Birthday Season

My children's birthdays have turned into multi-day extravaganzas. How did this happen?

This year I planned to keep it simple: small friend party (without a meal this time)and dinner with parents and siblings. This idea sounds easy. However with three children born within the end of November to beginning of January timeframe, I don't think simple and easy are possible.

One of the things I overlooked was the necessity of the school treat. This means I create multiple rounds of dessert for every birthday. Weston's birthday dessert schedule was particularly complex. For preschool, he wanted cupcakes, muffins, grapes, bananas, and punch (he only got cupcakes and lemonade). For his friend party, he wanted an Indiana Jones cake and many flavors of ice cream (he got two). For his family dinner, he wanted pumpkin pie (what's wrong with leftover cake?).

Grace and I brought his preschool round of dessert to him during his usual snack time. His classmates immediately got bored of their activities and began chasing Grace around the classroom. One girl led the pack screaming, "Give me that baby. Just give me that baby."

Grace giggled and toddled as fast her stocky legs could move, prattling nonsense words the whole time. She was finally saved when Weston jumped between her and her pursuers, stuck out his hand, and yelled (in his best tough guy voice), "Stop! That baby belongs to me."

Of course, at home he has regularly requested that I give Grace to the neighbors. Maybe this birthday represents a change of heart.

Insignificant

The other day while running errands, the kids and I listened to my iPod. We started singing Jack Johnson's "Upside Down," from the Curious George soundtrack.

When the song ended, Cooper sighed and said, "I miss Grandma Mary." I teared up and told him I missed her too. I then told them about Grandma, Papa, Aunt Katie, and Uncle Russell as young couples loading up a car and taking an unplanned (maybe just poorly planned) trip to Yellowstone. They just threw a cooked chicken into the trunk and headed out. They ate the chicken for the entire trip until Grandma noticed it started turning blue. Then they used it to save themselves from an over-eager bear. I can imagine Papa waving Grandma into the car while he hurls bits of chicken into the woods.

Grandma laughed everytime she talked about that trip.

Of course, we talked about Grandma's propensity to lose wedding rings. One time, she felt sure she'd lost it while cleaning the toilet at her cabin in Bear Lake. She went for months without the ring until my family and I drove to the cabin after Christmas, me carrying a huge birthday cake on my lap for the entire 2 1/2 hour drive. We met with cousins, uncles, and aunts. When Papa left the cabin (probably for one of his trips to the post office where he would bribe a grandchild to come with offers of soda and candy bars), the adults raced to the downstairs toilet, prepared to scuba dive in the sceptic tank if necessary. Older kids huddled around the hallways, watching the excitement of a toilet in pieces. Soon a troop of five year olds marched down the stairs covered in frosting. Yes, they had pulled the cake off the table and proceded to eat fistfulls off the floor. Aunt Jayne saved the top layer of cake and served globs on plates, which delighted me. In the midst of the chaos, Grandma found her ring in the toilet. When she took it in to be cleaned, the jeweller said he'd never seen such a clean ring and asked what her secret was. I'm not sure if she admitted to the long-term toilet soaking method or not.

When I went away to college, Grandma and Papa visited me every month. We would go to lunch, buy groceries, and spend the day together. Then Papa died, and Grandma would stop by on her own. During one of our visits, she told me about her mother-in-law, who had lived in Logan in her old age. Apparently, her mother-in-law always wanted to live in Logan and didn't for a long, long time. In fact, she didn't move there until she was too old to enjoy it. Grandma said, "She never made anywhere she lived her home, was never satisfied, always waiting for Logan." Grandma told me she tried to learn from that and be happy where she was at. She encouraged me to do that too--be happy where I am, not to wait for Logan.

Grandma's cooking,raspberry jam, and chocolates were legendary in our family. But I didn't want the boys to forget about other, less remembered things. After she moved in with my parents, she volunteered to tutor children at the local elementary school. The school paired her with the hardest cases, and she spent hours making learning games and little activities for each child. She listened to them read with the patience of a saint. She loved them, and they knew it. She expressed delight each time one of "her children" suceeded.

Of course, my children then reminded me about the hours she spent reading to them, especially reading Curious George books--how she would laugh at the antics of a little monkey. She could always laugh at the antics of my little monkeys too.

We talked about her last couple years. She'd become more introspective, saying she was ready to go. She could still step right over a baby gate, walk several miles briskly, and touch her toes, but she felt tired. She often reflected on her life, her failures, feeling insignificant.

I would tell her then and still echo the thought to my children: If she represents what it means to be insignificant, let my life be insignificant too.

Later Church

The new year brought many wonderful changes. The change that my children were most excited about was a new church schedule. Instead of attending at 9:00 a.m., we now go at 11:00. With such a late start, we should always arrive on time if not early, right?

I'm sure you can guess from this setup that we did not make it to our 11:00 church on time on Sunday. The boys were lined up in the bathroom for a hair/finger nail inspection when Kimball turned pasty and grey and said, "I don't feel good." Then he promptly threw up. Allen, of course, was already attending pre-church meetings, and I couldn't get a hold of him, but there was no way I was letting the healthy children take a break from church (that's the kind of mean parent I am). Finally, I loaded the children, including the puking menace, into the car and found Allen at church. Allen volunteered to stay home with Kimball, and I was left with the rest of the gang at church.

During sacrament meeting, I needed to take Grace to the bathroom to wash off the remnants of sucker goo on her face. While returning to the meeting, I heard a familiar voice over the loud speaker. Weston was bearing his testimony about playing with toys and not sharing (it's apparently much better when you don't share).

Later I found out Cooper also snuck up to the podium while I was in the bathroom. .

Go Utes

Four years ago, we drove to the Fiesta Bowl when the Utes busted into the BCS. This year, unfortunately, New Orleans was just too far away. However, Allen, the boys, and I cheered, jumped, moaned, and completely enjoyed the Ute's victory tonight. Grace just pulled a wheeled ark around, blocking the TV at crucial moments in the game. Go Utes!