Evan is 16

Helping Andrew bench press. Hopefully the puberty puts muscles on his arms like it did for Evan.

Evan LOVES Koda.

My biggest piece of advice for people who are about to have teenagers:

GET A DOG for your teenagers. 

Koda is the biggest...hmmm what's the right word...de escalator.

calm

peace

heart and mind regulator

focus 

turn down the temperature

We all gravitate to her and become melty putty in her hands.

No one is "non chalant" the minute koda is involved. Everyone talks to her like she's the best thing they've met all day. All teenager pretenses are turned off. Care taker mode is turned on. 

We turned the Superbowl Party into a Birthday party.

Yay Seahawks!

At school the next day on Evan's actual birthday, Mr Dahl brought his accordion in and sang Happy Birthday. 

Evan often complains about having a sore but bone. 

We went to the doctor to get it checked out. They looked at his CT scan from last year's appendix situation, and found this fun situation:

See how his tailbone makes an L shape there at the end? 

Yeah. 

I don't know.

We wonder if his sacral dimple has something to do with it. 

But he has an appointment with a surgeon next. 

And we are working on getting his license. Why does the written test have to be so hard? 

He failed if for the second time today and my heart is just broken for him. He knows alllll of the facts but has such a hard time with multiple choice tests. 

So i don't know.......

Andrew's Birthday

This was a sneak picture on January third.

Andrew said his hair was chopped, so don't get a picture.

But then Avery got one anyway.

It's crazy how much Andrew has stretched out. He's a beanpole. 

This weekend he had an actual birthday party with friends.

Jim pulled out a loose molar in the morning,

then gave Koda a bath.

The house was full of boy energy. Evan had his friends over,

we grilled hamburgers and watched the Seahawks game and played football and basketball and the piano.

Dylan came in with dogpoop all over him, even though we cleaned up all the dog poop in the yard, he found some.

Andrew has amazing frineds.

They are so middle school, and also so tweenager. I guess at thirteen it is very teenager.

They talk about girls, ask out and break up with girls,

their voices are squeaking all over the place. 

They say things like 6-7, buns, dip, chopped.

I love these 7th graders. 

Day 26 :: Something That Makes Me Sad

 

It makes me sad to think about Avery's Senior year coming up.

I know if you refer to day 23 that shouldn't be true, but Senior year feels like an impossible thing that I don't want to do. Because then she will launch and I just want my kids to be mine still. 

Big sigh.

So her 17th birthday came on a Saturday. She had big plans to do brunch with friends, and then beach fire with more friends...but since she's pushing adulthood, her stupid dumb job got in the way and she had to work most of Saturday. (PS her job is actually awesome - she is a lifeguard at the waterslides, but you know, jobs are stupid dumb).

So she had a lowkey change of plans birthday. 

In the end, she went to Paso with her two good friends and Bea sent me this picture and it made me so happy to see her birthday was salvaged. 

We went to graduation this year. It made me sad.

I hear when it is your child's actual graduation it's not as sad because you are more ready? Hopefully.

But I got this pic of her with her friends and hope to have a part 2 next year in their grad gowns. 

Avery is the absolute best thing. She is so smart and funny and fun and mature. 

I just love her. 

I think a lot about her patriarichal blessing. It talked about how Avery was with us long before she was born to us, and I just feel that deep. 

She does Borderite News with this crew of friends every Friday. She loves leading a team in projects. She loves the creativity and being with her friends. 

Click HERE to see her shows. 

This is her latest product she directed most of the intro. It has a lot of inside jokes. 

I just love her so so much don't leave me. 

FIVE YEARS AGO

Evan is 15

Right around Evan's birthdays there's always snow days or trips to Disneyland. 

This year his birthday was on a Sunday, so we had our best friends come for cake. 

They couldn't stay too long because we all still had to PACK for our trip to Disneyland the next morning. 

Right there in the middle of the group is Wild Bill. He heard about the party at church and invited himself. haha he's the best. 

Jim made this four layered chocolate cake. 

Me and Jim were discussing Evan...in many ways he's such a contradiction. 

He's so loud, yet so shy/quiet.

He's so fun to be with - at Disneyland we all found ourselves wanting to be near him.

Yet he's so annoying when he drums and beat boxes right in your ear you want to get away from the noise. 

He's charming, he's funny but he doesn't really "get" some humor. 

He's both super smart and super clueless about certain things. 

Last night the youth had an activity with geneology. They had to download the Family Tree app, and it was reportedly a pretty boring activity. But you know who was searching around, looking at ancestors? Evan. 

I think it's a lot like his love of looking at maps, and searching around google maps. He likes to see where he is and how he got there. 

I was looking at pictures from when he was little and I just don't know how to understand it. He was five years old at one time, and now he's fifteen years old. He's been living in our house the whole time secretly getting older and bigger every day. No one noticed. 

Now he's six feet tall with shoes on. How does that work? 

Anyway he is a fun kid to have in our family. 

Whenever I go tuck him in for the night, I find his blanket from when he was a baby and cuddle it up to his face. I say "I love you" and he says "whatever".

Whatever is code for "I love you too". 

My Birthday and Stuff

45 feels like a big birthday. I know I'll look back and say wow you were young and spriteley. 

But it just feels like it's the point of no return. 

The good news is I am surrounded by the best people who ALSO get older every year. So we are in this together, right people? 

The day before my birthday (Sunday birthday!) we went for a long, cross mountain hike. 

Up and over. Jim and Joe started from the other end, and left us a car to go pick them up on the North Side. 

My friendship birds.

It was a beautiful 6 miles. 

I love my life. My beautiful family and beautiful friends. 

There is so much to read and discuss in this world - it's my favorite thing to do: read and discuss.

I'm trying to remember what we have been talking about lately ::

But it's too many things. 

But here is a snippet from a Substack I read ten times today (by Spencer Klavan):

'Considered as a work of art, the universe expresses a raucous and insatiable appetite for life in every possible variety. The skill is that of a Rembrandt but the spirit is that of a toddler with a box of crayons. I don't think we take this into account nearly enough in our theology, what a limitlessly free and ravenously inventive mind we must be talking about when we talk about God.

Why make a global swimming pool and fill it with space aliens? His answer seems to be something like uh, why not??

"The Lord God of Israel," wrote one of Lewis's favorite writers, Thomas Traherne, "was from all Eternity, and from all Eternity wanted like a God....  He wanted Worlds, He wanted Spectators, He wanted Joys, He wanted treasures." As he explained to Job, he wanted a world filled with ostriches and bulls and mountain goats, and he was entitled to make them as wild as he pleased without explaining himself.

We now know he also wanted quasars, and nebular dust, and giant squids. Whether he made space to house these things, or whether it's only the necessary mental condition under which they appear to us (which you'll recall is my preferred answer, and Kant's) seems less important than this fact: when we talk about miracles, we're not talking about any reality other than the one in which, wonder of wonders, we already live and move.'

I don't have the good words to describe how amazing this universe is, so I will borrow from Spencer Klavan. 

Anyway. 

This is my Sunday outfit. 

We had steak and pie. All my kids and Jim were so nice to me all day. 

Me and Avery watched Wicked together. She gave me a foot massage. 

haha I look like Sunday. 

This paint by number has been my current puzzle activity. 

So, most insurances do colonoscopies for free once you hit 45, so three days after my birthday I had my first one. 

On the day that I had to fast for 24 hours, I spent a lot of the day working on this. I love seeing the progress:

I also love this progress: Every Sunday we open the rock tumbler to see how things are going. 

That line I'm pointing to are the rocks we added from our beach.

The other ones came with the kit. They tumble down so small! I didn't know they would shrink so much. 

Ok, this is the funniest thing on the internet and in my life right now: It's a video of a kid excited about this cereal box. He shows his mom the combination of sugar cereals "cinnamon chost trunch...and the best part is (pointing to the Kelce Brothers) Lebron James and Michael Jackson!"

So we were watching this over and over and I was die laughing - especially because the caption "how lost are you in math?" The combination just hit so funny.

BUT THEN Evan came along and watched it and said "that's not Lebron James. That's some random guy and Devon Booker."

So if you thought I was laughing at the original reel, you just wait until that entered the lexicon. We all died laughing. I think about it at least once a day and die laugh. 

I will randomly say "some random guy and devon booker" 

(except I can never ever remember devon booker's name, so I say some name that is similar to that. even just now as I was writing this story, I had to text Avery and ask her what that guy's name is.)

 haha I swear to you this is the funniest thing in our family right now.

It's not a blog post without some basketball pictures.

I love watching my kids play sports. Even though we LOSE constantly. blah. 

This is my other favorite thing in the whole world: 

Andrew's first passing of the sacrament was the best. His shirt came untucked and his hair is a bit crazy, but he was so earnest and eager. I might die of just love for this whole thing. 

Saturday Roxanne and I ran up to Whoopsie Woodle,

And Monday Lisa and I ran up to Jack and the Beanstalk.

And now for a few more things I love:

Koda and her head in my lap,

my new room and bathroom, 

the sky,

especially on the drive home with the sun setting behind Drayton Harbor,

climbing a mountain 

with friends

and Jim

talking about stuff

reading good stuff

watching progress

jokes with my family

more and more beautiful trails.

That's a good amount of love at 45.

Andrew is 12

Andrew wanted a "family only" birthday this year.

I loved it. 

Again, he set out a list of things he wanted to do with us:

eat Subway for lunch,

cake from Costco,

play a family round of MarioKart,

watch The Wild Robot, 

play Trouble. 

On Sunday he got ordained a Deacon. 

He is so adorable about it.

Yesterday for his first young men's activity they practiced/learned how to pass the sacrament.

He came home BUZZING about it. Pacing, biting his fingernails, explaining what number does what. 

When I was tucking him in, he was still so excited. He said he hopes he doesn't get sick (Evan was puking on Wednesday) because he really really wants to pass the sacrament Sunday.

The next morning he said he couldn't sleep because he is so excited. 

I just LOVE that the boys are given this chance to wear nice clothes and do something that in no other walk of life he would be expected to do. He gets to elevate his whole character (hopefully!?) because of this responsibility.