May 2016

This month has been a marathon of awesome events, including one actual marathon. I'm going to do my best to write it all down as fast as I can so I don't forget.

May is the month that sneaks up on you. It is as busy as December and in some cases (such as this year) much much busier. Which can be difficult to explain to your childless boss and co-worker why you are suddenly so inundated with events in your personal life. They have been supportive nonetheless.

I think I will go in order from oldest to youngest.

May was a busy month for Brian who, for the first time, is on the GOAL staff who puts on the Ogden Marathon the 3rd weekend in May. He was so busy the two weeks leading up to the marathon, and barely had time to sleep (leaving the house at 5 am and working past 10 pm) on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of the marathon.

The GOAL staff is not allowed to participate in the marathon since this huge event requires all hands on deck as well as hundreds of community volunteers. However, this year was Brian's chance to run the Ogden Marathon for the 10th time -- qualifying him for the 10-year club. This is a club of people who have run the Ogden Marathon 10 or more times and they are honored at a fancy pasta dinner at Zucca a few nights before the marathon. His staff graciously agreed to let him run the race one last time so he could secure his membership.

We all hoped for beautiful weather since the marathon has been rainy and cold in 2014 and 2015, so it's getting kind of a bad rap. Saturday morning we woke up to a downpour. Sad. Especially for Brian who had to run in buckets of rain for over four hours and who has to market this race that has now been a severe test of endurance due to the weather for runners for three years in a row.

Aside from the weather, the race was another huge success. Way to go Brian and way to go GOAL and way to go Ogden!

I am so proud of Sophie. In the month of May she worked her new summer job at Lagoon, performed in the Little Mermaid Jr. at the Ziegfeld Theater eight times, appearing as the mersister Aquata, a princess, a pink flamingo and a jelly fish. The mersister role was definitely the largest role she has had in a play to date and included some singing solos. She was darling doing all of her parts and the show turned out so colorful and cute. I am really impressed with the director and what she was able to pull out of the kids.

Sophie did all of this while also preparing for a school play that opens tonight (only a few days after the Little Mermaid closed). Anyone who has participated in theater knows this has meant a lot of long days going directly from school to rehearsals and performances that have lasted sometimes until after 10 p.m., even on school nights.

A musical, a play and her first summer job -- all while finishing up her first year of high school and staying on the honor role. Like I said, so proud of this girl!

Ian reaches the landmark of his final day of 7th grade today. He has had a fantastic first year of junior high. He has so many good friends and I am grateful for that in his life.

Before school began, the band teacher reluctantly agreed to let Ian join the 8th grade (advanced) band instead of having to first complete a year in beginning band since he has had so many years of piano and is good at reading music. He was starting on a new instrument -- drums -- but he put in the time to get caught up to his peers and by the first test he earned first chair.

He continued to do well and by mid-year, the band teacher signed him out of his required keyboarding class for 2nd semester so that he could join the jazz band and play bass guitar -- another new instrument.

At first Ian was bummed out that he couldn't play keyboard or drums (those instruments were taken by other students and he kind of got pushed into being the bass guitarist). He would come home and lament that he couldn't show off on his instrument like the other students since he didn't know how to play it yet.

I was so proud of him when I went to his band concert earlier this month and that kid rocked it! He is awesome on the bass guitar already and I am excited to see where he will go with it next year. It meant a lot to my dad who has helped pay for his piano lessons over the years to see him perform.

We also got to attend the honors banquet with him for being on the honor roll all year. I am so proud of Ian's musical accomplishments and of all of my kids for working hard to keep their grades up.

Ian was also allowed to skip 8th grade math and go straight into the 9th grade math class next year because he has been such an outstanding mathematician. He completed the entire 7th and 8th grade online curriculums halfway through they year and then started the 9th grade curriculum.  There are a handful of 7th graders who are skipping straight to 9th grade math. Ian is the only one out of his entire school of over 900 kids to complete two grades worth of online topics and more than fifty 9th grade topics in one year. He had to look up youtube videos to teach him the concepts as it became more and more complicated. What a guy!

Isaac's 4th grade year had a rough start and ups and downs but ended on a totally high note. He passed all of his sage tests with flying colors (his teacher and I were both holding our breath). He was honored earlier this month in an assembly where his teacher named him student of the month for his good behavior and hard work academically.

This is what his teacher had to say about him:

"Isaac is an amazing young man! He is passionate about learning about the world around him. He has millions of facts and details he has read about swirling in his head and can add to every lesson with these facts. I admire his desire to learn. My favorite thing about Isaac is the twinkle in his eye - he has such a funny sense of humor; but he usually says it so straight-faced that I have learned to look for that "twinkle" to see if he is teasing me. Isaac makes my day happy every single day!"

She has truly loved him and brought out the best in him. I am so grateful. His positive attitude has also spilled over into home life prompting him to work on some goals (like shoe tying) that he has been stubborn about in the past. I am so proud of him!

The other day, he and his friend filled a whole outdoor trash can with weeds they pulled for fun. I love it.

He was also given an award at the end of year assembly yesterday. The teachers each picked three students in their class who had been outstanding for one reason or another and Isaac was one of the three his teacher chose.

My darling Katie Jane turned seven this week. She has been counting down since about January 1. When she woke up on the morning of her birthday, she started counting down to eight!

She has worked so hard at DaVinci Distance and home school and finished the year strong. Yesterday, I went to her science fair in the morning where she gave an amazing presentation on how volcanos erupt and then, yes, we did erupt a volcano that the class had made together. We erupted it over and over and the kids loved it more and more each time.

After that, I went to Isaac's school to see him get his award. Then it was straight back to Katie's school for an end of the year BBQ celebration at the park. The day was jam packed with fun and yet we were just beginning.

At 2:30, we picked up three of Katie's friends and headed up to a petting farm (Carver's Cove) in Ogden Valley. It was a magical place. There were goats, llamas, alpacas, miniature donkeys, miniature horses, wild mustangs, bunnies, geese, pigs, turkeys, cats, cows and the most friendly sheep dog named Tess. The kids could walk around and pet and feed all of the animals. They got to ride on a horse. We saw piglets that were born earlier that day and two baby goats that were born five minutes earlier. There was a baby lamb, a baby horse, baby cows, more baby goats -- tons of cute babies since it is spring.

My heart was so touched when Isaac broke away from the group to give the last of his food to the momma goat who had just given birth. She took a break from cleaning her babies to eat it. He is so thoughtful.

The kids had fun with the animals. I loved how excited they were -- even about the friendly cats. Then we went to a fancy cupcake shop for a treat and to open gifts. I think it was a pretty fun birthday celebration.

More end of year celebrating today as it is Ian and Isaac's last day of school. I will see Sophie's play tonight. She has school through next Friday. Ian's piano recital is next week. It has been a very full and very wonderful month. I am so excited for our adventures this summer.

Suicide

Chad and Dori moved into out ward while we were living in China. It was ten years ago that we returned from our travels abroad to our house on 25th street to meet these new ward members -- Dori, a spicy red-head, and her husband Chad who was bald and had the same glasses as Brian, creating enough resemblance between the two that sometimes our youngest kids would walk up to the wrong "dad."

I was instantly attracted to Dori's zesty and honest personality. She was so intelligent and had interesting insights on every topic. Chad was one of the most creative people I had met. He was always creating elaborate holiday decorations for their home, themed parties for Weber State University, and their family always had the best Halloween costumes around.

When I met Dori she was working as an independent grant writer for the city while trying to juggle a large and very young family. When she and Chad married, Dori already had a daughter. They decided they would have two more kids together -- which they did in rapid succession. With three children, they felt their family was complete. But, another baby came soon after that. When birth control failed them a second time and their fifth child was born, Dori opted to have her tubes tied. Crazy story is that she somehow conceived a sixth child. Her first daughter was about seven years older than the kids Chad and Dori had together. The five kids they had together were born in seven years and three of them were unexpected.

I am sure it was challenging to balance all of this, but Chad and Dori did it with smiles on their faces, using humor to keep going through the daily struggles and uplifting the people around them all the time.

I know all of this because, as I mentioned before, Dori had a very open and honest personality and shared so many things. She shared the marital challenges that she and Chad had which, quite frankly blew my mind as I learned about all they had been through. At one point when they were separated, we had a conversation during which Dori was gasping for breath and crying so hard. He had done things that I don't know if I could forgive. It was hard for her to forgive too. But, she loved him so much. Instead of being angry, (I'm sure she was angry too), she expressed hurt down to the tips of her toes and just unfathomable anguish at being separated from her soulmate, her true love, her best friend in the entire world.

They made it through some of the toughest struggles I've ever known of married couples to face. They had both had difficult childhoods, and their love for each other as they created a beautiful life for their own family was evident, even if they were not perfect individuals. In fact, the openness and honesty about their imperfections made them all the more endearing in this world where life is so very, very messy and real.

I loved Dori for her cheeky sass and I loved Chad for his kindness. They both had so much positive energy and optimism for life and infectious smiles. I loved their brood of freckle faced kids. I loved their love story that endured all things and fought hard to keep going and to truly forgive and to keep loving through hard things.

That is why I was so sad to learn Friday night that Chad took his life. I keep thinking about my conversation with Dori when she thought their marriage might be over and how heartbroken she was not to have him in her life as her partner every day. I remember how happy she was when they started dating again and when they were finally able to heal the wounds and stay together.

Suicide is so tough. Just two months ago, a neighbor who lives a block from us also took his life. He and his wife had been together 25-years since they were sweethearts in high school. Both of these men, Chad (and Danny) were so beloved by our community. They could always be found at events aimed at making Ogden a better place. They were family guys who loved their wives and children. It is hard to see this happen to two beautiful families.

My heart does feel more at peace than it did twelve years ago when Brian's good friend Scott took his life. That was my first experience of losing someone close to me to suicide ever. It took a long time for me to wrap my brain around what had happened. We had been on a couples trip to Moab with Scott and his wife a few months before, and we were preparing to take another couples trip to Moab with them in one week when Scott died. On our trip and the double dates that followed, we had laughed so hard and had such good times together. Like Chad and Danny, Scott was one of the most friendly, easy-going, optimistic and happy people I had known. I always felt great when I was around him. He had four kids between 12-18. How was it possible? I felt like my entire world was turned upside down. The belief I had been taught at that time was that there was no redemption for those who took their own lives. That left me with a very raw feeling inside.

After losing these three amazing men in such a surprising way, it makes me ponder about how we truly never know the sorrows those around us are battling every day. I know that God is a loving God and would never cancel out a life of good deeds based on suicide. My heart is aching for their families and I feel sad thinking about them being in such a dark place in their final moments. But, I am so grateful that they can finally rest and have peace in their souls and pray for those left behind.