A few years ago, Zack and Kyra asked if I’d tow them around the neighborhood on a sled attached to the back of my car. (There was snow on the road.) I obliged, and we had a great time cruising around Serenity Circle.
Tonight, Zack asked if I’d tow him on a penny board around the neighborhood. The asphalt is really smooth, making it prime territory for a skateboard. Again I obliged, and he held onto the side of my car (well, technically his car now) as we cruised. These photos don’t really do it justice, because it looks like he’s just standing beside a stationary car. But if you look closely at his hair you’ll see it blowing back in the wind.
At one point I was doing about 25mph, which is probably far too fast for this neighborhood– cars can pop out of garages or blind corners at any time. He said it felt like around 40mph. I may be 50, and he may be 20, but that doesn’t mean we can’t act like a couple of 15-year-olds.
And yes, we got some strange looks from a few people who were walking outside.
Alex and Kaitlyn headed out on a cruise, and left their offspring with us. Sure, we’re experienced and amazing parents, but sheesh, it’s been like twenty years since we had a one-year-old in our care for more than a few hours at a stretch.
Fortunately being a parent is much like riding a bike, in that you don’t really forget how to do it, and at times you crash spectacularly. Ollie seemed to have a great time with us. Part of it, we decided, was the simple fact that we have so much space. Compared with a tiny college apartment, our house– and the expansive yard surrounding it– probably seems like an endless vista of possibilities to someone who’s less than two feet tall.
He enjoyed riding on our backs as we hiked the driveway and did chores…
One day as I was destroying the yellow menace in our yard, he was following me around and picking a few of the dandies himself. At one point, though, he apparently felt like it had been too much walking, so he plopped down in the grass and just sat there with an angry expression.
(Yes, our grass is obscenely tall… we mowed it the next day.)
As required by law, grandparents are known for spoiling their grandchildren, and we did plenty of that. He was happy at mealtime when he could enjoy bowls of mac and cheese, mixed with the occasional Cheeto or handful of chocolate chips.
He even endured a ten-hour drive back home to Utah, sitting in his car seat with a look of occasional wonder mixed with some zoned-out stares out the window. After arriving at the villa, he actually climbed back into his car seat (which was sitting in the garage) and attempted to buckle himself in!
Although we didn’t enjoy waking up at 5:30 every morning when he’d decided sleepy time was over, and our productivity took a nosedive, it was a blast to have him around for a couple of weeks. Grandparenting is cool.
Kids love water. Kids also love rocks and throwing things. So it stands to reason that kids love throwing rocks into water.
We put it to the test today by taking Ollie down to Yellow Bay and letting him play on the shore of Flathead Lake. He absolutely loved it.
Even though it’s May, the water temperature these days is hovering around 45 to 50 degrees. Still, you get used to it pretty quickly. He didn’t mind having his legs in the water while he picked up handfuls of rocks and threw them.
Naturally we decided to take him out on the jet skis, so we bundled him into a life jacket that was literally as big as he is. He seemed excited about riding with his Aunt Kyra.
They cruised around the bay for a while, but after maybe ten minutes of it, the little guy was literally falling asleep.
Kyra said he was sort of nodding off. I wonder if maybe he wanted to go fast, so this slow cruising just wasn’t exciting enough.
In any case, when he returned to the shore he was thrilled to throw some more rocks. Life was good. Heading home, he showed us what he thought of a day on the lake:
Today was our last day of seminary for the school year, which means I can finally turn off that pesky alarm that chimes at 5:35 in the morning:
As is tradition, we had some food and just chatted for our final class. Strangely enough, a number of the kids insisted that pizza would be a good option for food. Not cold breakfast pizza, like some people enjoy, but hot fresh-baked pizza right out of the oven in the church kitchen. So we obliged, and made three big homemade pizzas last night. The kids wolfed them down– nearly everyone grabbed a slice or two.
Afterward we decided to snap a class photo. Although I’m happy to avoid 5:35, I’ll miss these yahoos each morning.
For two and a half years, we’ve been using our “it’s only temporary” setup with a TV sitting on a piece of plywood which in turn sits atop two big Yamaha speakers. It works, but it looks ghetto and the TV is way off-center for everyone on the couch except the one Sweet Spot. I finally decided to do something about it.
First, I imagined what it might look like if the TV was mounted on the wall with in-wall speakers for left, right, and center channels.
It’s tricky with the fireplace, of course, because you shouldn’t mount a TV– or any nice, expensive, meltable thing– right above a fireplace. After some discussion, though, we agreed we never really use the fireplace anyway, so it’ll be fine. I called a drywall guy to see if he could patch up the holes I’ll inevitably make, and then re-texture the wall to match the rest of it. To my astonishment, he said he could do the work three days later. I’m used to having contractors tell me their schedule is booked months in advance. This meant I had to really get cracking.
After a deep breath, I took a drill and a compass saw and went to work dissecting the drywall. I had no idea what to expect back there; with the fireplace and some closets on the back side of the wall, it was anyone’s guess. Sure enough, the studs were kind of a hodgepodge.
I minimized the drywall I removed, because this was mainly a voyage of exploration. As it turned out, the placement of the studs dictated where the speakers could go. On the left, there’s only one space wide enough. On the right, there’s a big horizontal support just above my cut, pushing both speakers down a bit. And sadly there’s not a space for a center channel, because there are three studs alongside the fireplace and they shouldn’t be cut.
My favorite part was removing the three-way switches that control our ceiling fan, and being reminded of the Switch That Does Nothing. Thom and I discovered it a few years ago when meddling with the electrical stuff. You can see how it has a single line wire coming in, but nothing coming out. (The brass is the ground, of course.) I have no idea why you’d wire something like this. It does, however, explain the roughly half-dozen other switches scattered through the house that I can’t figure out… they probably also go nowhere.
With the switches rewired and my rough speaker holes cut out, it was time for the drywall guy to get to work. He did a great job patching the hole and re-texturing everything to match.
This morning I added a coat of paint, cut the final speaker holes, and installed them. Oh, and I found a cool little tube that can route cables through a wall between rooms. That’s important because the stereo equipment actually sits in the closet on the other side of the wall.
After some shenanigans with the TV mounting hardware, we had it securely attached to the wall and it was time to give it a whirl.
Mission accomplished! Another house project checked off my list, only two and a half years after I conceived of it…
Apparently today is the day the dandelions bloom. Yesterday I didn’t see any of them in our yard, and today as we were driving past the orchard for lunch, I saw this horror:
They seemed to come from nowhere! Pepper thinks the flowers spread out in the sunlight, and then when the sun fades, they sort of quiet down and hide. It’s probably true, because the courtyard looked like it had two dozen dandies but when I went out to pick them a few hours later, there were only four or five. And once the flowers have closed, it’s hard to spot them.
For the past year, Pepper and I have continued our decades-long tradition of making homemade pizza weekly, but with a twist: we’ve been making a half-dozen mini pizzas at a time, baking two for ourselves that night, and freezing the rest. Then, when a hankering for pizza strikes us, we pull these uncooked masterpieces out of the freezer, pop them into the oven, and in 15 minutes we have a delicious fresh hot pizza. Nice!
The other night we somehow got on the topic of our pizza tradition, and I mused about making pan-style pizzas. Since we turn a batch of dough into crusts for six pizzas, they’re each pretty thin and end up basically being baked tortillas when they’re done. Why not use a little more dough per pizza, and have a more substantial crust? I found some seven-inch pizza pans online, ordered them, and today I went to work.
I made the dough, prepared the toppings, and jammed everything into these four little pans. Bonus: double layers of toppings on all of them!
Now they’re sitting in the freezer, awaiting the real test. When I next have a hankering, I’ll put one of these puppies in the oven and see if this new style works out. And if not, it’s back to tortillas, which are still awesome.
This week in seminary we’ve been discussing the Ten Commandments. That includes the story of Moses coming down off the mountain with the stone tablets, only to find the Israelites partying and worshipping a golden calf. As a class, we talked about what our “golden calves” are today: what gods do we make for ourselves and then worship? Celebrities? Money? Our smartphones?
The Israelites had recently left Egypt, where their taskmasters worshipped a vast pantheon of gods. Like many ancient religions, the Egyptians had a multitude of gods who were each responsible for certain things: the sun, moon, river, harvest, good fortune, and so on. We thought it would be fun to have the kids sculpt their own gods and tell us the “power” their god had.
So, before class we went to work making some dough. It’s pretty simple: flour, salt, water, and a bit of tartar sauce.
I don’t know why we need tartar sauce, but whatever. Then we added some color by kneading food coloring into the blobs of dough. We made enough for everyone in class to get a blob, and bagged them.
The kids had a blast sculpting gods for a while during class. Their creations ranged from Worm (pronounced “wuhm”, Lexi told us) who was– shockingly– the god of worms, to Gerald, the god of naps and laziness. There was an elephant god, a strong man (the god of workouts), and a rather intricate creation which turned out to be the god of dreadlocks. My creation was Nasob, the god of unhealthy foods:
In case it’s not obvious, his staff is a gigantic Cheeto.
Honestly I’m pretty sure the kids enjoyed the activity mostly because it meant they weren’t sitting at tables talking about the Bible, which can be tough at 6:30 in the morning. But regardless of their reasons, they had a good time and we were able to chat about the “graven images” in today’s world. I’ve always thought if I can get just a single high schooler to really think about the stuff we’re discussing each morning, it’s a win. Maybe in a small way, we’re helping these good youth become just a little bit better.
This morning it’s been pretty foggy as we continue a week of rain, snow, and general moisture. As the fog clouds retreated, it was cool to watch them descend the valley. Our house is a little more than 500 feet above the level of Flathead Lake, so we often get slightly different weather up on the mountainside compared with what’s down on the water. I snapped a shot from our front porch, showing the cloud sitting on the lake.
All of Flathead Lake is sitting beneath this huge plain of what looks like white cotton candy…
