Two weeks ago Nate and I jumped in the car with the kids and took the herd to Angie’s to join hers. They all grazed in the kitchen then snuggled up and watched all of Nate’s pictures from the trip. He really acted out the story when you said “beans!”to the TV camera, so that became a huge joke perpetuated into the eternities by Hyrum.  Every picture after that he would yell out BEANS!

Oh, sweet girl, we love you. We pray for you. Our hearts swell with joy and gratitude at your work and sacrifice. You are a shining glorious example to the little precious souls growing up here. I love you forever!

There is so much going on around here, sometimes I just lay down on the floor and pretend I’m a carrot, because I used up all of my superhero juice and I’m all dried up.  The boys and I have been blessed with three big huge landscaping jobs, two of which require acquiring new skills, namely building a retaining wall, and a flagstone patio.  I am so overjoyed when my children stick to a very difficult task and get hard things done. They are awesome. We had a huge job, a $3000 contract across from Highland High School. It was a complete front yard makeover.  Now we are doing a huge makeover of Mo and Sue’s north side, which begins with a 150 foot retaining wall, each retaining stone weighs 90 pounds, it’s intense, but it’s going to be cool.  Marcia Matheson Slichta hired us to build a patio in her yard and design and install her flower beds, and maybe garden boxes and eventually an arbor, anyway, it is crazy.  Our next play is in a couple of weeks, Happily Ever After High, 60 year reunion, and the piano recital is coming up.  We just finished homeschool and our last homeschool show last week. These are some of the most intense physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual and challenging times of my life.

Coy is doing SO AWESOME!  He was cast as the Professor in Narnia the musical.  Few on earth understand the significance of that, you are one who does.  A girl told him to try out, and he doesn’t know her well, and doesn’t know anyone else.  I can’t believe it myself.  He is taking a college class this summer on SLCC campus, working with me, and he is in Dark Canyon at Lake Powell this week.   The ceremony to have him become a madrigal was so incredible, lighting the candles, all those tears. He came home after and said “I just don’t know how to handle all that emotion!”  I’m so excited for his year next year, for where he is in his life, he is ROCKING IT! He also performed with his a’capella group “I Need Thee Every Hour” in sacrament meeting.  His testimony is bright.  I don’t think he’s missed a day of scriptures in years. He is so awesome. 

Mooks is a crazy teenager. He finally got a clean bill on his hip and starting to run again a little.  He is in the throws of girls.  I checked his texts and a girl is just begging him to be her boyfriend, he gets that kind of stuff. I pray for him a lot. The kids are always climbing on him, and he plays with them.  It’s so darling.  He is so so beautiful, and fun, and good, and the girls notice, and he is so nice it makes it hard. He will lay on the floor and just laugh, often, and get the whole family going.  He is signed up for highschool, hoping to get his Eagle project done this morning, but all he seems to be worried about is friends, fun and football.  I’m really proud of him with missionary work lately, he helped get 4 nonmember or inactive boys to go to Lake Powell this week.  Darrell fasted and went to the temple and is praying to touch them. He’s so awesome.  Three of the boys have no fathers.  One boy’s father is in prison.  I feel guided to that boy and have great hope for the missionaries there. 

Spen is so darling. He has a great friendship developing with a boy that lives over by South Hills, and wants to be there all the time. He is getting taller, changing.  He is in love with the cell phone. I think it’s almost too much for him to handle. Puberty is creating challenges for him, but he’s toughing it out. We had so much fun last night.  We were hanging out with Spencer’s friends, Daniel, Tanner and Parker, and Nate, and we got all spooked out and Nate went down in the trees with a baseball bat because we heard noises.  Everyone was clumped up in one corner of the kitchen.  He is so tactile. He is so so funny, his sense of humor is coming out in such a big huge way. No longer is he the quiet predictable boy we knew. He is wild sauce with cheese and toppings and Christmas lights. 

 It’s fun building a retaining wall with my boys, to see their personalities. Coy is exacting and methodical, reliable, incredibly strong.  Mckay is all yellow bouncing around, ready to lift and show off his muscles but engaging me in conversation over and over saying that it is close enough and doesn’t have to be perfect. Spencer is a perfectionist and will work on one brick for 15 minutes to get it to line up to the umpteenth of a millimeter.  Because I know them all so well, I can suit the task to the person and we are making it work.  I love these boys.

Joseph is so enthusiastic and is working so hard. He was up and at Sue’s ready to work at 7 something the other day, before some other kids were even awake.   In the play we’re doing now he is a nerd, and Nacho Libre, and Richard Simmons. Those hips are loose, it’s kind of scary.  in the homeschool show he sang a lot of songs, sang as Elvis and learned to swing dance with Annie.  He is a gifted little crazyhead.  I don’t know what we’ll do next year with homeschool, but I’m planning on sending him to school for sixth grade.  I’m overdone. Definitely if Jeff is not happily employed he’s going back, but even if he is, we’re so behind in so many ways, I don’t know, we’ll see.  It has been a good year in a lot of ways, being home has given him a space to be the oldest and that has been healthy.

Annie is a little angel.  She is growing and changing so much. She thinks everything over really deeply, and holds me to everything I say, she remembers it all.  She and Grandma Jello have all kinds of plans for her room, and she is working to earn money to get her ears pierced. When I was growing up there were all kinds of rules, make up at 12, nylons and leg-shaving at 12, pierced ears at 12, with only one girl, I just don’t feel like we need hard fast rules.  That’s kind of an advantage I guess.  It’s interesting to see both satan and the Holy Ghost at work in her life since she turned 8.  I can see both influences quite clearly.  She is a sweetheart.

Seth is as crazy as ever. His reasoning, which is so completely clear to him, is always enunciated so passionately, he just can’t believe that we can’t understand when everything is so clear to him.  He is such a tease, all day long saying things wrong to make people laugh. The boys put him in a Mohawk today.  When we were cleaning Spencer and Joseph’s room we were giving a lot of things to the DI and he said “Mom, do we have to give our Jesus pictures away?”  I said no and he said “Few!” with relief.  He put a coughing sticker on his elbow so he could cough on it.  We were on the way to Fairview and he said “Mom! I forgot my scriptures! I have to have my scriptures because if I be naughty, then I read my scriptures, and then I’m not naughty anymore, so I have to bringded them!”  He wet his pants in the middle of the night and came in and put his arms around my neck singing “I love you, a bushel and a peck and  a hug around the neck”.   He always says “mom, I want you!” He likes to wear his skeleton “inja” costume around.  He’s in the play and he says “My name is bashful montoya, you stole my princess, prepare to fight! “  Then he slow motion fights with Tucker Terry,  it’s awesome.

I love my kids so much my jaw hurts, and my tummies hurts.  The ache and joy in my heart is magnified because Mike Sanders keeps dropping hints about us adopting him, and it just breaks my heart in half.  Can you imagine begging to be in a family, to have a family?  It is so humbling.  I don’t know what to do. 

Oh, Jen, I wish we could talk for hours.  I’m so grateful for you.  I’m learning some of the most beautiful exquisite things about the depth and breadth of the Atonement, things I’ve never understood before.  The joy in the deepest parts of me is growing and spilling into everything, even in the very dark circumstances.  I gathered the troops and asked both parents to get together to give Jeff a blessing, so so worried about him. It was a tender, sacred and powerful hour.  I was told in my blessing (which I hadn’t planned on having but was so unspeakably grateful for) that there were generations of angels in the room helping to administer.  We got two more “no” answers on jobs this week, and it is so stinkin hard and confusing.  I am so grateful for the sweet pain of growth, and just so sorry that others the cost of discipleship has included others, like Mom and Dad, footing the bill. 

I love you my dear sister. I feel so close to you, we are both struggling along and growing so much.  These are precious and sacred times, with the sweet agony of growth, the joy of pain.   I love you so much.  Our Heavenly Father  lives, loves us, and it is his purpose in every breath to bring to pass our immortality and eternal lives.  Jesus Christ is the best friend anyone could ever hope for, and He is our Savior, our creditor, our mediator, advocate and best Friend.  I love the Holy Ghost, and I’m so grateful for His sacrifice to go without body and family to serve us, to help us every second. I love how He pulls us constantly to the Savior through His presence and his absence.  I love you and I love mine very own testimony. I love the scriptures, I love prayer, I love truth.  Today our gospel essential lesson was about the Church of Jesus Christ in former times and we talked about Michael Stephenson’s questions from years of studying the Bible, realizing anew how precious the truths we have really are.  Revelation, divine authority, prophets, apostles, covenants and ordinances, baptism for the dead.  The gospel answers the deepest questions of the heart that EVERYONE HAS, some may have just buried them deeper.  We read a cool story this morning during breakfast about a painfully shy Filipino man who was baptized at the age of forty.  He couldn’t even look people in the eye.  The stake president felt to ask him to speak and fought and fought it, but called him up. He stood up and said  “For 39 years I don’t know who I am or where I’m going, now for one year, I know who I am and where I’m going”. That about says it all.

The boys all got home last night from Dark Canyon and Lake Powell, and they had some pretty significant eperiences.  Trevor Morse and Delynn Summers went unconscious from dehydration and almost didn’t make it.   The teachers took 4 nonmembers and one less active, one of the little boys I found in my missionary work. His Dad is in prison.  Darrells devotionals got through, he tried so hard.   I love the men of this church and how they sacrifice their own needs to serve others. Jeff went as well and helped take care of the boys, he’s awesome.