Reclaiming Wood

 Before Damon left on his mission, I informed him Claire would be taking his bedroom. She'd been an angel, sharing a room with Julia since we moved to Kansas 8+ years ago, and I knew she was tired of it. But, I told Damon, don't worry: I'll build you a room in the basement while you're in Mexico. 

Jake was not on board with this plan: finishing a basement is expensive. Not so, I replied. I'm going to "minimally finish" just one corner with reclaimed wood--it'll be cheap. To which he replied, I don't have time for a project like that. Don't worry, I said. I'll do it myself. And by gum, I did. It's almost done, and barring disaster, I'll show you the pictures next week.

In general, I consider Facebook an evil timewaster. But my sister informed me Facebook marketplace has replaced Craigslist as the go-to for free and cheap second-hand stuff, and she was right. A fellow was gutting an old house in Pleasanton (about an hour from here), posted pics in marketplace of the old wood he was giving away, and I was off and running. Here's some of the wood after I'd scrubbed it clean:

Note how handy stored water is: not only can you drink it in an emergency, it can keep your wood from warping as it dries in the sun.

Unfortunately, some of the wood was treated with creosote (a preservative used on railroad ties and telephone poles). I like the smell of creosote and planned to use it in the basement, but some unhappy research revealed it to be toxic and not approved for indoor use. So after ordering a test kit to for the wood that didn't smell like creosote and reassure us (i.e. Jake) that I wasn't going to poison us all, I built a raised bed garden out of clean wood to prove 1. I could build things and 2. this endeavor was already saving us money (raised bed kits started at $75 at Home Depot; test kit was $30 on Amazon plus $10 for screws plus $20 in gas driving to and from Pleasanton a couple times equals a whopping savings of $15).

See the cantaloupe hanging from the tomato cage? That green oval hovering at the middle back? This is a fun experiment to see how much weight a cantaloupe vine can hold. 

I used some of the creosote treated wood to build stands for our water barrels:

FYI, you want your water barrels elevated, otherwise you won't have enough pressure to push water from the barrel, through the hose, to your garden. Also, the larger water barrel is actually supported by cinder blocks hidden by the wood. AND the City of Leawood was subsidizing rain barrels and rain gardens last year. I didn't have time to do the rain garden, but they reimbursed us $150 for the rain barrels.

As you'll hopefully see next week, I used the non-toxic wood from the first photo to panel part of one wall in Damon's room. To build the wall that separates his room from the rest of the basement, I used pallets, also found on Facebook marketplace for free:

Above is the back of Damon's pallet wall. I was fortunate to find a source of pallets that was not only free, but also high quality and of similar size and build. I was also blessed and lucky to get just enough to finish the room. I've been back since, hoping to get enough pallets to wall off the furnace and water heater to make the basement look nicer, but they don't have many pallets there anymore. I suspect someone offered to pay the roofing company for the pallets with the wide boards I like so much, so they're not putting them out on the curb for free. They don't have a listing on marketplace anymore, either. And I haven't been able to find those wide-board pallets anywhere else. It's like the Rolling Stones taught us: you can't always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you get what you need.

Emo Res

 The Church has developed a 10-week emotional resilience course. My stake is trying out a shortened version for the youth (shortened meaning the lessons are only 30 minutes long as apposed to an hour+). Jake (who has now been bishop for 3 years [sidebar: in Catch-22 Dunbar cultivated boredom to make time slow down; being a bishop or being married to one is another way to slow time, i.e. it's been a long 3 years]) asked me to lead the Emo Res Youth Group for our ward.

To train for this assignment, I attended another ward's meeting where I was forced to confront the green-eyed monster. This ward has a youth program like the one I grew up in, the kind I always assumed my kids would also have: lots of active youth who know each other well and enjoy being together. There must have been 15-20 kids there. 

In contrast, at our first meeting the following week, there were four kids: Claire and Anne and the 2 teens of the family we asked to host. My job is to lead the discussion, which should primarily by the youth talking. Getting comments from this group was difficult and awkward. Anne didn't want to be there, and only attended because I made cookies and promised to keep it to 25 minutes. A few weeks later, 2 additional youth showed up, bringing our numbers up to 6, and the lesson was quite a bit more enjoyable, but alas. Those 2 never showed again, and now the host family has lost interest and we're down to just Claire and Anne and Julia (who is a couple years too young, but as it's now at our house, we invite her to join). We trudge through the lessons as best we can. ("best" is used loosely here; our lesson on anger management featured yours truly raging for the full 30 minutes, i.e. my anger was not managed unless you concede that I never threw anything or physically injured anyone).

But this past Sunday we finally had a lesson that felt slightly less torturous. The lesson was "Building Healthy Relationships." We learned to use "I" messages rather than "You" messages, as "I" messages are less likely to offend. The manual gave some examples: a "You" message would be "You never listen to anyone, and you're not really listening to me now." The "I" message version would be "I feel hurt when I don't think I'm heard. Looking at me when we talk helps me feel like you care." 

Julia caught on quickly: "You are a brat" was her example of a "You" message. Her "I" message was, "Callie and Lydia, I feel you are a brat." (I typed that correctly: more evidence that kids are having difficulty recovering academically from the Covid years.)

Later that day (which happened to be Father's Day) Jake got this card from Claire:

Sacrament Meeting Talks

Damon has given two talks, one on the Millennium and the other on the Aaronic Priesthood. See the Bible Dictionary.

Claire gave her first talk last week. See below.

My Uncle Justin is in the Navy. In September he was sent out on a submarine for a patrol where he would have to stay for 16 weeks. This is always hard on his family, and was especially hard this time because my Aunt Melissa was about to have their 3rd baby. They really wanted him to be there when the baby was born, but accepted that he wouldn’t be able to as he was needed during the patrol. The likelihood of surfacing and being able to take leave was extremely slim.

 A couple weeks into the patrol my Aunt Melissa was attending stake conference and the theme was faith. One of the speakers quoted Elder Eyring who said, "The best days are ahead for the kingdom of God on the earth. Opposition will strengthen our faith in Jesus Christ, as it has since the days of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Faith always defeats fear. Standing together produces unity. And your prayers for those in need are heard and answered by a loving God. He neither slumbers nor does he sleep."

Melissa felt she was supposed to exercise faith. She called her family members and asked them to pray for her and Justin. Then Melissa felt her faith strengthened. She knew that Heavenly Father was aware of her family and their needs, and even if Justin couldn't be there for the baby's birth, it would be okay. But then to their surprise Justin was given permission to go home! Nothing shy of a miracle, the submarine surfaced for an inspection. The timing was such that he was able to leave his crew and be home in time for the birth of the baby. He rejoined his crew a couple weeks after to finish the patrol. Exercising faith works miracles. Many members from Justin and Melissa’s ward are retired from the Navy and were in shock that things worked out for him to come home. This is extremely rare given the nature of patrols on submarines where little to no outside communication occurs. 

My great great Grandma Jenny was also a woman of faith. When she grew old she had terrible headaches. The doctors weren't able to help her. My grandpa had just gotten home from his mission and she asked him and my great grandpa to give her a blessing. She was healed immediately and was able to sleep for the first time in days. The headaches never came back.

I hope that when I have hard times I will also choose to have faith.

Spring Breaks 2016 and 2107

Last year we went someplace near Camdenton, MO in the Ozarks. Bridal Cave:

At the bottom of that green water (above) are a raft and a wooden ladder made with wooden pegs. Both were discovered when the cave was being made accessible to the general public. Prior to that, the entrance to the cave was small, and a person could only get in by crawling, meaning the raft was carried in piece by piece and assembled inside the cave by lantern light. The ladder would have been used to access a hole leading to Spirit Lake beyond, which is inaccessible to non-spelunkers like us.

Above are the ruins of a mansion at Ha Ha Tonka State Park. I plan to rebuild the water tower (not pictured) and live in it when I'm rich and own the entire park. Also not pictured is the river in the ravine? chasm? below where blue green water bursts out of the hillside. It's beautiful. Alas, the river is currently poisoned by garbage dumped into a sinkhole some miles away. But I'll get that cleaned out when I'm rich--don't worry about it. Below are more pics from the state park:

And here's Lake of the Ozarks and Jake kayaking:

Anne Queen of the Reptiles with one of her minions:

All the kids wanted to do was stay in the vacation rental and watch movies, except when Anne had a lizard to chase or when it was sunset and Anne the romantic wanted to sit on the dock and tell stories while the sun went down. We had to drag Damon out of the van away from his book to hike around Ha Ha Tonka. Family vacations make me long to be an empty nester.

2017: No pics of Crater of Diamonds. My fingers were probably too numb with cold to operate the iPad. But here's the lake where stayed near Perryville, AR:

Crater of Diamonds

Jake works too much so the kids and I went on our spring break trip without him. He didn't want to go anyway--why pay to dig in the dirt when you can do it for free in your own backyard? he said. I'll tell you why: at Crater of Diamonds National Park in Arkansas you can dig for diamonds and keep them if you find them!

The day we were there a kid found a 7.44 carat diamond--the largest found in 40 years. It was galling when we heard about it on the car radio later. Another thing that made the trip memorable: I didn't pack the tent poles so we had to sleep in the van. That made for a long night.

Things improved after that, though. We spent the next two nights in an AirBnB cabin on a private lake. Lovely, relaxing. The only downside was the absence of a TV, so the kids couldn't watch Season 2 of MacGyver.  (Sad side note: Turns out MacGyver belongs to Toyland. Jake and I have passed its borders, and we can never return again to appreciate his awesomeness.) But there's one more day of spring break, so MacGyver Marathon our house tomorrow!

More Julia quotes and Halloween

This post is not ordered chronologically or any other way.

 Julia saw a bag of candy on the kitchen chair (Halloween night maybe?). She hugged it and said, "Ah, my best friend."

Halloween night. Damon as King Arthur, Julia as a lady bug or dancer or something, Claire as the Wicked Witch of the West, Anne as Ginny Weasley (You know, Harry Potter's wife. We tried to dye her hair red three times with semi-permanent dye. It didn't take.)

Halloween has broadened Julia's horizons. Ever since she's been saying things like, "When I grow up, I want to be a pumpkin" or "When I grow up, I want to play with the kids" or "When I grow up, I want to be a princess."

She created this a few days ago and called it a Halloween decoration:

Julia practiced trick-or-treating in the house, but at the ward trunk-or-treat she was traumatized by the Halloween CD I played. It has songs like MJ's Thriller. So she wouldn't go trick-or-treating for real. Jake tried, but she refused, sobbing. "No! I scared!" Mike Royko would have understood.

Side note: I may have traumatized the bishop that night. I'm in the primary presidency, and the primary is in charge of the trunk or treat, as well as the primary program which was 3 days prior. I've been feeling frazzled for most of 2016, so after the chili dinner/trunk-or-treat when we were cleaning the church kitchen, I seconded someone's suggestion that we just have a trunk-or-treat next year with no chili dinner: no decorating + almost no cleanup = awesome event for everyone involved. A dear lady said, "Oh, but the chili dinner is a tradition." I replied, "Well, the Lamanites gave up their wicked traditions when they converted to the gospel. So can we." She said, "I wouldn't call the chili dinner a wicked..." At that point I walked out of the kitchen and screamed in the hallway. I really did. Just as the bishop walked by. He looked too frightened to comment. Don't worry, though. People were vacuuming, so probably nobody else heard me. Oh, and I had vampire makeup on with fake blood dripping out of my mouth.

Julia quotes

Me: Are you angry?
Julia: No, I Julia.

Me: Do you want quinoa* for lunch?
Julia: Yes, sir.
   *She really likes quinoa. Theory: eat something healthy often in front of a little kid without offering any, and they might ask for some eventually, and even like it. Try to make older kids eat something healthy, and they probably won't try, and if they do, probably won't like it.

Julia: I got pants on my milk.
Me: You got milk on your pants, you mean?
Julia: Uh-huh. Oops, I got pants on my milk again.
Me: You mean you got milk on your pants.
Julia: Uh-huh.