This is Us: The Browns at Disneyland

Yes, we love the thrill rides, and yes, we were too cheap to buy the $25 picture from the park, so we just took a picture of the picture. One of many. We rode Space Mountain seven times. It was Easton's favorite!

This was our very last ride of the three day excursion at Disney - The Grizzly Water ride at California Adventure. We saved it for the very end in case we got wet, and yes indeed-e-o...we did. Easton and Ryan took the hardest hit as the geyser exploded right as they were passing by. Seriously, we cracked up so hard on this ride. What a great way to end our trip.

What great memories!

Easton waiting in line for the Buzz Lightyear Ride

Ryan & Barrett on the Matterhorn (day 3). We loved this one too. It was the very first ride we did on the first day, so it set the tone for all the fun.

Having too much fun on the swings at California Adventure

Toy Story Mania - really a fun, interactive ride (it was a shooting game), but the wait was too long! It was our only long wait of the trip, and not sure it was worth it. But since this ride was new, we didn't know what to expect...and didn't think we'd be waiting that long! Yes, we were spoiled with all the other short waits I know...

We loved loved loved California Screamin'! It's the fastest and most intense ride in both parks.

Afty & Row on the Matterhorn

Since Easy E was too short for Screamin', dad took him to buy a souvenir while the girls rode the second day. He's been lugging Mickey around ever since.

We ran into Jessie from Toy Story at Disneyland and Rowan was so excited for a quick photo op. I didn't want to wait in line behind a bazillion other little girls for a picture with Cinderella, but we saw the glass slipper princess too.

Easton had a blast exploring the Tarzan treehouse just outside of the Indiana Jones ride. Indy was the only other ride he was too short for, but it worked out great for him. He climbed and played on Tarzan the whole time that Ryan and the girls were on the ride.

My favorite ride - the Tower of Terror at California Adventure. We had fast passes for this one on Monday night at 8:15, and it was amazing and scary all over again. It had been 3 1/2 years since the last time, and I had sort of forgotten how cool a ride it is. We did it again the next day too.

Snack break - pretzels with cheese please!

Really, we just had "too much fun."

We're Back!

Happy St. Patty's Day! We're back from the land of Disney where every single other spring breaking family on the planet must have been. Crazy herds of people everywhere. Really, how many people can they let in that place? But we worked it like nobodies business and seriously did so much in our three days there. Really, truly - as much as I have completely loved both our family trips to Disneyland, I am never ever going to go there without someone in a wheelchair, unless we take all the kids out of school in the complete off-season (if there is such a thing as an off-season). Or at least never ever at Spring Break without some one's broken limb. It would so not be worth it to wait in all those crazy long lines.

Thanks again to Afty Cakes for taking one for the team. It was way busier than the last time we went in 2007 for Fall Break, so by 2:00 or so in the afternoon, even the wheelchair accessible lines were getting long. Clearly, not as long as the normal lines, but we were still always waiting. Thankfully, we tackled so much in the mornings when we could just ride and ride and ride over and over with little to no wait.

My very favorite thing about the whole trip was seeing Easton's pure joy on the rides. I'm not sure there is anything better than watching your 5-year old's face light up in raw excitement as he swirls and dips and flies on the coasters, coupled with his contagious laughter and giant big blue eyes. I was grinning ear to ear just watching him. He is a little thrill-seeker like the rest of the Brown family (thankfully, we have no riding wimps in our crew), so the faster the better for him. He wasn't afraid of anything, nor was Rowan. And there was only ride he couldn't do at Disneyland (Indiana Jones) and one ride at California Adventure (Screamin'). Just a few inches shy of the mark. Seriously, it was such a great time. I have a bunch of pics to post after I get them downloaded from my iPhone.

We drove home yesterday after spending about six hours in the park for our final day. We wanted to get home by midnight, so we left the park around 3:00 or so to head back to the hotel, clean up a bit, and pick up the car. After some brutal LA rush hour traffic, a stop at In-and-Out and a couple potty breaks, our home greeted us warmly around 11:30 last night - still standing and smelling a bit like new drywall and tile cement. We joked with the kids as we tucked them in for prayers that we could still be Disneyland (it stayed open until midnight). Even though the kiddos all expressed their gratitude many times on the trip for us taking them there, it was really extra nice to hear each of them independently express their gratitude late last night in their personal prayers. They were so dang sweet.

While we were exploring Disney, the skillful worker bees were busy transforming our master bath into what we hope will be a spectacular new room. A huge thanks to J.R. for being our GC on this job - we are really happy with how it's all coming together. We're closing in on the third week of bathroom construction, but I still think it will be a couple more before it's 100%. But it's looking good - really good. The granite guy is cutting our sink and faucet holes today. Maybe installing tomorrow? Albert, the drywall guy, was back this morning before I left for work finishing the final sanding. Should be a nice, white film over everything by the end of the day :) And then Jose, the tile guy, should be back to finish the last piece in the shower and start the bathroom floor. We're doing a Versailles pattern on the floor - can't wait to see it! He laid the floor liner last night. Tomorrow, the glass guy will be over to measure for the shower glass and I still need to finalize my paint colors...

Getting closer.

Now it's back to work and softball and all the usual with the fam. The kids have a couple more days of spring break, but they're spending today and tomorrow at my mom's since I'm working. Hopefully they'll get in some good play time with friends and maybe a little relaxation after walking a marathon the past few days!

Can't wait to share our pics from the trip. I hope to get them downloaded soon.

Disney bound...

We're super excited. On our way to visit the happiest place on earth! Thanks, Afton. You're our golden ticket!

The Recap

Just to recap the week - quickly:

1) Afton played in her last basketball game a week ago yesterday. She should have had her season closer yesterday afternoon, but thanks to the broken foot, she was on the DL. We sure had fun watching her play this season, though. She brings so much energy and enthusiasm to the court. And it was kinda cool being back in the Kino Junior High Gymnasium after all these years. I spent many, many hours inside that gym playing both volleyball and basketball for the Kolts in the mid-80's. Good times. Good memories.

And here's our little jockette sporting the cast and crutches. She's ready for bed in this pic, staying up a little too late working her word genius skills on a crossword puzzle with Barrett (an ELP assignment, not for fun.)

2) Let the remodeling begin. The demo crew came out on Monday and removed our shower and tub from the master bath. Then on Thursday, the framer came and knocked out our bathroom linen closet to make room for the new foot longer 6' jetted tub and 2' longer shower. Hooray! We are super excited to get a new bathroom. After 5 trips to Imperial Tile, I think I finally have all the shower, floor, bath and trim tile procured. The granite is purchased. The cabinets are on order and should be here in a couple of days. After significant hunting, I finally found the 24 x 36 vertical opening window we needed since we are taking the existing one out to make room for the bigger shower. All the faucets and valves and drains are finally here. Who knew that you had to order the faucet handles separate from the faucet itself? What a racket. But thanks to overstockdeals.com, faucets.com, Lowes, Home Depot, and Farnsworth Wholesale Plumbing - I think we are finally set. The guys are hopefully coming back either tomorrow or Tuesday to finish the framing and do the plumbing and get ready for the tile guy mid week. Can't wait. It's going to be awesome!!!

3) Rowan lost her second tooth (finally). This time it was her front tooth, so she's sporting the ever-so-fashionable first grade look. And she loves it. The tooth fairy brought her two bucks - in quarters. Just like she wanted.

4) No pics for this, but we did lots of softball practicing this week. Ryan and I helped coach Rowan's team practices this week (her head coach was out of town and Ryan is the assistant). Afton squeezed one in before the break, and Barrett practiced three times. They are all doing so great - can't wait for the games to begin.

5) I realize that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but to me, this is true beauty.

This is our two-car garage that we finally cleaned up and fully purged yesterday after 3 months of full on garage chaos. I should have taken a pic of the one car garage too - it is equally spectacularly clean. We started right after we got home from Rowan's practice, then Ryan had to leave to work security detail at Lehi Days. I was on a roll so I finished it and was oh so proud. We've been parking the suburban in the driveway since early December when we moved a bunch of stuff out of the one car garage to make room for Afton's birthday party and the gingerbread throw down. And life has just been so busy that we haven't made the time to do the full clean up ever since. We decided that before we moved anything back to the one car, we'd purge and simplify. And it just felt so overwhelming that we kept letting other projects take priority. It was getting insane, though, and I am just so thrilled that it's finally clean. I took a suburban full of stuff to DI, threw about 3 big black garbage bags of stuff out, and voila! We're parkin' in again, baby.

Other than that and all the normal life stuff going on with raising four kids who study hard and play instruments and sports like all good kids do, and work work work work, and church stuff and trying to feel better after two weeks of being super sick and a great kidney transplant surgery for Bob & Lacey (both are doing great) and the school carnival Friday night and spending time with the family and squeezing in a great date last night to Mi Amigos and a movie (Unknown - which was super suspenseful by the way) and subbing primary in church today and a bike ride and chocolate chip cookie making and a little Battleship tourney after dinner, nothing much else to report at the Brown house.

Life is good.

Chester & The Foot

Grandma Cheri thought it would be a good idea to have the grand kids come up with a name for Grandpa Bob's new kidney, the one generously donated yesterday by Ryan's little sister, Lacey. They landed on "Chester" a few weeks back, and we've been affectionately calling it such ever since.

Well, the very good news is that the kidney transplant seems to have been a big success thus far. Lacey & Bob reported to Mayo Clinic yesterday morning at 9:00am for an 11:00 am surgery, but the hospital was backed up and things got delayed about three hours. So somewhere around 2:00, they took Lacey back to start her first, successfully harvested her kidney and then started working on Bob. He was only born with one kidney to begin with (which we've learned occurs in about 1 in 750 people, mostly males), and that one failed last year. He's been on dialysis since the fall and it is no fun at all. The implant went well, and as soon as they hooked Chester up inside Bob, his body immediately began producing urine. In fact, the urine output was so great, that his body got depleted on potassium and sodium and he ended up with very painful leg cramps. But as of this morning, they got him largely regulated again and the cramps have subsided quite a bit.

Both are doing really well, although Lacey is super duper sore (like a C-Section I'm sure), but she's getting up a little and moving around like she's supposed to to start the rehabilitation. She's scheduled to leave tonight, if all goes well, and then will have several weeks of home recovery. Bob will be in through Friday, and then his life will be filled with several follow up appointments and therapies, etc. a week for the next month to make sure everything is working.

We are so grateful that all went well and that the countless prayers and fasting efforts were heard.

Now on to the foot...totally unrelated by blog worthy nonetheless...

Our Afty Cakes broke her foot last night and just got it casted this morning. It's blue. She'll be in it for three weeks, then a boot for three weeks, then they'll assess. She was out front skateboarding yesterday before dinner and had just finished up and was going to put it away, but somehow tripped up on it and kaboom....broken.

Again.

She broke the same foot three and a half years ago, jumping out of a swing at the park, the week before we were scheduled for our first ever, long-awaited Brown family trip to Disneyland. I had been so bummed about it because I thought our plans were ruined, but later learned that there is no better ticket for getting around Disneyland lines than a broken foot. Seriously, we had it made. We never had to wait in ride lines - they just have you escort your wheel-chaired person to the exit of every ride and you bypass it all. Amazing.

So it's been the long-standing joke in our family that the next time someone breaks a leg, we'll go to Disneyland again. We often joke about who wants to take one for the team. Now we've got to figure out how to make a quick Disneyland trip work amidst the chaos of March. We'll have to see if we can make something work - it's really too incredible of an opportunity to pass up you know - what with no lines and all. Still, the thought of being there potentially during spring break is almost overwhelming - so many bodies everywhere! Maybe we'll just have to do a long weekend and let the kiddos out of school for a day or two. We'll see.

I'm just trying to keep the glass half full perspective. Broken foot = Disneyland. Yes, we are super duper sad that Afty cracked the bone right as softball season is starting. They've had four awesome practices so far and her team is going to be fun to watch. Great coaching, great team, great #1 pitcher. Afty got drafted up to majors this year, so she and Barrett are on the same team again, which is awesome. Since their first game isn't until March 26th, which is about 3 weeks out, there might be a chance that she'll be able to catch the tail end of the season. We'll just have to see how she heals.

So Chester is good, the cast is blue, and Disneyland might be in our future too!

He, he, he...I'm a poet and don't know it...

Thursday

Day 3 on the antibiotic and my chest is still on fire. Pneumonia? Last night Ryan was feeling tired from his long run, and I told him I wish I felt tired from a long run. He laughed. I joked with him that I feel like I'm a chain smoker or something. I was fully winded after walking up half my staircase and had to pause for breathe on the landing. Pathetic, I know. But sadly, all true. The head cold part seems to be marginally better, though, so there is hope.

My big outing today was walking down the street to pick Easton up from the bus. And it was oh so beautiful out. I totally needed the fresh air and the exercise (if you can call it that).

I was only going to have a 2-day work week to begin with since Monday was a holiday, but it turned out to be a 0-day work week. Lots of catch up next week I fear.

Still, I have so much to be grateful for. I just read my SIL, Shari's, blog post about her sweet Tate and his inability to communicate and I bawled my eyes out. She is truly an amazing mom and doing all she can to help her little guy. I hope he has a breakthrough with his speech sometime very soon.

My two youngers are cracking me up right now. It's just the two of them home with me this evening and they have been running laps around the downstairs for about 15 minutes now. I can't believe they are still going. Normally, I would have run out of patience by now and asked them to stop, but really, they're not even bugging me so I just let them run. Funny. It's good to see them giggling their heads off. I guess there's something pretty hilarious in the kid world about running indoor laps. Maybe I should try it. But not today - surely I'd pass out after one loop around the pool table.

Ryan took the two olders for a few hours to tackle the marathon night of softball to basketball, back to softball then to junior high open house. Holy cow...Barrett is going to junior high. I had planned to do it, and was kinda looking forward to being out with the girls for all that actually, but that's OK. I think Ry will squeeze in a run around the track while he waits and hopefully spend some time out on the field with the girls too.

So life keeps moving, and we are keeping busy as always in spite of our less than stellar health. Yesterday we finished Easton's kindergarten science experiment (a cool balloon hovercraft thing I found on the internet), albeit two days late since we totally forgot about it. He had a blast doing it. Rowan's finally getting her 14, 15 and 16 subtraction facts down (after a zillion flash cards), but still hates it. It's hard to see one of my kids not loving the math. Afty finally found the love of reading, and is on Harry Potter book 4 now. She's totally loving the hoops and is now double booked for a couple weeks with softball starting too. Barrett is Miss Social and still excelling at everything and really enjoying softball starting too.

Well, I've been fending off the requests for dinner from the two youngers for about 30 minutes now (to say my motivation is lacking would be an understatement), and I think they are losing faith that I'll ever feed them again. They just came downstairs and brought me a hand drawn map leading to the Brown house cafeteria (i.e. the kitchen) with a plea for food. Hint taken.

I need some air...

Maybe the weather shift? Maybe some random bug I picked up at the grocery store? Or in the temple Saturday night? Or, maybe, just maybe, it was tending to two super sick kids all last week. Hmmmmm....not sure. But I'm pretty much a mess and I'm pretty bitter about it. I already took a turn being sick this winter. It's someone else's turn. I promise, I've been a good girl. Really - getting plenty of sleep, eating well, exercising tons, taking my vitamins. Apparently, it wasn't enough to fight off the crud.

It came on so suddenly. Saturday morning, I felt fantastic. I ran 9 miles, including some good hill work. Super good training run - getting ready for the Mountain to Fountain 15k in a few weeks. Then I spent the rest of Saturday churning and burning through all our family activities and errands and date night, slept great, went to choir on Sunday morning, and by the end of sacrament meeting on Sunday, I had this weird dry cough thing starting. Every hour I felt worse. Sunday evening I helped my folks finish moving all their stuff out of closets and rooms and plastic-ing pantries and such to get ready for the tile demo crew to start early Monday morning. By bed time on Sunday, I knew it was coming in full force.

Overnight, my cough morphed into that serious burning bronchitis stuff, and my head was pounding from all the hacking. Oh ya - I can't breathe either. Minor detail. Sometimes it's kind of important to breathe. I have crazy asthma, like I'm at 70% oxygen or something. Surely, I must be exaggerating because I'm not really sure you can live at 70% without a machine. I don't know. But I haven't had to use my inhaler this much in I don't know how long. Years? I must have needed a little stronger kick in the pants, though, cause the alternating chills and fever have now kicked in too, so I'm bundled up in the warmest blanket I can find fighting off the latest chill attack.

What the heck? All I wanna do is hibernate and breathe. Breathe. Breathe. I think I'm breaking down and taking something stronger than Motrin and essential oils and vitamins and my inhaler. The girls will be walking in the door in 45 minutes and we're off to the semi-annual dentist appointments that we've had on the books for six months. No chance we're canceling, so I've gotta pull it together. I'm thinking dinner will be Daddy Delight a la mode (aka whatever he wants to make) while mama soaks in a hot shower and sleeps. Doesn't that sound delightful?

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OK, OK, I need a little cheese with my whine...

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On the brighter side, Easton finally went back to school today (Rowan went back on Friday) and although he is certainly not 100%, he's back to smiling and happy and enjoying the normal kid stuff instead of sleeping cheek down on the carpet in the middle of the last room he could stay awake in. So that's always good.

And the girls had their first softball practice last night. We're super stoked that Afton got drafted up into majors so she and Barrett will be playing together on the same team. Seriously - so happy about that. The coaches are fantastic and I think they are going to have a terrific season. We have yet to hear from Rowan's coach, but I'm sure the call will come soon. And we only have two weeks of overlapping basketball and softball, so that's all good too.

Well, I hope the masses are fighting the plague and staying healthy. We'll try not to breathe on you. And just FYI - we don't need any more cooties at our house. We're not used to being sick around here and we've met our quota for the decade, thank you very much.

Happy Tuesday.

The Hundred Dresses

I read it last night. It was a really quick read - less than an hour - but such a cute story with a good moral. It was written sixty or more years ago - back in the day when young school girls wore dresses to school and the boys wore neckties. And even though the "school dress" of our time has changed dramatically over the decades, the same school yard dynamics exist among our children today and the same timeless lessons on kindness ring just as true in 2011. Really, I should have read it aloud with my girls, but they were already tucked into bed. They would have enjoyed it too. And more importantly, I'm sure we would have had a good talk afterwards. I will have to check it our at the library again and make time to read it with them. I did give it to Barrett to read today. I hope she finishes it before I have to return it tonight.

On Tuesday night at our Relief Society meeting, our group kicked off our spring service project, called "The Hundred Dresses." Our whole RS was divided up into six groups, each with a fearless leader, and each armed with a cute black dress chest housing this cute book inside. The plan is for each woman in our RS to take a turn with the black chest, read the book (if they want), and return it to the leader within three days with a donated dress inside. If everyone participates, we'll have collected the hundred dresses by late March and will donate them to the professional dress closet at the career development center run by Save the Family, a non-profit organization established to help families get back on their feet. Such a great idea for community service.

Our whole evening was centered on service that we can do outside of our normal comfort circles. We were encouraged to get out into the community more and do some good. It's easy for us to serve in our families and wards and neighborhoods. And sometimes we feel like we do it endlessly. But even so, we need to do more. And we can. Really, I think we can. Even the busiest among us. Even if we do something small, like donate a dress or two or ten, volunteer at a school, help pack some weekend food for hungry kids, volunteer at a charity race, or whatever - a little community service will do us all some good.

So I took the first round with our group's dress chest and book and am excited to return it tonight with a handful of dresses. We're only asked to donate one, but really, I have a number of nice, professional suits and dresses that I could donate and I am happy to do it. I'm sure there is some woman out there who would be thrilled to have something nice to wear to a job interview or new job. Really, it's such a small thing.

Thanks to the good women of the Harris Park Relief Society for coming up with this idea. It was a fun night with the girls for sure and a good reminder for us all.

Sick Kids & a Lost Friend

My two youngers are home from school sick today. Both have sick eyes, croupy coughs, and 102 degree fevers. They make a great pair. Yesterday, my little Easy E got off the morning kindergarten bus and was sad as can be. Tired, weak, weepy. Pretty much a mess. He didn't want to do anything, eat anything, say anything - except "hold me." Poor kid. I didn't realize how sick he was until we drove him out to Imperial Tile to pick out our new master bathroom tile, and he fell asleep on the way and could barely muster enough energy to walk. Ryan ended up lugging him around most of the time. Not so fun with a 5-year old. As soon as we got back, he crashed on the carpet. And Rowan said her teacher "yelled" at her yesterday to stop coughing. Hmmm...not sure about that one.



So after I took the temps again this morning, I asked them both if anything hurt. Easton said, "Ya, my brain." Rowan said, "Me too."

Translation: headaches (or at least I think). So I gave them both a little Motrin for the fever and headaches and hopefully a day of rest will help kick whatever little bug they picked up. Maybe some kind of flu I'm guessing.
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On another note, and a sad one at that, Ryan's long-time former employee and friend, Orlando, whom we fired a year ago after discovering that he had embezzled boatloads of money from us through a whole series of schemes, passed away last night from pneumonia and a compromised immune system.

The saga of the last year is too long and unnecessary to rehash, but suffice it to say that it was a horrible experience all the way around - devastating in so many ways.

Well, yesterday afternoon Ryan took a call from our head handyman, who also knew Orlando very well. He told Ryan that Oly (that was the nickname he went by) was in the hospital and only had maybe a day left to live. So Ryan quickly got in touch with Pete, Oly's nephew, and found out where he was. Ryan let Pete know that he wanted to come and visit Oly and let him know that he forgave him. The family was in tears and so grateful and touched that Ryan would come by and express his love and forgiveness after all that had happened. We both felt undeniably that he needed to go.

So last night, Ryan drove over to the west side and paid his last respects to his old friend. He was sleeping or unconscious while Ryan was there, but Ryan talked to him and prayed with him and said his goodbyes. Then just after 9:00 last night, Ryan got a text from Pete saying that Orlando had just passed.

It's funny how things that seemed so monumental (and were so monumental at the time), suddenly become really unimportant in the grand scheme of things. I cried last night when I saw the text. Even though the end of that relationship was so, so bad, when Ryan and I look back on the whole 8 years we knew Orlando, there was so much good. Orlando was always happy, and had such an upbeat sense of humor. His personality was charismatic and he got along so well with everyone in our office. Truly, he was a great friend to my dad, Ryan's dad, my Aunt Laurie and Lacey, and especially to Ryan all those years. It's just too bad that it ended like it did.

So today we are hoping and praying that he is at peace on the other side and that his family will find comfort in knowing that he is at rest. And now we will move on as well and stop worrying about if and how we might ever collect on the unpaid debts, and worry more about how we can make a difference.

A Hard Day

Yesterday morning after getting all the troops off to school, I headed out for my run. I love Tuesdays, by the way. I love being home, love working around my house, love getting errands done, love getting "caught up" and being with the kiddos. And I love that I can work out at 8:00 am when those kiddos are all safely in class instead of working out at the crack of no dawn (yes, it is still so dark and cold in those wee hours before everyone wakes). I like Fridays and Saturdays for that same reason too, but the weekend always seems to bring so much busyness along with it. So I'm pretty sure that Tuesdays are my favorite days.

Anyway....I ran hard and felt better than I have in weeks. It's nice to finally feel like my lungs are coming back. I still had to use my inhaler when I was done, but I finally feel like I can breath again. After cooling down, I came upstairs with my big glass of ice water in my favorite red cup, ready to head to the shower. As I walked by Barrett's room - conveniently located right at the top of the stairs - I noted that her door was mostly closed, which seemed a little unusual. As I opened it, I smiled knowingly at an un-made bed, assuming that was the reason for her closed door. So I decided that it was a good day to change the sheets and began stripping the bed. And then I saw it.

I'm in her room everyday for one reason or another, and I've seen her magnet board a million times, but still - as I looked at her board - really looked at it - I was overcome with a big wave of gratitude. And love. Truly, I felt blessed to be the mama of our sweet and fun-loving Barrett Ally, who is blossoming into a young woman, trying so hard to choose the right and be a good friend and make good choices. This is her board:

Of all the great young women handouts, inspiring quotes, and other things pinned up on her board my favorite attachment was undoubtedly the well-worn temple recommend, which she uses often. Most weeks, actually. Sure, she makes daily mistakes (just like we all do) and sometimes makes me crazy with her night-owl thing and then dragging so much the next morning. And sometimes I worry that I'm too hard on her or expect too much from her as our oldest child. We moms rely on our older ones so much - how would we ever survive without them? But I hope she knows how crazy I am about her and that I love her to infinity and beyond...and back. She's such a good girl. Truly, I am blessed to be her mom.

But a couldn't finish this post yesterday - as much as I wanted to. I was conflicted in my emotions and gratitude about being such a lucky mom as I tried to reconcile those feelings with how another wonderful mother in my ward must be feeling. One of my dear friends - my visiting teacher, the piano teacher of my kids, the choir director that I am blessed to work with in my calling - tragically lost her oldest son yesterday morning. I can't even imagine her grief. My friend had just gotten the news not long before I showed up for Afton's piano lesson. As I pulled up to drop Afty off, there were a few cars in front of her house and a sign on the door that we couldn't make out, but soon saw that it said, "No piano lessons today." Just then, her next door neighbor - our relief society president and a good friend of mine also - came running out to intercept me. She gave me the sad news and we cried together as we talked about what we might do to help. I was heartbroken for my friend and for the wife and and two little sons that her son left behind.

Oh my goodness, what a hard day. Just a couple of months ago during one of our monthly visits, this good mom broke down in tears as she told me about the struggles her son was facing and what a trial they were going through in their family. We cried together that day and I have prayed for her countless times in the months since then. I have thought about that sweet visit often as I see her. Even on Saturday, after my parenting class that I taught, she and I visited briefly and I again thought of our visit a couple months back. Then today, when I got into work, I listened to a voice mail message from her that she had left for me yesterday morning (before she learned of her son's death) asking me if I could bring some soup for our RS meeting next week.

I am grateful for the knowledge I have of a loving Redeemer who atoned for our sins and our grief. I am grateful to know that his mercy will have to be enough in this difficult time as he bridges the gap between our capacities and deeds and what is ultimately required to return to Him. Keep this sweet family in your prayers.