Be Grateful, Eya!

Are we born with our sense of entitlement, or is our culture so saturated with it that we develop it from a very young age? Either way, we've noticed kids are never really satisfied with what they have. Someone else's toys are always better. We buy Evelyn something new and she is content with it in the first day, but the next day she's bored again. So we had a family home evening lesson on being grateful for the things we have been given.

We started out talking to Evelyn about people who can't do things that she can do. She's already pretty sensitive to people with disabilities because of my arthritis. So we talked to her about people who are born without arms. We decided to pretend we haven't any arms, and tried to draw pictures with our feet.

That was so successful we couldn't leave it there and went on to brushing our hair: 

This is where Michael and I stopped participating, but Evelyn didn't mind because she thought it was so interesting.

    She was amazingly good at brushing her hair, but by the time she was done styling it, she looked very similar to Cousin It.

   Next we let her brush her teeth. She couldn't quite reach her toothbrush to her mouth with her right leg, so we switched it over to her left, and she did just fine.

Last we had her put on a pair of pants. By this time she was so excited she was just goofing off and rolling around the floor giggling. She got them most the way up by using....HER TEETH! I can't believe her flexibility! She did eventually get her pants the rest the way up, but she cheated with her hands tied behind her back.

Here are some funny things Evelyn has said lately:

"Mommy, if a bad guy wants to punch you in the face, don't worry, Daddy and I will keep you safe. I will use my 'windshield wipers!'" (We taught her how to block punches by using her arms like windshield wipers.)

Her uncle John visited with us on the fourth of July and her told Evelyn that he calls one of his little girls by the nickname "Wiggles." Then he asked Evelyn if she had a nickname. She was a little confused, so he clarified by asking if anyone ever called her anything other than her name. 

 "Yes," she replied solemnly. "Sometimes my mommy calls me liar-head." John and Grandma burst out laughing and Evelyn indignantly cried, "THAT'S NOT FUNNY! THAT'S SAD!!!"

We watched the old classic movie Harvey with Jimmy Stewart and then Evelyn started walking around with a big invisible rabbit, of course. He's the perfect imaginary friend. Well, one morning, Evelyn started screaming and ran into my bedroom to wake me up.

"Mommy, Mommy! There's a huge daddy-long-leg spider in the kitchen!" Alright, Alright....I rolled out of bed to live up to my roots of bug killing (thank you, Killer Ken) and found a dead daddy-long-leg spider in my kitchen with only three legs. I called Evelyn and pointed out the fact that it was dead. 

"Well, it was moving when I saw it!" she said.

"But it only has three legs on one side of it's body. It couldn't move unless somehow it lost those legs after you saw it." I explained.

Evelyn gasped and rasped, "Harvey! He must have nibbled the legs off while I was getting you."

We had a dentist appointment on Monday, and Evelyn was so excited for it. She kept telling us that she was going to be so brave when they "tickled" her teeth. She kept repeating Dr. Peacock's name and finally she announced that she liked that name! Then she told me, "Dr. Peacock says that his blue gloves smell like grapes, but they don't. They smell like balloons."

Ultimate Cooking Faus Pas

   For those of you who aspire to become a chef, here's an important tip: Cumin starts with a "Cu". Why all the spice companies make cumin and cinnamon bottles look so similar is a mystery to me...and my family. A few weeks ago I was making some potentially-delicious chicken chili and I started throwing in whatever spices appealed to me at the moment. When I applied a rust-colored spice liberally, Michael asked, "Cumin?"
   A gasp escaped our heroine's mouth. She grabbed the suspicious bottle of which she could read from the label, "Ci..." "That's not cumin....that's not cumin...." thrummed her panicked thoughts. She turned the bottle to read the rest of the label: "Ground Cinnamon," it read.
   "AAAAAAGH!!!!!" involuntary screamed the cook.
   "Hahahahaaa!!!!" laughed her unsympathetic husband.
   (K, back to first person...) As I frantically scraped the majority of the cinnamon off my chili (thank heavens I hadn't stirred yet!) Michael took a deep sniff.
   "That actually smells pretty good. Mind if I taste it?" I didn't, and he did. He said it didn't taste bad, but if he had to eat a whole bowl of it, it would make him sick. So I spent the next little while straining my chili under the water faucet and trying to salvage it. It did eventually turn out nice.
   I guess it served me right for teasing Michael so hard a few months ago when when he put ground cumin in our raisin oatmeal.
  Now if you ever look in my spice cupboard you will understand why my cinnamon bottle had been generously clarified.

Pioneer Heritage Story

Happy Pioneer Day! This year is the first year I have started looking into my pioneer ancestry. I always knew I had lots of pioneer stock, but I had no idea the incredible stories I would discover! I want to tell you my favorite story.
   Once there was a family who lived in Illnau, Switzerland. The family's name was Bryner. The parents named their first son (as many families did) after his father, Hans Ulrich.
   Well, when Hans Jr. was 16, he became very ill (perhaps with typhus). He was one among many who were infected, and the sickness even claimed the life of his best friend. The Bryners were very afraid they would lose their first born son. The sickness progressed to the point where poor Hans Jr. was fevered and delirious. His family watched over him closely, but his little brother Casper would not leave his side.
   Finally, Hans Jr.'s fever broke and he started to recover. As he regained his faculties, he related a dream that he had to his family. In it, he was wandering about it the darkness. After a time of stumbling around, a man came to him. This man had a strange appearance, with grey whiskers and "peculiar eyes." The man was from America and had come to preach to Hans. He led him back to America and brought him to the foot of a large building with six spires.  Then the man told him about the city of Zion and the gates through which he could enter. But then the man told him he would have to wait for a time before he could enter.
   The family was interested in his dream, but mostly passed it off as part of his delirium. But young Casper didn't forget the stranger with the "peculiar eyes."
   Hans Jr. grew to a man and married (Anna Maria Dorothea Mathis) and became a butcher. His brother  Casper assisted him. In 1853, he was dressing a slaughtered pig. The pig was hanging from it's back hooves from a hook in the ceiling when suddenly a tendon in the pig's hind leg snapped and slipped off the hook. As the leg fell, it hit Hans Jr. in the eye, instantly blinding him. Casper led his brother through the town to the hospital. Although the wound was cleaned and dressed, it became infected and spread to Hans Jr.'s other eye, blinding that eye as well. From this point on, Hans Jr. became known affectionately as "Blind Bryner."
   While in the hospital recovering from the infection, Hans Jr. had a second vision that supported his first dream. He mentioned it to his family again.
   Before Hans sufficiently recovered to be released from the hospital, he heard that some missionaries were preaching a new Gospel in Zurich. He immediately sent his family (including his mother, wife, and his brother Casper) to listen to the missionaries. When they returned home, they visited Hans and asked him to relate his two dreams again. After he finished speaking, his mother-in-law announced, "We have met the man in your dreams!" The man had grey whiskers and was very cross-eyed and wore thick glasses.
   A month later, the missionaries came to the town of Illnau. Hans Jr. was released from the hospital and was at home late one night when there was a knock at his door. It was late enough that his wife, Anna begged him not to answer, but Hans Jr. did anyway. It was the two missionaries. Hans invited them to stay in his home, and so they did for the next few months, despite the fact that Hans Jr. was persecuted for it.
  On March 16th, 1854, twelve members of his extended family were baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  In 1855, almost exactly a year from the baptism date, the family got on the ship Juventa and set sail to join the saints in America. Some of the family settled in Atchison Kansas until they could collect the supplies they would need to make the journey to Utah.  Casper didn't wait though. He set out with his sister Anna Barbara for the Salt Lake Valley. He had been assigned to be a captain in a company under the direction of Richard Ballentyne. They arrived on September the 25th, 1855.
  Hans Jr.'s lot wasn't so easy. Being blind, he needed special arrangements for bringing his wife and two small children with him. He finally left in a wagon train under the direction of Dan Jones in August of 1856.   You might think that sounds a little late in the year to be setting out to cross the plains in a covered wagon, and you would be correct. On October 19th, the wagon train caught up to the Martin Handcart company. Trying desperately to increase their speed to beat the weather, they left a lot of their supplies along the trail to lighten the loads. They assisted the handcart company throughout the early winter storms that were raging.  They made it to Martin's Cove in Wyoming, and were caught in a blizzard.
   Brigham Young sent out help from the Salt Lake Valley, and in the rescue team was Hans Jr.'s little brother Casper.  Hans Jr. and his wife, children and mother arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on December 10th, 1856. His feet were completely frozen, but he was administered to by Brigham Young who advised he wrap his feet in a special poultice. After his obedience to the prophet, his feet became whole.
   The Bryner family was called to settle Price in Carbon County and later to a mission to establish St. George. In 1862 Hans Ulrich Sr. died and was the first person buried in the St. George cemetery. You can see a monument of him today. Hans Jr. lived to "see" the dedication of the six-spired building, the Salt Lake Temple, though when he had the vision, it was no more than an architech's idea. Hans Jr. died in St. George in 1905, and his brother Casper died in 1914.
   Casper is my great-great-great-grandfather.

Casper Bryner's original tombstone next to his wife's.

Hans Ulrich Jr. or "Blind Bryner"'s original tombstone

Hans Ulrich Senior's grave marker. He was the first one buried in the St. George cemetery.

Reconstructed grave marker for Casper Bryner, my Great x's 3 Grandfather

All of the information given here, I obtained from "The First Book of Steve" my uncle's personal history.

Spicy Candy!

   Evelyn inherited the ablility to enjoy cinnamin candy from her father (Ew! who really eats that stuff?! I guess the people who have a taste for corn dogs and mac-n-cheese). She calls it "spicy candy."  Well, the other day we wanted to see if she developed a taste for sour candy from her mother. So we gave her a warhead.

  We did warn her that it would be very sour. Evelyn was enthusiastic about trying it. As soon as we popped it into her mouth, she got her "legendary sour face" on:

Then she tried to relax her face and found she couldn't stop squinting her eyes.

"Aren't I funny? Wow, this IS a little sour!

Then she started to feel the burn:

"K, not funny anymore. This is REALLY sour!!!"

*Sob!*

Yeah, she is like her mother after all!

Eating a handful of warhead candies. Picture from college, 2004

Oh, How Time Passes on Feet with Wings!

   Summer School! Growing up, my mom always did a series of activities during the summer break under the name of "Summer School." To me the name did not bode failure in classes, but of fun things like doing soap carvings and learning to cross-stitch and getting an allowance of $50 in order to purchase all my own food for the week, thus learning how to budget.
   I have continued this tradition in my own home, but I have found it is actually really difficult to come up with ideas for a single child. You may think, "Yeah, whatever, give her a stickerbook and give her free reign of your home!"  Um....no thanks. My goal with summer school is not just to entertain Evelyn, but to also do so with as little stress as possible for yours truly. (And getting her to learn something wouldn't be so bad either.) In the past, we simply have spoiled her rotten by providing her with trips to Thanksgiving Point, the zoo, "big Mooshies" (the movie theater) or lots and lots of days going to the condo's swimming pool. Last year we got really {brave/ambitious/stupid} and took her camping overnight, then spent the next week recovering.
 So this year, I wanted to do something low key that was exciting to Evelyn, and didn't cancel the possibility of going on big trips. My sister gave me the idea of doing a Harry Potter theme. Of course, Evelyn hasn't seen the whole movie. That would have been doing something detrimental to my own sleep, and we mustn't do that. But we did watch the fun parts. Then the next day, we had a visitor! 

  

   We found a little barn owl on our table with an invitation for Evelyn to participate in a Summer Academy!

   Evelyn was in love with the little owl and named her Fanna. Every night Fanna has to fly away to the school so that Evelyn can get her next assignment by the next morning.  We have done all sorts of fun things together, and when Evelyn is really good, Fanna will bring her a chocolate coin from the school.

  

For the first few days we had Fanna, Evelyn was determined to catch a glimpse of Fanna flying away. I had to prevent her sometimes from opening the front door and chucking the poor owl outside.  We told her Fanna was too shy to fly in front of her, but that only satisfied my little four-year-old's curiousity for a few days, then it was back to the drawing-board to figure out a way to watch Fanna fly. She would get so mad when Fanna would fly off without saying goodby to her. Finally, we had to tell her Fanna doesn't really fly to the school, she travels by magic; so she just disappears.

Today, Fanna brought Evelyn a whole roomful of balloons. We were very confused how Fanna carried all those balloons. I thought she must have brought them over one by one, but Evelyn asked Fanna how she accomplished such a task, and Fanna told her she carried them all in a big line by magic. I think that must have been quite a parade.

Here is Evelyn's reaction when she first saw the balloons.



....And then she dove right in!