Spring Break and Conference Weekend - 2013

Usually spring break is the time we do big family trips. We've done Mexico, San Diego, LA, a massive road trip to Washington, Oregon and Northern CA, and San Francisco. Since a lot of our summer vacation is devoted to time with extended family, we've made spring break our time for fun travel with just our own nuclear family.

But we did a big trip to the Bay Area for a wedding during Christmas break and we're planning an epic road trip to the East Coast as soon as the kids get out of school this spring. So we decided to stay put this year for spring break. And it turned out to be SUCH a nice spring break!

The weather was gorgeous pretty much all week and we loved seeing the daffodils come out in the front yard and going on walks to see all the little buds starting to pop out on the trees. We slept in and made our favorite foods. We had a little read-a-thon and spent some good time at the library. We got haircuts. We went on a huge bike ride one day and a little bike ride another day. We played all our favorite board games and went to a great neighborhood pot luck dinner.We spent a day in Salt Lake where we enjoyed a great art exhibit at the church museum featuring wonderful art by teenagers, learned a lot at the planetarium and saw a wonderful IMAX movie about butterflies with my parents, and went swimming at my parents' condo building. And I had a chance to get this new Joy of Reading Kit done for Power of Moms (just launched yesterday - check it out if you want).

Beautiful flowers and art near Temple Square

 Here are some of the kids' favorite works of art from the international youth art display at the museum - some pretty talented kids!

This one is called "An Eye Single to His Glory."

Love the artistry and symbolism of this one - the gospel and the love of God (represented by the flowering Tree of Life) brings us great light. But we have to plug it in.

Loved this image of valiant young women holding up their light for all to see.

These kids can't get enough of their Grandfather (and Grammie who, as usual, was busy making nice food for us so she wasn't in the picture...)


Towards the end of the week, we were stuck at home for a couple of days because we needed to be here while contractors finally worked on replacing our water main. I was frustrated about having to be home-bound during the kids' break when there were so many little excursions I was hoping to do - and the stress of coordinating different contractors and negotiating escalating prices was not fun. But the kids had a great time playing with neighborhood friends and being outside so much. They LOVED watching the excavator at work as they dug trenches for new pipes and were super excited when we decided to have the excavator also dig a hole for the in-ground trampoline we're saving up for in the back yard. We got the hole we needed for the trampoline but perhaps even more exciting, we ended up with a huge dirt mound that was an instant magnet for all the neighborhood kids who had the greatest time playing "king of the hill," burrowing through the hill, and sledding down the hill using an old sled. We're thinking we just might have to keep the hill (but maybe some grass on it would cut down on the serious dirt the kids are covering themselves in daily now!).
See the twins in the tree watching the excavator? They were out there all day. And the lovely "fort" the kids built of scrap wood?


This hill has become the most exciting thing in the neighborhood!


We finished off Spring Break with a wonderful Conference Weekend. SOOOOOO nice to just relax and enjoy conference together and to have Jared all to ourselves all weekend since there were no bishop meetings. We watched all four sessions (some of them at slightly different times thanks to DVR) and Jared and Ashton had a great time together at the Priesthood Session.As soon as we turned on conference, the older kids went and got paper to take conference notes and the twins settled on the floor with a bunch of puzzles to work on.  It was gratifying to see that the kids knew just what to do w/o being asked (so marvelous when good practices are in place after so much sometimes painful repetition!). Eliza took copious notes as usual and asked some great questions. Ashton took sporadic notes as texts on his phone and had to be reminded a few times to wake up and listen. Isaac wasn't much of a note-taker but had insightful comments and questions here and there. Jared and I sat there soaking in the togetherness and the great words that were spoken and we came away uplifted and armed with new resolutions.

Light, Peace, and Hope seemed to be themes woven throughout this conference - just what I needed emphasized. I especially loved the talks by Elder Scott (how everyone in the family can and should work to create a Christ-centered home), Sister Wixom (building up children; turning off technology), Elder Ballard (the priesthood and how it belongs to all of us), Elder Clayton (great thoughts on marriage) and Elder Holland (doubt leads us to find truth; we're always working on our testimonies; fan the flame of our faith while working through out doubts). We had a great discussion about chastity following Elder Bednar's talk. The kids loved President Monson's story about playing with fire and obedience. themes of conference that I heard were peace and light.

There were so many gems shared and so many things I realized I needed to work on. But this little gem by Elder Scott helped me feel peace when it comes to figuring out how to move forward without being overwhelmed:
"We need not worry if we can’t simultaneously do all of the things that the Lord has counseled us to do. He has spoken of a time and a season for all things. In response to our sincere prayers for guidance, He will direct us in what should be emphasized at each phase of our life. We can learn, grow, and become like Him one consistent step at a time."




Sometimes staying home is just so very very nice!

Wrap-up on Easter

Best Easter ever.

For the past couple of years, Easter has been part of spring break week so we've been on the road. While we still did most of our special Easter Week traditions, it was tricky making some things happen while traveling. It was SO nice to be home for the full Easter week this year and be able to focus more fully on the very special meaning of this week.

I already posted about our egg coloring early in the week. But here's a glimpse at the rest of our Holy Week.

Our "Last Supper" was great this year. The kids remembered so many wonderful little details about what happened at the Last Supper while eating lentil stew, pita bread, grapes and goat cheese by candlelight.


The neighborhood Easter Egg hunt was great:

 Everyone was very pleased with their haul - and very kind about sharing with younger kids who didn't find quite as many eggs.

Jared clearly loved his role as the Easter Bunny.

 

Saturday morning, we hid and found all the real eggs we'd dyed and then feasted on them for breakfast. We've adopted the Bulgarian tradition of "chooking" (knocking) our eggs against other people's eggs and seeing which egg can survive all the "chooking" without cracking. 

Here's what the kids found on Easter morning (after we watched the Easter story video)

(seriously, Ashton has GOT to let me cut his hair!)


After enjoying some nice candy appetizers, we had our traditional Eggs Benedict for breakfast:


Then we went to church. The kids sang beautifully with the Primary in Sacrament Meeting and I had a great time presenting a fun Easter lesson during sharing time in primary.

And of course, I had to take pictures of the kids in their new Easter clothes. But, of course, it wasn't easy to get a decent shot. I keep trying to convince the kids that picture taking just has to happen sometimes and that it can actually be quick and painless if they'd just stand there and smile for about 30 seconds. But somehow, it's still just plain hard to get a decent photo.

Despite warnings that we needed to stay in our Sunday clothes after church until after pictures, a couple kids ran upstairs to change out of their clothes before I could catch them. And they were NOT pleased when I insisted they put their Sunday clothes back on (and weren't exactly quick about it).

These two were happy to pose while we waited for everyone else to change.


Then when we finally got everyone somewhat dressed again (no shoes, I had to give in somewhere...) and got everyone positioned for the photo, a dog showed up and the poses quickly dissolved.

After the dog left, we tried again. I got everyone situated and posed and stepped back to take the photo, pleading for everyone to please cooperate since the battery light was blinking on the camera.

Just as I got ready to take the picture, Silas thought it would be hilarious to untuck his shirt and strike a crazy pose. Everyone got mad at Silas. Silas started crying.

I comforted Silas, got his shirt tucked back in, got everyone positioned yet again, and took some shots. This is the best we got - goofy-faced Ashton and red-eyed Silas. Oh well!

When the photos were finally done, my parents arrived and we enjoyed a lovely Easter dinner together.

One other thing we did this year was watch the last two episodes of the new History Channel mini-series, The Bible. Everyone was pretty much glued to it and I thought it was quite well done and mostly quite accurate according to what I understand and have studied about the New Testament. It brought up lots of great discussions with the kids and seeing things portrayed different ways really helps us think about how things really might have been.

Finally, I loved this post by my sister Saydi who wore herself out trying to make Easter special and meaningful through trying out a bunch of new traditions, some of which proved to be over-kill for her young children. I was her not so long ago. I've mellowed and figured out that often less is more. But I've also realized, like Saydi, that even when our heart-felt efforts seem to go awry, our kids are internalizing a lot of wonderful stuff and our hard work does pay off, especially when our work is accompanied by love and inspiration.

Chicken Spaghetti (with goat cheese)

Here's a recent super-duper easy favorite. This takes about 5 minutes to put into the crock pot, about 6 hours to cook in the crock pot, then about 8 minutes to cook the pasta while you shred the chicken.

Ingredients:

• 4-6 large frozen chicken breasts (depends on how heavy on the chicken you want it to be - and how much chicken you happen to have)
• 1 jar marinara sauce (my favorite is Bertolli's marinara but any kind works fine)
• 1/4 cup basalmic vinegar (gives it a nice little tang, makes it taste a little more special)
• 1-2 packages of pasta (we usually use capellinni because it's so fast to cook and the kids like the thin noodles but linguine, penne, or bow-tie all work great as well)
• shredded mozzarella or parmesean cheese or crumbled goat cheese (my favorite) to sprinkle on top

Instructions:
Place frozen chicken breasts in crock pot. Dump marinara sauce and basalmic vinegar over the top. Cook in crock pot on high for 5-6 hours (or until chicken is falling apart). About 10 minutes before you want to eat, put water in a post (with quite a bit of salt in the water), bring water to the boil, dump in pasta, cook until tender but still a bit firm (pasta package directions should tell you about how long - usually 6-10 minutes depending on how thick the pasta is). While pasta cooks, shred/pull apart chicken (still in crock pot) using two forks. If you have a little time, leave the shredded chicken to stew a bit longer in its now-shredded state. Taste the chicken and sauce and add a bit of salt and pepper if you think it needs it.

When pasta is done, drain and rinse it (rinsing helps prevent it from sticking together too much). Serve chicken marinara sauce on top of pasta. Top with the cheese of your choice. Enjoy!

Serves 6-8

Eyre Summer in the Phillippines and Japan

A couple summers after we finished working on our log cabin in Oregon (post about that here), we headed off on a very different but equally crazy and eye-opening family adventure. My parents' book tours had yielded them SO many frequent flier miles that they could get quite a few free round trip tickets to just about anywhere in the world. And they'd always been interested in Asia. So we packed up and headed to the Philippines and Japan for the summer.

(Sadly, I don't have any photos of our time in Japan but I was able to find photos on the internet that match my memories pretty accurately)

I remember getting off that plane in Manilla and feeling like I'd been thrown into a steam room. Wow was it ever hot and humid! Then when we left the airport, the swarms of people and crazy traffic of beat-up cars mixed with bicycles and jeepneys combined with intense smells was somewhat breathtaking!

These old World War II jeeps that were left by the US when they pulled out were transformed into these privately-owned little buses called "jeepneys" that take people where they need to go. Each jeepney is unique - painted all fancy, often sporting interesting hood ornaments and nonsense words in English.

We stayed with some of my parents' friends in a nice gated community but spent quite a bit of time exploring other areas of Manilla. I'll never forget visiting "Smokey Mountain" - the huge city dump where tons of little homeless kids eeked out an existence by picking through garbage for things they could sell or eat. They lived in little self-made shacks on top of that self-combusting smoldering trash. Wow.

We explored the countryside and I was so interested in the houses on stilts (nipa huts) with chickens and pigs running around under them.

We stayed for a few days at a quaint resort where we slept in our own upgraded thatched huts on stilts and enjoyed amazing snorkeling and lots of interesting lizards and wildlife (often inside our huts). To get to this resort, we had to go on these very rickety-looking canoes with motors. I remember looking at those things and thinking there was no way that we were actually going to get on those things and ride in them - surely someone would point out how dangerous they looked! But we just climbed aboard and putted away across the bay to the resort where we had to take several different approaches through the rough sea until we could finally get to the little pier and get off safely. I remember everyone being uncharacteristically quiet on those boats - serious fear I think...

Here's what I remember the boats looking like (wish I had an actual photo!). Imagine two of these little boats with outboard motors on the back carrying the 11 of us (plus a driver in each boat) through some big huge waves. Scary stuff.

The color of the water was gorgeous and the sea life was amazing. Here's a photo that reminds me of the resort where we stayed:

After about 10 days in the Philippines, we headed to Japan for about a month.

In Japan, it was still sticky-hot but everything was about as opposite from the Philippines as can be. Everything was amazingly neat and orderly in Japan. The brand new clean little cars everyone drove had nice crocheted doilies on the headrests of the seats and while it was crowded, everyone was careful of the traffic laws. Everything seemed so small and neat. We learned to stoop to go into each house and remove our shoes, cramming our big feet into the little indoor slippers we were offered.

The grocery stores were amazing. Everything was so neatly and beautifully packaged. Even the fruit was perfect - cantaloupe melons grown perfectly so that they had nice handles made of vines (and they cost like $50 each - watermelons were about $100!).

When we first arrived in Japan, things were a bit crazy. My dad had picked up a strange debilitating infection after scraping his leg while scuba diving in the Phillippines. When the 11 of us left the airport with our 22 bags and lots of little kids, he was pretty much incapacitated. Somehow my mom and us older kids managed to get all the bags and all the kids off the plane, onto an airport shuttle and off at the train station. It was frantic and wild trying to make the transfers and not leave anyone or anything behind while it was all my poor dad could do to barely walk and keep up with us. On the shuttle to the train station, Charity (age 4) started doing a pretty crazy potty dance and I was charged with finding her a bathroom as soon as we stopped at the train station and threw all the bags off the shuttle. She and I ran into the station but there were turnstiles and we didn't have train tickets yet. I found a station worker and, knowing no Japanese, I just pointed at Charity who was doing her frantic potty dance and the nice worker opened up the gate to let us in, pointing towards the restrooms. We ran into the bathroom and into a stall and this is how the toilet looked:



Charity said "That's not a potty! I can't use that!" and started dancing around even more frantically. We looked in all the other stalls and there were no other options. In desperation, she finally dropped her pants and tried to use the Japanese toilet only to end up with some pretty wet pants and underwear anyway! Those toilets take a little getting used to!

Wish there'd been a sign like this to help us:

We all eventually did make it to the lovely home where we'd be staying. We lived with a wonderful couple who'd read my parents' books and opened their home to our crazy group of 11 people for an entire month. What saints they were! We stayed in a large house (by Japanese standards) in the lovely town of Kamakura (a former capital of Japan outside Tokyo - still the cultural capital of Japan in many ways). My parents had a room and then we had two tatami rooms, one for the girls and one for the boys. In true Japanese style, we pulled out mats and bedding each night and made our beds on the floor in our authentic Japanese rooms with paper walls and straw-mat floors.

My mom scoured grocery stores for food we would find somewhat familiar. We laugh now that we tried to make American-style spaghetti using soba noodles and tried to fashion hamburger buns out of bean-paste rolls by cutting them open and scooping out that bean paste rather than embracing the Japanese foods we now almost universally enjoy. But at that time, Japanese food wasn't common in the US and it all seemed a bit scary to us. We'd sometimes go to restaurants were the plastic food displays were most helpful as we tried to figure out what to order (see example of a beautiful plastic food display below). We'd generally stick with terriyaki chicken or a bowl of noodles. Sushi scared us. And now it's one of my favorite things!

The family we were staying with helped us set up all sorts of wonderful cultural experiences and helped us find amazing sites to see.

We visited amazing Buddhist Temples and Shinto shrines and appreciated their unique beauty and peace. We especially loved this little bamboo forest that's part of the Hokokuji Temple in Kamakura.

A Shinto shrine:



We went to visit the Big Buddha right down the street from where we were staying in Kamakura quite often.


We learned to do sand art on black laquer trays at the home of the priest right next to the "Big Buddha". It's a lot harder than it looks!

We experienced the crazy electric district and great cultural sites in Tokyo.

Rush hour in Tokyo was quite an experience. They actually have people in the subway stations whose job it is to push hard on the people hanging out of the over-crowded train so they can squish in and the doors can close. Sometimes the crowds were practically suffocating and we had to hold up the little kids so they wouldn't be squashed. I was impressed by how politely and matter-of-factly the Japanese handled the situation.

Shawni, Saydi and I learned how to put on kimonos (wow, is it ever complicated), participate in Japanese tea ceremonies (so interesting to learn about the precise actions required in that very peaceful and pleasant ritual), and do ikebana (Japanese flower arranging).

Learning to do Ikebana was so interesting - so much thought must go into the exact placement of each element - it's sort of like composing a beautiful painting and getting things artfully off-center but also balanced.

I found a great blog post that shows the pretty intense step-by-step process involved in putting on a kimono - here's one photo from it and you can see the whole thing here:

We took a "bullet train" to Kyoto where we saw amazing palaces.

We visited gorgeous Mount Fuji. 

We had many families give us lovely little gifts during "summer giving season" and we gave baseball cards in return (which were most appreciated). One family presented us proudly with a watermelon which we were excited about because we like watermelon. Later we saw at a store that a watermelon cost $100 and the gift was extra impressive.

We also had a chance to go to Japanese Schools. The lady we were staying with set up opportunities for each of us to go to school with kids our ages and some of us even got to stay for a night or two with a Japanese family as part of the experience. I remember dropping off my little brothers at a Japanese school where everyone was in their neat uniforms and my brothers with their light hair and American clothes and tall-even-in-America stature stood out like sore thumbs. I was proud of how they went right into the classrooms with the other kids and made friends at recess and sat through classes in Japanese all day, enjoying the chance to help the English teachers learn to pronounce some English words correctly when it was time for English at school.

I got to stay with a family with two girls close to my age and went with them to Sophia University in Toyko for a couple days. The girls were so kind to me and I answered a lot of questions and asked a lot as well. The family I stayed with made me truly delicious Japanese food that I loved and I had a chance to take a traditional Japanese bath in their deep, deep tub (you shower and scrub down thoroughly first, then you sit in the nice deep hot tub to soak after you're all clean). I learned so much in my couple of days with that family and will be forever grateful to them.

We'd lived in Mexico, England, Virginia and Utah before, each of which offered interesting contrasts and great chances to learn about different cultures but wow, our time in Asia offered SUCH a different experience. We all learned and grew so much. And I'm sure that the 11 of us light-haired super-tall people offered a pretty good show to everyone we encountered!

P.S. My sister Shawni's post about the Philippines and Japan with some actual pictures that she found of us is HERE.