Our Week

It is officially Fall and we are ready for some cooler weather.  Lizzy and her friend drinking hot chocolate and hoping cooler days are comin’.                    In High School they expect you to keep your own instrument in tune.  Jason found a cool app that is a tuner!  Way cool!  He loves to find new apps all the time!   

Jessi’s big things this week:  She made this cute scripture bag at Activity Days – and she got her hair cut.  Waa – I loved it long!  But she has been begging and begging!  So off it went – so short, but so happy!  She also got her AR t-shirt!  She was so excited!  She was the first one in her class to do it this year.

Wednesday was Kathie’s 35th birthday.  We couldn't let that day pass without recognition, so we enjoyed lunch at Pei Wei.

Family Fun Night on Friday:  While Jason and Becca were at the KHS football game, the girls and I were at the pool having a wonderful time with April.

Jason and Becca at the football game and Nerd Day during Homecoming Week:

Saturday our youth went down to Galveston.  I think Becca succeeded in not getting burned this time!!  Here she is next to the grave marker of a sand crab that she accidently killed while digging in the sand!  :)

Saturday our van decided it needed some attention.  Fortunately, I wasn’t driving it nor was it packed with youth wanting to go to the beach!  Jason took it in and $1100 later our radiator is happy once again.

Saturday night was the General RS Meeting.  I got to meet up with Kathie and Mama.  We went to Hasta la Pasta (yummy!) and then headed over to the Stake Center.  After listening to President Monson’s talk, I fasted today for a more charitable heart.                                                          More pictures of my babes:

More Musings…..

I’ve been thinking lately…I’ve been thinking about normal and busy and balance and courage.

When Bella was so critical in the hospital, we survived.  That is all we did.  Life was what it was.  We got through each moment.  We lived in each moment.  It’s survival when the button is pushed and twenty people descend on your room with the crash cart and all you can do is stand back, watch, and pray.  And it’s a different kind of praying.  There are no words.  There are no concentrate thoughts.  It is simply opening a conduit up to heaven and waiting to feel something, anything of the divine to get through this moment, this second.

Then Bella got stable enough to come home.  We got used to another normal.  There are strangers in and out of your house all day and all night normal.  On a first name bases with doctors, nurses, paramedics, EMTs, RTs normal.  Rush to TCH normal.  Back to school for the kids normal.  Back to church activities normal.  A new normal.

Now a year of that has passed, and we are at another new normal.  Now we want the kids to have a normal life, so we are busy doing things:

• Becca: Orchestra, Viola lessons, HOSA, Latin Club, Mutual
• Sammi: Art Club, Garden Club, Piano lessons, Activity Day Girls
• Jessi: Girl Scouts, Piano lessons, Activity Day Girls
• Lizzy: Soccer, Piano lessons, Play Dates
• Joy: Preschool, Speech (2x a week), Occupational Therapy (2x a week), possibly re-introducing Physical Therapy
• Bella: Developmental Services, Physical Therapy (2x a week), Occupational Therapy (2x a week), introducing Speech

So now all we do is run – here and there.  We do homework, we read scriptures, we pray, we run down to the hospital.  We run.  I read a quote that said something like this:

  We get so busy that we anesthetize ourselves against thinking or feeling. 

When is the quiet time?  When is the pondering time?  When is the time to just be?  To listen, to open that conduit to heaven and speak no words, but to listen, to reach for the divine?   I think we have to find our balance.  But what is it?  Me, being a type A over-achiever wants so much for my children.  But me, having lived my life, has learned that there must be times for solace and healing or everything, especially your health, will unravel.

As I was walking out of preschool today, I was watching all the other mothers.  I was thinking of, and as I always do, longing for, the Millennial reign.  I’m hoping that then we will understand so much more.  We will have more of an understanding of balance and what normal is supposed to look like.  At least, I hope I’ve figured it out by then.  I’m learning that this life is about choices.  We choose the life we will lead.  I was reminded by something secular that I read last week that especially in the middle class, so much of our lives are made up by what we choose.  I have enough money to put my children in these programs.  If I didn’t, it wouldn’t be a choice.  I have the choice how to spend my time.  It’s an interesting thought and one I’m still mulling over.  I think it’s why my heart skips a beat when I read this description of life (click here).  But isn’t that me just trying to get out of making a choice and living with the consequences.  If there are fewer opportunities, there are fewer choices, life is easier.  My problem as a perfectionist is I want to do it the right way – and there is no right way.  I just have to pray for guidance  and do the best I can.  Then live with the consequences.  What does it say about me that I am scared to vary from the norm – that I want my children and family to appear to be happy and successful?  I don’t want to look back and regret.  I don’t regret with Bella.  Am I brave enough to be different from the norm?  Do I need to be?  Do I want to be?

Robert Frost (1874–1963).  Mountain Interval.  1920.

             The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,
       

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.
       

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Our Sicky Week

Jessi lovin’ on Bella.  Sammi in the “ship” she made from an old box.  Bella discovering big girl toys.

Bella and Sammi working on creating a light hut for Botany.

 

The Turpins got sick – something viral.  We know that because they ran every test possible on Bella.  It’s like a bad cold with a small tummy component – :(

But I have to admit I LOVED having everyone home.  We didn’t have to rush here or there.  We were all just here, together.  I loved that!

Some Sammi pics – her completed light hut with cups of seeds and her spray water bottle.  And then her grooming her Daddy – I thought it was funny!  And finally her creations from art club.

Bella pictures – sleeping in a nest on the floor and playing with the girls – yeah!

 

Yes, Jessi has stuffed her shirt to look pregnant.  I think she’s adorable!  One day she will be a wonderful Mama!

Friday we had friends over and had cookies and milk.  Katie and Sammi got to play again on Saturday.  They had a fashion show to Taylor Swift’s music and played Princess Academy.  Saturday was also the YW Stake Volleyball Tournament.  The picture of our ward team is on Facebook.  Afterwards Becca went with the YW to McDonald’s and I took my girls to donuts.  That day Jason learned all about being a soccer coach.  Lizzy signed up for soccer and Jason is her coach.  Lizzy is beyond thrilled!  That night Bec and I were back over at the Stake Center to set up for a dance.   Busy day!

    

Jason’s newest project.  He is turning our fireplace into an entertainment center.  We can’t have fires with Bella, so why not?  The big TV will go there over the green diamond and all of the equipment will go into a cabinet he is going to build and then place into the fireplace.  And no, that isn’t Jason Turpin in the right picture.  It is Jay helping to drill all of these holes.

 

Sweet girls!

Friday was a big day for Jessi.  It was the completion of  four weeks of school.   Jessi has been struggling with her teachers and begging me to home school her.  As much as I would like to (love to really), we reviewed her back to school blessing and thought about our life right now.  We really wanted her to be able to go to school.  If she really needed it, then somehow we would try to work it out, but otherwise we wanted her to try.  I had asked her to try for four weeks.  Friday was that mark.  She went to school that morning telling me it was her last day.  I went asking her to see all the good there.  I am so grateful for two of her teachers!  That day she was given a blue sparkly pencil for being a star singer in music.  She went up to one of her teachers and hugged her – and the woman hugged her back!  And those two simple acts made all the difference.  She came home smiling and ready to stay for the rest of the year.  Whew!  Such small and simple things – I wonder if we know the true power in our small gestures towards each other.

Labor Day Week

I decided to splurge for Labor Day – I bought pancake mix in a can – just for the fun of it!  Jason says they weren’t as good as his Grandma Southwick’s recipe, but it was a lot of fun!

Jason played Monster with the girls.  This is a fun game my Dad used to play with us growing up.  Everyone had a lot of fun – and Jason got his exercise for the week!

Kathie stopped by to drop off Katie for a play date and we convinced her to leave our baby Eliza Jayne with us while she went shopping.  I don’t know why they insist on calling her a Ricks :)

The girls played and played and played.   Their finale was a tea party – fun times!

Our new adventure for Labor Day was learning to make gummi bears – very easy and very yummy!

        

Jessi had a great time at Activity Days.  They played games.  She loves her time there.  My little girls played and were happy.

Daddy chillin’ with his babes. 

Thursday was a busy day for Becca and Jason.  They went to a Klein High Freshmen game – Klein won.  Then they went over to the Orchestra Pot Luck and Concert.  They have a wonderful orchestra!

 

Friday the girls got to play with their Sutherland cousins – but since they played there, I have no pictures!  Ugh – I understand that they had a wonderful time!  The funniest thing to me was little Aidan wondering if his Uncle could come play with him.  Too cute – even better was Jason’s reaction.  He was all smiles.

Saturday was Mandy’s Party at the beach – good times.  I loved that we got to bring Bella!

My little Lizzy really wants to help with Bella.  She wants to be the nurse.  She is learning some great skills!