Free book!

My wonderful brother-in-law has written a novel, and as a Thanksgiving special, is offering the kindle version for free on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Brackets-ebook/dp/B009L9IQ5C/ref=sr_1_3_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353692582&sr=1-3&keywords=brackets

So get it, read it, and then buy the print version!  A great Christmas present for all the basketball/thriller book lovers out there.  :-)

11/22/2012

1.  Happy Birthday Christian!  21 years old!  Man, that makes me feel old.  :-)

2.  It has been a busy week.  I intended to do lessons with the boys on Monday-Wednesday, but instead used the days to finish up a bunch of stuff that had been accumulating.  Dealt with the gigantic pile of mail and bills that had been sitting on my desk for weeks.  Changed my address with a million people.  Unpacked more stuff from the garage (made way more difficult by the baking powder still covering most everything).  Made thankful trees for scouts on Tuesday afternoon, followed by Thanksgiving shopping with Mosey.  Wednesday was cleaning and organizing and laundry (which still did not get folded-- I'm waiting for the laundry elves to come fold it all while I'm sleeping).  Rosalynde and her kids came late Wednesday night-- hurray!  My kids had been waiting all day for them to get here.  We sent them to bed at 10:00, but told them they could stay up reading if they wanted, until the Welches got here, which of course they all did.

3.  Thanksgiving today!  Rosalynde and I baked all day.  Ben did yard work.  The kids stayed busy doing all kinds of stuff.  Joseph went on a long bike ride with Jack, my boys and Jack had an airsoft battle, Miles discovered our vast supply of little cars and planes and tanks and other things with wheels.  Elena perused our bookshelves until she found a book she liked, and then we didn't see too much of her-- she is a bookworm!

4.  Thanksgiving menu:  Turkey, brisket, cranberry-apple stuffing, sweet potato casserole, rolls, jello salad, corn, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, apple pie, banana cream pie, and blueberry cream pie.  Phew!  We are all stuffed now, and I think we came awfully close to using every single dish in our kitchen.  After dinner we went on a walk through the golf course, and then home again for pie.  Fun day!  I very thankful for family, good food, and beautiful weather today.

11/18/2012 Family Letter

Hi everyone,

Happy Birthday Christian!!  You'll have lots of people thinking of you on Thursday and being very thankful that you are our brother/son!

This last week was pretty good.  No police visits.  School was decent.  Orchestra, archery, piano lessons, violin lessons, practicing, the usual.

I cooked several meals this week-- real meals-- which is something to note, I guess!  The reason was mostly because Brigham and Joseph got herbst appliances--- installed?  applied?  inserted?  attached?  I have no idea what the right word is.  A herbst appliance is basically an orthodontic device that hooks the upper and lower jaw together with these metal bars attached to the upper molars and lower molars.  The boys can open and shut their mouths, but can't move their jaw forward or back.  The appliances keep their lower jaw pushed forward so only their front teeth touch.  Over time, their jaw will grow into the right position, giving them a correct bite.
It's a little hard to explain, but the upshot is they can't touch their back teeth together at all, which makes chewing a bit... difficult.  So I made broccoli curry soup, cheese and broccoli soup (I had a lot of broccoli!), quiche, pumpkin bread, banana bread, and lots of smoothies.  Apparently kids learn to adapt and figure out how to eat regular food, although I'm not sure how that will happen. Brigham and Joseph are not too happy about it all...  But they are good sports, and in 8-12 months it will all be done, and they'll avoid the orthodontic nightmare that Ben has been through over the past several years because his bite was never corrected.

Saturday afternoon/evening the boys had a couple of friends over to play airsoft wars.  I have mixed feelings about these airsoft guns.  Not because I have a problem with them playing with guns, but because, although they have given the boys hours of fun playing with each other, they have also resulted in a lot of arguments. Being an airsoft referee is not my idea of fun.  Recently my boys have been vacillating between playing together really nicely, and driving each other crazy (on purpose).  I keep reminding myself of how often I did not get along with my sisters, and how great everything turned out in the end, but the picking at each other really drives me crazy..  I just wish everyone would put half as much effort into finding NICE things to do and say to each other, as they do in finding ANNOYING things to do and say to each other...

I've listened to too many podcasts about politics this past week, and have gotten all upset again.  Must stop doing that.  Ben hasn't read or listened to any news at all since the election, which is unheard of for my Drudge Report junkie husband.

Well, that's all for tonight.  I'm in the middle of a massive paperwork project which I don't want to finish, but really must.  I need a secretary.

I'll leave you with some pictures from our family reunion that I've been slowly working on.  I just can't get enough of that sweet baby Jacob.

Love,
Gabrielle

Jacob's first bath.  He was not a fan.  :-)

11/17/2012

1.  Overslept today and missed Joseph's archery practice...  :-(  He overslept, too, though, so I guess we both needed the sleep.

2.  Attacked the giant pile of letters and bills and stuff that has been piling up for way too long.  Still have a bunch of stuff to take care of, though.

3.  The boys had a couple of friends come over this afternoon to play airsoft with them.  So fun.  Reminds me of going to my cousins' houses in Utah over the summer and playing night games.

11/15/2012

1.  I've been too occupied writing comments back and forth to my friend Julie regarding my "day after" post last week, to do my daily updates the last couple of days.  Julie is one of my homeschooling mentors, and has three fabulous boys.  We are also polar opposites on the political spectrum, but I hope she still likes me anyway.

2.  Brigham and Joseph got herbst appliances placed this morning.  Poor boys.  They are basically these metal hinges connecting their upper and lower jaws, pushing the lower jaw forward and making normal mouth movement (including those required for chewing!) very difficult.  They are such good sports.  We got Sonic shakes and slushes on the way home, had smoothies for lunch, and cream of broccoli soup for dinner.  I'm going to have to expand my repertoire of liquid meals.  The orthodontist assured the boys that most people totally adapt to the appliances within about a week.  I sure hope so, or else Thanksgiving Day is going to be a pretty big bummer for the boys.
Later on in the evening Joseph got really despondent about it.  They will likely need to have them in for 6 months to a year.  That is a LONG time for an eleven year old.  It's especially long when you're still on the first (most painful) day.  I told him in 2 weeks if he was still in misery, we'd take him in to have the appliances removed, and go with headgear instead.  I always leaned more toward headgear, since you can take it off during the day!  But Ben is a big fan of herbst appliances, and the boys both told me that's what they wanted, so I'm hoping it all works out.  I think it will.

3.  Our art group came over this afternoon.  We made pumpkin bread.  Making pumpkin bread with 8 kids (and two babies) is quite the ordeal.  I tried to let each child help in dispensing various ingredients, mixing, greasing pans, etc.  After we poured the batter into the pans, and were about to put them in the oven, I licked my finger which had some of the batter on it, and realized that we forgot the sugar!!  That would have been a disaster.  :-)  So we poured all the batter back into the bowl, added 6 cups of sugar (yikes!), and the resulting loaves are delicious.  Since they had to bake for 90 minutes, Brigham came with me later on in the evening to deliver the finished loaves to everyone.

some pictures

I've been so busy with other things the last few months, I've hardly had time for any photography.  But the past few days I've been trying to cheer myself up and escape from reality a bit, so I opened up my folder of pictures from our family reunion in California in August.  I have about 700 pictures to go through (really), so it might take me until next August to finish with them.  Here are a few I've finished so far.

(My sister Rachel's baby, Jacob, all of about 2 weeks old here)

  (picture courtesy of Brigham, I think)

(Baby Jane, my brother Brigham's youngest daughter)

11/12/2012

1.  Monday.  It was a great Monday, actually!  Everyone got nearly all their schoolwork done, there was no fighting and no complaining over practicing.  Who are these children, and what did they do with my kids??  :-)  No, really, I was very proud of them.

2.  We're hiring cleaners to come every couple of weeks and help with deep cleaning.  The boys are not quite ready to take on all of that themselves, yet.  So four ladies came over this afternoon and spent almost 5 hours doing the deep initial cleaning.  Wow, I've never lived in a house this clean!  :-)

3.  Orchestra and archery tonight.  I love seeing Brigham so excited about orchestra.  I love the fact that we found a short-cut way to get to the rehearsal, saving about 20 minutes that would otherwise have been spent sitting in traffic.  While driving the the care, we're listening to John Stossel's book, "No, They Can't," which has been generating a lot of questions and good discussion.  I wish it were required reading for all high school students.

4.  While I was waiting for the boys I blew away my previous record on WordSearch, my favorite time-killing ap on my phone.  484 seconds, baby!  It's interesting to try different strategies.  On the way home we stopped by KFC, Brigham's current favorite place to pick up dinner on the way home from orchestra.  I don't cook on Monday nights!

11/11/2012

1.  Joseph woke up feeling sick.  Being the kind, loving, caring mother that I am, I told him to get dressed and go to Sacrament Meeting and if he still felt sick, I'd take him home.  I figured he was exaggerating and just wanted to sleep in.  He was not enthusiastically complying with my requests to get dressed for church, and so I somewhat impatiently told him to Hurry up and get dressed!  We are going to be late!!!  He went back to his room to get dressed, and I heard him start crying.  Well, that finally got through to me and I realized he really was sick.  Poor boy.  I'm such a jerk.  So he stayed home, and it was good he did because he ended up throwing up three times within an hour of us leaving.  Sacrament Meeting would have been pretty miserable for him...

2.  He was feeling a little better when we got home from church, and seemed to be fully recovered by the afternoon.  My kids get these random transient stomach issues pretty frequently.  No fun!

3.  The missionaries came for dinner.  Two sweet young men from Ogden, Utah.  It's amazing to think that my big boys could be in their shoes seven years from now!  I made chicken and dumplings, biscuits, and jello salad.  Sort of a mish-mash of southern and mormon food, I guess.  :-)  Brigham made a cake, and we had a fun time trading weird stories from the Old Testament.  Did you know there is a story about a flying roll in Zechariah?  :-)

11/10/2012

1.  Mosey had a tae kwon do tournament today.  He was signed up for two events.  For some reason, I thought both started at 1:00 (one was board breaking which was an ongoing event).  We arrived at 12:55, right on time.  Then I looked at the schedule of events and discovered his first event was at 11:00.  Oops.  So he only did the board-breaking.  He did really great, I thought!  There were five different hits or kicks that the kids had to do, with only one try each.  If the kid broke all five boards, a trophy was automatically awarded.  Mosey really wanted a trophy.  But it is not easy!  Most of the kids broke only 1 or 2 boards, and many didn't break any.  During the hour that we were there, only 3 kids got trophies.  So when Mosey got up there and broke three boards in a row, I was really proud of him!  But, he really, really wanted that trophy.  So he got in line again for another try (an extra $10 and 30 minutes in line).  He broke another three boards, including one that he missed the first time, but he didn't get a trophy.  Poor Mosey was so sad.  Joseph got a medal at his archery tournament last week, and I know Mosey really wanted a trophy, too.  It is hard to have high expectations for yourself!  But, he can practice really hard and the next tournament, he will get a trophy!  And I will do better, too.

2.  Meanwhile back at home, Ben and the other boys were busy digging a hole.  We are burying a big container to store buckets of wheat and rice and sugar and other food storage.  It will have to be a big hole! Joseph was motivated by the airsoft gun waiting for him at the top of Ben's closet, and worked all afternoon.

this guy

I wish I could get every American to listen to this guy for a week.  The world would change.

11/09/2012

1.  My string of really super days continued today with a visit from the cops.  Great, huh?  My visiting teachers came in the morning, and I thought the boys were staying busy with schoolwork while I was talking with them.  Turns out Joseph and Mosey were fighting over something, and Joseph threatened, or at least Mosey got scared that Joseph was going to "beat him up," and so Mosey took off outside to get away from Joseph.  He went out without any shoes, walked down Cedar Crest and was walking up Spicewood Parkway when a woman stopped to ask him if he was OK.  Mosey says he said he was fine, but I'm not sure about that since Mosey is not always very good at responding to other adults.  Anyway, he turned around and headed home.  But the lady called the police and then followed him home in her car.  Mosey had just come home and I was working on some schoolwork with him when the lady came up and knocked hard at our front door.  Mosey answered it, and she said, "Oh, it's you!" and then walked quickly away from the house.  I thought that was very weird until Mosey told me what had happened.  Then a couple of minutes later, a policeman walked up to the front door and knocked.  I answered and he said, "Do you have a small child that was walking around by himself?"  I told him that yes, I did (although, is almost-9-years-old that "small?"), and that he and I had just been talking about what happened.  Then he asked, "Why isn't he in school today?"  I told him, "We homeschool.  But don't worry, he and I have been talking and he knows what he did wasn't cool."  I told the policeman and the lady that I really appreciated them watching out for my son, but that everything was OK.  They were polite and and left without saying much else, but I was pretty embarrassed.  I'm sure I really helped to give homeschooling a good name with them.
After they left I thought of a lot of other things I should have said.  Because actually, I don't mind at all if my boys walk around the neighborhood by themselves.  They are plenty old enough and responsible enough, and I have no problem with it.  The only problem was that Mosey had gone out without telling me.  But the lady and the cop didn't know that.  I wish I would have said, "We homeschool, and I give my son permission to take short walks around the neighborhood for exercise."  Oh well.

2.  At least we had a pretty decent day of lessons.  I think everyone finished everything.

3.  In the evening we went to our friends' house for an election pity party.  It was half cathartic and half depressing.  At least I know I'm not the only one feeling this way.

11/08/2012

1.  I couldn't write anything last night.  I was too sick and sad.
On Tuesday, I didn't listen to any of the reports coming from exit polls or anything all day long.  We had scouts in the afternoon, and after that I dropped Mosey off at home, made some quick sandwiches for the boys, and then went to see a movie.  Afterward I sat in a Walmart parking lot until 11:00, reading a book, and then headed home.  My feelings had been growing darker and darker all afternoon and evening long, and so when I got home and saw that all the lights were off, then went inside and found everyone asleep in bed, I wasn't surprised.  I was just incredibly sad.  I went to bed, slept fitfully for about 3 hours, then woke up and lay in bed, my thoughts churning for the rest of the night.
Yesterday was a terrible day.  I cried all day long, I'm not embarrassed to admit.  I felt physically ill and couldn't eat anything the whole day.  We didn't do any school, and Ben didn't go to work.  I think I just wandered around in shock and grief.  At night I watched 24 reruns until I was falling asleep in my chair and then went to bed.
I thought I might wake up this morning feeling a little better, gaining some perspective.  I didn't.  Disappointment has always been my most difficult emotion to process, and this is a big one for me.  Six years is a long time to build up hopes.  And I feel sick, just absolutely sick about what the next four years are going to bring.  The idea that Obama thinks that his re-election means he has some kind of mandate makes me want to scream and throw things.  It's the worst kind of fight-or-flight response.  There's no one to fight, and no where to run.  I just can't believe it's over.

2.  The boys are doing OK.  I thought they might be really upset, considering how involved they have been in this election process-- well over a year now.  But they are doing fine.  I'm glad for that.

3.  I have so many reasons for feeling sad and depressed, but I can't go into all of it.  One thing that is really depressing to me is to think that if Romney had won (and I really, truly believed he was going to pull it off-- up to Tuesday afternoon, when a feeling of dread settled over me-- a premonition, I guess), then an equal but opposite proportion of the population would be feeling just as devastated as I am now.  I think that if Romney had been elected, he had the biggest chance of anyone to "bring us together," given the fact that he has a pretty good track record of doing just that in Massachusetts, but as it is now, this country is going to only get more and more divided along ideological fault lines.  I think there is actually very little common ground between left and right.  People like to say that our goals are the same, it is just the methods that we disagree on, but I don't even think that is correct.  Maybe in a very, very broad sense, in that everyone agrees that having a job, and good health are good things.  But even those simple things are not simple when viewed from the left and the right, because the priorities are so different.  How do you prioritize income opportunity versus income equality?  Quality of health care versus equality of health care?  The end of life versus the beginning of life?  Marriage as an institution validating love between two adult individuals versus marriage as an institution to protect children?  Environmental protection versus economic development, national security, and personal freedom?   The list goes on and on.  These are fundamental questions, with fundamentally different answers, left from right.
My sister posted an article on facebook a few days before the election, in which the owner of a high-end match-making service observed that more and more people using her service now will not consider dating a person of the opposite political persuasion, no matter what other commonalities they have.  My sister was puzzled and dismayed by this trend, but it makes sense to me.  If you take politics seriously, and have deep ideological underpinnings for your political beliefs, then the fact that another person is on the "other side," speaks volumes about that person's fundamental values and priorities.
I suppose if you are not terribly ideologically grounded in your politics, or if you don't mind sharing your life with a person that has a fundamentally different worldview from your own (truly, I don't know how James Carville and Mary Matalin get along!), it might not matter so much.  But I have a feeling such mutual understanding and respect is very rare.

I voted!

I've done my part. The rest is up to...well, I'm not sure, but not me. :-)
I'm going to stay off the computer all day, and go see a movie tonight.
Happy election day, everyone!

Family letter 11/04/2012

Hi everyone,
Who has tried the new gmail email compose window?  Interesting.
Well, the subject line of my email says it:  two more days.  At least, I desperately hope it's only two more days.  I don't think my nerves can take an extended mess like back in 2000.  I wore red, white, and blue to church today in hopeful anticipatory celebration.  I wonder how many people were fasting for Romney today?  Maybe today marks the most fasted-for single person on a single day in modern history?  Maybe ever?  I hope it helps.  :-)

OK enough about that.

This last week was a good week for us!  I think my jewel system is slowly working.  I still need to work on giving more spontaneous jewels.

Halloween was a good day, even though it was piano lesson day.  :-)  We waited too long to get pumpkins again this year, and so ended up with only watermelons and a pineapple.  That's OK.  We do miss the pumpkin seeds, though.  The boys all went dressed as soldiers, of course, and at the last minute Ben put on his old Army ROTC uniform as well and went out trick-or-treating with the boys.  We got only a few trick-or-treaters-- only families that live on our little street.  I knew that would happen, since we're the last house on the road and our house can't even be seen from farther down.  And our neighbors across the street were out of town.
Speaking of those neighbors-- they really are so nice!  Since they were going out of town, a few nights before Halloween, they came by our house with little bags of candy and a dollar bill for each of the boys.  They went around the whole neighborhood to give out Halloween bags to the children.  How sweet is that?

Saturday morning Joseph and I drove out to College Station, about 2 hours away, for Joseph's first archery tournament at Texas A&M.  He was nervous at first, but ended up having a good time.  He came in fifth in his division, and now has a baseline score that he can work off of in future tournaments.  The tournaments last a LONG time!  There are 20 rounds-- 3 arrows each round.  The kids were all divided into two groups, so first group one shot, then group two, then everyone went up to the targets to record scores and retrieve arrows, and then the process started all over again.  Each round takes several minutes, and so we were there several hours.  We got there about 12:15, and didn't leave until 5:30.  And then we had a two-hour drive back home, so it was a pretty long day.  Joseph's next tournament is at UT, so that will be a lot better.

I wore my Romney shirt and got several supportive comments.  That's a pretty safe bet in College Station, one of the more conservative cities in Texas, but I wasn't sure about some of the families in Joseph's archery team-- Austin is an island of blue in a sea of red, as they like to say.  But both of the Archery Country families I sat by told me they liked my shirt, and we whiled away the long hours of the tournament in talking politics.

Anyway, it was a fun day with Joseph, and he had a great time.  Early Saturday morning, before we left for the tournament, Ben set up a place for Joseph to shoot arrows along the back side of our house, and he's spent several hours out there already today shooting arrows, so he'll be able to practice more.

The other fun thing the boys did this week was to get air-soft guns.  Brigham has been wanting one, and did a lot of research online to figure out which one he wanted.  Happily, the one he decided on is carried at Walmart for a very reasonable price.  So he got his on Tuesday night, and the boys played with it (without pellets) all week.  Then on Friday night, Ben decided he wanted to get one, too, so we went back to Walmart and Ben and Mosey got airsoft pistols (much cheaper), and Joseph got one, too, which will stay on the top shelf of Ben's closet until he earns enough money to get it down.  I'm pretty OK with the airsoft gun thing.  They all got guns that shoot at about the lowest speed you can get, which is still fast enough to sting, but not enough to do any damage.  And they're not allowed to shoot with pellets unless Ben is there, and they are all wearing goggles and long sleeved shirts.  Friday night and Saturday, Ben and Brigham and Mosey went out to the forested lots next to us and engaged in some airsoft battles.

Brigham and Ben worked all day Saturday to clean off Ben and my old bedroom furniture, and spray paint it all black.  They got new hardware for the drawers and it looks really great!  Like new furniture!

OK, that's it for tonight.  I hope this week is a GREAT week for all of us!

Love,
Gabrielle

11/03/2012

1.  Early in the morning, Ben set up a bit of an archery range on the back side of our house, so now Joseph has a place to practice.  He was out there for about an hour practicing with his new bow, and the sight that his coach put on his bow on Thursday night.

2.  At 9:45, Joseph and I got in the car and left for College Station for Joseph's first archery tournament at Texas A&M.  It is a two hour drive, but really pretty this time of year.  Joseph and I listened to Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End" on the way there and back.
The tournament itself was pretty interesting.  It took a long time!  There are 20 rounds, with the kids shooting 3 arrows each.  The kids are divided into two groups.  Group 1 shoots, then group 2, then all the kids go up to the targets to record their scores and retrieve their arrows, and then go back for the next round.  It all takes some time, and the tournament itself lasted about 3 1/2 hours.  Joseph sat next to the other boys shooting at his target, and I think had a good time hanging out between shooting.  I talked with some of the other parents which was nice.  I think I will bring a book next time, though.  :-)
Joseph came in 5th, got a medal, and had a really fun time.  He can't wait for the next tournament, which, thankfully, will be at UT.

3.  Back at the homestead, Ben and Brigham were hard at work.  They cleaned off the old master bedroom furniture set (bed platform and headboard, chest of drawers, and side table), spray painted them black, and attached new hardware on the drawers.  It looks really great!  Like new furniture!  I think Brigham is pretty happy about it all, although the furniture does fill up his room pretty well.  :-)

4.  I'm not sure what Mosey did all day, but I'm betting it had something to do with computer games and/or stuffed animals.  :-)  His stuffed animals have been under pretty heavy rotation.  He loved his raccoon so much, its tail fell off.  Luckily Mosey's mom is pretty good at reattaching tails.  :-)

11/02/2012

After lessons, Ben came home from work and we all headed to Walmart for a fun family shopping trip.  Who doesn't like to spend their Friday nights at Walmart??  :-)

After seeing Brigham's super-cool airsoft gun, Ben decided he wanted one, too.  So he picked one out at Walmart, and then Mosey decided he wanted one too.  Joseph wanted one, too, but he has no money at the moment, so Ben and I bought one, but it will stay in its packaging at the top of Ben's closet until Joseph has earned the money for it.

When we got home, Ben had the boys shoot him with their guns so he could see how bad it hurt.  They got pretty low-speed guns, but even so, it does sting to get shot on bare skin.  So the rule is they have to wear goggles and long sleeves and long pants, and can only shoot with pellets when Ben is around.  And then, even though it was 8:30 PM, they all put on their goggles and went out to the empty lots next door and had a bit of an airsoft battle.  I'm so lucky to be married to a guy who loves to play with his boys.