To Sleep, Perchance To Dream

Today, someone told me that summer is over.

They said school is starting. Tomorrow.

But "they" are wrong. They must be. I mean, school can't be starting tomorrow.

Sure, my bulletin board may be up, first-day lesson objectives might be posted, and yes, the costume tree has blossomed into a beautiful array of hats and wigs, but that doesn't mean that the new school year has permission to start.

Permission for the school year to start has not and will not be granted because I have not yet dreamed my traditional back to school dream.

I have never participated in a school year without dreaming that wonderful, yet terrifying every-thing-goes-horribly-wrong-on-the-first-day-of-school dream. When I was in junior high, the dreams usually involved jammed lockers, mixed-up schedules, defective PE showers, and/or embarrassing pajama fashion moments.

When I became a junior high teacher, the dream shifted to include incomplete lesson plans, a total lack of copies, unpronounceable names on every class list, and/or embarrassing pajama fashion moments.

I usually wake up in a cold sweat, hands shaking, the smell of chalk mysteriously lingering in my bedroom towards the end of July. But not this year. July came and went, as did the start of August, fair week, and five days of back to school inservices, all strikingly back-to-school-dreamless. And now people are telling me that I have less than ten hours until I will be back in my classroom educating the sweet, hilarious, unwashed masses? Impossible. Not without my dream. What happened to my dream?!?!
My blasted subconscious must have been busy worrying about the fair booth. Or something.
Happy New School Year!!!!!

The Boys of Summer

Dear Jenny,
Thanks for letting your boys come for a visit this weekend.

Remember the last time they came to Burley? Bentley was so little, Max was learning to talk (and to moo), and Jonah's bones were still in that squishy, gelatinous stage.

Remember the last time they toured Becky's dairy? Well, they found it even more impressive this time around. Bentley used his fingers to flash the peace sign instead of plugging his nose.

Apparently, wearing a cowboy hat makes you immune to the smell of cow poop.

Jonah still spent a good deal of time with his finger up his nose, but I don't think that was smell related.

I think you will be happy to know that we took good care of your sons. We didn't put them in any dangerous situations. We certainly didn't let their three and two year old cousins take them on an unsupervised tour of the dairy.

When we took them to the fair for lunch, we made sure that they only tried the most nourishing dishes.

And we most certainly didn't let them go on any of those rides that you hate.

You know, the rides that you think are so deadly dangerous? The rides that make me sick just to look at their horrible spinning? The rides that are up so high your fearful-of-heights-mother

starts sobbing at the sight of? Yeah. We didn't let them go on any of those. And no little roller coasters either.

Instead, we took them to the educational exhibits and made sure they stayed hydrated with all sorts of vitamin filled heath drinks.

I'm sure that you will be pleased to know that we didn't spend their designated rest time engaged in any dangerous activities, the kind of activities that might require the services of a professional life-saver, for example. No sir-ee. None of that stuff for us. I mean, what kind of babysitters would we be if we... I don't know... maybe allowed one of your sons to be frequently tossed through the air at high speeds? We would never do anything that reckless. Especially not over and over again.

But if we had taken them swimming in a pool where there was no lifeguard on duty, we might have been a little confused by Maxwell's conflicting personalities. One minute he would be helping Jonah get to the side when his little bro had gotten in over his head...

... and the next he would be doing his best to drown his other brother. You might want to have the school counselor visit with him next week.

And while you are at it, you might want to make an appointment for Jonah too. The only thing he enjoyed more than cuddling with Dam-ma was watching Max try to wrestle Bent into a watery grave. If we would have taken them swimming, that is.
You should be happy to know that we made sure to avoid doing anything that might feed their newly acquired Hero Clix addiction. We most certainly didn't let Warren hook them up with a billion new game thingys. No enablers here.

When we went back to the fair that night, we didn't even consider taking your beautiful, cultured young gentlemen into those animal barns that you have issues with.

They didn't get close to any animals that were big enough to peck them, bite them, or kick them in the head.

We made darn sure that we didn't do anything that would encourage Bentley's fascination with the professional music business. We only let him stop and stare admiringly at drummers for 45 minutes each day. And when he said they were awesome, we didn't verbally agree with him.

We did take the boys to the rodeo, but they were too busy eating popcorn and cotton candy to feel any distress about possible animal cruelty. They weren't even distressed about wearing the bandannas for tough enough to wear pink night.

The only thing that did seem to distress them was the deep fried oreos. They apparently need a little more junk food experience before attempting to tackle something that advanced.

They liked to press the fence during the bronc riding and steer wrestling. They really loved it when the action got up close and personal. Jonah ended up with a face full of dirt after a particularly buckish bronc came by, but 45 seconds on Grandma's lap and a bag of purple cotton candy made it all better.

I think that you will be happy to hear that, out of all of the animal-related experiences they had over the last two days, one of their favorites was walking their beloved bat-eared-rat-dog. But don't worry about them rewriting "Smoke on the Water" lyrics to sound something like "Chloe the rat dog... peed on her walk". I would never have allowed or encouraged such a thing.

So, dearest older sister, I think we can all agree that this little outing was a success. So much, in fact, that Ruby should be able to join us for next year's fair and rodeo. Thanks again for letting us borrow them for 32 hours.

Love, Me

P.S. If they do happen to start singing about canine urinary functions, I would appreciate it if you would assume they made up the song in their primary class. Thanks!

Good Deeds and Mud

I grew up thinking that performing good deeds or acts of service would result in blessings.

Now that I am older and wiser, I have amended my thinking.

I now believe that performing good deeds or acts of service results in mud and then in blessings.

Exhibit A: A few weeks ago, Krystal and I spent some time hoeing beans at the Church farm (Not to be confused with the time the Woodhouses and I spent time hoeing beets at the Church farm. You can reread that adventure here) . It was a wonderful service project that was attended by approximately four million people from several stakes, including the Burley Unleaded Stake which will from this day forth be known as our evil arch enemy stake that must be destroyed (more on that later) .

We had barely made our first sweep across the field before the storm clouds rolled in, the lightning started flashing, the rain began to fall, and the brethren in charge started yelling at us to run for our lives.

Oh, did I mention the rain? Because it was quite impressive that night.

So, between the irrigating that had happened earlier in the day and the thunderstorm that showed up mid-service-project, Krystal and I left the Church farm wearing roughly 1/6th of the Church Farm on our feet. Service equaled mud. And in this neck of the woods (or end of the valley) mud is rarely just mud, if you catch my drift. That little tidbit of info might be important later.

Exhibit B: The branch Relief Society retreat. There was a delicious dutch oven dinner (Thanks, Bishop Krystal's-Dad!) , exciting boat-related activities (Thanks, most wonderful Hobsons and Barkers!) , and a beautiful lesson about the pure love of Christ (Thanks, President Princess Smoothride McSpeedster!) .

So after listening to such a wonderful lesson about charity, we really had no choice but to help push Courtney's car when it ended up in the giant lake of mud in the middle of the road.

Did I mention the humongous lake of mud?

Needless to say, some of us got a bit muddy while performing that little act of service.

And then there was Ashley. Ashley ended up getting more than a little muddy.

This is the point where you should might want to remember that fun fact about the mud round these parts.

Now, when I got mud on my feet, I attempted to remedy the situation by putting my feet in the river.

Ashley had a similar idea, but she took it to the next level and jumped on in.

And then remembered that her cell phone was in her pocket. So I guess that in this very specific case, a good deed equals mud and a new cell phone. Does getting a new phone count as a blessing?

Now, I am not going to bring up the thunderstorm that blew in during the outdoor book sale I helped with last month, or the micro burst that hit during a yard work oriented service project last year. But if I had decided to bring them up, then I think that my point about good deeds equals mud would have been more than made.

But so as not to discourage other mud-adverse folks from participating in service activities, I would like to restate the fact that after the service-induced-mud comes the blessings. Like the rainbow appears after a thunderstorm and beautifies the newly cleansed world, so too do the beautiful, multifaceted blessings softly float into our lives and make us feel shiny and new.
Case in point: the rodeo starts tomorrow.

Boy-howdee do I LOVE service project blessings. Yeehaw!