Most of you know that Doug is a super genius, but do you ever wonder hat a super genius does in his spare time? It’s the project. There is always a project underway at our house. There was the arcade machine, the fire truck bed, the reenforced train table, the storage space in the attic… There’s always something.

Last year a friend asked Doug how to make the Pinewood Derby finish results more accurate. Usually there’s a judge at the finish line who determines who won, but apparently that’s not the most accurate way. Doug spent a while trying to figure out a program, but eventually he just decided to build his own timer.

I can’t tell you how many hours he’s spent on this particular project, but I think it’s worth noting none of our children will even be old enough to participate in the derby until next Spring! We haven’t tried this out on an official run yet. My idea was to have a group of the adults bring some derby cars that they’ve helped their kids with in the past, and have a trial run.

Oh, and in case you’re worried about safety, there’s a warning label so that you don’t stare directly into the laser beams. That’s right, there are laser beams!

First Day of School

This was a big back to school year at our house. William and Samuel are both at school this year. I wasn’t quite sure how William would take to Kindergarten, but he really seems to be enjoying himself. I have loved watching him and Samuel talk about school every day. They love to talk about people they see, or what happens when other kids get in trouble! Right now we have Toys for Tots going on, and it was great watching William’s expression when he realized the toys were for somebody else!

Samuel’s teacher this year absolutely loves teaching. She seems so excited every time I talk to her (which really isn’t that much!). Samuel has been working hard at climbing the reading chart. His teacher measures reading by time. Before this year, no student had read more than 5000 minutes during the school year. Samuel made it his goal to read 6,000 minutes! So far, he’s well on his way. There’s another student in his class who is also very goal oriented, and it helps keep him motivated!

Samuel with his teacher

William’s teacher had me a little worried. She seems very dainty, and I was worried that William might be overpowering. I needn’t have feared. She has everything under control! William comes home every day talking about snacks and free stations. I love how carefree kindergarten is! He seems to making great advances with his reading, and he likes having his own friends from school.

William and his first teacher

I feel so grateful that our kids get to attend such a wonderful school that makes learning fun and stress-free. It’s nothing like school was for me (not that school was stressful for me, it’s just that everything seems much bigger here). When I was in elementary there were two classes for every grade. At Samuel and William’s school there are six classes for every grade. It makes Thanksgiving assemblies insane!

I’m sure it won’t always be this fun for them, but I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts!

As a side note, just so I don’t forget: Samuel decided he was too big for a character back pack this year, so William decided that he was too big too! I thought it was because they thought the characters were too childish, but it’s actually because the big backpacks have way more pockets, therefore way more places to hide stuff!

I hate that I’ve been looking at that lost post forever! I wanted to write about the other 4 days in detail, but really I just want to move on to the other things that have been going on. What’s kind of lame is that I’m going to combine all the days from the reunion!

The reunion was the p0int of the whole road trip. We needed to be at Rocky Mountain National Park to meet up with all 50 members of my husband’s family for three days of non-stop action and potato sack races. Because the baby was still pretty new at that point, I didn’t do as much visiting as I would have liked, but the kids had an amazing time. The sad thing about family reunions is how it reminds us that we don’t live near any of our family. Our closest family is five hours away. I know that’s not too bad, but it would be great if my kids had cousins to play with on a regular basis.

The biggest kudos of this trip go to my mother and father-in-law who organized the whole thing. It’s a huge task to get this many people in the same place, and not one person was missing! Thanks also go to Bryan and Charlotte who planned a lot of the nitty gritty (including the aforementioned potato sack race!). Samuel and William even made it to Junior Ranger status on this adventure.

The weather was absolutely perfect the entire time. There was still snow up in the mountains, which was a treat for my kids that weren’t born in Utah! It really was a great few days. I should write more, but I really do need to move on! Hopefully I’ll be able to get better caught up!

Where was I? My last post had us arriving in Denver pretty late Monday night. We met up with Doug’s brother for a quick minute and then got everyone into bed.

Tuesday morning our family of 7 plus Mike and Ingrid’s family of 7 pretty much took over the lobby of the Embassy Suites hotel! After breakfast and a few errands we made our plans for the day. A trip to Hammond’s Candy Factory and then and afternoon birthday party for Ben at the playground.

The candy factory was a great time. It reminded me a lot of the Sweet Candy Factory in SLC.  Sweets was a little more Willy Wonka-esque, but Hammond’s has an amazing candy store.We drove out to the most amazing playground in the afternoon for Ben’s birthday party. We had cake and drinks, plus all the props for our Angry Birds course. Unfortunately, as soon as we got there the lightning alarm went off. That’s how cool this playground was: it had a lightning alarm!

It was raining buckets before too long, and so we decided to postpone the party. We went to Cafe Rio for dinner, and then back to the hotel for some cake and sorbet.

On Wednesday we headed to the Denver Science and Nature Museum. There was a pirate exhibit plus a space exhibit, and a gemstone exhibit. There was also a body exhibit. There was an exhibit that was “supposed” to measure brainwaves and relaxation. It must have been broken though, because it said that Doug was more relaxed than me … I think we all know that that’s a statistical impossibility!

After the museum we headed to a restaurant recommended by a friend. Unfortunately it was closed. However, there was a Happy Cakes right next door, and a pizza place on the other side. The greatest thing about the pizza place: it had a mix your own soda machine! Plus, the restaurant was empty when we showed up, so the 14 of us didn’t really disturb anyone but the guy working the counter!

At this point everyone was pretty wiped out, so we returned to the hotel for a good night’s sleep. Except for Ingrid and who went for a late night workout in the gym … we’re dedicated like that!

On Monday morning we checked out of our Santa Fe hotel. I only had two requests: a visit to Trader Joe’s and a visit to the State Capitol. Am I the only one with a love of state capitols?! Those two locations were pretty close together, so it was easy. Doug then wanted to go to Taos and check out the area. Since I knew Julia Roberts has a house there, I was all for it! I also consulted our little Paul Roberts Santa Fe guide and noticed that he mentioned the Bradbury Science museum. We entered it into the GPS and saw that it didn’t put us too far out of our way. Monday was a free day, so we decided to head to Los Alamos.

New Mexico State Capitol

I have to say that I loved Los Alamos. It’s like you actually get smarter as you drive up the mountain! I couldn’t help feeling though, like we entered an episode of Lost. In New Mexico a lot of the houses are adobe style, but Los Alamos looks pretty Main Street, USA. Clearly it was built by people who weren’t local to the area! I loved the museum. They had all these stories of people who had worked in Los ALamos and what they did. Doug loved the technical things, and the kids loved all the Legos. It was very impressive for a free museum!

Lego Exhibit

Taos however, was less than impressive. I was expecting a Park City/ Vail type of town, but instead it was pretty unremarkable. I think the problem was that we didn’t drive all the way to the ski resort. Maybe it’s totally deluxe 20 miles up the hill.

The rest of Monday was spent driving to Denver. It was a pretty long drive, but we saw lots of beautiful scenery and the kids were great. We got into Denver late Monday night and met up with Mike and Ingrid and their family for a couple of fun filled days in Denver.

In front of El Parasol

Day 2 was so much more relaxed than day 1. Although, I have to say, that even with going to the gym every day, I was not prepared for the toll that the caves exacted on my calves. I could hardly walk on Sunday morning!

In the sculpture garden

We knew we were going to take it easy on Sunday. We went to church at 11:00am, which was pretty much perfect. The people were super friendly. After church we headed to El Parasol for lunch. This was a place recommended by Doug’s cousin Paul who used to live in Santa Fe. Paul told us that El Parasol had the best tacos in the world. That’s a bold claim to make considering the best tacos in America are available right here at Taco Taco! The tacos at El Parasol were very yummy, and the whole experience was helped by the fact that there was no wait!

Any guesses as to what this is?

After lunch we went for a drive through Santa Fe. I don’t know if I could live there all the time, but Santa Fe seems like a great place to spend a week-end. Another place recommended to us by Paul was the Tesuque Market. The food here was amazing and the ambiance was great. We also took a little walk through an outdoor sculpture gallery. The kids thought it was great to pick out their favorite pieces and to see if they could identify certain things. Some times it’s a little nerve-wracking to have them running around $10,000 pieces of art, but they didn’t destroy anything!

It really was a perfect travel Sunday.

So, now that we’re officially done with Summer travel, I can write about some of it with an air of nostalgia! I thought about writing in the moment, but some of the moments weren’t that pretty! Now, everything has blurred into a fuzzy happy memory! There were no children screaming in the car, There was no peeing on the side of the road,and there was certainly no yelling on my part!

Enough preamble. It’s time for day 1. Keep in mind that this is the first road trip of the Summer. I’ll get to the other road trip when I’m done with this one.

This was the family reunion roadie. It involved three days in Estes Park for the reunion, two days in Santa Fe and three days in Denver. Day one was supposed to get us to Santa Fe with a stop at Carlsbad Caverns along the way. It was 6 hours to Carlsbad and then another 6 to Santa Fe. Twelve hours is a lot of driving for one day, but we figured if we left at 5:00am we could do it. What we failed to calculate was the time it would take us to actually hike the caves! That whole adventure added about 6 hours to the trip!

We actually got on the road on time. Unfortunately we got a little waylaid by my need to get an egg mcmuffin! We also forgot to set the house alarm, but thankfully Dixie helped us out there! Because we left so early, we made really good time to Fort Stockton. Doug got a little annoyed because I wanted to take a picture in front of the Road Runner statue (the world’s largest, btw!), but he calmed down once we got out of the car and Miss Fort Stockton was there taking publicity photos! It’s not every day you get your picture taken with a beauty queen and a road runner! We then had lunch at Dairy Queen and packed everyone up again.

We got to Carlsbad Caverns early in the afternoon. If you’ve never been there I highly recommend it. I would however also recommend going when all of the elevators are working! We had to wait an hour to get out of the caves. The kids all did a great job of walking down the cave, but there was no way they were going to be able to walk out.Here’s another fun fact: you can’t take your stroller into the cave! So, I had Charles on my back, and Afton was a trooper and walked by herself.

After hiking the cave and the Big Room it was time to go. Ben used some of his spending money for a miner’s hat (turned out to be a good investment because the same hat was $2 more in Denver!), and then we waited in line to exit. By the time we got out it was just a half an hour until the bats so of course we stayed. Little did we know that it was a half an hour until Ranger Randy started his presentation on the bats! The bats exited the cave at about 8:00pm. Ranger Randy said this was the most bats he’d seen … ever! Another helpful hint: don’t bother lugging your big camera to the bat exit, because you can’t take pictures. Bats are very sensitive to electricity. If you don’t believe me, try and use your phone at the bat amphitheater. You’ll get a nice visit from the law enforcement ranger. He carries a real gun and a tranquilizer gun!

Now we had a dilemma. It was 8:30pm and we were still 5 hours from Santa Fe, and that was before stopping to feed the baby. We foolishly soldiered on and made it to Santa Fe at about 2:00am. Next time I would just stay at the Travelodge in White City. They have waterslides! We did make a quick stop in Roswell to feed the baby. If you’re ever in Roswell, you should probably check out the coolest McDonald’s.

So, that was day 1. Stay tuned for a relatively laid back day 2!

This is the dream!!

I wasn’t going to write any more about the talk I gave at church on Sunday, but then a friend suggested that I put it on my blog so that I have it. I don’t have copies of any of my other talks, so I thought it would be an interesting exercise. I’m warning you ahead of time, because it’s long, and you  don’t need to feel obligated to read it. It’s mostly for me.

The Talk 2011

When we were living in Salt Lake City, my husband and I had both gone about 4 years without speaking in church. We got called to speak one Sunday, and a few weeks later we found out we were moving to Texas. We have been in this ward a little over 4 years now, and my husband spoke for the first time a few weeks ago. Today it’s my turn. If this somehow turns out to be my good-bye talk, I just want you all to know that we have loved our time in Texas, and in the Sonterra ward!

When brother Heywood called me this week and asked me to speak, he told me the topic was, “What manner of Men or Women Ought Ye to Be?” Then he gave me a reference talk from April’s General Conference. The talk he assigned me is Become as a Little Child, by Sister Jean Stevens. I read the talk, and I had to ask myself if brother Heywood had ever seen my children? Does he really want me talking to all of you about how to become like little children when my experience is with 5 wonderful, but not necessarily reverent kids? There is actually a talk from April conference entitled What Manner of Men and Women Ought Ye to Be, but apparently Sister Stevens had a lot to teach me! My husband, who’s all about keeping it real, informed me that I clearly had some things to learn, and that maybe I should humble myself a little bit. Humility isn’t something that you’ll find a lot of at the Roberts’ home. If you want proof of that, just come around when we’re playing Trivial Pursuit.

If I was going to answer the question of What Manner of Woman Ought I to Be, I don’t know if the first thing that would come to my mind would be to act like a little child. It’s probably because I spend all of my time with my own little children. Maybe I’ve stopped appreciating kids for what they really are.

When I think of how I want to be, what manner of woman I want to be, it’s most often in terms of how I want to improve. I’m doing what I always wanted to do. I’m raising a family. Now, I want to do it better. I want to be a better wife, a better mother, a better daughter and a better friend. I want to be kinder and more patient. I want to have a cleaner house, and I want my kids to have their hair brushed all the time.

I have five children ranging in ages from 7 down to 2 months. There are 4 boys and 1 girl. If I were to ask them how they wanted to improve themselves, I’m pretty sure that I would be met with some blank stares. Two of those blank stares would be because the particular children don’t actually speak, but the other 3 would probably be wondering what I was going on about. Improve what? My kids like themselves, and I don’t think they spend a lot of time worrying about how to be better. They don’t stress about the dirty clothes on the bedroom floor, or the current state of the bathroom. When we were talking about my oldest’s upcoming baptism, we asked him why he wanted to be baptized. His 5 year old brother answered for him, “It’s because he wants to play in that pool!” Clearly no one is stressing about talking with the bishop!

One of the things that I really love about my kids is that they never second guess themselves. They’re still young enough that they don’t question anyone’s motives. They take things at face value. I have a horrible habit of over-analyzing. I always think there’s a deeper meaning behind everything. I’m forever asking my husband what he thinks a certain phrase really meant. I’m not going to speak for my husband and say that it drives him crazy, but if you asked him about our upcoming family reunion, and the conversations that I’ve had with my mother-in-law, I’m pretty sure I know what he’d say.

In her talk, Sister Stevens says, “Our Father in Heaven, in His great wisdom and love, sends His spirit sons and daughters to this earth as children. They come to families as precious gifts with a divine nature and destiny.”

I think this divine nature and destiny are closest to the surface with little children. They’re not embarrassed by their feelings. They’re nothing but feelings. When I tell my kids they’re wonderful, they don’t question that or roll their eyes at me. They usually just tell me that they already know that. What happens to that knowledge as we grow older? Why do we find it so hard to accept the truth of who we are? Why are we so quick to question it?

In Matthew 18 we read, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven… Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3–4).

I had always understood that to mean that we need to get back to the mentality of a little child; that little children are immature and unknowing. That it’s the lack of knowledge or experience that makes it easier for children to be humble. You know how you know everything about kids before you have them.

Now that I get to watch my own children, I can see that the opposite is true. While children don’t necessarily have a lot of experience or maturity, they do have an innate knowledge. They don’t question, because they already know. They know that their Heavenly Father loves them unconditionally. They know that they’re supposed to be happy because that’s what makes sense.

Sister Stevens asks, “What is it we should learn from children? What qualities do they possess and what examples do they demonstrate that can help us in our own spiritual development?”

Then comes her answer: “These precious children of God come to us with believing hearts. They are full of faith and receptive to feelings of the Spirit. They exemplify humility, obedience, and love. They are often the first to love and the first to forgive.”

Just look at how quickly children can make friends with each other. They see someone new at the playground and they go over and ask their name and how old they are. That’s it. That’s the requirement for being a friend. After that, it’s just playing. There’s no wondering, hmm… do they really want to be friends with me?

I can’t speak for anyone but me, but I’ll contrast that with how I am when I meet new people. It goes something like this, they look like nice people, maybe we have kids around the same age, maybe we should invite them over for dinner, but what if someone else has already invited them over for dinner. What if they say no. What if my kids are acting up or heaven forbid someone asks my husband how you make plastic. What if they aren’t really interested in how you make plastic. What if they think I’m shallow because I like to read entertainment magazines when I’m in line at the grocery store. All of this will go through my mind in the time between when a new name gets read into the ward, and when we raise our hands to welcome the person. And so what do I do, probably nothing at all because, I worried myself out of it.

It doesn’t occur to little children that they can’t do something. I think the unquestioning part of children isn’t necessarily that children don’t ask questions. If you’ve ever been around a two year old, you know what I’m talking about. I think it’s that they don’t question themselves, and they don’t question their Heavenly Father. They don’t doubt. They know that if they’ve been promised something by their Heavenly Father, He’ll come through. They know that if they pray, their prayer will be answered.

Something happens to us as we get older and more and more involved in the world. We lose that innocence that children have, and we start to question. We can question people and their motives, we can question ourselves and our abilities, and we can question the Lord. Am I the only one who’s received an answer to a prayer and thought, no, I don’t think that’s right? I don’t think Heavenly Father really understood what I was asking Him.

In Mosiah 3:19, King Benjamin tells us to become like a child – submissive, meek, humble, patient, and full of love. This can be a problem if you’re not trusting, but if you’re like a child and you know that your Heavenly Father wants nothing but the best for you, then it makes more sense. I think as we get older we don’t always believe that we deserve of all the blessings that we’ve been promised. We don’t fully comprehend the Atonement and so we don’t always see how it works for us. Sure, we can see how it works for someone else, but for us personally, maybe we struggle.

Sister Stevens says children provide “examples of some of the childlike qualities we need to develop or rediscover in ourselves in order to enter into the kingdom of heaven. They are bright spirits who are untarnished by the world—teachable and full of faith.”

Stevens continues by saying, “There is not a more perfect place to behold our little ones than in our families. Home is a place where we can all learn and grow together. It is here in our families, in an atmosphere of love, where we see and appreciate in a more personal way the divine attributes of His spirit children. It is here in our families where our hearts can be softened and in humility we desire to change, to become more childlike. It is a process by which we can become more Christ-like.”

So now maybe instead of worrying all the time about the state of my kids’ hair, or the condition of our bathroom, I’ll worry a little more about the state of me. I won’t question if someone wants to be my friend, I’ll just be a friend and let the rest work itself out.

I have a testimony of many things, but one of the things I know for certain is that Heavenly Father knows each and every one of us. He knows us by name, and He loves us. We all deserve to be loved by Him. He really does want us to be happy… Man is that he might have joy. I certainly have days where I want to pull my hair out, but more often than not, I just have to look at the blessings in my life, look at how things have worked out when I didn’t think they could to know that God has always had a plan for me. That even when I’ve been the one to deviate from the plan, Heavenly Father has found a way to guide me back, because He knows what will truly bring me joy.

Doug and his siblings (Mike, Susan, Amy & Bryan)

Doug always likes to celebrate his birthday in a big way. One year we did turkey drumsticks, last year we did the gigantic pizza, but this year required something extraordinary. This year Doug was turning 40. The only glitch in my party plans was that Charles’ arrival was supposed to be around the 10th of May, and Doug’s birthday is the 13th.

Me on the ladder

In order to work around this scheduling conflict, I decided to start planning way in advance. I booked our local rec center in January, and I ordered the invitations in February (of course, I neglected to put the time on them!). I was planning a surprise party, and whenever Doug would ask me about what we were going to do for his birthday, I told him we would just have to wait to see how I was feeling after the baby. Having a baby is pretty much the perfect cover for a surprise party!

The baby chillin' while we were working!

The theme for the party was an all out geek celebration. It all started with a door mat that I found at Kohl’s for $5. After that, there was no turning back. I had geek glasses and Nerds for party favors. I even had an awesome playlist (think, She Blinded Me With Science). Unfortunately you couldn’t hear the music above the crowd! I had beakers and wind up robots. My sister made molecules out of Styrofoam balls and bamboo skewers. I think my crowning achievement had to be the Periodic Table of Cookies. My sister and I baked 100 cookies the day before and laid them out to form the Periodic Table of Elements.

Dixie and Christina with the helium tanks

The best part was that people came from far and wide. Greg flew in from Utah, and Doug’s siblings came from Washington, Minnesota, Florida and Dallas. Plus Doug’s parents came. My dad and sister were here too. We even had friends drive in from Ft. Hood. I think the whole thing was a huge success, but I’m a little biased!

The Periodic Table of Cookies

I was a little worried that Doug was on to my plan. When He asked me again what we were doing for his birthday, I told him that my family was going to watch the kids so that we could go out to dinner. I wanted to get to the rec center at about 7:15, and we had finished dinner at about 6:45. On our way home Doug suggested taking the long way, so I was sure he knew what was up. Then his dad called to wish him a happy birthday, and so he pulled over to talk to him for a few minutes. The timing was perfect when we got to the party. I asked him to pull over, and he thought it was because there was a friend in the parking lot. He didn’t find it strange at all that there were lots of friends in the parking lot! That’s when he finally asked if it was a surprise party.

Cousins

When he walked in the real surprise came. Everywhere he looked he would see someone else who had traveled a long way just to celebrate his birthday. When he first walked in, Tommy came running up to him with the biggest hug ever!  The party was a great success, and Doug got to have some great family time.

Doug and Afton

I have to give a huge shout out to my sister Jessica who watched my kids, and to Christina and Dixie who hung out with me all day decorating the rec center. Those things always take longer than you think. My dad was also a huge help. He pretty much ran all of the last-minute errands, like going to Costco for the drinks and veggies. It was a crazy day, and there was no way that I would have been able to do it by myself!

Doug and Bryan with the kids

Another awesome thing: with all the family and friends, clean up was a snap. Am I the only one who gets depressed that something that takes hours to set up can be torn down in 30 minutes?!

Taking the balloons home at the end of the night.

I don’t even know what we were doing that day. Suffice it to say, the boys were interested in kitchen science! I can’t even remember if we actually made something (this is the problem with not blogging consistently!) .

Is anyone else watching this season of Master Chef? Is it only me, or do these people not really seem like “home cooks?”

I’m actually procrastinating the writing of a talk right now. Anyone have any ideas about What Manner of Men Ought Ye to Be?