Family Time – Page 30 – Letters from Home

Jazz, Art, Band, Choir, Twelve, AP

Richard and I had plans to go to Timothy’s jazz band dinner dance this week, but I was sick and had to miss it. Mark went in my place. I really missed out on a great evening! Timothy was able to play with some seasoned jazz musicians and play some of my favorite big band music. He is the trombone player on the second row in the video.

Today is Mark’s 12th birthday. I am happy for him, and a little sad for me. This week he displayed some work in an art show, played trumpet in a band concert, and sang in a choir concert. I couldn’t get a good photo of him in the back of the band. However, I bet you can spot him easily in the choir. He is ambivalent about the choir experience for many reasons, one being his section.

It’s the Fathers and Sons campout tonight, so we will celebrate Mark tomorrow night with all the good things.

Each day but one this week Daniel or Timothy took AP tests. I tried to warn them, but they took the classes and tests anyway. 😉

Good Things from Last Week

Paige was accepted into the Illustration BFA program at BYU and things are moving forward with her internship in New York this summer.

Mark was awarded three ranks in Scouting. He achieved the rank of First Class, just in time to turn twelve.

Paige and I drove to Cedar City for lunch with Richard’s female relatives to celebrate his mom’s birthday. I didn’t capture everyone in this picture. With so many schedules it was amazing that so many could make it.

Dessert in Beaver

Daniel learned he is Valedictorian of his class and received the Heritage scholarship at BYU.

Not pictured: Timothy in his tux playing at the State Band competition, winning Frisbee points at the tournament on Saturday, and the electric guitar he is making in his woods class.

Richard and I celebrated our 23rd anniversary.

Not every week is a harvest, and I am thankful when one comes along.

Time for a Doll

I am in California this week with my mom, sitting with my grandmother. This means many pleasant things, including some time to stitch.

Goblin Valley

Holy Week Activity

Does Easter sneak up on you? I have been meaning to update our Easter scripture activity for years, but I am surprised every year, so I don’t get it done. This year, even though I have two adult age children, I finally did it. I wanted more of a Holy Week activity, with readings about the Savior’s actions and teachings during the last week, not just Gethsemane and the Crucifixion. I found a good LDS podcast which educated and inspired me to do more to commemorate the week and looked up several reading lists for Holy Week to help me narrow down which Bible passages to use. In the end, my favorite additions are the alabaster vial with a reading about the anointing woman and some doves for the reading about the cleansing of the temple. Instead of an empty egg representing the empty tomb, I have small Christus in the final egg. He is tangible and present, and not a missing person.

Here is a list of the readings I chose. I typed out the passages, printed, and folded them into numbered eggs along with these small objects. This year, we will read them all in one or two sittings. In the coming years, I hope to do two readings a day in the week leading up to Easter.

Jesus Enters Jerusalem: Matthew 21:1-11 (palm leaves, donkey)
Jesus Cleanses the Temple: Matthew 21:12-15 (money, birds)
Mount of Olives Discourse about the Second Coming: Joseph Smith-Matthew 1:1,4-11, 22, 31, 37 (picture)
The Anointing Woman: Mark 14:3-9 (small white vial)
The Last Supper: Luke 22:7-8, 15, 19-20 (bread, cup) additional: John 14:6-7, 15, 18, 25-27
Gethsemane: John 14:31; Matthew 26:36-45 (picture)
Arrest: Matthew 26:14-16, 47-50, 56; (30 quarters, rope)
Trial and Peter’s denial: Mark 14:53-72 (rooster)
Jesus is Brought Before Pilate and Sentenced to Death: Matthew 27:1-2; Matthew 27:24-30 (scourge, purple cloth)
The Cross: Luke 23:33-34, 44-47; John 15:13 (nail)
Jesus is Buried: Luke 23:50-54 (white cloth)
The Stone is Sealed and a Watch is Put in Place: Matthew 27:59-66 (soldier, stone)
An Angel Appears to the Women: Mark 16:1, Matthew 28:2-8 (angel)
The Resurrected Lord Appears to Many: Mark 13: 9-15 (Christus)

Couch conductor

10:30 pm Sunday night. I am recovering well from a hand laceration. Richard still has no energy after the flu. The boys play trumpet and piano while we rest.

Last Sunday Timothy gave a talk in church with 30 minutes to prepare. He did so well!

Timothy and Mark played in a piano recital on Tuesday night.

It was a good week to be a parent.

Daniel advanced to a regional level in the Sterling scholar competition.

Daniel was named a National Merit Finalist.

Paige began work towards a summer internship in New York.

I finished hand-quilting my international doll quilt. I will finish the binding some other day.

Richard and I watched the John Adams miniseries, except when my eyes were closed during the violence and 18th century surgeries.

We watched Wonder. Tears streamed freely for me.

I can’t type this week as my hand heals, so this is it for a while.

Last Week

Last week was a wrestle. I wrestled with church dilemmas, the clock, illnesses, and expectations. But there was a three-tiered cake one night, and clean surfaces everywhere, evidence that when I am doing mental work, physical work goes right along with it.

Last week, there was so much calling me to stay home with the family. They needed my skills, my advice, my health, my early mornings, late nights, afternoon errands, and my touch.

Last week’s lessons:

Don’t bury concerns. Express them.
BYU application essay editing is a good way to spend a LOT of time with your senior. BYU requires six, people. Six!
You can’t wash your hands too often during flu season.
The boost in morale will come.
It’s ok to choose the less time-consuming option.
Conversations happen away from screens.
I experienced a miracle.
Everyone’s faith is a little different, even within the same church, and that is ok.
God knows ahead of time when I will fail to act, whether from laziness or pulls from different directions. He prepared a contingency plan or two last week so people were still cared for.
Life is long. I don’t have to do it all at once.
To write is to be vulnerable.
The sacrament is so precious to me.

Angel’s Landing

Light and shadow, cool and bright, we experienced Angel’s Landing last weekend at Zion National Park. Scrolling through the pictures makes my fingers and toes go numb as I look at the narrow fin of rock on which we hiked. I didn’t watch the kids do this. I stayed ahead or behind, and didn’t make the last few hundred feet of the journey with them. As I walked down the mountain, I thought of our Father in Heaven, who doesn’t shrink from watching over each of us when we are in peril, and felt gratitude for a Parent like that.

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, cherish, and lift

After Apple Picking

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

-Robert Frost

I have mentioned this before, but since I was called to be a R.S. president I write down the names of the sisters I visit or interact with each day on my calendar. It is my reminder that the work is about individuals, not activities, lessons, and cookbooks. It reminds me that I didn’t fail *these* sisters today, even if I am concerned about so many. Most of the time, it is incredibly helpful to me to keep this record.

In December, I gave up writing down the names. I was looking at life through a distorted lens, as through ice over water. Despite my efforts, the problems multiplied in my mind. There are a lot of reasons for my discouragement, some obvious, some subtle, some avoidable, and others unavoidable. I am not beating myself up about this. It is OK to be tired sometimes, and I don’t resent or regret anything I did for others.

I played a musical number with Daniel on Christmas Eve for the ward and hurried away from church because with this last service of giving music, I had given my all. Everything. I was dry. I couldn’t even face compliments. When Richard came home ready to tell me all the positive things people had to say about our music, I simply told him, “I don’t want to talk about it,” and made my way out the door for one last visit to a sister before Christmas.

Instead of coming home after the visit, I drove to the temple and sat in my car in the parking lot for a long time. I remembered the impression from the Spirit that I had during the sacrament a few hours before. It was simply, “I love you. Don’t worry about working on anything else for now,” and I drove home with that thought.

How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is giv’n,

Still God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heav’n.

-O Little Town of Bethlehem

I have rested, I have rededicated myself to habits that bring me strength, and I am being gentle with myself. I know it IS enough to simply love someone through their problems, for this is the pattern that Heavenly Father showed me on Christmas Eve. I took some needed and worthy time for rest, and this included not keeping a catalog of my efforts. I take comfort that “all things are written by the Father” (3 Nephi 27:26) and no detail of my silent and private service is lost to Him.

On January 2, I started writing down the names again. When I awoke to the news on January 3 that President Monson had passed away, I couldn’t think of a better way to honor President Thomas S. Monson on his last day on earth than to make those visits and keep a record of their precious names, even though I know that angels are doing the same on the other side. This day, writing the names didn’t deplete any energy, it invigorated me.

You are, of course, surrounded by opportunities for service. No doubt at times you recognize so many such opportunities that you may feel somewhat overwhelmed. Where do you begin? How can you do it all? How do you choose, from all the needs you observe, where and how to serve?

Often small acts of service are all that is required to lift and bless another: a question concerning a person’s family, quick words of encouragement, a sincere compliment, a small note of thanks, a brief telephone call.

If we are observant and aware, and if we act on the promptings which come to us, we can accomplish much good.

-President Thomas S. Monson