Friday, May 29, 2009

It's getting black outside, about to pour.  A moment ago, an enormous crash of thunder shook the house and rattled the windows.  The kids just got in from HTT- even Naomi- and I have been here at home painting the front room wall, since I don't have a car today and can't go anywhere at all.  When I get more batteries in my camera, and when the wall is finished, I'll post a photo of it.  I think it's looking good.  =)

Besides painting the wall, I've been working in the yard.  I put in a stone patio, planted gardenia bushes, planted the dahlias I got for Mother's Day,  put flowers in the front terrace, and planted a small yellow rose bush in the back yard.  The rose bush called to me at the garden center.  I swear, as I passed, it said, "hello!"  I did a double take and thought, huh.  cute little bush.  But as I walked off to the stone section I just kept thinking, "that was a really cute little bush.  When I passed it again it almost leaped into my cart.  So I brought it home and planted it.  It really is very cute.

Gotta go.  This storm is getting bad.  Power surge possible,

Friday, May 22, 2009

Thoughts on an Eagle Scout project

Today was going to be the big day-- concert, bake sale, hundreds of people, and thoughts and donations for Uganda.  But...

While Josh was brainstorming ideas about publicity a few weeks ago, concerned that he might plan a great event and have no one show up, he contacted the Potomac News about running a story on his project- which they did.  The reporter and photographer were very nice.  They came to his sound check when his band and another band brought all their equipment to make sure everything would work and to see where and how to set up.  The story in the paper was very nice, but, unbeknown to us, caused some alarm in the local city offices.

Apparently they had just been discussing an incident in Baltimore where a girl's birthday party at a city park had to be shut down by the police, and they were all saying "Thank Heaven that didn't happen here!"  The following morning the paper carried the story of Josh's Eagle Scout project and they all panicked, picturing thousands of rowdy teens running over the park and needing to be arrested.  

Josh got a call that morning from the city council, and another from the chief of police.  They wanted to meet with him to discuss the project.  He and I went to the town hall that afternoon and met with two women from the city council and the chief of police.  While they were all very nice, it was clear that they had already decided Joshua's event was not going to happen.  The woman who had called the meeting kept saying, "It would have been a nice event..."  Bad sign.

They had called the health department to inform them of our bake sale and to recommend it be inspected (and consequently shut down).  They said there were not enough police in the city to patrol that sort of event.  They said Josh needed permits and insurance and thousands of dollars to pay police, pull permits, and so on and so forth.  It felt a bit like deja vu.  (Similar thing happened with our home owner's association, after they had approved it)

So, today was the big day.  The day we were going to be having a benefit concert.  But Josh is going to work at a neighbor's house cleaning up their back yard, removing trees and cleaning out the garage.  Which is a good thing to do!  Just not what we were planning on.  

On the bright side, how many young men get to meet with the chief of police and city council, besides the home owner's association board, all for one Eagle Scout project?  Actually, he'll get to meet with the city council twice.  They asked him to come back on June 2 to discuss the possibility of still having the concert.  (For some reason, holding it at a later date might be better.)  We'll see how that goes.  As we were leaving the meeting, one of the women who had really sounded sorry about shutting this down said, "There will be a new head of the town council on June 1, but I'm sure it will still work out."  Like I said- major deja vu!

I'm glad Josh is getting to really work for this award.  I think, at some future point in his life, all these problems and set-backs will be seen by him as a great preparation time.  In the mean time, I hope he can keep his chin up and make the best of a discouraging situation.

And if he ever does get his project to actually happen, I hope he has a whopping turn out, and is able to help tons of kids in Uganda.

=)

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Bookmarks

Just a short brag.  A while ago our county library system had an art contest for adults to design bookmarks.  On the day the contest closed (procrastination is one of my strong suits) I decided that if I wanted to enter, I'd better draw something.  So I drew two designs (well... three actually, but one went in the trash) and ran them over to the local library.  

A few weeks later I got a phone call saying my bookmarks-- both of them!-- were chosen as runners up, and that 1,500 copies of each would be printed for people to take home from the libraries.  My prize was a library book bag.  Green and black and wonderfully sturdy.  =)

Today we ran into the library-- literally, because we were in a huge hurry-- and Surprise!  There were my bookmarks!  One has a dragon reading a book, and one has a girl in front of a library holding some books in her arms.  Should you happen to wander into one of our local libraries, pick one up!  Hold your place, and enjoy some of my sketches.  =)

Monday, May 11, 2009

Mother's Day

I missed talking to my mom yesterday.  First it was too early, then we went to church, then she was in church, then it was suddenly 11 pm here-- 9 pm there.  I called,  but no one answered.  =(  It's a sad thing not to get to talk to your mom on Mother's Day.

But I did think about her, and her mother, and my mother in law, and my other grandmother.  here are some things I thought.

My mother is amazing.  She has not been handed easy children to raise, but she has done a wonderful job.  She can cook anything, sew anything, keep her house beautiful, offer recipes over the phone, and cater weddings.  She is creative and an amazingly hard worker.  I hope I can be like her, someday.  =)  If she had not been a mother I wonder sometimes what she would have been.  Maybe a private investigator, or  CIA operative, maybe a stewardess or travel agent, maybe a seamstress, or perhaps a school teacher.  I don't know.  I had a really good time with her in Panama and on a cruise to Mexico a couple of summers ago.  Besides being a wonderful mother, she is just really fun to be with.  (Oh.  Sorry.  I know that last sentence should not have ended with a preposition.  She's also Really good at grammar! =)  She grew up in Provo- on 9th East, right across the street from BYU- so after many years in the frozen waste lands on Minnesota, she is now back home.  =)

Her mother is my Grandma Jones, and I lived with her my freshman year of college.  She grew up in Delta Utah (they grow pomegranates there, I believe) and worked in a bank for many years.  (Secretary to the President, I think?) She had a tiny bedroom in her basement with a bookshelf above the bed that was well-stocked with Nancy Drew, Brighty of the Grand Canyon, and many others.  She had dried apricots in her freezer- which I helped myself to more often than I should have- Lladro figurines in her living room, and roses on her fence that I loved.  The heavily-scented evergreen bushes by the side of her driveway are, to me, the scent of Utah.  From her I learned to keep my underwear drawer tidy, that "beautiful" matters, and that spending time and thought on gifts is worth while.  She seems like a queen in my mind, tall and dignified.

My mother-in-law is the kind everyone must wish for. (Sorry-  another preposition at the end.)  She compliments my skills with my children, tells me my house is lovely, and gives hugs all around.  =)  Very nice.  My only complaint?  She has a spotlessly clean house, so I have this standard of perfection for when she comes to visit.  Sometimes I just tell myself, "It's ok.  You have kids, and are running 24/7.  She'll understand."  And she probably does.  It would just be nice if my house was as clean as hers.  Or if I found dirty socks on her living room floor just once.  =)  But all around, she wonderful.

My Dad's mom is Grandma Crookston.  She was tiny-- apparently she fit in a quart jar when she was born, and she did not ever get very big.  She had this contraption in her bedroom on which she would hang upside down every day.  I think it helped her back.  She had a jar of pink and white peppermints that I loved, and when I got married she gave me the jar.  Her house was old-- one of my some-number-of-great grandpas built it, I think in Brigham Young's time.  And it had the most amazing climbing tree in the side yard.  There were kittens by the back steps, and cows in the back pasture.  I stayed with her one summer and loved it.  From her I learned that it's good to have cookies in the cookie jar- preferable snicker doodles- that there is nothing wrong with taking the chipped china dishes into the yard to play tea party, and that if you shred cat tails in the yard, you have to clean them up.  (Not easy!)  She grew up next to the Cardston Alberta temple, and she loved it.  Temples, peonies and petunias make me think of her.   As I was weeding the front flower bed on Saturday I thought of her checking my work, and how she would make me get out even the tiny ones before I was finished.  =)

I have been blessed by a whole lot of wonderful mothers.  And wonderful children!  Aahh... life is good!          

Thursday, May 7, 2009

What I forgot...

Last night as I was typing my post I was really tired, and toward the end a few things slipped my mind.  (Imagine that)  

While in Panama City we also visited the Miraflores Locks and the LDS temple.  They were both wonderful in very different ways.

We went to the locks first, since they were pre-programmed into our GPS.  A ship was passing through, and it was Huge!  There were thousands of boxes on board, and each one was the size of a semi truck trailer.  Actually, "thousands" is probably an underestimate.  I would love to have known what they were all carrying.  We watched the lock be drained of water to lower the ship, and then watched the ship move out of the lock into the open canal.  Even before the ship was all the way out, the lock began filling again for another ship.  It was quite cool.

As we were leaving the locks, Mike asked a gate guard (in Spanish) if he knew where the LDS temple was.  He beamed at us and said in perfect English, "You're from Salt Lake City!"  We told him we were actually from Virginia, and I asked where he was from.  He said, "Panama."  When I asked how he'd learned English he said, "From talking to people!"  He told us the temple was just down the street and around the corner.  (We knew it was close.)

The temple was amazing.  It's beautiful, of course, but the feeling was so... peaceful, wonderful, calm, and in many ways very different from the other places we had been.  We took pictures that night, and Mike talked to a man from Venezuela who is thinking of moving his family to Panama because he is concerned that Venezuela is moving quickly toward communism.  The kids all exclaimed, in quiet voices, how wonderful it was to be there.

We returned the following morning-- minus Peter, Naomi and Grandma-- to do baptisms for the dead.  We joined a Panamanian ward from Colon, and everything was done in Spanish.  The Panamanian kids were beautiful.  Some were clearly native Kuna indian, and some were black, and some were Hispanic, but they all were smiling and reverent and although we could not communicate very well, they made us feel very welcome.  

Ok, I'm off to read stories to my kids.

Good night!  =)

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Trip to Panama

The first day we arrived and planned to take a taxi to the bus station, and then a bus to El Valle-- a village in the crater of an extinct volcano.  But there were some problems with the taxi part of this plan, to the tune of $200.  Yes, that's right.  The taxi drivers wanted $200 to drive us across the street to the bus station.  (We would have walked but we didn't know the way.) Mike made a wise choice and found us a rental car- for not too much more than the taxis!  And so we missed the Panamanian bus experience, but gained the ability to stop wherever, whenever we wanted.  It was a really great thing!  =)

We stopped for lunch on the way to El Valle at a little Columbian restaurant and enjoyed grilled chicken and pork and cold drinks.  Peter chased their chickens and we found a cashew tree and sampled the fruit.  (the juice made our mouths very dry)

In El Valle we checked out a couple of hotels and decided on a cute little place.  The woman looked pleased that we would stay there and said she would make up the beds while we saw the petroglyphs and found a place to eat supper.  It was 6 pm and we told her when we'd be back--but when we returned, the hotel was closed, locked and completely dark.  We were baffled.  After calling, "Hello!"  and walking all around, beeping the horn, and deciding there was really no one there, we drove back to the restaurant to borrow their phone.  Mike called (our only Spanish speaker) and the woman from the hotel said she goes home at 6 pm every night.   

What?

We drove around town looking at one dark hotel after another.  Apparently the whole town-- other than restaurant owners-- goes home and to bed at 6 pm.  Naomi was crying in the back seat, afraid we'd be spending the night in the mini-van.  (10 people+ luggage, 8 seats)  I was just glad we had a mini-van!  Finally Mike found a hotel with an actual living, breathing person in sight, and we stayed there.

When we woke up in the morning we were surprised to see that we were in paradise!  Misty hills, squawking parrots, bright flowers, mangos falling at our feet, hammocks to swing in, and a little stream running by.  

We drove to the zip line hut (wooden beams with palm fronds for a roof, with various plants growing in the fronds on the roof), strapped on harnesses and hiked (about 45 minutes, I think) through the rain forest to the first zip line.  The guide explained he would strap us onto the steel cables that were strung from one platform to another.  I felt sick.  The fall to the forest floor was hundreds of feet below us.  I get vertigo just looking down a couple of flights of stairs.  And my children!  What kinds of a mother would swing her children- Tarzan-like- out into the jungle?  I had to sit down.  The kids were ecstatic. 

I don't know who went first.  But I know when they said it was my turn I knew I would pass out.  Click.  My harness was attached to the cable.  Thick leather gloves were put on my hands, and I was told to "hold here" (behind the pulley system) "not here" (in front of the pulley system).  I sat in the harness seat, like I was told to do, and they shoved me off the platform into the mists of the jungle.  

Aauugghh!!!

The other platform loomed closer and closer and I gripped the steel cable to slow myself.  Thud.  I landed.  And...

gulp.  I was alive.  and...

Woo Hoo!  Was that ever fun!

I turned around to take pictures of my kids following me across the river below.

We went over several lines, including one that crossed the El Macho waterfalls, which were gorgeous from the platform after I landed, and which I photographed mid-air while I was on the zip line, but my memory is mostly of terror at being suspended above the ground and letting go of the cable to get out my camera.  My feet are sweating even as I think about it.

When we got back to the hut, we changed into swimming suits and went swimming in the Freezing pond below the falls.  It was gorgeous.  Some Panamanian teen-aged boys were there, clearly showing off for the girls.  We took photos with them, and talked for a while.  They were nice, and the flowers were amazing.  I had never considered that the Impatience flowers we plant in our yard must grow wild somewhere.  Well, that somewhere is Panama.

Later we went horseback riding around the streets of El Valle, and visited the little zoo there, where we saw caymen, ocelots, a puma, and the famed golden frogs of El Valle.  The frogs only live in El Valle, and they are seriously facing extinction because of a fungus that grows on their skin and suffocates them.  The zoo is trying to preserve some of them.  We were not allowed into the building where they were kept, but could see them through the windows.  They were bright yellow with black spots.  Very cute. Lots of other animals were there, too, including capybaras, and some enormous pig things that I did not photograph.   

The next day we drove to Portobello, on the northern (Atlantic/Caribbean) side of Panama.  We stopped at some 1600's Spanish fort ruins where the Spaniards tried to defend Panama from Pirates of the Caribbean.  It didn't go too well, from the looks of it.  The kids found a baby bird and secret passage ways, and we all enjoyed hiking around the ruins.

Our hotel was called Scuba Panama, and it was... umm.... scary.  Mike escorted a cockroach out of our bedroom, and most of us chose to shower outside, in the places designed to rinse off after swimming.  Not that the ocean water was inviting.  Naomi went in and came out with her feet stained black-- I think from an oil spill.  It was all quite disheartening.  But pretty-- as long as you didn't look at the water.  Flowers and coconuts and amazing birds.  

But we were there to snorkel.  We asked them to boat us to a distant island that was supposed to have clear water, but they refused.  So we settled for their recommendation of a closer beach.  Bad plan.  I swam around the cove and saw lots and lots of sand and dead leaves.  The kids, however, were pleased.  They found a few fish and some coral, while Mike, my mom and I walked along the tiny strip of beach.  Mike saw a toucan fly away, and we all saw hundreds of hermit crabs.  But the most amazing thing was the ant highway.  The ants had cleared a path about 5 inches wide and hundreds of feet long through the forest floor, and they were carrying pieces of leaves in one direction along the path, and returning empty-handed, so to speak, back the other way.  I wished I'd been an ant reporter and could have interviewed them to find out why they were doing this.  The path had forks in the road, and branched off in several directions.  It was amazing.

We did not stay there two nights, as planned, but returned to Panama City where we found a clean hotel with hot water (our first since we'd arrived- it was heaven!) and beds we felt safe in.  
Let me pause to say:

We are SO spoiled as Americans!

While in Portobello we were parked outside a cinderblock house.  A mother and several mostly-naked children were there and they had nothing.  The door stood open and I could see into their empty house.  A few clothes hung on a barbed wire.  Two thin cats prowled the yard keeping their eyes on a rooster, and coconuts littered the ground.  The ocean was across the street, and people were catching lobsters, so I knew they could get food, but I turned from looking at them to look at my children-- dressed, clean, in an air conditioned car, with multiple changes of clothes in their colorful, cute suitcases, reading books and listening to music on their cell phones.  I felt absurdly wealthy.  

But I digress, I was talking about our hotel with polished stone floors, white soft beds and fluffy clean towels in Panama City.  This is the life we are used to.  A pool downstairs, a concierge to hep us find dinner, and tiny bottles of sweetly scented shampoo.  It was so nice to have a hot shower that I shampooed my hair twice and shaved my legs, just so I could soak in the warm water.  

In Panama City we had the most wonderful fruit smoothies, visited Old Panama and saw the palace, went to the Smithsonian marine research center and saw cool animals, shopped at the handicrafts market, and drank more smoothies.  The kids stuck their hands in the Pacific the day we got there so they could be in the Atlantic and Pacific both on the same day.  

And then it was time to go home!  My mom almost was not allowed to get on the plane- but she made a fuss and they let her on.  The flight home was uneventful (thank heavens!) and we saw Inkheart on the plane.  It was pretty good.  We got home at 3 am.  

And went to bed.  =)   

 

Monday, May 4, 2009

Flight to Panama!

We did it!  (Panama-- that is.) And it was really, really fun.  =)

Our adventures began at 3:30 am when we got up to get dressed (yes, we were dressed that early- even though we homeschool-  amazing, I know) to get on the plane that left at 6:30 in the morning.   Sacrificing sleep for vacation.  Go figure.   

I had pulled up our flight schedule the night before, just to be sure I had the right flight number and-- shock!-- we were not flying out of Reagan National!  We were leaving from Dulles!  Boy, was that a good thing to find out before we were sitting at Reagan wondering where our plane was.  

I fell asleep on the plane right away- pretty soundly, apparently- and was surprised when we started landing.  Short flight!   Then I heard the captain say we had a medical emergency on board and were landing in North Carolina, and I noticed the guy doing CPR on someone at the front of the plane.  We had the closest thing to a crash landing I ever hope to experience.  Stuff went flying everywhere.  Rachel said afterwards, "So that's why you have to have your seat back and tray in the upright position and locked position.  So you don't knock your teeth out!"  Ambulances, police cars, more ambulances.   A woman was carried off the plane and into an ambulance.  We waited.  And watched out the windows.  And waited more.  The captain said, "Hopefully we will still have permission to fly to Panama today."  Was that in question?  The ambulance with the woman left, and so did we.  Being in America they did not share the woman's medical information with the passengers.  (In some places we've lived they probably would have announced to the whole plane exactly what was going on.)  I hope she recovered.  

The rest of the flight was uneventful.  At least for me.  I fell back to sleep- I thought only lightly- but when I awoke I was disappointed that they had not even served beverages, let alone food.  Until my kids started talking about their apple pancakes, and I said, "Hey!  You got food and you didn't wake me?"  I was well-rested, though!  =)

Now, speaking of being well-rested, I'm going to bed.  I'll try to write more and post some photos tomorrow.  (Today was laundry, grocery shopping, and clean the house day. I have never been so happy to do things I usually loath.) 

Rebecca =)
who finished The Chrysalis by Heather Turrell and recommends it to any who enjoy a lawyer/mystery/historical fiction-type novel  (some mild adult-type content)