little lambs; moving

Taking a break from packing, cleaning, organizing, and more packing. We are moving to a house in Orem which will give us more space and a fenced backyard. But I had planned my trips to California and Missouri before I knew I was going to move and now I’m trying to get it all done as fast as possible because school starts for me on Monday and then it’s back to studying.

The kids had their first day of school today at their new schools. They missed the first day. A lady from the office walked us to Sam and Joy’s classrooms. Sam went into his class and I called after him to say I’d pick him up out front at the end of the day. The look on his face clearly said, “I am a lamb and my own mother has just brought me to the slaughter.” The office lady said, “Oh! He looks like he’s going to cry. He can come to the office and sit with me if he needs to any time during the day.” But I knew he wouldn’t need to because he is like me. We only have “pull yourself up by the boot straps” mode and “complete collapse” mode which just means cry your eyes out in private, then rejoin the world when you feel better. Asking for help from someone other than immediate family is tough, even mortifying and I haven’t mastered it yet.

Nathan was adamantly against moving, as any 8^th grader would be. But his first day went well; he talked to new people and seems to like it, after all. He wants to go to the private school just down the road—Karl G. Maeser Academy because his friend Alex goes there. I told him if he gets good grades this year, I’ll look into it for next year.

Thanks, Spencer and Michelle, for letting us hang out with you last week and get to know sweet, little Aurora a little bit. Thanks to my other big kids for holding down the fort while I was gone. Melody did a lot but she needed her big brothers, too. I am so, so lucky. And I don’t mean “luck” in a random way. I am lucky that I have been so blessed.

Deserts, Mountains, Pleasanton

Pleasanton—my favorite place; 410 miles of I-80 in the Nevada desert, not so much. The trees in the Sierra Nevadas are beautiful, too. The kids were getting cranky so, to distract them, I asked them to see if they could tell which trees telephone poles are made out of. Joy said, “How can you tell? Do they have telephones on the side of them?” I thought she was joking until I remembered she’s from the cell-phone tower generation.

The drop in elevation out of the Sierras is pretty steep in relatively few miles and this is how the conversation went when we got down on the California side:
Sam: Mom, why is it so quiet all of a sudden?
Me: Maybe your ears are plugged. Swallow.
Sam: What?
Me: (louder) Maybe your ears are plugged. Swallow.
Sam: (very loudly) WHAT?
Me: (muttering under my breath but smiling) I give up. I’m right but he’ll never know it.

For 13 hours, Sam asked every 15 minutes how much longer or how many more miles to Grandpa’s house. Okay, I exaggerate a little. Really, he only asked about 3 times per hour. At one point, I answered, “Well, it’s only been 15 minutes since the last time you asked so the answer isn’t really different.” And he laughed like he was a little embarrassed. But he still couldn’t help but keep asking.

This morning, I jogged around the park on Black Avenue a couple of times, Joy and I collected a few seeds from Gpa’s flower garden and now we’re going to take BART to San Francisco and take the kids sightseeing.