09/30/2012 Back in the Game!!

1.  It's been a long few weeks with limited internet access.  Also strangely nice.  But not so nice to log onto your email and see 454 unread messages.  Luckily most of them were deletable, but still took a couple hours to get through.

2.  Today was the primary program.  Joseph and Brigham's very last one!  Waaaahhhh!!!  But they have come a long way from the Sunbeam days of hiding behind the pews refusing to participate.  :-)  Some of my favorite moments:

Being in a vantage point able to see each one of my children's faces, and seeing them all singing!

Mosey dragging his stuffed animal snake up to the stand with him to give his little talk about God granting agency to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.  That snake is his attachment object of choice for the past few weeks and has gone everywhere with him.  Honestly, he's like Linus with his blanket.  I'm so used to seeing him with it that I don't even see it anymore.  Otherwise I would probably not have let him bring it to church, let alone up to the podium where its yellow and black spotted head peered out at the congregation.  I wonder if anyone else in the congregation noticed, or wondered if he brought the "serpent" up there on purpose!  :-)

Joseph and Brigham singing "I'm trying to be like Jesus" with their class.  I used to sing them that song at bedtime when they were little.

Joseph giving his talk so well, even though he did NOT want to do it.

Brigham looking like such a little man in his black pants and blue blazer when he gave him talk.

3.  My mom came this weekend to help unpack my house.  She got more done in 2 1/2 days than I could have in 2 1/2 months.  She is amazing, and has got to be utterly exhausted now.  Ben was seriously impressed when she helped him carry the incredibly heavy solid wood top to my huge computer desk from one room to another.  Ben was sure he was going to have to call another guy-- preferably a large guy, to help him move it.  But my 110 lb mom did it without breaking a sweat.  She did SO MUCH.  I can now drive into my garage!  Most of the boxes are unpacked.  She packed up Ben's entire closet at the old house, which had been a giant repository of all kinds of "I don't know what to do with this" items.  She carried load after load of heavy boxes and bins from the car into the garage in the absolute pouring down rain.  She did my laundry.  She swept the floor 2 or 3 times while she was here.  She stayed up later and woke up earlier than I did every day she was here.  She woke up early enough this morning to make a pan of cinnamon rolls for us before we left for the airport at 7 AM.  She assembled furniture, took vanloads of stuff to Goodwill, cleaned the old house, and even made time to play the flute with Joseph last night.  I just looked up synonyms for "amazing," since I use it to describe her so often, but there really is no word adequate to describe her.  THANK YOU, mama!!

Moving is fun!!!

09/20/2012

We have internet now, but my computer is not set up because my desk is not set up yet because I haven't fully decided where I want it.  So all I have is this old laptop that is missing the t key.  I have to press the spot where it was really hard and it is a pain and I can't believe how many words have T in it!  Maybe I'll skip the t's.

he boys are suffering from lack of a schedule.  hey may no realize i bu hey do so much beer when hey have a schedule and know wha is expeced when.  All of his up in he air suff and lae nighs and boxes and mom and dad oally disraced and nohing how i is supposed o be is wearing on hem.  hey've been fighing and picking a each oher and i is no fun.

OK, this no T business is too much of a pain.  I'm not sure which is worse-- no T key, or trying to type on my phone.  I'm giving up for now.



09/17/2012

1. Before this move, I promised Ben that I'd be nothing but positive about this move--no stressing or grumbling. I think I'm doing ok. I just keep telling myself, "moving is fun!" Right? Right?? Maybe if I keep saying it, it will be true? :-)
2. Here are some of the most fun parts of this move so far:
The first night we brought Chrissy (our cat) over, she decided it would be a good idea to pee on Joseph's bed. The same bed he so painstakingly made all by himself with new sheets and matching bedspread and pillow cases. When Ben took the mattress pad outside to air out, he was met by our dog who had apparently decided that was the night to try and make friends with the local skunks. Turns out the skunks weren't too interested in making friends with Sandy. In fact, they were downright hostile and made their displeasure known in the smelliest way possible. Oh joy. So Ben had to make a midnight run to two different HEBs to get hydrogen peroxide and baking soda to give her a bath, which she thought was about as much fun as the original skunk encounter itself. Meanwhile back inside, Chrissy had not yet finished communicating her extreme distress over being kidnapped from her perfectly comfortable home and so rudely thrust into this big, scary place filled with scary boxes and scary sounds and scary smells. So she decided to poop on my bed.  She then got to experience my extreme distress when I grabbed her by the tail and threw her off the bed. Sorry about that, Chrissy... At least the lizards seem to have made the transition pretty smoothly. :-)
3. One awesome thing about this move has been how many people have come out of the woodwork to help. We've had dinners brought in, ladies from the church have spent hours packing things for me and helping me unpack and organize my kitchen and pantry. That was a big job. A few guys from the church have helped Ben move big stuff from one house to another. And my boys have been awesome. Yes, there has been some whining, but overall they have worked so, so hard. I'm proud of them.

09/10/2012

1.  So busy!  We are moving into our new house.  The boys are very excited.  We spent the night there last night (all we had were mattresses and a few blankets) because they couldn't wait!  It was pretty fun to see them in the house, all empty and completely ours for the first time.  They ran to their new rooms and spun around and yelled like crazy.  Cute.  The previous owners are very nice people.  The wife left us a house-warming gift-- an incredible handmade quilt.  She is an avid quilter, and it is unbelievably beautiful.  I don't feel like we are deserving of a gift that reflects that many hours of work!

2.  All the decisions when it comes to unpacking can be a bit overwhelming.  How to make my kitchen wheelchair accessible?  My friends Stephanie and Pamela came over and helped me pack up most of my kitchen and take it over to the new house where we unpacked a lot of it.  But a lot of it is still sitting in boxes because I can't figure out exactly how I want to organize everything.  I went to The Container Store tonight and brought home a bunch of shelving-type-stuff to try and make more storage space available at a lower level.  The kitchen has lots of storage space, but most of it is above where I can comfortably reach.

3.  Brigham and Mosey had their first orchestra rehearsal tonight.  We were late because the parking at that school (O. Henry Middle School) was terrible, and some non-handicapped people were parked in the handicapped parking spaces.  Grr.  But it was the first day so it was OK.  Mosey LOVED it.  He said immediately afterward, "That was AWESOME!"  He made instant friends with his stand partner, over a conversation about Apache helicopters.  :-)  The experience was made even better when a bird ended up in the cafeteria (where the rehearsal was), causing all sorts of excitement among the kids.  I think Brigham had a good time, too, although I didn't sit in on his rehearsal (he's in the next level up from Mosey).  He commented afterward that it was the most number of kids he's been with since being in public school.  He didn't have a stand partner (we were late), but after seating tests next week he should have one.  I was amazed at how many kids were in the orchestras!  It's going to be a good experience for both of them, I think.

4.  Big news from the weekend was Ben getting called to be a counselor in the Bishopric.  He'll be good in the calling, and this last year of him being Elders Quorum president has acclimated us to his heavy meeting schedule.  Ben is looking forward to working with the new Bishop, Brother Hepworth (Bishop Hepworth!).
I got a message on Thursday night, as we were driving to Lowes.  I listened to it in Lowes, and as soon as I heard "This is Brother Eastley," my stomach dropped to my toes, because I knew what it had to be.  At first I was not happy about it.  But, over the next couple of days I came around (or maybe resigned myself?  :-)), and now it's all good.  I hope Ben feels the same!

09/06/2012

1.  We have a lot of stuff going on around here.  The past couple of days we've had painters here painting the outside of the house.  We are having wood flooring put in the school room at our new house (tomorrow, hopefully!).  A guy came today to give us an estimate for new carpet upstairs in this house (it needs it, believe me).  We're going to have the inside of the garage at our new house painted.  It's original 1974, and looks it.  :-)  That should happen tomorrow, too.  I ordered ramps for the front and back doors of the new house, which arrived yesterday.  We took them over to make sure they'll work (they will).  I'm so excited to be in this new house where I will be able to go almost anywhere in our yard.

2.  We are also trying to have some semblance of school around here.  We're doing pretty OK in that arena, although we still haven't cracked the math books yet.  Today we had our homeschool group over in the afternoon and we made 3-D cells.  It was a great project!  I made a big bowl of lime jello, and let it set just a little before the kids came over.  Then each kid got a zip lock sandwich bag (the plasma membrane) which we about half-filled with jello (cytoplasm).  We talked about all the different organelles in the cell, and added each to our cell, one by one.  A cherry (with the pit still inside) was our nucleus and nucleolus.  Raisins were our mitochondria.  Carrot shreds were the golgi apparatus, coconut shreds were the microtubules, grapes were lysozomes, blueberries were peroxisomes, sprinkles were endoplasmic reticulum, and little colored nonpareils were the ribosomes.  Did I forget anything?  It was lots of fun, and shockingly not too messy!  I thought we'd have at least one spilled bag of jello on the floor, but all the kids were careful and they did a great job.  Yay for successful activities!

3.  My no-sugar resolution is going pretty well.  I was perfect the past couple of days, and only slipped up with one small cookie today.  Let me rephrase that-- I didn't slip up, I allowed myself a cookie.  :-)  My friend Stephanie brought us dinner (which was the reason we were eating dinner at 7:15 tonight instead of 8:30 like it's been the past several days), and a plate of cookies that I just couldn't resist.  But one is OK.  It feels good to be disciplined.

4.  Brigham and Mosey got into the respective orchestras that they auditioned for on Monday.  They were both happy about that.  Rehearsals start on Monday night.  Thankfully they are both at the same time and same location.  So we are going to have to reschedule family home evening to Tuesdays, I think.  I hope my boys love orchestra as much as I did.  Although, I remember that at first I hated orchestra.  HATED it.  But that was because it was our little elementary school orchestra and we were terrible and it was painful to listen to us.  And for some reason a kid named Mark drove me crazy.  I wrote a journal during the year I was in 5th grade (so hilarious!), and mentioned how much I hated orchestra and how annoying Mark was nearly every week.  But, it was a character-building experience, right?  And I ended up totally loving orchestra when I was older and in some more advanced ensembles.  I never really loved public school orchestra, although our high school was fairly decent, I think.  Anyway, another activity to add to the schedule.  Still to add-- Joseph's flute lessons and Mosey's speech class.  We'll figure it all out.

09/04/2012

1.  Pretty decent day of school.  Now just have to figure how to fit MATH in.  Yep, Joseph, we still have to do math this year.  :-)

2.  First cub scout den meeting of the school year.  We wrote secret codes, wrote notes in invisible ink, and learned to spell the boys' names in sign language.  Also found out that 3 of the 7 boys won't be able to make Tuesday afternoons after this week, due to sports practices and other things, so we have to figure out how to reschedule.  This is why we don't do team sports around here (one of the reasons).  You can't pick your practice days or time, and you don't know when they're going to be until after you've already committed to joining the team.

3.  The boys have been on an army tank/helicopter kick recently.  They've read all sorts of Wikipedia articles, and have been busy drawing lots of pictures.  Joseph is a good little army tank artist, and loves to show me his drawings and explain everything to me.  Mosey has resurrected his army planes and helicopters and has been playing with them.  That's why it is actually satisfying to get Mosey toys-- he really does play with them.  However, he also has trouble keeping track of his toys.  He's constantly asking me if I've seen such-and-such, and if I haven't, asking me to speculate on where I think it might be.  This afternoon he was outside on the trampoline with one of his helicopters, and the blades fell off.  He discovered this after he came inside, and was pretty distraught.  He even went online to the manufacturer to see if he could order replacement parts-- and this for a $6 toy.  But, he found them!  And then tried to super glue them onto his helicopter, getting glue on his hands in the process, and leaving a super glue fingerprint on the side of his helicopter.  So he went online again to research how to get super glue off of metal.  Apparently nail polish remover can sometimes do the trick.  But when we tried that, it started rubbing off the painted "US Army" on the side.  So 9:30 PM finds me in my bathroom with a little emery board trying to gently sand off the fingerprint from the side of his helicopter.  Because I really have nothing more pressing to be doing with my time, 6 days before moving day!  But, I do love my boy, and he did ask so nicely.  :-)

4.  We are getting the outside of our house painted tomorrow.  The painters were going to paint the deck, too, but the boys beat them to it.  Brigham woke up early on Saturday morning, and Ben set him to work cleaning off and then painting the deck.  Mosey and Joseph joined in, too, and pretty soon three sets of clothing were pretty well covered in deck paint.  :-)  Joseph went out this evening to work on the 2nd coat.  He took my iPod and worked out there for a good 2 hours.  Maybe an iPod is the key to getting him to work without complaining?  It works for me, I guess.

09/03/2012

1.  Labor Day.  Did not get as much labor done as I wanted.  What's new?  The boys worked on staining the deck for quite a while.  I made arrangements for putting wood in our school room in the new house, and ordered wheelchair ramps so I can get in and out of the house.  We'll be able to move into the house starting a week from today.  Eeek!  I also finally finished the doors for upstairs.  I messed up one of them-- put the hinges on backward.  Grr.  So I re-routed the hinges and all the doors are installed upstairs.  They look good.  I also got one load of laundry done.  Whoop de doo.
What I did NOT do today:
Clean the house
Finish the laundry
Pack up the books from upstairs
Do any packing at all

2.  Tonight Brigham and Mosey had auditions for Austin Youth Orchestra.  We drove down to Stephen F. Austin high school, arriving a bit discombobulated since I had mapped directions to 1715 East Cesar Chavez, instead of 1715 West Cesar Chavez.  Oh well.  It was OK, but there was only one other kid after us in line for auditions, so it was a bit of a wait.  The boys did just fine.  I think Mosey was nervous-- on the way down he asked me, "What is it that makes the nervous feeling?  It's not like adrenalin because it doesn't come all of a sudden."  Well, it is adrenalin, just severely misplaced adrenalin.  The fight or flight response has no place in music.

3.  I have decided to go on a sugar fast for the next month.  Now that the birthday and vacation season is over, it is really TIME.  I'm going to be as strict as I can until we fly out to Utah at the beginning of October. This means nothing at all with any added sugar.  I was perfect for today!  One day down 29 to go.

09/02/2012

Today marks the end of the Frandsen birthday season.  We have 12 birthdays in our family between June and September!
September 2 is my brother Isaac's birthday.  He was born 16 years ago today, too early.  As short as it was, his life has deeply influenced the lives of every member of his family.
I remember September 2, 1996 very well.  It was that summer I decided to transfer from Rice to BYU, and that labor day weekend I was in Houston, packing up the rest of my things that I had in storage, and heading back to Provo that afternoon.  When I left California for Houston, my mom was in the hospital in preterm labor.  I knew it was serious and that if my brother was to be born, he most likely wouldn't make it, but I felt like he and my mom would be OK.  He *had* to be OK.  My mom had told me about her pregnancy early in the summer, and I had spent the last several weeks with that happy secret.  It was such a happy time for me-- I was transferring to a University where I knew for sure I was supposed to be.  I knew my parents were happy about that, and it felt good to do something that made them happy.  And I was going to have a new baby sister or brother!
I know that kids in large families sometimes resent another baby being born, but I was never one of those kids.  I loved every new baby in our family, and was always so excited when my parents announced another one.  I was so happy about this new baby!  So when my mom started having contractions, I was very worried, but felt like everything was going to be OK.  How could anything go wrong that perfect summer?
I got on the plane back to Salt Lake City, and Ben picked me up from the airport.  We talked on the way home, and decided to stop by Naomi's dorm room where she had just moved in as a freshman.  When we got there, her roommate told us that I needed to go straight back to my apartment and call home.  I think Naomi had already gone over there to find me.  I knew at that point that something was very wrong, and I pretty much knew what it was.  But I hoped and prayed it was not that.  But when I called home, I found out that Isaac had been born, and that he had died shortly after.  I also found out that my mom had very nearly died herself, but that she was going to be OK.  What a terrible mix of emotions-- gratitude and grief.
When I went back home for Isaac's funeral, my mom asked me to help dress him for burial.  It was such a sacred moment for me, as I looked upon my baby brother for the first and last time, marveling at his perfect little hands and feet-- so small, and yet so complete with tiny fingernails.  This perfect baby who could have survived in only a few short weeks.
I knew that someday one of my son's would carry Isaac's name, and that he would always be an important member of our family, even if none of us ever got to know him.  Someday we will.
I have no pictures of Isaac, except for those in my memory.  I don't know who he would have looked like.  Would he have had Benjamin's bright blue eyes?  Brigham's cowlick?  Abraham's smile?  Christian's mischievous little personality?  How would our family have been changed if he had lived?  Christian would have been a big brother, which I think would have been good for him.  Eva would have been a big sister, and I know she would have loved that.  And my parents would still have a child in their home for the next two years.
Someday, we will know Isaac.  I believe that he knows us.  And I love to think of him and Jacob together, waiting for the rest of their family.