New President and Riots

Donald Trump won. It amazes me. I am floored that our country could nominate and elect someone like him.  I could talk a lot about this, but this is not the forum.

 

Paul and I were downtown at the Blazers basketball game on Friday night. At the end of the game reports came from the PA that I-5 and I-84 were closed due to the third night of demonstrations. That was our way home, so we took our time in the parking garage looking for alternatives. I said, "Let's go dancing!" We started looking for a place to go dancing and I turned the radio to a new station.  The radio announced that downtown Portland was a war zone!  There were bombs going off and I could hear all the screaming behind the announcer.  We found a route and came straight home.  It would have been fun to go dancing, but not tonight!  We still had a great time together. The Blazers won by 1 in overtime.

My parents have been here for 13 days working on a remodel they are doing in Willsonville. I helped with the finishes for about a week.  They left this morning.  My mom and I got to go to Value Village together and I sneaked her away to look at pinterest and art ideas a couple of times, but most of the time, she was busy working with my dad. They watched the kids so we could go to the game. I got to talk to my dad about the drama with his siblings that occurred when his Mom died.  It's really sad that they don't communicate better and that there is so much pain in their relationships. They really needed their Dad not to die so young. I wish he lived longer. 

Jeanette sang in church today with a group of 5 women. It was beautiful.  Eirik gave a talk on being reverent and having respect for Heavenly Father. It was very good. 

Paul taught my dad some cords on the guitar yesterday.  I loved watching this!

Lllllotion

Sometimes on slow Saturdays, all the kids take baths and then we have spa day. I lay out towels, turn on the heater, light candles and we do massages, nails and listen to soft music.  It's been a long time since we had a spa day and Juni was getting out of the bath this week.  She said, "you rub my back." She laid down on the towel and waited.  I laughed and got out some lotion.  She said, "Llllllotion!" She is working on learning to say her L's and overemphasizes them in the cutest way.  When I started rubbing her back, she said, "what is this?" I said, "It's a massage." She said, "Oh massaaaage. I wike massaaaaaaaaaaages." Then she said, "slllllowlllly,  slllllowlllly."  It was so cute, I had to write it down.

"You look like a bully in that haircut."

"You look like a bully in that haircut." Joren screamed at Eirik in response to something Eirik had done.  There were tears.  I found Joren in his room ashamed and sad. He cried on my shoulder and then said he was going to make it right. I watched him go next door and through tears, tell Eirik he was sorry and that he really doesn't look like a bully.  They hugged. 
My boys love each other and are old enough to have learned to apologize and make their relationship strong on their own.  Today Joren had a rough day at church.  He was hungry and tired and wanted to go home. It was all he could do to hold it together until the end.  I was in charge of sharing time. I took them into the sacrament room for the lesson. They all sat down and Eirik's row filled up really fast. Joren was the last into the room.  He looked around at all the hundreds of open spots and then climbed over people and squeezed into the nonexistant space next to Eirik.  Eirik was happy to make "room" for him. It made my heart happy.

Roller Skating

We went to Oaks park to go skating as a family when Eirik's school teacher invited his whole class to skate.  We were ALL surprised to find out how much we loved it. Juni was adorabe in her little strap on skates and effervescent attitude. Nothing got her down. Teig was like a constant ball of motion.  There was no stopping him, even the 5000 falls which seemed to be part of the whirl of forward momentum.  And Joren found a groove and took off on his own all night long.  He went around and around and around with pure determination.  Eirik and Jake and Jeanette all had a great time too. There were calls to go back the next night and the next and the next, but we settled on a week later.  The night agreed to came and the adults were not as excited to go since Halloween was the next night and we had to leave a party at the school early to go skating.  It seemed like too much.  Despair was in the air.  Joren said, "I want skating to be my life! I love skating. I want to go three times a week!"  Teig was so mad! He said, "If I could, I would run away and go skating right now." I took just Teig and Joren and the three of us had a great time. The third weekend, we took my mom and dad.  The Westovers met us there.  If we can get Eirik more on board, we will have a family activity we all love.

Biz Town

Today Eirik and Jake went to Biz Town, a warehouse downtown setup inside like a little town where each student is given a job in the town and they spend the day interacting withing their job titles, earning money, buying things and learning how commerce works.  Each student was given the chance to apply for three jobs of their choice and then interview for them. Eirik was given the job of meteorologist, but what he really wanted to be was the TV Host.  He thought being the meteorologist was fine, and he enjoyed it, but he was able to get the TV Host to agree to let him fill in for her while she was on break. He came home bragging that he got the most screen time of anyone there.  He admitted that he may, or may not, have bribed the representatives of the different businesses that were responsible to come for interviews, to all come while the TV host was on break for so that he would get to do the most interviews.  My friend Tiffany went to Biz Town as a volunteer and I saw her after school.  She said that all the parents were talking about Eirik and how talented he is. She said, "Eirik said he wants to be a dermatologist, but he would be great on TV!"  I told her that he is always volunteering to give talks in primary whenever anyone is absent.  Talent and confidence oozing from this kid!