July Update

We camped at our favorite camp site at Pine Creek July 18-20 and hardly saw any fire damage there. I feel so grateful because it looks like the fire just jumped over our favorite spots--tender mercy!

Family ready for breakfast burritos

Niles & James, my sweet boys

Heidi & Daddy

Mama & Addie

Yum.

Niles loved the hammock

weee!

Addie & the kids built a little fort and made an Adventurers Club, and you got a carved hiking stick with your membership.

Friday Night we enjoyed our annual Ward Dinner at the pavilion. Here's the Bishop chatting with Brother Carter.

Gloria J and Niles had fun after dinner

The Dinner Crowd

Heidi back at the campsite, ready for s'mores

James, Gavin R, and Niles enjoyed sitting by the fire. It was a fun campout, even though lots of our friends and their kids were missing this year.

Sunday afternoon, Cousin Maren and her family arrived after a whirlwind trip up from Willcox Arizona. Travis (sitting ont he ottoman in this picture) got out of the hospital with hemolytic anemia on Friday and they took off from Willcox on Saturday at 4pm our time and arrived at 4pm Sunday. TROOPERS! We enjoyed staying over at the ranch house with them!

Travis eating popcorn & watching "Three Caballeros"

Morgan and James are pals

Cooper

Daphne is a tiny dolly!

Daphne still loves Addie.

And here is a random, fun picture of Niles in action at home...of course he is "VACUUMING!"

***
I plan to go take some pictures for a house update today, although the house is pretty full of stuff to install right now--cabinets and tiles strewn all over the place, but it's looking so good! Our builder projected finishing up and getting an inspection next week, but there have been a few glitches, so I am sure we are still 2- 3 weeks out. But it's coming along and it just dawned on me that I better start getting stuff organized and ready to move. Sigh. Giddyup...

 

SUMMERTIME: 1-3

Magic: I was 12 going on 13 in the summer of 1984. In 1983, my family had, much like the Jeffersons, moved on up to the east side and I was getting ready to start junior high school at Magee. I had made some new friends in the area and loved going to activities with our ward youth group. The previous year, I'd met Susan who would be my closest friend until college. I am six days older than she is, which seemed magically fateful to us at the time because we became Beehives the same week. That year two older girls, Sherri and Laura—Laurels!—took us under their wings and showed the adolescent ropes like big sisters. An older boy in our ward who was 15 had been flirting with me since the previous summer, and we all ended up at this youth activity at The Breakers waterpark. While we were all hanging out, this older boy had his friend come tell me to hang out with him. For me, this seemed like a little victory because everybody at the table had heard this request and knew he liked me. It made me feel super cool. My older friends said, “No way, she’s hanging out with us today!” which made me feel even cooler (in that superficial junior high way). We girls went over to the wave pool and I hopped on a raft, put on my sunglasses, and waited for the waves to start. At that moment, the loudspeakers blasted “Magic” by The Cars... "Summer, it turns me upside down, summer, summer, summer, it's like a merry-go-round!"  That song still takes me back to that very moment, stinging from sun exposure, air filled with the scent of chlorine and sunscreen, heart full of adolescent anticipation and excitement, feeling pretty awesome. It was the start of a really fun part of my life.

Summer of ’69: Something about this song reminds me of the halls of Magee Junior High. That’s the first place my mind goes when I hear it (probably because the Bryan Adams version was everywhere at the beginning of 8th grade, fall 1984), but I think it qualifies as a generally nostalgic song. I could easily make it autobiographical by tweaking the lyrics and singing about the summer of ’89, which turned out to be epic, but I won’t. I think the song is universally appealing, combining the intoxicating effects of summer AND first love AND playing music. That’s a recipe for some hardcore memory-making.

Where the Streets Have No Name: It’s hard to overstate the impact that “The Joshua Tree” had on my life in early 1987. I was 15, certifiably crazy in love for the first time, resting somewhat comfortably in my social niche as my sophomore year of high school came and went. We saw U2 and Lone Justice the first week of April (where I instantly developed a girl crush on Maria McKee), then got the great news that U2 was coming back in December to Sun Devil stadium and playing two nights. But the best part was that the tickets were $5 each. I kid you not. To this day, those jangling sounds of the guitar at the beginning of WTSHNN make my heart beat a little faster and take me right back to those cold, drizzly nights at the stadium when U2 began each show with that song. They would just about kill the audience with anticipation and stretch that intro out for 4-5 minutes, til we were all just screaming hysterically waiting for the song and the band to explode onto the stage. It was magic.

Here’s the backstory on that, though. At the beginning of 1987, I was in deep smit with Aaron. At the peak of it all, he found out he had to move when school got out. It was a perfect teenage tragedy, and “With or Without You” was the soundtrack for our sorrow. Those specific feelings were long gone, but that song was still almost too painful to listen to. Seriously, sometimes it still makes my chest all tight and gives me tummy flutters because it's stuck in my muscle memory, and it just perfectly captures the pain of separation. Interestingly, I have talked about this with other people and they have had the same experience. Twenty years later (or whatever) they still get choked up. Someone even said she still changes the station when it comes on. So kudos to U2 for writing an exquisitely painful love song. Anyway, back to the narrative—Aaron left and I survived. My junior year began and a boy that my friends and I had admired from afar the whole year before asked me to go out with him. I didn’t turn 16 until the end of September, so he offered to take me on my first real date: the premier of “The Princess Bride.” Um, yeah. Needless to say, we kept dating all the way through graduation because he was super cool. So it was with him I stood in the rain at Sun Devil stadium as we took our place in rock and roll cinematic history, our little lighters playing a supporting role in the film, “Rattle and Hum” (which we also went to see together the next year). PS: it was also with him that I took my first and last greyhound bus ride from Tempe to Tucson after that show. Never again. From then on, we traveled in his little green Fiat and later, his little white Festiva—“The Tic Tac.".

***

Next installment: What do The Ramones and Jimmy Buffett have in common (besides heavy drug use)?

It's You & Me in the Summer Time...

I’ve been looking for some framework into which I can fit some thought, memories, personal history, et cetera, so I can get myself back to writing. My mind and time seem to be spread so thin these days, I either have a great train of thought and no time to write it down, or I sit down to write and I am exhausted and uninspired.


Today I was working in the kitchen and I put on a mix cd called “Summertime” which I created about 10 years ago. It has a distinctly bubblegum-pop mixed with rocking-in-the-hammock mixed with let’s-take-a-roadtrip-I’ll grab-the-Big-Gulps spirit to it. Every song brought back distinct and fabulous memories from different parts of my life, I thought it would make a great framework for a collection of memories.


Much of my life I have felt a little embarrassed, even ashamed of my intense reaction/connection to music and also my crazy vivid memory. I come off as overly sentimental, but it’s not like I WANT to remember most of this stuff, it just gets recorded. It’s etched forever in my muscle memory, accessible when music pulls the trigger, while in the meantime I can barely remember what day it is or where I put my keys. However, when I turned forty I gave myself the gift of Not Giving Two Toots what others think and owning who I have become, so there ya go: I love music and it’s a trigger for powerful, vivid memories for me, like it or not.

Without further ado, let’s have a gander at the “Summertime” playlist:

Magic by The Cars

 Summer of ’69 by Bowling For Soup

Where The Streets Have No Name by U2

California Sun by The Ramones

Sugar, Sugar by The Archies

Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffett

Come Away with Me- Norah Jones

Hot In the City- Billy Idol

Hitchin’ A Ride- Vanity Fare

Summer Time-The Sundays

Three Little Birds- Bob Marley

The Joker- Steve Miller Band

Free Fallin’- Tom Petty

Angel of Harlem- U2

I Want You Back- Jackson 5

Buffalo Soldier- Bob Marley

American Girl- Tom Petty

Drivin’ on Nine- The Breeders

Boys of Summer- The Ataris

***

This is the outline for my next few posts. See ya on memory lane!

ARIZONA! June 2013

Casa Melin II

Tuesday, June 11, we went out to the house after dinner and took these photos. Most of the action today and tomorrow is finishing the basement framing so it can be wired and plumbed. It's coming along!

We now have a roof and a chimney! We had a few hot days after the roof was done
and that made me happy cuz I'm sure the sun sealed it up good!

The garage side of the house. I am glad we put in a side door to the garage this time.

This is the great room as you come in from the front door.
You can see the staircase to the basement there on the left; the framed up corner behind it is the kitchen pantry and part of the master bedroom; The kitchen is in the back right, and there are three bathtubs sitting in it right now, woo-hoo!

The view from the front window...
a really nice older couple lives in that house and we already have plans to adopt them as grandparents.

Finally, here is my view from the kitchen sink window...
not too shabby, eh?

So there ya go...6-8 weeks and she's all ours. Yay.

More Weekend Photos

Here are a few Luau photos I missed on Sunday...

Carter & Ashley monkeyin' around on the clothesline

Poor Gavin, soaking wet!

Heidi with her squirt gun, probably running away from
 Brody, who had the hose on full blast!

Bikin' Brody
 

On Sunday evening, we had Mom & Dad Melin over for Luau leftovers and a birthday celebration for grandma. After dinner, we relaxed in the yard.

Addie & James on the hammock with Grandma & Grandpa
 on the porch steps, and Daddy and the other kids on the lawn.

My cute pre-mission in-laws

James, Addie, & Niles on the hammock

Summer bliss

Aloha!

Luau/ BYU-H Alumni Hangout
A new family moved into our ward in April and we soon learned they went to BYU-H, so we had to get together and share some of our favorite Hawaiian grinds on Saturday the 8th...it was a great summer kick-off.

Jason, Gavin, & James

Niles & Brody fighting over Ni's bike...it's hard to be two!

Kai, Carter, & Zach playing "volleyball"

Addie looks upset in this picture, but she was having fun.

The Yard--- Heidi, Naomi, Rich, Aaron, Matthew, Kim
(with Ashley & Hailey in the foreground)

As will happen on a hot June day, the kids broke out in a water fight.
Gavin, Kai, Brody, Heidi

After dinner Niles went around and finished off all the drinks.
I like the background of this picture- Carter & Kai having fun on the hammock
and Addie shooting a water gun)

Brody got cold & munched some strawberries.

 

We had such a fun time, we are so grateful to have great new additions to our ward family. Can't wait to do this again! If you're not in these pictures but would like to be, holla and let's plan another fun get-together and summer it up!

Niles Turns TWO!

Our miracle boy turned two on Sunday, May 19th. We had a dinner at Grandma's House with cake & presents, but we did the presents first because Daddy & Grandpa had to go to Stake Priesthood meeting.

I loathe Elmo with a fury as red-hot as his fur. I went to great lengths to keep Niles from getting sucked in--we only watched Classic Sesame Street for the longest time. Somehow he caught a modern episode and it was love at first sight, so we had an Elmo party. Niles got a furry Elmo from Aunt Laura when she was here the week before, and we got him a Lullaby Elmo that says "Nigh-Night." He also got cute clothes from Grandma Melin, a Mega-Blocks Dump truck & coloring book from his siblings, and his favorite of the night--a Leap Frog Birthday cake.

Niles has been obsessed with birthdays for quite a while, repeatedly watching home videos of birthdays past and making us put candles in his food so he can blow them out. We were glad to find a toy that pretty much just plays the birthday song and lets you blow out candles til your heart's content.

I have been so dramatically challenged and blessed by this boy since the day I knew he was coming. I forget sometimes what a gift he is and how much he has changed our family for the better (oh, sure, we've got more wrinkles and less hair and we're tired all the time...but it's all for a good cause!). Happy Birthday, Niles! We're excited to watch you grow another year.

MAY STUFF

I got my first case of Mom Spring Fever this year. I was so over school by May. But then all the activities and filed trips and graduations and final projects began and it felt a tiny bit like torture. I will not elaborate further because someone already wrote a great post that captures my feelings perfectly HERE.

Not Torture: Addie's final band concert. These kids have come a long way this year.
 Addie is so cute playing her flute. I'm really proud of her...

...as evidenced in this photo.

 

***

On the night before their big first grade picnic, James' teacher called and begged me to come help. I usually say no to afternoon things because hell hath no fury like Niles without a nap, but I caved (she will never do that again, I assure you. He was tantrum-tastic). I was glad I went, even with the screaming, because it's fun to be with James and it was a beautiful day.

James

Brother Hugs at the park

Niles

Ms. Linton's First Grade Class at Pompey's Playground

On the way back from the park picnic, we stopped at Rosedale Gardens nursery and they taught the kids about plants and let them pot a flower for their moms. It's a magical place!

we began laying out on our lawn on sunny afternoons, too

 

Heidi had a very belated friend birthday party on May 10th. Aunt Laura came from Helena to have a sleepover at the ranch and do nails with these crazy girls.

back: Querencia, Debbie
front: Addie, Hailey, Ember, Heidi, Marissa, Ashley

Pretty Piggies!

A Less-Silly shot of the girls. It was a fun night; I was glad to have my friend Kim with me to make it even "funner."

We had a good time with Aunt Laura! She stayed Friday and Saturday night, but we let her go home to her family to celebrate Mother's Day Sunday. Here's Niles saying goodbye.

Me and my beautiful kids on Mother's Day after church.

James loved my pretty flowers!

Friday May 17th The Postums stopped by on their way home from a fancy-schmancy police banquet in Billings where Uncle Matt received a life-saving award. It was really fun to see them!

James, Jake and Sam...silly cousins

Action shot! Emily about to smack Heidi with a rice bag. We had so much fun with cousins!

Later that night, we went to a zombie party at the Palmer's house celebrating our friend Mike's 40th Birthday. I didn't get a picture of the girls, but here's James in his zombie make up. It was pretty dang fun.

 

Another thing we celebrate in May is spring finally coming around, although we had 3 weeks of rain so it didn't FEEL very springy. However, there were a few gloriously warm, sunny days where I got to hang out my laundry and let my dishes dry on the window sill. I put out all the caps and stoppers to Niles' sippy cups and noticed that letting them dry in the sun killed all the little moldy spots that were so hard to clean. Magical! I thought--the sun is indeed the best cleanser. Then I immediately recognized an allegory to a favorite scripture in my mind (you can read the scripture HERE). The sun cleans things that seem un-cleanable, and The Son cleans things that seem un-cleanable ("though your sins...be red like crimson, they shall be as wool"). Yes. But you can take it a step further because the sun & The Son are the same (see first reference). Sitting in the sun with my lovies, watching our plants grow, making lots of invigorating vitamin D is a more holy experience since I had that thought.

 

"And he is in the sun, and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made...which giveth light to all things..."

--Happy Spring!--