Ridley Update - In Which We Camp and Stuff

6/20/11 - 6/26/11

We had a week. We did some stuff. What did you do with your weekly allotment of days?


In our usual Monday way, Piano and violin lessons were exchanged between ourselves and the Jesse/Jennifer Owens family at our home. We alternate between our house here in Idaho Falls and their house in Rigby for lunch and lessons. Emily and Hayley can now play mostly-distinguishable renditions of simple tunes, such as Go Tell Aunt Rhody. We had heard about free Ice Cream being served down town to celebrate the centennial of Bonneville County. The usually-quiet streets of Idaho Falls were packed with people in an almost fair/carnival feel. A classic car show, a bluegrass competition, a robot demonstration, and a hands-on fire hose target activity were simultaneously underway. At some point, I saw a reenactment of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" being performed. And I still can't figure out why there was a 2-story rubber duck parked in the street. The randomness of it all notwithstanding, it was fun.

At Hayley's routine check up on Tuesday, doctors discovered what Emily terms "the mysterious asymptomatic strep". Now Hayley is tortured with regular doses of yogurt (which she hates) and Amoxicillin. To her, the cure is far worse than the disease.

Our kids join weekly at rotating parks around town to play baseball or softball with children from the ward and some of the home school associations we've made. This is followed by the traditional Wednesday afternoons at the library. There they receive their summer reading prizes and take part in a little play. Hayley and Nathan had parts as Apollo and Calliope in "Orpheus and Eurydice." Eliminating all need for rehearsals, they streamline from casting straight to performing - the Librarian tells them their lines and they act it out with costumes and props. It's fun. They like it. And next month they make the shift from Greek Myths to Shakespeare.

Nathan and Matthew did not escape the torture of doctors. Their check ups - which due to some odd office policy couldn't be scheduled at the same day as their sister - included some terrible shots. According to Emily (I wasn't there), the nurse told Matthew to breathe out to help him relax. He would not breathe out but tensed up. The more he tensed up the more painful it would be and apparently there was some screaming. Now this is the same kid who they had to draw blood from twice last time and he got extra prizes and much praise from the nurses for being so tough. Not this time. And after all that pain, he and Nathan had to have their fingers pricked and spill blood into the little vial - and to top it all off, they got nothing but a sticker each! No suckers! The blood work for Nathan caused doctors to call Emily and say they think he's "a little anemic". Seems odd for Nathan to be called anemic. They suggest he take some Iron medicine. Maybe we'll stock up on beef, broccoli, and spinach.

Our weekend began by splitting up the activities: Hayley and Emily went to see Sound of Music performed by a local drama troop. They report that it was interesting to see the stage production versus the movie. The girls got to see some pretty talented people in the parts and commented on the good sets and costumes for a local performance. They got to see Jennifer Owen in the pit orchestra and watch Uncle Bob and Christian Stahn perform on stage and talk with them after the show. Hayley really liked it.

Meanwhile, the boys and I drove off to what our Elder's Quorum likes to call the fathers and sons "Camp Out, Pig Out, Shoot Out." The "camp" was really in the spacious lawn and pine tree grove of a member of the church. Matthew got to choose the site for our tent before many others arrived and we commenced setting up. We had our scripture study and family prayer inside the tent and were promptly called out to dinner. Initially, the complete lack of camp fire was disappointing to Nathan and Matthew - for whom the words 'camp' and 'marshmallow' are intertwined. They quickly found comfort, however, in the ample supply of grilled hamburgers and hot dogs served with chips and soda. My duties were simple - keep them from falling in the canal or stumbling through rattlesnake territory. Other than that, I had it easy. So the three of us hiked a small distance across the canal bridge and through the supposed snake zone and discovered some hives of bees. We were, of course, careful not to disturb them too much as we did a test to see if they liked root beer. Apparently, the hike lacked enough danger for the boys and they grew bored. So we returned to the camp where we participated in a Priesthood meting where high school aged scouts and their leaders gave talks on various gospel topics. I think by the half-way point, Matthew had decided he preferred the hike. But he sat on my lap and wrestled with me a little as we listened. Pretty soon, he was perched on my shoulders piggy-back style and wobbled on and off of his roost, poking pieces of grass in my ears until the speakers ran out of wind. Then all the boys played capture the flag until bed time. I was sure that with 20 or so boys of various ages zipping between the ever-less-visible trees someone was going to have an injury. Sure enough, first aid was administered, but it appeared to be for one boy's preexisting knee condition and not the result of a collision. Nathan and Matthew have been quick to tell anyone that their team won most of the rounds. And they were having too much fun playing to even stop for dutch oven apple & peach cobblers I was sampling. Nathan wanted to see the stars as we laid down to sleep, but the chill in the air caused me to put the rain fly on the tent anyway and everyone settled to sleep quite quickly.

Somewhere around 4:30am, I awoke to the quavering moans of what sounded like a little boy calling out for his daddy. Because it was a father and sons trip, I assumed he was having a nightmare and that his father would be helping him shortly. Then the moans turned into short screeches and then to long, full-volume, intense screams! Cries for "daddy" were intermixed with moans and weird sobs as I stumbled out of the tent and went looking for the boy I thought must be lost in the trees. Maybe his father was not responsive? Maybe dead? And how come nobody else was responding! Surely they couldn't sleep through this screeching! Many unpleasant possibilities presented themselves to my imagination as I found my way in the dark to the source of the commotion. A boy was standing shirtless upright in his tent and had resumed shrieking for his father. The only other occupant of the tent was another boy trying to ask him what was wrong. I realized the boy was semi-coherent at best. Apparently, I was witnessing the worst case of night-terrors I have ever seen! The other boy in the tent trying to get him to talk was making matters worse. So rather than talk about what was making him scream, I asked the shirtless boy if he was cold. He calmed down to consider this, "...yeah. A little." Then I suggested he put his shirt on and lay down, which he promptly did and went back to (or sunk deeper into) sleep. I stayed up for several more minutes to make sure the 13-year-old boy (whose father, the Elder's Quorum President in charge of the activity, is a doctor and on call and had to leave the camp earlier that night to return to the hospital ) was actually asleep. I was baffled as to how not one other adult got up to see what was going on in all the previous several minutes of screaming. Somewhat unnerved by it all, I finally went back to bed and sleep. Nearer to dawn, the moaning and crying recurred, but not with nearly as much intensity and I could hear his tent-mate asking him to go back to sleep, which he must have done.

The next morning at breakfast, many of the fathers greeted me with guilty smiles, laughed and apologized for failing to warn me that 13-year-old Eli does this regularly - thought they said they'd never seen his night terrors get that bad, that loud, last that long, or involve standing up and screaming like he did. It is one of those things that are much funner after they are over. Breakfast being over - and us not having a single gun for the "shoot out" portion of the day - targets and clay pigeons - we packed up our things and went home. Later that day, Hayley attended a birthday party of a close friend of hers. And I took the kids biking to a nearby park where we played catch for a while and rode our bikes up and down a steep hill. That night, we camped in the back yard (partly because Hayley had not got to camp with us). Nathan got to see the stars through the tent roof this time. Nathan and Matthew zonked out pretty quickly, but Hayley abandoned the rest of us after less than an hour. She went inside to her bed because she claimed she was having trouble falling asleep. I was just glad everyone was quiet all night.


It has been a week of painting, caulking, and touching up the new wall, trim, and door that was just built between the master bedroom and bathroom. Emily has also applied a few coats of paint to the formerly "intentionally rough worn look" banister so it now matches the bright white of everything else.

It's really amazing the number of scans, prints, emails, faxes, tabulations, calculations, estimations, formal requests, notaries, phone calls, follow-ups, fees, checks, and double-checks that have been involved in getting my application for full licensure for therapy in to the state of Idaho - to say nothing of actually filling out the forms (which...nobody could have actually used before me because they were highly inadequate and had to be retouched and doctored in Paint & Word before they could even contain the necessary information). I get the sense that I'm very much pioneering a new trail here. The Idaho Board of Licensure (IBOL) had to check with their legal counsel to determine if - since my intern-level license expires the day before they convene to grant me my next licensure level - I will be allowed to practice therapy AT ALL in the event something is not to their full satisfaction. Ultimately their legal counsel was indecisive so they're advising me with their standard, noncommittal "Well, just turn it all in and we'll see what happens" response. Anxiety! The Bureau of Licensure stated that I'm the pilot case for this unique predicament. I think it's because very few MFT graduates put up with this and try to apply in this state! Even therapists in other disciplines (i.e. Clinical Practitioners and Social Workers) here complain that Idaho's licensure process is an "all or nothing shot" and they give you little guidance. So if it works (and there some some significant technical holes which they can't reassure us about either way until they meet) than we're golden. If it doesn't go through, than we may easily be unable to work at my present job from August 18th - October 4th when the board reconvenes to decide the next round of applications. But now it is all done and mailed. I am praying the board will be reasonable and not legalistic. Your prayers are appreciated.


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- David Ridley