Just a Cute Picture

I was going through our pictures today and found this super cute picture of Minsy that Katie took during December last year. I had to stick it up for posterity. :)

Dare to Stand Alone

I thought I'd take a second today to send Katie a little shout out on the blog. Katie is in the middle of some of the most trying times of young life ... the junior high years. I don't know of anyone who looks back on those awkward years as the best in their life. I know I don't. Everyone is going through these massive growth spurts, dealing with raging hormones, and trying to figure out exactly who they are and how they fit into this crazy world as they move away from the total dependence on their parents they have as young children and toward the independence they will experience as adults. It can be a confusing time, and almost everyone is going through it at once, so it can lead to LOTS of drama. Lots. So many times kids at this age just want to fit in somewhere. Standing out for being different is not something they want to experience, generally.

That's what leads me to be impressed with Katie's choice yesterday so much. She chose to take a stand on something she felt was important, and she was okay with being an odd duck for doing it. Here's the story ...

We have a rule that our kids can't go to dances until they are 14. That is the rule for church dances, and we feel like it applies well for school dances as well. So far, it hasn't really been much of an issue because none of our kids has been all that interested in attending their school dances in junior high. But Katie is a bit more social than our oldest three have been. She likes to be in the crowd and experiencing all the excitement that goes with that. I have expected that she would be our child who tries to push the envelope a bit and see if we'll be swayed to change that rule. I don't think that we would, though. I'm not a big fan of the modern school dances. Maybe it's always been this way, and I am just viewing everything through the lens of parenting, but it seems like these dances are just trouble. Trouble with a Capital T and that rhymes with D and that stands for Dance. (get it? ... harhar).  Anyway, there is just a weird vibe at these school dances. I can't put my finger on what is wrong. It just feels wrong.

Katie has not pushed us to change our rule at all this year even though there have been a few opportunities to do so. At the very first school dance she got the cutest invitation from an 8th grader who is in Advanced Band with her. He was so super sweet about how he asked her, but Katie didn't even ask me if it would be okay for her to go. She had already decided way before that she would not be going to the dance. She only wanted to know how best to handle the situation, so I gave her some options of how to talk to this boy so that he didn't feel bad about being turned down. She showed me who he was later, and he was such a cutie! I'm impressed that she was strong enough to turn him down. I'm sure that when I was her age I would have never been able to do that.

Well, yesterday things potentially got a little more complicated. Katie is playing piano for the 7th grade jazz band, and they are planning a trip to Disney World later this year. These trips cost a ton of money ... $660 per person ... so they have been running fundraisers to help defray the costs so that more of the students can afford to go. They decided to host a dance for the junior high. In theory, Katie had good reason to ask us to change the rule so that she could participate in this fundraiser the whole time ... but she didn't. We didn't have to have a discussion about what would be a good decision. Katie had already made her own choice. She told the band that she would help to set up for the dance after school, then she would come home and return after the dance to help clean up. They thought she was crazy. Why not just stay for the dance? Katie didn't even bat an eye as she told them that she didn't go to dances yet. When she talked about it with me she wasn't upset about being called out for her unusual choice. She just felt right about making it. I was super impressed with her.

Yesterday she stayed after school to decorate. When I came to pick her up she expressed frustration that so many of the other band members just sat around looking at their cell phones. Welcome to our modern world, unfortunately. But she didn't say a word about the dance. She did come home and spent a ton of time getting super gussied up. She did her hair really beautifully and put on her nicest dress. I asked her why, and she explained that everyone else who was cleaning up would have stayed for the dance, so they would all be dressed up. She didn't want to stand out too much by being in casual clothes ... so she might as well spend two hours getting dressed up, even if she wouldn't be dancing. I drove her back to the school about 15 minutes before the dance was over so that she could start cleaning up right away. When I picked her back up about an hour later she told me that as soon as she walked in the door that boy who had asked her to the dance in the fall came right up to her and said, "I guess your parents are letting you come to dances now?" She had to explain that she only just arrived and was there to clean up. I'm sure he thought that she had just been feeding him a line when she told him that last fall, poor guy.

Katie told me that she wasn't all that impressed with the atmosphere of the dance. She said that lots of the girls were wearing really skimpy clothes, the room was too dark, the music was too loud, and there was more PDA than she was comfortable looking at. I don't think that her experience there inspired her to attend another school dance any time soon.

Either way ... what really impressed me about Katie this week is that she made her own decision without being pressed into it by our influence. It was a hard decision to make when everyone else was choosing differently, but she didn't waver about it at all. That takes a certain amount of guts at this age. I'm happy for the strong young woman Katie is turning out to be. She is getting ready to make some important decisions about her future, and I am confident that she will be strong enough to make those choices, even if it leads her to stand alone in those choices. Love her!

Sometimes It's Hard to Be the Youngest

It's twenty degrees outside tonight. Twenty degrees. And dropping. Seems like the perfect night to sit at home cuddled up by a nice warm fire to watch a fun family movie together, right?  Or ....

You could head out into the great outdoors for a miserably cold Boy Scout camp out. 

It turns out that my sweet husband and my scouting sons think that camping out tonight is the better idea. Or I should probably clarify ... Hyrum and Spencer think it is a good idea. Herman thinks it is insane, but he's playing the role of supportive dad tonight since Hyrum could only attend if Herman was there with him.

Hyrum is soooo excited to go camping. It is his first scouting camp out, and he wasn't going to miss it, no matter what. He started planning for this event a week ago. His first task was to make a list of essential supplies. He spent a long time working on this list, and finally he was able to hand me a list of the things he needed to survive the harsh conditions tonight. On this list were only three items. What were they?

A Flashlight

A Band Aid

And Oreos Double Stuf (of course)

Seems about right, don't you think? Herman and I thought that he probably was going to need a few more things in order to make it through the super low temperatures tonight, but Spencer thought that Hyrum's list was pretty good. Of course, Spencer would have worn shorts tonight if we'd let him. Boys ....

Hyrum all decked out and on his way
to his first camp out.

Herman and Spencer have become experts at packing for these events. Herman has collected enough camping supplies to outfit a small army, I think. They went about collecting things and packing them up for the trip while I threw together a few foil dinners for them. Hyrum just sat around grinning as he thought of his upcoming adventure. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, until Minsy came into the kitchen to tell me that JoJo was sad. I hurried around the corner ... and poor JoJo was lying on a chair sobbing. Oh no!

I didn't even consider how this camp out was going to affect JoJo. Hyrum and JoJo are best friends. They do everything together. Everything. JoJo was not handling being left behind very well. I tried to do what I could to cheer JoJo up, but nothing was working. I asked him if there was anything fun that we could do tonight while the older boys were camping, and he wailed, "I don't know what to do if Hyrum isn't with me!"  It was a rough hour as JoJo worked through his emotions. I felt so bad for him as he cried and cried and cried. At times I would think that everything was better, and then I would hear a huge sob bubble out of him.

Herman took a second to comfort JoJo before
he and the scouters headed out the door.

The boys left and I enlisted JoJo as my right hand man as I drove to pick up Katie from her after school activities. We ordered pizza and decided to have a girls and JoJo night sitting in front of the fire, staying warm, and watching Big Hero 6. By the time the pizza arrived JoJo was feeling better ... not perfect, but getting there. 

Finally I found the thing that brought JoJo right out of his doldrums. He took charge and decided to build our fire for our cozy night at home. This is normally a job that Herman or the older boys would do, but with me supervising JoJo got the chance to be the big man of the house tonight. It made his night, I think.

Sometimes it can be super hard to be the youngest, always seemingly left behind as older siblings head off on adventures without you. JoJo is going to be experiencing that a lot in the next several years. I feel this huge need to cushion the blow as he goes through all these hard moments. I'll probably overcompensate, I'm sure, as I try to make it all better. For now, I hope that it will be enough for JoJo to enjoy a little JoJo/Mom time in front of a roaring fire.

I love my JoJo.

***UPDATE ... Katie was soooo good with JoJo after she came home from helping clean up at the dance that her jazz band set up as a fundraiser for their Disney trip. She set things up so that everyone could have a sleepover in the basement. JoJo was sad because Hyrum is always with him when they do basement sleepovers. When Katie mentioned watching a movie, JoJo teared up a little and said that he didn't want to watch any show that talked about brothers ... or parents dying (don't know where that came from). She ended up setting things up so that they could watch a marathon of "How the States Got Their Shape." Perfect!

It was a little messy, but my little man got the job done.

Missionary Mom Perks

When Laney left for her church mission to Chile she was leaving behind a vast universe of  internet life. While she is serving she is not able to check her email accounts, facebook, instagram, her blog ... anything. She is only given a limited amount of time to email friends and family each week. Other than that she stays away from her internet connections. That leaves the potential for Laney to return home to a million back emails and facebook posts and messages. Laney gave me access to those accounts so that I could keep things a little cleaner for her and pass on important messages as they came up. I also update her blog and her facebook account with her letters home so that those who are interested can read about her missionary adventures. Also, one of the great advantages that this generation of missionaries has that was not around when Herman served in the early 1990s is the ability social media gives her to stay in contact with the wonderful friends she makes in Chile. I try to friend any of her companions who are on facebook, and several people in Chile have reached out and friended Laney as well.

I don't think that everyone realizes that I am running her facebook account right now. In fact, there was a time a few months ago when Laney was getting friend requests from Chile at the pace of about five a day for a bit. As soon as I could tell that there was an actual connection between these people and her I would accept the friendship. Sometimes this would happen only moments after the person had requested Laney as a friend. Since Laney only had internet access on Mondays, and she wasn't even supposed to be on facebook, it was surprising to the members in Chile that she could accept their friend request so quickly. They joked that she must be a bad, bad missionary to break the rules like that. Laney had to explain that it was me running the show up here. I wish that there was a way that I could attach some sort of note to let them know that I'm the one posting things and passing along messages, but I guess it isn't really common for twenty year-old young women to turn over their facebook account to their mom for 18 months, is it? Odd though it may be, it has been a great joy to do this. My favorite moment as a Laney facebook usurper was when Laney left Frutillares, a branch where she had served for over seven months. I was able to see so many expressions of love for her from the members of that branch in Chile. It was so wonderful to see them recognize Laney's inner beauty and love. It just filled my heart to overflowing. Those are things I might not have seen if I had not been monitoring her account so often.

Well, today I got one of the best perks of monitoring her facebook account. The best. Every once in a while someone will send a private message to Laney. I'll usually pass it along in my email to her, but a few times I have to respond to let them know that it is actually me on her account, not Laney. I had one of those messages today. It was from a 17 year-old young man from Chile. He just said hello and left a brief message. Then he basically said, "Wait. Are you home yet? How are you on facebook?" I knew I needed to respond so that he didn't think Laney was just breaking her mission rules right and left. I don't know Spanish very well, but I needed to respond in Spanish, so I pulled out my trusty google translate and created a message letting this young man know that it was actually me that had accepted the friend request and was monitoring her account. But, since google translate is really a terrible translation tool half the time, I showed it to my fluent Spanish speaking husband to see if it would be okay. He crinkled his nose and said that it wouldn't embarrass me ... too much. That was good enough for me, so I sent the brief message to this young man. Several hours later he responded and it was the best response ever. So, so sweet and innocent and in a strange way, courageous. He congratulated me on having a beautiful, humble, and nice daughter. Totally agree with him there. Then (here's the courageous part) he told me that he really, really likes Laney a lot, but since it's against the mission rules, he can't pursue her. He finished by putting a little frowny face icon at the end of the message.

So sweet. So, so sweet.

It was such an innocent and honest message, and its one that young men don't usually send to the moms of their crushes. Maybe it is because I'm all the way here in the US. What am I going to do about his declaration from all the way up here? I just thought that it was absolutely adorable.

It really means a lot to me that Laney is having the opportunity to share so much of herself with the people of Chile. I love that they love her, and I love that she loves them right back. This experience has been such a powerful instrument of growth in her life, and it is a great perk for me to be able to see immediate examples of how she is touching the lives of others in Chile. In all of her letters home she expresses so much love for the people of Chile, and it is good to see that they recognize that love. Unfortunately, the outcome looks a little bleak for this young man who is quietly pining for Laney in Chile. Nevertheless, I am grateful to him for his sweet message letting me know that he sees the good in Laney. It made my week.

I love being a missionary mom!