Trains and baking toxic substances

So, when you are a parent occasionally you have these days where from the start of the day to the end you know how blessed you are to have your children and everything seems wonderful and the day is just heavenly.

For those of you who don't know, Doug is into model railroading.  He ultimately wants to do a model of perhaps the RailLink line through Ravalli and Polson, or maybe a chunk of the Sierras or something, but so far he's just in the "acquiring stuff" phase of his project.  Saturday there was a train show down in Bakersfield, so we loaded up the kids and the four of us spent the day checking out trains, working models, train toys, etc.  Dylan LOVED it.  He is always trying to steal his daddy's trains and once he figured out that he was in BIG trouble if he tried to touch the trains, he was great.  He would just point them out as they went through the mountain tunnels and around little towns and say, "oooohh".  Keilana enjoyed it, although not as much because somehow she got it in her head that she was to be given candy so she spent half the day whining about not having any.  She did love the Circus train model, though.  There was the actual circus train as well as a parade in the small town, with the big top set up full of tiny people. She thought that was pretty cool.

Outside in front of the building, they had a miniature train set up that you could ride on.  It was on tracks they had laid down, and the engine was about three feet tall and four feet long and pulled a half a dozen single seats.  We had the kids ride and they both loved it.  Keilana was sitting behind me all smiles and kept saying, "Mommy, this is FUN!"  Dylan was standing in front of my seat just yelling, "Choo-choo!" the whole time and when it came to a stop he yelled, "Yay!" and started clapping.  I'm sure they both would've ridden several more times had we let them.  The drive down to Bakersfield was beautiful (unfortunately, it ended in Bakersfield and so did the beauty), with the gorgeous spring weather making the day that much more pleasant.  It was just a fantastic day from start to finish.

Cut to yesterday (Monday).  As a parent, you also have days when you wonder why you decided to reproduce.  Keilana was whiny all day.  I can handle her kicking and screaming and throwing an outright fit much better than whining.  Oh, it drives me crazy.  Everything was difficult (Keilana, pick up your blocks.  "I can't, my elbows hurt".)  or very, very sad, ("Mommy I dropped my train!  Whaaaaa!).  She was obstinate every time she was asked to do anything or to NOT do something.  Dylan kept beating her up--I couldn't convince him to leave his poor sister alone--he kept knocking her down and laughing and she'd scream every time.  When she finally hit him back, he would punch her or, if he was in the mood, bite her.  I decided that we must go to the park before I strangled them both, so I got out the stroller and both their faces immediately lit up.  We played at the park for a couple hours and everyone was much happier and more relaxed by the time we headed home.

As soon as we got back to the house, I turned the oven on to preheat so that I could broil some steaks for dinner.  After it had been on for about 40 minutes, I opened it to move the baking rack up and was hit with the horrible scent of artificial material burning.  In the middle of the baking rack was a large, squarish, rubbery black substance that, after some deductive reasoning and brief interrogating I confirmed to be one of Keilana's giant foam blocks.  She has a set of Princess blocks that are about a foot square that interlock, which we use to build tunnels and such.  Since we bought Ratatouille a few months ago, Keilana fancies herself a chef and apparently sometime in the morning, she had been pretending that the block was a cake so she had put it in the oven to bake.  She had not intended that I actually bake it and was quite distraught about the whole thing.  Dylan, of course, thought it was hilarious, which for Keilana simply added insult to injury and increased her screaming.

I was so glad to put them to bed.

And now for something completely different.

Sunday evening we held our New Beginnings program.  The Young Women program at our Church is responsible for all the girls from ages 12-18, so once a year we hold a program to welcome the girls who will be turning 12 in the next year and introduce the theme for the year.  We were supposed to have New Beginnings a couple of weeks ago, but the week before we were going to do it, one of the girl's father was in a motorcycle accident with another girl's older brother (fortunately some extreme road rash and a couple of broken bones were the extent of their injuries), another member of our ward was in the hospital with heart trouble, another had her baby, one of my fellow leaders had a little girl in the hospital with severe food poisoning, one of my girls was trying to move into a new house with her family, as was the other leader in our program.  Several other families were also sick.  So between trying to take people meals, give people blessings, take care of children, etc, etc, there were just too many demands on people so we postponed it.  I'm glad we did.  It went really well.

The theme for the year is "Wherefore, I would that ye should be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works" (5:15).  We went with a star theme, relating the idea of being "steadfast and immovable" to the unchanging stars.  So we had the lights dimmed and had decorated with lots of Christmas lights.  We had a white backdrop with a star for each of our girls on it (their names were on the stars).   My favorite part of the evening by far was when we had the mothers speak.  One at a time, from youngest to oldest, we had each Mom come up and tell everyone what they loved most about their daughter or something unique about her.  It was really touching, because the love in the room was so evident--they are such a phenomenal group of girls.  Most of them will be around for quite a while--its a young group, consisting mostly of 12 and 13 year olds--but Susie, our lone 17 year old will be leaving this summer and that made me sad.  She has been so wonderful since I got my calling--so full of enthusiasm and ideas and hard work.  She has never failed to be friendly, patient, optimistic and motivated.  She's a unique person and she will be sorely missed.  Each of the girls bore their testimony one at a time and I was so touched by hers.  She talked about being lonely, spending much of her life as the only active girl her age in her ward, and how she could always rely on the Savior and always had a friend in him.  I remember that feeling well myself and I just wanted to give her a hug and say, "Wait til you get to BYU!  You'll be surrounded by wonderful young women who understand you, who love you, who hold sacred and precious the same things that you do!"

And in postponing our program we received an unexpected blessing.  We were able to have Teara join us.  Teara moved to Visalia at the end of the last year with her Mom.  Her grandparents live in Lindsay so she pops in occasionally.  She happened to be there yesterday and so she came and participated in our program with us.  The Lord does work in mysterious ways.  I was glad to see her again.  When you work with youth in this kind of capacity, you grow to feel almost a parental-type love and responsibility for them.  And so, like a parent would, you worry about them sometimes.  I never worried about Teara.  Not because I love her any less (the very sight of the child makes me smile), but because for whatever reason, I have had absolute confidence in her from the first moment I met her.  Something has just told me all along that, whatever happens in life, Teara will be just fine.  She'll succeed. And I trusted that prompting.

I love them all.  Little Makaela, so much like her mother, so sweet and gentle.  It is fitting that she arrived as the oldest sister in a family of seven, because she is one of the most service and child oriented people I have ever known.  She works hard, but very quietly.  And when she lets it out, she has a tremendously loveable goofy side as well.  Monique, who we all tease mercilessly because she is so easily distracted and wanders wildly off course in both discussion and activities, but never gets upset.  Takes the teasing in stride and even pokes fun at herself, because she knows who she is and that she is loved.  And Kaselynn. Oh Kaselynn!  She is arguably the "girliest" of my girls, but she is also the best football player and most accomplished belcher.  She's hilarious.  She is very strong minded and yet she takes direction and suggestion SO well--what she always ultimately wants is someone to guide her in the right direction and I think she's going to surprise a lot of people with her breadth of talent.

Though there are parts of my job that I don't like/am bad at (all the administrative-type tasks that come with the territory of having a leadership position), I love my calling. I have two amazing counselors who are great at picking up the slack where I have deficiencies and are wonderful friends to me.  And the girls make my life better all the time.  I'm excited to see what fun the next year will bring!