It's Been Awhile

I guess I have been busy and haven't had the urge to write lately since it has been about three weeks since I have posted. We have been settling into the fall school routine which is BUSY. Not so much during the day, although I always have plenty to keep me busy, but when school gets out I become a taxi driver--marching band rehearsals, 6th grade after-school band rehearsals, two different soccer team's rehearsals, clarinet lessons, YW, etc. Somewhere in there I squeeze in making dinner, getting kids to do their homework, and the bedtime routine. Meanwhile, Niles has many evening meetings at work, Webelos, and coaching one of the soccer teams. It is good to be busy doing many things and we are happy about the opportunities our children have here and the friends they are making. Jumble has been working so hard in marching band and practicing on her own and handling all her school work. We are so proud of her! She is sleeping better because she is so tired. She is about to start the fun part of marching band--all of the performances! They had family night on Monday so we got to go see the whole marching band show. Both sets of grandparents were able to come, too, which made it even more fun. It is amazing what those kids can do! But not really that amazing when we remember how many hours and hours they have spent practicing!

We are enjoying the BYU football season (3-0 Go Cougars!) but it sure takes a chunk out of busy Saturdays. Between that and two soccer games every Saturday, the housework is suffering a little lately. Oh well. This past Saturday, I got to attend the first home BYU game that I have been to in probably 15 years. (The rest I have watched on TV.) I knew with the winning streak they have going at home, if they lost, Niles would think I was the bad omen and not allow me to attend another one!! We weren't even half-way through the game before he turned to me and said, "You can come to all of the rest of the games!" Turns out I'm a good omen. (For those of you that don't follow BYU football, BYU ended up beating UCLA 59-0. UCLA seemed like they were cursed! They fumbled three possesions in a row with BYU recovering the ball and scoring touchdowns as a result and they also missed a close-range field goal.) My only complaint was that I got a little weary of singing the fight song after about the 8th time (the tradition is to sing it every time BYU scores.) One amazing thing, our Arizona friends, the Mills, have seats just two rows behind us in the stadium. We used to get together at their house for all the BYU games about 6-8 years ago. We had some great times watching the games, rooting for BYU, and wishing we could be at the stadium in Provo. They moved to Utah a few years ago and now we are here, too, and we are all watching BYU games together in the stadium! We never would have dreamed back then that we would be watching games in the stadium together. And with a 60,000 seat capacity, it is amazing that our seats are next to each other! We also sit one row up and just one seat over from John Bytheway and his family. Niles reports that Jumble sat in awe during the first home game to be so close to him! (John Bytheway does EFY and gives inspirational talks and has written books for teens. We have a few of his presentations on DVD.)


Speaking of soccer games, Jet scored his first soccer goal on Saturday! I was sad that I didn't get to see it--I was taking Jumble to marching band practice at the same time the game was going on. Minnie is also playing soccer and reported that she almost scored a goal. (I missed her game, too, because of the BYU game.) She is learning a lot, even if her team isn't doing too well, unfortunately. Her cousin Emily is also on the team and is a really great soccer player. I think she is pretty frustrated with the way the season has been going so far.

Atom has recently discovered our copy of "The Monster at the End of this Book" and can't have it read to him enough! I think it is one of the cutest, cleverest children's storybooks ever. However, I still get tired of it after reading it about ten times in a row! It is so fun to hear Atom laugh as we read it, though! I am enjoying all my one-on-one time with Atom during the day. He is at a fun age--we have a good time together.

My brother, Ben, and his family recently had to evacuate their home in Houston because of hurricane Ike. They went to stay with Dee's family in Louisiana so they weren't too far away and still saw some of the storm. Dee's family stayed with my brother's family in Houston only a few weekends before as hurricane Gustav hit Louisiana. So the hurricane season is keeping their lives interesting lately. We were glad they were safe but anxious to hear how their house survived. They got back home Monday and discovered a lot of branches down everywhere but nothing that seemed to damage the house too badly. Their biggest casualty was their backyard fence, downed by a tree that was uprooted in their neighbor's yard. But it didn't hit any houses so that is a blessing. We are grateful they are O.K. It sounds like they are lucky to have power and water service, although they say they have to boil the water and maybe the power isn't totally reliable yet. I am curious how our former house and neighborhood in El Lago survived (We lived there from 1973-1977). It is VERY close to Clear Lake and Taylor Lake and not far from Galveston Bay and the Houston Channel so it seems like the potential for serious flooding there was significant. Maybe Ben can give us some news about that at some point. That was one of my favorite places that I have ever lived so it is unnerving to think of it possibly getting destroyed.

After a three month wait, we finally had Jet's appointment with a pediatric GI doctor at Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City. They did another x-ray and confirmed that he is chronically constipated and has what is called a "mega-colon." Who knows what caused this and it is amazing that he doesn't display any of the usual symptoms--so how could we have known? Once soccer season is over (the beginning of October) we get to spend three weekends on a clean-out procedure and then have a maintenance treatment plan to follow until we go back to see the doctor in December. It will complicate our lives somewhat but we are hopeful that it will be successful and that he will be cured soon. The maintenance treatment will probably go on for at least a year but it will be worth it to get his body functioning the way it should. On a happy note, the nutrition specialist at the doctor told me we have a pretty good diet so we don't have to change that too much and I get an emotional pat-on-the-back that I am doing a decent job of feeding my family in a healthy fashion. Another interesting thing--Jet is a little under weight and this is probably because his full colon decreases his appetite. They said to expect his appetite to increase as his colon empties out and then he will probably fill out a bit. He has always been so skinny that finding pants and shorts the right length that don't fall off him has been challenging. So hopefully that will get easier.

A few other random things that have been going on--quite a few of us have been fighting off a cold/flu bug that hasn't been too fun, especially mixed with the fall allergies. On Labor Day we had a family BBQ at our house which was fun, but it wasn't really BBQ weather--cold and rainy and it SNOWED in the mountains--on September 1st! Since then it has warmed up again and so far has been a very pleasant fall--we hope it lasts well into November! Last week we had another thunder storm and it actually knocked our power out for over an hour. That was tricky when I had to jet over to pick Jumble up from school and take her to marching band practice and the car was inside the garage with the automatic door opener not functioning. But I figured out how to switch it to manual operation. Speaking of cars, my van has had this intermittent problem with not starting and it got to be more prevelent so we took it in two weeks ago to see if someone could figure out what was wrong with it. They said it was the starter and replaced it and it was not cheap and guess what happened today? My van wouldn't start! Grrrr! So we paid a lot of money and still have the same problem. Sometimes I hate cars not to mention car mechanics! I have found a family on the street to car pool with so she brings my two middle kids home from elementary every day--I drive in the mornings. That has been really nice. Especially since my kid's school has been a traffic nightmare--I'll spare the details. I was actually shedding tears of frustration one morning! At least it has improved since the first few weeks. The drop-off procedure was poorly planned to begin with and complicated by the fact that their school is currently under construction for a new cafeteria. Their school currently looks like a demolition area--I'm not exaggerating. The City of American Fork hasn't helped, either. They are systematically tearing up all the streets in the city to install pressurized irrigation pipes. Guess which week they decided to do the streets surrounding my kids' elementary school? You guessed it, the first week of school. Brilliant! This whole pressurized irrigation pipe project has actually been causing us grief since before we even moved into this house. We have had to find different routes to our house all through the process of moving in and beyond, as different streets in the neighborhood would be closed on different days. It is especially tricky to find alternate routes when you are not familiar with the neighborhood to start with. I was overjoyed when they recently re-opened the street that for us is the best route to the high school so I didn't have to go a round-about way anymore. My joy was short-lived. They promptly closed another road on the route--and then the detour for the closed road took you directly onto a side street that was practically unpassable due to the construction also taking place on that road. Another brilliant move, I thought. I will be very glad when they are done installing these pipes. In two years they will start phase two which will include the street we actually live on. I can hardly wait!

I wanted to post video of Jumble's band--and I took the video camera with me to the performance but I forgot to charge the battery first! So it was dead and useless. So sorry no photos or videos this post. Just boring me rambling on...