61

When I was eleven, my mom was the Young Women's president of our ward. For one Wednesday night activity she taught the twelve to seventeen-year-old girls to make bread. She took dough ready to bake, dough ready to knead, and ingredients so they could actually make the dough. When she got home she commented that the girls really got into the kneading part, and they kneaded the bread so much that my mom thought it might have been too much. When the bread rose again and was baked, it turned out to be the "lightest, fluffiest, most delicious bread" in my mom's words.

                            

When I was in elementary school, I would get out my homemade lunch in the cafeteria and look around at the other kids' lunches and just ache for a white, store-bought, Wonder bread sandwich instead of my homemade wheat bread sandwich. When there were so many of us kids that my mom couldn't keep up with the baking, she switched to buying discounted Mrs. Baird's bread at their outlet (day old) store in town.

My mom kept baking bread, though. The first kind of bread she taught me to make was her "Easy French Bread" recipe. Few ingredients, minimal kneading. It was perfect for Saturday morning chore day because you had to set a timer and stir the dough every ten minutes for fifty minutes. We would race to see what we could accomplish in ten minutes. I took the French bread recipe with me to college and amazed roommates, ward members, and other friends.

Once I turned 18, I was my mom's go-to partner for many, many visits in connection with her leadership responsibilities in Relief Society, visiting teaching, and serving others. Most often she had a loaf of bread to take along with the spiritual message. Who wouldn't welcome a warm loaf of bread? Meals to new moms and the sick or elderly included a loaf of bread.

A few years ago I started making most of my family's bread and began a quest for homemade whole wheat bread to rival the soft white bread I had so pined for as a child. Assisted by a stand mixer, I regularly mixed up loaves of bread for us and to share. I was so used to making bread that when the mixer wouldn't knead the bread anymore and just died one day, I figured I might as well finally learn to make bread completely by hand. It turns out that it's not that hard, but it does take some effort, and it's very therapeutic.

As I knead, I think about my mom raving over those teen girls' kneading skills and wonder to myself if you can really over knead bread. Every. single. time. (I have since googled it and resolved the question in my mind.) I feel a sweet connection to my mom and an entire family heritage when I make bread. I get sentimental that way, and it's one of the reasons I continue to do it.

On my mom's birthday the year after she died, my husband recognized that I was having a hard time and asked if I would like to go to the cemetery and visit her grave. The thought hadn't even occurred to me before then, but in that moment I realized that I did want to, and that I wanted to plant some flowers there since the cemetery encourages it. The following year we did the same thing. This year I was thinking about it several weeks before the date, and I felt impressed to do something different to celebrate her 61st birthday.

We live in the same ward as my parents, in the same neighborhood as my parents, my kids go to the same school my siblings went to and where my mom sometimes worked as a substitute teacher. We know lots of people who knew and loved my mom, so I decided that over the course of the two weeks until my mom's birthday, I could bake 61 loaves of bread and give them away. I didn't tell many people what I was doing, but a few asked and were touched to find out. It was a lot of baking. Most of them were mini loaves. I tried to make a special effort to give bread to people who knew my mom, but I didn't limit it completely.

My daughter Ellen was my partner in crime and extremely excited about the whole idea. She asked me daily what the bread count was, and how many more loaves we needed to reach 61 by grandma's birthday. In the end it was a beautiful and emotional couple of weeks. I cannot begin to describe how it felt to deliver gifts to unsuspecting friends and family. I absolutely felt like the messenger, the deliverer. I had to consciously stop myself from saying "this is from my mom" as I handed over a loaf of bread, but that is what it felt like every time. It's the kind of gift I think my mom would have loved since she was a giver her entire life.

Happy birthday, Mom.

Little swimmer

This year I traded piano lessons for a friend's daughters for swimming lessons for Rose. She has loved it.

And I have been a total slacker at getting her the right kind of goggles and letting her practice with her "diving toys" in the bath tub.

Field trip

The first graders go on a field trip every year to Homestead Heritage. They went on a hay ride, watched demonstrations in woodworking, metal work, weaving, and pottery making. Seeing the baby animals was especially fun.

Easter camping. and candy.

I'm not really sure how we ended up with no pictures of our Easter weekend, but maybe some will show up. We surprised the kids and took them to Nana and Pa's house in Gilmer. Jack Jack had been asking about camping and got the other kids talking about it. So Friday evening Jack's dad set up a tent in the back yard, found sleeping bags and a cot, helped start a fire, and got smores ingredients together. Nana helped the kids find chairs and roast marshmallows. She told them all kinds of stories about their dad when he was a kid and they were in heaven.

I'm really not sure how I ended up sleeping outside in a tent in a cot with a kicking child a couple of yards from a house with a warm bed in it, but I made it until about 5 am and then found a blanket on the couch. I remember being awake most of the night and being cold. I remember the smoke and dirt. But mostly I remember that it was fun being outside with the kids and seeing them so excited. They thought (and still think) that it was the best night ever.

Is it possible to romanticize camping? I love the idea of camping. I have great memories of the one camping trip my parents took us on when I was a kid. They had some persuasive friends, and we had great times on the Texas-Oklahoma border at the Red Rock Canyon. I have great memories of Girls Camp as a youth. I loved it so much that I went the required four years, two more years as a youth leader, and another year after my mission as a ward camp leader. I went camping a couple of times while I was in college, once in the winter when I thought I was going to freeze to death while simultaneously awestruck at the beauty of snow in the mountains in the moonlight, and once in the summer with a group of friends to help someone fulfill a rec management class requirement. I would repeat any of those camping experiences in a heartbeat.

Even the morning after "camping" at Nana and Pa's, even remembering the cold and the no sleep, just thinking about it made me happy. My girls already think it is completely unfair that Jack and Elijah will have myriad camping opportunities with scouts and the father and son's campout. I remember thinking exactly the same thing. Hopefully there will be more camping in our family's future. (Jack is reading this and shaking his head. No romantic ideas about camping on his part.)

And if the kids didn't receive all the desires of their little hearts camping, all their hopes and dreams came true Sunday after church when all Daddy's cousins arrived with their kids for lunch and the Easter egg hunt in Nana's front yard. Candy and quarters. Need I say more?

Church service in the 21st century, part 2

Pretty soon after speaking in my own ward, I was asked to speak in the Spanish branch that meets in our building. The the Spanish branch children and youth attend our Primary and Young Women/Men meetings in English, and then have their own sacrament meeting in Spanish immediately following the conclusion of our meetings. So that makes me their Primary President, too. The Branch President asked that one of my counselors speak, and that the Activity Days Leader also speak, and that I be the last speaker.

After thinking and praying, I decided to give essentially the same talk, so I rewrote it in Spanish. As I sat down it occurred to me that I could have lots of time to speak or no time, but that it was more probable that I'd have no time to talk, and that I should be prepared to just share my testimony. The Activity Days Leader, who has known me for most of my life, shared the story of how she came to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was very personal, but also very similar to an experience I had written in and out of my talk several times, and had finally decided not to share due to the personal nature of the experience and time constraints.

Fast forward to my turn to speak. I looked at the clock and saw that I had about three minutes before the meeting was supposed to end. President Moore told me to take about seven minutes, and as I looked around at everyone, I felt impressed to set my prepared talk down and only tell the story of how the Lord answered my prayers upon finding out about Elijah's heart defect. My original talk was about the gift of the Holy Ghost and personal revelation, and I had intended the story to be personal example of receiving revelation.

I found it interesting that the paragraph I had cut out of my talk in the first ward was my entire talk in the Spanish branch. I'm glad I had prepared.

Twenty years

I can't believe it has been this long!

I love the T-shirt. A little less than ten years out from my high school graduation I was teaching high school myself. Ah, the memories of high school Spanish, Spanish Club, theater department musicals, prom...

Now my kids go to the same school that my youngest brothers went to, and some of the same teachers are still there. This little dude hasn't even started yet. Lots of school still ahead of us.

Best General Conference prep ever

Early on the first Saturday in April, we walked up to the elementary school to participate in the First Annual Color Me Woodway 5K Color Run. I planned to jog ahead with Ellen and Jack Jack, and Jack planned to walk with Rose while pushing Elijah in the stroller.

When it was our turn to start the race, we ran around the corner of the school and started down the street. At this point, most people started walking. Ellen and I slowed down, but Jack Jack just kept going. So I had to encourage Ellen to keep up the pace, keep an eye on Jack Jack up ahead, and try not to kick myself for not running any substantial distance in the last 15 years.

We ran through several color stations and got to the half-way point, had a drink of water and turned around to run the same course back to the school for the second half of the race. A few minutes after we had turned around, I saw Rose running along all by herself. I stopped for a second to check in with her. She was supremely confused to see me running "in the wrong direction" and said Daddy was somewhere behind her. I told her to keep going, and I would see her soon. I figured that with the 600 people running, mostly kids and their parents, she wouldn't get lost, and I could always find Jack and send him to get her or run back to her once I finished with Ellen and Jack Jack.

Jack was waaaay behind Rose, and it turns out that she started with him, but as soon as she saw everyone else running, she took off running, too. 

Elijah was a particularly attractive target for all the teenage female volunteers throwing colored chalk at the color stations. He was cold because I didn't anticipate how cool it would actually be, and he rode the entire time, so he wasn't really feeling it by the end.

I finished the 5k with Ellen and Jack Jack (who ran most of the way. That's three miles!) Then I went back for Rose, who also was still running along, looking very earnest and intent, and maybe a little worried. But she also ran most of the way.

For our first family 5k, it was amazing. All of us had so much fun (well, maybe except for grumpy there in the middle), and we were set to go home and watch eight hours of General Conference over the course of the next two days. I cannot wait for our next race!