The oldest four kids have all moved out. They’re living all over the place so we don’t see them as much as we’d like. India (and her husband Ethan) both graduated from college last year. They’re living in Arizona where they have grown-up jobs and two cat-children. York and Arabella are in Utah. York thinks he wants to come back to Austin where people are “normal”. He hasn’t finished college, nor does he plan to. Despite what we tell him constantly, he doesn’t see it as a necessity. Oy. Finn lives the closest; he’s in downtown Austin. He goes to school and works and is also in the military so we only see him every few weeks.

Ada and Jasper are our only kids at home. It’s so, so strange to only have two kids around. After making meals for what seemed like a million people, I almost feel like only cooking for four is barely worth my time! Jasper is finishing up 9th grade which was almost entirely on-line. He went back for a week after Christmas but kids in his class kept testing positive for Covid so he’d have to stay home and quarantine, and after a while it was like, “meh, might as well just stay home permanently”. Ada is in 10th grade and has been going to school in person since September. (She and Jasper go to different schools.) Almost nobody in her grade has tested positive, so she hasn’t had to quarantine a single day. That’s pretty miraculous since our Texas schools have been very strict about quarantining all year. Ada turned 16 last month and got her driver’s license on her birthday. It’s been wonderful, except for a couple of fender benders she got in during her first two weeks of driving. Whoopsie!

And what about me? Well, with most of our kids moving out, we decided that having a 4600 square foot house was a little absurd. So we moved into a rental and fixed our old house up to sell. Let me tell you, after having eight crazy people living in that house for twelve years, it was BEAT UP!

I also decided to go back to work. I currently work as a closet designer, which I really enjoy. I get to help people but not in an emotionally draining way. If you’ve never remodeled your closet so that you finally have room for everything, it’s thrilling. Is thrilling too strong of a word? Not according to my clients.

There is a lot I’m not saying about the last three years. In some ways it’s been incredibly tough. There have been some very hard things. It’s also difficult to blog about older children. They pretty much don’t want me to talk about them at all. That has to be respected, even though I would really love to hash some things out with y’all and get your advice. Alas, that’s not how it works anymore. Fellow parents of teens and young adult children, I see you! I acknowledge the mess that you can’t really talk about. Hopefully you’ve got a friend to confide in. The worst is having to die inside because your child has got some issues that they have requested you not share with anyone but you really, really need to talk to someone about but you just can’t. If you’re in that boat, I feel for you. I truly do. Try to hang on and don’t start sobbing at Walgreen’s when the pharmacist asks if there’s anything else you need help with. Like, an ugly cry where you have to cover your face and you don’t know what’s happening because you’ve never broken down like that in public but that’s where life is at these days. Not that that has ever happened to me. Ahem.

Some of the bad things have helped Mister and I become stronger as a couple. Our marriage is pretty much the best it’s been, so that’s good. I’m very independent and for the most part like to do what I like to do, without having to take anyone else’s opinion into account. Becoming part of a team has been a hard one for me; it’s just not how I work. But when hard times come, if you try to keep being a lone wolf, marriage becomes even harder. Being a team makes everything so much easier, and that’s a lesson I still have to remind myself of regularly.

Getting the pointy and sharp edges of one’s personality smoothed out is really unpleasant, but it’s the only way to become a better person. The process is yuck, but the results are yay!

So there you go! My whole life in a nutshell. I’ll expand in the future and promise to write more often.

The wedding was at the temple for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (commonly known as Mormons or LDS but we prefer the longer, more formal name) in San Antonio, Texas. It’s a two hour drive away from our house so we ultimately decided to have the wedding on a Friday evening and have the reception the next day instead of cramming it all into one day. Traditionally only the very closest family and friends attend the temple wedding. It’s a very short ceremony and not at all like a traditional wedding. So we planned a ring ceremony with the couple walking down the aisle and reciting vows along with a large reception on Saturday morning before the reception. Ethan’s mom is a pastor at the Methodist church nearby and she performed the most beautiful ceremony. It was really the best of both worlds.

Every single weekend in April and May in Austin had been rainy so I was a little panicked that we might have rotten weather, but it turned out to be warm and bright and perfect.

We were fortunate enough to find a fantastic photographer who was willing to go to the temple on Friday as well as cover the wedding festivities on Saturday. If you’re in the Austin/San Antonio area, I can’t recommend Vanessa Lain highly enough. I was a little worried that she would be way too expensive but Bonnie, the groom’s mom, and I agreed that a good photographer was paramount. Fortunately Vanessa worked with our budget to meet our needs. I don’t care how tiny your budget is, wedding photos are not something to skimp on because it’s ultimately the only thing that will be left over after the wedding is done. They’re the things your kids and grandkids (great-grandkids?!?) will look at forever. If you’re planning a wedding, don’t leave pictures to a family member or friend! Pay for a decent photographer!

The Next Morning, May 12th, was the ring ceremony and the reception. From day one India and Ethan insisted that it be a morning wedding followed by brunch.

The event was held in Ethan’s family’s backyard. It’s full of twisty oak trees with a view of Lake Travis in the distance. If you aren’t familiar with this part of Texas, it’s hilly and green. Their backyard is stunning and we were so blessed to be able to hold the celebration there.

The menu for brunch consisted of donuts (of course), A yogurt parfait station, buttermilk silver dollar pancakes with Darren’s homemade vanilla syrup, a cereal bar, fresh fruit and omelet bites (for all the gluten-free folks).

Congratulations, India and Ethan! You’re amazing people and you’ve already made it three years!

(If you have more questions about all the wedding details, the next post goes into every single aspect.)

We’re fortunate that both the bride and groom are from here in Austin, so that made everything really convenient and we could combine our spending power into one nice wedding and reception. India showed me her pinterest boards and told me to figure out the details. She and Ethan had a few things they absolutely cared about, but the rest was up to me as the mother of the bride (and as a picky person).

India and Ethan had already decided on everything before they even got engaged. They wanted a brunch reception (weird, but OK) and they wanted blush, sage and cream as their wedding colors. After going back and forth on dates, they finally decided on May 11/12, which was the sixth anniversary of their very first date. Perfect! The weather here is pretty decent that time of year too.

Our first DIY was the wedding invitations. India showed me some that she really liked from a fancy stationery designer. At $4 per invite that was a big fat “no”.  Bonnie (Ethan’s mom), India and I hammered out exactly what we wanted them to say and I designed them. I used to be a big fan of really formal types of things, but now I feel like formal things are lame and pretentious. I like things to be pretty and charming while steering clear of tackiness or being too cutesy. I used the font “Madelinette”, which is one of my absolute favorites. I also scanned an old book page to make the fronts and backs of the invites look like vintage paper.

I wanted the invites to be on really, really thick cardstock. Like, so thick you probably couldn’t even use a magnet to put it on the fridge. Kelly, my brother in law, works for a printing company and totally hooked me up. The invites were perfect and the cardstock had a layer of green sandwiched between the white.  And of course I addressed them by hand using my sweet calligraphy skills and some lovely white ink. (FYI, metallic paper is so lovely if you’re using a pointed pen for the envelopes. It’s smooth like a dream.)

Most Mormons add a picture of the happy couple to the wedding invitations. I don’t really know why but it’s totally a thing that has been done for decades. I think it’s kind of odd. I mean, if you want to see the bride and groom, just come to the reception! Nowadays with social media it seems even more odd. So I didn’t add a picture and I’m sure the Mormons were turning the invitation over and scratching their heads.

We decided to hold the reception in the backyard of Ethan’s parents’ house. It’s a bit far out in the country, but they have gorgeous old trees in the backyard and a view of Lake Travis. It’s just so lovely and shady. Because the ring ceremony and reception were at home, we saved a lot of money not having to rent a facility. India said there was no way she’d have her reception in the church gym.

India and Ethan really wanted farmhouse tables but even to rent they were super expensive. So guess what Ethan’s family did? They made six of them! Made them from scratch! We also rented circular tables. We rented all the chairs too.

The wooden tables didn’t need linens since the wood was so gorgeous. But the circular tables did. Craig’s List came through and I got floor length white table cloths for less than it would have cost to rent them.

I bought the napkins at a local wholesale linen company. They were the same price as rental napkins but I sold them all after the wedding for the same price I bought them for so they were essentially free. My brother Ben and his wife, Nicki, spent hours ironing and folding them before the wedding. It’s dumb little things like that that eat up so much prep time before the wedding.

India wanted mismatched vintage china for the reception tables and after toying with buying it all, I quickly realized that would be way too much effort. Luckily I found the sweetest woman, Patty, who rents out vintage china in Central and Eastern Texas. She had even bought several sets from a woman whose aunt was Lyndon B. Johnson’s secretary. Mrs. Johnson had given her a set of her dishes that she had used in the White House, and now we were using them! How cool is that?

A month before the wedding, my friend Stephanie came to visit from Oregon. I took her to Round Top–the biggest outdoor antiques fair in the country–and we stumbled upon a man selling piles of vintage flatware. After striking quite a deal with him, I bought 300 forks, knives and spoons. Sweet Stephanie set there for over an hour helping me pick out the best pieces. They needed so much polishing but Ethan and India did that when they got back from college.

Stephanie is a fellow soaper and she helped me make a few batches to use as wedding favors.

I also made tubes of lip salve to give away with the soap. Because who doesn’t like a good lip balm?

The weird thing about a daytime outdoor reception is how to decorate the venue. Flowers are good for tables but what about up high? Lights won’t show up, so those are pointless. I love, love paper lanterns and they were a natural fit for decorations. They’re cheap and the colors we wanted were actually on clearance at Paperlanterns.com. All the boys in the family got together the day before the wedding and hung them all over the trees. We ended up having so many more than we needed. But better safe than sorry! It had rained every single Saturday for the four weeks before the wedding and I prayed as hard as I ever had for good weather. And our prayers were answered! The lanterns were safe.

I ended up doing the flowers myself which was a major money saver. I really loved doing it and everything looked so amazing. Although when I was up at 2 am the night before the wedding, up to my eyeballs in flowers, I wasn’t thinking it was such a great idea.

But India’s bouquet turned out to be particularly gorgeous . . .

As did the bridesmaid’s bouquets . . . .

Wedding cakes are so expensive and I’m normally a real cake snob. But when I was browsing cake websites and saw the exact cake India had on Pinterest board at H.E.B. (our local grocery store) for 60% cheaper than the fancy bakery I liked the most, I was like, “H.E.B., it is!” Once I found out they had an all-butter option for the icing, that sealed the deal. The cake was perfectly tasty and nobody would have guessed it was from the grocery store. My sister picked it up at 6 am and we were good to go!

So many of our friends stepped up and helped decorate, serve and clean up. It truly takes a village to put on a cost-conscious wedding. Fortunately my village is made up of the most superb and wonderful people in the entire universe.

They both returned from Mormon missions last year so there was a brief get-to-know-you-again phase since they spent over two years apart, only writing emails and letters. Turns out they still like each other.

This is my first child and our first wedding so there has been a steep learning curve, but you know me and my enthusiasm for beautiful things and DIY.  Just like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to put on a wedding. You can either hire that village or you can implore your friends and relatives to help you out. People have really stepped up to give us a hand and it’s only going to get more intense as the wedding gets closer. Fortunately I have no problem asking people for help and they’ll rue the day they offhandedly said, “let me know if there’s anything you need help with.”

Well, I need 200 origami cranes; here’s the paper! (Just kidding, we bought the origami cranes online from China.)

I have decided against making the wedding cake in order to preserve the small amount of sanity that I still  have. Making wedding cakes is maddening even under ideal circumstances. When I went to order the wedding cake, the lady at the shop told me how brilliant I was not to make my own. She has four kids and sadly never learned her lesson. She also assumed I was the bride, but I explained the cake was for my daughter’s wedding. She said, “What? Did you give birth when you were nine?!?”,  which was a terribly sweet thing to say. Mister thinks she was just trying to butter me up. Whatever. I take all compliments, even fake ones.

I’m also not making the wedding dress because I AM NOT CRAZY. Everyone asks if I’m making it. These people obviously don’t know how hard that would be. I am, however, making all the bridesmaid dresses. So I am partially crazy.

Here is what I have decided to DIY: the flowers.  I love, love, love flowers and our budget for flowers did not allow the arrangements India was hoping for. At least, not done professionally. But Hildie, amateur flower-arranger extraordinaire, is on the case! So we’re ordering a bajillion flowers wholesale and we’re going to have quite the flower-arranging party the night before the wedding.

These blooms are going to be the star of the show: Hanoi Cloony ranunculus.  I saw these in a picture and I literally gasped. I knew we MUST have them for the wedding. It took me weeks to track these beauties down because I had no idea what kind of ranunculus they were. I figured it out but I was sadly disappointed because their growing season ends in April but the wedding is in May. Fortunately I have excellent sleuthing abilities and I found a grower in South America that will have them next month. I’m so excited! I think that makes me an official flower nerd.

Also, peonies are gosh darn expensive. Even wholesale. But can you blame me for not being able to resist these? India prefers white flowers but to me they are so blah. From far away you might as well have a bouquet made of wads of toilet paper. So we are planning on quite a few white flowers, but we’re adding some blush in there as well. Pink is just plain prettier. 

In addition to flowers, we’re going to DIY the food. Most of the food, at least. Here’s the good news: it’s a brunch so it will be easy-to-make breakfasty foods. There will be a donut wall, of course. I’m always looking for any excuse to serve and eat donuts. Now I just need to figure out how to make 400 pieces of bacon with only one oven. Maybe I need to have a bacon-cooking party.

I’m also making the wedding favors. Not to spoil it or anything but I made the mother of all soap batches last week. I filled up every soap mold that I own. My house smells really lovely with all that soap curing. It just occurred to me looking at this picture that the soap has a definite 70’s vibe with the green and gold. But I assure you it won’t look like a barfy avocado and harvest gold kitchen when all is said and done. Trust me.

Ethan’s parents have gone above and beyond in the DIY department. When the happy couple told us they really wanted wooden farmhouse tables for the reception, I took one look at the rental prices and said, “too bad, so sad”. But Ethan’s parents stepped up and made several farmhouse tables. From scratch. I don’t even know what to say.

The wedding will be here before we know it. I’m praying I don’t have a nervous breakdown before then!

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You probably have one of those rooms in your house that was OK a few years ago and you frankly haven’t given it another thought since then. That was my living room. When we moved into our house ten years ago (a record for us as the most time ever spent in one home) the room had mustard yellow walls. Mister liked them and I though they were fine. Our grand piano took up most of the room but we threw some bookshelves in there as well as some mismatched wingback chairs. I found some lovely striped silk fabric (dirt cheap!) a few years ago and made some curtains and that was that. And then one day last year I walk past that living room and saw it for what it was: a really ugly room. It was dark and drab and screamed 2003 with the earthy colors.

I instantly knew what I wanted it to look like. The look I wanted just fell into my head. Grey,black and white with emerald green accents. The guitar we have is exactly the color I wanted. I even brought it along to the fabric store when I was trying to find a matching green for the throw pillows.

Anyway I thought about the look I wanted for the living room for about 60 seconds then I got in my car and went straight to Home Depot to buy paint. I painted the entire room and ceiling within a couple of days. What was shaping up to be the quickest and easiest room redo ended up taking almost a year to finish. My budget didn’t want to cooperate and my decorating projects were vexed at every turn.  And then life just got in the way.

But I persevered! And now I have a living room that makes me smile instead of cringe. Technically it’s more of a music room. I play the harp and several of the kids play the piano or guitar or both. There’s also a hammered dulcimer which is usually in its case because it’s quite large. And some ukeleles. And a violin. Like I said, it’s a music room. It also doubles as a library where most of my and Mister’s books are kept. (The kids’ books are all kept in their rooms). The best cell phone reception in the house is in here too, so the chairs come in extra handy for having juicy conversations.

I am a stickler for getting the best price and great deals, and this room is kind of an ode to that. These hideous chairs are from Craig’s List.  I’m just praying that brown and beige never come back into style but I know they probably will. Sigh.

I refinished the wood with chalk paint then reupholstered the chairs with a jaunty black and white buffalo checked fabric. And I sewed some new curtains and throw pillows too.

The fabric for the curtains and the chairs was a little too stark white when it arrived in the mail. I had gotten swatches but you can only tell so much from a 4″x4″ scrap of fabric. The moulding and the book cases in the room are a much warmer white. They looked awful with the fabric. Which meant a couple of hours of me stirring 15 yards of fabric around a bathtub full of hot tea to bring the fabric to a warmer shade of white (the black was unaffected by the tea treatment). Quite a pain but the fabric was less than $9 per yard so it was worth the extra effort.

Et voilà! The white on the fabric looks perfect with all the white wood in the room. The cowhide rug ended up matching beautifully too. It was another of my Craig’s List steals. The gold side table was a clearance find at Target for $30.

Lamps are quite a budge buster. How can they cost so much? They all come from Chinese factories so it’s not like you’re paying for superb craftsmanship.  There was a lamp online that I fell in love with that was green and gold but it cost over $400. For one stupid lamp! Fortunately Hobby Lobby and a can of spray paint came to my rescue.

Here’s the lamp I bought for about $45 at HobLobs. Nice shape but I find plain white pretty boring.

Here it is after I took some paint to it (I even painted the lampshade because why the heck not?):

Here’s something I learned about gold paint during this redo: It’s pretty crappy. Gold craft paint (the stuff in the smallish plastic bottles that are less than $2 at any craft store) is dull and lusterless and lacks any real panache.  Instead I opted for “liquid gold leafing” for the lamp which I found at HobLobs in the gold leafing section. It smells absolutely hideous but it covers divinely and has a shine that is unrivaled by plain old paint.

I also used authentic gold leaf on the planter. Well, not real gold because that’s expensive. But whatever the sheets are made of that look like gold. Again, Hobby Lobby has the best selection I found. I was able to change the planter that I found at Target, which I loved the shape of, but was made of ever-so-boring unfinished wood . . .

. . . to this!

I was really looking for texture and shine; gold leafing beats paint, hands down. It’s a true pain to work with but whatever. An artist has to suffer for her art.

The prints on this wall are from a superb and very affordable photographer on Etsy named Day Three Creations. I had them framed in some scratch and dent frames I found at the Pottery Outlet for less than $25 each. They were white originally but a quick can of blackish bronze spray paint added some drama. I love the extra bit of style the shape of the frames add to the wall.

All in all, I think this room was worth the wait. It’s a place my kids love to hang out in, whether they are practicing their piano or playing instruments with friends. Or just trying to stay out of my way so I don’t assign extra chores to them.

P.S. It goes without saying that the bookshelves are from Ikea. Because that’s where cheap people shop.

P.P.S. Don’t ask what color I used for the walls. It’s a grey I made up when all the samples of grey that I got from the store weren’t quite right. I mixed a few of them up until I got a result I liked, then took it to Home Depot to be color matched.

Finn graduated from high school. Graduation ended at noon and every picture we have outside has me with my eyes closed because I’m a blinker to start with and the sun was relentless. So here’s a picture of Finn with Arabella, a non-blinker. These two are thick as thieves and when they’re both home, they’re nearly always together.

Finn also got his Eagle Scout Award. I really can’t stand Scouting at all and I was no help whatsoever.  At a Court of Honor each Eagle Scout has a display table featuring all his Scout-related accomplishments and accouterments. The good moms have saved all the Scout-related items since their son was a Cub Scout. They have tables featuring old Pinewood Derby cars and framed awards. The bad moms have to call a neighbor to borrow a Scout Shirt and have never even bought a sash, let alone sewn all the merit badge patches onto it. They decorate with pictures of their Scout doing Scouty things because wouldn’t everyone rather look at a picture of the kid rather than look at the kid’s old Cub Scout shirt on display?  I’ll let you figure out which type of mom I am.

The very morning after the Court of Honor, an announcement was made saying Mormons won’t officially participate in Boy Scouts anymore. We all groaned and laughed. Of course they announced it the day after Finn became an Eagle Scout. And then I did a happy dance because I’ve still got Jasper that I don’t have to worry about now.

Mister and I celebrated our 25th anniversary. I’m pretty darn proud of that because if you’re married you know it’s a lot harder than you thought it would be back when you were naïve and single. I love Mister so much. Like so, so, so much. But marriage is hard work. Despite that, we made it a quarter of a century!

We decided a couple of weeks beforehand to sneak away to Florida for a few days and catch the U2 concert in Tampa.  The Joshua Tree is one of my top five albums of all time and the concert did not disappoint. As I should have expected since there were double rainbows!

The resort we stayed at on the Gulf Coast in Longboat Key was heavenly. It had a couple of golf courses so mister could play while I hung out in a cabana at the beach all day, ordering virgin piña coladas. Sometimes simple trips are the best, and this was certainly the case. 

Also, the shells on the gulf coast of Florida are amazing! I came up with quite a technique for finding the best ones; it involved picking them up out of waist deep water with my toes.

Jasper had a birthday (my baby is 11!) and got glasses. Last year at this point none of my children had glasses. Now three of them do. What’s going on???

India, who had gone to BYU for Spring term, came back for the three weeks. And my mom came to visit for a while too. My nephew James from Portland also came to stay with us. We had to show him a good time in Texas which meant lots and lots of swimming.

The big summer event was that York got home after being in Brazil for two years. One of the families in Brazil made a farewell cake for him and his companion. This companion, Elder Jeffries, was the one he sat next to on the flight down to Sao Paulo. They came home on the same flight too. Crazy to think of all the changes that happened to them over the last two years.

When India got home I sobbed buckets. When York got home all I could do was laugh through tears.

It was beyond wonderful having all my babies back in the nest. Our first stop was Kerby Lane for pancakes. The first meal home back in America is always a big deal.

How long do you think it took before the arm wrestling started? Less than an hour (York won).

York came back a much improved version of himself. He’s happy to be with us and somehow developed very tidy habits. He does whatever I ask and doesn’t have to be reminded. It’s pretty fantastic. He and India jabber to each other in Portuguese all the time.

We took advantage of everyone being home and went to stay at the beach on South Padre  Island for several days. It was lovely having us all be together. We tried to keep TV to a minimum and just enjoy each other’s company. Here is one thing that I’ve forgotten: six children are loud. I am not accustomed to that much noise anymore. I had to escape to my room every once in a while just for some quiet time.

We hung out at the beach and got a little sunburned. It’s safe to say that I like the beach more than everyone else in my family combined.

We took sand-castle making lessons from Andy, an Australian bloke we found online at sandcastlelessons.com. He brought all his tools and helped us make this masterpiece. We got this finished in about three hours. Building a really great sandcastle is nothing like I thought it would be. But now that I know what I’m doing, the beach will never be the same!

Andy also taught us how to make sand spheres.

We hadn’t every been to South Padre before and in case your Texas Geography is a bit cloudy, it’s an island off the coast of Texas about five minutes from the Mexican border. We stayed at a pretty big resort and there were only about two or three other families we saw that were American. The rest were from Mexico. (Or rather, the other families were Latino. I have no idea what country they were citizens of.) I really could kick myself for not ever taking Spanish lessons. In my defense there were zero Spanish-speaking people in Detroit when I grew up except for a Jewish family from Argentina who lived on our street. Anything Spanish or Mexican seemed a million miles away. I don’t even recall seeing any Mexican restaurants in Michigan. We had Middle Eastern culture everywhere but Spanish anything was completely unheard of.  Finn is so blessed and lucky to be going to Colombia where he’ll eventually speak Spanish fluently.  Speaking Spanish is a necessary skill if you want to have a leg up in America, especially in border states like Texas.

Anyway, we got Finn all outfitted for his mission and I even taught him how to make his own ties. He made a couple all by himself! He may have worn sneakers to church up until the time he left, but we let a whole lot slide.

Once all my minions were home I didn’t waste any time getting all my projects done. Project Number 1 was digging out the old “lawn” (AKA weed patch) and installing some new sod. My helpers did a fantastic job. 

When Mormon kids go on missions, they usually give a 10-15 minute speech in church before they leave and then again within a couple of weeks of coming home. Because York was coming home and Finn was leaving within three weeks of each other, the boys were scheduled to speak on the same week. Because this was a big deal, lots of relatives decided to come into town for the weekend. The boys’ special Sunday ended up being the weekend of Hurricane Harvey and several of the friends and relatives who were supposed to come had their flights cancelled. Grandpa made it!

It ended up being a snug weekend indoors with Mister’s brother, sister and parents. Some friends of ours hosted a wonderful party in honor of the boys and a lovely time was had by all.

On September 5th Finn left for Colombia. The country, not the university or the District of. You can’t believe how many times I have had to clarify.

He’ll be at the Missionary Training Center there for six weeks then will take a short flight over the mountains to Medellín. He’ll be in and around that area for the next two years. We cried and waved as he went through security.

We were so thrilled that Finn decided to go that any sadness we felt was eclipsed by happiness and pride. We have always told him that we only wanted him to go on a mission if it was his own decision. And for several years he told us there was no way he would go. You guys can’t even guess at all the stress, worry and heartache that boy has caused us. Every grey hair on my head arrived once he turned 15. He’s a good boy–better than he thinks he is–but my gosh, the devil lives in 15-year-olds. He’s had his ups and downs but ultimately we’re pretty proud of the person he became by the time he turned 18.  If you’ve got a 15-year-old, don’t kill them. They will eventually become civilized and pleasant humans, even if takes a while.

Last week was the first week I finally felt like everything has been back to normal. With so many people coming and going, our house has felt crazy for months. But it’s back to business and I’m pretty happy about that!

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As you probably know, I live in Texas. I am in Austin and when Hurricane Harvey hit, aside from people creating a ridiculous gas shortage that was of their own devising, nothing much happened. There were copious amounts of rain and wind all weekend, and my brother–who was supposed to fly in for a visit–had his flight cancelled straight out. But that’s about it.

Houston is two or three hours east of us and you all know what happened there. Since the flood waters have receded, we have been spending weekends over there helping people muck out their homes, ripping out everything down to the studs.

We are Mormons and pitching in is what we do (officially we are Mormon Helping Hands and you can find us wearing bright yellow). Each weekend we have been grouped into a team of people from our congregation (usually around 10-15 people per team) and assigned an address of people who have requested our help. So as not to be a burden on the area, we have been asked to bring our own tools, supplies and food.  We head up on Saturday morning, sleep at a high school outside of Houston and have a short church meeting on Sunday mornings before we get back to work. This is our second weekend doing this and we’ve been asked to continue for the next couple of weeks at least.

Because everything has been soaking wet, we brought along rubber boots. At least that was the plan. The girls already had some but York and Mister didn’t. And every pair of rubber boots in Austin had been shipped to Houston already. Seriously. There were no rubber boots in Austin. Even waders from the sporting goods stores had been sent to Houston. So we were left with very slim pickings. Fortunately we found some “shrimper boots” (shrimp catchers wear special boots? Who knew?) on clearance at Dick’s Sporting Goods. Luckily York likes them. I mean, who doesn’t want to look like they own a hazmat suit?

We got to Houston early on Saturday morning, donned our yellow pinnies* and got to work. The first weekend I took York, Arabella and Ada and we worked entirely in Katy. Last weekend Mister took the kids.

This has been heart-breaking work. Not being in the floodplain, nobody in this area had flood insurance. Person after person told us how they had nothing left. One older couple had used every penny they had saved up to buy a new house and furnish it from scratch when they arrived in Texas in April.

In some of the houses we worked in, the residents had just been back for the first time that morning. I can’t imagine the trauma of seeing so many things you’ve owned, lying in dripping wet, ruined heaps around the house. Many things weren’t directly touched by flood waters, but had to be thrown out anyway because of all the mold growing everywhere.  Here’s a section of wall about three feet long, covered in mold. Imagine this in every room in your entire house. We wore N-95 face masks to keep the mold out of our lungs. I’m not sure how well it worked, but we tried.

As is normally the case in America, trash goes out to the corner to be picked up. Only the trash here wasn’t just a few bags; it was entire houses. Not just furniture but insulation, sheetrock, mouldings and appliances. Street after street, house after house had piles as tall as a person out front.

Many houses we cleaned had had flood water sitting in them for two weeks when we arrived. Carpet was soaked and smelled horrifying.

The floor in this house was white tile with a white bathmat. You can’t even tell.

Some other people on our team were down the street attempting to clean out this house. Remember that everything in this picture is soaked and moldy.

Load after load we pulled out floors, ripped walls down to the studs and gutted kitchens.

One thing that is impossible to explain is how awful the smell is while you’re mucking out a house. Everything is moldy and rotten. But none of that compares to the horror of the fridge. Imagine a fridge or freezer, full of food, sitting in several feel of water for weeks with no electricity.  It smelled worse than death. We would tape the doors shut so they didn’t accidentally swing open, but a rush of water would always come out as soon as the fridge was tilted up and put on a dolly.  More than one person actually ran outside and threw up (Someone in my family, who shall remain nameless, threw up in her mask when the fridge went by).  There was so much stench that even going outside wouldn’t provide a breath of fresh air.

You would think that we would have been depressed all day after doing this for more than one weekend, but that just hasn’t been so. As we cleaned along side the owners of the houses, neighbors would stop by to offer a hug or a word of advice.  People pulled wagons up the street offering free bottles of icy cold water or Gatorade. One woman made sandwiches and loaded them up in a tote bag, making sure everyone had something to eat. We found ourselves recipients of hot Chinese food, delivered by the owners of an Asian restaurant who lived on the street.

As we drove out of the neighborhood in Katy last Sunday to go home, we found children at one corner who were giving away homemade cookies and brownies.

At another corner was a sweet husband and wife who were offering pizza or vegetarian Indian food to anyone who wanted it, free of charge. We were so happy to have a hot meal after working hard all day.

We were all touched with the care that these people showed for each other and for us. The neighborhoods we’ve worked in have residents of every color. As our family has worked in Houston we’ve been so impressed by how people’s skin color or country they were born in doesn’t make any difference. Everyone has been willing to offer a hug or a kind word or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to their neighbor.

These are my fellow Texans and I love them.

*I had a long and drawn out discussion of the word “pinnies” with my husband. He insisted that he had never heard this word before and that I made it up. But what else do you call a mesh vest?

SaveSave

I don’t have cancer (at least, not that I’m aware of). But cancer has been particularly brutal to those that I love and care about lately. I’ve been filled with such a swirl of emotions that I’ve really had a lot to process.

In the last seven days I received word that one of my sweetest and most wonderful friends, Stephanie, was diagnosed with Stage 4 Metastatic Melanoma. Stephanie was my first real “mom friend”. We met when she moved into my town in Oregon when both of us had two-year-old daughters plus another baby. The first day we met we had on the same dropped-waist corduroy dress from Eddie Bauer (mine was burgundy, hers was dark green). I knew we would be friends and we still are. She’s one of those people that always runs and makes healthy choices, not like some people (ahem, Mountain Dew addiction) so it’s a real stunner that her health has been compromised. She has four children and it’s just all wrong.

Also this week, the ten-year-old son of another dear friend passed away after a short battle with Leukemia. The loss of a child is never happy under any circumstances, but Wyatt and his family had been getting ready to go on a much-needed relaxing cruise. Instead they had to stay home and arrange hospice care. So much heartbreak. I look at my babies and wonder what future tragedies will befall them. I want to gather them close and protect them from all the pain and heartache. But that’s not a mom’s job, even though every mom wishes it were possible.

On Thursday a friend down the street passed away after a struggle with breast cancer. Her son and daughter were the same ages as my youngest son and daughter and we have so many fun memories of double playdates. My friend’s struggle has been a long one. They suspected the end might be near, though, and wondered if she would be able to make it to her son’s fifth grade graduation ceremony which will be next week. In the end, the school surprised her with a little graduation ceremony for her son and a few of his buddies a couple of weeks ago. Such a compassionate gesture that ended up being perfect and timely.

All this heartache and grief has been pressed together side-by-side with so much happiness. We’re so thrilled for Finn and his decision to go on a mission (for several years he told us there is no way it would happen). And we got the flight info for York to come home from Brazil (there will be about three weeks when both boys will be home and the whole family will be together!)   I’ve kind of had emotional whiplash this week.

All I know is that God is good. He’s not some master puppeteer that decides on every little things that happens to us. We happen to live in crappy world where things just go wrong a lot. It doesn’t take any planing on God’s part to make that happen.  But God does have the ability to take any horrible, rotten, disastrous thing and turn it into something that will help us grow and become amazing. Not every bad experience will do that, or every person in this world would be overflowing with wisdom and compassion. But we can turn to God and ask how to make the anguish into something beautiful. He’ll show us how rub away the rough edges and make us the best version of ourselves. That never feels good while it’s happening but it’s all about making us sparkle for eternity.

I don’t know what will happen with Stephanie, or how Wyatt’s parents will possibly go on living without their boy. But I do know that there is joy in this world. There are happy times as well as sad times. Our Father in Heaven does love us and bad things don’t mean He doesn’t.  We’ve all got to take a separate journey to find that out for ourselves. You can believe what I’m saying but you’ll have to take your own journey to know.

Well, after sixteen days, Finn received his mission call. When you agree to go on a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, you have absolutely no say in where you will go.  The church leaders who make the assignments prayerfully consider the file of each missionary and look at the notes added by the leaders who interviewed each potential missionary. But there is pretty much no input from the missionary him/herself. It requires a lot of faith that this missionary will go where they are needed.  Sometimes the call makes sense (the missionary who gets sent to France after taking four years of high school French). But most of the time there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason.  But nearly every missionary I have spoken to has felt like the place he or she went was exactly where he or she needed to go.

I was shocked when India and York both went to Brazil. First of all, because Brazil is just not a country on my radar. But also because their personalities are so different and it seemed absurd that they would go to the same place.

Now that she’s home, it’s easy to see that India’s experience was so perfect for her. Being naturally shy and introverted, the warm and welcoming people of Brazil were just what she needed.  She was able to talk about God freely with Brazilians, most of whom have at least a passing belief in God and aren’t ashamed to talk about it.  The laid-backness of the culture helped her take her anxiety and perfectionism down a couple of notches.

Brazil, for York, has been a place to learn humility. Nothing like living in the third world in an apartment with mold growing on the walls and no heater or air conditioner to teach you about what is important in life. It’s been amazing to see York focus on the importance on the family (Brazil has a LOT of deadbeat dads and families that are fractured) and see how fortunate he has been to have a caring mom, dad and siblings that provided him with a stable and peaceful life. He has told us numerous times how grateful he is for us and how sorry he has been to not appreciate us in the past.  Sadly, that is not how he felt before his mission. We were all a bunch of idiots who were trying to make his life awful. It’s been wonderful to see that change of heart.

We’ve been excited (but mostly stressed) to find out what Finn’s mission call would be. He for sure didn’t want to stay in the country. He was also hoping to learn Spanish.  I knew he would be so let down to get a call in the United States, but we tried to prepare him for that possibility (I’d say the odds of going to a mission in the U.S vs. foreign are about 50/50).  So where will he be going?

Finn is just thrilled with his mission call. I’ve heard it’s a great place and, despite it’s crime during the the 80’s, it’s become the gem of Latin America. Also, the temperature year round is an average of  72°, giving Medellin the nickname of “Land of Eternal Spring”.  I think we may need to visit!

York is still the same kooky kid he’s always been.

He’s excited to come home in three months but he wants to work hard up until the day he gets home. Good boy.

Having experienced the joy of seeing a child return after a mission, I can hardly wait. I can’t even tell you how amazing it was to welcome India home. Having a missionary come home is every bit as exciting as having a baby. But with none of the pain, mess or nervousness that she’ll be deformed! There is nothing but happiness and joy at welcoming home this person that you love so much and has made fantastic choices and grown as a person over the last 18-24 months.

As soon as India came down the escalator at the airport I started to cry. I bawled big ugly sobs as I got to hold my firstborn baby in my arms again. I was so happy to see her and so thrilled that she had done it! She had made it through her mission which was wonderful but so hard and so tough! She had returned from Brazil with honor and was safe and sound. It was relief and joy all mixed together. My heart was fit to bursting and it was one of the best experiences of my life. When we die and go home to God, I wonder if it will be like that. He’ll be so excited to see us and to have us home safe and sound. He’ll hopefully be proud of us and our hard work and will be thrilled to have us around again. I like to think that’s how it will be.

In Utah, welcoming a missionary home is a big deal. Everybody and their dog shows up at the airport. But I knew I only wanted family to be there when India got home. I politely informed all the people who wanted to come along that it was just for our immediate family. And I’m so glad I insisted on that. It was such a lovely, wonderful experience that wasn’t diluted with a jillion people asking questions and getting in the way. Coincidentally my friend Buddy was there picking up her sister who was on India’s same flight so we had someone to take pictures of our family. She’s got a missionary daughter too, so she gets the whole thing.

In less than three months York will be home. He is planning on staying home and working all of fall semester to earn some money, so we’ll have a grand time getting to hang out with him until he goes to BYU after Christmas.

Baby #3, Finn, is just about to graduate from high school. He’s already turned in his mission papers and we should be getting his call any day now. We have no idea where he will go; it could be Mississippi or it could be Mombasa. Finn is an adventurous soul so he’s hoping to go someplace totally offbeat. Or at the minimum, someplace where he can learn Spanish (it’s cool that my older kids could learn a language, but Portuguese? Not exactly something they’ll be able to speak much). I pray every day that his call will be inspired and he will be at peace with it. Strangely, I’m hoping he goes someplace weird too. Not so much Mesa or Boise.

Wherever Finn ends up going, it will be an opportunity to become an amazing person. Not everyone has a fabulous experience on a mission, but every missionary has the opportunity to let humility and hard work teach him or her to become stronger, have a deeper belief in God and to love everyone with the pure love of Christ. I know this has been the experience of York and India and it’s something I will be forever grateful for.