Easter 2012

Due to Jay being on call, a before church choir practice and a post church Aaronic priesthood interview for Seth, I was never able to get a dressy Easter picture of my boys in their new matching yellow ties and me in my new pleated skirt.  Ah well.  It was a wonderful day in spite of the extra meetings and thanks to some uplifting talks, good music and a viewing of The Lamb of God, I was reminded of my gratitude and dependence upon the Atonement and basked in the celebration of Christ’s resurrection.  I love Easter.

Unlike the secular Christmas traditions, which I still find magical and fun in spite of the obnoxious commercialization, I am baffled and slightly repulsed by the appeal of a gigantic bunny leaving candy.  As as result, my children have always gotten an easter basket from mom instead.  I love the symbolism of Easter, from the new dresses (and ties!)  to the grass, eggs and chicks, because Easter is all about renewal and rebirth.  I even like a good Easter egg hunt.  But, never with a giant bunny.  Scary!  And weird!

We had a lovely day with family.  We pot lucked the dinner with Stephanie cooking a ham, potatoes and asparagus.  I brought two salads, a spinach with strawberry and mixed fruit, and Patty made rolls and two kinds of desserts.  The highlight of the afternoon was the Easter egg hunt for the little boys because we had over 120 eggs to find!  Throw in some mild spring weather, a non-school night due to it being spring break this week, and the eventual arrival of Grandma, Grandpa and Jay, and it was a near perfect day.

Here’s just a few photos for proof;-)

The wait for trees to bloom.

The egg hiders minus Clark.  Seth attempt to do the fist on the chin cracks me up.  He didn’t quite get it.

Guess who was excited about finding candy?

Still running.

My boys do have cute easter baskets but I left them at home.  Unfortunately, they looked like they were picking up trash with their plastic bags instead:)

Caden couldn’t wait to open the eggs!

Ethan was a very good hunter!

He opened the eggs as he found them too!

Scoping out the field.

Working as a team.  These two sure love each other.

But I’m not sure anyone can compete with how much Sam loves his cousin, Caden.

Delanie and Patty

Vaughn with his dog, Harry.

Clark

Classic Derek pose

Seth barely clearing his front flip.

Sam leaping to some risky move.

Pretty Delanie

Uncle Vaughn took Daniel on his first six wheeler ride.

The cousins.  The boys have always outnumbered the girls.

Sam gets instruction on how to drive the six wheeler.

Seth.  Its so strange to me that he’s starting to resemble a man more than a child now.

Checking out their loot.

A very cute chocolate lipped Caden

Still counting.

These boys played basketball all afternoon and evening.

Daniel was content to be held by everyone.

Lovely and fun Stephanie

Vaughn in a posing mood.

Still getting passed around.

The boys went down to the barn to feed their steers.  Seth ran back up to the house while Sam drove the six wheeler.  As they got closer, they started to race.  Kind of dangerous, but i think these series of photos are fun.

Happy, Happy Easter!!

Fastest 5K In The West

I have a feeling a race run at an altitude of 7,000 ft isn’t actually the fastest 5K in the west, but, due to the course being mostly in a downhill direction, it was thus named. There is not much that Jay enjoys more than a Saturday race. The much would be having his boys and brother run in the race as well. Oddly, I enjoy mornings like this too and had so much fun watching my boys accomplish their personal running goals. Jay, as always, wants to win which he technically did at this race although a college student actually beat him.  Fortunately for Jay, he couldn’t claim the first place prize because he, a member of the college cross country team for which the race was sponsored, was ineligible. It’s a technicality but I’ll take it and am proud that Jay won:) Seth wanted to run in under 25 minutes and Sam hoped for 30 minutes. I was so proud when Sam came in with fifteen seconds to spare.

They both have that competitive spirit and when the each saw they could kick and beat someone to the finish line, their instincts kicked in. I’m not sure how these cute ladies felt about having boys sprint past them at the end, but it sure was fun to watch.

The race started with one lap around the college track and then a meandering down college hill to downtown.  The four boys all started at the back of the pack but you can see each of them working their way towards the front.

Here’s Jay passing his nemesis on the outside (Jay is in grey) - the guy in the yellow shirt.  I say nemesis because this guy continues to seek Jay out before most races and give him running advice.  I’m not sure anything annoys Jay more than unsolicited advice.  So, he makes it a point to beat him every time.

In front now.

There’s Clark and Seth pushing it.

And Sam...hanging with the ladies.

Jay takes the corner only 19 seconds behind Mr. College.  I think these next four photos are fun because they are almost all have the same form.

It is hard to get a picture of Seth when he doesn’t have both feet in the air.  He must spend most of his time in the air.

Seth puts his sights on beating the lady in pink.

Go, Seth, Go!

He’s going to pass her on the inside.

Came in under 25 minutes!

Here’s Sam with his dad running in with him.  Yes, Jay backtracked once he was finished to run with Sam.

He was supposed to stay on the street but he was so determined to pass this girl that he stayed right on her.

Making his move.

Passed!

And then...finished on the street.  Officially:)

All the boys, including the non-runners.

Well...except this one who will one day join in the fun too.  For now,  he gets to hang out with the support crew.

Book Review #12 - The Fault In Our Stars

Imagine this: You are on a date with an incredibly good looking individual. It is the first time you have met and you are bedazzled not only by your good fortune to spend time with someone so fine but also because it’s been so long since you’ve had this much fun on a date. You are having a great time and want everyone to know it. And then - there’s just this teeny tiny thing. You catch your incredibly good looking date watching himself (or it could be herself) with satisfaction in a mirror.  For just a bit too long. Your date is still beautiful and fun and interesting and one of the best you’ve had in a long time but....

I got that feeling while reading The Fault In Our Stars by John Green. I was twitter pated through page two hundred, at least.  Then, I noticed the navel gazing. By naval gazing, I mean that I became aware of the author’s probable vanity. His delightful main characters, Hazel and Augustus, are so esteemed in each others eyes.  Although both teenagers suffer from cancer, they make up in wit and comeback lines from anything they suffer in terms of health.  Everything they like, from authors to friends to music to food, seemed so, so smart. And they keep talking about it - how smart the other is. Their favorite fictional author, Peter Van Houten, plays a large role in the book and he is equally smart. Mean and drunk, but smart. Each of their sidekicks, though one is angrily blind and the other blissfully unaffected by life are hyper quick with fabulous diversions. Indeed, they are all very, very smart. Understand, I don’t mean book smart, though that element is there. I mean confident and thoughtful with themselves and others in that irreverent, brash, Gilmore Girl meets Ally McBeal kind of way (I realize this is a YA book and those two shows might be too old for the intended audience's to actually reference).  John Green wrote them all this way. And just like witnessing the self adoration in the mirror, I thought, “I think John Green must think of himself as awfully smart and funny.”

Still, I’m on this amazing date with a hottie. I don’t want to ruin it. So I pretend I didn’t see what I’m pretty sure I saw and relax and enjoy this smart and funny story about two kids whose lives are unfairly full of disease and compromise and whose lives will be ultimately be much too short. I enjoy their romance and their existentialism.  I laugh. I cry. I feel angry and protective and wishful. I think. A lot. I admire my date’s ability to repeatedly return to a recurring theme without it ever feeling redundant. In fact, his pacing is poetic and artful.

The world is not a wish-granting factory. Whether there is or is not a God, purpose in the stars or our own genetic mutations, Hazel and Gus are the kinds of people whose conversations about these things are ones I appreciate reading.

Book Review #11 - Defending Jacob

If you like reading about legalese, you will like this book.

If you like reading about marriage and family drama, you will like this book.

If you like reading whodunits, you will like this book.

If you like reading in the first person narrative, you will like this book.

If you like tidy endings, you will hate this book.

William Landay, a former prosecutor, shows off his lawyering chops in this very compelling legal drama about an first assistant district attorney, Andy Barber, assigned to prosecute a murder case only to be pulled of it when his son, Jacob, becomes the prime suspect.

I know John Grisham kind of ruined the legitimacy of legal fiction with his formalistic and over-the-top plots but Landay gives the genre an authentic and gritty reality without involving the mob, the CIA, the supreme court or Washington DC.  Instead, he sets his court in suburban Massachusetts where murder crimes are nonexistent and the victim and suspect are teenage boys.  Moreover, he deliberately highlights the impotency, flaws and tricks of the legal system from both a prosecutor’s and defense council’s standpoint.  Some are depressing, others shocking and, more often than not, rather mundane.  I especially appreciated the view from the defense side of things, getting Andy’s point of view with the understanding of his extreme familial bias.  Knowing the game of law, he walks us through his narration deliberately with a sometime-in-the-future-looking-back hindsight.  The foreshadowing seems to give away certain outcomes but you still are forced to wonder.

Things aren’t so clear to his wife and mother of the defendant, Laurie.  As we only get Andy’s perspective, we only see Laurie and Jacob through his opinion and he clearly loves his wife and son.  But, he does not understand her suffering or her doubts and he certainly lacks the necessary impartiality to accurately see the state’s case against his son.  Andy just defends Jacob as he deems best.

Two things I very much enjoyed in this book were Landay’s weaving a court transcript throughout the book and his unabashed accuracy in how teenagers speak.  The court transcript felt like short but interesting intermissions from Andy’s story.  It was the only time we read something that Andy Barber wasn’t controlling.  It was refreshing but never long enough or distracting enough to pull you completely out of Andy’s fog.  It just let me catch my breath a bit and wonder what was going on.  And, so often, dialogue in books is written in a way that, while interesting to read, sounds like no one I know.  Landay’s teenagers sound like teenagers.

It’s not a very uplifting subject matter, thinking about murder and teenage murder at that, but Andy’s background, his discipline and his resolute determination to defend his son will make readers question how well we can really know another person, including our children, and the prejudices we undeniably have towards others.

Book Review #10 - The Snow Child

So many things to love about the enchanting novel, The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey.  Set in Alaska homesteading period of the 1920s, Jack and Mabel seem a poor fit for survival in the extreme conditions that surround them.  Already approaching their twilight years, Jack lacks the strength to establish a producing farm on his own and Mabel struggles with loneliness and depression from a past miscarriage and subsequent infertility.  Then, on a night when the winter snow begins to fall, Jack and Mabel have their first lighthearted moment in a long time thanks to their welcoming neighbors, Esther and George, and upon returning home, spontaneously play in the snow and build a showgirl.  Mabel decorates it with a coat and mittens and Jack carves a beautiful lifelike face onto the snow statue.  During the night, Jack wakes and sees their snow girl destroyed and what he thinks is a real girl wearing the coat and mittens they used to decorate their snowy creation earlier frolicking about his yard.  The mystery of who the girl is, if she’s real or a creation of grief and cabin fever fills out the rest of the story.

What’s fun about this book is the fable within a fable.  The Snow Child introduces an unknown-to-me Russian story, Snegurochka or The Snow Maiden, and it is used as both foreshadowing and as a parallel with Mabel and Jack’s snow girl.  The author is very adept at subtly shifting between their harsh reality of needing food and warmth and human contact and the enigmatic existence of Faina, the snow child.  For instance, whenever Jack and Mabel are talking to or about Faina, Ivey leaves out traditional punctuation.  No quotation marks or commas.  The words seem more like thoughts than anything spoken aloud.  The other conversations throughout the book are framed with quotation marks so it is deliberate and effective.  Are those conversations real?

I also appreciated the author’s ability to convey depth of emotion - both lighthearted joy and gut wrenching despair.  I felt proud of Mabel when she successfully planted potatoes and mad at Jack when he didn’t comfort his lonely wife.  Likewise, I cheered when Jack got a bull moose and wanted to shush Mabel when she pestered Jack.  So much truth about marriage here - both the committed and romantic love but also the disappointment and grudges that are hard to let go.  I also loved how the author showcased the need and purpose of friends and human interaction.  We need it more than we think we do.  It lifts our souls to connect with others.

The part of the book that failed for me was the snow child herself.  I never connected to her.  I think we were supposed to, much like Jack and Mabel did, but her aloofness and ambiguity prevented her from being anything more than a “thing” in their life, and I never felt concern for her outcome.  This confuses me because the way the book ends, I assume we are supposed to care very much.

Which brings me to the ending.  I don’t think I got it.  I read a library’s copy and have since returned it but I wish I could reread the last chapter or two because I think what I thought happened may never have happened at all.  Perhaps that is the point, this being a near fable and all, but I’m pretty sure I should be more sure.

All things considered, it is a lovely book.  One I happily recommend.

Book Review #9 - The Kitchen House

For some reason, I keep putting off writing this review. I think it’s because I want to say things about this book that may not be popular and I want to fully defend my thoughts. But, those thoughts keep scattering and are hard to pin down. I wonder if I should even bother at all but I look at the thirty plus books I read and didn’t review last year and feel so sad that I can’t go back to recall what I thought and felt after reading any of those stories. I don’t want that to happen again so here goes.

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom is what I think fits under the definition of a saga. Its timeframe spans decades and although the story unfolds with two alternating first person narratives, Lavinia and Belle, there are many more characters in whom the author invests and in whom the readers come to care about.  Set in post-Revolutionary War colonial Virginia, Lavinia, a young, white, Irish indentured servant, is brought to work on a tobacco plantation's kitchen house among the house slaves.  Lavinia has been orphaned and takes comfort in clinging to Belle, a mixed race slave who also happens to be the biological daughter of the owner of the plantation, Captain Pike, and whose light skin looks the most like hers.  As the story progresses and Lavinia matures into a young woman, her role on the plantation changes and her loyalty to the only family she can remember as well as her belief that these slaves are her equals is pushed to dangerous limits.

It is a compelling read, especially the first half when Lavinia is young and bonding with her adopted family.  I’ll be the first to admit that the conflict, the history and the limitations of both the slaves and women in defending themselves and standing up against tyranny had me on edge and rooting for what my  twenty-first century sensibilities know are worthy causes.  In spite of my interest and enthusiasm to know what happened next, this novel suffers from several flaws.

First, I absolutely loathed all of the misunderstanding.  Things not spoken, things misinterpreted, things covered up all contribute to much grossly unfair consequences.  I believe a good story can be built upon the foundation of what happens from the consquences of a misunderstanding, for instance, Ian McEwan’s Atonement.  However, the author’s repeated use of her characters hearing partial conversations or the assumptions made about unexplained relationships was more along the lines of what the old sitcom, Three’s Company, did in many of its episodes except tragedy, rather than comedy, being the end result.  One misunderstanding I could have handled.  For example, Marshall, the eldest son of Captain Pike, hates Belle because he believes his father spends time with her and gives her gifts from his travels because she is his mistress.  He does not know that Belle is, in fact, his half sister.  The Captain’s wife, Mary, also believes this and an ugly need for vengeance takes hold of Marshall that fuels his many transgressions.

That brings me to Marshall, my second grievance.  Marshall had a bad childhood.  Even with the privilege of being white and wealthy, we are allowed to witness his confusion and sorrow as he is neglected by both of his parents, abused by his tutor and saved several times by the very slaves he eventually persecutes.  I think the author was trying to make him a rounded character by making us privy to his difficulties but to them make him so uniformly evil in the end felt like a mischaracterization.  I wanted him to want redemption.  I wanted him to find it.  That was not his role to play.

Likewise, Lavinia morphs into several unmatched characters throughout the book.  From a scared mute to a confident, educated and compassionate girl who later becomes an eager to please teenager and eventually a weak and terrified drug addicted adult.  I’m not saying that couldn’t be someone’s life story, it was just a lot of changes to a character within one book.  Plus, the narration was usually told with a hindsight perspective so I did not understand why she always seemed so different.  Shouldn’t the use of perspective give some continuity to her voice?

I loved Mama May, George, Ben, Fanny and Beatie (not sure about the spelling of those names because I listened to rather than read this book) but...I was supposed to.  These are the stereotypical “good” slaves.  Of course, slaves were quite capable of being good and patient and kind and thoughtful because those qualities are human and, even though they bore the weight of the injustice of being owned and mistreated, they were and always have been human and likely to be likable.  I wished we could have been trusted to know their flaws as well.  Sure, we saw some fear and sadness when things got really bad but no other weakness was allowed.  It frustrated me because I still would have rooted for them even had one of them been depicted as lazy or shallow or unkind or selfish.  It was as if Grissom devoted the book to show us how human slaves were without letting them be human.

Finally, I loved and hated all of the romantic and sexual drama.  The narration often hurried up to the point of the story where people were falling in love, in love, in lust or jealous about others falling in love, in lust or being in love.  In short, I think this is historical fiction for women.  Even with the messiness of slavery and farm work, I can’t see a man really liking this book.  I could be wrong.  Maybe there are men who are drawn into the workings of a kitchen house and all the fuss between men and women but I suspect all of the childbearing, nursing, and repeated rape and attempted rape might make them squirm.  Because I am a woman, I found it all fascinating and horrible.

Even with the many things that irritated me, I still appreciate the scope of the book.  It examines the nature of freedom and the various things that enslave us: disease, addiction, fear...even perverted forms of love.  It highlights the wonders of kindness and generosity which stood in stunning contrast to the wickedness and corruption.  In addition, if it makes anyone more aware of the stain of slavery in American history, then it gets points for that.

Daniel - 15 Weeks

LOVE!!