Buster’s Wedding

These are all the photos off my iphone from the Camille’s and Alex’s wedding.  My flash is broken and my camera is nearly worthless.  Anyone care to sponsor a new iphone?  Bueller?
I’m sorry for the below average quality, but Sherman Chu hasn’t finished working his editing magic and this is what I have for you for now.

Ellie and Paige
  
Me and Si

Nancy and Celia.  Nancy is my pseudo-sister.  I can’t remember life without the Nance.
 
Dapper little Jude.  The matching bowties I ordered didn’t come in the mail so I made these for my boys the night before.  They served their purpose.

Val and Alina

My Mimi

Charlotte (p’s) Mimi and Alice (c’s).

Sisters attempting normal. 
 
This is my absolute favorite picture and moment of the day.  While we were posing for the traditional siblings shot and about to take the picture someone said “WAIT!  Get the deck!”  Mark took off running for the car and skated back on one of Nate’s skateboards.  We took this picture in honor of our brother Nate.  I think we were all thinking about him that day and it was especially powerful for me when I looked out at the crowd of people watching us pose for this weird photo and saw my mom’s face.  Though a bit bewildered and caught off guard, I could tell that she in particular appreciated the siblings demanding to have Nate represented in some way. 
Always 8.

Pam photobombing

The dress.  Made specially for Camille.  It looked like she had just walked out of an epic Hollywood movie – Gone with the Wind maybe.  She was glorious.

But brides need to eat.  Ellie helpfully shoved food down her throat.

We usually take family shots since every body is all matchy-matchy.  This is Phil Aub and Teddy (11 months).

Me and my minions.
On to the reception.
The majority of the reception was orchestrated by our newest sister Robin.  The Perrys live at The Mothership right now because they’re in between homes.   They are not blood relations, but man, we love having them.  Darin and Robin worked their buns off.

Ellie was very helpful yelling at people with her megaphone.

Cake assembly

Favorite cousin Max showed up from BYUI and was swarmed by the cousins.
Then the fun began.  It was a hoedown so there was a caller instructing everybody in the dancing.  He was appropriately bossy and it was so much fun.

Silas had a ball

Bride and groom first dance.  Oh, you didn’t know that the dress was CONVERTIBLE?!!  Yep – the bottom ruffles came off for dancing!!

There were about 300 people there.  It was crowded and we were so happy that so many people came to celebrate Camille and Alex.
Here are some random dancing shots:
 
These last few shots are stolen from Sherman.  He is an incredible photographer and practically part of our family.  Hey Sherm, if you don’t want these posted let me know – not trying to step on toes and stuff but really, I love these pictures so much I couldn’t help myself.

Testing Out a New Hobby

special blog feature for CGH so she doesn’t feel like she is neglecting her scripture reading to read my blog, there will occasionally be scriptures at the top.  Two birds, one stone!  One stop shopping!  Book of Mormon 2 Nephi 24:3 And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall give thee ^arest, from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve.

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Invariably my undiagnosed ADHD (N. Cox, you might have been on to something) has kicked back into full gear:

DO SOMETHING.

Yes, parenting is doing something, but I feel like my best self when I’m working on a project. During the summer it was teaching, but this semester I’m just substituting and that doesn’t weigh on my mind the way a normal teaching gig does.  And the LSAT is done, but I’m not ready to jump into the law school game yet. 

My mother used to say when I was a child that when I am bored I make trouble.  There shall be no troublemaking.  No drama (which may mean no men?)

I needed a new project, something to stimulate my synapses after the children are in their cozy beds.  Time to put the other side of my brain into work mode.

Niya came to town!  She spent the week opening up a new hobby for me: Painting!  Like, moving beyond spray paint painting.  Not graffiti this time (MMcA, remaining nameless, that never happened) but canvas and paint and texture and sparkle and varnish and all those things I knew so little about.  My education began this week!

Of course, what I get into my kids get into, so they painted right along side us and will continue to do so. 

Here’s some of the process:

Mimi hauling canvas. 

Niya coaching Jude.

 

An old horrible painting that Silas improved upon.

Mimi calls this one Corners.  Jude is painting a picture of Spongebob, clearly.

I like that Silas knows when his paintings are finished.  He never over does it.

Jude sometimes stays up late for extra Mama time.  I love it.

  

For this one we did the background together and then Niya taught me how to do lines and edging.  It is hard. 

I might be in a dark phase.  Surprise.  Actually, this hobby is totally helping me through these difficult confusing times.  It frees my mind.

 

Exhausted.  We were up late doing these.  I’ve found it becomes addictive – when you start it bugs you until you can go back and finish.

And I may have fallen asleep mid-session.  I love our new little studio.  It’s going to stay up in the family room. 

  

   Watching Niya work is amazing.  She’ll just brush onto the canvas and it turns into the perfect curve of a foot and angle of a neck.  And she’s fast too.  She has a ton of talent.  Go see (and buy) her work here:  http://artbyniya.tumblr.com/  She does commissions too – like if you have a wall you need filled or a blank space you want dressed up she’s your girl.  I love her faces series.

 

More painting babies.  We’ve found that the less clothes you paint in the less paint you get on your clothes.

And for the finished pieces:

Lifeline

The Stars Aligned

Broken Girl

That Was LSATisfactory.

The LSAT came and it went.  I did not burst into tears nor run screaming from the room so I consider that a resounding success, though the results won’t be published for some time. 

They allow you to take only the contents of a plastic bag into the test, and I felt sufficiently moronic walking around with my plastic purse exposing my mint Oreos. 

But I felt confident because Mary Lou Retton said I’d do great.

The test was as I suspected: a marathon of the mind and it was exhausting.  I am glad to put away the books and table the student cloud – you know that feeling when you are studying and it seems as though there is ALWAYS something you should be doing?  That nagging voice in your head that says “Stop Watching the United States of Tara and Breaking Bad and go study!”  That voice is gone.  Au revoir.

On to a new project.

Inspiration Collection 1: "There is hope, but not for us."

 I've been plowing through literature and art focusing on the tenuous relationship between purpose and life.  I thought it might be amusing to collect in one place the things that are inspiring me (or aiding in my spiraling, depending on perspective). 

A Little Fable  Franz Kafka

"Alas," said the mouse, "the world is growing smaller every day.  At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into."
"You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.



This story appeals to me because of the wry humor and desperate situation.  I like how fate arrives either way -- by the trap or by the cat but it's inevitable.  The "too late too late" idea is riveting, as is the idea that the mouse was unnecessarily propelled forward to its ultimate demise.  And I like that in the end it was optional, something we did not assume from the beginning.  Kafka once said "There is hope, but not for us."  Indeed there was hope for the mouse but it was undetected until pointed out by the cat, by which time it is too late.  It's a story of missed opportunity and of consequence, simple and profound. 

This is just for my records so I won't forget.

Key to My Faith

“to see a world in a grain of sand

and heaven in a wildflower

hold infinity in the palm of your hand

and eternity in an hour”

William Blake

I consider myself a fairly reasonable person, but I believe in some pretty outlandish things.  How does a reasonable person reconcile the two?

Here’s how I do it.

I lose my car keys constantly.  Almost daily.  For some reason they are slippery and they sneak away even if I make a concerted effort to put them back in the same place every time.  They have their usual hiding places where they most often lurk, but nonetheless I lose them.  Perhaps it is because leaving usually entails grabbing a million kid-articles on my way out the door, but my lost keys issue has been an ongoing trip up since I became a licensed driver.  I don’t often lose other things – I can keep track of cell phones for years and any number of random things.  It’s just the keys.  And nothing can quite stop you in your tracks more literally than losing your keys.

My unicorn keys.  If lost please return.

Here’s the seemingly unreasonable part.

Whenever I lose my keys I say a little prayer to God/Heavenly Father/Allah/Jah/the higher power.  Yeah, that’s right.  I take my tiny little stupid annoying problem to the MOST POWERFUL BEING IN THE UNIVERSE and I ask Him to help me find my keys.

William Blake’s The Ancient of Days

And then a vague image comes into my head, one of two sorts.  The first type is definite: look on the changing table.  The second type is vague: quit looking, move on, YOU won’t find them because YOU didn’t lose them.  For the first, I find them in the exact place that came to my mind.  For the second, it means that my kids moved them and that they’ll turn up soon through the help of another. 

And then, without fail, I find my keys.

Every single time I have lost my keys I have prayed to find them like a superstitious twerp.  Dumb old Nor with her lame lost keys appealing to the Supreme Creator of all Galaxies.  I feel like a moron doing it because IT MAKES NO SENSE.  Losing keys is a uniquely human foible.  I or another human misplaced the keys.  Why would I go outside my own sphere of definite knowledge to fix annoying minutia?

Because it works.  Every single time.

This is my particle. It isn’t much, but I can say with confidence that it is the tender and amusing mercy He has always given to me – a kind of inside joke between me and my creator. I always giggle a little bit when I say that silly prayer, but it has become foundational for my faith.

But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than a desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.   -- Book of Mormon, Alma section 32 verse 27

My deduction is as follows:  God knows me.  He knows that when I am lost and struggling, when I am alone and jaded, when I’m angry and disenfranchised by a religion that doesn’t seem to fit me and my life, when my back is turned and my ears are plugged that I will invariably lose my keys.  And then I will pray.  And He will help me find them.

So when I am looking forward without hope, when my heart is filled with doubt, when I look at my circumstances and feel frustration and want to kick somebody, when I think that my heartfelt prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling I remember that God always, always answers this tiny prayer for me.  Maybe it’s His way of saying I Am.  I exist.  I know you.

“Nor, your keys are over there.”

And because He has answered this little prayer time and time again, I have faith He can answer my most far-fetched deepest longings: to have an eternal family for my children as soon as possible.

It’s not very reasonable to believe that a higher power would be concerned with my little things and most of the time it seems like He isn’t.  But because He has in this one area I combine my reason with faith both in finding my keys and in making huge decisions in my life.  God knows me.  Everything is going to be fine. 

Hey Marcus B. Nash, good job your “By Faith All Things are Fulfilled” talk.  It was inspiring and well delivered.  Thanks for writing it just for me.