45 Blessings

 In honor of my newly earned gray hairs and my arrival to the grand olde age of 45, I thought I would spin this family blog entry as a list of some pretty great things from the past few months. There might even be 45 of them.

1. Jesus.  He knows me and still likes me and helps me every day.  He is the one I have to thank for getting me through these last 45 years, and also for the other 44 things that will make this list. They might seem like small things, but because of Him, everything has significance.

2. My mom is an awesome Grandma. Look how happy she is in the picture! Love it.

3. Grandmas love the temple! So do I. It was very special to get to attend the new Helena temple for the sealing of my nephew Jeddy to his family. Families can be together forever.

4. Mom is pretty fun. She went on a long beautiful bike ride with me. We stopped to take pictures of old barns, because we are girly and artsy that way, and not in any hurry.

5. She is an "optimist," like me. "I'm sure this bowl will be big enough for the waffle batter..."

4. I have some pretty great grandmas, one in heaven, one here with the flower garden. When we were in Montana, and Grandma Heagy drove past my kids in Mom's driveway, the first thing she said to me on coming into the house was, "My goodness that Macy is a pretty girl." Then, when she asked Macy what she might like to study in college (in a few years), and Macy said maybe interior design, Grandma nodded sagely and kinda winked at me and pleasantly remarked, "That's a nice major for a freshman."  Macy is currently rethinking her life plan.  Grandmas have POWER I tell you!

5. Fat babies with chubby cheeks, blowing raspberries and winning all the staring contests. Jeddy and I are old buds from when I got to visit him in the NICU.

6. My friend Marina, a newborn photographer, encouraged me to learn to knit lacy baby stuff and shared one of her patterns. This was my project in the car while in Montana.

(Is anyone picking up on a theme here yet...?)

7. Leslie and Cole. Aren't they cute? Almost...glowing. Photo credits for Red Ledges: Lauren Rowley

8. Baby on the way!!!!  Due middle of April.  I'm going to be a Grandma!

9. Dimples. Boy or girl, I vote lots of dimples. 

10. Mark. My partner in crime. My shoulder to cry on. Makes everything easier and waaaaay more fun. Everyone's favorite guy and I get to keep him forever. The jury is still out on whether he will go by Grandpa Mark or Papa Day, but I kind of like just flat out "Pop". We are kind of hopeless at taking pictures together...

11.... but you can see his laugh in these ones.

12. Yup, just like he said he would 24 years ago, he makes me happier than anyone else.

13. He does sports stuff with our kids. Go Cougs! This was Luke's birthday request.

14. He is easy to please. Rosie made him a little magnet box for Father's Day, to put his sunflower seeds in. 

15. He isn't grouchy when I jam extra stops into our itinerary. I wanted to show the kids Provo Falls. So pretty!

16. Rosie is my sweetheart. It will be fun to have a little girl and a little grandchild so close in age. She fancies the name, "Aunt Tarantula". 

17. So glad for cousin Brielle so Rosie can have another little girl to play with. They love each other so!

18. Rosie has learned a few tricks from having brothers as well...

19. Redheads, matching rainbow unicorn shirts, and frogs in buckets. Childhood.

20.  Sugar, picnic blankets, fireworks and loud music. We love summer in Spanish Fork.

21. I only had to take one child to swimming lessons this year. 

22. Our new favorite swimming hole, Burriston Ponds. See all the little fish swarming around Rosie?

23. Rosie likes fancy.  She couldn't stop grinning when I let her wear my colored sunglasses. 

24. First day of school!

25. Unexpectedly, all-day kindergarten.  Note my T-shirt. First time having the house to myself in 22 years. (Until the teenagers bring their friends home for lunch, anyway.)  I stewed long and hard about what I should do with my extra time, and after considering lots of job options or worthwhile projects, I decided to put my shoulder to the wheel helping out on the "family farm," since that option was available. I kept thinking about the example of my mother and ancestor mothers before me who worked alongside their hubbies as needed, and that just seemed to fit what I wanted really well. Our farm is our company, Remarkable Home Loans. It has been really fun to go to the office and help Mark there (and maybe go out to lunch in our matching polos!) or just work at home. Very flexible since I needed lots of priority time to take care of the crazies and the house (and lots of fun hobbies.) My official job title (first time I've had a job title in 22 years as well) is payroll specialist, but I also do bookkeeping, write the checks, update licensing, make phone calls when the house is quiet and set appointments, help with whatever marketing project is going on, and work on some of the databases. I've been a little surprised at how much I'm enjoying it--it's engaging and satisfying and even aligns with my business finance degree--even though I'm still figuring out how much "free" time I actually have to contribute. 

26. Big brother Luke. He was cranky all summer about the prospect of having to escort his sister to and from school. "She'll go, like, negative two miles per hour!!!"  So, the week before kindergarten Rosie and I made some practice runs on the bike to her school, just to improve her time. He's a good sport and hasn't complained since school started. He is also helpful to get her moving along in the morning so they aren't late, chop chop. "Hurry, take another bite! Hurry, brush your teeth! Hurry, put your backpack on! Meet me in the front, I'll get your bike for you." Luckily, it doesn't seem to stress her out.

27. Great schools. Super happy with our schools, teachers, principals, and that we live close by.  Look at this support! And at the fun stuff they do there!

28. Rosie loves school and schoolwork and it was easy for her to go. 

29. That Rosie is big enough to tag along with adventures with our older kids. Sometimes it is hard to have such a big spread and keep everyone happy, but she has been a trooper. 

She even liked the art museum. 

PS. Rosie votes that the new baby is named Lily or just any flower name.

Sesame Street's Near and Far, courtesy of Rosie.

30. Da boys. (Just had to put this throwback photo in here. They are still just as "fire".)

Even though they lost out in their 3 on 3 tournament in Montana with the cousins, I think this was one of their favorite highlights of the whole summer. (And my brother Jake keeps calling Cooper with bribes to recruit him to Frenchtown basketball.)

Luke is always so happy to get to be with cousins close to his own age. This bunch looks like trouble!

Luke and the Great Cousin Relay. 

Luke on the big rope swing. 

Trouble, trouble, and more trouble. 

31. Boston and Cooper got to play on their last baseball team together, with Mark coaching. Boston even got to pitch a few innings, just for fun, one time when they were ahead. 

Boston's triple.

Cooper's double. 

Cooper's pitching form.

32. Cooper finally got his drivers' license, after a long delay due to a broken ankle. 

33. Silly brothers that turn into crazy uncles. This is so not Jake's style that it just cracked me up. He pulled this random shark hat out once he had all the kids in the water. We were laughing at him because the mouth area kept filling up with water and choking him, haha. Love Macy's "is this for real?' face here. 

34. Playing at the lake with the big kids. Lots of lily-pad pictures here because I love all the facial expressions. 

Look at these two wiry cousins battling it out. Give Addy another year or two and she might win.

35. Teenagers who do tough stuff. These three got to go on an awesome pioneer trek with a huge local youth group. They loved it. It was fun to hear the different things they learned and thought about, each in their own separate "families".

Boston was one of the older brothers in his family and enjoyed telling the others that this is all "Light Work". I guess it became kind of a motto for their family when things were hard. Later one of our friends who was a leader over the whole trek said that he was hearing a lot of buzz from the adults afterward that "there was this one older kid who was really good at encouraging the younger ones, and he was really strong. Don't know what ward he was from, but we think his name was Boston." Awww!!!

36. Thankful for a roof over my head, and air conditioning, and medicine, and sunscreen, and for all the hard things my pioneer ancestors did so that I don't have to. 

Coop was asked to give a talk in church about his trek experience. I have a copy and want to include it here because he shared a pretty funny story, with good insights. 

"One of the main things I got out of trek was: You never have to do anything alone. You always have people there to help you, and if no one on earth wants to help you, you can always pray and ask for God’s help. One of the key examples of this on trek was when we first got there and we arrived at where they gave out the handcarts, we loaded up the handcarts with all the stuff. Just to mess around I tried pushing one of them by myself, and I could barely even get it to move a few inches. As soon as everyone else started pushing it became super easy, and it was a lot easier, even when we were walking; the burden and weight of all the stuff we loaded on was a lot lighter. It got so easy that at one point I was pushing with an extension–they would have a stick that you could tie a rope to and have two more people in the front pushing–it got so easy to the point that I was walking and one of the ropes fell off the stick and I didn’t realize for like ten minutes that I was just carrying a stick and everyone behind me was carrying the weight. So yeah. I’m glad that my family was nice enough to let me go ten minutes just walking carrying a stick, so that was pretty nice. But, if you pray and ask God for help He’ll always be able to help you carry your burdens.

  I was so grateful for trek– that I was able to get just a fraction of what the pioneers had to go through, having to carry all their stuff and leave their homes and go to Zion. I have a scripture that goes along with that. The pioneers had a lot of doubt–every day they didn’t know what to expect from the upcoming day, but I found this article in the gospel library that says, 'Early in the Book of Mormon, an angel asked Nephi a tough question. ‘Knowest thou the condescension of God? I know that He loveth His children, nevertheless I do not know the meaning of all things.’ Nephi’s answer is a perfect statement for us to remember in times of trial. We don’t know the meaning of all things, we don’t have all the answers to explain all the tragedies in the world and in our own neighborhoods. However, we know, we are sure, that God loves his children.' And I just really like that because it was crazy to me that the pioneers could go through the hard thing on that day and just still have a good attitude and still find ways to be happy. We may not know why our trials come to us, but we know that we are children of God and that He loves us."

37. I know I already said, Da Boys, but I want to add Handsome Tall Boys. Sheesh. And as sweet and nice and good as they are good lookin'. (We won't talk about the Nutella bill here.)

Rosie was all gussied up and ready to go to homecoming, I guess.

Boston looks a little bit like my Dad, who would sometimes flex for photos as well, so this is fun. Dad lifted hay bales, Boston lifts weights, and a lot of heavy man stuff at the hardware store where he works I guess, which is about as close as we could get to farm work around here.

Cooper looks a lot like his Dad, which makes me very happy. He is taking French this year. Maybe he'll end up serving a mission in Paris? 

Cooper is always pushing his vertical. We are excited for basketball season.

38. Luke is a happy kid and reminds me of my namesake, Grandpa Happy Jack. He is full of quips and questions and is working on developing a verbal filter but it's not there quite yet, so that's entertaining.

Came across this sweetie pie throwback. Still so sweet, buddy.

Here is a sweet story about Luke. One night Mark and I came home from our walk to find Luke on the porch, crying. He and Boston had been playing Lacrosse catch in the back yard, and one of Luke's throws broke the neighbor's shed. He felt terrible, and we consoled him by telling him that these things happen, we'd get it fixed, etc, we knew it was an accident and we'd have him do some jobs to help contribute to the repairs. When I went into my room later, I found the following mess piled on my bed:

I called out the window to Luke. "Hey buddy, what's this big mess on my bed about?" He shrugged as if it were obvious. "To pay for the window!"  Gulp. Let's review what made the pile. Four piggy banks (one looks like Rosie's). Some autographed BYU gear. The hoverboard. The pokemon collection. Walkie-talkies. Even his beloved fan and bottle of lavender that help him get to sleep at night.

I explained that he was being very generous, but that we wouldn't be selling all of his prized possessions. Remember? We just were going to have him do some extra work. 

"What kind of jobs? Weeding?" 

Maybe. 

Pause. 

"Can I please sell some stuff instead?"

Luke also played baseball this year and was one of the starting pitchers. Mark was able to coach both of the boys' teams. 

39. My garden. Luke was the only one of my kids who was excited about the crop. His designated box grew strawberries and great big melons that I told him he could sell in the neighborhood (which is why he was excited.) This is his farm wagon, including the melons, tomatoes, squash, basil, flowers, etc. 

40. An extra shoutout to my happy little no-fuss grapevine. We had so many grapes even we couldn't eat them all and I bought a juicer.

40. Flag football. It was a rough season with not many receiver plays, but atleast Luke had fun and got to kick the ball and pull a lot of flags. Next year I think Mark and Cooper will coach instead of grumbling through every single game, haha.

41. My ladies, Leslie and Macy. (We already counted Rosie.)

Macy is busy serving on the 9th grade student council. 

One of the dances was western themed. I told her she could've been Rodeo Queen in another life. 

42. Leslie lives nearby, so we can visit each other and do fun stuff. Here she is with her good friend Abigail on an e-bike adventure. 

We went to the big annual quilt show together, now that she needs to avoid bikes for awhile. 

43. We ladies take care of each other. Macy got her lower wisdom teeth out this summer. Rosie was very sweet with her and fed her bites of her slushy. 

Leslie and Cole both were severely sunburned on a float trip in Virginia. Leslie couldn't take the normal medicine because of the pregnancy, and her legs blistered and swelled up with edema. She had to be on crutches for a few days. This reminds me a lot of when I had the horrible leg infection several years ago. We were glad this didn't become infected, yikes!

44. Beautiful places and spaces

45. with my family and friends!

This was a little birthday picnic for me since the kids didn't have school that day. 

Boston's Labor Day weekend 18th birthday we spent in the Uintas at the cabin at Bear River Lodge. Here he is with his friend Ty. The two of them are possibly rooming together at BYU-Idaho when they return from their missions.

Mark and I love to go on double dates. This was a fun one on BYU campus with our friends the Petersons. 

Backyards are special places, too! I got to have an awesome Loch Lomond reunion (our starter home neighborhood) birthday BBQ, and these mamas and their families were able to drive down and visit. So fun! I have so much admiration and sisterhood with these women because of the life (both joy and lots of similar challenges) that we have passed through. Forty-five years gives you a lot of experience to celebrate. 

Here's to another trip around the sun with these crazies!