Disney - Day 1

Oh Disney...

What in the world would it be like to be able to dream without limitations? I'm not very good at it, you know. I'm a bit too practical and logical, so I like it when I can live vicariously through others who are good at it.

And when it comes to dreaming without limitations, there may not be anyone more excellent than Disney. Is anything impossible in that magical land?! I'm always so delighted at how they can take something completely made up and make it feel so real.

I've been to Disney several times with my kids, and a few times we've been accompanied by others... my parents, Brian's parents, my sister, etc, but this time we got to go with my whole family. Well, my whole family minus Amber who, unfortunately, couldn't get work off that week. My parents rented a great little home a couple miles away from the parks and we filled that thing with so much love. My family gets together a lot - whenever we travel up to Utah, my siblings make it a point to come to my parents house too, and when one person decides to come to my house for Thanksgiving, the rest of the family works to come too, so we often find ourselves all sleeping under the same roof. But this time it was different because it was the first extended family vacation we've had on that side of the family where no one was hosting... no one was in their own home. We were in someone else's home, and it created a fun dynamic.

When we got there, we were a little surprised that the home's website had used the term 'walking distance to Disney' because we found Disney to be a mile and a half away, which certainly could be walking distance, but it also could certainly not be walking distance for everyone. But it wasn't a problem we couldn't solve, and the men offered to drop us all off, and then park the cars while we window shopped in Downtown Disney and waited for them.

They were champions, those husbands. They did a lot of extra walking through the entire trip and we were grateful for them.

Something else we did a lot of was rider swapping. Babies aren't allowed on all of the rides (of course), nor would they want to be allowed on all of the rides (just ask this cute baby after the ferris wheel episode). Thankfully Riley and Eliza had a fantastic time and had no idea they were missing out and being left behind.

I love that cute little Riley face up there. But even more than that I love that beautiful Mama face on my sister, looking at her baby with stars in her eyes.

Speaking of stars in eyes, my brother and his new wife were pretty starry-eyed the whole trip, too.

They've been married for just over a year now and every time they look at each other their faces beam with a thousand little sparkles and they look ready to fly away like love birds. I loved that golden time when Brian and I were first married and all we had to care for was each other. But, those times have been gone for a while now, and it was funny to me to watch my siblings and their spouses having a delightful time together - riding rides together, holding hands through the park together, having conversations together - while Brian and I had an entirely different experience with our small fleet of children. Thankfully we've gotten really good at throwing I love you looks at each other from long distances, and at squeezing each others hands whenever there is a moment to stand next to each other.

Also thankfully, we got to ride all the rides next to our children. Which, in my opinion, is pretty unbeatable, and what Disney is all about for me.

This was Eliza's first ride and, as you can see, she wasn't too sure about how to feel when it started moving.

But she caught on quickly to the fun of it.

And by the end was squealing with delight.

We rode this Cars ride seeeeeveral times, and Eliza and Timothy were having such a great time that their laughter ended up convincing Miles to go ahead and give it a try. It's hard to be in that in-between phase when you feel a little too old, but not old enough... so I was delighted when he decided to jump right in and be just as excited as the other two. He even braved the ride all by himself when we couldn't all fit together.

Miles's sweet little heart was far more excited to watch Eliza ride than it was to ride on his own, and one of my favorite things was watching his eyes fixed on his little sister, and listening to his giggles of excitement every time we passed by each other. Some of the giggle was for himself, I'm sure, but much of it was excitement at her joy.

Taking pictures wasn't really on my radar while we were there. Honestly, it seems like that's the story of my life more often than it's not these days. My brain (and my hands) are always so full that the thought of taking a picture either never enters my mind, or when it does it feels much too hard to get it done. But when I saw these pieces of my heart all sitting there under this great windmill with the sun shining through it, I knew I wanted at least one picture.

Unfortunately, no one else cared about my one picture, and they were all grumpy about the request, but whateves. I'm happy with a grumpy picture, too.

It's much easier these days to take pictures of them when their backs are to me.

Let's move along to talk about swings. Swings are my favorite. I have always, always, always loved them. And to sit tandem with my favorite 5 year old made them even more wonderful.

He felt pretty brave.

After I snapped the selfie with Timothy, I wanted a picture with everyone else I loved around us... and as I snapped this picture, Timothy said on my right, "HEY! What about ME?!"

Which made us all laugh, so I tried to push my hands back farther to include him in the shot but just as I was about to take it, the swings raised just enough that everyone lost their footing and Jake slowly drifted from the frame. We laughed for a solid minute!

You probably had to be there. *shrug*

At the end of the first night we all crowded around a light and attempted a family selfie - with low expectations.

And didn't it turn out lovely?

Sunday Pictures (Catch up post)

They won't always fit on a bench together like this.

These are the days, I think, that matter. Look at those faces. My home is full. Full of love, full of needs, full of helpers, full of noise, full of tantrums.

They say I'll look back on these days with longing.

I believe them.

But next Sunday maybe I should fill the frames with the tempers and the eye rolls and the runny noses before they've been wiped.

Then maybe the longing won't be too bad...

Shark Reef

For Timothy's experience gift this year we got him a date night, with me, to Color Me Mine so he could pick out any ceramic piece he wanted, slather it with paint, and display it on the shelf above his bed. He was polite about the gift as he opened it and said all the appropriate thank-yous, but it wasn't hard to see that he was a little underwhelmed.

I was surprised because I was under the assumption that he loved painting. When we went to Aspen Grove over the summer, for example, he wanted to hang out at the art cabin and paint through every spare minute he had.

Well, he grew out of that love, apparently.

Which wasn't a big deal because one of the greatest things about experience gifts is that they are quite returnable. Especially if you never actually purchase the tickets before you give them. Which we don't because we're lazy. So the biggest hassle was throwing away the original piece of paper that promised an evening at Color Me Mine, and then going through a little brainstorm of ideas with him guiding the way.

Easy peasy.

Within two minutes we had landed on Shark Reef.

With mom AND dad.

Though, we ended up losing Dad for little pockets of time here and there because as we walked past the piranha tank he overheard that they were possibly going to be dumping a bucket of ill-fated goldfish into the carnivorous fishs' tank sometime that afternoon, and that was something Brian did not want to miss.

I didn't mind missing that, however, because I didn't want to have to work through sad feelings for the goldfish, so it worked out perfectly that I would follow Timothy around to all the tanks and exhibits while Brian bounced back and forth in his quest. Fortunately, Shark Reef is quite small so it was easy for him to slip away and come back without Timothy noticing much at all. Unfortunately the bucket of goldfish never arrived, so all his bouncing back and forth was for naught (which I suppose was a fortunately for the goldfish).

Shark Reef is basically an aquarium with a heavy emphasis on sharks. And, despite my fear of sharks in the wild, I don't seem to have any fear of sharks behind glass... so that's good.

Timothy had the same reaction to the sea jellies that I have to the sea jellies. (Interesting fact: Jellyfish are not 'fish', which is prompting the recent movement of calling them sea jellies. So I feel rather forward thinking here.) He stood at their tank and watched them glide and float through the water almost as long as he stood at the shark tank, which is saying something since the shark tank was about 4 million times larger.

I asked Timothy at the end of the date which sea creature he would be if he could choose any of them and he said he'd be the saw-tooth shark "because it looked so, so cool." It was also very hard to get a picture of the saw-tooth and the shark. Here's the best one, but it's too bad you can't see the full saw-tooth.

If I were asked the same question about which sea creature I would be (which I wasn't) this angelfish might have been a strong contender:

Though I suppose it would depend on whether those pretty little feathery extensions would get in the way of a comfortable life. Would they snag on all the coral? Would they flap in my face if I swam through a strong current? I did chop all of my hair off... so maybe I wouldn't want to be this angelfish after all.

Once we were done in the aquarium, we got a free pass to check out a new, temporary exhibit called A Polar Journey which ended up being quite the fun, interactive adventure. For example, you could sit in this little pod and watch giant plastic penguins (like 3-feet tall) walk around you while you listened to fun facts about the poles of our earth. I didn't get a picture of the penguins, but I did have to dodge them and watch out for them so they wouldn't run into me while taking this picture.

Next up was a rather clever hallway designed to test our nimble-footedness. The ice blocks moved slowly downstream, and if you jumped onto one it would start to crack and sink underneath your feet (not for reals, of course... it was all done with lights and who knows what else), so it was important to be quick and light while jumping from ice chunk to ice chunk or you would at least, get wet and at most, sink. Timothy and I hopped along this icy stream for the better part of half an hour as Brian held our place in line to see a short film. We were quite good, if I do say so myself.

We also spent some of the waiting-for-our-turn time saying hello to these polar bears who, by the look of them, were saying hello right back to us.

On our way out I asked Timothy to pose for one more picture next to the selfie turtle because I wasn't entirely happy with the way his head was blocking some of the words in the first picture at the beginning of this post. He was happy to oblige, it seemed, but his bored face betrayed him as every picture had the forced smile of someone who was being asked to smile against his will. So this will have to do.

The next phase of our date took us to Timothy's favorite restaurant, Zupas, but before we walked inside and as we walked through the parking lot we found ourselves walking in front of a Smashburger which caught Brian's eye.

"Oh, that looks good," he said out loud but mostly to himself, and then turning to Timothy he said, "Hey TK... are you sure you don't want a burger bud?! Burgers are so awesome, and this place looks reeeeeeeally good."

"Yep, I'm sure. I want the white soup."

"Okay, cool. Yep. Your date. Your choice. Zupas is great," he said out loud but mostly to himself.

I raised my eyebrow and smiled a half smile at Brian as we continued walking past the burger place, its vents pumping burger smell straight into his nostrils, and I watched his head turn as we passed its door.  "Bri," I said, "why don't you go on into Smashburger, get yourself something there and then meet us at Zupas in a few minutes." Happiness.

As Timothy and I left Brian walking through the Smashburger door and opened Zupas for ourselves Timothy turned to me and said, "Hey mom, great job thinking win-win!"

Well, thank you.

Ice cream was last, and we found this charming little place right next to Zupas (and Smash burger) who served the most delightful mint-chocolate concrete, and who was more than happy to smother Timothy's vanilla ice cream cone in rainbow sprinkles.

Timothy was right... sharks, soups, and sprinkles were way better than ceramics.

We are Doers

We Are Doers has been our family motto for years and years now. I can't honestly remember how long ago I read the scripture that sparked the idea in the first place, nor do I remember the actual event, but somehow and at sometime, James 1:22 became our family scripture and We Are Doers clicked in as the Alder family motto.

The scripture says: But be ye therefore doers of the word and not hearers only...

It still clicks every time I read it. Maybe because my personality yields itself to wanting to progress in all the things in all my whole life (much to my husband's (and my) chagrin sometimes), and it makes sense to me that doing things would be a great way to make some progress.

And so, all those years ago, I read that scripture and realized that we had a bit of a problem. Every Sunday we'd sit in our Sunday School classes and practice being good hearers, and then we'd come home and sit around the dinner table and talk about things we learned while being hearers, and then we'd... do nothing.

Well, nothing focused on what we'd heard in our Sunday School classes anyway.

So the motto was born and now things are different. Now we sit around and discuss all the things we heard in Sunday School, and at the end of the discussion everyone picks a Doers for his or herself that they will focus on for the rest of the week. That they will focus on doing.

It has worked for us (as much as anything 'works' for a family full of kids I suppose) for years and years and years.

But recently it's kind of gone a bit stagnant. We still go through the motions, sitting, discussing, picking a doer, but then we often find ourselves sitting back around the same dinner table seven days later with hardly a memory about what we had chosen the week before.

So, it's not really working at the moment. This isn't unusual, we've gone though pockets like this before, but this time as our family motto was losing a bit of resolve I was simultaneously reading a new-to-me parenting book called The Entitlement Trap (because it was 2018 and it seemed rather appropriate). In it the author, Richard Eyre (who, fun fact, is the father of one of our Durham friends), spends a whole chapter talking about the importance of children feeling ownership in their families and suggests that a great way to do this is to pick a family motto.

Pick a family motto, he suggests, but let them be a part of creating it. Then they will feel invested in it, feel ownership over it and it will mean something real to them. This struck a cord in all the parts of me so I brought it up over our Shake Shack burgers with the big kids.

(I don't know why I'm the only one in focus in this picture...

but it illustrates why I've been falling out of love with my phone camera for quite some time now. 

I'm rather grumpy about it, so maybe don't bring it up.)

"You guys," I began, "how do you feel about our family motto?"

"Um..." There was a moment of whiplash as they redirected their brains from The Best Burgers in the World to The Family Motto, but once they recovered they lit on fire. They insisted that they loved our family motto, and by the way they talked about it, it seemed to be actually attached to and intertwined with their personalities. Parent payday for the parent all about progress.

"I love it," McKenzie said earnestly.

"Yeah, me too," Carson agreed.

"Okay, well that's good," I shrugged. "Do you guys want to adapt it at all? Maybe expand it a bit?" I went on to explain that we had historically only used it in a spiritual sense - We Are Doers of all those things we hear in church - "but in addition to that, we really do so much more. So, who do you guys think we are? Who are the Alders? What do we do?"

The next twenty minutes passed in a brainstorm as we ate the rest of our cheese fries and the end result was this list (in no particular order except the order that they came to our brains):

We do family

We do respect

We do obedience

We do gratitude

We do refuge

We do hard things

We do fun

We do happiness

We do the Word

We do progress

We do love

We do active

We do strength

We do scholarship

We do try

We do ALDER

Each of these has bullet points of examples, and it was a pretty beautiful thing to see inside my kids' brains and watch all these things tumble out and listen to all the reasons why they felt these fit as definitions for our family. The list still needs a bit of pruning and tweaking, but this first draft makes me feel happy all the way through.

With this list tucked away in a file on my phone (do things really get tucked away in a phone?) we continued our day of adventure by hitting an escape room.

It was their experience gift this year for Christmas, and it was a big, big hit.

We should have known it was going to be awesome when they gave us heavy duty knee pads and told us we'd need them to crawl through the tunnels.

Tunnels?

Cool.

We donned our vests and put ear pieces in our ears and embarked on a highly important mission to steal a vile of some very important liquid from a highly secured safe. We had real dart guns and drills and wires and cables and solved all the problems with ease. Pay no attention to the fact that everyone else in the picture below drew their guns for the photo while I drew my drill. I might not last very long in a real situation...

Here we are crawling under lasers.

And stealing the vile of liquid.

We had one hour to complete the mission before something terribly terrible was going to happen (I missed that part of the story), and we emerged after having cleaned up all of our mess with over 18 minutes to spare. The worker running our session seemed genuinely impressed and commended our ability to listen to directions (my specialty in life - I'm much better at doing what other people tell me to do rather than thinking for myself).

I think we need to add to our list:

We do escape rooms

Because that was fun - and it was awesome to watch my kids work together with us to solve puzzles.

Also awesome, backing into the garage with this staring me in the face.

I love it when clouds become part of our desert world.

Bringing in the new year

It's a fuzzy one, I know. But just look at that smile! This little girl brings energy into everything she does and can you just imagine what a New Year's Eve party would be like without an extra spark of energy? We let that little ball of energy stay up alllllllll the way until 8:00pm - an hour past her usual bedtime - and then we kissed that little spunk and put her to bed so we could all enjoy a little less Eliza energy.

You can't have Eliza energy around, for example, when you're trying to play a game of Exploding Kittens.

And we played lots and lots (and lots) of games of Exploding Kittens during the last hours of 2018.

But first up on our list of games was Mario Kart.

We had 10 people bouncing up and down for two hours, shouting and cheering for their little colorful racers on the screen. I was impressed that everyone had such a great time for so long given that we only have two remotes.

Three of the children pictured above are from the Yates family... and can we actually pause for a minute here to talk about the Yates family? I adore every one of them. Melissa and Tony moved in over the summer with their eight children and we have become fast friends. Melissa and I speak the same heart language - a language of ideas and feelings and doctrine and philosophy (a language many are not comfortable speaking as I have discovered through much embarrassment over the years) - and she has sunk into my heart like a magnet. Carson and Porter are the same age and fell into fast friendship, and Ellie and Miles are the same age and I could write a whole post about their tender, beautiful friendship. So as New Years Eve evening was approaching it was no surprise that Carson and Miles asked if the Yates could come over.

Somewhere in the shuffling of children, I realized that their teenage son, Kimball, might have nowhere to go for the night, so I mentioned that he was more than welcome to come hang out with McKenzie and the rest of the family as well, if that didn't feel too awkward for him (I'm still new to this whole teenage boy/girl thing).

He jumped at the chance and it was delightful for me to watch McKenzie slide into a completely comfortable friendship at his side.

As the night wore on, we ate pizza, played games, lost the teenagers to a different party, put Eliza and eventually Timothy to bed, and were left with these four who were more than enough to help bring our new year in with laughter and fun.

We played more games, watched a movie (Black Panther) and then had just enough time as the credits rolled on the screen to get our noise makers and poppers ready to go and count down from 10.

2018 was a year of ups and downs (as are all years, of course), and much of my year was spent wrestling demons in my head. At most points throughout the year, if you got me to a place of pure honesty, I probably would have told you that "things are a little rough right now". But you probably wouldn't have seen it on the surface. Isn't life funny that way?

I've spent a whole lot of time with pen and paper analyzing my year, pulling hundreds of isolated emotions, thoughts, and single events from the days of the calendar and working them together like puzzle pieces to reveal a greater picture of what my 2018 was really like. When I started this work, I worried I would find that the finished picture would be one of discouragement and loneliness and failure because all of my pieces seemed to be filled with negative emotions. But as I worked through the hours I found quite the opposite and ended up in tears because all of those hard pieces, when pieced together and looked at as a whole, ended up creating something beautiful.

2018 was a year of incredible personal growth for me. According to my own memory, it's been the largest personal growth spurt I've ever had within a 12 month period of time. Compared to myself at the beginning of this year I feel so much stronger - but I had to swim through some pretty murky rivers of my own weaknesses to get here. I am so much more confident in my gifts and talents - but had to climb over some pretty craggy mountains of my own insecurities to get here. I am more grateful for my home and my city and my state - but had to cut through some pretty dense forests of jealousy to get here. I've learned just how powerful my thoughts are, that they are creating all of the feelings and actions in my life and I'm learning how to harness them and use their power for good. And all within one year. One hard, beautiful year. (Though, let's be honest... I didn't recognize it was beautiful until the end of it.)

Also, I think it's important for me to point out that reaching this point of recognition and understanding happened to correlate right along with Brian's new bishopric calling. If you had been reading my journal in early November you would know that I was quite terrified when he received the call because I knew I wasn't in a very healthy emotional place (I was still navigating through those rivers, mountains and forests, you see (without knowing where I was going (or how much further I had to go (or whether I had gotten stuck and was going around in circles)))). Either Heavenly Father knew that I was almost here and would arrive before the weight of Brian's calling started feeling heavier, or He opened up a shortcut and showed me the way out. Either way I'm grateful to have Him on my team, sculpting me and looking out for me, cheering for me, and helping me take another step closer to who He knows I can be.

Anyway - all that rambling just to say that someday when I'm old and grey and looking back on the course of my life, this year is going to stand apart from the rest as a year of transition. And I love that I can see that right now... generally I haven't recognized those years of transition until they are long gone and I'm looking at them through a lens of perspective. But this time I know it now. I knew it through the middle of it even. My life has changed this year. I don't know exactly where I'm going, but I know God has a plan for me and that He has used this year to get me pointed in the right direction.

So welcome, welcome, welcome 2019. I can't wait to see what you have in store for us!

The Man In The Suit

Brian has been called into the bishopric.

With every righteous sacrifice there comes a blessing. I believe that, and even so, the tears have come. I'm not surprised at them, really. After all, a sacrifice isn't really a sacrifice unless it hurts a little.
Or a lot.
Right?

He said that he needs a new suit.
He's right.
Truthfully, he probably needs more than one. I'm not sure why that's one of the things that has stuck out to me in all of this. A suit. It just feels a little strange I guess because he doesn't actually wear suits.

Or rather, he didn't.

But he wore one last week.
And when his name was read by the stake president over the pulpit, he rose to his feet right next to me and dang if he didn't look amazing in that suit. The congregation rose their hands to sustain him as the first counselor to the new bishop, and then I watched him gather his things, walk down the aisle, and sit in a seat up front; and the whole time that suit went with him. It looked more like a companion than a crafted piece of fabric, and when he stood to speak it spoke with him, held him up, gave him a quiet power.

He is going to be good at this. I know he is.
Because dang he looked amazing in that suit.

It filled his eyes with humility, and turned his voice soft and gentle. It poured itself out in words of gratitude from his lips and gave his testimony a gentle power.
Power.
How could a suit do it? Fabric and thread, tailored to the exact dimensions of Brian by a pair of skilled Thai hands in a tiny suit shop in downtown Bangkok.

It gave courage to his heart and trust to mine.
And power to us both.
Power.
Power to trust. Power to try. Power to be what the Lord needs us to be. Power to support. Power to love. Power to carry the heavy loads coming our way.

And as I sat pondering how a suit could be all of that, the eyes of my soul were opened and I saw that he was wearing more than one suit that day. A second suit made from sacred priesthood threads hung from his shoulders and infused him with its power.

The power of the priesthood.

It too was tailored to the exact dimensions of Brian, but by the hands of God himself and was given to him as a gift to wear as a representative of Jesus Christ. A suit that he wore in righteousness that wrapped him in the Divine and made him a man of God.

And dang if he didn't look amazing in that suit.

Stratosphere (Catch Up Post)

This year we asked each kid whether they wanted gift to play with for Christmas, or a gift to experience. And to my delight, they all chose Experience.

So for the three older kids, we took them to the Stratsophere to test their fear of heights.

It was a great place to test this fear because the Stratosphere is the tallest free-standing observation tower in United States and makes for some pretty impressive views.

Also, it is home to the scariest ride I've ever been on.

I don't scare easily on rides, but this one did me in. Which was funny because it is probably the smallest ride I've ever been on, too... the track is only 68 feet long, and entirely straight... which really doesn't seem scary at all. But it is because the 68 feet of track tilts down so the lone car is sent careening towards the end of the track at a fast enough clip that it feels very much like it would be impossible to stop the car before it falls off the edge and falls 866 feet to explode on the ground in Las Vegas. And what's worse, the car goes over the front of the track enough before it stops (it does stop) that it feels like you're already on your way there.

I was happier hugging this handsome guy and watching my children skirt death.

We were there at twilight time, which was absolutely gorgeous.

And it was so fun to be with my older kids.

There were only three rides on the top of that tower and so I worried that we'd get bored quickly, but I needn't have worried one bit. We ran from ride to ride to ride and back again.

And as soon as the rowdy, drunk crowds arrived at the top of the tower we were ready to head home anyway.

It was a night to remember, and I'm sure we'll be visiting the Stratosphere again.

Timothy and Miles chose a far safer experience, though they were every bit as delighted with theirs as the the older kids had been about the Stratosphere.

Chuck-E-Cheese.

Brian and I were actually having a bit too much fun running around with them to take many pictures. In fact, these are the only two I have of the whole night.

But I'll tell you, it was pretty awesome hanging around with the younger kids, too. And Brian and I make a mean team when it comes to Wack-A-Mole.

I think experience gifts are going to become a big part of our Christmastimes.