Citizens of the world

I just got this wonderful essay that my friend Neylan wrote for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought about her growing up experiences in NYC. As the daughter of an acclaimed Metropolitan Opera star, Ariel Bybee, she grew up surrounded by the best art, music and culture and went to one of the fanciest private schools in the city. Her essay talks about how her unique upbringing helped build her testimony and addresses the issue of how her world. If anyone wants to read her essay which I highly recommend, let me know and I'll send it to you.

Anyway, her essay really got me thinking about what I want my kids to learn and where I want to raise them and I thought you might be interested in the response I wrote to Neylan after reading her essay:

Neylan:
I loved your essay - had to read it right when I got it this morning in the midst of the twins' usual craziness. It was so fun to learn more about your upbringing and your essay helped me solidify my fomerly somewhat softening resolve to keep the arts and the great cities I love a big part of my children's upbringing. We had so much fun on our trip to Boston and NYC and Ashton and Isaac talk about the trip constantly.

Jared and I have always been resolved to raise adventurous children who are excited about the vast array of places and pursuits and possibilities the world has to offer. We want them to be as comfortable hiking and rock climbing in gorgeous places that celebrate God's creations as they are visiting a fine art museum or attending a play to celebrate the creations of mankind. We want them to be as comfortable in the humble homes of their little Hispanic friends from their bilingual school or in the dirt huts of the communities we'll visit in Kenya or Bolivia as they are in the homes of their affluent friends from our ward here and the apartments of our friends in New York or Boston. I loved it the other day when one of Ashton's friends who has a very humble home was playing over here and said "I wish I could live at your house - it's so big and nice and you have a movie theater" and Ashton came right back with, "I wish I could live at your house because you have a dog and really cool board games." I want my kids to appreciate that there are great things about so many situations people live in.

We're trying to raise citizens of the world - and I think that can be done regardless of where you actually live - it's related to the attitudes and mind-set you pass on to your children, to the travel budget you set aside and use to go to places other than a cruise or beach resort or Disneyland (it amazes me how much money people spend on that place again and again when they could mix it up and actually see something real with less money), to the ways you use your weekends to explore your immediate world (we go so many random festivals and events around here - Native American jamborees, nature walks with Park Rangers at the neighboring State Park, an India Indian dance festival which randomly popped up here, every art show at the little St George gallery which actually does some pretty nice stuff...).

When we were in Boston and NYC doing and seeing so many things I love so dearly my heart yearned to be there more but as we watched Noah and Kristi carrying their little McKay in his stroller up and down all the subway stairs in Manhattan and saw them stuffed into their very nice but tiny apartment, I felt glad that we opted for a less urban life for now. We may live here - but my kids will KNOW cities, know and love them.

I guess everyone knows what they've grown up with. Here in St. George we're surrounded by some very good people, many of whom grew up in a typical Mormon suburban environment, some of whom built a live of luxury for themselves from a very humble upbringing (often without the benefit of much education), many of whom have Las Vegas as the one big city they've ever been to, many of whom got married right out of high school and educated themselves primarily through church callings and running "parties" to sell everything from candles to kitchen gadgets to modest clothing. What they want for their families is often a mirror of what they perceive to be good from their own upbringing and a rejection of what they thought of as bad. So many people just want a simple life of soccer on Saturday mornings and movie nights Friday night and kids riding bikes around the neighborhood and doing a good job with callings at church. They haven't seen "more" enough to want more. And I guess that's OK to some extent. But I'm doing all I can do to expose people to the larger world and give them chances to expand their world view even slightly. I have nice art and photos of trips all over the world displayed in my home and people always have questions. I'm always sharing experiences from my schooling and travels with the Young Women I work with. I'm putting together a book group that will read "real" books and a CareerMothers group that will help mothers really think about what they want to help their children learn and become. We're doing a benefit concert where our kids and their friends will perform to raise money for orphans in Bulgaria and I'll tell attendees all about the situation for orphans in Bulgaria and offer them a chance to learn and share. When I volunteer in my kids' classrooms at school, I'm always reading stories about other cultures and helping them do art, etc. So while I don't fully understand a life that is as simple and boring-seeming as the lives of most people around me - I do understand their choices - and I want to do what I can to create a home and a family that is sort of an oasis of culture and perspective and new ideas in this community. And at least for now, that seems right!

So there are some random thoughts for you. Thanks so much for stirring them up with your wonderfully well-written and insightful essay. One thing I get SO tired of here is the fact that not many people care to read or write insightful things or talk much about ideas. But I'm gradually finding some good friends who do get below the surface and that's good - just a long process in a place like this.

Hope your holidays are going well! Love, Saren

Vegas Air Show

HUGE tank and jeep carrier plane that we got to walk through

We found out last-minute an air show going on in Vegas on Saturday so we decided to check it out. It turned out to be pretty darn amazing and we all had a great time. They had planes from every era all the way back to WWI. They did air battle reenactments and aerobatic shows with amazing dizzying manoeuvres done with planes and helicopters and they toped it all off with an amazing display by the Thunderbirds (6 planes that fly in formation and do all these spectacular tricks). Here are the big kids with one of the Thunderbirds:

All airplanes that weren't performing at the moment were on display so we got to walk right up to all the different airplanes and in many cases get onboard them and learn about them. The kids especially loved seeing the helicopter that could fly upside down and that did a bow in the air at the end of its performance and the little red biplane that did dives and spirals and crazy stuff - we couldn't figure out how in the heck the pilot could keep from getting totally disoriented and crashing with all those quick spins and backflips!

Ashton chatting with a fighter pilot

With a D-Day airplane we went inside - used as an ambulance plane during WW II

We finished off the day with a trip to Jared's favorite - In and Out Burger and a trip to my favorite - Trader Joe's. Then we hurried home to hang out with Grandfather a bit and go to dinner with friends.

Then Sunday it was so fun to have Dad around. The kids can never get enough of him. What a guy! He babysat in the afternoon so Jared and I could go do a missionary prep class about the Book of Mormon - fun to present together - we've never really done that before. It was great to pull out my old B of M in Bulgarian and share some experiences from my mission that I haven't thought about for a while. I'm so grateful for the Book of Mormon.
Last night we had such a fun FHE. We made a "blessing box" and everyone wrote down things they're grateful for on slips of paper, then we read all our stuff to each other. We'll keep adding more stuff every day and hopefully fill the box to overflowing by Thanksgiving. The kids got really into it and we loved hearing all the stuff they came up with without any prompting from us. Ashton got a ton and didn't want to stop. Isaac did cute pictures to go with his things and came up with some very creative spelling to write them out. Eliza did pictures and then had us write her things. Here are some of the first things the kids put down:
Ashton: food (pizza), technology, cousins, grandparents
Isaac: cactus froots and floers (cactus fruits and flowers), montins (mountins), scul (school), cusins, Grame (grammie), Granfader (Grandfather)
Eliza: scriptures, shopping with my Mom, our beautiful names, my friends Grayce and Olivia

It was so fun to see their loves come out in what they wrote - and to see the things all the kids put - family being big on everyone's list. And interestingly enough, Ashton, Isaac, Eliza and I all independently put "colors." I do love colors so much. We had so much fun stuffing our box and feeling so grateful!

In other news, Eliza and the other Joy School kids as well as teachers are so excited that Camden is now in Joy School! We had so much fun talking about feelings and doing different facial expressions the first time he came to Joy School at our house. Here are a few of my favorites: (notice Eliza's not in the photos - she was the object lesson for the day - totally grumpy and offering a great example of how one person being grumpy can mess things up for everyone especially herself - she spent a fair amount of the lesson in time out)

Have a great week! Count your blessings!

Beauty, Family and the Gospel

We had a great time this weekend counting our blessings as Jared and I got the chance to go to the Temple Friday night, take the kids to enjoy the amazing beauty of Zion's National Park ablaze with fall leaves on Saturday, and spend the day in SLC on Sunday with a lot of Looslis for the blessing of Aaron and Michelle's new baby Parker. We did a quick surprise visit to Gramme and Grandfather on our way out of town Sunday night and got back to St George at a pretty decent hour, ready to hit the new week. This weekend gave us a chance to really think about some of the most important blessings we have back to back - the blessings of the gospel with all the sacred ordinances and and wonderful traditions it offers, the blessing of immediate and extended family, the blessing of the beauty of nature. Here are a few pictures to sum it all up.

We all love hiking, but the twins LOVE hiking. They skip and gallop along the trail with such glee. They collecting leaves and got really into noticing everything from dead crumbled pieces of leaves to really lovely brightly colored ones with pretty shapes. As we wandered around outside Aaron and Michelle's church yesterday (the twins had to be taken out from Sacrament meeting for wildly climbing over the benches to see cousins and loudly exclaiming over everything in sight - we do occasionally make it through a sacrament meeting but only by actively and constantly entertaining the twins and putting on a pretty good show for everyone around us), Silas plopped down on the church steps and said "Mommy and Olber, let's sit down here and look at all da butiful leafs." He waved his hands up to the sky as he said this - then noticed the leaves on the huge tree we were under were already gone. "Oh wew (well)," he said, "no leafs, just owie sicks!" These guys are talking more and more every day!



One of the big highlights of Zions for the kids was seeing deer - 4 of them - grazing right nearby - then they leaped through the fence and crossed the path right in front of the kids to their great delight. The twins were especially excited. Silas exclaimed "Elephants!" Close, buddy, close.

Isaac and Liza loved holding baby Parker. He's such a cute little guy! It was great to be with so many Looslis and for Jared to be there in the circle to bless Parker. We haven't been able to go to many Loosli baby blessings - and Parker is probably the last or second to last - Aaron and Michelle are the only ones still having kids. Aaron and Michelle fed scores of people at their house after the blessing and the kids had so much fun with their cousins. The weather was amazing and it was just a really nice day. We finished it off with a surprise visit to Mom and Dad and Eli who showered the kids with some quick love and attention and food and we were on our way. What a great bunch of extended family members we have!

Halloween

HALLOWEEN!!!!!

What a Halloween we had! The kids are all old enough to get really excited about everything so this was a very fun year. And they all picked pretty easy costumes so my life was a lot easier leading up to the big day. I feel like we totally covered the celebrating of Halloween this year - last Wednesday was the church Halloween party (my Young Women were in charge of a booth and it turned out great - we did a fun obstacle course), Thursday was the big school Fall Carnival and Reflections Open House (I somehow ended up calling to get volunteers for the event in the midst of everything else and then got stuck at the Pirates of the Carribean Slide for 2 hours or so, taking tickets and dealing with crazy kid pile ups when kids got scared at the top of the slide while Jared dealt with lost twins... the things I do!), Friday was Eliza's Joy School Halloween party, then Saturday was a fun adult Halloween party we put together for a bunch of friends, Monday was pumpkin carving, Tuesday was Liza's preschool Halloween Party (she has preschool AND Joy School this year) and our family Halloween story night, then Wednesday was the big day complete with taking treats to Jared's office, going to the Halloween Parade at the school, doing the Ivins Trunk or Treat and having a great time loading up the candy bags Trick or Treating in the Lanoue's neighborhood with them.

All the kids got really into doing pumpkins this year - nothing like
that feeling of squishy pumpkin innards between your fingers!

Great original designs - kids drew them out and Jared and I
helped them copy their designs exactly onto the pumpkins.
Order: Isaac's, Ashton's, Eliza's
Eliza with her Little Einstein's Preschool friends -
her best friend Olivia was pretty amazing Grinch!
Ashton at the Halloween Parade with Ricky, Avry and Lupe
Isaac with his class ready for the Parade

The twins were so cute in their bear and honey bee outfits. Silas was hilarious running around with this big old stinger wiggling around on his bum and his little tippy toed legs in their black tights looking very insect-like. Oliver was totally adorable in his bear costume and loved saying "grrrrr" to anyone who commented on his bear-ness. Liza skipped along from house to house and totally looked the part of a fairy. All day Tuesday, she kept saying, "Mom, I can't believe TOMORROW is really Halloween - I'm SO excited!" Ashton loved playing the part of the sneaky Ninja and Isaac was the cutest little happy pirate I've ever seen. The neighborhood where we trick or treated was a great area where they were giving out lots of candy and everyone was very pleased with their haul. Our kids and their friends Blake and Kinley were so cute running house to house, helping the twins along (and helping Si get up again and again - he could't see that well with his bee hood and kept falling over and spilling his candy everywhere - but he didn't complain a bit - just worried that all the candy made it back into his pumpkin bucket!). We've got some big kids now!

Here we are in our last-minute pretty lame
Halloween costumes - a bee and a flower - at least we tried!
Jared made almost as cute a bee as Silas. We had a great time playing games and marveling at all the great costumes our friends came up with at our party Saturday night.

To break up the Halloween events, I went to Vegas on Friday to meet up with Mom and Dad who were there for a speech and took them to the huge furniture market there to look at rugs for the new house. We found a gorgeous one that just might work! Jo drove to Vegas with me since he needed to pick up a car there and it was great to have time with him and with Mom and Dad. Plus it was nice to get a break from the kids and leave them with a babysitter for most of the day - sometimes a day away does wonders. I had a chance to have dinner with Mom and Dad in Vegas before hitting Trader Joes and heading home - such a treat to have the two of them to myself for a bit! What wonderful parents we have.

Now - to get caught up on laundry and put away Halloween stuff and clean this dirty dirty house...

The Big Trip

What a trip! It couldn't have been better (well, I guess we could have done with a little less rain and cold - but you can't have everything!). We packed our 5 days with favorite places and favorite people and had all sorts of serendipitous experiences (mostly involving getting something for free- always nice). One of the highlights was sharing everything with these wonderful big boys of ours - while knowing the twins and Eliza were safe and having a wonderful time at home with our good friends, the Lanoues. The boys were totally excited about everything - both the sights we were excited to show them and the things they discovered on their own (like the joy of chasing squirrels in Harvard Yard and Central Park) - and it was great to see things through their eyes. They didn't complain once about the many many miles we walked every day and were always up for the next adventure.

We left home at 4am on Wednesday the 10th for our flight from Vegas only to get there and find the flight was delayed an hour and a half - so we had a great time exploring the airport. The boys loved this poster of Blue Man group at the airport (they're trying to do Blue Man faces in the picture). Little did we know we'd be seeing the show that night!
NEW YORK CITY
After we left the JFK airport, Noah greeted us at the subway with the news that he got us positions as ushers at Blue Man Group and fanagled a way for us to bring Ash and Ike. Ashton's fondest wish was coming true! I got to sit by Ashton in some great seats up front and he was transfixed throughout the show (despite getting up at 4am for our flight and not sleeping much on the plane - he was too excited to sleep and wrote all this cute excited stuff in his journal instead). It really is a great show that's so entertaining to all ages - and has some great messages imbedded. Isaac was thrilled that a Blue Man came up in the show and put a blue thumb print on his cheek - he wouldn't let us wash his cheek for days. As "ushers" it turned out that all we had to do was help clean up crepe paper at the end for about 5 minutes - and we got four $80 tickets! I love free stuff, don't you?After the show we went to Times Square. To add to the excitement of all the lights and people you can count on there, a garbage truck had just totally demolished a taxi cab and there were police on horseback and all sorts of exciting things going on. Great to be there and see the place so alive - at 11pm on a Wednesday night - NYC is truly the "city that doesn't sleep"!
Here we are waiting for the subway - we all loved the experience of riding around on the subway - people of every color and background and interest brought together by the common need to go somewhere in the same direction, buskers playing instruments and putting on shows in the stations and on the trains, dirty old trains with graffiti that muggy hot smelly subway air, nice new trains that don't seem to belong to the same transit system, beautiful old mosaic tiles with the names of stations.... There's nothing like the NY Subway. Isaac especially liked the lady that got on wearing a funny paper birthday party hat and I thought the pretty 20-something woman with tattoos and lots of piercings who was sucking her thumb and rubbing her nose as she contemplated life was pretty interesting.
We all wedged ourselves into Noah and Kristi's great little apartment for a very welcome night's sleep. Noah and Kristi have created such a lovely home there and they live in such a great area. They are the greatest hosts and were so sweet to show us around and help us do all the things we wanted to do.

We started off with Central park and FAO Schwartz. The boys loved chasing squirrels (or "chipmunks" as they called them - we don't have any squirrels around here) in Central Park and playing the big piano at FAO.
Then we walked down 5th Avenue - loving the roasted chestnut smell at all the little food stands, the people-watching and the fancy window displays (looks like everyone should wear black this coming season - black, black and more black on all the manequins - fine with me - my favorite color to wear). We stopped into St Patricks Cathedral and it was mass - there's nothing like hearing music in a cathedral - a wonderful woman singer echoing throughout the place. Then we headed on down to try our luck at catching some great views atop 500 5th Avenue - I think I was one of the very few people in my family who hadn't done that yet and the boys were very excited about the intregue of "sneaking up" there. We breezed past the security guard station - took our name and picture and sent us to the elevators. Then we took the elevator, then the stairs, and just kept going - it was pretty exciting for the kids going through all these machine rooms and old narrow metal staircases. We finally got out to where the ladders are and there were all these workmen (they're fixing the brickwork all over the building) who didn't seem to mind us being up there but didn't like Isaac trying to climb up a ladder. So we retreated to another great spot and got some wonderful views.

You can see in this photo how seriously Ashton took the "sneaking" - he's so into spies and all that. The boys were so excited that we found this great secret place for a great view!
We headed down to try to see the Statue of Liberty but it was POURING by the time we got to that end of town so we checked out the World Trade Center site (sad long long list of names there) and saw that we couldn't see anything of the Statue of Liberty through the rain - oh well. We headed back to Noah and Kristi's to get our bags and say our goodbyes and went to explore Chinatown for a while before taking the good old Fung Wa bus for Boston. What a day!

BOSTON

Sweet Saydi came and picked us up at midnight when our bus finally got into South Station - lots of rain and traffic made for a long ride but it was nice to just sit for a while and enjoy the odd assortment of sandwiches I picked up for dinner at a random place in Chinatown while a truly diverse group of people on the bus talked loudly on their cell phones in Chinese, complained with a lot of expletives about the bus driver's technique, snored or ate smelly food.

Saydi and Jeff's house is beautiful! They've done such a wonderful job with it- I loved all the colors and the beautiful old creaky floors and the radiator noises that took me back to my days at Wellesley - such a pleasant homey place. Ashton and Isaac had so much fun playing with Charlie and Hazel and kept them entertained in the early mornings so the rest of us could sleep a bit. We spent a rainy Friday eating amazing food at an Indian buffet on Newbury Street with Saydi and Jeff and kids, checking out the Public Gardens and doing a fair amount of the Freedom Trail until we were just too cold. Then we headed for the Boston Children's Museum which has all this new stuff and everyone had a wonderful time - luckily it was late opening day so we had all evening there and we got in free off Saydi's pass.

Here's Ashton and Isaac's favorite spot on Newbury Street

The boys at the Massachusett's State House - beginning of the Freedom Trail

Outside the Children's Museum

Saturday we did the grand tour of MIT and Ashton decided he's going there. He couldn't get enough of all the cool inventions we saw at the MIT museum and loved the labs we walked past and the neat echo bench place on the grounds and the awesome new computer sciences building. It was so fun to have Jared show us some places I'd never even been before.

Here's the wild new computer science building.

Here's one of the really cool, whimsical machines we saw at the MIT museum.
Then we went on to Harvard Business School to visit our friends Neylan and Elliott and family and check out Mom and Dad's old stomping grounds.

Then walked around Harvard Square and the Ed School and Harvard Yard. It was fun to see all the students carrying "Free Hugs" signs and the buskers doing various shows in the Square and it seemed like just yesterday that I was there - so much the same.

The kids thought Harvard paled in comparison to MIT - no cool gadgets in sight, just a lot of old brick sidewalks and buildings covered in ivy. But the squirrels in Harvard Yard - they were cool.

We finished off the day with a visit to Newburyport to see Eva and family - her little kids are so cute! It was fun to see their house (with walls full of Eva's beautiful photography) and catch up a bit, speak some Bulgarian and see the beautiful little jewel of a town where they live. It was quick but it was worth it!

Sunday we had a nice breakfast with Tal who was there for the single's conference - fun to see him here and there between his activities. Then it was great to be in Saydi and Jeff's ward - such a mix of good people from all walks of life and Saydi and Jeff clearly part of the foundation that ward relies on.

Went out to Wellesley right after church and I loved showing the boys some of my favorite spots. Wow - that place is gorgeous! The leaves were all really starting to turn thanks the cold weather we endured.

We had a great dining hall Sunday dinner with Charity and the boys thought it was pretty much the coolest thing in the world to eat all the food they wanted. We ate in the dining hall for lunch the next day too and the boys seriously put away about 5 meals worth of food in one sitting. Thanks in large part to the food, Isaac declared that Ashton could go to MIT if he wanted but as for him, he'd be going to Wellesley. He was pretty disappointed to hear that that wouldn't be a possiblity!

The three Eyre Wellesley women in Great Hall

Saydi and I stayed out at Wellesley after Jeff and Jared took the kids back for bed (all but Ashton who got to spend the night with Char and thought it was very very wonderful). It was so fun to talk about all the wonderful and weird things about Wellesley with my two Wellesley sisters - when I went there way back when, I never would have guessed I'd have any siblings go there - let alone two!

We spent Monday morning at Wellesley again, exploring my favorite "secret" passageways and getting one last meal in with Charity. Then we spent some time with one of my best friends from Wellesley, Keliegh and her husband and little girl - great to catch up. Then Saydi took us to the airport and that was it!

We were so excited to see Liza and the little guys and they'd had a wonderful time with the Lanoues. It was great to be back at home and back together. What a trip we had! I love that Ashton, Isaac and Jared have all these special shared experiences now and that the boys know more about the places that helped shaped who Jared and I are. There are so many things I love and miss about the East Coast. But this is home - for now - and it's great to do the comparison and feel so blessed to be where we are at this time in our lives.