My boys were kidnapped by my in laws Sunday afternoon and they got to spend Monday and Tuesday and we met them there late Wednesday after Andy got off work. My father in law looks a fair deal like Andy (go figure) so Max said to Papa, “I have a hard time calling you papa, you look like dada.” Mav meanwhile, ran straight into a display case at academy and gave himself a black eye. I’m not terribly surprised since just last week he ran into a wall because he was walking while looking through binoculars. He is my little comic relief and also can be my most demanding child but he gets away with it because of his charismatic smile. Five seconds after leaving his grandma’s house Maverick says, “Where’s grandma?” and as we arrived home, he looks out the window and with protest, “WHAT? I want to go to Grandma’s house!” He certainly loves his grandparents (on both sides). He also repeatedly tried to facetime Caitlyn (or as he calls her, “Cupcake”) while driving home. From the front of the car I tried to get him to stop, knowing she was probably in church. Well, at least she feels loved. I know he also tried both grandmas… like I said, he loves his grandparents. Max cracked me up today because he was talking to his dad about a lego creation he was building. Andy: What are you building buddy? Max explained. Andy: Huh? Max: “Here, let me tell you in your ear.” I thought he said this because it was a secret and was going to whisper in Andy’s ear. Andy leaned in and Max leaned over and with full volume, directly into Andy’s ear, “IT’S A MOWER GRASS THING” I couldn’t help but laugh. Not sure if it was his description of his lawn mower or the fact that he thinks his dad is totally deaf. Either way I had to make up some excuse for my uncontrollable laughter so Max wouldn’t think I was laughing at him. Max really is our sweetheart. He helps out willingly 99% of the time. His Papa and grandma gave him various chores around their house and he gladly got to work, it helped that they rewarded him with some money to go towards a lego set he’s been wanting. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with Andy’s family and celebrating our little Beverly’s birthday. She is growing up so fast I can hardly believe it. She says, “Mama, dada, brotha’ (brother), Daisy, All Done, uh oh, and a few other words, but her favorite thing is to just make lots of funny facial expressions (especially to her grandma) and mimic funny noises. She is walking (has been for almost 2 months) and is nearly running. She tried jumping today, but landed on her butt. She loves baths and her favorite past-time is dumping out boxes, bags, and bins and sometimes putting the new discoveries back where she found them. Toys are interesting, but not as interesting as uncovering hidden treasures in cupboards, the diaper bag, or her personal favorite- my wallet. Speaking of Beverly, her name-sake, Beverly Hansen had a dream this week which really touched her, and me, for that matter. She said in the dream she was counseled that Beverly (JR) was a very special spirit and needed to be protected and looked after. I hope that we have Grandma (Mema) around much longer, but when she crosses over, I tell you, my little Beverly is going to have a full time guardian with Mema. I spent a good portion of a day listening to Mema and Grandma sing the songs they grew up with. I recorded them and now I’m trying to figure out how to post them to familysearch.org. When I do, you can find it either under Beverly Hansen (who’s still living, so you may not see it) or her mother, Vivian, who a few of those songs began with. I am thankful for laughter and for family and I’m grateful that my week has been filled with both. 2018-12-03 16:42:58 I really do want to keep up on the goal of writing weekly, I am a day late, but I am doing it. I was busy finishing a Christmas project last night and this got pushed aside. Last week was Andy’s last week at the “STICY ICKY” I purposefully misspelled sticky, because it was his month at the STICU (shock trauma intensive care unit). Needless to say, he did not enjoy it. I can’t say I blame him. 3 AM wakeups for an entire month definitely paid a toll on his well-being. But he’s done. He gets the whole month off! Yay! And we just found out that we will find out December 12th where we match to, we are anxious. I am not nervous though, I know the Lord will send us wherever we are meant to go. We had a pretty normal week until Friday. I lost my wallet but didn’t realize it was missing until 5 PM. I frantically searched the house but had a sickening feeling that it wasn’t there and it had fallen out of my baby carrier at the outdoor mall I was at. I called the store I went to. They didn’t answer, so I called the store next to them. They answered and ran over to the other store to ask them if they had seen my wallet, they hadn’t. I called the store I had parked in front. They said, “Someone had come in asking if it was ours and we told him no. He worked for Sherwinn williams, you could try calling them. He said he’d give it to security.” Well, I thought it odd that I had already called Sherwinn Williams and they hadn’t mentioned having it, but I called them back and told them what the previous lady had told me. They said that they didn’t have it, but they’d ask around and asked me to call back in 20 minutes. At this point Andy and I decided to hop in the car and head down there to see if we could find it by asking around or going to the security office. Well that turned out to be a bigger feat than I realized. It was already 5 PM and I was sure that all the businesses would be closing by the time we got there. I called the main office, security, and any other number I could find and I either got an answering machine or they didn’t have my wallet. I was not sure I would find it at this point, but I still had faith because I was still searching. Of course I had prayed half a dozen times at this point. We got down there and I couldn’t find the main office. It’s an outdoor mall, so I’m not even sure they have one. I called Sherwinn Williams again and their first words sent a rush of relief over me, “We have great news.” They had found the worker who had found my wallet… at a totally different Sherwinn Williams 9 mintues away. We drove as fast as traffic would let us. I was so relieved when I saw my wallet I nearly burst into tears. I threw 5 dollars at him, that he didn’t want to take, but I insisted, “Buy yourself a drink or something, I am so grateful!” and then I frantically ran out. Yeah, I was a bit of a mess, but I was so grateful. Nothing was missing, not even the $20 I had in that wallet! What an honest person!! Well prayers are answered time and time again. Speaking of prayers, when I was saying my morning prayers on Sunday morning I felt inspired to pray for Andy to have a spiritual experience. During Sacrament meeting Andy bore his testimony. I was deeply touched. And a witness of his testimony brought me to tears. He shared about his early EARLY morning scripture study and how in the still of the night he could feel the spirit so incredibly powerfully as he read his scriptures. He won’t like me telling the world, but he teared up, and so did I. It was an incredible day yesterday. I was preparing for my lesson for the Young Women and felt a rush of revelation. I could feel his love for them as he guided me through my lesson and gave me ideas for their upcoming activities. Interestingly, plans changed when I got to church. I discovered that I wouldn’t be teaching for the rest of the month (just that Sunday) because we will be having a lot of combined meetings to prepare for the switch to 2 hour church. Makes sense, I just hadn’t heard about it till then. So I’ll have to find some other way to implement the revelation I received. The lesson I prepared was also changed a bit. I had printed out some quotes and had a few versus of scripture to have them read aloud, but after I had them write down their questions and we got started on that, the lesson took a turn. We left in tears, some were sad because they had sought comfort, and hopefully they were comforted when they left, others were just tears brought by the spirit. I don’t believe The Spirit always brings tears, but it did to me and a few others that day because of the intensity of the spirit in that room. I felt emotionally and physically drained when I came home. That’s one of my “tags” in my scripture study, “After Spiritual Experiences.” In the church history as well as the scriptures it says things like, I went down to rest, after receiving the vision, or I fell upon my bed. Anyway, I definitely felt like doing that yesterday because my experiences were so profound, but as a mother, I don’t have that luxury. I came home, heated up dinner (it was a leftover kind of day) and then played with my kids. Some fun moments from our kids: Bev has her own crib that we always stick her in at night, but it is all the way upstairs so if/when she wakes up in the middle of the night, I just drag her down to bed with me so I get enough sleep to handle the rest of the kids during the day. Anyway, She did not sleep well at all last week. It was miserable, but at one point she woke up, rolled over to where her dad usually sleeps and discovered he wasn’t there, she was very disappointed and began to scream his name, “DADADA!!” I am sure, if he had been there, he would have agreed with her that it was ludicrous that he was up before the sun (again, at 3AM). But she settled in with me to get a couple more hours of sleep. We made pizza for family night last week. I chopped up mushrooms, red pepper, artichoke, and had pepperoni, cheese, and sliced black olives for the boys to use to “decorate” their pizza. When it came to be my turn to make Andy and my pizza all the red peppers were gone. I had seen the boys put a couple of slices on their pizza but I was confused to where the rest of it went. “Where’d the rest of the red pepper go?” I asked them. Max replied, “In my tummy.” I was quite silly for asking such a dumb question apparently. Sunday morning I gave the boys Christmas ornaments to paint, thinking I could get stuff done while they worked on that… what was I thinking? it’s paint. You can’t leave young children with paint unattended! Don’t worry, I didn’t leave them alone because as I squirted the paint onto their paper plates I realized I had committed myself to being fully engaged in their happiness for the next 20 minutes. But it was fun. And they did a great job. They’re quite the creative little kids.