Escalante

We are back from a week in Escalante, in Southern Utah, where we hiked, played, watched movies, played games, ate great cooking, and did schoolwork remotely.

I took the week off work. We didn't have a spring break back in March (we kept doing schoolwork), and everyone seemed to need a break at least from our house. It was amazing how much I could help the boys with their schoolwork when I didn't have to worry about my own deadlines and work! Yes, working full-time at my radio reporting job is keeping me from being a teacher to multiple children full-time.

JB's timer on his phone took this picture for us on our first day.

Millie wore that hat and dress much of the week, she's so funny in this stage.

The weather was beautiful. It was a little warm sleeping at night but fans and open windows worked wonders.

We played lots of table tennis, fooseball, Apples to Apples, Clue, and chess (well, Millie carried around the pieces and called them her princesses).

I watched some shows -- amazing how when you take vacation you have time for these kinds of things -- I borrowed some series from my neighbor to watch: Christy and Berkeley Square, and also caught up on Belgravia and When Calls the Heart.  I also read a lot, and finished Peter and the Starcatchers with the boys at night.  We watched movies together, too: Hoosiers, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Cars, Kung Fu Panda and others, and read scriptures together in the big room.

JB made some great meals for us -- smoked pork, tri-tip, breakfast burritos and lots of things that he planned ahead to bring it all down in our packed mini-van.

I'll blog next about the hikes and stuff.

Backyard busy

Our sweet neighbor allows us to use her backyard playset while her grandchildren can't be here. I am quite grateful. 

The only bummer is how the kids fight over one swing. The swings seem the same to me, but each races to get to their favorite one.

Millie wears what she wants. Notice above the tutu and ballet slippers, and below the swimsuit with coat and long socks.

We head over after schoolwork is done for the day. Sometimes I'm pushing swings or helping down the slide, other times I do squats or lunges around the yard, but my favorite is when they are happily playing or play-acting together and I can sit and read a book.

Staying busy

Millie had her first video meeting for preschool this week. They asked each child to share what they've been up to.  A few have traveled, some talked about what they got for Easter (thankfully she did not seem to mind that she didn't get anything). When it was her turn, she mentioned going to lunch every day, and watching Trolls in the tent.

We go get the school lunch at 11 at the high school curbside pickup. We walked a couple of times, but James wanted to crowd into the stroller with Millie, saying it was too far.

Last Friday afternoon, Ben and Max set up the tent in the backyard. The 3 youngest were in and out all day. That night, Max slept in it on a cot with Andrew and James curled up together on top of and under mounds of blankets. It was 30 degrees that night. But they said what bothered them the most was all the noises, like the birds.

Then we spent more time in it Saturday.  Here are the only pictures I grabbed. Millie totally fell asleep while watching Trolls on my laptop for the umpteenth time.

We will do it again, it was really fun. And much more fun that I slept in my own bed. Momma needs her mattress.

Enduring

Whelp, I can't wait to find out which teachers my children get next year.

I hope it's not me again.

Jokes aside (insert crying emoji), I think we are settling into a kind of routine. 

I do my job from home in the early morning hours, reporting live from the car and sometimes going to a scene but mostly doing everything from home. Millie stays on my lap as much as she can. 

In this picture, I was editing an interview with the Lt Governor and had to dump her off my lap to go live at 8AM.

My time card is a mishmash of starts and stops from 8:30 onward, as I try to help the boys with their assignments. JB also has to start and stop helping the boys while he juggles his work. The loan industry is all sorts of crazy right now.

We've discovered (after a few very tearful days) that James does his work so much better for JB than for me. I arranged for a weekly video chat for James with the school counselor, and I overheard him tell him, "My dad says I'm good at math. My dad is proud of me." I got teary-eyed.

It doesn't take much to make me cry these days.

My stress level is better now that my General Conference special is all done, but the daily story deadlines also make my head pound, and juggling all the boys' assignments and logins and websites and video meetings. My boss is very understanding and flexible. 

We try to stay with a routine. And, with no where to go anymore, our scripture reading has become a lot more regular. No more running boys here and there. We all gather around together now.

James always reads the last verse. Though I'd like him to take more turns to practice reading, he is improving a lot. Andrew is also improving his "s" sound a little bit, now that we have weekly video calls going with his speech therapist.

JB braced me for the fact that school would be out the remainder of the school year, so I was ready for the governor's announcement this week. But Max and Ben were very sad. Their school workloads are still very heavy, just from home. But Max is missing so much in his high school experience, especially the tennis team. And Ben will never go back to his elementary school or say goodbye to his friends. He's a 6th grader but has no closure.

My heart goes out to everyone else I know with struggles. I have faith that our fasts and prayers will be heard, and this will get better.

Ben cooking

Ben set a goal in January to learn to cook more this year. He reads recipes, watches cooking videos, and daydreams about it. I love to bake, so I have been helping him with that, and I am teaching him some basic stuff like scrambled eggs, fried eggs, and french toast.

On Presidents Day back in February, like 1,000 days ago, when our kitchen was still being remodeled, we went up to Nona and Papa's house to cook and bake.

He made two types of cookies, a chocolate marshmallow concoction and oatmeal raisin.

He also tried a kind of stromboli or hot-pocket from scratch.

Everything was very good.

When we got our kitchen up and running, he wanted to bake and decorate a basketball cake.

He has been missing a type of pie they used to have in school lunches, so he made a graham cracker crust and vanilla pudding pie one afternoon. It was just the box of vanilla pudding, but I learned how to do a vanilla custard pie from scratch in my high school home ec class and maybe I should teach him that, next.

We had a lot of peaches in our freezer from the summer. One Sunday he made peach dump cake (make a syrup with the peaches, then a dry cake mix on top and butter on top of that and bake 350 degrees. I usually do this with a cherry or blueberry pie filling). Then this last Sunday, we made a peach cobbler together.

I got out a too-small dish for him and it spilled over, but the taste was amazing. I feel like I have to supervise the whole time, but hopefully he is learning some good skills! We've enjoyed the fruits of his labor.

Peace at the Salt Flats and through General Conference

One night last week I went to bed with a pounding headache, churning stomach, racing heart and tight chest. I knew it was anxiety over everything going on, or I would have thought it was almost a heart attack. Worries about my children's school work and them falling behind. Worries about JB's mortgage business (and basically the whole economy). Stressing over my Conference documentary past due. Even worries about another earthquake. After a heartfelt prayer and deep breaths and a good sleep, I was able to turn in the documentary the next morning.

And then we left the house and drove and drove....100 miles west to the Bonneville Salt Flats. We were all alone out there.

I felt I could breathe again, seeing the blue sky, and having a load lifted off my shoulders.  I think the children felt so much better, too. They ran all around and yelled and had some freedom for the first time in weeks.

I also felt peace from the very first lines of the first hymn at General Conference, "It is well with my soul."

This full-time schooling thing is still going on, JB and I still have stressful full-time jobs, we still can't go anywhere, but if I remember the peaceful feelings I got at the Salt Flats and during Conference, I can chose faith over fear.

"Even in the midst of unique trials and challenges, we are truly blessed." - President Dallin H. Oaks, Sunday afternoon session, April 2020 General Conference.

My First Vision documentary

The past several years, I have researched, traveled, interviewed, written, recorded, voiced and produced long radio pieces for General Conference weekend.  For example, Women and Perfection, Forgiveness & Health, The Saints in St Louis, and The Haiti Temple.

I stress, I lose sleep, I work lots of overtime, and I pray over every part of them. I swear I will never do it again. Then I cry a little when the last line plays on air.

This time, I went to Palmyra, New York, to learn more about Joseph Smith's First Vision during this Bicentennial year.  In this piece, The Hill Cumorah Pageant gets a spotlight, too.

This one was perhaps the most stressful to put together. I was in New York as the country started to shut down for coronavirus. I missed my family and worried about them. I was next to the teary senior couple missionaries when they got the word the historic sites would close the next day. I flew home during uncertainty. I was editing the whole piece under chaos at home when we suddenly had to homeschool all our children and not go anywhere.

But it got done!

Take a listen to the podcast version below, and thank you to all who gave me encouragement and support. 

https://kslnewsradio.com/category/podcast_player/?a=b0a01dfb-5919-4a2b-a1e6-ab9001464e8c&sid=2057&n=Conference+Conversations

There's also a write-up here: https://kslnewsradio.com/1922635/first-vision-joseph-smith-bicentennial/


My interviews:

Kerry Muhlestein: BYU Professor of Ancient Scripture/author of "I saw the Lord"

Steven Harper: author/BYU Church History Professor, Joseph Smith scholar

Anthony Sweat: artist/painter/BYU Church History Professor

Spencer McBride: Church Historian w/ Joseph Smith Papers, host of First Vision podcast

Elder Marc Clay and Sister Kathleen Clay:  Church Area 70 for North America Northeast 

Hill Cumorah Pageant President Neil Pitts and Sister Beverly Pitts 

Ward Wright: Hill Cumorah Pageant battlemaster/assistant director

Ken and Summer Johnson and their 3 children: Live in Rochester area, Involved in pageant for years 

Melissa Smith: early-morning seminary teacher in Rochester NY 

Justin Bennett: church member/member of Cayuga tribe in NY and participant of pageant

Riley, Jennette and Sean Cooney: a family visiting the church history sites

Sheena Perron, lives in Idaho, Founder of Facebook group Seek Christ Daily 

Jennifer Doyle: Provo mother/artist who made a huge hooked rug of the First Vision