Trash, Inventing, CP3, Roomates, Talk, Ugly Chickens,

We buy raw milk from a dairyman in Grants Pass. He comes to Medford once a week and we exchange clean bottles for full in the parking lot of a sports center (where he plays racquetball). We’ve been doing it every Friday for about a year now, and it has made a big nutritional difference for our family, particularly Seth.

Baby Matthew loves trash cans—he’s dumpster diving already. Wow he moves fast.

Solomon invented a Block Picker-upper using a small car, a pencil and tape. The block sticks to the tape and then you can drive it wherever you want. He said, I want to be an inventor and a spy and a math-magician, whew, there’s so many things I want to be.

Adam calls his new mp3 player a CP3 player. A bit too much Star Wars? He’s listening to books on tape all the time now. Sol complains that Adam doesn’t play with him enough now. But when I try to limit Adam a lot, he says I wouldn’t do that if he were reading a book… He works while he listens, so he’s doing his chores really well. Still working on that balance.

Theron’s parents and two siblings still at home, Kaylisha (15) and Jordan (17) are moving in with us next month.

I got mastitis (a nursing mother’s infection that feels like terrible flu) again. This is the third time since Matthew’s been born. At least it wasn’t as horrible as the first two times I got it. I’m recognizing the symptoms earlier and throwing myself into bed as fast as possible—it makes a big difference in recovery and how bad things get.

Mandy gave her first talk in sacrament meeting. She did a fabulous job. Her talk stuck to the principles and she didn’t sound like a 12 year old speaking. She said she felt nervous, but you couldn’t tell based on her composure. She’s growing up!

I spoke at the same sacrament meeting. I also sang a duet. I also led the music. I had agreed to sing and give the talk at separate times and then, to my embarrassment, discovered that they were on the same day, the song right after the talk. THEN, the chorister didn’t show up so just as the opening song was to begin, the organist leaned over and asked me to lead. So there I was, very visible and feeling like I was taking over the meeting even though it was the last thing I wanted to do. Oh well. Nothing to do but smile and pretend it’s all on purpose. At least I was too busy to get nervous. Ha.

Chickens molting are very ugly birds. They look like they’ve been in a fight where some animal tore out all their neck feathers. They’re so embarrassed, they stopped laying until yesterday. I guess they finally got enough feathers so they could stop thinking about their appearance and start thinking about eggs! We got 3 eggs, yah!

Mandy went on her first temple trip, doing baptisms on behalf of those died before they were able to be baptized themselves. When she came out of the temple she said, “I feel more relaxed than I have in a long time.” I could tell in the way she smiled and spoke gently and hopped up to help a sibling without being asked that she felt very good inside. She wants to go every month. I’m going to look into it!

Theron’s been getting up at 3 am this week to work. We hope that after this week his schedule will normalize. He’s working so hard! And when he’s home he’s swarmed by us all.  He gave a great lesson on Gratitude and Service for Family Home Evening. Out of our list of possible service projects, the kids chose Secret Service to do this week. So we drew names, and we’re supposed to do secret acts of service for a member of the family. Which reminds me, I better go do that right now!