Addictions to Make Us Happy??

 Xai was giving the lesson tonight.

He said at one point, "The Savior gives us addictions to help us be happy." I believe he meant "instructions" but wow, that was a fun spin!

Busy month!

 Buchanan Reunion 2021

We had an amazing reunion with the Buchanans here at our place. It was miraculous that my parents moved in next door just in time to host people there as well. The kids and adults drifted back and forth between our two properties when they wanted to. We played games inside, games outside:

-Minute to Win It—noisy and crazy and Aaron and his team of young girls won, lol!

-Field games inspired by my friend Miss Penny

-Emptied out Opa and Oma's garage of all the burnable stuff and had a giant bonfire taller than my 6 foot 6 inch (?I think?) nephew

-Went to a place to play Combat Archery and outdoor Lasar Tag in a little “course” they had set up...so fun!

-Great music and conversations

-Late night fun (when I wasn't a stickler on being quiet so those who were asleep could sleep :D)

-Swimming at a lake and at the local pool

-Adult/1^st and 2^nd generation dinner at the Purple Chopstix (super yummy, fun place!)

-just basically went with the moment, with a few memorable things scheduled in :D.

It was surprising to us all how relaxed we felt at the end, feeling that someone must have been doing all the work to make it happen but somehow we were all getting a lot more rest than usual! (Probably because the kiddos were always busy playing together really well :D.) Sarah made t-shirts for everyone who wanted them—here and not here—and that was a fun unifying aspect as well.

Kittens

We were delighted to have kittens join our family farm during June. Sadly, the last day of the reunion, one was up under a car and was accidentally run over. The Monday after that, one fell off our elevated front porch and didn't survive the trauma. Two days later the last three just disappeared. We had no idea where they had gone! The younger kids and I went climbing at a local rock area behind Wendy's while Hyrum and Lily worked there. We came down from climbing to find the three little darlings playing under the car Hyrum and Lily had used to drive to work!! Miracle!

We brought them home with much rejoicing!

The next morning we woke up and they were gone. And we haven't seen them since.

There has been a lot of heart ache in our family due to this chain of events. We have five little graves...four with nothing in them since something dug up on of the other ones. Fortunately, a friend of ours has two kittens from a litter that she is giving away and we have learned our lesson. These kittens will be staying in an area in our basement until they are old enough to fend for themselves.

Poor little dears!

Visitors!

We have been blessed to have the Shetkas arrive shortly after the Buchanans left! They are super chill and fun to have around and they plan on staying for a month! We have already been climbing, swimming, gaming, playing, chatting, laughing, eating, cooking, biking and pretty much just enjoying being together. They are in the midst of a wandering lifestyle, visiting many beautiful places around the country as they work online and show their kids some great places. We are grateful that they have made us one of their stops :D.

They have even survived the great millipede infestation of 2021. At first they were cute. Then they were a nuisance. Then they got creepy! One night, we went out and there were hundreds of them outside of our back porch door!

Thanks to some research and some diatemaceous earth we have balance restored but yikes! That sure wasn't a pleasant thing to have to go through for a few days.

Fowls

We are down to 34 chickens but haven't lost one in over a week, so we are hopefully getting more stable. We think that it is our dogs, every time we lose a chicken, the dogs have been off the chain unexpectedly.

Our guinea fowl have been successfully transitioned out to the main coop with the hens and are settling down together. Every once in a while they will venture out to the big scary outside world and boy do we hear it! But the little darlings will soon join their chicken compatriots in debugging the immedate vicinity around our house. Yay for natural pest control!

And, we've gotten a few eggs from the deal :D.

General

-Hyrum has given his two weeks notice at Wendy's. He has a full Fall and has saved up a bunch already. He also just finished up his online driving course at last so we can schedule him for his road driving course so he can get his license. However all the “local” places are booked through January so it might be awhile. He's having fun trying to squish in time with friends.

-Lily is still working there and possibly going to start working for Quinn, who is insanely busy trying to transition and get in a new groove here as a independent appraiser with so much work. She is doing more with her dog, Love, who is almost full grown and not as big as we thought she would be so her parenting is probably a little different than we were told. She is saving up for a huge road trip or trip to Europe and is talking about serving a mission.

-Drew has started writing stories again which I see as a huge sign of improved mental health. His wound that he got from parkour (that required three deep stitches and five superficial ones) is finally starting to heal as is his ankle which we are still not sure if it was broken or not. (He dropped a huge dead log on it while helping clear some old debris with the other kids.)

-Tova and Ben are enjoying Texas together...well, they are enjoying being together anyway! Tova just finished up a semester and is loving her break before fall classes start. Ben is almost up for his one year contract renewal and is looking at options. Tova is writing a play “Remarkable” that I hope to put on next spring.

-Piper is running more and more and is running more and more of the animal portion of our farm :D. She loves her goat, helps a lot with Kujo and training and is our “first one out” every morning to water and let the chickens out of their coop. She loves games, reading and is still an amazing helper. She spent some of yesterday climbing trees.

-Havala is still very musical. She doesn't like bugs so doesn't spend a lot of time outside but is super cute working with the younger kids. She is excited about our choirs and plays this fall, as well as seeing her friends.

The little ones miss their Buchanan cousins but are really enjoying having Olivia and Owen around. It is fun hearing them play around all day! We have played a lot of games but I think we will start settling into more of a school routine the next few days. We are also enjoying swimming—the boys especially are making a lot of progress! Elijah actually passed the swim test and went off the diving board a few times, scaring those watching a bit when he swam the wrong way and when he tried to get the water out of his eyes in a deep section. Crazy six year old kid! Love him so much! He's been pretty feisty lately so not sure what to do about that but endure to the end (or enjoy to the end as Quinn puts it!). Liesl is still pretty obsessed with Penelope. Penelope is loving the “hold my hands and walk me”stage. She also is cautious about edges (so grateful) and crazy about stairs (not so happy). Just the other day, she was found at the top of our second landing outside our patio up a huge flight of wooden stairs. She was just sitting at the top, calling out at the top of her lungs happily. Yikes! Fortunately we have kept the downstair's door closed pretty consistently, with only one scare that I can remember...finding her sitting at the top reaching out for the sparkle lights I have on the wall there. We had fun on a bike ride yesterday and enjoyed sitting in the cool of the library afterward, soaking up books. I am grateful that these particular children are a part of my journey here.

We survived a pretty brutal stomach bug that was apparently going around both our family and the local community. Yikes!  I've not been that sick in so long.  Fortunately we recovered in time to get our COVID vaccine yesterday.  Drew and I had an "engaging" discussion about it on the way in. I've conceded that the pros outweigh the cons for me personally, but I detest the shaming, alarmist, coercive rhetoric that many people use on both sides of the "whether to get vaccinated or not" issue.  No place for it, in my mind, and Drew was touting a comparison that was a little extreme for me.  I must confess it almost made me walk out and not get it but I'm trying to reign in my emotional responses a little more lately :D.

I have finished adapting our Les Mis (non-musical) script that I rented from script licensing agency, 30 pages of awesomenesss. I am enjoying reading about Acton School and the Socratic method of teaching to prep for my classes in the fall. It's going to be an awesome year!

Oozing Love as a Sleep Cure?

 Yup. There the "siren" went again.

After writing and posting something on my Lazarus blog this morning about Penelope's recent sleep miracle, my Penelope started wailing. 5:23 am. She did give me from 10:30-3:00...ish. But I fell asleep while snuggling between Elijah and Liesl in Lily's bed during Quinn's nighttime reading so I got a nap from 9 to 10:30 :D. Sleep. It's over-rated.

Liesl and Eli are doing better at sleeping at night and not having accidents. I kind of had what I think is an epiphany about their sleep habits that might be worth recording.

A few weeks ago...or maybe a month...I was lying awake in-between times Penelope woke me up during the night. As I lay there, I heard her do a sad little sob. It wasn't the typical “I need!” outburst. It felt like a deep emotional sorrow uncharacteristic of one so little. It puzzled me and I started pondering on what would make a tiny soul, “so fresh from God” as Dickens put it, mourn with such gravity.

I felt like the Spirit whispered an impression to me of the many sleepless nights when I was basically going crazy with her. While she was never in any physical danger—or really any kind of danger—I was extemely off balance sometimes and even as I held her in my arms oh so gently, my soul raged. My friend told me once that if you sleep deprive animals that they become similar to rabid animals and I felt it during some of those months. Fortunately I had the humanity to recognize it and be moderate in how I handled my children for the most part, but they could tell that my sanity within was kind of wacky. As could I.

During one of those times, I remember holding Penelope on top of my tummy. It was about 2 am and she was happily awake, gabbing and chatting in her baby language.

And I was done. I remember her looking at me and smiling. Me glaring back at her with so much negative emotion and her cocking her head and looking puzzled at me. And smiling again.

I didn't think much of it until that night when I heard her sob.

What if all those extreme negative emotions leaked out and she felt them? How could she not! But what if she internalized them at a “conditioned” level?

It make me reflect on those years before...I've never been a very internally calm parent at night. I'm much more a morning person. I'm actually much more a “sleep through the night” kind of person, come to think of it, lol. However, my last few children, I've noticed, are particularly sensitive. In fact, it seems that they are either coming more and more sensitive or I am just noticing it more or more...but that is neither here nor there. :D

So what if Penelope has “night time” associated with all those negative vibes that I was experiencing? What if that was part of her struggle to feel peace while she slept? And what if that is also why Elijah and Liesl struggle to a degree sleeping alone?

My dear sister Jackie (technically “in-law” but in my heart “sister”) once quoted Gordon B. Hinckley as saying that every parent does things to their children that their children should get therapy for later. God knows that there are no perfect parents on this earth and somehow it is still part of His perfect plan to send children down to them. So, having internalized this truth, I am a little over beating myself up over it. I need to repent, change and try to fix what I can and know that God—who loves these little ones more than I can comprehend—has sent His Son to atone and compensate for and heal all those wrongs. I can't change the past and beating myself up for it changes nothing for the better and just limits my ability to change and do what I can do.

So with this truth in mind, I thought, “I wonder if I exude love and all those warm, fuzzy feeling emotions to Penelope when she wakes up, if that will help? And maybe doing the same with my other two little ones when they go to sleep at night will help heal them as well?”

One of the million beautiful things about God is that sometimes He lets us be a part of the healing process :D. Over the past month I have seen her night time outbursts lessen and felt her drift off to sleep peacefully as I ooze as much love and adoration into my emotions as I can as I snuggle with her. Super cool.