Lullaby

Noah sang himself to sleep loud and clear last night. 

And then he was silent.  

In related news, Noah loves nursery - finally!  He has the best nursery leaders now (consistently there, so loving, and so fun) and he is so happy to go into nursery every week.  He runs from the chapel all the way back to the nursery all by himself, and he always comes home smelling like the sweet ladies that love and snuggle him for the two hours he's in there.  Then he spends Sunday afternoon singing "Follow the Prophet", "Scripture Power" and "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" and telling us all that "Jesus loves Noah!"

Being Brave

About a month ago Adam and Leah came bursting through the door after school and announced that they had both signed up to audition for the school talent show "Showtime".  After auditioning they were both accepted and started some serious practicing of their pieces- Adam playing the Star Wars main theme on the piano and Leah playing "Beauty and the Beast" on her violin.

Adam isn't fazed by much in life.  Just tell him what to do and he does it.  Or he'll just decide what he wants to do and never looks back.  No big deal.  He is determined and confident and adorable.  And since the Ashland Ridge courtesy theme is Star Wars, this song was guaranteed to be a hit from the beginning.  That, combined with the fact that he was one of the youngest performers, is probably why he went first.  And he did great!  He had his song memorized and couldn't resist looking around at the huge audience as he plunked his way through the song.  Then he enjoyed his thundering applause and ran off the stage and into a big hug from his sweet teacher.  We were waaaaay in the back and didn't get to see him until it was over.

16 acts later it was Leah's turn.  A week before the show Leah came to me with wide eyes and said, "Mom, the talent show is in front of the whole school.  I have to play in front of the WHOLE.  SCHOOL."  I guess that little detail hadn't crossed her mind before, but she was plenty nervous about it now.  

But she practiced and practiced and practiced, and the night before the show she played the song beautifully- with all of the dynamics, the key change, and the strong finish all in place.  She was ready!

And she did a beautiful job.  She was focused and confident and sounded great.  There is a tricky key change in the middle of the song that would have made a lot more sense with an accompaniment of some kind, but she didn't have any.  And she stumbled a bit, then paused (which immediately solicited applause from the over-eager crowd), but she preserved and finished strong.  Later she told me that she had been confidently playing along, then realized she didn't know where she was in the music, she got flustered, her glasses fogged up, and she wanted to scream and run off the stage.  But she didn't!  She did an amazing job, and she finished!  Which was a lot harder than giving up and walking off stage when it got hard.  And Jason and I were just bursting with pride at the confidence, talent and tenacity of these two little musicians of ours!

Iowa Bucket List

Easter weekend marks our 3 year anniversary of moving to Iowa.  It is hard to believe that we have lived here for nearly as long as we lived in Indiana.  Our time in graduate school was so finite, so intense, so focused.  We had a job to do, and we were going to do it as quickly as humanly possible.  And, of course, we loved life along the way.   Life here in Iowa does not have the same feel.  This is a marathon, Indiana was a sprint.  Where we were getting ready for the next phase of life at this point in Indiana, here it feels like we are just settling in for the long haul.

And that makes me just a tiny little bit claustrophobic.  I moved around so much as a child, and even in college, that I'm not used to settling in.  I never really learned how to call a place home, only to call it the latest adventure.  And now we actually are settling in and I don't actually like the thought of moving soon.  I like it here.  I do, sure, but to what end?  What if we live here forever and it doesn't matter if we experience new things here this year because we can just do it next year?  We've always lived with a feeling of experiencing as much of what the area has to offer as possible because we know we won't be there forever.  Now that may not be the case.

Enter the Iowa Bucket List.

Even if we live here for the rest of our lives, a bucket list helps me keep perspective about the things that we can only do here.  I sat down a few weeks ago and listed out some of the things that we want to do in Iowa.  I didn't include things we've already done, but if this list was all-inclusive, it would include Zombie Burger, Raccoon River Beach, the wooden park, Ledges, Pella Tulip festival, Big Creek, and many more of the fun things we've discovered since we've been here.  But we're starting three years in, and I was delighted to see that the list is still plenty long.  I love having things to look forward to, and it has been fun to start planning ways to mark each item off the list.

Last weekend we marked another item off the list- visit the World Food Prize Building in Des Moines.

This gorgeous building sits right on the Des Moines River (which runs through downtown Des Moines).  It was built in 1903 and served as the city's library for decades, and then sat empty once the library was relocated.  In 2011 it was completely restored and became home to the the World Food Prize Hall of Laureates.

It is a beautiful building, but probably not one that we would have made the effort to visit if it weren't for it's significance.  The World Food Prize is referred to as the Nobel Prize of Agriculture.  It's dedicated to Dr. Norman Borlaug.  In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifetime efforts to feed the world, and laureates have been awarded the prize in years since for significant contributions to agriculture.  Norman Borlaug is one of Jason's personal and professional heroes.  

In April 2007 Jason received his BS in Biology.  He knew he didn't want to pursue a career in dentistry, and after exploring the limited options available with his BS, he began to think about the conditions of the people he served on his mission in the developing country of Bolivia, and how his education could help them.  He decided to focus on his knack for genetics and continue his education at BYU.  Research in genetics and quinoa began in September of the same year.  

On September 27, 2007, Gordon B. Hinckley, the beloved prophet of our church at the time, came to speak at BYU. In his speech he talked about the 13th Article of Faith- about the importance of being honest, true, chase, virtuous, benevolent, and in doing good to all men.  

He talked about Norman Borlaug, how he has saved more lives than anyone else in the history of mankind because of his lifetime of efforts to improve crops and feed the world.  He finished up by stating, "Life will be challenging but more interesting, and the blessings of the Lord will come upon us, for we shall be doing what He would have us do."

It felt like a direct confirmation to our little family from the Lord that this new path we were heading down was the right one for us.

And here we are today, happy with the path we've gone down and blessed beyond measure because of it.

As we started climbing the stairs, I realized we actually had been here before!  One of our favorite family pictures from 2014 was taken on the stairs of this building.  We had no idea where we were at the time, but this makes me love this picture even more than I already do.

And it is a beautiful building!

We all enjoyed the amazing artwork, soaring columns, stained glass, grand staircase, magnificent ballroom, inlaid tile work, metal sculptures, and beautiful views of downtown Des Moines from every window.  

Adam and Emma took a spin in the ballroom, while Leah and I practiced waltzing nearby.

I tried my best to prepare the kids beforehand for what this building would be like.  It's not exactly a museum, and wasn't hands-on at all, but they still found a way to enjoy conducting business at the 27-seat boardroom table, pretended to plunk out a few tunes on the antique grand piano, and studied the various depictions of food and water gathering around the world in earnest (like the Nigerian woman above who wore a "banana hat"!).  Overall they did a great job on this field trip that was mainly directed toward Jason.

It was so inspiring to read about the efforts of so many scientists around the world that have done amazing things to feed the ever-growing population.  One of Jason's professors from Purdue received the award a few years back, and I have every reason to believe that someday Jason's name will be up there on the Wall of Laureates.

 

I think he'd fit right in. 

Spring Break in Iowa

After we got back from Chicago, we had a whole week of nothing stretched out ahead of us, and boy was it glorious.  We made a list of things we wanted to do during the week, all while trying our best to do nothing at all.  So we spent a lot of time hanging out in jammies, dancing to music, chasing each other around, making huge messes, playing with friends, and generally just enjoying not having to do much of anything.

Adam wanted to put together all of his Lego sets, a task that he set his mind to but kept getting distracted by all of the pieces.  I sat down with him one day and we worked for hours trying to reconstruct the police station.  I learned that day that Adam knows the function and origin of every single Lego piece in the box.  And there are thousands.  It was quite impressive, and while we didn't get very far with the police station, it was still fun to sit together and talk and work on something he loves so much.

All of the kids wanted to read, read and read some more, so we headed to the library one day and stocked up on as many books as we could carry.  That took care of an entire day.  I love that simple equations new books + eager readers = a quiet afternoon for me!  That evening Leah and I headed over to Orange Leaf to celebrate her passing off her latest math facts.

Emma was mostly happy to have so many playmates around to keep her company all week long,

and Noah kept us all scheduled by taking lengthy naps every afternoon.  He had a lot of catching up to do after our busy weekend in Chicago, and I didn't mind it one bit!

We took the kids to pie night at Village Inn one evening, which was so very exciting,  Jason and Adam went early one morning to get donuts for everyone (a first in this house).

I had some dental work done while Jason was home on Friday, and he and I had a date on Saturday night.  We had some delicious Indian food and talked and talked and talked about our family and our future.  It was so nice to sit and talk about the things that matter most with the one person who cares about all of it just as much as I do.  Although I do think our kids terrorized the babysitter a little bit, given that we got home at 9:45 and they were all still awake and scrambling to get into bed as we walked upstairs.  It was only okay with me because it was spring break.  I love having a schedule to work with most of the time, but this week of spring break was a perfectly lazy one, and we loved every minute of it!

Spring Break in Chicago

The siren calls of Chicago lured us back again over spring break.  Something about those skyscrapers, museums, endless options for tasty food, views of the lake, big city life and the chance to meet up with friends just keeps calling us back.  When we decided to move to Iowa (knowing full well that we were putting ourselves, essentially, in the middle of everywhere and nowhere all at the same time), we promised ourselves that we would make the effort necessary to get out of Iowa often.  Jason reminded me of that when we debated whether or not to take this trip, and we decided to go.

We hopped into the car immediately after school on Thursday, stopped for a sub par dinner at The Hungry Hobo (Jason's pick), then drove to our first hotel, which was about an hour outside the city. We woke up to swimming and breakfast before heading straight into the city to explore the Field Museum, Chicago's beautiful museum of natural history.  

It kills me that our kids don't remember that we've been here before, but really, how could they?  The last time we were here was in 2010, when we looked like this- 

Adam was almost 1 and Leah had just turned 3.  I thank the Lord for this family blog that has chronicled our adventures over the years.   

Because now we look like this- 

From this-

To this- 

It's amazing how the days have a way of flying by.

So in we went, to re-explore this brand new old museum.  We loved the dinosaurs, the jewels, the mummies (the boys especially), the halls of animals (the girls especially).  My favorite part was when we found out that Auntie Michelle is having a baby girl this summer!

And this room- 

We sat and stared at all of the amazing creations that are found on the earth.  We played Eye Spy for a solid 20 minutes, and wondered the whole time about the infinite knowledge and wisdom of the God that created this world and all of the amazing things in it.  And we felt very blessed.  

We checked out the kids room (Emma loved gathering corn just as much as Leah did the last time we were here), Noah was thrilled to find "stampers" and they all loved checking out the microscope.  Then we had just enough time to zip over to the Adler Planetarium- a first for all of us!  This beautiful building sits right on the shore of Lake Michigan, which was calm and bright blue this day.

This building gave us another chance to reflect on the vastness of the universe that our Heavenly Father has created for us.  It's amazing!

After a long day of traversing through the museums, we were off to find our Chicago River front hotel and some tasty dinner.  We learned a lesson of time vs. money at this hotel when we tried to avoid the $65 parking fee at the hotel by parking a few blocks away at a fraction of the cost.  Unfortunately we forgot to factor in the size of city blocks, the difficulty of navigating downtown Chicago at night, the lake wind and chill in the early spring air, the amount of stuff we would have to transport from the car to the hotel, and the fact that we would be tired at the end of the long day.  Jason was our hero and dropped me and the kids off at the hotel with the bulk of our stuff before taking care of the car, but the lesson was learned- sometimes the price paid is worth far more than the dollars spent!

Dinner at the Shake Shack and dessert at the Nutella bar in Eataly definitely helped perk us all up again. 

The views of the city from our room were beautiful, we were directly across the river from the Trump Tower.  No one knows how that story will unfold in the months to come, but we watched protesters marching across the bridge toward the tower after a rally was cancelled just blocks from our hotel earlier that night.  History in the making.

The next morning we were all up and ready for another day of fun- exceptional fun this day because we were meeting up with our sweet friends the Baileys.  Rachael and Neil have been our friends since our newlywed days at BYU back in 2004, and then we shared our graduate school years with them at Purdue.  We've swapped more graduate school woes, babysitting, motherhood tales, date nights, tips and tricks than I can think of.  We've cleaned each other's houses and been pregnant (several times!) together.  We've gone camping and hiking and shared Thanksgiving together, along with our friends Tyler and Andrea, a few years back, with hopes of doing it again before one of us moves again. One of my happiest Chicago memories was the birthday when Rachael and I ditched our day jobs and spent the whole day in the city.  Needless to say, we were just a little excited when they agreed to come up and meet us for the annual dying of the Chicago River!

I've known about this tradition for years, and when I realized we were planning a trip to Chicago around the time when the river is dyed, we centered our plans around the big event!  

I tried to convince my kids that the river was dyed by little leprechauns, but really it's dyed by the Chicago Journeymen Plumbers, who dump orange dye into the river that turns bright green as it diffuses.  Magic indeed.  We found a spot on the busy Michigan Avenue Bridge right where it intersects with Wacker Avenue, so we had a perfect view of the action.  The kids were thrilled to see all of the mounted policemen, terrified of this silver street performer, and most of all delighted to see their friends again.

We kept our hotel for the morning so we could go up and get a birds-eye view of the river.  It was so nice to have the nine kids contained for a few minutes.  We spent the rest of the day counting to nine over and over again.  

And the views were great!  

I always forget that St. Patrick's Day is mainly a drinking holiday, and we were glad to leave the partying (at 10:00 in the morning) crowd to head over to the Museum of Science and Industry.  Rachael navigated the Metra for us, and we took a train to and from the museum rather than trying to drive through the city during the parade, which was such a smart move.  Thank you Rachael!  At least 3 of my kids said that riding on the train was their favorite part of the trip.  Ha!

This is the one picture we got of all of us- perfectly symmetrical with tired babies in strollers and arms, with matching mom-uniformed Rachael and I feeling super proud that we actually managed to pull this day off!  I realized after the visit that what I really wanted was sit and visit with her uninterrupted, but this visit was not really conducive to that at all.  We started about 15 separate conversation topics, and I'm already looking forward to the day that we can finish them without worrying about losing a child!

And lose a child we did!  Despite our best efforts, at one point Emma got lost.  The Museum of Science and Industry is over 400,000 square feet of exhibits, and we did a great job of moving our crowd from one room to the next while staying mostly together.  We saw tornadoes, avalanches, baby chicks, trains, airplanes, the human body, the U Boat, and finally relaxed a bit when we headed into the children's area- a gated exhibit that had a guarded exit.  When it was time to leave we all gathered at the crossroads of four separate exhibits that we had already explored.  We had been counting to nine over and over again all day long, but this time I only counted to eight.  

Emma was missing!  

I stayed at the junction with the remaining eight kids while Jason, Rachael, and Neil took off in separate directions to find her.  After a good three minutes they all came back without her, and I headed back into the gated children's exhibit to see what I could find.  I walked into the exhibit at the same time as a museum security guard who asked who I was looking for.  I said, "Emma", she said "Come with me" and we walked out of the exhibit, past the rest of our group at the junction, down the hall, up the escalator, and over to the security desk, where Emma was sitting next to a kind old security guard, coloring and looking as cool as a cucumber.  

"Hi Mama," she said.  "I colored this for you."

I scooped her up, thanked the guards for helping us, and walked back over to everyone.  She stayed happily in my arms with her arm hooked around my neck for the next little bit, but overall she was unfazed by the whole thing.  Even I didn't really have time to get worked up about her absence before the mystery was solved.  The story came out later that when we all left the children's exhibit the girls headed over to see the circus display around the corner.  When the big girls had seen enough of it they walked back to where they knew the rest of us were, but Emma was left behind.  In the two minutes (one minute?  30 seconds?) that she was alone a nice female security guard asked her (according to Emma) if she was a poor little girl, or if she was a poor lost little girl, and then they immediately took her to the security desk upstairs.  

I am beyond grateful that it was a security guard who took her.  I would have preferred that they had stayed there for just one more minute, rather than take her so far away from where we were.  She wasn't really lost for long, so much as she was taken away from anywhere even close to where we were and thereby eliminated any chance of us finding her on our own, but she was safe, and that is all that matters.  

Still, after that our senses were a bit more heightened, and the effort of the day was starting to wear on us all.  We hopped back on the train, (where a gawking 20-something girl asked us if we were running a daycare), headed over to The Bean for a few more minutes with the Baileys, then said our sad "see you next times" and grabbed some Garretts popcorn to snack on on the way home.  

I wrote about our end-of-summer trip to Chicago last year.  It was mostly wonderful but parts of it were difficult  Anytime that we take a vacation we're trying to find the balance- balancing the energy and patience levels and the hours in the day with the many, many fun things to do, keeping everyone safe and happy and fed, making sure that we're working as a team and communicating our expectations before we actually get going.  We're still trying to get it right.  It's a process, and Jason puts up with a lot while we're figuring it out.

And so do I. 

But I'm so glad that we're figuring it out together!  It was a fun, quick trip with great memories made. And that makes it a success.