meh

No Torty yet... :-(
We spent a long time looking for him, and Ben and Joseph crawled under the deck and got unbelievably dirty. I really like that little guy and hope he turns up. Joseph asked if I thought he was just in a really long bad dream and he would wake up and Torty wouldn't be lost. That broke my heart a little.
We had stake conference today. Our stake broadcast the meeting to our ward building because there just isn't enough room in the Stake Center for everybody. 2 hours watching a grainy broadcast in a darkened chapel isn't that fun for little boys, but they did well anyway. Afterward, an older lady a couple of rows back complimented the boys on their good behavior. She went on to complain about all the other kids who were not so reverent (it was kind of loud, but I mostly tune that stuff out), and how it showed a lack of respect to God and the failure of parents to discipline their kids. She was nice to compliment my boys, but I thought she was pretty unfair to all the other families who made the effort to go to Stake Conference, which many families take as a "free pass." It's not easy for little kids to be still and quiet for *that* long. Why do people get judgmental like that? Shouldn't church be the one place we have compassion for others and forgive them their weaknesses? Then I have to hold the mirror up to my own face and wonder why I'm being so uncharitable to that poor woman who just wanted to feel the spirit and was distracted by all the kid-noises.
Anyway.
I totally forgot about a presidency meeting tonight. I had my phone off and was in my room folding clothes and listening to my iPod when the RS President knocked on my door to pick me up. Ben was in the front room, but was sleeping and didn't wake up to her knocks. Oops. I hate dropping the ball like that. I really, really hate feeling irresponsible. I constantly have this dread that deep down I really am irresponsible and pretty soon the truth will come out and everyone else will realize it too.
Yesterday I went to the memorial service for a woman in my ward who just died of colon cancer. She was only 2 years older than me and left 3 little kids and a husband who adored her. The service was so beautiful, but so, so sad. She and I had talked a few times about chemotherapy and how hard chronic illness can be for kids (this was her 2nd bout with cancer after having first been diagnosed 5 years ago). I've felt some weird form of survivor's guilt-- just as I was recovering from my stem cell transplant which will hopefully put me in permanent remission, she was finding out about her recurrence, which she knew would be terminal. I've thought about her so much over the past year. During those times when I've felt discouraged or pessimistic or depressed, I've thought about how if she allowed herself to think about it (which she probably did not), she would have traded places with me in an instant and felt like the luckiest person in the world to do so. She was a very brave person. She had 5 younger brothers, and they were all there with their families yesterday, and 3 of her sisters-in-law sang the song I want sung at my funeral, and the whole thing was very emotional for me. I wanted to say something meaningful to her husband on my way out, but barely choked out, "That was beautiful and I'm so glad I got to attend." And then felt like an idiot because what kind of moron would be "glad" to attend someone's memorial? I doubt he registered my idiocy, but I still felt bad. I guess there's nothing good to say in those circumstances.
Anyway, it's been one of those "meh" weekends for me, I guess.

Bound to happen...

A sad thing happened today.
Joseph took Torty outside for a few minutes late this afternoon to walk around and eat some grass. He's only taken him outside a couple of other times because I'm paranoid about him getting lost.
Well, Joseph got distracted and forgot to keep his eye on him, and now we can't find him.
Ben and the boys went in back with a 200 W bulb on a work light searching through the bushes and under the deck, but no luck. They'll have to keep trying tomorrow when it's light.
Torty *is* back there. It's just that he could be under the deck, and if he is, it could be very hard to find him. The boys are all praying that they'll find him. And so am I. Joseph was extremely sad and feels just terrible.
Will you offer a quick prayer that Torty will turn up?

We took the boys to see "Where the Wild Things Are" tonight. I'm not sure what to think of it. It held the boys' rapt attention, though, and Mosey said at the end, "I think that movie was good enough that we should buy it." That's pretty high-praise! He was a little scared in some parts, but over all not as scared as I thought he might be. When we watched "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," during the climax scene when the dam holding back all the leftover food is about to burst and crush everyone on the island, Mosey got really scared and said to me, "I thought this movie was supposed to be funny! It isn't funny, it's scary!!!"
But, going back to "Wild Things," Max sure reminded me of Joseph. Joseph has never been as angry as Max, thank goodness, but there were places in the movie that hit close to home. The closing scene with the mother watching Max as he eats his supper (that was still hot) was very powerful to me.

3 teeth less

Bright and early this morning, Joseph and I headed to the dentist's office.
We were there last week for our 6 month cleaning, and I asked the dentist about what our plan of action should be with Joseph's teeth. The orthodontist took a look and saw that 3 of his canines have not fallen out, and based on x-rays, were nowhere near falling out. This was causing a lot of crowding with his other teeth and could result in impaction.
So this morning those 3 teeth came out! The doctor gave him versed in a syrup, and pretty soon he was very drowsy and loopy, although the cartoons still held his attention. (The doctor said that most pediatric dentists put more stock into their TV systems than their anesthetics! LOL!)
2 of the teeth came right out, but the third was stubborn and broke off at the root and it took the doctor quite a while (well, it seemed quite a while to me, but he assured me it was very common and not a problem) to get it out. I could never be a dentist-- the whole thing just made me shiver!
The hygienist put in some temporary spacers and next week we'll go back in to get molds made so he can get permanent spacers. These are small devices that will keep his teeth from moving into the space now made by the extracted teeth.
He probably won't get braces for a couple of years yet, but this stuff will make the braces process shorter and easier.
Joseph did really great! It was funny to see him so out of it. And he was pretty dizzy when he got up from the chair. The hygienist helped him out and into the car (I wasn't much help there, I'm busy just trying to keep myself from falling over!). He came home and watched movies for a couple of hours and has been fine ever since. He doesn't remember much from the procedure now.
It's weird to see the baby teeth with the root still intact. The doctor told me that when the adult teeth start descending, they release osteoclasts which break down the root of the baby tooth which is what makes it start to get loose, and is why there is no root attached when the baby tooth finally falls out. Interesting, huh? Anyway, the doctor gave him his teeth in a tiny yellow treasure box and he was pretty proud to show his brother when he got home.

Reason #7,392 why I love the Internet

My mom just sent this to me. Isn't it awesomely amazing? Merry Christmas!

Photography 101

These photos are apropos of nothing. I just didn't want to post without pictures! These are from a couple of months ago when we went to see the bats fly out from the Congress Street bridge.


Brigham is giving me bat ears.


Here are the bats! Slower shutter speed...


...and faster shutter speed. They are very cool animals.

I taught a Basic Photography workshop tonight for a Relief Society activity. I hope I was coherent! I spent quite a bit of time writing the outline, and then choosing and printing photos to illustrate the points I was making. Someday when I have time I'll integrate the photos into the text. But for now, I uploaded my handout to Google Documents and you can find it here, in case anyone is interested! The format is a bit wonky, but the text is all there.

Today was a pretty good day, despite the 3.5 hours of sleep I got last night. I am DONE with staying up too late. The last few weeks with Halloween costumes, and massive desk reorganizations and Relief Society activities, etc., have been pretty bad on my sleep schedule. However, it's kind of cool that I still *can* do it, because a couple of years ago I never would have been able to. M.S. flares made me so exhausted, 9 or even 10 hours of sleep still wouldn't be enough. So even though I know it's not good for me, it is so nice to be free of that aspect of M.S.

I took the boys to McDonalds for lunch to play at the play place, something we haven't done for a very long time-- more than a year at least. I used to take them more often, when they were little and I was always looking for places to take them out of the house where they could burn off energy without destroying my house. It's so amazing to me how big they are all getting, now. In another year or two, the twins probably won't even be much interested in the McDonald's play place.

Well, time to put this disjointed blog post to bed, which is where I'll be going in about 30 seconds!

Jackpot!

I've been trying to participate in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month, I think), and post at least once a day. I haven't been able to make it before midnight every night, but I'm posting at least once every day Pacific Standard Time!
I'm teaching a photography workshop at my house tomorrow night (well, I guess tonight), so I took the boys out today to get some examples of do's and don't's in photography, and you know what? That was the BEST ruse I've ever used to get great pictures of my boys! They all cooperated, I was totally shocked. S-H-O-C-K-E-D. And extremely happy because I got some great shots of the three of my boys together, which is very rare.
Here are a few of them:
















I also got some really great pictures during our family picture photo shoot on Saturday, but I'm saving those. :-)

I should have taken before and after pictures of my desk. It's been piling up and I got to the breaking point yesterday evening and spent 4 (yes FOUR) hours cleaning and organizing and putting away and taking care of all the things that have been waiting for me. Whew!! How long will it last? That is the question...

Brigham's "Duel of the Fates"

Over the past few months, my boys have become just a *little* obsessed with Star Wars. You'd never guess by the 14 light sabers in our play room. :-)
The first thing the boys do when they come downstairs is get on YouTube and play "Imperial March" as loud as possible. It's a charming way to start the day, really!
Mosey's favorite piece on the Star Wars soundtrack is Duel of the Fates. He will play it over and over and over and over...
We got a John Williams piano book a few months ago, and Brigham learned Imperial March right off. Joseph learned Hedwig's Theme from Harry Potter (the movie's main theme). I neglected to video them playing those pieces, and they're not too interested in polishing them up again just so I can record it for posterity. Oh well.
Anyway, Brigham learned Duel of the Fates next. He's nearly got it finished, so I decided to record it before I forgot. Joseph is learning Qui Gon's Funeral and I'll record him when he gets it all down.

Ugh.

Three things I'm saying "Ugh!" about these days (No, not the three boys above, at least, not too much! Those pictures are just for fun.):

1. We discovered that the hall bathroom sink has been leaking. Specifically the U-pipe under the sink. The water dripped onto the bottom of the cabinet, and instead of leaking out the front of the cabinet, somehow made it's way down under the cabinet to the concrete slab below. From there, it seeped under the wall into my closet. We didn't realize this until I realized the carpet on the floor of my closet was inexplicably wet. Anyway, the bottom of the cabinet was totally soaked, and the particle board was just crumbling away. Ben removed it and set up a bunch of fans in my closet to hopefully dry out the water. However, I have a feeling this might end up being a little more involved than all of that...
I'm reminded of when Brigham and Joseph were about 2.5. Brigham flushed a whole bunch of things down the master bathroom toilet (medicine bottles, bandaids, basically anything he could grab from the bathroom drawers). I fished as much as I could out, and hired a couple of plumbers to try to snake the rest out. However they were ultimately unsuccessful, and water ended up backing up from the shower and soaking the carpet in the bedroom and hall. The plumbing guys ended up having to jackhammer a hole through our concrete patio on the side of our house, down underneath our house, and up through the slab to get access to the pipes under the bathroom floor. It was a very expensive little plumbing mishap.
The insurance company sent out "Service Master Pros" to pull up the carpet, take out the baseboards, and set up industrial fans to dry everything out. Last year, Ben started getting harassing phone calls from a collection agency trying to collect $1800 from us. It was bogus, though, since we never got a bill from them, and didn't even hire them. The insurance company set the whole thing up when the repairs were made, and we paid our deductible, and that was that. Not only that, but the statue of limitations has already passed, so these guys were pretty much out of luck.
Anyway, hopefully this will be a little less traumatic than that.

2. I lost 51 pictures. I apparently neglected to upload all the photos that Ben took on my birthday. He took a bunch of pictures of me and my boys as part of their gift to me. (His approach to photography is the shotgun approach-- take enough pictures and hopefully a few of them will turn out-- hence the 51 shots). Anyway, I uploaded all the pictures before and after those birthday shots, but not the birthday shots. On Saturday I took some family pictures for some friends, and when I filled up my card, I popped in another one. I quickly checked to make sure I could delete anything on it, and saw the pictures before and after the birthday shots, which I knew for sure I had uploaded, so I blithely deleted all of them. Then I came home and searched and searched for those lost birthday pictures with no luck. Ugh. I'm glad there were no other pictures lost, but darn it, I have precious few pictures of me with my boys!!!

3. Ben cut his foot a couple of weeks ago when he was outside staining our fence. He stepped on a piece of brick and made a small puncture in the arch of his foot. He thought nothing of it until the next day at church when it started to really throb. After Sacrament meeting, he took off his shoe and sock so I could take a look. It was swollen and pussy (sorry), and there were red streaks running up his foot. I knew that was bad news. After a quick consult with our R.S. President who is also a physician, I sent him off to the Urgent Care. They lanced it, cleaned it all up, and sent him home with a prescription for Bactrim. Then at church yesterday Ben leaned over during Sacrament meeting and told me his foot was hurting again. I asked him if he had been taking the medicine, and he said, "Sort of..." Ugh! Men! Anyway, I looked at it, and it's not infected again, luckily, but still! Ugh! :-)

Oh, yeah, just thought of a 4th "ugh."
4. I have 5 loads of clean laundry getting wrinkled in laundry baskets in my room, and no time in the foreseeable future to actually fold and put it all away. It's gonna have to be sometime in the next day or two, because the laundry never stops... Putting away laundry is my nemesis. Ugh!

soccer season 2009

Here are my backyard soccer pictures of the boys. I didn't feel like shelling out the $12 for pictures I could take myself! Remember Joseph's soccer picture from last year? What a difference a year makes, that's all I can say about that! He's come a long way in a year, and I am proud of him.

Mosey ended up having fun in soccer. There were 3 little boys on his team who were very good, so his team ended up winning by a very large margin every game (although they don't officially keep score at that young age level), and Mosey got so excited every time a goal was scored. He'd turn toward me immediately and put both fists in the air. It was pretty cute. He was happy to kick the ball and got more into it each game. I think he'll be happy to play again.

Joseph and Brigham had a tough last few games. After winning the first few games handily, the last four were not so great. One of those games Joseph and Brigham weren't even there (because of the Halloween recital), so I'm not surprised at the loss. The two of them were pretty key players on their team. One of the other losses, the opposing team had 3 extremely good, fast, tall players who just couldn't be stopped. (At this age, height is everything, it seems. Those tall boys with long legs can just outrun everybody on the field.) And the other loss was to a team that was extremely well-organized and who had 4 more players than the boys' team. So while disappointing, they were legitimate losses and the boys were fairly philosophical about it.
But this last game was just painful. The teams were pretty well matched. Both teams scored a goal in the first half. Then Brigham scored a goal putting them ahead. Then the other team scored again tying it up. Then Joseph scored (yay Joseph! His first goal, he was so happy) putting them ahead again. Joseph had been playing goal keeper for a lot of the game, and never let a goal in (actually he never let one in all season which is pretty impressive considering the number of goals that obviously did go into their team's goal-- just not on Joseph's watch). For a while, Brigham was goalie (he never let a goal in either), and it was really funny to watch him. He actually probably wouldn't make a great goalie, because he's way too distracted by what's going on with the rest of his team. He kept on yelling out instructions like he was the coach, and his coach had to remind him a few times to get back in front of the net. LOL! Joseph is extremely focused as goalie, and never lets his eyes off the ball. But before the last quarter another little boy asked the coach if he could be goalie, so the coach put him in and put Joseph on defense. Well, the other team immediately scored 2 goals which would NEVER have gone in had Joseph been goalie. The boys' team almost scored again, but the ball literally went right into the face of the other team's goalie. He caught it only by reflex, and ended up hurting his eye and leaving the field in tears (poor little guy, but what a great save!). It was bad luck. It was a fast, high ball, and if it had been 5 inches to the left or right, it would have gone in for sure. Finally, it was the end of the game, and the boys' team had the ball up near the other team's goal. They had a couple of really great plays and were seriously ABOUT to score, when the game ended. So they lost 4-3.
Joseph was really upset. He wanted to win so badly, and he was so incredibly frustrated because he knew the last 2 goals wouldn't have gone in if he had been playing goalie. He started crying and refused to go over with his team when the coach gave out certificates and medals. I just held him on my lap and tried to console him. He finally calmed down enough to go shake the coach's hand and tell him thank you (at my insistence). Brigham, who had been far more upset by the other losses, seemed okay, and voluntarily thanked the coach like the gentleman he is.
I think Brigham was humiliated by the other losses (which were 5:1 and 5:0), and so they were more upsetting to him. But this game was very close and he felt good about his efforts so he was ok. But Joseph knew his team didn't really have a chance in those other games, and had already withdrawn emotionally long before the game was over. But he really thought they were going to pull this last game out, and his disappointment was acute.
Anyway, we had a good talk about playing on a team and being a good sport and after a celebratory/consolatory lunch at Burger King, Joseph was ok. Still, a tough end. I wanted so badly for them to win that last game.
So, that wraps up the 2009 season. They want to play winter soccer. I'll have to think about whether I can handle having soccer dominate our weekend schedule for another few months. Or whether I can handle the mommy-nerves that plague me when I'm watching them. I always suffered from nerves terribly when I was competing in sports in high school, and it's just as bad now that it's my kids playing! We have a few weeks to decide.