19 years old!

Our family turned 19 years old this week...it's an independent adult, but still inexperienced and finding its way. Old enough to vote, but not drink, and can't quite rent a car yet. Yay, us!

I'm kinda between projects at the moment. Christmas prep is done, not quite garden-planning time. Feeling a twinge of ennui. I'm sure it will pass soon enough...nothing stays the same for long around here. 

I thought I'd let you see Bobby's "home office" (which also functions as a gym, conference room, copy room, and storage room). 

And this week was another first for us: 70 candles on a birthday cake! My friend Sandy turned 70 on Sunday and we had her over for dinner and cake. The cake was brighter than the camera could handle and the kids were only 3/4 through lighting at this point. Everyone helped with the blowing out. I loved that Sandy chose a spice cake for her birthday. It reminded me of our wedding cake. Our top tier was spice cake and we enjoyed it on our first anniversary.

We got our first real snow of the season this week! James and Matthew played in it for hours. Robert's teacher gave his class the assignment to take a picture of themselves in the snow. I'm sure she was envisioning the quintessential snowman/snowfort/sledding photoshoot. Robert, of course, decided to complete the assignment as quickly and literally as humanly possible.

Barefooted. Nice.

You can tell that the pandemic has allowed the kids to extend their summer wardrobe long past its usual expiration date. They just haven't been walking to and from school for the past 4 months.

The kids are officially on winter break. This is the best week of the year because they're excitedly anticipating lots of good things very soon and all their school responsibilities have been lifted. The week after Christmas tends to be a serious let-down for all of us :( I've got a few things in mind. We might make it through all right ;)

Optometrist visit

Matthew needed an eye exam for Kindergarten registration and I only got around to it this week. Whoops. Normally, the school office would be on my case waaaaay before now, but, y'know...Covid. Sigh. I took him and Alice at the same time. He's a teeny bit far-sighted and Alice needed to bump up her prescription a little, but no biggie. I left those appointments just relieved that Matthew kept his mask on the whole time. I didn't have energy to philosophize further :)

I also made appointments later for Robert and James 'cuz, well, neither of them had been seen since THEIR required Kindergarten eye exams *cough cough*. Once Robert realized the exam was only for his eyes and there wouldn't be any shots or examinations of any other kind, he loosened up. James was just plain excited for an outing :) It turns out Robert is a little near-sighted in both eyes (double astigmatism). James is a little far-sighted. Neither boy's condition warrants correction, though, so it's just a watch-and-see situation. 

No surprise, it got me thinking...James' subtle near-sightedness might partially explain why he stumbles and glosses over more complex words while reading. I thought maybe he was being lazy. And he might be. But he also might not see the words as clearly as others do. As a whole, he tends to dreams big and figure out the details later. He prefers to communicate with body language and emotion and action, not words.

I also thought about Robert. He's so focused on what is literally right in front of him that he sometimes misses other important dimensions of the situation. Things afar off. He'll fight you to the death over semantics, completely missing the fact that you actually AGREE with him on the larger point. He doesn't see how the vicious debate wears on a relationship, either. Robert lives in a world of wordy exactness, repeating his case until he feels you understand his point adequately. Flexibility and open-ended answers have been known to infuriate him. He communicates with words. So many words.

I have never been more convinced that people come to this world with a little something already programmed inside them. Personality. Needs. Perspective. 

Just plain fascinating.

Relief

I can't tell you how much relief I feel knowing the first Covid-19 vaccine is making its way into bodies all over the U.S. today. Remember when President Nelson called for a worldwide Good Friday fast way back in April? I had no idea back then what lay ahead, but I decided to see God's hand in whatever relief would come. Just 8 months later (not 18 months, not 3 years), there are THREE very promising vaccines. Awe-inspiring. I'm just amazed. And so stinking relieved. 

It will take time to recover from this state of affairs, to be sure, and I don't expect church or school to settle into a "new normal" for another year, but what a gift! Hang in there. Let's keep wearing masks, social distancing, and washing our hands frequently. The vaccine will be able to save MANY more lives if there are fewer people already sick.

David Leonhardt of the New York Times wrote:

No vaccine can eliminate a pandemic immediately, just as no fire hose can put out a forest fire. While the vaccine is being distributed, the virus continues to do damage. “Bluntly stated, we’ll get out of this pandemic faster if we give the vaccine less work to do,” A. David Paltiel, one of the Health Affairs authors and a professor at the Yale School of Public Health, told me.

Relief is on the way.

Primary Program 2020 and Christmas Beginnings

Today was the boys' turn to participate in our annual Primary Program event. It was done over Zoom, of course. A first for all of us. The dumbest thing was, though, that it didn't occur to me to invite family and friends to view it until literally moments before it started. Ugh. The boys weren't thrilled to participate, as usual. They were squirmy and shy, as usual. I think it went really well :)

Alice was in charge of the Young Women's lesson this week. I like how her leaders have the girls take turns, too. Alice realized that she's a lot more confident when she's wearing her glasses! She was pleased with the length of her lesson and didn't feel like she messed up anything. That's a win!

I've had mixed feelings with the onset of the Christmas season this year. My favorite bits are now impossible (e.g. having families over every week to sing Christmas carols) or already too abundant (e.g. unstructured time with family at home and nothing scheduled to pull us around). I was pretty sad about that for a good week or two. I asked some friends about it. Turns out, I'm not the only one dreading a holiday that comes with expectations of loving togetherness and wishes fulfilled and meaningful service and lifetime memories. It seems too much to ask when I'm already trying to do that every. single. quarantined day. I already invest enormous amounts of energy trying to keep the family on an even keel these days. Christmas in a Covid world is void of the activities that recharge me. 

So, I mourned the loss for a little while. 

Putting up the Christmas tree was a disaster. Two kids opted to hang out alone in their rooms while the rest of us decorated and listened to Christmas music. Even now, I'm still rolling my eyes and shaking my head. I was working so hard managing my own anger and frustration at their behavior that I couldn't help them through their own feelings in the moment. We seem to have bounced back alright, though. I really wonder what my kids will remember about this period in their lives.

I talked to some of my old friends about my Christmas issues. They listened and empathized and offered suggestions. I'm crazy lucky to have women friends and family that I can be real with...people I trust and love and look up to all at once. Thanks to these women in my corner, I'm ready to rethink this year and make it something my family and I can all benefit from.

Anyway, I'm okay with Christmas now. Gifts will be simple. No friends coming over to help celebrate or sing. We aren't really doing the Advent thing at all. We are loosely adhering to the #LightTheWorld campaign. It's pretty much Robert and me doing all the heavy lifting there. One good thing about paring it down to the absolute essentials is that we now have room for whims. I read Christmas stories to the boys for an hour this morning. Robert saw some characters making pomanders and asked if we could, too. I said, "Sure! I'll get cloves tomorrow on my weekly grocery trip." Heads up to any friends and family nearby...you may be getting a spicy-scented gift on your doorknob this week. 

Here's our current Christmas setup. I put candles in the fireplace this year. I like the light and warmth they give. I also like that the flames are behind a glass barrier so the kids can get as crazy close as they want with minimal danger to themselves :)

I'd love to share some other random and assorted photos with you...

James' class has begun writing opinion pieces. This is his list of opinions.

The two Robert J. Evanses accidentally wore identical t-shirts one day. Cooooool.

This is one of the few ornaments on our tree that belongs to me and only me. My sister Lara bought it for me on our sibling trip to New Mexico. The image is Rose of Lima, patron saint of gardeners and florists :)

Matthew can't bend his pinky toes. No matter what. He tries and tries and they just stick out like dainty little pinky fingers at an English Tea Party. So darn cute!

Despite his toe issues, he's remarkably flexible, and likes to do the strangest things.

Alice asked one afternoon if she could have a campfire. I raised an eyebrow for only a moment before granting permission. Honestly, I'm glad to see her getting brave and independent with things that used to scare the living daylights out of her. I think she wanted to get warm with it. It mostly just made her smell like bacon. Mmmmmmmm.

Kindergarten Fun and Growth Spurt

I overheard Matthew's teacher making a certain announcement for the first time in her life, I'm sure: "When you go to the bathroom during class, don't take your computer with you. Just leave the computer."

Also, Matthew's writing assignments have started to require a little more out of him. Today he had to write a sentence about a family tradition:

His text reads, "On kwmis, my family dokawats a kwsmis chwe." (translation: On Christmas, my family decorates a Christmas tree). He tells me the person is jumping with joy while he decorates.

He can hear the difference between Cwistmas and Christmas. He can say it, too. And I've tested him multiple times to see if he can say "the" instead of "vuh", and he can. He just doesn't think about it that way when the words are coming out of his own mouth. I'm confident he'll sort it out eventually, and I might be a little sad about vat :)

****************

I pulled some fleece pajamas out of storage for James this week. He's just barely 8 years old, but tall for his age, so I thought the size 10 PJs would work all winter. Nope. They were high waters on him, and the sleeves didn't reach his wrists. Seriously?! I measured his height. He's about the 97th percentile in height for a boy his age, which makes him the size of your average 11-year-old. His summer shorts and short-sleeved t-shirts deceived me!! So, size 10 is too small and the next one up is size 12, which is too big. Robert wears size 12-14! And I measured Robert, too. He falls at the 90th percentile in height for age. Big, big boys. And Matthew? 37th percentile. Alice still hovers around 50th percentile.

What a variety of phenotypes from the same parental genotypes! I'm taking that as a good sign...lots of genetic variability...hybrid vigor and whatnot ;)