Semester's End!

We don't have a lot to report from last week--mostly, we put our heads down and worked. It's the last week of classes, however, so we have finals this week and then we're FREE! (Well, sort of. Dan is teaching summer school and I have a nearly 400 page novel to finish revising. And then write another one.)

The highlight of the week was probably going to the dinner at the college put on to honor recent tenure awardees. The food was okay, but we enjoyed the company (we were at a table with Poppy and the university president and his wife, who are in our ward). We brought the kids, too, but had the forethought to bring entertainment for them: Oliver played my kindle and the older kids read while the various deans gave their speeches. We had a minor mishap when I couldn't figure out how to turn down the volume on the game Oliver wanted to play (Andrew helped), and Oliver decided he needed to go to the bathroom before Dan's department chair (J. Ty Redd) had finished saying nice things about him, so I missed the end of that speech. But we're very proud of Dan and all his hard work.

We spent the weekend cleaning the house (a deep clean for the kids' rooms, more general everywhere else) and prepping for Dan's "T" (for tenure) party tomorrow for his colleagues. As soon as I'm done here, I'm off to iron some white tablecloths for the event. (Mom, you can stop laughing now. I do know how to iron--even if I didn't know what an iron was when I was Andrew's age.)

Today we had a lovely dinner with Robert (Trisha is out of town, saving the world--that is, helping Dr. Snow perform eye surgery in Mexico). The kids especially liked the frappes--7-UP with sherbet in it.

Dan and I both taught church today, and Oliver made my sharing time interesting by "helping" me. That is, while I tried to talk to junior primary, he stood behind me and used my chalk to write his name on the board, making all the kids giggle. Senior primary was impressed with the food coloring/bleach analogy for the atonement--luckily, I'm married to a chemist who explained beforehand that this works better with red dye, due to it's greater pH, than with blue dye, which I'd been trying (and failing) to make work. So--now you know.

A week divided

This week was definitely an atypical one for my family.

I spent the week at the RT Booklovers convention in Las Vegas; my mom very generously came down to stay with the kids while Dan worked. (In other words, she weeded my entire back yard and trimmed two garbage can's worth of branches from trees and bushes--clearly, I should invite her down more often!)

This means, though, that I have a very limited perspective of what happened while I was gone, and most of our friends and family aren't interested in a blow-by-blow account of my conference. (If you are, you can find an account on my website).

So, a very short update for a very busy week. Hopefully more next week!

(pictures from Aunt Annie's birthday party last weekend)

The Semester is Winding Down

Heading into the last few weeks of the semester is always a bit crazy, and this week was no exception. I don't think Dan and I saw each other at dinner more than a couple of times this week.

Monday  night was the opening gala for the Festival of Excellence. Dan had a candidate dinner, and I was supposed to attend the gala so I could write about it for Summit (one of my part-time jobs). So we hired a babysitter to split the difference, and actually got to see each other for a few minutes of the gala.

Tuesday was the Festival itself. Dan presented in the morning; I attended sessions, fetched Oliver from preschool and fed him lunch, before turning him over to Dan so I could finish up the Festival (again, for Summit--a magazine run out of the provost's office that profiles faculty and staff work).

Wednesday and Friday were more candidate visits for Dan; Thursday he spent the day in St. George judging Sterling Scholars for the region. Wednesday I managed to get a flat tire in the Walmart parking lot--I called Poppy, who tracked down Dan, who fixed the tire and made it (a  little late) to his class. On the positive side, I know now how to change the tire myself, should it happen again. (In defense of my parents, I was shown once up on a time how to do it, but it had been so long since I'd had to do it--every other time we've had a flat, Dan was with me--that I couldn't remember where to find the tools or what to do with them. Yes, sometimes I'm pretty pathetic.)

Saturday we went down to St. George for Dan's aunt Annie's eightieth birthday part and got to see the house where Dan grew up. I enjoyed hearing stories about his aunt's childhood and her eight children, though I'll admit the introvert in me struggled with a room full of people I didn't know. I think Dan enjoyed seeing his aunt, and I'm glad we went (though I'm also glad we skipped out early, as I have it on good authority that the program went until at least 9).

A full, busy week--and this next week promises more of the same!

Plugging along

This has been a rough week in some ways for our family. Dan's department is searching for several new positions and he had late meeting several nights this week (I think Thursday was the first night that we all sat down at the same time for dinner--and I didn't really eat because I was meeting friends later!).

Andrew also had a hard week--he started off the week grounded (after getting caught in a pretty egregious lie). Wednesday, when we were supposed to review his behavior to see if he could go to Tae Kwon Do or not, he disappeared while I was cooking dinner--I finally found him with Evelyn (whom I thought was playing with the neighbors) at the elementary school playground. Needless to say, we've had lots of discussions this week about the importance of telling us where they are going! (Discussions we've had before, but apparently they didn't make much of an impact). The upside is: I got my bathrooms cleaned as part of the consequence!

It wasn't all rough though--on Tuesday, Andrew got to be part of the district math competition. It was pretty incredible. In order to get to district, he had to be one of the top 3 scorers on a math test. They use their calculators--the calculator gives them a problem (add, subtract, multiply, divide), they enter in the answer, and the calculator gives them a new one. For their school test, they had to get the most answers right in 30 seconds!

The district test was similar: they started with how many could complete 30 problems in two minutes, then in one minute, then 45 seconds, then 30 seconds (by 30 seconds, it was more a case of how many they can get right, since I don't think any of them got all of the questions). Andrew made it to 30 seconds, and got out because he entered an 8 instead of a 9. But I was proud of him--I don't think I could do that many in 30 seconds.

Thursday, as I mentioned above, I ended up going to dinner with some writer friends who were passing through town. I got to see the advance review copy of my friend's book (it's so pretty!) and it was nice to talk shop with people who get the weird ups and downs of publishing.

On Friday, Andrew went to a birthday party while Evelyn played with a friend, so Oliver and I (mostly I) worked on a prank for the kids.

See, Andrew has been obsessed with April Fool's pranks for the past couple of weeks. He talked about it all the time. I was a little concerned, because he didn't always see the line between fun pranks (that both the pranker and the prankee can enjoy) and pranks that border on cruel/embarrassing (Friday morning he sprayed both Evelyn and Oliver in the face with a water bottle as a "joke"--until I told him he couldn't do that).

But it seemed only fair to turn the tables on him a little, with something I thought the kids would enjoy. So I made "soup" (butterscotch pudding--a wonderful recipe from the Pioneer Woman) with maple-bacon crumbles. For dessert, we had "pie" (really a spaghetti pie in a spring-form pan). The pie didn't look as convincing, but Andrew's first, very hesitant taste of the soup was perfect. I think he thought the soup was squash or something--then he made a face and said, "this is really sweet. It tastes like custard or something!'

Because, of course, it was.

Yesterday was pretty laid back: I listened to conference, the kids played, Dan helped out with a Science Olympiad on campus during the first session. In the afternoon, Andrew and Oliver went to play with some friends, Evelyn went back to her friend Adelle's, and Dan and I had some very unexpected time just to ourselves. So what did we do? I went for a walk and Dan started on dinner. (I know, we're so creative).