We're ready for the elementary school Halloween party!

 Tyler is a Gothic rag doll

 Rachel is a pretty pirate

 and since the ninja costume was sold out, Olivia is a sweet mermaid

They are all ready to go to school!  Happy three days before Halloween!

Oh, and if any of you have any brilliant ideas, any extra scary costumes, or unused spooky decorations around your house, I sure could use your help.  Apparently, my girls have been making big plans to do a Haunted House at our place tonight at 8:00.  Rachel has even given out several invitations to their friends.  The girls were kind of thinking our messy house would be scary enough as it is, but I would kind of like to help them make it a little bit more like the real deal.  I know it is short notice, but I would appreciate anything!  Thanks!

Letting in the light

"Now, God be praised, that to believing souls gives light in darkness, comfort in despair."

                                                                                                              --William Shakespeare

This is the post where I thank all of you have been praying for me, worrying about me, reaching out to me.  I have found hope again!  Prayers have been answered.  Real contact has been made.  My letters to my birth daughter and her family really are going to make it into their hands.  Thank you!  Thank you!  Thank you!  I want you to know I truly understand that my Heavenly Father knows the righteous desires of my heart and delights to own and bless me.  I have been blessed a thousand times over, I know.  Before this moment, and especially in this blessed day.

Thank you again.  I love you all.

Company Retreat

Some of you may know that I work with my husband at his mortgage business, Primary Residential Mortgage, Inc.  We recently spent some time in Moab with all of Britt's employees.  The word all sounds pretty serious, but it amounts to Kayela Bradford, his processor, Beverly Digiambattista, his underwriter, who lives in California and flew out for a meeting we had with local realtors, and Merri Shumway, his new assistant.  Yes, he just hired Merri to work in the office full time.  Does that mean I am out of a job?  Not exactly.  I just get to work on stuff at home now, which is lovely.

We spent a wonderful couple of days getting to know each other better, outside of the work environment, as we toured some of the awesome sites around Moab.  Of course, Arches is one of our new favorites:

I love this guy

Inside the frame created by the arch, if you look way in the distance, you can see two other arches on the horizon.  I guess Arches National Park is supposed to contain over 2000 sandstone arches within its borders. 

 Britt looks like he can take on the world, doesn't he?

This bowl beneath the arch is pretty cool, too.  It kind of seems like it ought to be a natural pool you could jump into.  Merri said the whole place reminded her a lot of Lake Powell, except without the water.  She used to practically live at Lake Powell.  Her father was the original owner of Halls Crossing Marina.

Looking at these pictures has been reminding me of something.  Several years ago--it would have had to have been 15 or more years--I tutored a Western Literature class at the college.  One of the books we read was Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey.  Toward the end of the quarter, we took a class field trip to Arches National Park, and hiked to Delicate Arch.  It was the first time I had been in the park, I remember, and my little brother Tim was one of the students in the class.  I loved the book!  In some ways, it is hard to think of the wonderland Edward Abbey loved so well being changed as it has since this park has become more popular.  Still, I have to say, we are grateful that we can enjoy the natural beauty that is contained within Arches National Park.

We are also grateful that our own little backyard, San Juan County, is mostly undiscovered.  When we want to go explore our world, we don't have to pay to enter a park.  We don't have to do litter patrol, or try to find animal tracks amidst all the human tracks.  We just pull out the GPS and wander to our heart's content, very rarely running into any other hikers along the way.  Call me selfish, but I like it this way.

I also remember that when we entered the park all those years ago, we were supposed to get a discount for being on an educational field trip, but the ranger there said she had to charge full price.  I remember about a week afterward, I wrote a letter of protest to the park, asking that they recognize the educational nature of the trip.  I even included specific references to the book in my arguments.  I wish I still had a copy of the letter.  Yes, I am bragging, but it was pretty well-written, if I do say so myself.  A few weeks later, the instructor of the class received a refund of the money she had been charged.

I think I am going to dig out some of those old pictures, just so I can show you my young self and my cute little brother Tim on our first hike out to Delicate Arch.  Not for a few days, though.

From now on, my Sundays will be computer and phone free.  I promised my husband, and now you are all witnesses.  I won't even be blogging.  Sorry.  See ya later.

Closing the door

It has been a rough couple of weeks for me.  I am not yet ready to tell you why.  I am still holding out hope that something good will eventually come out of the grief I have been experiencing.

Today, I made a phone call.  I didn't even ask to talk to her, because I knew it would be a wasted effort.  I have been playing a vicious game of phone tag with her all week.  This time, I simply asked to be sent directly to her voicemail.

Today,  I requested that Sandy send my letters to my birth daughter and her family back to me.  I left my address on the voice mail just in case she has lost or forgotten that, too.

I am closing that door.

It is not worth it.  Not worth believing she really will do something about it.  Not worth trying to get her attention.  Not worth feeling like I am harassing an agency that once promised to do anything and everything for me.  It is so not worth it.

I am closing the door.  I am letting go of that struggle.  Now, I am hoping with that door slammed shut, there will be some wide, clear-paned windows opening soon, because it is getting awful dark around here.

There is beauty all around

 Wow, did you notice how bright my new header is?  Yeah, all the people in the photo did, too.  Look at everybody squinting.  This was what we did for Family Home Evening last night.  I know I am not a professional photographer.  Hey, that last picture was taken by the truck!  Still, it is nice to have a record of what a beautiful family I have.  In moments like these, when life has been bringing me low, I look around at the beauty that God has created (including these wonderful people that I love), and I cannot be sad for very long.

 

 

Don't you just love Fall?

I have more pictures to post from the rest of the day--earlier in the day, actually.  I just couldn't resist posting these from when we were up at Grandpa Lee's cabin.  It was such a beautiful day.  The kids had a blast raking the leaves and then playing in the piles.  Thanks, J.C. and Lori for inviting us.  And Happy Birthday, Ryker and Carter!

Tyler is okay

I am not posting a picture, because if I were Tyler, I would be mortified.  But then, if I were Tyler, I would probably have insisted on not going to school at all today.  After all, when you are in the fifth grade, your looks matter a lot to you and to everyone else.  Tyler is my daughter who has always fought me violently whenever I have tried to do her hair, and now she is begging me to do it.  She is definitely more conscientious about how she dresses and all of that now, too.

So, when I received a text from my mother yesterday--which I couldn't view because I was out of data range in Arches National Park at a business retreat--and a voice mail from the school principal describing Tyler's injuries, I was very concerned but pretty much helpless.  Thank goodness they had been able to reach my mother and she had a vehicle to get to the school and pick up Tyler.  Once I was able to call Tyler, her usual perky, mile-a-minute voice answered me back like it was all no big deal.

No big deal that she had a split lip, bleeding gums, a monster goose egg and swelling right side of her face, not to mention a developing black eye and two very scraped up knees.  She wasn't crying; she wasn't complaining.  Actually, she sounded like she was thrilled to be getting some quality time with her grandma, especially since she was able to finagle Grandma into helping her start another quilt project.  She wasn't even really upset about what had happened to her.

What happened to her?  Those of you who didn't already hear or who weren't there when it happened are probably wondering.  This is the story told to me by Tyler.  She was playing kickball with a bunch of kids at school.  As she ran to the base, a boy threw the ball at her to get her out.  He hit her legs, tripping her and knocking her right into the base, which happened to be a metal pole.  Personally, I am thinking having a metal pole for a base is not such a good idea.

She was pretty bloody then, between the scraped knees and her bleeding mouth, not to mention the goose egg making her face swell.  Grandma Gail got her home to her house, cleaned her up and kept an ice pack on her face for a while.  Tyler didn't really want to be bothered with it, but Grandma said it did help bring the swelling down.

Once I got home, she was developing a pretty large black eye, above and below her right eye.  Her lip was not bleeding, but it had swollen quite a bit, as had the entire right half of her face.  A friend of hers was encouraging her to take ibuprofen to reduce the swelling, but since she wasn't really in pain at that point, I didn't think it would be that helpful.

This morning, she looked like she had been on the losing side of a terrible boxing match.  I told her she didn't have to go to school, but she wanted to.  She is braver than me.

Thanks, everyone who called to make sure she is okay.  She really is.  She is kind of like the Energizer Bunny, you know.  She just keeps going and going.  I think she is even enjoying the fame and attention she has been receiving since it happened.  I love my Tyler.

More time in Arches National Park--April 2010

I was just looking through these pictures and wondering how I was possibly going to limit the number of pictures to a reasonable size for this post.  You will notice I didn't do a very good job of keeping the pictures to a minimum.  We really enjoyed our second visit to Arches National Park.  The girls even worked on earning their junior ranger badges that day.  Unfortunately, we didn't make it back down to the Visitor Center before 6:00 p.m., when they close, so they weren't actually able to get their junior ranger badges.  Still, they had a great time, picking up litter and learning all they could about the park.

We spent a little bit of time down by the Visitor Center, hence these first pictures:

Then we started off on a long hike down through the park.  I cannot remember the name of it, but we saw several different arches along the way. . .

 . . .including Landscape Arch, which is an amazing arch which spans a long distance.  We got lots of fun pictures with that one.

We also hiked up past the rubble of Wall Arch, which is an arch that actually collapsed a few years ago.

We stopped and enjoyed a snack.

 And just enjoyed the the view.

Then we hiked some more, but those pictures are for my next National Parks post, which will probably be my next post, unless I decide to post about something else.

National Park Series: Visiting Natural Bridges April 2010

I don't know if you remember when I our family visited Mesa Verde two years ago, and I said we were going to use our National Parks Pass as much as we could in the coming year.  Well, you saw my posts about Arches, and then one about Natural Bridges.  This is part two of our visit to Natural Bridges National Monument.  We also used our parks pass at Arches again.  Then, in one long drive (over a few days), we went to Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Grand Staircase National Monument, and Capitol Reef National Park.  Those posts are still coming.  I thought it would be fun to try to update you on some of those visits.  I know I am way behind, but I hardly blogged at all in 2010 and I do prefer to have a record of our lives here, so here we go:

Here we are hiking down to the Owachamo Bridge.  We think some day we would like to do the full hike down the canyon, starting at Sipapu Bridge.  We have always hiked down to Sipapu Bridge in the past, when we have brought family or friends down, but the trail was still covered with ice and snow then, so that wasn't an option this time.  I have been down to the Owachamo Bridge a few times with my kids' classes when they were here for field trips.

 It is awe-inspiring every time.

 My kids love posing on the rocks.

 and under the bridge

 my doll

  "Take my picture, Mom!"

Our family poses for a picture framed by the bridge.

We make a good-looking bunch, don't we?

 And my girls' favorite part is earning their Junior Ranger badges

Here they are, getting sworn in.  It was all very official.  They loved it!

Yes, this was a year and a half ago.  I intend to post more pictures from our other National Parks visits in the next few days (not that there isn't plenty of stuff going on here now that I will need to post about).  I just like to mix it up, okay?