Life lessons and daily snapshots

I sort of feel like I should say something about the relative lack of substantive posts on the blog lately. I've been thinking a lot about this talk lately as I've been feeling so despondent--not depressed, but very despondent. This talk just speaks to me so much. I am SO grateful for both my Father in Heaven and for my father here on earth, both of whom have been on the receiving end lately for a lot of tears and worries from me, and both of whom have comforted me so much when I felt like I literally could not talk to anyone else.

I was talking with a member of my stake presidency tonight in a temple recommend interview , and at the conclusion of the interview he looked at me and told me that one of the most important things we can gain here on Earth is the ability to lean on the Savior's Atonement. He mentioned that it is not just to get us through one or two really difficult trials in life, but everything--physical pain, worries, "small" trials, etc. (This is about the time when I started crying.) This meant so much to me--I had said nothing in our conversation to indicate that this would be a really meaningful topic for me to discuss, but it has been on my mind so much lately--like all the time, and worrying and wondering how I can do everything I need to do and knowing that there is NO way I possibly can, and knowing that I've just got to somehow relinquish control and turn things over to the Lord and have faith that He will do what I can't. I am so grateful for that good man who listened to spiritual promptings to know exactly what I needed to hear. Sometimes it is too easy for me to forget that the Lord's hand is stretched out to me, but that I have to reach back to take His hand, and that so much of mortality is really about putting us in a position where there is no possible way we can make it through without reliance on the Lord--and that we have to acknowledge that and turn to Him, and that through doing so we create the kind of faith and resilience that we never would have otherwise. And this is definitely a lesson that is going to take me a lifetime to learn.

And on to a lighter topic--thanks for bearing with me.

Some days I have a spare moment to walk around during that hour before dinner and snap a quick photo of what everyone happens to be doing at that particular moment in time. And here are some of my favorites. 

Like Luke snuggled up on my bed with a giant pile of Curious George books and a K'nex sculpture that he made himself and carried everywhere for an entire day...

...or the two littlest boys stirring their "potion" which kept them busy in the afternoons for almost a week.

Luke zonked out on my bed for a late afternoon nap.

My beautiful grown-up Abigail working on her math homework at the kitchen table while she listens to her mp3 audiobook, which she checked out from the school library, the very possibility of which pretty much blew my mind.

Luke catching some air on a sweet jump

Abigail helping Tot take off Isaac's helmet (she thought he would be safer from Luke this way, which is a good idea in theory if not in execution with the too-big helmet on the trampoline).

Jules working on a book club assignment--this girl has some really interesting homework habits. For instance, when she's working on a math problem she typically does all these wild somersaults and runs around the room; when she is memorizing vocab words she chants and marches around the house. Funny but I do worry about her need to move while she learns & how it plays out at school.

Natie in the swing--one of his favorite places in the world!

The boys were wearing long-sleeved shirts on this particular day when they went out to play and got so hot! I came out to check on them after a few minutes and chuckled when I found both of their shirts very carefully arranged on the patio side by side.

Abs collecting eggs--we are getting about an egg per hen now! Fun times and my kids are in heaven.
 

Sweet Jules pushing the boys on the swings. One of the things I am really loving these days is watching my kids look out for each other. I really try to never have them be taking on parental-type roles (they didn't sign up for more siblings!), but we definitely do try to foster an environment where they can recognize a need that they are able to fill. On this particular day Abigail was reading on the trampoline to keep Tot company while he jumped around and I got to experience the joy of making dinner without Tottles underfoot. Lovely!



A few weeks ago Nathan had his first s'more. Frankly, I don't think he enjoyed the process--poor guy! He couldn't actually get it out of his hand to pop it in his mouth. Methinks we're really going to have to give him lots of opportunities to learn that skill this fall.



We are slooowly staining wood around here--we've made it through the swingset, half of the pergola, and the entire exterior perimeter of the fence. I am loving how it looks! So nice and fresh and lovely.



And good golly I love turning on those bubble lights and having a little family party out there.

Beach house

So when I vacation somewhere, I have this thing about really wanting the place where I stay to reflect the “feeling” of the vacation. I also want the place I stay to be sufficiently beautiful so that I am constantly looking around and thinking how lovely it is, rather than being distracted by décor that is not to my taste.

Really unworldly, right? But this means that I like to spend a gazillion hours trying to find something that I love that evokes the tone of the vacation, like the pioneer log cabins we've stayed in at Nauvoo or the gorgeous log house in the Smokies. For this trip I really wanted a beautiful, cool, beachy-but-not-kitschy home.

 And oh, this was such a winner! I think I took a photo of just about every single piece of furniture, art, etc. It was like my perfect Pinterest beach house dream board come to life...the lovely British woman who owns the home has absolutely impeccable taste and spared no expense when she renovated the place last year.

 Seriously, This is like my beach house paradise. The colors were so cool and calming and the entire house was just this breezy, beautiful, wonderful place. The homeowner also had left us a GIANT goody basket full of all sorts of treats and water toys, and then she also had these scented air pump thingies everywhere (I can't remember the brand name but they automatically dispense air fresheners every 20 minutes or so, so the entire house always smelled amazing!). I just constantly felt so relaxed by my surroundings.

I was half-jokingly telling Neil last night that I want to go back here for Thanksgiving because I want to use the double convection ovens to cook Thanksgiving dinner.

And is this not the most idyllic backyard pool you can imagine?

We ate every single meal out at the table in the Florida room overlooking the pool. I have got to have a room like that in my house some day...it was heated and cooled, but still has all of the feeling of a gorgeous sunroom with tons of light and the most comfy couches ever.

Dolphin cruise

 One of the things I was so beyond excited for about this trip was that we had chartered a private “dolphin cruise.” I did a TON of research and ended up booking with a company almost an hour away that was ranked #1 on TripAdvisor. Little did we know, but in the 10 days between the time we booked and the time we sailed, the owner’s wife left him, took all the reservation info, and their credit card machine. 
 

So we got up at 6 am the day of our cruise, drove for an hour, and arrived bright and early at 8:30 AM to an empty parking lot. My cell phone (which I never ever use) was back at our beach house, so we spent almost half an hour trying to find a phone we could use and then when we finally got in touch with the company, they said they’d texted us at 7:30 the night before saying that the captain was unavailable until 11:30 that day. I told them that I’d specified email as my contact method and then they said that they didn’t have the kind of info because the owner’s wife had taken it…oh man, it was an awful morning. We ended up killing a couple of hours at a nearby state park  (see the photo below...we were at St. Andrews trying to spot the alligators) and fiiiiinnnaaallly the replacement captain got there and then we waited around some more for the reservation agent to show up and give him the boat keys. In the process she yelled at us a lot when we told her how unhappy we were with their customer service and I was in tears by the time we boarded our boat (which we did go ahead and do since they refused to do a refund).

 Fortunately the captain was way nicer than his employers! We were able to get in the water with the dolphins four or five times (we didn’t get as close as I was dreaming, but they’re wild animals, so you can’t really expect too much…this is what I’m telling myself!).  Neil was within about 4 feet of a couple of them and the rest of us got to see them swimming back and forth under our boat, leaping out of the water near us, etc. We were IN the water at the same time as the dolphins but they didn’t find us sufficiently interesting to swim back in our direction.

My main motivator in booking the 8:30 cruise was so that we'd be home by the time Nathan needed a nap...as you can see, he was NOT happy! He screamed throughout almost the entire trip...no wonder those dolphins took off!

See that gray spot a bit up and to the right of Neil? Dolphin!

More dolphins...if I recall correctly this was from a pod of about 5 that included a little baby. Super cute.

Isaac watching a dolphin swimming under the boat...

Abigail poised and ready to leap into the water at the first sign of a dolphin (our captain told us we had to get in the water IMMEDIATELY when we spotted a dolphin...which we never actually managed because we have lots of little kids).


 

I missed all of the giant leaps but I did catch this one! Oh--and I totally forgot to mention that we saw dolphins swimming out on the sandbars twice at both of the other beaches we went to. So amazing and beautiful!

 The captain also fished out a cannonball jellyfish for us—super interesting and very heavy! We had fun passing it around. Much more kid-friendly than the other jellyfish we spotted!  Then he anchored in some shallow water off of a little undeveloped island and we swam in and looked for shells—we found almost a dozen hermit crabs and the kids were in heaven.  This day was definitely their favorite part of the trip! I realized as we were out there that our kids have never been on a boat before--they were just so amazed that we were way out in the Gulf and couldn't stop exclaiming over the boat, the water, the wind, the clouds, and the dolphins. 

 We also snorkeled over a wooden schooner that sunk almost 100 years ago—I was holding Nathan so I didn’t actually swim down to it, but Neil was able to go down and reported lots of beautiful fish, coral, and sea urchins. Hopefully we’ll have some good photos when I finally get the film (weird, right?!) developed from the underwater camera.

And just as we turned around to head back into the harbor, this happened. Peace at last!

Evening adventures

Both of the girls did trip reports for their classes at school. As we were putting these together, I realized that we'd unconsciously organized our days with a loose but regular schedule.

Every morning we got up bright and early to eat breakfast and then hit the beach. This part of the day also included the highly coveted job of snack-packer...the kids divvied out the days to decide who was responsible for packing the snack each day! For some reason this was incredibly exciting to them to open up the pantry and decide which goodies would be accompanying us to the beach that morning.

We spent the mornings at the beach and then came home around noon to have a quick (okay, like an hour) swim in our backyard pool before lunch. Then after we ate, the girls and I would work (they had homework and I was working remotely). There was often a movie at this point while Nathan napped and the girls would drift in to watch as they finished up their work. Then once we'd all had a break from the sun, we would swim some more until dinner, then eat, then swim some more (man oh man we loved having that pool!!) and then we would often do something more adventurous.

One night we went to the Navarre Beach Fishing Pier to watch the sunset. This is the longest fishing pier in Florida and there were tons of fishermen there who we could imagine spend all day every day out there pulling in giant monster fish! They were all super friendly and let the kids check out their catches and explained the different varieties of fish to us.

Another day we checked out a place I'd read about on TripAdvisor that was supposed to have the best seafood in the area. I really didn't want to go to a place that felt like a chain or a big business--I wanted to replicate for the kids my own memories of eating super fresh seafood while I watched boats pull up the dock just outside the restaurant. We were quite a bit inland, but we LOVED this place! Super tasty...I think the grilled amberjack I had was easily the most flavorful fish I've ever eaten, and the jalapeno hush puppies were to die for. We also had a big platter of scallops, shrimp, and oysters that we shared and the girls and I decided that we loooove oysters. Yummy!

While we waited for our food we checked out these photos of how they prepare all of the different fish. Fascinating!

Lots of nighttime swimming...one night after the kids were in bed Neil and I made up a synchronized swimming routine and then performed it for the kids the next day (it was Neil's idea and I don't think we've laughed so much at any one time during our entire marriage as we were laughing that night!).  Another night we put the boys to bed and let the girls stay up and swim with us--we did lots of diving for glowsticks! And on our second-to-last night we watched the sunset at the beach and then came back and all swam around in the dark with those hard-working glowsticks.

We took a couple of trips to the harbor--one at sunset to see the touristy-type boats come in...

 ...and another earlier in the evening to watch the charter fishing boats come in. It was a beautiful, well-kept (i.e. not stinky!) harbor and there were so many things to look at!

 One of our favorites was this giant piece of driftwood that was covered in really elaborate sea-life carvings on both sides. It was beautiful!