One Last Belated Valentine

This one is for Sam."You said that it would,

Now everything should

be all right."

Love, Maj

A Sad Story

Q: Know what these are?

Yesterday when Heidi went down for a nap, I told Addie I had to finish something on the computer before I could play puzzles with her. So she was dinkin' around and a few minutes later, she came in the office holding these two mega blocks, upside down, each half-full of water.

"Mom," she said with a sniffle, "do you know what these are?" [fake SOB]...

"Ummm...mega blocks with water in them...why are you playing in the water?"

"You're WRONG! These are all the tears I cried because you said it's not puzzle time yet."

A: Tear Vessels

Dear Nana...

You asked for an email, but mom needs to blog, too, so here's your letter! It sure was fun to talk to you today and we're so glad that you made it back to Utah safe! Only one more week til you're back in Missouri! It's been nice having you out west, even if we didn't see you all that much. Here's how we're doing today: This morning Daddy took Addie to school and went to work while Mommy took Heidi and James to our co-op pre-school and then a WIC weigh in. Heidi weighs 38 pounds and is 39 inches tall, and James weighs 19-14 and is 27 inches tall--BIG KIDS!

After WIC, we made our two-week menu and grocery list (so we don't have to do it Saturday) and stopped by the office to see if Daddy wanted to come on his lunch hour.

When we got there, he had just received mommy's cool new Canon camera in the mail, so we took this cute picture with it (it does fun movies, too). He came and helped Mommy and James and Heidi do the grocery shopping for the next 2 weeks (most of it, anyway). Then we picked up Addie and went home. Miraculously, for the first time EVER, all three Melin kids took naps from about 2pm-4pm (probably because they were emotionally drained from the fish funeral we had this morning--Dory, our 14-month-old Beta, bit the dust cuz we neglected her while traveling; but shhhh--the kids just think it's cuz she's old)! Mommy got lots done, including some of Cousin Bill's wedding video, Baby Shower invited for a girl she visit teaches, and some Segullah stuff. Later, when everyone woke up, we read stories and started dinner (that's when we talked to you). Here's Addie reading to James (this was taken while you were on the phone).

And here is a picture of Addie and Heidi playing NICELY (!) in their room! Cute sisters!
And here is a picture of James and his bright eyes

(all blurry because mom forgot to change the camera speed!)

And now we have eaten our spaghetti and salad and we are getting ready for bed. The girls are having a "play bath" with lots of bubbles and mommy is getting ready to watch the "American Idol" she tivoed while she was doing Young Women's New Beginnings last night.
Aren't they silly?! Bubble Monsters! Anyway, Nana, we love you and we wish you lived closer. Life is sweet in Montana and it's sweet being a family! Have good dreams and stay healthy! XOXOXOXOX...Love, The Melins

PS: Just to make you Montana-sick...

But I still love you, Reagan...

My Dad Layton sent me this quiz, on which I scored a 29. That places me somewhere on their conservative scale between Jack Kemp and Bush I. I can live with that.

What was YOUR score?

On This Date in History...

...just last year, "Little Sam" Post was born to my brother Matt & his wife, Amie. Happy First Birthday, Sammy!
(that's Sam with his Daddy on leave last month--1/19/07)

The coolest thing about Sam's birthday is that he shares it with his Grandpa...

Papa Post!

(that's Grandpa with Heidi in 2004)

Feliz Cumpleanos, Dad!

Click On Over...

Grandma Muriel and Aunt Maxine in 1940

...to Framanisco to read about the life and times of my darling Grandma Layton.

Belated Valentine

Overheard at my house the day after Rich explained to Addie who Cupid is and why he's on Valentines.

Addie (to Cousin Danny) : That's Cupid.

Danny: Why?

Addie: He shoots people in the heart. Know what? My dad went to a party a long time ago when he was a little boy and he saw my mom there and Cupid shot him and he fell!

Danny: Where did he fall?

Addie: In love with my mom!
***

In honor of Valentines Day, I present to you the best kiss from my favorite, most hilarious and romantic movie EVER (even as I fear that I am casting my pearls before swine, so to speak). I have the soundtrack and when I listen to it on rainy Sundays, I can almost smell Florence ("Inhale! A truly Florentine smell..."). Oh, George...what you did to my teenage heart! And then I happily married your opposite! Happy Valentine's Day from me, my dear husband, Lucy Honeychurch and George Emerson. Enjoy your sweetheart today! (A Room With A View, 1986)

More Arizona Photos

Central Arizona Mountains
Grandma's beautiful flowers--pink & purple never looked so pretty!

Dad and Me
(me looking buck-toothed--what is that tooth doing catching the light like that?)

Aunt Gwen's grave
My Mom (right) and her sister, Aunt Marti--so cute!
A Gang of Laytons

backrow- Erin, Dad holding Kennady Layton, Becky, Sam, Jake, Dasha, Ross Canaday, Willy Post; front row-Tyler Oslin holding Willy's Maeby, Cody Oslin, Kristen, Me holding James, Aunt Maxine Canaday (Dad's sister), Kliss Crosser, Audrey Post, Spencer, Melanie, & Liam Post

Great-Grandpa Elrey got to bless Maeby Lynn before the family dinner
Sam at Grandma's House-

the last inhabited house on Church street, where the Laytons lived for 67 years.
Willy with Maeby, and Kristen at the house.

Unco Hamma and Aunt Dizzen

This is Sam's & Kristen's Home in north Phoenix. It's really quite lovely, and that's where I stayed on Friday & Saturday nights.
This is my brother Willy with his family and my brother Sam on the far left. Sam is holding Spencer, Willy's 3rd child. Spencer used to be a grumpy mama's boy, but he has come out of his shell and his personality is HILARIOUS. He has a funny speech pattern where he pauses between each. and. every.word, and drops or substitutes initial consonants or consonant blends. He also adds a subtle "uh" to the end of certain words. For instance, he calls his baby sister "Maebyuh," he said "I. love. you. too-uh!" when I left, and he calls Uncle Sam "Unco Hamma" and Aunt Kristen "Aunt Dizzen." It's so adorable! On Sunday as we were getting ready to leave, Kristen said to Sam, "Let's get out the video camera! We're never gonna see him like this again. He won't talk like that next time we see him." So they filmed him being so cute and funny.
Here's Sam teasing Liam at a Phoenix fountain. Poor Liam.

I spent a mellow Saturday with Sam& Kristen and the Posties. I will publicly chastise Lisa for not coming and hanging out with us...Lisa, FOR SHAME! What could possibly be FUNNER (yes, I know that's not a word) that hanging out with your far-flung siblings, huh? Anyway, Saturday began with a delicious breakfast cooked by our hosts, then we hung out looking at pix and videos while mom got up and got packed. Then Will & Sam took mom to the airport while we ladies stopped for beverages and took the kids over to a playground and visited. It was nice to be with my sisters-in-law. They are good women and my brothers SCORED. I

t was so fun to play with my niece and nephew and not have to worry about what my own kids were doing--sometimes I really miss being fun single auntie. Liam (who also has some speech issues, which make everything he says sound SOOO cute) tried to convince to me to come ward off the bees so he could pick flowers; Spencer wanted to slide with me, but got side tracked by laying face down on the top level of the play place, looking down through the grate at his siblings below. He was so still and focused, I thought he was asleep there! The boys sent mom back to SLC on the plan and came back to join us at the playground. We went back to the house to freshen up at about 3pm, then headed over to In-N-Out Burger for lunch-dinner, then Old Navy so I could get some spring clothes and we could all shop some clearance sales. We headed back home and the boys went to the store and got us some ice cream. We put the kids to bed and watched "Waking Ned Devine" (one of mine and Sam's favorite movies ever), and ate ice cream and Dr. Pepper in memory of Grandma Muriel. We know she was with us in spirit, enjoying the treats and laughing at the crazy Irish folk on the movie.

The next morning we enjoyed some delicious french toast and we all got ready for our trips home. Will & Audrey loaded up their van and headed off to SLC; Sam & Kristen had to miss their Stake Conference to take me to the airport at 10:30am, but they caught an 11am Sacrament Meeting with Kristen's sister in Chandler. Things went smoothly for me on the way back home, and Rich met right at the curb in SLC. I hopped in and we headed straight up I-15 for home by 3pm. We got home safely by 11pm, dodging lots of blizzards and sleet, and slept soundly in our comfy house.

It's Tuesday night and I am still in my "post-trip funk." I am almost unpacked. I am tired and a bit unmotivated. My spring cleaning seems insurmountable. Did I tell you that our guest room still looks like Christmas threw up in there? I took down all the decorations and piled them up in there, and then piled up all the after Christmas sale stuff in there, too, with stuff for the gift closet, too. It's BAD. If anybody gets a wild hair and feels like cleaning and organizing, feel free to come and share you enthusiasm. Mine is at an all-time low, and I don't' know why, because I know that I will feel SOOOO good when it is all done. UGH! Maybe I need some light therapy or something.

In closing, I would like to welcome two of my best, dearest, most-missed friends to the blogosphere. Tom & Adriane, thanks for keeping in touch!!!

Snowbird

Dad Layton, Me, Lisa, Willy, & Sam at Grandma Layton's Grave 2/16
Pallbearers at the church in Thatcher 2/16

I used to make fun of snowbirds (people who fly south--to Arizona, for example--for the winter). Now I have a testimony of Snowbirdism and wish I were in a position to live the life. I enjoyed a few February days in AZ so much! It will do me good to make a February or March visit a habit. The holidays are just too crazy to enjoy the sunshine! Of course I hope I won't be visiting for a funeral again anytime soon.

I read the entire Ensign, cover to cover (well, I skipped a few articles) in the tub tonight. I've got a new favorite gem from President Hinckley, from a New Year's Eve address:

"You can be wise and happy or stupid and miserable. The choice is yours." Well said, dear prophet. Another gem comes from Elder Nelson's article, Faith and Families: "I want you to think about yourself...50 years from now. Your broad minds and narrow waists have traded places." Too bad that doesn't seem to have taken 50 years for me! Another article deserves its own entry--Forgiving Oneself--but I liked this quote: "We don't' forget the sin and its effects; rather, the memory ceases to be part of how we see ourselves." Think about that for a while. The article goes on to explain that it is Satan who want us to feel defined by our sins, while the Lord wants us to learn from them and use Christ's atonement to move on. I'll be writing about some of that stuff on Framanisco when I get a chance. I haven't been writing much, but I have been musing!

My trip to Arizona was WONDERFUL! It got off to a rough start trying to celebrate V-day AND clean AND pack AND go to two doctor appointments before 11am, but we got off okay and had a good sleep at Willy's house (his family was already gone to AZ). Rich took me to the airport Thursday morning and I got there an hour before my 10am flight, but the flight closed before I even got into the security line. They put me on standby and I missed an 11-ish flight and a 1-ish flight before I got a seat on a 3pm flight (only because a bunch of connecting flights were delayed on the east coast in a snow storm. So that was a fun day in the SLC airport with James. Of course, he never made a peep and enjoyed just hanging out with mommy and looking at new things.

I arrived in Phoenix the same time as my half-sis, Erin, flying in from Boise. So my sister, Lisa, picked us both up and we slept over at Lisa's house in Ahwatukee (south Phoenix, Tempe area). Sam called from North Phoenix to tell us they'd rented a minivan and would pick us up at 8:30am to drive to Thatcher. That got messed up and he picked us up at 10am, so we high-tailed it across central Arizona (ewwww!) to Thatcher for the family viewing at 1pm, followed by the funeral at 2pm.

We barely made it, but had such a nice reunion! Grandma looked beautiful and the decor and memorabilia around the building were so nice. I really do not like funerals, but this one was very well done, with very talented family musicians and a really entertaining life story given by my dad's cousin, Jenene, and my cousin, Dasha. I suppose it helps if you've led an interesting life and you have a sense of humor. I have emailed a request for a copy of those remarks and I will post them on Framanisco when I get them. My Grandma was already "old" (59) when I was born, so there was much from her life that I just never knew. It was so cool to think about how much of my personality and tendencies came from her. I certainly know where the smart aleck part comes from now! Grandma was buried at the LDS Cemetery, next to Grandpa, whose grave we had visited so many times with Grandma--walking around the corner from her house and straight up to the dirt hills where all those hardy Arizona pioneers and their descendants are buried. It was a sunny, windy, warm day and the starkness and brightness just really struck me. So many people are born, live, and die in this valley--it's so weird. And I wondered what Arizona will mean to my kids, if anything at all, since they were born in Montana. Will they return to Arizona for a funeral some day and look around and think, "Why does my mom love this place?" (I have been known to say things about the Gila Valley like, "If Brigham Young had sent my family here, I might have pulled an Emma and gone right back to Utah.") But I do love it...I love the way my ancestors marched right down there and made that desert blossom like a rose, just like the prophets said they would.

The whole day was surreal to me. I felt like I was in some kind of bubble or time warp or something. And I also got a little bit sad and sentimental about what might have been--perhaps what should have been. After my parents divorced when I was five, I was young enough that it didn't bother me all that much. It's just the way things were, and we stayed close to my Layton side, even when we became Posts. It wasn't until recently that I have found myself wishing--like some pouty teenager--that my parents had found some way to stay together. that they had grown up a little faster and let the two worlds of my Elrey family and my Layton family be ONE. Because seeing everyone together at stuff like this (my Elrey grandparents were there, as were my mom and her sister, Marti) reminds me of that Nibley quote on my wedding announcement ... "memories of how things should be."

*Sigh*

I'll write about the rest of my trip and post more photos later...G'night, yall.

Update

(a) Addie's arm is broken. It's fractured at the top of her humerus, so close to her shoulder that they just gave her a sling and a big fat ace bandage-type thing to hold her arm to her chest. She's taking it well, except the part where I had to sign the rest of her Valentines because her right hand is tied up.

(b) Still no news on my biopsy, but I am healing up well and the topical treatment seem to help, so no worries. And James is getting better, sleeping through the night, and having only one breathing treatment.

(c) I am in Utah AGAIN--we left Bozeman at 1:30 pm and got here to Herriman at 9pm. Rich and the girls will drop off me and James at the airport tomorrow morning to catch a flight to Phoenix, where I will meet up with my Layton family and head over to Thatcher for Grandma's funeral on Friday. Rich has some fun things planned for the girls--they will hang out in Salt Lake City and pick me up and head back to Montana on Sunday. And then we are not going ANYWHERE!!!!! ;) Not for a while, any way!

So life is good. It has been a long hard two months (I keep singing that dang Counting Crows "Long December" song in my head). I am ready to stop the world and catch my breath for a while. Monday night after our own little Family Night, we went across the street to watch a movie with my SIL and her kids. I came home early with James. As I looked across the street at my little cozy house all covered in snow and smiled down at James in his carrier, my heart swelled a little bit. Life is really hard sometimes, whether you're struggling or someone you love is struggling. But it's really, really beautiful sometimes, too, like when you're walking through super-sparkly snow on a February night with a beautiful, happy baby you prayed really hard for, to a warm, comfy house you built with the man you love to house the family you cherish. Like the three little birds sang, "Every little thing's gonna be all right."