Sixth Grade

I started sixth grade pretty ticked off at the world. My parents had just ruined my life. They were responsible for me big in the wrong school class. My elementary school had a system of placing students of similar reading abilities and aptitude test scores together. I'd been with the exact same group of kids since 4th grade. I'd been with some of the kids since 2nd grade when my family moved to Kearns. We were called the "Access" class. Everyone from the principle to the teachers to the other students knew that the access class was made up of the smartest children in the grade. Thanks to a good memory and test taking skills I was considered one of the "smartest" in my class- and I knew it.

My sisters were not in the access class of their grades. This just illustrates how much elementary test scores don't show. Both sisters would graduate high school with higher GPA's than me. But we didn't know that back in 1996. For some reason this caste system mentality affected our home life. My parents decided that in order to have peace and harmony at home they would need to have all of there children in the same school class level. And so the Friday before school started I stared in horror at the class list that contained the names of all my friends, but not my name. My name was on the list with all the regular kids. I started crying and pretty much cried until school started on Monday.

School was painful at first. None of the kids could figure out what had happened to me. The access kids treated me differently because I was now in the regular class. My best friends, who were access kids, tried to be friendly but it was hard because we were in different classes. The kids in my class didn't accept me. And I didn't know how to treat anyone in return.

There was one small consolation prize. I had the good teacher. All my friends were were in the class with a teacher who was new to the school. My teacher was Mr. B. who had a reputation for being fun and caring. And fun was what I needed. I was so worried about always appearing smart that I had a hard time relaxing. Also I was incredible book smart, but I was embarrassingly remedial in everything else. I could hardly do my own hair, and I had no fashion sense. I'm ashamed to say that I wore a jump suit on the first day of school and a pinafore (yes a pinafore at age 11!) on picture day. (Hence the lack of pictures in this post, some things just shouldn't be seen.)

Gradually things began to change. First I made friends with people who were similarly ostracized. One of my neighbors was an autistic boy who was a year younger than me. We had always got along well at home. His 5th grade class shared shared a lunch table with my class so I started eating with him. I also made friends with a girl who spoke a limited amount of English. I began to like my classmates and they began to accept me as well. A pivotal day occurred when they elected me to a monthly leadership position within our class.

I learned how to relax and have fun. Mr. B. let us have pizza parties just about every Friday. We also had an exceptional amount of extra recesses. On hot days he let us play in the water from the sprinklers - we just couldn't play with the sprinkler heads. I have lots of memories of relaxing by doing water coloring during free time. This was the most artistic I had been in years.

By the end of the school year I was happy with how things had turned out. I still had my best friends from the access class and I had friends in my regular class. I'd learned how to do my own hair by watching the regular girls. I wasn't dressing great yet, but at least I knew not to wear everything that my mom told me was cute. Most of all I had learned not to be stuck up about how smart I was. I'd learned that there were a lot more important things to life than just getting a high score on a test.

Inspiration: Don't Give Up

Sometimes I feel like Brandon and I are the only people who have struggles and fears. That we are the only people in the world who don't have everything we want. Back when Brandon was still in school we read a story that inspired us to not give up- that good things would come. This is from Elder Jeffrey R Holland's Conference talk in October 1999. Here is the part of the talk that I like. The part in bold hangs above Brandon's desk.

Forgive me for a personal conclusion, which does not represent the terrible burdens so many of you carry but it is meant to be encouraging. Thirty years ago last month, a little family set out to cross the United States to attend graduate school—no money, an old car, every earthly possession they owned packed into less than half the space of the smallest U-Haul trailer available. Bidding their apprehensive parents farewell, they drove exactly 34 miles up the highway, at which point their beleaguered car erupted.

Pulling off the freeway onto a frontage road, the young father surveyed the steam, matched it with his own, then left his trusting wife and two innocent children—the youngest just three months old—to wait in the car while he walked the three miles or so to the southern Utah metropolis of Kanarraville, population then, I suppose, 65. Some water was secured at the edge of town, and a very kind citizen offered a drive back to the stranded family. The car was attended to and slowly—very slowly—driven back to St. George for inspection—U-Haul trailer and all.

After more than two hours of checking and rechecking, no immediate problem could be detected, so once again the journey was begun. In exactly the same amount of elapsed time at exactly the same location on that highway with exactly the same pyrotechnics from under the hood, the car exploded again. It could not have been 15 feet from the earlier collapse, probably not 5 feet from it! Obviously the most precise laws of automotive physics were at work.

Now feeling more foolish than angry, the chagrined young father once more left his trusting loved ones and started the long walk for help once again. This time the man providing the water said, “Either you or that fellow who looks just like you ought to get a new radiator for that car.” For the second time a kind neighbor offered a lift back to the same automobile and its anxious little occupants. He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry at the plight of this young family.

“How far have you come?” he said. “Thirty-four miles,” I answered. “How much farther do you have to go?” “Twenty-six hundred miles,” I said. “Well, you might make that trip, and your wife and those two little kiddies might make that trip, but none of you are going to make it in that car.” He proved to be prophetic on all counts.

Just two weeks ago this weekend, I drove by that exact spot where the freeway turnoff leads to a frontage road, just three miles or so west of Kanarraville, Utah. That same beautiful and loyal wife, my dearest friend and greatest supporter for all these years, was curled up asleep in the seat beside me. The two children in the story, and the little brother who later joined them, have long since grown up and served missions, married perfectly, and are now raising children of their own. The automobile we were driving this time was modest but very pleasant and very safe. In fact, except for me and my lovely Pat situated so peacefully at my side, nothing of that moment two weeks ago was even remotely like the distressing circumstances of three decades earlier.

Yet in my mind’s eye, for just an instant, I thought perhaps I saw on that side road an old car with a devoted young wife and two little children making the best of a bad situation there. Just ahead of them I imagined that I saw a young fellow walking toward Kanarraville, with plenty of distance still ahead of him. His shoulders seemed to be slumping a little, the weight of a young father’s fear evident in his pace. In the scriptural phrase his hands did seem to “hang down.” In that imaginary instant, I couldn’t help calling out to him: “Don’t give up, boy. Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead—a lot of it—30 years of it now, and still counting. You keep your chin up. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.”

I often think about this story when I get discouraged. It reminds me that even apostles in the church struggled at times. It reminds me that there are good things coming in life. Since I first read this story in 2009 several good things have come into my life. Brandon graduated, we moved out of Logan, and we had the girls. I look forward to other good things that will certainly come.

You can read the whole talk by clicking here. And you can read the story that the picture goes with by clicking here.

Licking

The girls have started licking a lot lately. They lick whenever their binkies fall out. They usually lick their blankets, but they also will lick each other. It's pretty cute. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of it yet. So here is one where they both have their binkies.

Changes to this blog

These days I have a lot of time to think. Nursing isn't the most thrilling thing to do in the world. To take my mind off the tedium I usually read. If I'm not reading, I'm thinking. And I'm usually thinking about things I can write about. Lately I've started writing while I nurse. I'm going to start putting a lot of my thoughts on this blog. Here are some of the subjects and the day you can expect to see them appear.

Sunday: A post on something that has been uplifting for me.

Monday: Memories from girls camp, youth conference, and school.

Wednesday: An update on what we have done during the week.

Friday: Any crafts or other hobbies that I have done.

A lot of these posts are probably going to be interesting only to me, but hopefully some of you will benefit from them as well.

Bottles

Here is a movie of the process I go through to get bottles ready for whichever twin is eating by bottle. It's an involved process but it is still easier than nursing two babies every day.

Bath Time

I decided to film how to give a swaddle bath. This movie is a little long (5 min), but the girls were so cute I couldn't cut some of the moments out.

New Years

Brandon and I usually pick out a movie trilogy and watch all three movies on New Years Eve. This year we decided to watch the first three Terminator movies. Several years ago I saw the last 45 minutes of third movie and I've always wondered what happened to lead up to what I saw. Brandon also saw the end of the 3rd movie. Right as the atomic bombs fell his brother accidentally lit off a fire ball in the kitchen - talk about interactive media.

We really got curious about the movie after watching the Terminator/Back the the Future Spoof on How it should have ended.com (Click here to watch the clip, and then take a minute and look around the site for more hilarious spoofs.)

Anyway so we rented all three movies and had a Terminator marathon. It was kind of like a history of cinima class. Each movie came out in a different decade so it was interesting to see what action movies were like in the 80's, 90's and 00's. The first one was the goriest. The second showed off it's state of the art special effects. The third movie was my favorite because it combined humor, action, and drama really well. The beginning chase sequence probably cost the same amount as the budget for the first movie.

At midnight we toasted the new year with an Apple/Cranberry Juice combo. We talked about what a year 2010 was and what we would like to do in 2011. Then we went to bed.

Brandon had to work on New Years Day so I took him to work and headed out to my parents house. Later that day I went to my Grandma's 70th birthday party. Here she is holding her first and second great granddaughters. It was a great way to start the new year.