Insomnia

It's 4:39 am and I'm awake.  Have been since around 3am.  (Unfortunately, this doesn't happen infrequently.)

Even though I got myself completely ready for bed to "set the stage" (no small feat for me when Brandon is out of town - more often than not he has to put me to bed like one of the children), took some melatonin, put on my eye mask, etc. . . I find myself awake for no reason.  

Maybe it's hormones.  Maybe it's because I haven't exercised regularly all summer long due to moving craziness. (There are other undesirable side effects from this as well . . .)  Maybe it's because I haven't had a minute to myself for a week and a half due to everyone's crazy sleep schedules and Brandon being gone so my sub-concious is waking me up saying, "It's quiet!  You're alone!  Enjoy!"  Maybe it's because our sleep number bed isn't working properly since the move and one side is stuck at 30 (too soft) and the other at 100 (too hard).  Maybe it's because Elizabeth is sleeping next to me, grinding her teeth and putting her feet in my side.  Maybe it's because my brain is on overdrive worrying about:

everything that still has to happen to make this house feel functional and comfortable,

all the school supplies and clothes I haven't purchased,

the last loose ends to complete school registration (like those darn shots!),

how my hair keeps getting thinner and why in the world I got that bad color job in Park City right before Education Week,

whether or not my kids will make good friends in their new schools,

how in most ways this summer was "a wash" for our kids as far as summer reading goals/self-improvement/hard work/fun vacations,

if we will ever have some semblance of order and routine in our life again . . .

Whatever the reason, if this plays out as usual I will go back to sleep in the next hour or so.

Right before Rachael wakes up.  

Long day, good night.

What a day.  We got up late as usual, I miraculously found the files containing birth certificates and immunization records, and I headed off (with Rachael) to the kids' schools for new student registration.  I left Kate and Will in charge of moving all the packing paper from the living room to the basement.  Not sure what we're going to do with it once it gets down there, but I'm sick of looking at it every morning and I want Brandon to think we actually worked up here when he arrives on Thursday!

The elementary school registration was no problem, except that  it turns out the five billion shots required in California are different than the 5 billion shots required here.  Hep A - all my kids need the Hep A shot.  And I had JUST told them I was certain they wouldn't need any shots this year since we had SO MANY done in California.  Kate surprised me by saying she wasn't worried about eating lunch alone or finding her way around that big Jr. High building -  she was worried about getting that stupid shot.  (That led to a discussion about how shots compare to childbirth, and that pretty much ended the conversation.)

Off to the Jr. High.  I ended up waiting for over an hour to talk to the counselor about Kate's electives and all that good stuff.  I didn't know that was going to be part of the process today or I would NOT have brought Rachael.  At one point I shamelessly asked another mom for 50 cents so I could get Rachael a Rice Krispy treat from the vending machine.  (It brought on a sudden flashback from my own days at Washington Jr. High when a certain group of girls would always stand near the exit at the end of the school day and shamelessly ask for "fifty cent" to get Now and Laters - remember those?)

Long story short, I've still got some business to take care of before everyone is squared away for school in a week and a half - the biggest being finding a pediatrician and getting those lovely shots.

The second half of our day was MUCH more fun.  Our good friends from California, the Newtons, are at Aspen Grove family camp this week and called to invite us up for the evening.  We had our Reynolds family reunion there last year and fell in love with the place, so when I told the kids we were going up there to see the Newtons they were pretty psyched.  We had dinner together, participated in "Frontier Night" (which has too many fun things to explain in detail here but, what a blast!), did some painting down in the craft tent, consumed WAY too much sugar, and I tried my darndest to squeeze in as much adult conversation as possible while still having a good time with my kids.

The added bonus?  April Perry and her family just happened to be there too - my Power of Moms friend that I just spent four days with up at BYU Idaho Education Week.  (She's actually the one that got me to apply.)

Triple bonus, Julie Newton's whole family was up there, including her twin sisters - the master minds of MMW (MormonMommyWars), and I had fun chatting it up with one of them too, the one who just got back from Haiti where she was teaching square foot gardening.

More than sleeping, more than making and eating homemade cookies, more than curling up with a good book, I love spending time talking with good, thoughtful, fun, happy people that have interesting stuff going on in their brains.  So it was a really good night.

GOOD NIGHT!

Big Stuff

Just in case you thought so, it's not all rainbows and mountain picnics around here.  

Well, it is about mountains, but of a different variety: 

 

I've got to keep the motivation going or we'll all poop out (like today - long story that started at 12:30am when Rachael finally went to sleep!), so we take rewards whenever we can get them: 

(I'd better bring that wobbly hand rail to the attention of the owner!  Ah, the joys of renting . . .)

This particular day we did end up going to the largest dinosaur museum IN THE WORLD (really!) to reward ourselves after a long day of unpacking.   Partly because it is really close (15 min. at the most), partly because it was open until 8pm and we are on a messed up sleep schedule and got off to a late start!  It really was pretty amazing: 

I have to admit, I'm into bribery and rewards these days.  I bought three boxes of cheap candy (Junior Mints, Dots and mini Charleston Chews if you must know) and some cheap grocery store toys as incentives on some of the long unpacking days we've had here without Dad.  Of course my kids wanted the candy first, but tonight they remembered the toys, so after a very long day (good, but long) the kids played for hours with a pair of uber cheap handcuffs (nothing like taking your sibling off to jail) and those balloons used for making balloon animals.  I found some instructional youtube videos and they went to town.  Here's a sword and helmet:

Total drama queen.  Look at the hand in back:

It took Kate ten tries before she could do the curly cue:

Rachael heading off to jail.  (Man, if I could have put her in jail last night I would have!)  I love the look on Elizabeth's face.  Kind of, "I really don't want to have to do this to you, but . . ."

More next time on the crazy, but meaningful part of the day with family.  We had a mini Reynolds reunion, with Marc and Emily in town from Texas to bless their baby, and most of the California Reynolds in town as well.  Poor Brandon was home alone at his parents house in CA. Aw!  

Flight of the Canyons

**Note to self: "add a caption" option under the pictures messes things up . . .

Here we are on our way up the mountain earlier this week:

Running to catch up. 

Kate has been my right arm with Brandon gone. 

Isn't it pretty? Even through the scratched plastic?  Right after I took this picture, we went up over a deep canyon and I freaked out.  I wish I had kept the video rolling because little Rachael started to try and calm me down by saying, "We're not going to die, Mom!"  

Once off the gondola we rode the lift up a little higher, planning to picnic and hike our way back down.

My little lift buddy.  Lifts freak me out.  Especially since Elizabeth jumped off one a little too early when she was just four and rolled backward down the mountain in snow skis.  Yeah.  She was fine, but that's the kind of thing that permanently scars a mother's psyche. 


Finally at the top, ready to find our
 picnic spot.

I don't know WHAT they are constructing up there in the middle of the wilderness, but it put a little damper on our quest for peace and quiet.  It bugged some of us more than others!

This is where we had our little picnic, right by the bridge and stream below. 

Once back "home" at the apartment we suited up to go for a swim, but not before Elizabeth put on quite the window box performance - it was pretty funny.

I Think It's a Sign

I know my voice is annoying, but for whatever reason I couldn't upload pics, only video.  Not the greatest quality from my little purse camera, but you get the idea: IT'S A SIGN!  Our life here will be perfect and happy and, and . . . and I'd better not jinx myself.


Things I'm digging about Utah:

1) The mountains.  I can't keep my eyes off them.  Especially late in the day when the sun is casting shadows and colors that are always changing.

2) The sky.  Today we had big, stormy clouds, lightening, rainbows, sun shining against the darkness - and we see it all like a huge, overhead IMAX.  We are missing our trees back in CA, but the sky makes up for it.

3) Fry sauce. (My favorite part of that?  "Because fry sauce is from Utah, it is a stereotype that Mormons love fry sauce.") 

4) A house free of funny smells, creaky floors, leaky pipes, and small ceramic tiles.

5) Cute, helpful, friendly teenagers working the drive thrus that speaka English.

6)Wide, open spaces - often with animals.  (Today we went by a property that had horses and camels.)  It reminds me of Iowa/Illinois and makes me feel at home.

7) Kids running rampant in the neighborhood.  Will was out catching grasshoppers and playing 'cops and robbers' with the boys in the neighborhood until 9pm last night when I had to go out and find him.

Lucky seven.  I'll stop there.  I'm tired.

A Wild, Wild Ride

One month and a day later . . .

What a doozie of a month.  One I don't wish to ever repeat again, even if I do feel like I can handle just about anything now that it's behind me.  I feel about a thousand pounds lighter today.

I'm going to do a little re-cap for myself, so that when I do get around to uploading all the pictures I can go back in time and revisit some of these moments in more detail.  While I don't wish to ever repeat the last month again, I do want to remember it!

July 1-2: trip to Utah to find a home.  Determined to rent and not buy this time, the best option (that didn't smell like cat pee or some other depressing feature), was a nice, fully furnished home in the "wrong" school district in Highland.  (We think we'd ultimately like to buy in Alpine because the schools are great like in Highland, but the lots are bigger, and it's closer to the mountains.) We'd have to put our stuff in storage, and Will wouldn't have a bedroom, but it was nice and clean, a good neighborhood, blah blah blah.  I stopped whining and got okay with it knowing there are people in this world living in cardboard boxes.  Seriously.

4th of July.  Brandon was "Born on the 4th of July", so every year he gets the same red, white and blue "jello cake" frosted with whipped cream and decorated like a flag in blueberries and strawberries.  He likes it, but I know how much he likes other desserts too (and that it's not always fun to share your birthday with a country), so on Sunday night we had a little family dinner party for him with a caramel praline ice cream cake before we headed over to my sister-in-law's grandparents' house for fireworks.  They live on a mountainside overlooking the Rose Bowl, so it's a pretty nice place to watch the fireworks.  I was getting a little sad thinking about leaving all that coolness behind, and the wonderful people we were enjoying the evening with, but - as I've told myself a thousand times in the last year - we can't stay in Los Angeles for it's coolness, and there are great people everywhere, right?  Monday we had a BBQ and swim with friends and family at my in-laws, and I brought out the flag cake.  (Pics later.)

The three older kids went to "Johnsons Camp" from 9-1 the first two weeks of July.  (Elizabeth FINALLY won a prize for crazy hair day - pics and details later.) In the afternoons we had random play dates with friends, mostly swimming like crazy at Grandma's house.

During the second week of July, I actually found another house on-line for rent that had a better layout for our family, was less expensive, and was in the "right" school district.  The lot was terrible (sandwiched between a bunch of other homes with a street for a backyard and no fence), but everything else seemed to make it a better option than the other house.  I found it the day we were supposed to sign and fax in the lease agreement on the other house.  What would you do?  Of course, I called on it.

Unbelievably, within three hours, there was another house on-line for rent in the "right" school district as well.  For just a smidge more, it was even nicer, closer to the mountains (i.e. natural gorgeousness) and on a half acre with a fenced yard and POOL!  Are you kidding me??  The minute I started hoping for it, I remembered how it felt to have my hopes dashed after losing that other "perfect" house.  Do you know how many homes in Utah have pools?  Hardly any.  (It's the craziest thing - this is high desert, people!  It's HOT!  I don't get it . . .)  Not trying to get too excited about it (unsuccessfully), I jumped on THAT rental as well.  That was probably the craziest 48 hours of the month, trying to juggle calls, faxes, and emails between all three rentals, not wanting to let any of them go until I knew which one would actually work out.  It was quite a dance, and I was on pins and needles waiting to hear about the dreamy, mountain pool house.

Because I don't really want to re-live the pain all over again, long story short: we got the great house on the dinky lot, in the right school district.  I really am over it now, but let me tell you, that was a BAAAAAD day when I got the call saying they'd rented the dreamy, mountain pool house to someone else!

During all of that time we were going through LOTS of lasts.  (Pics to follow.)  Last train ride and walk around the Japanese gardens at Descanso Gardens, last date night in Old Town Pasadena, last lunch at IchiBan, last dessert at FroYo, last day trip to Santa Monica beach and rides on the pier, a combined pool party at Grandma's for all the kids and their best school buddies for one last good-bye, last play dates with individual friends, last Sunday at church when Brandon, Kate and I gave talks to the whole congregation (THAT wasn't hard to do without crying!), Brandon and I giving our last lessons at church for the classes we teach - it just went on and on and on.  Pain and misery, tears and sorrow, days and weeks on end.  The WORST was the last night when we had to say good-bye to Todd and Shauna and their kids.  Ugh!  Poor Will had been in denial for months, but that night it really hit him.  Kate, Will and I had a cry-a-thon for over an hour after they left.  It was not pretty.  Heart wrenching, really.

(Have I mentioned I HATE moving?)

Meanwhile, we were wrapping up all the final details on our "new and improved" rental that wouldn't be ready for us until Monday the 26th, and trying to get out of the vice grip of the other rental. (The rental company managing the deal was trying to say we were "locked in" even though we hadn't signed anything yet.)  Not being able to move in until the 26th may not seem like a big deal considering we could stay indefinitely with the in-laws (and I'm sure they would have LOVED that!), but not only had we already said all our good-byes and planned to be gone by that time, there were other logistic complexities as well:

Original plan:  (We made this plan and adjusted Brandon's work schedule over a month before, assuming we would have secured a place to live sooner than a week before we wanted to leave!)

Brandon would take the last two weeks of July off so we could get moved in and settled at our new place.  I would leave the Wednesday of the second week for BYU Idaho Education Week where I would be presenting no less than NINE different classes while Brandon stayed in Utah with the kids.  (Some of those classes I still hadn't finished preparing, and that is the other GINORMOUS piece of the puzzle that was making everything even more stressful, and preventing me from ever sleeping beyond 4am due to mental stress and worry.) Brandon would stay with the kids in our semi-settled house while I was gone, I would get back Sunday, he would leave Monday for CA to wrap up work stuff, come back the third week of August to start work (assuming he had his Utah license by then - just one more "open loop" we were waiting on!), take off for the greater Reynolds reunion the following weekend, and then come back "home" for the last week of summer vacation - with the hopes of each child having met and made at least one friend before the start of school.  (And THAT is the biggest reason we were trying to hurry up and get to Utah.)  Then everything settles down and we live happily ever after, right?

That plan is crazy enough, but with all the "musical house" stuff going on, it turned out we couldn't move into our house until the second of his two weeks off, and - even better - the moving company was now booked with other jobs since we hadn't given them an address or move date yet!  So even though our house would be available on the 26th, the moving company didn't think they could get our stuff there by then.  Beautiful.

What actually happened:  We used the first part of Brandon's two weeks off to enjoy some of those "lasts" I mentioned, and we left early Wednesday morning (the 21st) for Utah, driving straight through for about 10 hours and getting in around dinner time.  Brandon's dad had a stroke of genius and thought to exchange some of their time share weeks that they wouldn't be using for a place in gorgeous Park City where we could camp out until our house and the moving company were ready. That was just what we needed - an emotionally neutral place to chill out between moving out and moving in.  It's been great.  The vacation we never would have taken this summer. That's where I'm writing from right now.  However, when we first got here I still wasn't ready for those classes so my dear, sweet husband basically played with the kids outside all day and let me work, work, work until I left the following Wednesday.

One of a million little graces - it turned out that the moving company could actually deliver our stuff the day our house was ready, Monday the 26th.  I was working frantically around the clock trying to clean up my classes, but if I wasn't working, I was worrying - especially in the middle of the night.  I was exhausted, and on moving day I seriously couldn't wake up.  I remember hearing Brandon moving around the room quietly, and then silence.  I woke up later to a note that said he had taken the kids to meet the movers and he wanted me to use the day to work. ( Could he be any more supportive?  Honestly, I am married to the greatest guy on the planet.)  I worked in my pajamas for 12 hours straight.  It was great.  (Sort of.)  I was doing Key Note (Power Point) presentations for all nine classes, so along with developing the classes themselves, I was also trying to make polished Power Point presentations.

You have to know, I've never done ANYTHING like this before, so I was feeling particularly nervous and completely lacking in confidence.  I've never even attended education week, never taught professionally, never used Key Note - I felt like I was in way over my head.

It's getting late and I'm getting tired, so I will continue this saga another day with many more details on education week, the new (temporary) house, etc. but long story short, education week completely exceeded my hopes and expectations and I came home yesterday feeling so satisfied and relieved I could hardly stand it.  That was a HUGE mountain to climb for me, even without the moving stuff happening simultaneously, so to feel like I did the best I could and that it was well received was one of the high points of my life so far.

Brandon left early this morning, and the kids and I hung around Park City, rode the gondola up the mountain, had a picnic, hiked over a mile up there (Rachael walked 95% of the way!), came back down and went swimming, showered, ate Bertoli's and fresh cherries for dinner and here we are . . .

It was funny, during our hike we ran into another family from Florida on the trail.  They had three kids, ages 12, 10, and 4, and the mom was carrying the four year old boy.  We talked briefly and the mother couldn't believe I was up there alone with four kids, especially with the youngest being two.  I didn't really know what to say because in my mind I was thinking, 'This is nothing!  This is the most relaxing day I've had in MONTHS!'  It's so interesting to me how conquering mental/spiritual/emotional challenges can empower you to take on physical challenges more easily.

Tomorrow I head back down to Highland with the kids to work on the house some more.  You should see the boxes!!

Congratulations to whoever finished reading this. :D  It's mostly for me.

Perspective

We're all settled in at Brandon's parents' house.  Everyone just had ice cream together downstairs and now I hear Brandon telling some story down the hall while Brent and Will are laughing.

We need to get in bed for our 7:45am flight tomorrow morning out of LAX - we're going to Utah again.  Hopefully we'll snag a house this time.  That's the idea anyway, and we only have 24 hours to do it.

I've chilled a bit since my last melodramatic post.  I didn't shed a single tear today at the house when Brandon, Dina and I cleaned together for about four hours.  (I did, however, shed tears with Dina in front of the house after we were done.  I think I almost have her convinced to move to Utah.)

A couple of nights ago when we first "moved in", I was in the guest bathroom putting my hair up to wash my face when I remembered a day a little over fifteen years ago when I was putting my hair up in that same mirror before putting on my wedding veil.  It was a funny feeling thinking back to that day and all the unknowns of our future.  We were just undergrads for crying out loud!

As I washed my face, I thought about what the me of fifteen years ago would have thought if she could have seen us now, Brandon in the other room watching a training video for his first ever robotic prostatectomy the next morning (how'd you like to be that guy - luckily it went really well, the proctor said it was the best "first" he'd ever seen), our four healthy, beautiful children sleeping soundly in the other room together, me acting like a big baby as we prepare to move back to the place where we were living as college students way back then.

It helped me see things a little more MACRO, and not get so lost in the MICRO.  It helped me look back and see how we've been guided all along the way on our little path, and even though it's a fact that as we get older more and more doors close, the doors we're going through are pretty darn good.

P.S.  I think another reason I felt more happy than sad today, was because it was the last time I would wipe down the obnoxious tiles on the kitchen counters, the last time I would use the ancient, dysfunctional toilet, and the last time I would smell the funny smells in the old cupboards.  (It's been sort of a "lipstick on a pig" kind of house.)