"F" is for FORBES: When we went to Utah before Drew

I have not blogged anything from the past 2 months. It is hard for me to blog in Utah, a) because I am actually with the intended audience of my blog, so the drive to keep them updated is gone, and b) I don't want to waste the time I have with them writing about what I am doing with them. I am tempted to gloss over everything we did quickly and get on with life, but these are times I really want to remember, and however much I keep this blog as a sort of family newsletter, it really is the best journal I've ever kept. I want my kids to know how much their grandparents and aunts and uncles have loved them their whole lives. I want them to remember playing with their cousins when they were little. I want to remember going to lunch with my siblings. I came across a scripture in fast and testimony meeting today while I was pondering testimony building experiences from the month. It's in Alma 37:8 and says, "And now, it has hitherto been wisdom in God that these things should be preserved; for behold, they have enlarged the memory of this people..." I love that wording: enlarged the memory. I've had the chance to work on a couple family history projects recently. My grandma turned 90 last month and for her birthday my mom made a book of her history, composed of an autobiography my Grandma wrote awhile ago and memories Grandma's siblings, children, and grandchildren have of her. I got to help edit the book and get it ready for printing (and by that I mean I had to give myself a crash course from Google searches on how the heck to make a word document meet Blurb's pdf to book requirements. It may have taken me 8 hours of lip biting and hair pulling to successfully upload it, but if you need to embed a font in a pdf file, I totally know how to do that now!). I also re-transcribed from an old family video a devotional given at a family reunion almost 20 years ago (I had transcribed it for a genealogy class at BYU, but lost it, so I got to do it again) that included a talk from each of my aunts and uncles and grandparents on my mom's side. I can attest that my "memory" of my family's history has been enlarged this month from hearing the stories of my Grandma's life and my mom's upbringing, and I can see that a lot of the qualities about myself that I am proud of have come from the love and work that generations of people have put into the fabric of my family. So, as much as I am dreading the hours of blogging it will take for me to document all the experiences I can remember from the last 2 months, I am sure it will be worth the effort, for me and my kids, when our memory of these years that every stranger tells me will go by too fast has dimmed and we want to remember the relationships and the experiences we had at this stage in our lives.

I think I have myself sufficiently psyched to begin.

There are definitely some perks to moving with the military (whether these perks will outweigh the frequency of moves remains to be seen). To get ready to move this time, all I had to do was safely stow things I wanted in the express shipment in a separate area, get rid of all the stuff we didn't want to take with us, pack our luggage, and leave the house tidy. Drew stayed behind for another few weeks to do some training in Yokosuka and get all checked out, so he was there to witness the efficiency and care of the Japanese movers, and then do the last cleaning. They are renovating the tower we lived in next, so housing was not terribly picky about how clean or repaired things were. Drew took us to the terminal for our LAST flight home from Japan (for the foreseeable future). When he had to leave us at the security gate, all the kids started bawling, which I honestly wasn't expecting, but probably should have been. Our flight home was not too bad. We flew on the Patriot Express, which really sounds like it ought to be a 4th of July themed, plane version of the Polar Express. Sadly, it's just a normal, older, commercial airplane, not a flag nor hot dog to be seen. Annie got her own seat, so she and I sat together and Rafe and Vivien sat in front of us. If the older two were plugged into their respective tablets, all was quiet (we only break the tablets out for traveling, so they are still a sufficiently gripping novelty). But when I made them eat dinner or go to sleep, we inevitably had a few ugly moments of brawling, me trying to referee from the seat behind. There were tons of babies on our flight, so nobody minded. Well, let's say everyone understood. We had a 3 hour stop in Yokota, most of which we spent waiting to be released from the boarding area, then waiting in line for food. We had 10 minutes to eat before we had to be back in the boarding again. Lots of people from the flight didn't even have time to get anything.

Vivi and Rafe spent most of their Yokota layover "playing" the demos of these arcade games over and over. I totally remember doing this when I was little.

Then it was on to Seattle! It was exciting to descend over all the beautiful forests and bodies of water that are so familiar, and to think we would have the chance to live here again. When we walked out of the gate my first thought was, "Everyone is so tall." Vivien's first observation was, "Mom! Look at that big, fat lady!" I spent the layover pushing Vivien and Rafe in the stroller after Annie, who was intent on tripping as many people as she could by walking right into their path just below their line of sight. I can't remember our plane ride to Salt Lake now, but Vivi and Rafe had specially requested Papa Mark to pick them up at the airport, so Grandma Paula and Papa Mark were there at the bottom of the escalator to greet us when we landed. There were tears of exhaustion and relief and happiness. Paula and I agreed that it doesn't matter where you're coming from or how long you've been gone, it's always kind of emotional to meet someone up at the airport.

We spent the first couple weeks at my parents' house, relaxing and trying to recover from jet lag. I finally got to tell everyone I am pregnant. I didn't want people to worry more than they already were about my flying with all the kids, mostly because I was worried enough and didn't want any more anxious vibes headed my way than I already had, so I purposefully didn't tell anyone until I arrived. I have been an uncharacteristically good secret keeper this pregnancy.

Rafe struggles with beds.

Annie had a REALLY hard time adjusting to the new time zone this trip. I feel bad, because the first Sunday we were there Rex was presented his Eagle award, so my Grandma Brunsdale was visiting and sharing the basement with me. I think Annie maybe slept three hours that night and spent the rest of it crying. I know it wasn't fun for me, and I'm sure it wasn't fun for Grandma either.

Rex's Eagle ceremony was excellent. My dad made a PowerPoint summary of all the adventures and cool things Rex has gotten to do in scouting, and Rex gave a touching acceptance speech. Then we posed for our complete family scouting picture. My dad worked a little Microsoft Paint magic and added Eagle medals to people who couldn't find theirs for the event, but Drew also had to be photographed later and added in which is a little more than Paint can handle, so Jake took over the editing.

Eeeeeagle!

The kids spent lots of time enjoying having a backyard. Nana and Papi had thoughtfully kept their pool open for us to enjoy the last few warm days before fall settled in. Tia Kate and Rose came over to swim a couple times and introduced us to the ingenious kiddie-pool-on-the-deck idea (2 parts pool, 1 part hot tub water). Vivien continues to get more and more comfortable in the water. Rafe, more and more comfortable in the hot tub, especially now that he's tall enough to stand on the bottom. The back fence was swarming with box elder beetles this year, which provided ample opportunity for nature observation.

Not that finding things to observe is a problem at Nana's house. She had lots of pretty things growing in her garden to admire.

The sunflowers were particularly fun. There was a bluebird that would come by all day and hang upside down by his feet on the rim of the sunflowers to eat the seeds.

Everyone had fun playing with Echo (and sampling her food). She is the perfect beast for grandchildren right now. She was very patient with all the petting and Annie's special excited scream reserved for canine sightings.

And if we were very lucky, Papi would take everyone on a lawn mower ride after work.

Another group . . .

He is an exemplary grandpa.

When days were cold, we played with toys inside. It took awhile to locate the Barbie box. Colette and Meg (who, let it be noted, are juniors in high school) still play with them occasionally together. We put in a special request one of the days that Colette had all her friends over for lunch to have the box brought back from the Sheffield's house.

We got to spend some time one of the days with Aunt Sarah, who is awesome, Elena, who is fun and fluent in her own intriguing tongue, and sweet Baby Myra, who is precious.

There was coloring to be done as well. Here is Vivien missing her daddy who is far away across the mountains and ocean.

When people started to feel a little more settled, we went on some outings. We hung out at the Alworths and took up Kaitlyn's entire day off, going to Wendy's and reveling in Megan's well stocked play room. Another day Nana accompanied us to the Alpine Arts Museum to have a look around the outdoor sculptures.

We also made it out to the Tracy Aviary, where the bird show people are generally more accommodating than they are at, say, the Hogle Zoo. The aviary is a superior spot for feather collecting, and we went home with several flamingo feathers, a macaw feather, and some lovely duck feathers with interesting patterns. Nana was very patient with my complainers throughout the adventure, even when we got stuck in traffic on the way home.

We got to go watch Rex and Colette swim, but we probably chose the worst meet ever to go to. Rex only swam one event because he had other stuff going on that night, and Colette was in a sour mood and refused to feel anything but contempt for swimming all evening. She had changed her tune significantly by the next meet--she switched from swimming for the Senior Gold team to swimming for the high school team instead, which left her more time and energy for being cheerful.

Other outings included haircuts. Once we left hot, humid Iwakuni for the cool, dry air of the airplane, Vivi and Rafe's hair looked like it was growing before my eyes. Their hair is so fine and straight, it lost all of its bounce and hung limply in their eyes. The situation did not improve much in Utah. Tia Kate graciously cut Vivien's bangs for me (cutting hair freaks me out, in the same way that squashing bugs does). I took Rafe to Cookie Cutters. The guy who cut his hair this time was AMAZING. He was so fast and it was a really cute haircut. This is the picture I always show them. Oh Rudy . . .

And Vivien got to take advantage of her family connections and take a ballet class on Wednesdays at the studio where Melanie teaches, for freeeeeeee! Vivien is a very quiet, obedient student. She's in the back of the class, standing exactly on her mark and not talking to anyone. I think her teacher was grateful for her strict cooperation. It was kind of a wild class.

It was fun to watch the kids get slowly better and better every week. Ballet is hard! It takes so much coordination. She worked really hard to leap with straight legs.

And to figure out an alternating leg chasse. It's close . . .

At the end of each class her teacher would put on Let it Go and let the kids free dance. Every single week, Vivien would stand there and watch all the other kids going crazy. She told me she didn't know what she was supposed to do, and she was also a little bit afraid of how much everyone else was moving. She's a funny girl . . .

Maybe Let it Go just isn't her jam . . .

Kaitlyn is the music and art teacher at Highland Elementary and she did a crochet unit while I was there. She asked if I had anything that I've made on hand to show the class, but I didn't. Her request prompted me to browse patterns on Ravelry for fun, where I found and fell in love with the Happypotamus, and had to make it. Rex came with me to choose yarns (he had nothing else to do because he was grounded from his phone at the time). He got bored watching me deliberate over fibers and colors and found the costume section to pass the time . . .

Here's the almost finished Happypotamus. It is made of a whole bunch of African crochet motifs. I think it is the most beautiful thing I have ever made. I am going to have to make another one.

This was technically after Drew came and went, but I got to go see all the things Kaitlyn's students made in class one of my weeks there. She put on an art show in the school auditorium and had each student pick their favorite project to display and write a brief explanation of why they chose it. It was so fun to read their reasons, and it made me very proud to have a sister who obviously has such a profound influence on the kids and uses it to help them develop their creativity and self esteem. So many amazing, fun projects. I am not surprised she is like a local celebrity (*Gasp* "It's MRS. ALWORTH!!")

Kaitlyn sent me this picture of this student that reminds her of Vivien walking through the art show.

Another fun thing that was technically after Drew had come and gone, but Mark got all his daughter-in-laws plus Kaitlyn into the Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point on his grandparents pass. My kids have two exemplary grandpas.