things that get broken

There are reasons that we didn't have a lot of nice/fancy things in our home as the kids were growing up.  There is a lot of breakage of things as kids grow from infancy to adulthood.
The sheet rock on the hallway walls was always marred and dented.  Partly because it is a narrow hallway and any furniture that is moved, bumps the walls.  But mainly, I think most of the dents were from little feet.  A disciplined child often had to sit in the hallway.  It was just wide enough for a young child to sit with their back against one wall and kick the wall on the other side. Also because of a narrow style hallway, there were a few dents because of climbing activities.

Sometimes the kids didn't own up to broken things, or tried to play dumb, but sometimes they ratted each other out.
We came home one evening to this note:
Mom, Brady was kiking his sokrball and he kiked it relly hard and brok the back door window. I think bug's are going too come in. I am skrd. Belev me.
Love Roxanne
I could honestly feel her fear as I read "I am skrd. Belev me!" (this was a note I put in our 'save' box)

The strangest incident was a toilet that wouldn't flush.  At all, It would not even drain slow.  The drain was completely sealed closed.  When the toilet was disassembled and removed, we could see that the floor drain was not plugged, so it was the toilet itself.  The toilet was taken to the backyard to investigate the problem.  There was a leather baseball skin adhered to the curved drain in the base of the toilet.  Why??  How can that question ever be answered?  Why was the leather taken off the baseball? And why did someone feel a need to flush it down the toilet? And why would it adhere itself so tightly to the ceramic drain to cause us to spend an entire Saturday removing and reassembling a toilet?

Another evening, we came home to this note:
The toilet broke by Brady playing with it. It was just an accident. The glass (ceramic) broke. The water ran everywhere.  I turned the handle down at the bottom. It was hard but after the water just touched the brown tile I turned it. We cleaned it up best we could.  Sorry! Rachel
(how could we get mad when the water had been stopped, floored had been cleaned up, towels washed and dried?)

The list of broken items could go on and on:

Living room window - toddler throwing a set of car keys.

Van -- teenagers (enough said).

Trampoline -- expected, a lot of usage over the years.

Dishes - expected.

Spoons - always missing, kids must be selling them on the black market.

Wallpaper- brand new wallpaper put up in child's bedroom.  3 foot square ripped off before nap time was over on the very first day. 

Closet door - markers, has anyone raised kids without markers on the walls at some point?

Christmas stockings -- I used a pencil and was writing the kids names on the stockings so I could embroider over the writing.  Melanie decided to help me and wrote her name on hers in a child's handwriting with a black sharpie.
Glass top coffee table - children crawling under the table and trying to stand up while still under the table.

Carpet stains - inevitable. 

Brown swivel chair - a favorite chair. It swiveled, it rocked, it twirled. It was the most comfortable chair we owned. We kept it way after it was torn up and should have been tossed. 

Piano keys -- markers, chipped.  

FHE chart -- rotating pieces with our names on it to rotate weekly assignments.  Names often got lost/broken.

Blankets - taken outside, loved to death, worn out in so many ways.
Worn spots on the roof. teen kids liked to go outside of the upstairs bedroom and sit on the roof. A traffic pattern began to appear.

The kids are leaving the house one by one now, The house is becoming quiet. I'm kind of enjoying redecorating and carpeting, but I'm hoping one day there will be some grandkids running around with markers and loosing our spoons. 

are you smarter than a 5th grader?

Well, Melanie got her mission call yesterday.  She will be living on the other side of the earth in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.  As we replayed the video (which I can't seem to download here) of her opening her assignment, we overheard each other saying "She's going to Czechoslovakia!"

I later learned a few things.  There hasn't been a Czechoslovakia for over 20 years. Does that embarrass me that we didn't know that?  Yes. Yes it does. (although in our defense, she said "Czech/Slovak", it sounds similar, right?) I thought it might have been a country on the Risk game board (our source of our basic geography knowledge growing up), but I just looked up images of current and older game boards and there has only been northern Europe and southern Europe, so I suppose our Czech knowledge really did come from 5th grade geography (pre-1993, when it really was Czechoslovakia)
On the video you can also hear us say it is in Eastern Europe.  Although it is more 'east' than some other European countries, it's really in the central region. The Czech Republic borders Germany and Austria. Rather than geographical differentiation, there are cultural and religious difference between the central European countries and eastern European countries.  Our friend Tom, from Holland, piped in and said it was not an Eastern European country.  I am sure in the next 2 years we are going to learn so much about an area of the world that truly is unfamiliar to us. The only thing I know about these 2 complete countries is that Prague is a beautiful city. That is very limited knowledge. I'm excited to start learning.
Melanie wants to learn 500 words before she gets to the Mission Training Center in December. (One college friend offered her help with the language. She said - I know one phrase in Czech I can help you with: "You a dumb boy!") Tom suggested looking up the famous poet, Franz Kafka. That might be fun to learn some poetry in the language.
When Brady opened his  mission call a few years ago, also with the possibility of serving anywhere in the world, I was surprised how relieved I was when he read his assignment -- Illinois. I didn't realize how anxious I was feeling about the possibility of him dealing with medical emergencies in a third world country or navigating roads and highways in a jungle. Illinois and Iowa were foreign enough for me. He loved the area and the people there.
We went to buy a map for Melanie today and while at the store, we were studying the globes they had on display.  Dave went on his mission to the northern island of Japan, the Sapporo Mission.  It is about 1/3 the way around the globe.  Melanie's mission is about 1/3 of the way around the globe in the other direction.
Although this is a modern and stable country, it is still so far, far away that I feel anxious sending our baby around the globe. She is competent and capable though and I know she will be an amazing missionary and an amazing ambassador for our church and our country.
Let the adventures begin!

the world of barbershop

Well, Dave and I went to Las Vegas for the International Competition of the Barbershop Harmony Society. There was a lot going on there partly because of the event we attended, partly because we were in Las Vegas, and partly because I was just enjoying a fun getaway with Dave.

Here are some of the romantic things Dave tends to say as we are walking into a vacation resort:
"I'd like to see all the fire pumps for this building."
"I can tell when this resort was built.  These escutcheons haven't been sold since the 1980's"
"I could take this fire hydrant completely apart in about 20 minutes"

I wouldn't say that this resort was the romantic getaway that we would want, but we were attending a big event at the MGM resort. We are terribly cheap about hotel costs, and since we were going to be there 5 nights and since we were here over a holiday, we opted for a less expensive location across the street. Actually I feel like we were staying in a toy box.

We studied the map and looked at where the event was being held and realized we could easily stay diagonally across the intersection and walk back and forth to the event.  There were a few flaws with our plan.  We are staying in the cheesiest, and least cared for resort of all that we have walked into and out of this week (thus the least expensive, perhaps?).  And although we could walk to the event, our room seems to be at the absolutely farthest location on this property, and Dave's rehearsals and performances are being held on the farthest corner of the property of the other resort.  It is literally a 35 minute walk to the event.  In normal weather, that distance is fine, but it is 113 degrees outside this week.  Dave showed me that we could walk through the maze of casinos (from Excalibur, across the walkway and through the food court of New York, New York, then across the walkway and into MGM and through the restaurants, casino, retail stores and another food court to the performance arena.   We can trim off 4 minutes of walking, and stay in the air-conditioned indoors.

There are a lot of odd and interesting things in Las Vegas. There are advertisements on the faucets in the bathroom!

On the way to the restrooms, Dave was distracted by the "please enter here" sign to a beautiful bakery case. After enjoying a perfectly delicious dessert, he headed into the same "please enter here" line a second time. "Well, I do eventually need to visit the restroom, but I'm just trying to be obedient to the signage"

The wedding chapel is in the food court between the Pizza Hut and Starbucks. Nothing sadder than a newly married bride having to leave her wedding venue through hoards of cigarette smoking gamers at the slot machines

It was also surprising who was hanging out in the arcade and casino.  It appeared that there were at least 2 couples one evening that chose to bring their 2 or 3 week old baby.  Really? a smoky, loud casino/arcade? right after childbirth?

Lots of things about Las Vegas I don't particularly enjoy, but the city was redeemed with a great Cirque du Soleil show. Loved it!

The real focus of our week was the chorus and quartet competitions. The performances were great.  There are choruses and quartets from about 20 different states and 6 countries (probably more, I didn't count) all having competed in regional contests to qualify for this event. Two big choruses have won competitions on schedule year after year for decades.  This year, they were competing head to head, plus a up-and-coming group from Sweden was threatening to take a high position too.  It was interesting to see how things panned out.  I was rooting for Sweden, but to no avail.

The quartets have a tendency to wear colors.  Stage type colors -- velvet jackets, orange socks, turquoise suits, straw hats etc. (I just described them as if they wore straw hats with their turquoise suits and orange socks. No. Crazy, but not that crazy.)

You wouldn't know it from the casual attire worn between shows, but see the gold medals around their necks? These two are pretty much superstars in the Barbershop world.

Dave has been in the "Spirit of Phoenix" chorus for 8 years now and their group has qualified to compete at the international level 5 of the last 8 years.  They are good!  They came into the competition ranked 22nd and ended up 16th (always hoping for a top ten, but it didn't happen this year).  I'm curious to know how many choruses were actually in the running in the local level competitions. It's hard to get a chorus to this level. It's even harder to get a quartet to this level of competition, and they have had a couple of quartets from their chapter do quite well in these competitions.

scary house

We are the new owners of a house that has been vacant for 2 years (Dave's childhood home).  We pulled up to the property late at night and snapped some sad sad pictures of the overgrown yard.  As I reviewed them, I realized they would be more accurate put to some apocalyptic music.  

This is what it looked like 2 years ago. It's fun seeing all these pictures again because there have been many people added to this group in 2 years -a handful of marriages and babies born. Good times!!

remodeling is forever

I just ran into this video -- a song made up by my brother in law.  This was 3 years into home ownership.  At times, I truly felt this way "why don't we just move to another house and start all over?".  But I have since realized that "Remodeling is forever!"  Decades later, it still continues.  (And Madeline . . . notice the mention of "and if you're really lucky, I'll even put in the door"??)

reception

Since it took me 8 months to finish getting Roxanne's photos posted from her wedding, I thought I'd try to beat my record and get Rachel's reception photos posted in 5 months. But even though I started this post within 5 months of their wedding, I am completing it at the 8 month mark.  Sad.  Anyway, I'm enjoying looking at all the photos again and reliving a very fun event with a beautiful bride and a wonderful new son-in-law.

Rachel and Kyle's reception was held out in Glendale at Saguaro Ranch Park.  It ended up being a great venue.  There was a long path from the parking lot to the building that we lined with candles and strung some lights along the porch posts. I'm just going to post random pictures of the decorations and the events of the evening.  

family home evening suggestions

Home Evening Suggestions (found in a box that fallen behind the TV years ago) Apparently, as the kids were getting older, we were getting bored with our standard issue Family Home Evenings. There were slips of paper with ideas listed. I suppose we were going to draw out an activity idea if we were drawing a blank for the week.  From the handwriting, it looks like Brady had already moved away from home at this point, so these are the ideas of  Dave and the girls. Apparently someone (ahem, . . . Melanie) didn't understand the budget / time issue we were willing to invest on a Monday evening activity.
Play Guitar Hero
Get a beach house for a weekend and learn to surf
Learn a Michael Jackson Song (the dance)
Learn a song on our own instruments and play them together, for example Guitar, Clarinet, Trumpet, Drums, Piano
Tic Tac Toe Tournament
Walk down to Ocotillo and back
Go to Mexico!!  woooo!!
Sing an unfamiliar hymn out of the hymn book. Find the most obscure one.
Design our backyard
Learn a song in 4 part harmony and sing it together
Go see something cool -Circus  -Cirque du Soleil  -Blue Man Group
Drive the the top of South Mountain for refreshments
Play "Scene It"
Do an art class together, have Rachel teach us to draw a horse
Try Dogfood  :)
Go to Steele Indian School Park. Do the Circle walk.
Play "Left Hand Lawyer"
Prepare artwork for display and hang it.
Go out to eat.
Go to a concert
Go to Granada Park, take Lexi
Go to the lake (with another family . . . who owns a boat)
Go to Sea World. Or San Diego
Go outside and play with Lexi
Praise Melanie (make her a smoothie)