Summer Bucket List 2018: Bentonville Community Center Pool

The sky had a refreshing cloud cover today and thunder that prevented us from kayaking at Kasey’s lake. But Thursday is the only day I can usually swing “water day” without commissioning the help of a friend, so we found a pool that was still open. 

Sloane took one look at that giant bucket that dumps on everyone and screamed for a good 45 minutes. Somehow, though, a miracle happened and she suddenly decided she felt safe. All was well after that and she and I joined the bigger kids in their fun.  She was even jumping to me in the water from the side within the next hour.  This is huge improvement for her! Here are the few pics I took. I’m so happy the kids got to do what they had planned today!!

Summer Bucket List 2018: Horseback Riding

My friend, and fellow foster mama, Lindsey, is the proud owner of two beautiful horses, Freedom and Dan. Lindsey is an excellent teacher, and she had the kids over for a ride. They loved it! Sloane was hesitant to get too close, but she enjoyed brushing them. Everyone else took a turn or two in the saddle. After, we took our giant, sweaty, dirt covered crew out for lunch at a Mexican restaurant down the road. It was a lovely day.

Blowing Springs Trail Run

When one of your besties is an expert trail runner, you finally cave to see what all the hype is about.

Bella Vista is gorgeous. These were taken on the 4 mile loop at Blowong Sprimgs, that goes through the woods right in my backyard! What a breathtaking morning. 5 stars, Arkansas! Thanks Kasey and Lacey for the excellent conversation and for letting me tag along on your trail run!  

Pioneer Day FHE: nature walk

The Crystal Bridges North Forest trails are our new favorite spot for a walk. For family night, we felt we should get outdoors, so we started at the Amazeum and wandered down the trail all the way to the giant geodesic dome, titled, Fly’s Eye. All of the babies pooped along the way, and we had no diapers or wipes with us, so it was a very stinky walk back...especially as we took turns carrying each of  them when they got too tired. Lol. To keep up the kids’ spirits, we would randomly sing a few lines from the primary songbook about how “pioneer children walked and walked and walked” or the “slow slow slow” of the ox cart.  I wonder if people who are from Utah  really realize that outside of Utah, Pioneer Day is not an actual holiday. I do still remember being in primary and our chorister, Jan Porter, wearing a bonnet and pioneer clothing to lead us in the same songs we goaded our children along with tonight, though, so there’s that.  I did not make homemade root beer or crank homemade ice cream.  We did begin the day with a power outage...does that count for something celebratory? 

Here’s what I do know. Even though we don’t have a parade or more fireworks than the Fourth of July, we celebrate Pioneer Day because we are the result. We have freedom to worship and live our religion and we have the comfortable lives we live because of the grit that mothers and fathers and children had as they braved the unknown and headed west. 

Every day as a mother and especially as a foster mother, I feel like a pioneer, blazing the path of uncertainty, and dragging my whole family along on my and Aaron’s shoulders.  And since we began fostering, Every. Single. Day there is something new that brings me to tears, humbles me, or amazes me. I am so tired of the path being only marked by checkpoints of court dates and a million therapy appointments, but I have hope that eventually, our progress will be measured by our growth and love, instead. I really love this work that makes me so weary.  

I know I can handle all of the unknowns of my life because it’s in my history and in my blood to do exactly that.  Just live it. Love it, come what may, and grow from it.  It’s like one big “you can do it” Day. I suppose “Pioneer” Day is a celebration of the verb, “to pioneer”, more than it is about the nouns. I’m sure grateful for their stories and examples though, to bolster me up and say “you can!” when the road ahead looks particularly impossible. Thanks for hope and empowerment, and the sorta fake holiday, Pioneer ancestors!  Oh and you’ll also be happy to know that “candy” has improved significantly in the last 100 years, and the saints have graduated from horehound candy to sour patch kids and chocolate covered cinnamon bears.

Sunday School Journals

I teach a Sunday school class of pretty remarkable 12, 13, and 14 year old boys. They’ve each had experiences in their lives that are just so fascinating.  I shared stories with them about my grandmother and her love for journaling. We read scripture verses about the importance of record keeping. I made each of them a personalized journal. I hope these special boys will write down their ideas and their testimonies and their times of loss and growth and their spiritual strength. And I hope that someday in the future, they will go back and read and remember how incredible they were at 13.  I hope they will recognize the hand of the Lord in their lives. 

Camp Wild 2018: Game Day

It isn’t summer until we have Camp Wild!  We’ve only gathered with the OG Camp Wild crew once, so far, but it was a great afternoon of popsicles, board games, bingo, laser tag, and don’t eat Pete with the Gulbransens, Gulbransens, Shaws, Messicks, and Kate and Mandy N. 

Adventure Day: Prairie Creek Battlefield

Summer is coming to an end. How depressing! Even with the kids feeling bored and missing friends, we are kicking and screaming at the thought of bus routes and homework and ALL THE THINGS that are about to start up again.  

I packed up some snacks and my people and we set out for a day of together.  Destination: prairie grove. 

Temps were record high and knowing we all wilt like parched flowers in extreme heat, I skipped the tour of the Fayetteville Alpaca farm and drove us straight to  Prairie Grove. 

Prairie Grove, Arkansas, featurines one of the best preserved American Civil War battlefield sites.  It was disgustingly hot and humid, but we learned a lot about the battle of Prairie Grove that secured NWA for the Union. We explored an old church, a one room school house, a dogtrot house, a blacksmith shop, and the Borden House, where when the mother saw the battlefront working its way onto to her corn and wheat fields, gathered up her three children to and fled to a nearby homestead and waited out the fighting in an underground cellar. They returned to find their home burned to the ground, but rebuilt the house you see in the pic in 1870.  

Life in the 1860’s was rough and this is definitely hallowed ground.  It was said that one could walk across the battle field without ever touching the ground because the ground lay covered with soldiers sacrificed in the fight.

This is the part where Soren told me his face was melting into a frown. We went back to the car and drove the remainder of the tour. We decided we could still feel pioneery with air conditioning blasting in our faces.  Thanks for being such good site seers, kids! 

The Borden House (Haha NOT to be confused with the home of Lizzie Borden of Massachusetts, where Lizzie allegedly murdered her parents with an axe.) 


I look forward all year long to summer specifically because of days like this. Long live tour guide mothers and adventures together in her great big fun bus. 

Bella Vista Beach

Summer be scorching, this year. 

Last week, we checked out the new Bella Vista “beach” at Lake Avalon. By comparison, we preferred place to the prairie creek beach for one reason alone: sand. Real, soft, clean, brown sugar legit sand.  To non beach snobs, it was odd to explain that the stuff at prairie creek is actually just dirt. With rocks and lake stuff in it. The tiny lake Avalon beach was far more expensive though. And prairie creek offers a lot of shade, that is only provided by umbrellas at the B.V. Beach. 

The heat index was 109* the day we went. Too hot to even be outside, truthfully, but it was the day I had arrangements for the twins and could make water play happen, so we went anyway. Even the lake water was warm!  We picked up the Allred boys and spent several hours on the beach, joined by the Hayes and Clives. 

It’s no Rio Del Mar with a salty breeeze or soundtrack of seagulls and crashing waves, but definitely an impressive setup for a little town in northwest Arkansas! 

End of the Tube

We saw both the audiologist and the ENT today. Quincy’s ear drum was not responding to the air puff test, so she was sent back to have her ears cleaned. They were packed with grossness.  3 of my kids have super waxy ears and Q is one of them. Her hearing was tested again and she is doing great! Very minimal loss and even that is continuing to show improvement from several months ago. The other good news is that the hole in Q’s right ear has closed and healed beautifully! A peek in her left determined that it was time for that tube to come out. Dr Mellon offered to let her keep the tube. Q was so excited. I took one look at it, all covered in drainage and threw up in my own mouth. (Not really, but ew!) 

Quincy argued that the t tube has been part of her ear for 3 years, so of course she should keep it. 

Barf. 

30 seconds later, she dramatically waved her arms around telling a story, and the microscopic blue stinky tube went flying out of its tiny specimen cup. 

Oopsie! 

So now, there is a little bit o’ Q somewhere in that ENT office hallway. 

Better than in my house. Cuz seriously, what does one do with a tiny plastic stinky drainage and scar tissue covered thing that’s been pulled from ones ear? I’m pulling a Marie Kondo card and calling it trash. Thanks for saving Quincy’s ears, t tubes! We are done with you now. See you never (hopefully)!

Quincy had the very specific request that we stop and get a Walmart NHM rotisserie chicken as her end of tubes era celebratory prize. You got it, sister! Sometimes, I love how freakishly similar in weirdness we are. 

Utah 2018: Clark Planetarium

We rode Tracy from Daybreak to downtown SLC with plans to take the kids to the Gateway Discovery Museum.  

Even with our Amazeum Membership Discount, it was going to cost $119 to get in. Hard pass. Our spontaneous change of plans took us around the corner to the Clark Planetarium. Free! Our Amazeum benefit also got us tickets to an awesome movie in the DOME theater about outer space travel for our whole family sub $30. Everyone loved it! Jana and Grabdma Lynda drove up and met us there. The Planetarium offered something for everyone, which is a tricky balance with our dynamic of 3 unpredictable toddlers,

Soren thought it was great that he happened to be wearing his new constellation t shirt, and discovered it glows in the dark!

Corbin and Jackson safely landed on the moon.