weekly 2015.10.11

Rebekah was immensely thrilled to learn our garage door opening code today. You’d think she won the Nobel Peace prize by her level of excitement. She has been begging for days to FaceTime Rachel, so she and the other kids talked and laughed with Rachel and her roommate for a long time. FaceTime is such an amazing blessing. Uh, thanks Steve Jobs.

Yesterday the boys were such good workers. Aaron and Thomas replaced the garage door opener on our big garage door. It was a big job for them, I think it took about six hours but there was probably some messing around in there too. Spencer and Harry helped fix a post on our once again broken fence. Ah the fence that keeps on giving…..work. And Spencer replaced a pull cord on one of the reclining seats on our couch. It’s exciting to see what good workers they’re becoming and how capable they are.

Harry and Bekah had Parent/Teacher conferences this week. Stick says they both got good reports and Harry’s teacher reported that he is a class clown (!) I had planned to be there but got in a fender bender on my way home from dropping Spencer off at soccer practice.

The fender bender was not my fault. I was stopped at a light and the lady behind me tried to pull around me to the left-hand suicide lane. While going around me, she somehow managed to bang right into my back left side, cracking my mirror and scraping the car. (The Excursion.) No major damage, and no injuries but we did call the police and get a police report done. So yeah, I missed Parent Teacher conferences ‘cause I was standing in the suicide lane on State Street talking to a police officer and some lady with questionable driving skills.

On Friday, the little kids and Spencer had no school so we went to Thanksgiving Point to goof off. I wanted to go to the gardens one last time before they close at the end of the month. Some of the kids were complaining that they did NOT want to go to the gardens and I should just do that with Grandma. But then we all had fun, the gardens are just so gorgeous and the kids ran around like wild banshees. We also went to the Dinosaur Museum which we haven’t been to in ages.

Aaron went to the dermatologist this week to get some moles removed, and the dermatologist said to him, “Did anyone ever tell you you’re a really moley guy?” He doesn’t seem to think this is as funny as I do for some reason.

Spencer came home from school on Tuesday telling us that there was going to be tryouts at CCHS for the Bantam basketball team on Thursday. Side note: according to the dictionary “Bantam” means “small chicken” so I have NO idea why they call it the Bantam League. Anyway, he wanted to try out and we said he could. We were unclear if it involved Harry’s age too, but he went just in case.  It was pretty intense, a ton of kids, all scrimmaging aggressively. Both our boys were a little overwhelmed with the situation. They made cuts that night and posted it online. Spencer was cut and Harry made it to the next round. So Harry went and tried out again yesterday, he did better, but still seemed a little overwhelmed. I watched part of the tryout and he did ok, but I’ve seen him play much better. Last night they posted the results again and he made the cut. He will do one last tryout tomorrow.

Truthfully, I’m not sure if I want him to make it or not. There is a whole society over there that’s not really my cup of tea. This sounds terrible but based purely on appearance; the parents of these kids are representative of the (bad) stereotypes that our city is often known for. Hopefully (maybe) I'm wrong about this assumption. I guess we will just see what happens. Harry seems pleased that he’s made it this far and I am happy for him too.

We took a long walk this afternoon. The weather is so beautiful right now and I always enjoy seeing all the houses and beautiful yards. Then I wonder why everyone else’s yards look so great with not a weed in sight. Then I decide that they must have gardeners, or unlike me, they’ve actually pulled weeds lately. I think I quit that back in July and man oh man, our flower beds look like it.

I hope that Rachel is going to write, but just in case she doesn't, she and her friends camped out at the Marriott center Friday night to get good tickets to Saturday's football game. Then last night after the game, she and her friends went and hung out with our two next door neighbors (RM boys) who go to BYU and their roommates. She said it was really fun and all the boys were much more mature than the freshman boys they usually hang out with. HA! (Rachel-----we still want you to write. We want the details of these events!)

Over and out.