Seminary Graduation

Brandon graduated from Seminary last night!

Maeser 5th Ward graduates

Brandon, Christine Esplin, Bishop Greg Goodrich, Katelyn Fuller, Scott Thompson 

Bruce is always asking, "Why am I so much taller than all my kids?"
Hm. I wonder...

I think Brandon is pretty awesome!

Brandon's a graduate!

It took a long time for me to make this post because I had to sort through and edit 266 photos that Bruce took of Brandon's graduation. But here it is:

Brandon Jeremy North is
an awesome, spectacular,
Uintah High School Graduate!

(wild applause here)

Now, back at Entheos, in 8th grade, Brandon was not getting such fantastic grades. Unless you count fantastically bad. But he had a change of heart and, just like a switch was flipped, he started getting really fantastically good grades. He made up his mind that he wanted to graduate from high school and do it well. And he has! I don't think he's had any grades lower than a B since 9th grade, and on Friday, May 27, Brandon got to participate proudly in his walk of glory.

Graduation day was a little hectic because Bruce "graduated" from Maeser Elementary too, and we spent the morning helping him clean out his classroom. We got home just in time to shower and then rush off to Brandon's graduation.

ready to go

We got Brandon there a little later than they wanted the graduating seniors to arrive, took Jason to work, and then Bruce and I barely made it back in time to see the graduates marching to their seats to the traditional (and much despised by my children) tune of Pomp and Circumstance. We weren't sure if we'd actually get to see Brandon coming in, but I think he is in this picture:

From where Bruce and I stood (there was standing-room only when we arrived) I thought the boy sitting in the middle of the photo (next to the guy wearing the lei ) was Brandon. When I edited the pics I realized I'd gotten the wrong guy—but look! I'm pretty sure that's Brandon standing right behind him!

Hi-Lites (the top Uintah singing group) sang An Irish Blessing. They stood in a circle around two microphones—which was a good idea, because that meant we could hear them, but it also meant we got another picture of Brandon's back.

There's the tall guy in the middle, and Brandon is the third one from his left. The teacher's name is Mr. Merryweather.

There were three speeches by students, short and sweet (the speeches, not the students), and then the graduates marched forward to receive their diplomas.

Brandon's medal is for participating in choir for two years.

When all the students had received their diplomas there was a quick changing-of-the-tassles (from right to left) ceremony, and then it was all done. Yaayyy for our graduates!!

We had given Brandon my cell phone so that we'd be sure to find each other again. Bruce and I had been standing at the fence on the west side of the stadium to watch the whole ceremony. And when they called Brandon's name and he was walking back to his seat I was waving at him a whole bunch, so I thought that he'd probably seen me. Still, we weren't sure whether he'd look for us at the west gate, or walk to the north gate like they'd told the students to do. Finally Bruce and I headed to the north gate. As we walked northward, still trying to look out for Brandon, Bruce's phone rang; I said, "That's Brandon." And I was right. Bruce asked him, "Where are you?" And Brandon said, "Right next to you." And there he was, just on the other side of the fence from us!  :-)

The tassel, my friend, was blowin' in the wind;
the tassel was blowin' in the wind.

So graduation was pretty awesome, but the festivities didn't end there. Uintah High School has this whole big, all-night Grad-Night thing, and Brandon went to that too. The theme was Grad Night—The Future Awakens.

The party started at 11 p.m. and ended at 4:30 a.m; the T-shirt was his ticket in. They had laser tag, karaoke, dodge ball and volleyball, inflatables (like bouncy houses, etc.), bingo, a cash cube, food, a prize-drawing, and they showed Star Wars in the little theater. So it was a pretty fun night.

Oh! And Brandon got a swell poster to bring home, too:

Someone did a little quick-and-dirty photoshopping to create
one of these posters (with different characters) for
each student who went to Grad Night. 

Brandon had taken this picture, but never quite got around to standing with the storm troopers and getting his picture taken with them.

So I did a little quick-and-dirty photoshopping for him.

He had a pretty fun night at the school. But the cool thing is this:

Brandon graduated from high school!! Yaaaayy!!

And we are very, very proud of him.

A fresh start

It's been ages since I've blogged anything. Mostly because life has been a little weird for almost a year, and I've just been trying to figure things out—including myself. But I'm not ready to kill the blog yet, so I'm making a fresh start. And, since my very, very first blog post ever  was about laundry, it seems fitting that, for a new beginning, I should talk about housework.

Anyway, for the New Year of 2016 I made an outstanding goal: I was going to make my bed every. single. day this year. This is what my bed looks like today at 11:00 a.m.:

It's also what my bed looked like all day yesterday. Not so great. I'm afraid I have to admit that I've only followed through with this goal about four to five days out of seven so far. It's just so much easier to grab my book, lay on the unmade bed, and read for hours at a time. This is so unlike the way I used to be that it's kind of astounding!

When I was eight years old my mom took a full time job. I didn’t worry about it too much then, but I’ve thought about it a lot since I’ve grown up.

My sister Melanie (who was thirteen at the time) says that my parents gathered all us kids together for a family council, and Dad told us that now that Mom was going to be away from home so much we needed to be more helpful in the house. I don’t remember this and neither, apparently, did most of my other siblings. Melanie took up the slack of the housework and when I was old enough to be willing—between nine and eleven—I worked with her. Melanie taught me how to take care of a house.

We did the dishes almost every day. This meant we washed them by hand for a few years until my parents could afford the exciting luxury of a dishwasher. It meant we put away leftovers, it meant we scoured the sink before and after the dishes were washed; it meant we searched the house for dishes so we wouldn’t miss any; it meant we washed all the pans; it meant that we dried and put away any dishes that would create a precariously high stack in the dish-rack; it meant that when the dishes were clean and drying we wiped down the counters, the stove and the table. And then we swept the floor. This whole process is what we called "doing the dishes."

But we didn’t stop with the dishes; we took care of the entire house, at least upstairs, which included the kitchen, dining room, living room, den, and two bathrooms—daily. This meant that we had to figure out where to put everyone’s stuff (often to be yelled at later by our siblings if they couldn’t find their things). It meant that we dusted all the furniture, vacuumed the carpets, and swept and mopped the floors. It meant we cleared and washed counters and tables. It meant we scrubbed two toilets, washed sinks, counters, bathtubs and showers, washed mirrors, and scrubbed two bathroom floors. It meant we cleaned our own bedrooms. Every day. It also meant we washed our own laundry, and did the community laundry, like towels and dishrags. (Luckily for us our grandmother, Vovis, folded all the laundry.) We also cooked dinner two to four times a week. This work that Melanie and I did every day, my kids would consider deep-cleaning now.

Sometimes we deep-cleaned. This meant taking all the books off of the shelves (and there were lots of books!), dusting the shelves, and putting the books back in their places. It meant taking everything out of closets and reorganizing them. It meant cleaning the common area of the basement—a space as big as the living room, kitchen, and one bedroom.  It meant scrubbing walls or degreasing kitchen cabinets. It meant shampooing carpets. It meant waxing and polishing wooden floors. Sometimes it meant washing windows. And, besides all that, sometimes we even canned apricots and tomatoes.

Melanie and I did the regular chores every day. My parents didn’t ask us or remind us, and we didn’t complain about it—not even to each other. We did simply because it needed to be done. We worked together until Melanie got married, when I was fifteen years old. And then I did it pretty much by myself until I got married and moved out at twenty-two.

Looking back I have sometimes wondered if this could all be true because, in addition to the housework (and school), we also had dance lessons every day, piano lessons (and you know  that I practiced a lot!), and jobs. So sometimes I'd get to thinking that maybe I've just been painting myself in a really, really magnificent light: I was such a good girl! Just look at all the work I did! But from talking to Melanie—and Bruce, too—I know that I'm not just making this stuff up. 

I do  have to admit two things though: First, half of my siblings had moved out by the time Melanie got married, so I was cleaning up after six people instead of ten—and none of them were little kids. Second, when you do all the housework every. day. it's a lot easier to do than if you only clean up once or twice a week. I mean, how dirty does the toilet really get after only twenty-four hours? Still, we really did do all of those things and there was a lot of satisfaction in getting it done. 

I kept it up after I got married, too. (Well, except for the laundry. There's no keeping up with that!) Even when I had lots of tiny kids around I kept a clean house.

And look at me now, twenty-six years later: I have discovered that there are chores I just really do not like to do. They are mostly easy things, which doesn't make any sense—you'd think that if I'm going to put a job on my "hate to do this" list it would be something like cleaning the toilet (which I don't mind doing so much). Nope. Not so. Actually I don't like vacuuming. Yes, it's very easy to do and a clean, vacuumed floor makes the entire house look cleaner, but to me it seems tedious; I just don't like to do it any more. A few years after vacuuming, sweeping and mopping the floors joined the list. And my number one, "hate to do this task" is...

...wiping down the table and counters. Don't ask me why. Maybe it's because I know those jobs are easy enough that my kids could do them instead—so why should I have to? Hm. That's one theory.
Or maybe I'm just getting lazy. But the first theory sounds better.

Well, the good thing is that I can still have a goal of making my bed every day, and I can start now. 

So I just stopped to make my bed, and this is what it looks like now:

And, speaking of fresh starts, I'll try to write more too.