Bolts in Tires and Feeling Stuck

Last week I shared this story with Heidi's primary class at church, and I've been thinking about it throughout the week.

On December 30, 2008, Ryan and I started driving from North Carolina to visit Ryan's brother in Florida. We expected the trip to take about eight hours. But instead we had some setbacks. First there was a terrible accident near Savannah, Georgia that completely stopped several miles of freeway traffic for three hours. Then we stopped to get some gas and accidentally drove over a bunch of junk in the road that we couldn't see until it was too late because it was dark. A few minutes later the left front tire was sounding funny, and when Ryan stopped and looked he found that there was a bolt in the tire and the tire was leaking air. At this point it was quite late, so we knew the places that could repair it were probably all closed. We didn't know what to do. If we couldn't get the tire fixed we would be stuck all night.

We pulled into a gas station thinking we would put the spare tire on. Then Ryan had an impression from the Holy Ghost that he should go into the gas station and ask if there was a place that could fix our tire. It seemed silly to even ask because it was so late, but he decided to follow the prompting. The assistant manager at the gas station didn't know of any place, so Ryan asked where we could change the tire to the spare without starting a fire and we went outside and started getting ready to change the tire. But before we'd even pulled everything out somebody drove by and told us about a Pilot station that could put the spare tire on for us. He had heard Ryan talking to the assistant manager inside the gas station. At the Pilot station it turned out that they actually had the tools to pull the bolt out of the tire and patch it up, and instead of charging us the manager just told us to tip the other worker.

We didn't get to Jared and Kristi's house until 1 a.m., but we were very grateful that through the guidance of the Holy Ghost we had been able to get our tire fixed and we weren't stuck. It's an experience that we've drawn on several times over the years as a reminder that God is aware of us and will guide and direct us on our journey through life.

As I've reflected on that experience it's been interesting how it parallels our current situation. Ryan's been applying for postdocs since last fall. We had a verbal offer for a job in February but it got retracted because of some budget problem at that university (a bolt in our tire). It feels like it's getting late and we might be stuck. But we have felt several times that God has a plan for us, so we are trying to continue to put our faith in him that he will guide us and help us meet the right people so that we can move forward.

February pictures

Blanket fort/popcorn fun:

The Valentine's Day craziness:

New haircut:

We had been eating airbread for a while because it was so busy, and I finally got around to making homemade whole wheat bread. As soon as it got out of the oven, Heidi said, "Mom, can I have a piece of bread right now? I know I'll get burned, but I don't care." I think we went through a loaf and a half that day. I make good bread.

Tut, tut, looks like rain!

Playing outside:

And in February, Kevin learned how to ride his bike! (Skip to the end of the video where he manages a nice long ride.)

Children's Museum of Alamance

Children's museums are kind of a pricy family outing, but occasionally we like to indulge. I had heard about the Children's Museum of Alamance and I was waiting for a day when Ryan could come with us because taking three kids by myself was a little intimidating. We were finally able to go on Martin Luther King Day and had a great time. It's always fun to see what creative ideas the different children's museums come up with.

Trying out an old fire truck:

Ann Marie's favorite part by far was taking care of the babies in the hospital section. She would have been happy to spend the entire time wearing nurse's scrubs and pushing the babies around in the stroller.

Painting on glass? What's not to love? Every once in a while workers would close off the area and spray it all down with soap and water, which was also fascinating.

Kevin played a long game of delivering mail all over the children's museum. It was so cute.

Heidi enjoyed working as a cook/waitress in the restaurant kitchen.

They had this cool beanstalk that the kids could climb. Can you find Kevin?

We finally gave in and let Ann Marie paint, which she loved. She did get paint on her clothes when we were trying to wash her off, but it all came off easily in the washing machine.

Heidi took a turn being a mail lady.

Other fun activities included the theater area with dress-up clothes and puppets, the farm/grocery stand, and the hospital/dentist office area.

Quiet book

A few years ago I made several quiet book pages, but I never got around to putting them together as a book, which meant it all got scattered all over the house. It got so bad I seriously considered just throwing it all away. In January I finally got around to getting all the pieces in one place and making it into a book, so here is the final product.

Velcro numbers (I had to reattach almost all the velcro):

This is a felt face with various face parts you can use to make faces. The face is glued to the page and the rest of the pieces go in the beige colored bag. This is one of the kids' favorite pages. This was one of the few busy bags I saved from the busy bag swap several years ago (big mess and I would not do it again). I used to have a magnet that could be used to move the paper clips around, but that disappeared and I haven't found an adequate substitute yet. There's also a zipper for zipping practice.

Touch and feel page with several different swatches of fabric.

Left side is a guy eating spaghetti (red yarn) out of a bowl. You pull the button on the image above to make the spaghetti go into his mouth. The downside to the string is that Kevin thought it made a great leash/kite/thing to drag the book around, but now he doesn't do that as much, so it's worked out. Right side is various buckles/things to adjust.

Left side has button flowers (still haven't found one of them), right side is for counting or just playing with the beads.

This was a lot of work and to be honest if I could go back in time I would tell my past self not to bother. Until recently Kevin and Heidi didn't have a lot of interest in it, although Ann Marie does play with it more. It's fun (but a little messy) for sacrament meeting.

January pictures

We've had several technology changes happen in the past six months. Ryan and I got smart phones and we aren't really taking pictures with the camera anymore because it's so convenient to use our phones. So Ryan has pictures on his phone that I haven't gotten around to importing and that therefore will not be featured in this series of catch-up posts. And if you take pictures on your phone it's really easy to just share one on Instagram. Then our computer died and even Ryan was not able to resurrect it, so we had to get a new one. The hard drive seems fine and I don't think we lost any files, but we were using Picasa and Google has stopped supporting Picasa, which means we can't download Picasa anymore. So now I'm trying to find a replacement for Picasa. I'm trying out Windows Photos, which has some basic photo editing abilities, but so far it's making me annoyed and I'm not sure how much of that is because it actually is annoying ("We automatically made this album for you! Isn't that convenient?" "No, that's not convenient! Just let me do that myself and leave me alone!") versus me being frustrated trying to figure out a new program. It's definitely not as good as Picasa and I don't think I'm going to stick with it. So I guess that's why I have almost four months of photos to share on my blog. I'm going to try to get caught up, but there probably won't be much editing or cropping on the photos. Then again, I don't usually do that anyway. Anyway, here are some pictures from January.

My mom found these dresses from when my sister Melissa and I were kids.

Some kids sleep with teddy bears. Kevin sleeps with electronics.

We had some snow days and the kids enjoyed playing in the snow to varying degrees. I was grateful we didn't have two weeks straight of snow days like last year.

Kevin's primary talk

Today Kevin gave a talk in Primary. This was the first time I didn't have to just write his talk out for him. We both sat down and talked about his topic and he wrote a lot of it himself. He was so cute giving his talk. I have to admit Ryan and I had to hold in laughs a few times. Here is his talk:


Hello! My name is Kevin. Today I will be telling you about the prophets.

In Doctrine and Covenants 1:38, it says: “What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, . . . whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.” That means that when the prophet says something, it’s like Heavenly Father is saying it.

Today our prophet is President Monson! Here are some of the things he has taught us:

In the last General Conference he said: “As we follow the example of the Savior, ours will be the opportunity to be a light in the lives of others . . . To each of you, I say that you are a son or daughter of our Heavenly Father. You have come from His presence to live on this earth for a season, to reflect the Savior’s love and teachings, and to bravely let your light shine for all to see.”

He said: “It is essential for us to live within our means.” That means we should save our money and we should not spend more money than we earn.

President Monson often teaches us to serve others. He taught us about being kind to others.

He taught us about being patient, which means to wait and be polite. If you don’t you might hurt someone or break something.

President Monson said why it is important to follow God’s plan. If Satan comes up to you and tells you what to do, do not follow him. Follow God’s plan. The plan of salvation is very special, and if somebody breaks it, God will be very sad. That is why it is important to follow God and the prophet. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Stuff that happened

As things get busier I'm finding that it's easier to just quickly post a picture on Instagram and then share it on Facebook, so I guess that's why I'm not blogging so much. But here, in no particular order, are some things that we've been up to:

Kevin finished the third Magic Tree House book. He always checks out two or three from the library just to look at the pictures. Math homework has gotten a lot better over the last couple of months. At the beginning of the school year it would take an hour every day, but now he's a lot faster and lots of times he enjoys the homework so much that he decides to do all four pages the day he brings them home. It does help that he's not getting as many story problems, but his focus certainly seems to have improved.

Recently Kevin expressed an interest in learning to play the piano and he started asking me on a daily basis when I was going to buy him some piano books. I asked around and everyone said the Faber method was great, so I bought the Primer books and we just started working on them. Kevin wanted to start with I Am a Child of God and I don't think he really understands that we have to start with baby steps like learning rhythm, but I think he's actually doing really well. He's really good at noticing patterns and he likes to try to come up with his own melodies. The Faber method seems really good. It's fun and engaging and I feel like it gives a lot of guidance to me so I know how to teach him, which is a big help because I don't have much experience teaching piano.

Heidi is learning to read at preschool. We're using Hooked on Phonics and I like it a lot better than Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. They're also learning sight words.

I'm still doing pretty well with practicing the piano consistently. It has been a blessing to have a piano, but I must admit in some ways this piano has been a bit of a disappointment. I had it tuned a year ago and within a couple of months it was already very out of tune, and every key has a different timbre. It's hard to try to play something musically when the quality of the instrument is not so good. I'm trying to remind myself that often when I can't get something to sound like I want it's not me--it's the piano. I am probably going to start going to the church once a week to practice so that I can keep my morale up playing on a good piano sometimes. For now my piano does work for practice and so I'm trying to deal with it and patiently wait for the time when we can save up to buy a good piano. I've been working on learning all the major and minor arpeggios because I never learned those. I have them all memorized now and I'm continuing to polish them. The arpeggio section in Fur Elise seemed a lot easier when I played it for fun a few weeks ago! I've also been working on Debussy's Arabesque 1 for several months. At the beginning I wasn't sure if I could ever learn to play those triplets stacked on eighth notes, but after practicing it for a while I got to the point where it's not that hard. I figure this has to be awesome for my brain. I have the whole piece memorized now and I'm trying to polish the whole thing and make it more and more musical. I've learned a lot about musicality from our ward choir director and now watching the dynamics and phrasing is something I tend to do out of habit, whereas when I used to practice in high school I would always forget about those things.

I am trying to implement a daily chore system for myself so I can stay more caught up on some of the housework. I set up reminders on my phone, and that seems to help. I told myself to stick with it for three weeks and see how it goes. This is week three and so far I like it. My schedule is: master bath on Monday, kids bath on Tuesday, sweep and mop Wednesday, vacuum Thursday, do a deep cleaning job on Friday. (I just realized that sounded like a bunch of Magic Tree House titles.) I'm thinking of changing Friday to cleaning the kitchen and doing deep cleaning on Saturday. I do try to do more than this, but having it scheduled helps me stay caught up. I've realized it really only takes fifteen minutes to clean a bathroom if I do it regularly. I've also realized that if my house was as clean as I wish it was, I would never do anything that really matters like spend time with my family or read or play the piano.

This has also reinforced that my biggest challenge with having a clean house is the kids' messes. It's really hard to get the vacuuming done when it means either picking up all the toys myself or (even harder) getting the kids to pick up the toys. We've invested in some really great toys that teach our kids to think and be creative, but unfortunately that means that we have several bins full of building sets with lots of pieces (duplos, marble run, Citi Bloks, play food, regular blocks, etc.). It's helped a lot to have each set in its own labelled bin, and the kids have gotten better with cleaning up, but if you dump out three bins of toys then that's already a huge mess to clean up. On Sunday I got so frustrated that I packed up almost all of the toys and moved them into our bedroom, and told the kids that if they want to play with something they have to ask me for it, and they can't have something else until they've cleaned up the ones they were playing with. We'll see how it goes. They need to learn to clean up their messes before making new ones.

The kids keep asking me when we're going to have another baby. I tell them we can't have another baby until they get better at cleaning up after themselves, which isn't really true because if I wait for that then we won't have any more. At any rate I've decided I like the three year gap better than the two year gap because two-year-olds are still almost babies themselves. The other day I saw a friend with a new baby and when I saw his tiny hands I thought to myself, "I can't hold that baby or I'll want another one right now and I just can't do that yet."

We got a marble run game for Christmas, which has been really fun, but it also stresses me out because Ann Marie loves the marbles. Her new favorite game is to throw balls and say, "Hi-yah!" and on Sunday she came out to the living room with two handfuls of marbles that had been left on the floor in the kids' room and threw them all while saying, "Hi-yah!" which was very cute and irritating at the same time, and that was when I confiscated all of the toys.

My new hobby is sewing shields for the Days for Girls feminine hygiene kits. I've made six so far and I have the materials for lots more. Our stake has started having periodic sew-ins to make things for the kits and I'm really excited to be involved. It seems like a really great cause and I can see how the kits could make a huge difference in these girls' lives.

Ryan's paper has been accepted for publication and they're just doing some final things before it gets published. We're still working on the job search.