Upon Life's Billows

Boy, I'll tell you. This week felt really hard. I was so sick. Alan was too. He was sick first and better first. Eve was fine though. The pictures are mostly of her. Hahaha! When I was searching my blog to see if I had used this title already I found a remarkably similar post from 2016. Same time of year, same sick happening, and the descriptions of my kids felt surprisingly still accurate. Here is a link if you want to see how we are repeating history.

So let's start with Eve:

Eve is having a tricky year, but still very much fits her description in 2016. Still very girly, loves makeup, nails, jewelry, friends. She is getting more complex too. The friend piece is tricky right now. Sometimes her friends are great and invite her to co-host podcasts. Sometimes they are irritating, rude and very weird. She loves science and is thinking it would be great to grow up to be a pediatric nurse practitioner.

Eve needed to try out my new blow dryer and allllll the attachments.

Eve has a lot of art in her.

The eggs Eve made.

11 year old portrait version of the pink egg eyes. (There was one in 2016)

The TRP began again this week. We brought a couple dozen toads to Meadowbrook Park.

Eve needed my phone urgently to take this picture.

Eve working on some lyra skills in her second session of class at KC Aerial Arts

Griffin is also growing up. He stayed home from school for a migraine on Thursday, which I realized was a mistake because he felt so much better than I did. (See post from 2016). We worked on a puzzle together, but mostly I made him be quiet and rest because that is all I wanted to do. This week we finished watching a Ryan Trahan YouTube series about making it across America starting with one penny. It was really fun and worthwhile. He has been trying to "get big" by lifting weights (sometimes on our driveway with no shirt on) and doing high intensity bike rides to the library to pick up old DVDs of Zabomafoo. He has also proposed to watch all the Star Wars movies with his friend Meyer.

Wyatt is sick too. He is not feeling the best, but he is still just very good. He finished his semester of University Chorale by singing in the devotional on Tuesday and a concert that same evening. He got another job grading assignments for a Differential Equations class, because his main job working on statistics surrounding earthquakes is interesting but spotty on bringing in money. He has really enjoyed his art history class this semester and, of course, his math classes, which are different versions of probability.

Willa is still in Provo working and sometimes hanging with her siblings. I think the best thing she has done recently is Eliza and Evan's family photos. I don't think she will mind if I share the link with you here. Isn't she just wonderful?!  I love that girl AND I love her work. She and Eliza like to get together and watch Botched. At work she is watching some true crime and video essays and playing sudoku so she doesn't have to pay attention to what her coworkers are saying.

Mariah and Eliza are home in their own homes without husbands and with kids because Evan and Mac are doing a boys trip in Boston to help their dear friend Tanner right now. Eliza is so great about video calling me with Frank regularly, so I get to see him grow up and start walking and trying a few words here and there. Mariah and their family spent Easter in Scottsdale with the Kellers and I got to see some adorable pictures of my grandkids there. Buddy disappeared for a while and everyone panicked. He turned out to have gone off-roading in the desert in his power wheels Jeep. Eliza has figured out that it is totally worth it to hire babysitters so she can go exercise while Evan is away. 

My best things this week were lunch with Cali Perez-Verdia at Billie's grocery, serving in the temple twice--once for a date night with Alan, touring Ronald McDonald House KC with Tami Greenberg (their CEO and my dear friend), Ari Penner (their volunteer coordinator) and Susan Cooper (service mission leader and my dear friend), meeting with my communications council and celebrating all the great things that happened at our Walk With Jesus, and finally, finally starting to turn the corner on this cold that feels like it will never end. I do know it is not COVID, so I didn't expose anyone to that while I was in the temple or doing my other things.

Alan has learned to ask for the Friday before conference off so he can be home and listening. Home and listening for him means he has ear buds in while he moves around and accomplishes an astounding amount of stuff. His phone records his steps and he walked about 14,000 steps yesterday. I like that he also takes some breaks to take short naps with me sometimes and he took our family to dinner last night so I didn't have to be in charge of planning or cooking anything.