...still: the farm

I wish I had a picture of the  giant, (but safely buried) rectangular trampoline and the 11 more kids that were on that at the time of this picture! And take note that it is Carter GETTING the underdog and Ethan JUMPING off the swing and flying through the air.

a perfect wyoming sunset

I recently filled out a get to know you survey at a church activity and one of the questions was "where is your favorite place to vacation?"  This was actually my hardest question.  I thought back to trips as a kid to Ocean City, MD or the Adirondacks.  I thought of my girls trip to San Diego this past spring.  I have never been to Europe or Hawaii but would like to go someday. I remembered our fun family trip to Seattle when the boys were little. All of the times in Jackson Hole, or Vail, stuck in Sidney, Nebraska in a blizzard (remind me to tell you about that sometime...), the camping and adventures here in Alaska...

But what I wrote down was The Farm.

Oh the farm is quite possible one of the least relaxing places on the planet too!  This year there were LARGE portions of our trip where at any given moment there were 17 children and only 2 moms to be found.  We had a revolving door of visitors outside of our immediate family that constantly changed the routine of daily life.  We had dads Jeff and JaDee go home leaving me and EmRee husbandless.  There are ditches full of water for children to fall into.  Little boys asking for matches (which we have to hide). Big boys wanting to shoot air soft guns and fireworks. Pirate ships and broken arms (that happened after I left).

And of course 3 meals a day.

Plus snacks.

But as hectic as it is, I guess when I think of where I would choose to spend my airplane tickets, I would almost always choose to do it here.

still the same

me and Ethan at cub scout camp June 2011

I was talking to friend in Utah the other day when she mentioned that stories of Ethan in sacrament meeting and in the neighborhood have become something sort of a legend.  She told me a friend of hers, who moved in after I was gone, was bemoaning her sacrament meeting woes to a group of my old friends and they told her, "Oh, don't worry. Your kids are nothing compared to when the Moncurs lived here!"

We laughed because oh we were quite a sight. Especially once JaDee was in the bishopric while I was pregnant with Olivia.  We have always sat on the second row not to be a spectacle, but it proved to be the spot with the least amount of distractions as no one else with kids sat up there. So starting with Carter, who only wanted to play with his friends and eat their snacks (I guess someone else's goldfish taste better to a 2 year old), we have sat up front.

(I will have to tell you of the fits Carter threw before we made the switch to the front rows some other time...)

So I write this tale of Ethan for my Utah friends who can't believe that the relatively well behaved child that I praise on my blog (he is my favorite remember :) is the same one I chased in the choir seats, and literally tackled as he vaulted the stairs back down to the congregation, during the sacrament all those years ago.

Fortunatly this story does not take place at church, but if it did, it would have been a doozy!

Ethan comes to me with my kitchen tongs last week. "Can I use these?"

"Yes. Wait, for what," I asked, coming to my senses in the nick of time.

"I need it to hold a mouse," he casually explains.

"A mouse? What are you talking about?" I am afraid I actually do have an inkling at this point.  See my two cats are alive and well. And ever so affectionate with sharing the bounties of their nightly hunts.  Most of the mice (they are actually shrews, no mice here in Alaska!) are left intact and in high profile places of the garage floor.  One was actually placed at eye level for us on the roof of an almost 5 foot doll house that is currently waiting for some repairs.  However, another was recently disemboweled for me in front of the van door and I had to scrap the guts up to get in the car.

"I also need to get my knife." Ethan continues. With the earning of his whittling chip every year at cub scout camp, Ethan has been empowered as a master knife-wielder (I know, everyone in Perry is cringing with disbelief that the boy who once almost drowned in my front yard pond after falling through the ice after plummeting off the above retaining wall, has access to knives).

"For what?" I am asking a little more shrilly at this point.

"I want to chop the mouse's head off and dry out its skull to keep."

I promptly take away the tongs and firmly change my answer to, "No. Absolutely not."

"WhyYYYYYyyyy," whines my incredulous son. (I love that word: incredulous...I have been using it lately at my children when they are in trouble).

Really? How come boys even have to ask this question. As if of course I am going to say yes to you using my kitchen tongs (OK I only use them for corn on the cob and canning, both of which we don't really do here anymore [no farms in Alaska=very little produce to can] ) to hold a dead mouse while you saw off its head with your pocket knife.

And then let it hang somewhere in the house to dry out so you can save it alongside of your Lego's and clay pots from art class.

Ethan has also recently charged a toll on the road behind our house for driving over his dandelion chain.

That story goes like this:

When we first moved here, Ethan and his friend C, would make dandelion chains to see if they could get them across the road.  They did this over and over again.  So when another friend came over to play earlier this summer, and it was such a nice day I sent them out to do the same. However, my road is bigger and we have a standing rule of no playing in the street. I didn't specifically mention this rule when I sent them out to play and that would later be my downfall.

The windows were open and I could hear the boys happily making boy noises as they cooperated in this building project.  They were at it a while and I started hearing Ethan say, "That will be 50 cents please, for road repairs."  He says this a few times so thinking that they had added an imaginary element to their completed project I take a peak only to see Ethan at the driver side window of some strange car!

Ethan reaches his hand in the car and takes something and puts it in his pocket.

Did I just witness my 10 year old do a drug deal?  And maybe we better lay off the Bear Aware and have a refresher course of Stranger Danger.

"Ethan! What are you doing?" I shriek as only I can.

"We are collecting money to fix our road when they drive over the dandelions." They do indeed have a chain stretched across the road.

"Are people really paying you guys?" I ask, incredulous myself, this time.

"Yeah," except pronounced "duh."

"You can't do that!" I shriek again after he explains that he has been standing in the middle of the road with his hand out, stopping cars, and refusing to let them pass without a toll payment.

I could have crawled under a rock.  What kind of mother lets her child stop traffic and demand money!?!  Oh wait, I know. Most, as in 99.9% of all mothers, DON'T! But now it is his turn to look incredulous as I try to explain the dangers of being hit, or stolen, or just plain rude by doing this.

"How much did you get?" I ask, wondering.

"I don't know. Couple of bucks," he pulls out a big handful of change from his pocket.

He and his friend split the money since his friend was the work crew and really had no part in the coercing a ransom out of innocent drivers. They each walked away with just over a buck.

Not too shabby for a days work :)

The terrible no good day.

Have you ever read this book?  Well I feel like I lived it yesterday.

I woke up feeling kind of bleh.  Or meh.  I had no real commitments but a house that looked like a bomb went off and I had started a new book so I debated skipping the gym and coming home and going back to bed with it instead.  But no, I have committed my self to go to the gym so I got dressed in my workout clothes.

Then I couldn't find my running shoes and was almost late to school. And Olivia was irritating me with her whining over not wanting to wear what I picked out for her for PICTURE DAY (honestly, I don't really care what she wears and you can sometimes tell, but picture day is the one day I go ballistic on).

Shoes found and kids dropped off I stop for my Diet Pepsi and look up the valley to see glorious sunshine.  It is way too nice of day so I decide to head out to the trails in the woods.  And heck it is Friday!  I should do a little jig for making it through another week.  One that felt like it should have ended on Tuesday...

So I stop at home, grab some snacks, bear spray, my dog Champ, and my new camera and head out.

Oh it was glorious. I was right to come out here. All the trees are golden and the shining sun was just the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was so quiet.  Champ was even being good and listening to me and not pulling on the leash.  I took a trail I hadn't been on before and was so happy with my Road Less Traveled choice.  My heart was singing.

My new camera was awesome. It fit in my pocket and took great pictures.  I stopped at a  little stream and was taking shots of water rushing over rocks and of Champ on the leaf covered trail.  Then I thought, "No makeup be darned, I am going to take a picture of myself out here on this awesome day!"

So I take off the wrist strap to transfer the camera from my right to my left hands, stretch out my left arm to get the angle I wanted and snapped the shot.  Then in making the short commute back to my right hand and into the right pocket of my jacket: disaster.

The camera slips from my fingers and in slow motion hits the bank of the stream and slides over the edge. For a second I think it is going to stop on the slight outcropping of dirt about a foot above the stream, but no. Its momentum carries it forward and -Plop.  It lands in the stream, tumbles once with the flow of the water and stops against a rock maybe 4 inches from its near perfect dive.

Slow motion breaks as I jump into ankle deep water and retrieve the camera. In one motion I open the battery door and take out both the battery and the SD card. I am so upset I know my hike is over and I take 2 steps down the trail when I stop and turn around to see my keys back at the bank of the stream. I count that as nothing short of a miracle that when I stoop to get my keys I just sit and start to cry.

Oh and there is Champ right on me licking my face to help me feel better.  He is seriously in my lap at this point and I am trying to push him off and I am yelling at him to leave me alone, but then I am glad he is there and I sit for a while and negotiate life.

I make it home (during a thankfully uneventful walk out and a phone call to JaDee on the way home in the car where I tell him, "At least I wasn't eaten by a bear." and he says, "Yeah, but I would still have the camera and chances are you would have had some great bear pictures on it..." thanks hon). and do what I call "Poll the Audience," from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and post my dilemma on facebook.  I look up a few websites, and put my camera in a bowl of rice in a warm spot above the mantle in my living room.

I got nothing done.  All day. I was so depressed!

Oh and when I got home Buckwheat had gotten in the garbage while I was gone and had it laid out across the kitchen and into the living room. (He is another funny story and had been earning time in Solitary Confinement, aka the Kennel, while we were out of the house but he recently was getting time off for good behavior- yeah he messed that parole board up).

Then I got a bobbi pin stuck in the agitator of the washing machine and for the life of me cannot get it out and I am afraid it will snag something and ruin it.

Then I got some bad news in the mail, in the box we don't use for the general population and often go for weeks without checking. In fact, my own mother doesn't have this address.

Then the kids come home and I have not done a darn thing and the house is still a mess.

Then JaDee tells me he found another $200 snow machine and he is on his way to get it. Of course it doesn't run yet, but he has high hopes. And of course it looks like something we dragged home off the side of the road (oh because we did) and parked it in our driveway as some kind of white trash art deco piece. (Don't worry, neighbors, it will up on blocks in my garage as soon as the motorcycle finds it home for the winter under a big attractive blue tarp).

But then we went out with friends and had a great time. I was still dressed in my hiking clothes (they had dried out by then:) and I still hadn't showered or put any makeup on. And the nice thing about Alaska is that there really isn't a dress code and  last night, I was for sure the one in the room you could look at and say, Well, at least I look better than that poor thing.

And it ended on a good note.

follow up

This is a video of Olivia from July 2010.  She was 4.

I wanted to answer a few questions brought up from my last post and give full disclosure that I too, almost drowned a child or maybe 2 children, on accident.

And about my own drowning child.  Well actually, Olivia could swim. She was seriously like a swimming prodigy.  At 18 months she surprised us all in my dad's pool by letting go of JaDee and doing the proper breathing all the way to the edge. The next year we were at a friends house when she was  2 1/2 , and  we let her jump off the diving board without floaties while JaDee was treading water below her (she has actually never worn floaties until just recently so she can play Marco Polo with the big kids at Grandma's and not get so tired).   Well at 2 she always came up on her own and she always swam to the side by herself, but with JaDee just a stroke away. She did this over and over again that night and loved every minute of it.

One day shortly after this, we were at the Brigham City pool.  I was putting lunch away and Olivia was right by me.  Or so I thought. I looked up in time to see her take a dive in not the deepest part but at least way over her head. As I was running over to her the life guards jumped in pulled her out and handed her to me and gave me a lecture on watching my child.

OK little miss 16 years old.  I will for sure take parenting advice from you.  I then made a big deal about getting in with her and taking Olivia way out and letting her swim to  the wall right under that lifeguard's feet.
Olivia has actually gotten away from me at the pools on several occasions and gets really mad when the life guards make her get out of the deep end or won't let her jump off the diving board. Or worse, fish her out like she needs help or something. "But I didn't, Mom.  I was fine!"  I know sweetheart, they are just being careful.

We had her take the swim test here at our high school pool, (the very one Beanie got fished out of) and they would have put her as a level 4 swimmer (the highest) but she was not strong enough to swim a lap of the Olympic size pool.  That was the only thing she couldn't do off the level 4 checklist and they asked her to do that part last.  I bet she could do it if they asked her to do it first.

We have never put her in swim lessons because quite frankly, she would be bored practicing bobs and blowing bubbles in the water with other 3 year olds, but she isn't old enough or strong enough to be with 10 year olds.

In any case, I almost really and truly lost Ethan once.  He was about 6 or 7 and a decent swimmer.  Again, at the Brigham City pool he and Carter were playing around. It was really crowded and hot that day.  I was with Olivia in the 4 foot area so she could "Jump in deep, Mom." and keeping one eye on Ethan (always my wanderer and my loner) who could tire out trying to keep up with his brother or not realizing what he has gotten into.

Sure enough, I look over and Ethan is struggling way out in the 6-8 foot area all the way across the pool.  I am not a strong swimmer.  In fact, I can't even use the word swimmer to describe me in the water at all. I refused to put my face in the water as a child at the YMCA swim lessons and was stuck in polliwogs for 3 years while my 2 younger brothers graduated from sharks.

With the crowded pool and the ever vigilant 16 year olds keeping watch, I could tell by the look on Ethan's face, and maybe with a good dose of Mother's Intuition, this this could get scary fast.  Carter was sitting at the wall with me and Olivia so I said, "Carter, go help your brother. Quick!"  Carter is a very strong swimmer and bolted across the concrete and dove in straight to Ethan.

I couldn't see them with all the bodies in the pool, and trying to wrestle Olivia out to go to them, but the boys, a very proud Carter and a very shaken, but grateful Ethan, later told me what happened:

Carter reached Ethan and sure enough Ethan was scared and grabbed Carter and pulled him under trying to stay afloat. Carter disentangled himself from his brother's grasp, took one more big breath and went under to the bottom of the pool. There, Carter grabbed Ethan's ankles and put them on his own shoulders and walked along the bottom while Ethan paddled with his arms to the wall.

It was quite a ways out too. The Brigham Pool is bigger across than our pools here, and Ethan was in the dead center right before the high dive (for those of you familiar with the pool in BC).  Carter was very brave and a quick thinker to come up with how to help his brother.  I should have yelled to the nearest life guard to help, or given Olivia to Carter to watch while I tried to save Ethan, but not being a swimmer, and knowing what Carter could do, I reacted by sending one brother to fetch the other.

So I guess I am trying to say, don't be too hard on Beanies parents. They are clueless, for sure, but I have been an idiot on more than one occasion, and not just around water, with my kids. I guess the stories are funny because they aren't happening to me.  But I read a great line in a Stephen King book once (remember, I LOVE him and my dream job is to teach an English class devoted entirely to his books at the college level...) but I can't remember the book or who said it, (it is probably in The Stand) Anyway it goes something like this:

"God looks after drunks and children. They always seem to survive against all odds."

Remembering

This weekend as I am sure we all know, marked the 10 year anniversary of 9-11. My kids, especially Ethan who was only a few months old at the time, have been talking about this a lot too. i thought I would take a few moments to jot down what I remember from that day.

I was getting Carter ready for pre school when JaDee said to switch over from PBS kids after the first plane hit and I watched the second plane hit, when all the TV crews were still trying to figure out if the first plane was just a horrible accident.  I remember the F-16 planes ROARING over my house as they zoomed to the Canadian border and back looking for rogue planes.  I remember how for months after that there were loaded F-16s in hangars at Hill AFB with pilots in them around the clock to take off in 90 seconds if another threat happened, especially during the Olympics that came just a few short months later.

My grandmother was actually on a plane, in the air on her way to see me in Salt Lake from Fayeteville, Arkansas, when they were ordered to land all planes that day.  My dad worked in DC at the time and was evacuated from the city.  My dad's wife and I were trying to get a hold of each other to make sure everyone was safe.  She and my dad couldn't get a hold of each other with all the jammed phone lines but both of them could call out to me (I could not call in to DC either but calls out came through) and I was relay point for her, my dad in the HOURS it took for him to make the 40 mile commute, and my grandmother, who was stuck in St. Louis for 4 days and a kind stewardess took her home with her.  I know my grandmother still sends her a Christmas card every year and I hope she knows how truly grateful we all are that my 75 year old grandmother didn't have to sleep in the airport.

I remember the days following when Carter would build Lego towers and crash his toy airplanes into them and knock them over, as if all the news coverage had opened a new way for him to play, and not shown him a perfect example of evil. His little mind didn't comprehend that there were people in those planes and even more people in those buildings.

I personally did not know anyone in the towers, the planes or the Pentagon, but many people I know did. My roommate from college lived in Battery Park at the time.  She has amazing stories of service and miracles, but also stories of horror and trauma as she tried to locate people she knew, who went missing.  My cousin and her husband lost several friends in the towers that day as well.


It was a turning point. As much the end of the age of innocence as the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. One in which we all were made a little more cautious, a little more careful and a little less trusting.  But we were also made a little more brave...when was the last time you have heard of a hijacked plane? Thanks to the brave passengers on Flight 93 in Pennsylvania that day, we are all empowered travelers who won't take it anymore.

Undeniably, the world changed that day. And for days even weeks after 9-11 the earth stood still.  Everyone was a little kinder, a little more patient, a little more compassionate.  So instead of remembering the evil of that day, lets remember the way we showed love for each other, for our country and for our families.  Lets never forget those who died that day, that we as a people might learn these important lessons.
Lets not forget how we stood by a president who made the decision to go to war nor the men and women who went to that war and those who continue to go to war.

But most of all, lets remember what matters most to all of us.  Our families, our God and our freedom.

New Post

It is time for a new post and I have several thoughts running through my head.  I am thinking it must be "Ranting Season," since most of my thoughts require me to get a soap box out to stand on, much like my sister's latest post.

But the root of my rantings is really the deep introspective thoughts I have been having.  I need some quiet time to process and dig deep into some of the thoughts I have been having.

So let me begin.

It all started when I went in the Principal's office to volunteer my help on something the school is working on. It is something I saw a need for and I decided to fill it.  So I am filling it and it took up a considerable amount of time last week and so I did not have a lot of time to do the usual things I have been doing lately and things like the house getting cleaned were set by the wayside as well (and you know, a house of order is a good place to lay your head).

On top of that I had Time Out for Women this week (which while awesome was a huge time commitment for me), Carter's first time marching with the band at a football game, feeding the Stake Presidency for Stake Conference this weekend, and the usual carpools and dinners and friends what not.

By Sunday I was shot and napped for 3 hours and woke up grumpy and mean, like a big old bear.

What was the cause of all this?  Why the big mean bear?  It was apparently so bad that I went to bed with a note from sweet Ethan promising me he would be better and try not to disappoint me anymore.

It was bad.

So here is what I have been thinking.  What am I to do?  Or to phrase the Time Out for Women theme, what am I to BECOME? Really and truly I think that conference just put the icing on the cake of some thoughts I was already having, since that was the theme, Choose to Become.  They had this opener with a video of women doing things, artists, authors, bloggers, bakers, all sorts of things.  And they were all succeeding at it like even as a career as well as being a mom, wife, mother, Daughter of God.

The first speaker challenged us to get out of our own way and have the faith to Become what the Lord wants us to be. A thousand thoughts ran through my head. "I should be a writer." "How awesome to be a speaker like this. I love to speak." "I should really be a teacher again."  "Ooooh maybe I should dust off my violin.  I could be good again." "Four years of Art in High school and all the painting I have done, I live in the most beautiful state.  I should paint and draw again. I was really good.  My kids don't even know I can do half this stuff."  And the list went on and on.

There was another speaker who I had never heard of before.  He spoke about the problem with conforming.  He challenged us to look at 2 things, first, what are we conforming too. And second, how are we forcing others to conform to us. He also said that there are only 2 choices we have to make: What you believe and values and how you act on those beliefs and values. The rest of the stuff is just consequences.

That was deep.  I know my values and beliefs. I made that choice, but how do my actions stand up?  Good food for thought. But what really got me was his first question: what have I conformed to. And I tell you, the answer hit me like a ton of bricks:  Volunteering at the school.  That is what I get sucked in to every time.  I don't know why, but I do.

So the next step is to change that.  Well, that is easier said then done, since I did make some commitments and I will follow them through. I will also recommit to my old mantra of Choose Your Own Halloween Candy.

What?  Well you see, my sister in law, EmRee, is a marriage and family therapist and a former teacher at BYU education week (which is a big deal if you know anything about that. Not that she would say it was a big deal, so I say it for her). I first heard that phrase, choose your own Halloween candy from her at a workshop she taught at Education Week.  I don't remember where she got it, but I adopted as my own person guideline for choosing things to get involved in.  Think back to when you are choosing which Halloween candy you are going to hand out.  Do you choose something you don't like? No.  You usually choose something that you are going to enjoy having the leftovers around. The same thing should go with how and what we get involved in. Do I want the leftovers that extracurricular activities bring into my life when they are around? No. Therefore when my commitments are fulfilled, I will scale back my conforming to volunteering and in the mean time, I will no longer conform to anything else.

Now some people will say, well someone needs to do it. Or, like I say to myself, if you don't do it, who will.  To that I say, if you can't get anyone to do it, maybe we don't need it.

Do I know what I am to Become yet?  No.  Not yet.  I have a few inklings though, like maybe I should Become a good friend, a good listener, a good mom, a good person. Because as awesome as Time Out for Women was, this year's theme didn't exactly celebrate the "ordinary" ways we can Become something.  We don't all have to be writers, painters, singers, bloggers with 10,000 hits a day, or musicians to be what the Lord wants us to be.  I think that message got a little lost.  I think if we all Become more Christ like and more charitable, and more patient and kind, then we will have succeeded in this life.

For now I am going to work on that.