Farewell to a hymn

With the First Presidency's announcement that Sunday meetings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be shortened to two hours, there are a lot of changes. For the most part, I am excited to move forward and see what the Lord has planned. When they announced three years ago that they were going to put a renewed and increased emphasis on making the Sabbath a delight, and worshipping at home, I had no idea they were preparing us for this. And who knows what this is preparing us for!?

But amid the rush and excitement, I do need to mourn for one of the changes. I need to in part because I know almost no one else will mourn its passing: The second hour will not begin with a hymn.

John-Thomas and the noodle nose

I've mentioned that John-Thomas needed to have a procedure done where they inserted a probe down his nose to scope out his intestines and find out what's going on. That was in late June.

I drove him up to the Cook's Children Hospital in Dallas. He took a teddy bear and a Sonic Underground CD for comfort.

They had a TV on with some cartoons. Gotta say, the cartoons they make today are weird and ugly. While I can appreciate the weirdness, the ugly was quite off-putting. He got bored with them quickly.

Finally they gave him the "giggle juice" and wheeled him away. The doc spoke to me eventually and said everything had gone perfectly and they found nothing unusual yet.

30-60 minutes later he woke up.

He was not terribly happy to be awake. Groggy and disoriented, he was very upset that his arms were in these two sleeves that stopped him from taking the noodle out. He got a yummy popsicle to eat and then we went to IHOP to try feeding him something before our long drive home.

Folks at IHOP were understanding. JT got to watch some 1960s Spiderman as a distraction, but Sonic Underground int he car was Much preferred.

Poor little guy got all the cuddles and snuggles he wanted, watched TV all day, and was loved and comforted in any way possible.

He finally fell asleep and stayed down the whole night. The next morning, we got to take the noodle out and I delivered it back to Cook's the next morning first thing.

They didn't find any major acidity problems, certainly nothing connected to his eating times. So that's when and why the doctor told us it was time to take all the deliciousness dairy out of his diet. He's done remarkably well like that so far.

Health updates

A non-dairy pizza

John-Thomas - The probe in his stomach determined he has too many white blood cells and that whatever's going on in his intestines is probably aggravated by a very mild food allergy. As a first step we took him off milk, with instructions to bring him back in two months.

Two months (and a few gallons of chocolate almond milk) later, JT is doing better. He has gone from gagging almost every day to only gagging 1-2 times a week. Sounds like it has helped but may not have been everything. We'll have to monitor a little longer.

Just a tiny tickle

Princess - Originally the x-rays were not the best and the doc couldn't see an actual break in her arm. He figured it must have been a very mild fracture, casted her, and told us to come back in a couple weeks. After Joy got back from UT, we brought her in and this time he got a better x-ray. It turns out she knocked a piece of her elbow clean off! She'll be in a cast for 3 months total at a minimum and is supposed to not put weight on that arm, but that's a really tall order with this one.

Princess also got glasses. She's got my astigmatism and has trouble seeing at a distance like both of us. She likes her new pretty pink glasses and she cleans them 7 times a day.

First day of school: pre-K for reals, 2nd, 5th

Superstar is doing just fine. His last turn was long enough, he can enjoy the time off.

A few days after

I had a topaz surgery in my ankle for my tendonitis, which is where they poke you with a hot needle in a checkerboard pattern in the hopes of jump-starting the body's healing process again to cure scar tissue. I will have been in a walking boot for something like 6 weeks before graduating to a regular boot again. When I went in this week, the tendon was still plenty tender, but that particular area doesn't appear to be hurting while I teach so far. So, progress, maybe?


Joy is back in Utah. When she got back home two weeks ago, we planned to send her back this weekend without the kids in tow and then again a month later. Turns out Grandma was transferred to a new facility the very day Joy flew out to see her! Joy has spent this weekend moving Grandma's stuff from Logan to Ogden, and helping her get settled in. We're very glad about the move - the staff there should be able to give her more of the care that she will need and they managed to convince her to get back on her medications, so that should help stabilize her too.

As evidence of the good Joy has been doing, Grandma was stable while Joy was with her last month, but as soon as Joy got back home to us her mother was back in the ER again. Hopefully this new facility will be able to help. (Mind you, we have no complaints about the other facility. They were patient and took good care of her for over a decade by my count. Grandma just needs a higher level of care than before.)

A childhood trauma, fondly remembered

I originally wrote this post in 2010 on our other blog, but something I read online reminded me of it and I wanted to share it again. Because it's funny.

Kids normally go through a stage of babbling random consonants as they practice sounds. Over time, these babblings start to sound like words. Then they become words. We've been trying to figure out this one sound Superstar [then 21 months old] LOVES making. What could he possibly be saying? We haven't agonized over it, but it has occasionally given his father some consternation.

Joy figured it out last night and as she told me, I leaned my head against our coat racks and relived an event from a couple decades ago..... (wavy flashback effect)

Ants have preferences

An ant colony is entering our house through a crack under our dining room table that I haven't been able to eradicate yet. This has given us a great incentive to keep the table and the floor under it really clean. We don't always succeed, though, and our mishaps have occasionally taught me some interesting things about ants and their ability to express their preferences.

I learned that ants have preferred foods and that they will completely ignore other foods if they have a more-preferred option available. For each of the following pairs, pick which one you think our ants attacked: (answers below the fold)

Cherries or grapes?
Bananas or bread crumbs?
Water used to heat frozen vegetables or flat, sugared cream soda (from Dublin)?

Thursday Throwback - Balboa Park 2

I was so sad when I realized the CD with half of Aunt Jacquie's photos of us at Balboa Park for our wedding was broken. Imagine my joy, then, (pun intentional) when I discovered we had TWO copies of each CD, and the replacement copy works! Here are some more favorite pictures from the day before Joy and I were sealed.

Throwback Thursday - Family pictures after the wedding

May 28, 2005

Our triumphal exit from the temple.

So, funny little story about our least-favorite part of the day: In a wedding at an LDS temple, you don't need a tux or any of the usual worldly finery, so I wore my temple clothing for the wedding. After the ceremony, I went to change and only then realized I'd left the tux in the car. We sent my brother to find it (after he got changed). He got lost, I think. Dad went to find him. It took a while. Eventually they found me again and I got dressed and came out to find Joy.

She meanwhile had been waiting for me. Really brand-newly married and her husband was nowhere to be found! For more than half an hour! It was very disconcerting. When I finally emerged, one of the temple workers had her hide and made me spend some time waiting on her. "That's the way things are supposed to be! The man waiting on the woman!" So I waited in a side room until we could be rejoined. It really was her least-favorite part of the wedding day. So when we emerged from a side door to find our families waiting (patiently) on the two of us, it was truly a moment of triumph. Let the wild rumpus start!

In the 13 years since, I can say I spend very little time waiting on Joy to get ready. I am a blessed man, in many ways.


The rest of the pictures are of our family. I'm labeling everyone for family history purposes

Throwback Thursday - Balboa Park

The other day we very nearly lost our family computer - the one with all the pictures we've saved up for forever. I realized that, while I used to be diligent about backing things up, the advent of cloud computing and transferring every file to the next computer had made me lazy. As I'm going back, restoring old pictures to the current computer so I can put them on more modern devices, I know I want to preserve some pictures.

Joy's Aunt Jacquie flew out to San Diego with us to take pictures the day before our wedding (and the day of) at beautiful Balboa Park. Cousin Rich also took pictures of the wedding and the Utah reception. Those pictures and two filled photo albums were among our most treasured wedding gifts. Here are some of our favorites from Balboa Park. (Sadly, half of the CDs of pictures they gave us have corrupted since. I'll need to scan our wedding album book sometime.)

Someone had a birthday last month...ish - Princess

In keeping with my tradition this year of blogging everyone's birthdays a month late, here is Princess' 7th birthday.

She decorated her own cake (and at least she helped make it; she might have made it herself too, but I'm not 100% sure and she's in UT right now so I can't ask). Her birthday theme was Under the Sea, following her school's musical program.

We celebrated several days. Day 1 was with my parents while they were in town visiting us. She opened her presents from them and we all enjoyed cake and ice cream. We ate a lot of pizza and tried to figure out just how far her walkie talkies would reach (answer: not as far as the pizza place).

She got soft and fuzzy things mostly.

Also a couple games and a bunch of really noisy dress-up shoes.

Princess has taken to origami lately, so she made her own party hats. Pop is a good sport.

She didn't get quite enough made for everyone, so we pulled out some hats from last year. Superstar is also a good sport, as long as you know he is a Prince, not a Princess.

The next day was her normal birthday and we gave her our gifts (more soft and fuzzy things, mostly) plus some books and a tracing tablet for our artistic girl. One of the fun things was her pausing opening her gifts to start reading each of the books she got.

Then she had a few friends over for a party. They played in the kiddie pool and enjoyed some games. She tried to teach them a little origami.

She was a very happy little seven year old, but she did one thing I wish she hadn't ... she started looking older and more grown up. Your kids aren't supposed to get older! Sigh.

Jolly Old King Benjamin

In 2005 I came up with the following parody of "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas," using the teachings of King Benjamin from Mosiah chapters 2-4 in the Book of Mormon.

Jolly old King Benjamin said: “Pitch your tents this way.

Don’t you trifle with the words that I’m going to say.

Jesus Christ is coming soon, so my countrymen,

Choose this day whom you will serve and be born again.

“I have served my whole life through that you might be taught:

When you serve your fellow man, alone then you serve God.

And if I, your chosen king, have labored to serve you,

Ought ye not to do the same: serve each other too?

“Oh what thanks we all should give to our Heavn’ly King!

Though we serve Him, we are just unprofitable things.

First off, He created us.  We are in His debt.

Then we serve, He blesses us, and we aren’t out yet.

“When the clock was striking twelve, I was fast asleep.

There appeared an angel bright, and my heart did leap.

He gave me a message clear, and I know ‘tis true:

Jesus is the only way salvation comes to you.

“We must be little kids, and be easily taught;

For you know the nat’ral man’s an enemy to God.

Yield unto the Holy Ghost, put off the nat’ral man,

Trust in God, be humble too; with His help you can.

“If you’ve felt to sing the song of redeeming love

Keep in mind how great and wise is the Lord above,

Then, my friends, you will retain remission of your sin

And you will teach holy things to your children.

“Last of all, please watch yourselves, your thoughts and words and deeds.

Do not let your brothers beg – answer all their needs.

See that ye do all these things in order and wisdom,

Then one day you will return to God’s great kingdom.”