Utah, Fortune Cookies and Spring Break

We traveled to Utah at the start of Spring Break to do some yard work at Ryan's parent's house. Shelly organized a family work day for Saturday morning and all of the siblings (except Meggan, who is on a mission with her parents) and some of the spouses and grandkids were there to help. Can you believe there were lots of cameras taking pictures, but NONE took a photo of the 6 siblings together?!?!? The pear trees, grape vines, clematis, bush cherries, last year's flower growth, leaves all had work done; many hands do make light work.

Ryan got hit in the left eye with a tree branch that he had just cut. It caused his vision to be blurry. Glen looked in it and couldn't see anything. Ryan called Genette's eye doctor, but the message service said that since he wasn't a patient, they were unable to do anything for him. We thought about taking him to the ER, but that didn't feel like the right thing to do. Daniel and Gene were able to give Ryan a Priesthood Blessing. I got to do the driving for the rest of the day and Ryan took it easy, keeping his left eye closed for most of the afternoon. [On Wednesday, Ryan went to see our eye doctor and was told that he came in at the right time, that the ER wouldn't have been able to do anything for him anyways, and that he had the starting of an infection, most likely a fungus from the live tree branch hitting him in the eye, so he got some prescription drops for that. His vision had cleared by Sunday and was able to drive us home.]
Saturday night we had plans with my mom to go to the BYU Museum of Art to see the Carl Bloch exhibit. It was beautiful. My favorite painting was "The Daughter of Jairus". The daughter is dead. The mother is sitting on the bed weeping. Christ is at the door with the dawning of the new day. I could feel the grief of the mother and it was heart-wrenching, but I knew there would be Joy in the Morning.
I am really glad that we took the time to go to the exhibit. We took all our children - Sabrina liked walking around with the rented iPad learning more about the paintings with her grandma. Her favorite painting was "Christ Blessing the Little Child, 1873". Ryan's favorite was "Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane". Hyrum and Roderic most preferred the WWII cartoons on display downstairs. (Ryan spent most of his time down there with them as a result. They also had cool "Cowboy and Indian" paintings--quite a collection.)



On the drive home, Roderic called me to the back seat because he had tied the seat belt around his belly. He had wrapped the chest strap back around his body and back underneath, in a classic hitch--but he must have pulled it all of the way out during his experimentation that got him in this fix, because it was in the car-seat safety locked mode: it would not let any further belt out, and it was starting to cinch pretty tight around him. By the time he called me back, he had already unbuckled it to try to get it off. I sat by him for ten minutes trying to get it undone, while Ryan was still driving through the one of those few uninhabited portions of Idaho in between Sublet Road and the Burley areas. Then we stopped at the rest area and tried for another 20 minutes with Roderic screaming his head off because it hurt! Ryan ended up moving the suitcases and such from the trunk to the front seat (it was raining a bit), got out some tools (hurray for emergency preparedness!) and unattached the seat belt bolt. There was much rejoicing; how good it is to be free! Hopefully Roderic has learned his lesson about what the proper uses of seat belts are. Hyrum thought it was quite fascinating. He was exulting that Roderic had to take of his pants and his shirt (as Mom tried to get him to squeeze through.)

While Ryan was enjoying a delicious Dean-Larson-homemade pizza with the Deacon's Quorum on Wednesday night, we had stir fry and fortune cookies. Hyrum told his father when going to bed that they had read "the jokes" inside the cookies, and that the box said that you needed to just eat one fortune cookie a day. So we'd better eat one a day.

Roderic - Don't let others try to stop you from doing what is right. (Spot on! These fortune cookies must work!)
Sabrina - You will take a chance in the near future. (She is running in her first track meet this next week.)
Hyrum - News of an old sweetheart who still things much of you. (I don't understand what this is trying to say. And I didn't change spelling or order of the sentence. It really said "things" instead of "thinks".)
Me - Your dynamic eyes have attracted a secret admirer. (Must be Ryan.)

While the kids were out of school, I enrolled Roderic and Sabrina in swimming lessons at the YMCA. They had fun playing and swimming all week - Hyrum, Leo and I got to be in the kiddie pool during lessons. We also went to see the movie "Tangled" at the dollar theatre, played at Bodies in Motion, walked around Zoo Boise and did some yard work.