Only One Week Left!!

Yes, indeedy, there are only 7 little days left for Brandon in Jamaica!! We're getting so excited, we can't hardly stand it around here!!

Two years ago, when we said goodbye to him at the Missionary Training Center, Emma was just 6 months old. We didn't exactly know how we could keep him real for her while he was gone. She was so very little! And I expect that when he arrives, she'll probably be shy around him at first. She'll warm up, though.

Emma is very good about identifying Brandon in pictures. The two of them also had a great moment during our Christmas Skype phone call with him, as they sang "Popcorn Popping" together. It was a tender mom moment, believe me!

In our living room, we have a digital photo frame. At one point, we'd had family pictures on it for Emma. Several months ago, Todd changed the slideshow to one of Brandon's missionary photos that he's emailed to us over the months. He added some missionary-type background music, like "Called to Serve", "Praise to the Man" and "Ye Elders of Israel".

One of Emma's sneaky-two-year-old things to do is to slip into the room, and turn on the frame. Then she'll climb up in the nearby chair and watch the photos change for a while:

I know when she's been in there, because I'll hear the background music going. And if I turn it off (when no one's around), she will slip back in and turn it on again. Like it SHOULD be on all the time, Mom! Emma's done this so often, that she's starting to learn the words to the songs. In fact, I'll bet she's pretty unique as a two-year-old to know the chorus to, "Ye Elders of Israel"!!!

"Oh Babylon, Oh Babylon, we bid thee farewell! We're going to the mountains of Ephraim to dwell."

Perhaps for Brandon, it will be, "Oh Jamaica, Oh Jamaica, I bid thee farewell. I'm going to the mountains of Idaho to dwell...... "

Annual Egg-Cracking Contest

It's that time again!


Last year, I didn't get my blog post done before Easter, and if you were reading this blog a year ago, then by the time you read it, it was too late to try it for yourself. So this year, I'm reminding you about our family tradition: The Easter Egg Cracking Contest. (I'm not going to type it all out again - click the link!!)

It's time to prepare your prize now, so you'll be all set for this Sunday. If you don't have a large family, or a group invited for Easter Dinner, then you might consider the 2-person Variation: all you need is a small Egg Army for each person, and you can challenge your foe to see whose eggs are the most resilient.

Go for it! And in the mean time, while you're thinking about Easter and eggs, you might remember the demise of one Miss Veruca Salt.

Two Weeks.

Two weeks.

(Remember that line from "Total Recall"?)

We are officially on countdown to Brandon's return from his mission in Jamaica, and today is the TWO-WEEK-MARK!!

I can't express how excited we are to have him coming home! It has been a wonderful experience for our family to have him serving, and I know he will carry memories of his mission for the rest of his life.

If you're anywhere CLOSE, please know that he'll be coming home on Thursday, May 5th, and we'd love to have you join his reception committee at the airport. And, on May 22nd, he will be speaking in church, .... so we're really looking forward to that date as well.

I'm dancing in my seat.......!!!!

WOOT!!

Imagine Me, A Missionary!

"Imagine me, a missionary traveling through the land, Imagine me, a missionary doing what I can to spread the gospel message in the latter days, I must study and learn and listen and prepare in every way!"

Ok, so I'm sure that song isn't as well known as some of the other missionary-themed songs, but I've always gotten a kick out of it. (There's more to it, but we won't get into that right now.)

The other day, I was taking pictures of Cameron to send in with his missionary paperwork.... we're getting even closer to having his paperwork complete. Cameron...... (being Cameron) has to inject a bit of his own personality into a photo session. I have no problem with snapping photos with every new face he pulled.

Yes, people. THIS is what I have to deal with: (No, we're not done yet. Put the tie back on.)

This was the face I got when I asked him to show a few teeth with his smile: Now, with no teeth, but he's pulling the "one-eye-crossed" look and combined that with a tie-flip: This is the, "You didn't just take a picture, did you?" (You BET, baby!!) : I don't even think this was the one he selected to send in, but it was one I liked: One thing Cameron could be working on to prepare for his mission, it would be to get up in the mornings. Todd addressed this issue yesterday, when he went in Cam's room to get him up for SURE.

So after the AIR HORN went off, I wished I'd been standing next to Todd with the video camera. Because that would have been some seriously awesome video footage.

Yeah.

Throw It Like You Know It!

Can we really be over half-way through the high school softball season???

One peculiarity about our season, is that due to weather, we play almost all our home games at the beginning of the season, and our away games at the end of the season. The schools in our league are in areas that are often still snowy when the season begins. Because our little valley drops in elevation, we are snowless long before them.

Here's a few photos from our toughest game (actually a double-header) yet, which was yesterday. Our girls are fairly intimidated by opposing pitcher, and we hit poorly. I was glad to see that the ace pitcher didn't get a decent hit off Alyssa's pitching, and was put out at first base at nearly every at-bat she had.

Pre-inning infield cheer.... Alys is in the front on the left: And a high-five (of sorts) between pitcher and catcher: Alyssa taking the sign from the catcher. Although you can't tell, it was pretty bright that afternoon, and she's scowling to see the signs better. Alyssa's over-the-head windup: And, the full stride-out pitch: Look at those L-O-N-N-N-N-G legs!! Alyssa found that her stride had her landing in a different spot than the other pitchers that day, and had to get a footing scraped out of the hard dirt.

She did well that day, but like any perfectionist pitcher ..... felt she could have done better. A few less fielding errors by her team would have helped her more. A whole lot better hitting by her team would have helped too! We lost both games to the other team, but I have a feeling in a few weeks, our team will meet them (in their territory) with a stronger game. I can't wait to watch the re-match!

Random Haven Happenings

Am I the only mother that takes one look at her child, and then says, "Hold still, let me get the camera...."?? Emma came down the hall yesterday, wearing this ummmm ...... headdress: It's not a Jewish kippa, but I'm going to guess you can't tell what IS on her head. And my apologies for the Heat-Miser-Hairstyle, but it was a day at home, and we just didn't do a pretty style that day. And without going into details of how or what, let's just say that Someone's swimsuit is, umm ...... incomplete right now. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

Also, in Haven Happenings...... the breezeway got a facelift last week: This is not a huge project, and it means more to us than it does to anyone else, I'm sure. But for the record: previously this space between the house and the garage had a funky small ramp (of sorts) at the back door entrance to the garage. Todd made arrangements (there are advantages to being in the Home and Garden Show) to have a layer of cement added over the previous stuff. The breezeway is where the roof connects the garage to the house, but it's open on both ends. We've used it for parking bikes, four-wheelers, gardening tools, storage, painting projects, etc.

One day, it will be enclosed and we can better utilized the space for storage and workspace. For now, it's a step in the right direction, and it simply makes more sense. These pictures are from the prep work.... the concrete was poured the following day. This shows the height difference at the door -- after the ramp was busted out, and also after the gravel base was added: And the view from the other side, showing the ramp. This side allows drive-by access to the backyard: The finished concrete looks great! No pics, so you'll have to take my word for it.

And finally....

Do you ever get the feeling something is missing? Todd and I had been talking about rotating food and food storage, so yesterday I got one of the cans of pumpkin to make pumpkin bread. Since it was a big can, I made two batches. The first batch looked a little wonky, but tasted fine. I wasn't sure what I'd done differently from normal. Then I made the second batch: Do you see what I see? Yep..... there's definitely something amiss here! And THAT, my friends, is what happens when you remember the baking powder, but forget the baking SODA. And there is your one-minute-life-lesson for the day. You're welcome!

Spring Sports

And now from the newsdesk, this piece of shocking news: Apparently........ there are other spring sports that exist outside of softball! Who knew?

So last week, Darcie and I traveled to Spokane for her final volleyball tournament (club volleyball, the traveling team) this spring, which was a nice getaway for just the two of us. I will say that the overnight stay at the hotel turned into the longest day of volleyball EVER. (We didn't get home until after 10 pm that night!) Whew!! So glad we drove up the night before, otherwise that would have been an even LONGER day.

Darcie's team played fairly well, and over the course of their season, they've had some fun together. One thing they do together is their pre-game cheer. It's not uncommon for teams to do this, but these can get repetitive and old. Darcie's team was led by their coaches (local college volleyball players), and their cheer was an original, with part of it being the song, "Hey! Baby". They always got great looks when they did their cheer, because no one else had one like it, or even remotely as good as theirs: This year, there was a new greet-and-wave they did, too. Previously, before a game started, the teams would run in a circle around their side of the court, giving "fives" to the opposing team as they passed at the net. This year, they stood in a line on the sideline, then walked to the center of the court (still in a line) and would wave in all directions to the spectators: Then, one by one, they would shake hands with an opposing team member under the net: They finished this tournament with second place in the Silver Bracket, from a playing field of 48 teams. At this final tournament, we got a team picture (one girl was sick), the girls gave flowers to the coaches, and the coaches had a cupcake cake for the girls. Overall, I think Darcie had a good experience, although we definitely feel there were times when she did not get the amount of playing time we thought she deserved. And in the meantime, track and field has started for the school, and Darcie's first meet was yesterday. She competed in the high jump and 100-meter dash. I must need to work on my track-action-photo-taking skills, because this is the best of what I took:

More Printing Trivia...

After my post on letterpress printing, I received an email from my sister, who reminded me of another commonly used phrase that could be traced to printing sources. My dad had at least two sets of type drawers. We called them "galleys of type". I'm sure a professional printing office would have many more than that. Each drawer looked something like this: (Dad would often pull a drawer completely out of its case when he worked with it. Sitting at an angle on something else, it was sometimes in a precarious position. My mom would strongly warn me not to upset and spill the drawer of loose type. I used to wonder if maybe she had done that herself!)

All the "sorts" would be organized in these shallow drawers, only about 2" deep. The more-often-used letters were usually in a bigger section than other letters, which was another thing that I didn't understand as a child. I thought each letter should get equal space! Each sort is a reverse of the character that it prints, so when the ink is applied and it is pressed into the paper, it prints correctly aligned. A printer needs to remember this as he creates his project, since some letters like "p", "q", "b" and "d" look very similar. Hence, the phrase, "Mind your p's and q's".

(I have also heard other possibilities for explaining the source of the P's & Q's phrase, so this also may or may not be true.)

How about this one....... most galleys (or tray drawers) of type were designed to hold either all capital letters, or all lower-case letters. Printers would keep the case of more-often used small letters close to them, and the less-often used capital letter tray was higher and further back. So now you have, "uppercase" and "lowercase" letters.

And finally, as I mentioned in my earlier post, with letterpress printing, the words are pressed into the paper, making it a dimensional, de-bossed image. If the ink is applied too heavily or the type is damaged at all, the image is of poor quality. So, a good printer who is careful about the quality of his product will also check and test his prints....... because he wants to make a good impression.

Pillow Talk

With the rest of our kids being older teenagers and young adults, we sometimes lack for entertainment around the Haven for an adorable two-year-old. So we improvise.

One of Emma's favorite things is to be buried in the pillows on Mom & Dad's bed. (We have 11, when it's all made up pretty.) Because our bed is one of those tall, tall ones, we've always put her up there ourselves.

Miss Smarty-Pants has now figured out how to scale the side of the bedframe, and get up there on her own. She still loves to play in the pillows, but now she can initiate the game herself: Jeepers Creepers, Girl! Where's you get those eyes? (She looks so thoughtful there..... probably thinking up some new way to get into things around here!)

And she also has a fascination with my bedside lamp, which she can turn on by herself:

Yesterday, she had a checkup with the doctor, where we learned she's sitting right at the 50th percentile for both height and weight, and she got updated on her immunizations (5 pokes!). With those kinds of owies, we thought that she more than deserved the indulgement of playing in the pillows!

P.S. 29 days and counting until Brandon comes home!

Just Like Family

In just a few weeks, Brandon will be returning home from his mission in Jamaica, and back to home and family and friends. His best friend, Ryan D, was gone on his own mission to Uruguay when Brandon left, so it will be about 3 years since these two guys have seen each other. It's going to be a great homecoming! In the meantime and since returning from his mission, Ryan D, (who is really like family to us!) has gone off to BYU-Idaho, and somehow convinced this gorgeous young lady to marry him! We are so happy for Ryan and Rachel! She has all the style and grace of a Southern Lady, which makes sense when you realize she's from Kentucky. I also like her sense of humor and fun, which I hope is evident in these photos:

Rachel, please forgive me for posting that one, but I think it's fun!

Ryan recently went to visit her in Kentucky and meet her family, and last week Rachel came here to meet Ryan's mom. We had the pleasure of having Rachel stay with us at the Haven for the weekend, which is why I was able to snag these photos.

All I can say is that Ryan has great taste, and we wish them all the best in their future life. They are to be married in August in the Louisville Kentucky LDS temple, and will be continuing at BYU-Idaho in the fall. Brandon will probably see them there!!