous births where the baby had come before she arrived, but I was also aware, without being able to change it, of how very quiet and unruffled my voice sounded. I was half-afraid Cathy would assume there wasn't any hurry—half-afraid there really wasn't any hurry—but she knows me, and she assured me she was on her way. 

As I waited, I paced circles through the house, feeling muffled and dreamy. My mind drifted through pictures and colors—I was in the eye of a swirling storm, and the clouds on either side had drifted inward until I was wrapped up tight, like the core inside a roll of batting, quiet and spinning in mile-thick clouds. I didn't want to stop walking, I didn't want to talk, I just wanted to turn around and around within this silent soft storm.

It was only experience hard-won from other births that made me reluctantly, very reluctantly, wake Sam and ask him to fill the birthing pool. Even those few words were hard to find, and felt foreign in my mouth as I spoke. I fell with relief back into my silent pacing, and even when Cathy and Christine arrived at 12:30, I smiled with effort and gave the minimum answers necessary before sinking back into layers of silence. 

In the calm of that inner storm, rising and falling with the wind and waves, my heartbeat was carrying the promise from my blessing the week before. "Perform the service laid out for you to perform." The words spun, both prayer and question, inside my head, spiraling toward an emerging vision of what they might mean. Not an event, not a moment or a sacrifice. The service was laid out in and through it all, dusting the darkness like stars—the sickness and the pain and the discouragement, this work of motherhood in any condition, the things being asked a mirror image of the things being given. God's invitations are His blessings; there is no contradiction. There they lay, inseparably connected: the service laid before me, and the strength to see it through. 

There's a dream somewhere in my past. It's held too deep in my soul to put adequate words to here, but imagine a desperate rush of people ebbing and flowing in some kind of train station, departures and arrivals tumbling over each other, a crush of humanity and some nameless urgency pushing the masses on. It isn't a place for peace or contemplation, and you are in the middle of it, feeling the fear and tumult and disquietude swirl through the multitudes in half-tangible form, held by the air like fog or rain. Here it should be close and hot and deafening, but over all of it, the waiting and the restless crowd, hovers a silence like the ringing in your ears, and into that silence breaks a baby's cry, and no one turns, no one turns, no one turns.

You start searching the faces of the people around you, waiting for recognition to dawn on one of them; waiting for sudden awareness, a race to find and comfort the baby making those cries. And still you seem to be the only one who hears. Is there somewhere I ought to be going?, you think uncertainly, watching the ceaseless rushing to and fro. Surely you wouldn't be here unless you, too, were on a journey.  But the crying continues, so you hesitantly make your way out of the main hall into a side room, full of mailboxes and parcels and baggage piled high, where the baby's crying is louder. There are conveyor belts and the hum of machinery, and people ceaselessly loading and unloading, though none are looking at the cardboard box sitting on a long counter at the side of the room. You can see the flimsy cardboard rocking slightly with the force of what it holds, and you look toward it as the cries intensify, thinking that surely now someone will respond. But no one comes. No one even turns a head. The box lies there before you, trembling with the cries of its occupant and the tiny fists flailing above its sides, and at last, hesitation gone, you walk up close enough to see the baby inside. In the eternity of that first moment, you lift her from the box and cradle her in your arms, and she looks up at you and you whisper, "I'll take care of you, little one."

I felt the echoes of that dream now, as I reached my arms out into the obscuring cloud to lift the burden I found there. I pictured our baby, its little spirit straining to enter the world, unsure about the next step, but coming anyway, full of trust—and I felt love surge over me as I imagined how dependent that spirit was on what I would do next. Who will open this door if not me? I wasn't ready, but I was ready enough. It was time to stop thinking about my fears. All right, then. I can be strong enough now, I prayed, and held on.

I still wasn't sure I wanted to get in the water once Sam had filled the pool, as it would mean changing what I was doing, and I would rather bear that storm I knew than "fly to others that I knew not of." But once I put my feet in, I found I did want the warmth and motion after all. I slipped into the water and knelt backwards and rested my head on the side of the pool, Sam pressing his hands along my back. Cathy and Christine left us alone in the bedroom, and the silence was so deep inside my head that it startled me every time a floorboard creaked or a fan turned on. I couldn't locate myself within the process of labor—I know the stages, of course, and I can often observe the proceedings from somewhere outside myself, watching the onset of transition and hearing myself get more vocal as the intensity increases. But now I was still in that storm-eye of silence, feeling almost fragile, unwilling or unable to break the spell with movement or sound. Having surrendered to the storm, I was gearing up for a long road ahead, and I could feel flutters of nervousness deep down—not knowing how much would be demanded of me, but trying to prepare myself to outlast it. 

Sam asked if I'd be okay for a minute while he went into the bathroom, and I nodded, all my concentration already fixed on that long road. During the next contraction, I hummed a little and felt the vibrations in my back where Sam's hands had been, and suddenly the deep fluttering resolved itself and came into focus and I knew what it was. Not nervousness, but pressure. Don't resist it. Breathe into it. Breathe. I found the familiar picture in my head: the door opening to light, breath carrying the baby down, sinking into the pain as if welcoming it home. I pushed, and as I did I heard myself breaking the enveloping silence for the first time, yelling, the moment lasting an eternity, at once familiar and completely incomprehensible. The baby was…here? "I feel the head!" I croaked, voice trembling. Cathy and Christine came running-not-running, and I yelled again, and Christine was saying something and reaching into the water, and then I was lifting up the tiniest, wettest little body as Cathy gently untangled the cord. It was 1:25 a.m.

Sam came back into the room and stopped to look at us with utter amazement on his face. "What? How?" 

"Oh! Oh! Is it a girl?" I was asking no one in particular, and Cathy was laughing, "I don't know yet; see for yourself!"

11

A solemn covenant

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Morning Session of the October 1994 Conference.

The years fly by so fast as I'm reading these talks. This October 1994 Conference began with a Solemn Assembly to sustain President Hunter as the new President of the Church. On that note, did you ever think of a sustaining vote as a covenant? I think I had known that, abstractly, and heard people use phrases about sustaining like "we raise our right arm to the square" which is clearly covenant language—but I don't know that I'd thought of it as A COVENANT. I figured that sustaining the prophets was part of our covenants to live the Law of the Gospel, maybe, or part of the Law of Consecration and our efforts to build the Kingdom of God. But I didn't think that when sustaining someone, we are making a covenant right then about what we will do. Here's what Elder Haight said about it:

When we sustain the President of the Church by our uplifted hand, it not only signifies that we acknowledge before God that he is the rightful possessor of all the priesthood keys; it also means that we covenant with God that we will abide by the direction and the counsel that come through His prophet. It is a solemn covenant. 

Interesting! So not only that we should be willing to obey the prophet, but we have already promised to obey the prophet…from the very first time we sustained him, and every time we've repeated that sustaining since. It gives a different feeling to that Saturday afternoon session where we always do all the sustainings!

As a Primary Teacher (and a teacher of my own children), I also appreciated this quote from President Hunter, shared by Sister Grassli in her talk:

Those who have the opportunity to teach children in the Church are particularly blessed as they help children understand their divine origin and Heavenly Father’s plan for them. These individuals will receive spiritual understanding in their own lives as they teach the precious truths of the gospel to children.

I love that promise! Spiritual understanding for ourselves as we teach the gospel to children. I have already noticed that happening many times as I prepare Primary lessons for our 10-year-olds, but I imagine I'm being helped in other more subtle ways as well.

2

Reunited

We had two family reunions this summer, one on the Nelson side and one on the Nielson side. It was really fun to see everyone—it had been fourteen years since our last Nelson reunion! Back then I was pregnant with Malachi, my dad was still alive, and the extended family felt so different, with lots of young children and only a few teenagers. (We had two children. Two!!) Knowing now how much life can change, I felt extra appreciative of this time to be together with my mom and my brothers and their families.

Before that, though, we had a quick one-day reunion up Hobble Creek canyon with the Nielsons, which was also really fun. We were afraid it would be unbearably hot, but it was shady there, and we were fine.

Dave took Goldie and Ziggy and Teddy down to the creek and played with them, quickly earning himself the position of favorite uncle!

Gussie found this water fountain with a pool of horrible-looking dirty water in it, and immediately began playing in said water. We pulled him away from it a few times, but every time we got distracted with other things he would return like a moth to the flame. As you see here, he has gotten some sand toys from somewhere and is commencing to pretend to EAT from them. An excellent immunity-building exercise, I'm sure.

He had become…er…slightly dirty by the end of the day. Is that a face only a mother could love? I was none too eager to hug him, I can tell you that much.

 

Sam and I were in charge of figuring out a craft that kids could do without much supervision and that the young married adults (of which there are many! More than little kids, at this stage!) and even older adults might also enjoy.

I thought of paint-by-sticker books like this one, which we sometimes take on trips, and the kids always like them. I always try to talk the kids into letting me do some of their pages because it looks so fun, so I figured some of the adults might enjoy doing it too if they were bored enough.

Sam, bless him, also came up with the idea of making sand bottles. I am very sorry to say that I did not at first believe in this idea, fearing that it would be way too complicated/messy/difficult for the kids and really, anyone. "Of course YOU would be able to make a beautiful sand bottle, but not everyone is YOU and you shouldn't assume the rest of us are capable of any such thing," I told Sam. Luckily, he persisted in his vision, and it turned out to be SO FUN. After some simple instructions, everyone was perfectly capable of putting the sand into the bottles, even the little kids. And the finished sand bottles turned out so cute!! I felt very penitent for my earlier doubts.

People came up with such good ideas. Daisy even made a penguin!

The Nelson reunion was several days long, and we didn't get to attend every activity, but we at least sent a contingent of children to almost everything! It was really fun to see cousins spending time together and getting to know each other.

The best part of this picture is David and Maddy in the background.

My three brothers. And Teddy!

My very favorite thing was on the last night when everyone came to our house. We had almost every person there (Mark and Andy were the only ones missing) and it just made me so happy to see these people I love—just eating, laughing, talking, and enjoying themselves. Abe and Seb brought home a million frozen custard "concretes" from Nielsen's Frozen Custard where they work, and we tasted all the different flavors.

We roasted marshmallows and made s'mores—

The teenagers were all having a great time playing some game or other (this was my favorite part, seeing them do this unprompted and independent of parental involvement)—

Many, many intense games of foosball were played—

And best of all, we had the most joyful, enthusiastic, LOUD hymn-singing session. I pounded out all our favorites at the volume I always WANT to play, taking requests—High on a Mountain Top, Praise to the Lord the Almighty, All Creatures of our God and King, Called to Serve, Press Forward Saints, How Firm a Foundation, Battle Hymn of the Republic, For All the Saints, Beautiful Zion, The Spirit of God. It was so wonderful! I think the whole house was ringing with the sound of our voices—I hope the neighbors could hear. My heart was just bursting with happiness to hear my children and family all together praising God in song. I don't know when I've ever felt happier or more grateful, in fact. It surprised me because I hadn't realized how much love I feel for these dear people collectively. Of course I think all the time about how grateful I am for my own children, but I suddenly felt love and connection with the nieces and nephews too, even the ones we hardly ever get to see and are just barely starting to get to know. And I felt strongly how happy my dad must be to see us all together, too. I wished he was with us. I didn't know when my mom suggested it that singing together would be exactly the right way to end our reunion, but it was!

And here we all are.

1

Talking about summer after it's over

Summer is over; how did that happen? But I'm not done talking about it. Isn't it strange how something so normal can all of a sudden seem terribly dear and poignant just by virtue of being looked back upon? These pictures already seem to depict a Happier Time. (Not that we are unhappy now. But these memories have the benefit of nostalgia, suddenly.) 

Anyway, besides our lovely trip to Oregon, here are a few other things of note from the summer:

• One of our maple trees had some kind of scale moth…*shudder.* I hate how they look on the branches, like some kind of weird fungus. Sam read that ladybugs will eat them, so we bought some ladybugs and released them onto the tree, hoping for the best. I don't know if any of the ladybugs stayed around for long, or if they helped get rid of the moths, but we sure enjoyed watching them and letting them land on us!

Gus was very excited about it all.

Ziggy was too!

• Daisy has been waiting ALL YEAR to get to go to the temple for the first time, and we were finally able to get an appointment in July! She was so happy. It was lovely because Abe and Malachi and Sam and I all got to go with her (Sebastian had something else going on that day) and it was our first time back at the temple in over a year too. I couldn't take my eyes off of Daisy while we were there—she was shining with happiness and goodness. I love her so much.

We went out for breakfast afterwards, of course!

And here is a bonus picture I just found from FOUR YEARS AGO, the first time Sebastian went to the temple! I was pregnant with Ziggy. Look how young Seb is!

• Our neighbors' yard has the most beautiful daisy border in July. It makes me want to pull out all our flowers and plant only daisies!

• And speaking of daisies—this one turned 12! She was hoping the baby would come on her birthday and be her best birthday present. No such luck, but she had a good birthday anyway—a new daisy dress, cheeseburger pie for dinner, and volcano cakes for dessert. Yum. Junie and Daisy and Teddy picked her a birthday bouquet and made her lots of cute pictures and cards. It was a happy day!

• This was a fun sight we saw one evening—three couples swing dancing on the hill. We sat outside and watched them for awhile, which I hope didn't embarrass them, but don't choose the top of the hill for your practice session if you don't want an audience!

• Another day. Twins on the hill. I think they're solving their Rubik's Cubes in this picture.

• This is…I don't know. Ziggy "being" something or other.

• And THIS is the table after Ziggy helpfully set it for dinner. Next time we need to fit 22 place settings at the table we will know who to call. And, having mastered the art of table setting, Zig has decided that he's ready to move onward and upward. He comes to me every night while I'm making dinner and says, "What can I do to help, Mommy?—I don't want to just set the table. I want to do something important!"

• Goldie found a recipe in The Friend magazine (or somewhere?) for yogurt-covered strawberries in the shape of fish. She was DYING to make them, and when I finally brought home some strawberries from Costco, she was overjoyed. She made these little fishies all by herself and they turned out so cute!

• Gussie wearing a big shoe.

• Gus hugging Caw while he sleeps (surrounded by TOO MANY animals).

• A few weeks before the baby was due, we decided to change around a bunch of rooms in our house. Move the girls downstairs into Sam's office, move the little boys into the girls' old room, and move Sam's office up to the little boys' old room. (It all sounds kind of depressingly futile when I put it that way! Round and round.)

We had thought, when we first moved here, that we'd move Sam's office upstairs someday…but he's been spending more-than-anticipated amounts of time in there, what with BYU classes being online all year, etc., and it seemed like it would be nice for him to be upstairs in the daylight instead of downstairs like a mole person. (Though luckily the basement room was very nice too. It has a nice big window.) But really that office room (which used to be the little boys' room) is the best room in the house; we've always thought so. So much light and a great view of the hill and the mountains. We both love being in there. So, that room became Sam's office and my sewing/craft/present-wrapping/other random stuff room, and we even put a soft chair in there so I could nurse the baby.

Isn't it nice? I love the magnet board with all my yarn on it. Sam's idea, of course.

The former office has the biggest closet in the house! Way bigger than our master closet. So it seemed like the perfect room to move three girls into. But the closet also didn't have anything in it except rods, so we got some shelving at Lowe's and built a bunch of new storage into it. The girls all helped build shelves and drawers and install them. It turned out so nice! There is room for ALL of their clothes and shoes and things, without any other dressers or chests in the bedroom! And I even was able to fit the boxes of old baby girl clothes to size 7 (all the stuff the girls have grown out of, basically) in there too.

All that shelf-building had to happen before we moved anything (especially because there were a million random boxes in that closet of things we hadn't wanted to get out until the office/bedroom situation had resolved) and then there was SO much stuff piled around waiting to be put where it was supposed to go! I was worried we had been a little overambitious in starting this project so soon before my due date, but with the girls enthusiastically pitching in, and the big boys helping take apart beds and carry big furniture (only when pressed into service, but willingly enough when those times came), it actually went pretty fast.

Everything looked so nice when we were done. (There is also a trundle bed underneath those bunks where Goldie sleeps.) The girls were pretty excited to get the office's old couch in their room! 

AND of course the little boys were excited about any change. They got a bigger closet too, and Gus got easy access to the light switch from his crib, so now he can turn the light off and on, off and on, off and on, all night long. Delightful! (Slim the Giraffe is not actually supposed to be in this room, as the little boys have a tendency to sit on him and get his poor neck all bent out of shape. Poor Slim.)

• Abe made this little circle for Gus to stand in, and once he'd given his word that he'd stay inside, he couldn't get out; no, never; he'd die first!

• Malachi got to go boating with his young men's group, and according to him, he was the only one that managed to stand up on the surfboard for any length of time! What an exceptional young man.

• Our back deck. I love it on summer nights with the lights on. Sadly, the outdoor rugs have faded to a sort of dusty purple now, but they still feel nice under our feet!

• A glorious rainstorm! We finally had a few of those. They were sorely-needed and extra welcome this year, but I always love a good hard summer rain. We had one huge thunderstorm while half of our family were driving home from Mapleton (the freeway had sections where the water was a foot deep, and we even saw a car almost floating in one spot! It was a bit scary) and the other half were attending a ward dessert potluck by the hill. The potluck-ers said the rain and hail was so hard that everyone took shelter under an ineffective canvas awning, and when it let up slightly they sprinted for home—but too late to save the plate of brownies they'd brought. When I got home and tried to pick up a brownie from the plate, it deflated, mushlike, into a sodden square wafer, and it was the saddest sight I'd ever seen in my life.

• Sunsets and girls in nightgowns. Lots of those around these parts.

• Seb has been doing extra jobs and saving all his money for something like two years now so he could buy a new bike. It helped a lot when he finally got a job at the frozen custard place Abe works at (and they even hired him several months before he turned 16, which was lucky). He finally earned enough to buy this bike a couple weeks before his birthday! He loves it, and had fun showing us all the cool features, like a seat that you can move up and down with a lever, like an office chair. (I probably just described the least important feature of the bike, but I can't remember all the other technical things and that one seemed cool to ME!) Anyway. It's been fun to see how happy he is with it. I love the colors, too.

He took his bike up on the hill during a lightning storm (don't worry, the lightning was that faraway eerie silent kind) and got some cool pictures!

• Seb finally having the thing he'd been wanting so long seemed to me to make his actual birthday a bit anticlimactic, but he seemed happy enough with his birthday dinner (Eggs Benedict with avocado and tomato) and cake (apple cake with caramel sauce). He also got a new bike helmet and these useful toe socks. Exciting!

We had quite a birthday disappointment at the Driver's License office when Seb went in, all set to get his license, and they told him there was NO RECORD of his driving class, road test, written test, etc. We were so confused, and of course the lady wasn't NICE about it—just brusque and uncaring and skeptical, like she could tell he just by looking at him that he was the sort of person who WOULD come in and try to get a license without doing any of the requirements for it. When we finally got in touch with his driving school and got it figured out (his name was spelled wrong on his learner's permit! And the records of his tests were under the correct spelling!)—we couldn't get another appointment at the DMV until the next week. So that was sad. But Seb (to my surprise) took it all in stride, shrugged it off philosophically, and even comforted ME when I was pretty sad and frustrated about it for his sake. So, that boy may make a fine man yet! I am so glad he's sixteen. Not just to have another driver (although, another driver!! An angel chorus should sing those words!!) but because he has seemed so old for so long. It is ABOUT TIME he turned an age that somewhat matches what he seems like!

Scary face. Teenage boys and fire are always an alarming combination!

• I already talked about doing baptisms with Daisy, and Sam and I have also gotten to go to the temple four separate times now that it has opened again, for initiatory, endowments, and sealings. It is so wonderful to be there again! We have missed it terribly. Going back feels like going home.

• And here are some more beautiful sunsets. I don't recall, at this remove, what it was that had Ziggy's shirt all wet, but it's probably something he wasn't supposed to have gotten into. :)

I love a rainbow sky like this!

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