Always more that needs to be done. Just sweatin’ out in the sun while getting yard work done. 
Andy wanted me to take the kids to Izumi’s- their favorite restaurant- to make Labor Day weekend more fun 
We had a ‘Pity party’ sleepover in my room. 
Max took it upon himself to change lightbulbs on Saturday. He couldn’t quite reach this flood light, so he grabbed our step ladder and the wheel barrow and made it work… I probably would’ve intervened if I’d known what he was doing. By the time I saw him doing this, he was almost done. 
Each day, Andy takes one of these little birds with him to work. This particular day was little birdie Bev. 
Some landscape from Andy’s deployment
Another full week! I’ve been struggling with migraines more frequently than normal, so I should probably schedule an appointment with my doctor to figure out if there is some way we can prevent or alleviate them. I think part of them are caused from my TMJ, to be honest. I wake up with a very sore jaw every morning. I wear a mouthguard, but all that does is protect my teeth. I’ve heard botox in that jaw muscle can help loosen things up, so I may try and go that route. No kids stayed home sick this week! Hallelujah! But… I did. I mean I didn’t stay home, though I did have to cancel some things I was planning on doing and I tried to stay away from people, but it’s mostly just an annoying cough, headache, and fatigue.
Andy seems to be doing a bit better this week, which is comforting. I put his name on the prayer roll at the temple and we gamed with him on Saturday. I think that helps. If you want to send him letters, message me and I’ll send you his address. I know that cheers him up. Bev’s been particularly struggling this week with his absence. She was going to bed crying nearly every night because she was missing her dad. I would go into her room, have her sit on my lap, let her cry into my shoulder for a while then we’d try the grounding exercise my therapist taught me. It worked the first night fairly well, the second night it seemed to work while we were doing it, but the second it was over she went back to crying so I wasn’t sure it was super effective, but then the next night she started asking for it and it really did seem to help. The grounding exercise lists out the five sense in this order: Five things you can see, four things you can feel, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. After about the fifth or sixth night of going through this cry, grounding, etc. ritual, I told Bev we can’t keep doing the crying thing (I’m happy to do the grounding exercise because it seems to work), but I don’t want her to wallow and be sad all the time. I asked her what we could do to change things and try and be happy and focus on the good and she said through tears, “I don’t know.” And in my exhaustion, I gently, but maybe slightly sarcastically said, “Should we just throw ourselves a pity party?” She stopped crying, looked at me and said, “What’s a pity party?” I could tell she was intrigued, so I decided to run with it. I told her, “It’s when you buy your favorite ice cream, put on your PJ’s, cry if you want to, watch a movie, and then put the sad things behind us and move forward.” She was like, “Yeah. Let’s do that.” So Saturday rolled around and we went to the store where the kids picked out their favorite ice cream. We sat around the dinner table after dinner and I asked the kids to share all of their feelings. Afterwards, I told them, “It’s ok to be sad, but no more wallowing. We have to find things that will make us happy.” Then we watched a movie in my room and had a sleepover. I guess we’ll see if my impromptu plan worked.
This week I did some wood working, leather repairing (still working on that), wrote a lot, attended lots of baseball, and entertained children. I also went to book club on Thursday. We read the book, “Screwtape Letters.” I can’t say it was the most enjoyable book, but it was very insightful with many quotable lines. The discussion on Thursday was even more edifying. We talked about how relevant that book is in today’s world. We learned about C.S. Lewis’s conversion to Christianity and then afterwards we informally talked in smaller groups. The little group I was sitting by started a conversation about angels. We talked about how there probably are many demons among us, but that I believe there as many angels watching over us if not more and they are even more invested, because I believe many if not all of them are our righteous ancestors. We shared some of the experiences we’ve had and I left feeling very uplifted. As I was leaving, my friend Steph Secrist left the room and came back with the painting below. “I want you to have this.” I was so touched. It was seriously the sweetest impromptu gift and this painting symbolizes how I feel about all of our ancestors looking over us.
I shared with my friends that despite the heavy workload and feeling absolutely burnt out most days, I don’t feel sad or depressed. I really feel buoyed up by angels both here on earth and in heaven.
