Our Lives -- May 2010

Saturday, May1, was the annual Scout-O-Rama at the Southtowne Expo Center in Sandy. Deven did the map and compass, good manners, and video game belt loops. Those last two are new. We managed to lose Jaelyn there when she wandered off. We were about to go when the kids wanted to climb the rock-climbing tower. Sara and Deven did it after waiting twenty or thirty minutes in line. Jaelyn thought it was too scary. Sara did well for being a tiny person, and Deven made it almost to the top. After that we checked out the black hawk helicopter and then went home. Corin spent the whole time in the baby backpack and was happy for three or four hours there. I fed him only when we got in the car to leave.

Deven rock-climbing

Sara rock-climbing

Black Hawk helicopter

Sara and Jaelyn

This month I began working on 72-hour packs for everybody. I got clothes and mini first aid kits all put together, and I've started on food packs. I have each person's stuff in a small bag of some kind.

Deven and Jaelyn returned to school after being off track for two weeks. They have no more vacation until school ends on July 2. We are on D track next year, so we will start school on August 16 instead of in July like the rest of the school. Sara will start Kindergarten, and Deven may or may not go on to 6th grade.

Our nephew Josh, the oldest Hammer grandchild, got his mission call to Pusan, Korea. He seems very excited, and we're proud of him for it.

Our ward went all out for Mother's Day. For the Relief Society hour we all met in the gym where the priesthood usually are. The women in Primary and Young Women all got to come to Relief Society. The bishop gave the lesson from the manual, and then we had fifteen minutes to eat cupcakes and socialize. There were chocolate peanut butter and strawberry shortcake cupcakes. All so good. We were also all given a CD of hymns all wrapped up fancily.

I ran out of most of my prescriptions, so I finally went to the doctor to get more. I was anxious about asking for four prescriptions (Percocet, fioricet, lotrisone, Celexa), but he was okay with it. He's a pretty mellow doctor who doesn't mind giving me drugs. I mean that as a compliment.

In the middle of May Glenn's parents came by along with my mother-in-law's sister, Georgia, and Georgia's husband and daughter. They had some old family artifacts they were distributing among the Lewis and Naylor descendants. We got an old wash basin that came across the plains, an LDS hymnbook from 1880, both of which are really neat and full of history. We also got some ceramics made by Glenn's maternal grandmother, and some crocheted items made by her and her mom.

wash basin with bear made by Glenn's grandmother

1880 hymnbook

James Fenton's name written inside hymnbook

Saturday the 22nd we all went to Wheeler Farm for their annual May Day. It was cool and cloudy and not crowded at all. I spent $10 for the kids to go on some bouncy rides. I got Caelan to go in a bouncy house with me, but he didn’t like it at all and just clung to me. Then we walked around and saw the animals and watched a sheep getting sheared. The shearer flopped him on to his back and and shaved with with a large set of electric shears. The sheep was okay with it until the shearer got really close to his male sheep anatomy. I was really bummed I forgot my camera.

Not having a reliable VCR, and too poor for DVR, we watched the series finale of “Lost” on Sunday -- despite the sacrament meeting talks that day about honoring the Sabbath day. I thought it was 6-8, but that turned out to be a special about the series. The actual final episode was 8-10:30, which is an odd length for a show. I'm glad I got to see it.

The final Monday of May began with snow. That was weird. It's never snowed that late in the season before.

At our monthly pack meeting one of our Bears earned his bear rank. Then all the dens did skits. We did two short ones. We did the invisible bench, which starts with one kid pretending to sit on an invisible bench. Each boy comes over one at a time, asks what he’s doing, and asks to join. So the final boy walks in and asks what they’re doing. “Sitting on an invisible bench.” Then he says, “Oh, I thought they took that away last week.” Then all the boys on the bench fall over. Our second skit was the emergency broadcast system test. It started with all the boys humming a high pitch. Then one boy said, “If this had been a real emergency, this is what you’d hear.” Then all the boys ran around in a panicked craze. They loved doing that.