The Sum of Seven Days - September 10th - 16th

Monday – We had a Family Home Evening lesson on record keeping. We shared with our children some of the records we have kept, including some pictures and summaries on this very web log. Hayley and Nathan agreed to make Tuesdays "Journal Day," wherein they write in their journals about their week.

Tuesday - Journal Day for the family. Dave worked early (gone at 5) and late taking interviewing a family (home at 11)…and that pretty much sums it up.

Wednesday - Day off (see next blog entry).

Thursday - ??? What did we do this day...hmm. I still didn't mow the lawn. :) It seems to me that this was a day Emily want away to do...something. I suspect (and Emily confirmed) that it was her Book Club night. …And I stayed home with the children and we had a great time doing...something. This is a lesson to me to take better notes on my life--and sooner--so that I'm not completely missing whole days.
...After much mind-racking, I think that was the night the youngins and I played and danced to some YouTube clips from Fiddler on the Roof and Music Man while we prepared, ate, and cleaned up dinner (the Ridley Marching Parade through the kitchen was particularly jolly - even Matthew joined in). Then the children had baths (Matthew can now say Bath Tub – “Baf Pub”) followed by a lively story time – reading the end of Nephi’s re-visioning of his father’s vision in the Book of Mormon and a little bit more of Polly and Diggory’s troubles in London with the witch/queen Jadis in C.S. Lewis’ “The Magician’s Nephew.”

Friday - Christa, Sara, Zack, and Amber came over for Emily's AMAZING home-made pizza dinner (her mother's famous recipe) to watch our children while Emily and I escaped to Ward Date Night. We white-elephant-swapped packages with date ideas and supplies at the church. Some awesome and creative ideas/packages were traded and we got to know some great people in our ward. Emily and I had, in succession, one trip to snow-tube Bogus Basin (complete with mittens and hot cocoa for two) which was stolen and replaced by one Nacho Libre movie and costume set (masks and capes so we could play the roles ourselves along with salsa and chips) which was swapped for a trip to the Meridian Corn Maze. We had fun and will enjoy our date to the corn maze.

Saturday & Sunday - Half a day at work and travel to Lehi for a Mission reunion and to see some old friends. Somehow the five hour drive took us more like eight. We stopped at Snowville (the home of two million flies in love with our car) at a nice little park for the kids to run and play in for twenty minutes. Emily enjoyed the association she had with Desiree & Stephen Preston and their family (who saved us from starvation), and John & Liz Shakespear (who saved us from sleeping on the street). Dave enjoyed that as well as seeing a passel of former missionaries in all their post-missionary glory. Some hours after sundown on the way back, we got to visit "Grandpa Ridley," (not Wayne but Cecil) who entertained his grandchildren by making shakes with them in the kitchen. There were mishaps - Hayley threw up on her copy of Little House in the Big Woods and tried to calm herself down by continuing to read it not realizing that was the very thing making her car sick – Nathan poured a bottle of water out on
the floor of the van just for fun – Matthew just could not handle sitting in a car seat for all those hours and tugged at our pity and patience with many cries. But overall, the memories and experiences were worth the trip.

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Subtle Hints
It has been fun to watch Hayley try to figure out the world – and how to beat the system:
"Mom, we need to get another copy of Little House in the Big Woods...How much does it cost?"
"About six or seven dollars."
"Whoa! - we have a lot more than that." The hint-dropping implication is, obviously, that we should go buy another copy.

A Sense of History
Hayley has been asking questions about the publication process of books. She was amazed to find that her book was written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. "Laura?...you mean like Laura in the book?" She wanted to know if her family helped her write it. Then she found out that Laura Wilder wrote the book many years after the childhood events had transpired. "Wow, so she must have written that a long time ago - like twenty years ago!"

Learning to Deal with Setbacks
Hayley was complaining that she wasn't going to get any dessert. Nathan piped up very grown-up-like, "Mom said we can't have any dessert - but that's okay with me."

All the Words
On another drive to visit some of our family, recently, I asked Nathan if there were any words he didn't know. Nathan thoughtfully responded, "Well, I know all the words that God says." We wonder if perhaps Nathan knows something about the Adamic Language that he’s not telling us.

Here we see Matthew and Nathan playing in the Nursery

with the children of our friends, the Shakespears:

A few shots which were taken along with Emily's Cousins' kids: