Happy Easter

It sure didn't feel like springtime and Easter, but according to the calendar, it was. Luckily the snow had finally melted and we were hitting sweltering temperatures that were approaching 40 degrees, so it wasn't all bad!

The kids had a great time with their usual Easter Egg hunt. (We sure missed Taylor!)

                                      

While they were out hunting, the bunny paid a visit to the house and when we came inside the kids found some fun goodies.

Easter Sunday was lovely with great speakers and classes and an opportunity to really reflect on all that Easter really means. The girls wanted to pose for a few pictures in their new dresses after church. It is truly astonishing to me to see how much they are growing! And even though Spencer didn't have new duds, we decided it was high time to snap a picture or two of his hilarious and handsome self. Kendall was out home teaching when we were taking pictures but we did get one the next day in his scout uniform. (He had come up with the idea to raise some money for scout camp this summer by selling his unbelievably delicious cheesecakes so he needed a photo to put on his flyer.)

Meanwhile out in Utah, the members there were taking great care of Elder Oswald. Taylor got to go and decorate eggs at a members home and they made sure to stock he and his companion up with plenty of candy too.

(These pictures all loaded sideways even though I had them turned right side up before and I don't know how to get them to turn, so you'll just have to crank your head to see them!)

We love when we hear from the members there how Taylor is doing--especially when they send photos too! He looks great and seems so happy. I'm told he was a bit homesick on Easter (and we were sure missing him!) but that he had a great day anyway.

Oh Brothers!

One day after church, Kaya couldn't decide what to put on after she changed out of her church clothes. Kendall and Spencer suggested that they let them pick something out for her. She loved that idea and promised that no matter what they chose for her, she would wear it. Additionally, she had to let them do her hair.

Of course, being silly big brothers, they made sure to go all out. 

Kaya was not thrilled with the result...

But she was a good sport and true to her word and she wore the entire thing for the rest of the day!

Cinderella

Way back before Christmas, Kendall auditioned for a role in the spring musical at his high school. He knew as a lowly freshman that any role he managed to procure would be small and that he would be choosing that lesser role over one of the larger roles if he had done the MCT play with the other kids. But since he wants to be a big part of the drama program at the high school in the future, he knew he needed to start somewhere. So he auditioned and he was given a part in the ensemble where he played three roles in various scenes of the play: a little boy in the crowd, a chef at the palace, and a guest at the ball. As the little boy he had a couple of lines but the rest of the time he was part of the singing and dancing, etc. They began pretty much daily rehearsals in January which was a huge challenge and made it hard to keep up with everything else going on in his busy life, and we sure missed him around here! But he stuck with it and had a lot of fun. 

They wound up doing three different performances and it was phenomenal! Definitely way higher class than the high school plays I was involved in. Our younger kids loved watching it too. Kendall did a great job and I'm sure will have lots of other bigger opportunities over the next three years of high school. It was so funny when Kaya leaned over to me in the middle of the play and said: "I'm really glad that they didn't make Kendall the prince because I wouldn't want him to worry about the kissing and all that love stuff!" 

Meeting the prince.

Meeting the wicked stepmother and step sisters.

Great job Kendall!

Elders

After the time of his life at the MTC in Provo, Taylor was sent to his first area of his mission. He is in the Mount Pleasant/Fairview area (just a little north of Ephraim). His first companion was Elder Falconbury from Alabama. This was his last area since he was on the last few weeks of his mission. Surprisingly, they actually had a lot of work to do. A lot of it was trying to get organized since the previous set of Elder's hadn't kept very good records but they also had several investigators and work a lot with inactive members. Taylor had his first baptism in March so that was very exciting and he was the one to get to perform it so that's even more exciting. I find that I live for Monday's when we finally get emails from him. He sends great emails that often have us cracking up but that also let us see how much he is already growing as a missionary. We are so proud of him!

Rapunzel

As usual, our year wouldn't be complete without the kids being able to participate in the annual Albion Youth Theater with Missoula Children's Theater production. This year they were able to do Rapunzel. And I think this one was one of my favorites so far. It was so funny and the songs were super catchy and fun. The kids had the time of their lives with their parts.

Sadly, Kendall wasn't able to participate for the first time since MCT has been coming to Albion. He was involved in the Marshall High School spring production and his rehearsal schedule didn't permit him the time to do this play as well. He was really disappointed but since he wants so be involved with the high school drama program, he knew he'd have to pass this opportunity even though it meant passing up (most likely) a larger part for just a little tiny part in the high school play. (You have to start somewhere!)

Lynnsey, Spencer and Kaya all auditioned though and they were given some really fun parts.

Spencer played The Littlest Billy Goat Gruff. I know, wrong fairy tale, but that's one of the fun things about these plays. He did a fantastic job and his voice is so perfect for the stage--he can really project loudly and clearly and his singing voice is pretty amazing too.

Kaya got to be a mushroom along with the other under 8 year olds. She loved her purple costume and doing the "robot" during one of their dance numbers.

And Lynnsey, in a sort of reverse Shakespeare tradition, was given the role of a prince! There were actually two Rapunzels (one in the tower and one on the ground) and two princes (one on foot and one on a horse). She did a fantastic job and had so much fun. She loved that she had quite a lot of lines and was a memorable part of the play this time.

There was one little snafu with the music. The usual pianist was out of town so they found someone who thought she could do it but then she had something come up and wasn't able to. So they found someone else to do it, but she had just had a stroke a couple of weeks before and she was really struggling to keep the tempo on some of those songs so she had to back out. The night before, I was contacting everyone I could think of but no one was able to do it. So the show went on anyway and they just did the whole thing a capella. And it was amazing! It was such a talented group of kids and they all nailed it so well without the accompaniment.

We're already looking forward to next year!!!

February

February continued our cold trend. "They" (whoever they are) say that this winter was the coldest on record for the state of Michigan. Last year, we had so much snow. It started and didn't stop for most of the winter. It was also very, very cold. But this year, even though we had a bit less snow, the temperatures were constantly below zero. We had lots of "snow" days from school but snow had nothing to do with it. It was just too cold. And instead of years past where we'd have a below zero day or two and then it would warm up at least for a day or two, this year it was just below zero every day for weeks on end. It was pretty rough. Especially because the rest of the country seemed to be having early spring--even in Cache Valley, which I always thought was the coldest place on earth with its canyon winds and zero winter sunshine. But even they were having winter days in the 50's and 60's and even a few in the 70's! Everyone kept posting pictures of themselves in shorts and tee shirts doing fun outdoor things like breathing without icicles forming around their mouths and opening their car doors without an ice pick. We were a bit jealous. But we made it through and took advantage of every "warm" day to play outside. "Guys, it's 15 degrees out! What are you doing in the house on such a beautiful day?" 

We had a crazy adventure with a rodent trying to keep warm in our house this winter! One day Kalen asked me about the nibbles in one of the apples in our fruit basket in the kitchen. I told him I thought it was the little girl I babysit who can be sneaky with food sometimes. But there was one week where she was sick and didn't come where we noticed that nibble spots were continuing to happen. We starting paying closer attention and realized that nearly every morning, we'd find just one section of one apple in the basket chewed on. And then one day we found that a bag of popcorn in the pantry had been chewed through and there were a bunch of empty husks that were left over. Another day, the bag of rice had a little hole in it. So it was apparent that something was in our house and eating our food. Whatever it was, seemed to be very careful to make as little mess as possible. We wondered if maybe it was a mouse but we've had mice before and they left their little droppings everywhere. So far, we hadn't found anything. Then one day, we did find some droppings in the pantry. And they were most definitely not the mouse variety. They were quite a bit larger than that. So we wondered if maybe it was a squirrel or a rat. Kalen tried an experiment where he sprinkled powder all over the top of the microwave where we keep the fruit bowl so he could see if it would leave some paw prints. One morning, we found some marks where the visitor had tried to climb up behind the microwave but the powder must have made it too slippery to pull itself up because what we found were two streaks of claw marks where something had tried to climb up but had fallen back. It was pretty freaky! So when my dad was here for Taylor's farewell in January, he bought us a live animal trap to see if we could catch it. We would put an apple in it and set it every night and every morning it would be empty. But after a couple of weeks, one morning Kalen got up early to take Kendall to Seminary and he heard a commotion in the kitchen and went in to find a very angry and frantic rodent trapped in the cage! He woke me up and told me to come and look at it to see if I could tell what it was. It wasn't a squirrel but it also didn't look like a typical rat with the pointy nose and teeth and a bare tail. This actually was kind of pretty and had a furry tail--it looked like a large gerbil. Kalen and Kendall took it with them and dropped it off on their way to Seminary and I did some research online. I think what we had was a wood rat (or pack rat) since it definitely looked like the pictures I was finding. However, they are quite rare in our neck of the woods, so I wasn't positive. But I couldn't find anything else that it could be, so I really think that must have been what it was.  I felt terrible that we didn't think to take it to the Nature Center. I bet they would have loved to have a look a it. Oh well. I hope it found a warm place and made it through the winter!

The kids had fun one day making a little snow family. Spencer even made them a little puppy. 

We had a nice Valentine's Day with our candlelight dinner and decorating sugar cookies!

We also spent a lot of the month packing up Taylor's room and getting Kendall moved in. He and Spencer are loving having their own rooms so much that it makes me feel a little better about not getting Taylor's room as a craft room. They still do sleepovers on the weekends with each other where one camps out on the floor of another so that is fun too.

We heard often from Taylor and he was doing great. He was sent to the Mt. Pleasant area a few hours north of St. George close to Manti. His companion was an elder from Alabama who was at the tail end of his mission. They wound up making things work despite some personality differences and they kept very busy teaching a few investigators and working with some inactive members. Their area covers 15 wards and 2 stakes! We are so happy that he adjusted so well and in spite of extreme fatigue is loving his experience as a missionary.

January: Happy Birthday Lynnsey, We Have a Missionary, Frigid Winter, and A Big Day for Lynnsey

Now that April is here, let's talk about January! One of these days I really want to catch up on these posts. And then stay caught up. Anyway, here we go:

We started off the year well with Kaya healing nicely so far from surgery and the kids resumed their usual school schedule without incident. Lynnsey celebrated her 12th birthday! It will never cease to amaze me how fast my children are growing up. This birthday marks the end of her time in the Primary organization at church and she enters the Young Women program. She is ready. She has been ready for awhile now and so far she absolutely loves her leaders and all the girls in there with her.

Since it is an even numbered year, she was able to have a friend party. It just so happened that there was a kid friendly movie playing at the Bohm Theater so she decided to invite a few friends to do that. Then everyone came back to our house for gifts at cake. Kendall stayed home from the movie to work on her cake with some of his new cake decorating tools that he got for Christmas. It was his first experiment with them and we thought he did a great job on both the cake (red velvet) and the decorating.

After all the girls left to go home, we had another little mini family party so she could open up her family gifts before Taylor had to leave for work.

As January went on, it started sinking in that Taylor was actually going to be leaving us! He worked right up until just a few days before he had to leave so he wound up getting behind on some of his preparations. We did make a few shopping trips to get the items he needed but he hadn't packed up anything for his mission or anything in his room which Kendall was anxiously waiting to take over. We wound up having a bunch of the Duchesne relatives come out for the weekend before Taylor had to leave so they could be here for his farewell talk at church. It was wonderful that they could come and it gave Taylor the chance to visit with Timothy and play his new Doctor Who Risk game. We also were able to make one last trip to the temple with him. But it sure didn't help the packing up process happen. His farewell talk was great--he went over his time by A LOT but it was a great talk. The men (and one young woman) in the branch paid a fun tribute to Taylor by all wearing bow ties that day. My camera was dead so I need to see if I can get a picture from someone  who took one of the whole group, but it was such a sweet gesture and I know it meant a lot to Taylor to be surprised that way.

The day before Taylor was set to leave, he still hadn't packed a single thing. So it was a day of meltdowns as he realized he was just out of time and everything was hitting him that he was actually leaving. He was so emotional all day and when he wasn't crying, he was panicking. Finally, late into the night he got everything packed to go. His room just had to be left with promises that we would box everything up and not get rid of anything because he wants to go through it when he comes home.

After only a few hours sleep we got everyone up and headed for the airport. (Except Kendall who didn't think he could afford to miss school so we dropped him off at my mom's so she could get him there.) It was a hard ride as we contemplated that this was actually happening. How was this actually happening? How did this happen so fast? How do I have a son old enough to even go on a mission? We arrived at the airport and got Taylor all checked in and then we had a few minutes to say goodbye before he had to go through security. It was emotional but amazing to think about the experience that he is embarking upon and about all of his life of good choices leading up to this moment. We are so proud of him and we know that this experience will help him grow and mature like nothing else will.

                                       

After one last wave before he disappeared through security, we headed back home to embark upon our new experience of having only four kids at home. Taylor's flight went well and he was able to spend some time with the Oswald side of the family for the rest of Tuesday before they took him to the MTC on Wednesday. He had a great time and I think that helped calm some of his nerves about the mission just to spend time with them. He and Todd spent a lot of time in Logan Canyon on Tuesday and I think that was his favorite part of the visit.

The next day they all journeyed to Provo and spent some time on the temple grounds and going to eat lunch before it was time to send him off. I wish we had been able to do it ourselves, but we are so thankful that in our absence, we had such a great group of family who could be there for him. 

                                     
While Taylor was having the time of his life at the MTC (he LOVED it there!) life here continued as usual. We got to have another trip to the temple, this time for a youth temple trip. My mom watched the younger kids so I could go along too since this was Lynnsey's first time ever being able to go and perform baptisms. It was a wonderful day and I think she really enjoyed the experience.

These kids of mine just keep on growing up, but I am so happy when I see the way they are turning out to be such wonderful people who make good choices that will bless them for the rest of their lives if they continue along the path they are headed.