Wedding Week

 This week has been quite the big one prepping and traveling for the wedding!

The first goal was to get out of our very slippery driveway :D.  On Saturday last Quinn led a group to break up and shovel away a good section of ice from the steepest section of driveway.  Hyrum, Piper and Hava helped me do some more on Monday and Hyrum gave it a final go-over on Tuesday.  The temps dropped to right above freezing the night before we were scheduled to go, so I was a little nervous.  Drew came home early from working at Wendy's the night before we left so the timing was tricky.  

We managed to get up the driveway (miracle!) but when I tried to turn around I got stuck in the mud.  Yikes!  The kids helped push me out and I carefully maneuvered back to where I started without turning around.  We loaded up and were set to go around 5 am the next morning.

Penelope was pretty excited to get going and screamed until around 1 am...perfect! Oh well.  I am glad I got a nap earlier that day.  We loaded up and were off!  I drove for a couple hours then let Hyrum take over once we were a few hours in. I then pumped milk and slept.  Yay!! Hyrum navigated perfectly to our first stop, Mammoth Caves, KY.

Masked up and socially distanced outside the cave

I loved the external terrain.  Hard to believe over 400 miles of huge caves are beneath our feet!

Penelop was cozy and managed pretty well, especially considering we ran out of expressed milk about 1/3 of the way through...yikes!  I fortunately remembered my parents making a binki out of a bottle nipple by putting something in to block the excess air coming in.  She fell asleep finally about 20 minutes after the milk ran out. A miracle!!

The descent.  It was so beautiful!

Everyone divided up into buddies.  Liesl was ecstatic to be Drew's!

On the way out again.  So fun!

I loved this shot of the two of them. If you can zoom in any more, you can see Xai's little cheeks puffed out like little balls :D.

From Mammoth Caves, we began the drive down to our hotel (and pool!) in Arkansas.  We had planned on stopping at a specific location along the way for a cultural dinner of authentic southern cooking for Hyrum's class.  However, as we headed southwest, we discovered there was a traffic incident that was adding an additional 1 hour and 30 minutes onto our drive.  Yikes!!  No thank you. We found a closer cultural experience to hopefully wait out the fix-up time.

Loretta Lynn's Cafe was just the place!  Look at those southern options....

For those like us how had no idea who Loretta Lynn was, she's the lady in the background picture. 
This little community was built up around her fame.  Still not sure why she is associated with the place, but it was fun and the people were darling.  

Our little hostess was darling and kept hopping between drinks and misunderstandings, like..."what??? I thought 'country fried steak' meant BEEF?!?" (Three very disappointed girls discovered that country fried steak actually has nothing to do with steak...other than it's meat.  Sort of.)

They even had some cool tourist trap picture posing places for us. 
(We decided against that wasp infested telephone booth.)

Drew's craziness is contagious :D.  Love it!

The "normal" shot for me.  Still love it!

Well, the accident was still there with an over an hour delay.  Needless to say we didn't pull into the hotel until around 10 pm after a diarrhea accident, Hyrum pulling into a red-light intersection, baby Nell not sleeping well and three-year old having a meltdown about what music we were listening to.  When I stormed into the hotel lobby (with two mismatched shoes) and the unfortunate woman behind the desk decided to be cordial and ask how my day was, I didn't mince words.  "Absolutely dreadful.  The best thing that is going to happen is hopefully going to bed." (Remember that little one not sleeping well?)  I was throwing a big girl tantrum and my kids were amazing.  They always teach me so much about compassion and kindness. Hava kept telling me she loved me and cuddled with "the porcupine" (me).  Drew jumped up to help with whatever I could have possibly wanted.  Hyrum was a steady driver (other than the red light incident, from which we quickly recovered) and Piper did a 5 hour stint in the back keeping the three littlest happy.  

Truly, they were magical and wonderful. I had some expectations I had to evaluate, like my irrational hope to make things better by sheer will and planning. Sometimes things just don't work out and, per Quinn's favorite Elder Holland maxim: "there is no situation so bad that whining about them won't make it worse."

I definitely made it worse but here we are.  We survived.

We enjoyed some time with Quinn's cousins, the Bryners, the next evening with pizza, fruit and breadsticks.  It is amazing how some people seem to never change. It was delightful!

We slept at my cousin's house (Texas is rife with cousins apparently) and had a delightful time with them.  They have six kids nestled in the ages of my own and love to laugh, talk, play games, watch movies and basically do things that my kids like to do!  The little boys were in heaven on Friday playing laser tag and nerf gun wars while we chased around doing last minute wedding stuff (like chewing out Kroger's).  My cousin, Liz, was amazing at keeping us fed and keeping her cool while we traipsed in and out with our chaos and mess.

The drive home was epic. We dropped off my parents at the airport and headed out for a 17 hour drive.  Whew.  We stopped over for about 1 hour in a misty Arkansas park to get a stretch around 7 pm, while we cleaned out most of the last of the food from the trip.  (Planned pretty well, if I do say so myself!) I had polished off the mini Cadbury eggs (my favorite) earlier that day so wasn't too hungry.  

Quinn slept in the back of the van for a few hours while I drove until I couldn't stay awake no matter what I put in my mouth or on the radio so he switched up to the front around 10:45 pm....and drove until morning! Whew. So great to be home!

Nell is super happy to be home. She got a good nap and is happily bouncing. 

Tova is happily married. She and Ben headed south to the Gulf of Mexico for their honeymoon and I'm super happy for them!

I reflected on Isaak's life and bore testimony during church about the role of Christ and His Atonement in helping me through that hard time.

We video-chatted with the most adorable little grandson ever! He's a darling.  Oh, and his parents. :D  I love this Sunday tradition of chatting with them.

Tova's Wedding in Texas!

 My cousin shared how she likes to write things in individual journals for each of her kids and then give them to the child as they turn 18.  For a split second I thought, "Awwww...I wish I did that!" and then I thought, "I'll just tag the child in each blog post and voila!!! They know where to find it :D."

I really like the idea of having a hand held copy but...reality!!  They can print them up if they want after seeking them out through the posts, right???

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So, BIGGEST NEWS!!!

My beautiful daughter Tova is married!!!

What a weekend.  I really don't know where to start...

--the low-key prep that Tova wanted and, really, succeeded in having.  It took like 15 minutes to drape and prep the room with the stuff that she wanted.  It took a little longer to put together the flower baskets with rose and daisy petals beforehand, but we just did that at my cousin's house and Drew headed up that team.  Everyone pitched in. Piper and Hava put the baskets together.  Drew, Hyrum, Maia and Xai did most of the flowers with Piper also pitching in there.

--there was a little stress in making sure I had roses there for rose petals for the flower kiddos to throw.  That was the only part that Tova really requested--red and white with roses and daisy petals thrown by a multitude of adorable flower boys and girls (which almost outnumbered the rest of the guests...)  Since Texas had been hit by a winter storm of historic magnitude the week before, we weren't sure if the roses I had "ordered" through Kroger's would be there.  I say "ordered" with quotations because, with Kroger's, apparently ordering online is not truly ordering at all.  It just means that at the appointed hour I specified, if there happens to be roses on the shelf right then, I will get them.  They will not order them ahead of time. They will reserve nothing....I mean, are you in the year 2021 or the year 1985???  Sigh. We got three dozen that they happened to have on their shelf when we came in and it worked.  10 dozen worth of rose petals would have been epic but Tova was happy.  Which leads me to my favorite part!!!

--Tova is so happy!  She and Ben were really focusing on what mattered most: the fact that they loved each other and were getting married! I kept reminding Ben's family that that was what the day was about and they did a fairly good job at not being stressed and not micromanaging.  They did so enough that Tova and Ben got the night they wanted...as follows-

1) wedding dress tailored by Oma (she ended up hand doing it between 3:45 when she showed up from the airport, along the way to the wedding venue, and finished up by 6:15 pm....go Oma!

2) pictures of both sides of the family before 7 pm

3) twelve of the most adorable little flower people...six of which were mine so I may be a little partial

4) Tova walking down the aisle on her daddy's arm

5) beautiful ceremony under a rose-studded arch where she beamed at her beau through the whole thing....all in a lovely white dress standing in a mini-ocean of rose petals

6) dance with her daddy to "Cinderella" (tears!)

7) Ben's dance with his mom to an amazingly appropriate song from a video game

8) a final dance with Tova and Ben

9) smashing of cupcakes into each other's faces

10) the couple sneaks away while everyone else is enjoying the ice cream bar they set up

--I purchased a GIANT bag and filled it with fun "wedding weekend" stuff and left it in their car

--I also purchased a pan set similar to the one my mom gave us for our wedding.  Apparently, his mom had a similar idea and voila!!! They have two identical pan sets, lol.  I told them to tell his mom how perfect that gift was and that I would return mine and come up with something else...a gift card to Amazon to prevent it from happening again. (I am hoping they buy some book shelves.)

The younger kids had a great time picking up rose petals and throwing them up again and again--during the dances, during the ceremony, during clean-up.  Then they rounded out the experience by gorging on cupcakes and ice cream.  'Twas quite the night :D.

Drew was the music man.

Hyrum was the ice cream man.

Lily was the bridesmaid and came down the weekend before to do wedding stuff with her.

Piper led the flower children down the aisle.  Hava brought up the rear.  The littles were cute.  Penelope screamed any time anyone clapped or cheered.

Perfect :D.

...now I'm just wishing I had pictures :(....

Sledding and Sass

 The kids just came in from an epic sledding adventure. Apparently on one run, they all tried to go on the same run and the three little ones fell off, Liesl happily dragging behind and the boys getting their breaths knocked out a bit.

After the trauma subsided, Liesl asked Lily to carry her up the hill (which serves as our driveway most of the time). “I can't carry you because you are too heavy with all of your snow clothes on, sorry!” Lily smilingly consoled her.

Lily continued up the hill. Shortly later, Piper (who was not privy to the above conversation) came trucking by with Liesl on her back.

“See, Lily...” Liesl called out as they passed. “Piper can carry me!”

Wow. Three and distinctly sassy.

Listening to Hair and Adventures in the Snow

Last night, Havala leaned over Lily, who was sitting and eating hummus after a hard day's work at Wendy's. Hava breathed in deeply and said, "If I listen really closely to your hair, I can hear you eating."

Ummmm....

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, Piper and I were enjoying our Indian food spread. It was slightly cold, because it had made quite the trek:

-home from Athens (25 minutes away)

-from our car to our house--up and down our icy, snowy driveway...along with the rest of our groceries

-sat on our counter-top while we put away aforementioned groceries, had a quick scripture and prayer (hosted by Drew and Hyrum) and cleared off enough of the table to eat.  Star of India.  Delicious. Worth the wait!

(Trekking the week's worth of groceries from the car parked near our barn all the way down and up the hill to our house--some of it on the sled--reminding me of hauling groceries home by foot in Hungary. My arms felt much longer when I arrived home.)

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It's been an interesting week.

After going to insanity and back again (check out mylazarusquest.blogspot.com post for that story), I called it a week and we had a “party day” Thursday with games, food, and the making of Valentines.  We watched a new (unliked) version of “Secret Garden” (Colin Firth doesn't always disappoint but this time...), the kids played outside and we all did some dog training, with the littler ones helping us train them on what not to do, lol.

Friday, the older crew arrived home.  Lily had gone back to Medina with Quinn for an MRI and blood work.  Her feet have been swollen to varying degrees for about two years now and we are checking things out to see if we can do something to help. Hyrum tagged along so he could hang out with friends there and Drew regularly make the pilgrimage with Quinn.  It was just Piper through Penelope and all the fun in between keeping me company. It's amazing how small a group seven kids seems when it means seven other people are gone.

These two darlings got creative using a little left-over dough from their creations that day.

Piper loved watching the oil heat up.

Maia captured two of our cats snuggling.

Arm-wrestling!

Piggy-back rides at the breakfast table...only these boys!

We did indoor workouts, made yummy treats.  One day, Piper made homemade bagels, Hava and Maia made from scratch French fries and turkey roll-ups for lunch, and Piper made donuts for dessert.  It was not a good healthy day and we all felt it...but they were yummy!  The next day we "purged" with oatmeal for breakfast and lentils and homemade bread for a late dinner right before Primary days for Xai and Maia over Zoom. (Their teacher is awesome with it!)

The kids played "icka-keebas" and made "nests" on the upstairs landing (delightfully out of my view so they could stay there ALL week)...

...tons of paper airplanes...

...played games...

...chilled...

...posed for Valentines' card pics...

and dressed up and acted out "Dwight in Shining Armor" scenes  (BYU-TV...check it out!)

It ended up being a wonderful week.

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We got a lot of snow (like the rest of the country...can you say "Second Coming" everyone!!!).  It meant that I was unable to use our van. I started to on Wednesday night at the end of my "melt-down" crazy time.  We were out of dog food and I was looking forward to a little excursion to town for a change of scenery. I had to laugh and cry hysterically as my van basically slowly slid the first 20 yards down our driveway until I put the emergency brake on and decided it wasn't worth risking sliding into the creek at the bottom of the hill.  (Our van sat there until Friday when Quinn tried to take it the rest of the way out the driveway and only succeeded in sliding it about 30 yards further before he did the same thing I did.  Sigh.)

It also meant that the kids tried out hill after hill on our property...unfortunately including our driveway "hill" which is the most clear hill around (and which makes it even more slippery).  Yesterday I enjoyed it too by going out cutting down briars, do some dog training and basically hanging out with my pals Eli and Liesl.  Eli is my little buddy in his cute five year old "mommy pal" stage. (Love it! Check out Clousen's "So you want to raise a boy?" for more clarification on that stage.  So insightful and accurate!)  He loves to make sure he knows where I am at, confide in me, get my advice on everything, watch everything and basically pal around all the time. He is super cute.

At one point, I heard Xai's blood-curdling scream.  It curdles my blood a lot less these days due to the frequency with which he uses is, from actual injurious situations to differences of opinion to the onslaught of imaginary leagues of deadly germs from his brother's licking.  So I didn't give it much heed. I slowly made my way over, anticipating scolding him for yelling at his brother but it seemed the little tyke actually had a legitimate claim to my sympathy: he had taken a "sledding path" that his little brother had used just before him and diverted off of it, crashing through tree starts and mini-bramble bushes.  I used my handy-dandy cutters to make my way down (and give him a thorn-less way up).  When I triumphantly showed him the path (all the while reminding him of the "boy who cried wolf," he was happily oblivious to both my triumph and my lecture.  He had recovered, it seemed, and not learned, because I soon left him and Eli pursuing his "cross country" path down even further to where it had a somewhat precipitous conclusion (in my mind for kids this age).  But they would have none of my reigning them in!  I made my way back up the now cleared path to our driveway, my mom's desire to keep my kids from any kind of harm battling with a relief that at least we didn't have neighbors to worry unduly about the adventurous kiddos.  Ironic.

Later that day, Xai arrived in the house, breathless.  "We almost died out there! Liesl and Eli and I kept having to save each other!!"  Well, apparently it wasn't scary enough to necessitate anyone to come in any earlier :D.  Liesl and Eli casually strolled in later, anticipating hot chocolate and the movie that I told them they could watch when they were done playing outside.  The dogs were taking a nap in their crates during this time so it was fun for the littles to just explore without worrying about too much puppy love.

It was good to be outside today.  Good to be without a schedule looming over me.  Good to just be able to work on the land, dream about what we will do with it, breathe in the cool air and watch my kids grow, explore and learn, stretching themselves and discovering what they are capable of.  Maia and Havala explored all over, finding a small cave-like area on the border of our property and our neighbors.  Maia took off her coat at one point at the beginning (yes, there was snow on the ground) and put it up in a tree to keep it from our playful Kujo.

Hyrum and Lily came home to full days of work at Wendy's and basically crashed when they got home.  Whew. Their work has been scheduling them for some crazy long hours, which will have to change, but for now they are surviving and starting to save up for those things they hoped to earn from my wallet, lol.

It is so wonderful, as always, to have Quinn back.  He is making so much progress on getting licensed and good to go here in Ohio. I hope he will be able to stay here with us more soon!

Dorsey, Dogs and Miracles

 Update!  We just got a new dog!  She's a Great Pyrenees and she's so sweet. It was something of a miracle how we got her.  Lily's wanted a huge furry dog forever.  We always said, "No way, Jose!"  Well, I kept feeling like we needed a companion dog for Kujo to kind of teach him to be mellower.  I was looking for an oldish type of mutt but nothing seemed to be pulling up except for aggressive nature dogs at the local shelters.  I had quite despaired but the prompting kept coming so I checked again last Tuesday.  There at the local shelter was a Great Pyrenees...puppy.  Yikes.  Not what I wanted.  But the breed is supposed to be super sweet and mellow.  She was inexpensive and was available that Friday. 

Reading through the site material, I saw that we needed to take our family and current pets in to meet the prospective adoptee.  So on Wednesday we all loaded up (well, most of us), including our Kujo and one of our cats.  The drive is about 30 minutes and Kujo wasn't pleased at all.  We picked up a charger (my phone with directions was almost dead) and two new crates to transport our doggies on the way.  

The kids were soooo excited as we pulled up to the shelter.  I knocked on the locked door and a woman came to the door with a perplexed look on her face.  "You need an appointment."  Oh dear.  I explained that it was a misunderstanding but if we could take a minute to meet "Love" (the dog) while we were there, it would be terrific.  She didn't think so. "There are already a whole bunch of people interested in Love. You would have to put your name on the list."

Yikes.  Oh well.

I went out to a van of disappointed kiddos. I told Lily that if she wanted to go ahead and put her name on the list, she could. "You never know..." I said.  Lily hurried in to add her name to the list and found out that it was actually a drawing situation. 

"You have a chance!" I told her.  "Let's all start praying for Lily's dog."

We prayed that night and the next day.

It was 9:48 am on Friday morning.   We were in the middle of a huge game of Carcassone while I was pumping milk for Penelope when we got a local phone call.  I had completely forgotten about the dog but immediately thought, "Dog shelter!"  I slid the phone across the table to Lily and exclaimed, "It might be for your dog!"

It was!  

"Can we pick her up tomorrow?  I have work at 11.  No?  Alright, we'll be in as soon as we can!"

We loaded up the same group.  Fortunately we had already done the load up drill the day before and we knew just what to do!  It was only a 1/5 mile down and up the driveway to the parked van since our driveway is still too slippery for our van to drive on.  And we were off!  On the way, we did a quick call to Hyrum and Lily's work at Wendy's to tell them we might be a little late. 

Love and Kujo were gentle and adorable in their introduction section, we hurried through the paperwork and we were off with our new not so little puppy!

Whew.

Outside of a new puppy, here's a little look at our week:

Eli is our resident Spaghetti Sunday taster for Quinn's weekly meal.  (It's amazingly delicious.)

Maia is one of many wonderful care-helpers with this little darling.

Liesl "painting" the breadstick pan for the complementary Sunday dinner tradition.

Baby Nell loves her tongue and her bouncer :D.

My adorable grandson!!

(Who gets some of his good looks from his daddy ;)...)

???

Big brother snuggles

Dorsey in the window!