Another Ending

Over the past four years, Nathan has been taking organ lessons at USU. It is one of those things that he does for the joy, not because he needs the credits to graduate. During that time, we have been able to drive to Logan to attend a number of his end of semester organ recitals. Yesterday was another trip north to attend Nathan’s last on-campus organ recital. He does get to play at Temple Square one more time and he is doing a mini senior recital of his very own a couple weeks after graduation so we aren’t done listening him play some big organs, but it was the last opportunity to meet his teachers and give a big thank you to them for helping him develop a skill that makes him so very happy. It was also an opportunity to take all our college kiddos to dinner and spend some time with them. Neither Daniel nor Nathan have full-time jobs yet, but I know that they are looking all over and will go where the work takes them. That means our short jaunts up to visit them may very well become long drives that necessitate taking vacation time. So, it was nice to be able to spend a few hours will all my crew sans Matthew. Of course, once Matthew gets home, there will be reasons for Logan trips again, but by then the others will likely be elsewhere…

A Whale of a Tale

Nathan is fully engaged in his ward. Which is good. When I was in college, I was all in too, making sure to set aside time for weekly family home evenings and ward prayers and all the ward activities. Not only do you get to meet lots of people that way, but it can be super fun. This week his FHE activity was a photos scavenger hunt. And his team won, with the prize being a bag of Otter Pops for each person in his group. Which he was super happy about. He shared one of the photos that led them to victory and it made me laugh. 

He is definitely not above acting a bit silly when Otter Pops are on the line…or really any time. 😂

College Cooks

My cousin Shirleen lives in Logan. Her kids are all grown and no longer living at home, but she and her hubby, Greg, have welcomed Daniel and Nathan and my nephew Josh to Sunday dinner at her house on numerous occasions over this past year. These boys have also attended dinners with Shirlene and her parents, my Uncle Pat and Aunt Betty, at their care home. Daniel and Nathan will be homeless for about five days at the end of the semester since there is a gap between when they have to move out of on campus housing and when they can move into their off-campus apartment and while she can’t house them for the gap (Her own kids will all be in town so her house will be full. Otherwise, she would welcome them for a few days.), she is ever so kindly allowing Nathan to store his frozen food in her freezer, which means he doesn’t have to haul it down here and then drive it back up the following week.  I’m so grateful for the support my extended family has given these college boys, and they are grateful as well. They expressed their thanks by turning the tables and cooking Sunday dinner for Greg and Shirlene this evening. They are good boys.

Elf Antics

According to Malia, our elf is the best elf. She loves that Jingle Jangle is funny, but not naughty. So many families have elves that make a mess and leave havoc in their wake. Ours is mischievous from time to time, but never in a mean or destructive way. He tends towards humor and creativity rather than leaning towards felony. This year he arrived by air, flying in by paper airplane the first week of December. He spent his time with us fishing, doing some sledding, and giving us all a glimpse of how we would look if we decided to sport a mustache. He even gave Nathan a big Texas mustache so Nathan could decide if that is a look he would consider post mission. 😉 

Malia gets so excited for Jingle Jangle’s arrival each year. She gets so excited by all his antics. And every morning she gets so excited to pop out of bed and search for him.  (I wish she would be so eager to get up for the other eleven months of the year!) She is sad today because she knows that tonight Jingle Jangle will return to the North Pole, although that sadness is greatly tempered by the fact that tomorrow is Christmas. She is the last of my kids and I know that as she gets older her excitement for our elf will wane, but hopefully her affection for him will remain. He has been an important part of our Christmas celebrations for many years, and I hope that as all my kids grow up, they will remember the years he has spent with us with fondness. 

In other news, Nathan won the roommate lottery this year. They all got along really well, enjoyed each other’s company, and had a fantastic semester. They became such good friends that they sent a Christmas card together. Talk about an amazing blessing for Nathan in this first semester of college. I’m so grateful for these young men and the joy that they helped Nathan find in his first semester in college. Hopefully at least some of them will still be around when Nathan goes back to USU after his mission.

Big Time Marching Band

 Daniel has had one of those once in a lifetime experiences. The USU football team went to a bowl game and the marching band got to go. Since I wasn’t there, Daniel is my guest blogger to share his experience.

A little bit of context: The USU football team had the best season in school history this year. First season since the 80s with double digit wins, and first Mountain West Championship win in school history. It was our win in the conference championship that landed us into the inaugural Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl. Because the football team made into the bowl, the marching band was invited as well to come and play for them! 

Our trip to the LA Bowl began on Thursday with getting up at 4:00 in the morning to make sure we arrived on time to our frigid 5:00 am call time in the Laub Athletics center. It was below freezing in Logan at the time. We loaded up tour busses, which had stickers placed on the side for the band and were on the road by 5:40. Thursday was spent in the bus traveling to L.A. Twelve hours later and a large amount of stir-crazy band kids later, we arrived at our hotel by LAX. The bus ride was largely uneventful, except for my first experience with LA traffic. Let me tell you, that made me really grateful that we don’t have any place with traffic that bad in the places I go! Once we arrived at the hotel, we were all pretty much done for the day. A few of the saxophonists in the band got together and played a few JackBox Games, but we were all tired from driving all day and so we went to bed.

Friday morning, we went and had breakfast. The university gave us a stipend of about $100 for food, so I ate at no expense. After that we went to do the only rehearsal we had in LA. It was a rather uncanny rehearsal, as we were on a community college field that felt like a high school field and it was 70 degrees. I had to keep reminding myself that it was nearly Christmas. For this game, we had learned a whole new pre-game show to account for the people that couldn’t come with us and an all-new halftime show. We had set the shows the night before we left for LA, so they were all still very new. That being said, we were able to get them on the field really quickly! We had our rehearsal, and then we went and had lunch. After lunch, it was a little bit of down time before we went to the pep rally the night before the game proper. The pep rally consisted of us playing the fight song and the Scotsman a few times along with a few of our other stand tunes in a battle of the bands format with the OSU band. The place they had us do the pep rally just outside SoFi Stadium was not suited for bands, and so the acoustics made hearing the OSU band hard. But I believe that they sounded good, even if we couldn’t hear it! We went back to the hotel and turned in for the night.

Saturday was the day that most of the event occurred. We woke up, and then had breakfast. Afterward, we packed up the hotel and got dressed in our marching band uniforms, which we would spend the rest of the day in. We were out of the hotel by Noon, and we were on our way back to SoFi. We started by walking into the stadium and finding our seats, and all I can say is that it is the nicest stadium I have ever been in. We had to walk down a ramp that led to our seats. We got situated and discovered that the field was 100 feet below ground level. That made it much cooler in the stadium than in the parking lot. We were served a lunch provided by the Aggie Alumni Association in the Toyota Patio area. We hung out there a bit, then we got all lined up, and then played our halftime show, fight song, and the Scotsman for them. After we performed there, we were shepherded down to the field for our pre-game show. In the tunnel on the way down, we ran into the OSU band, and we ran past giving them high fives and fist bumps and wishing them good luck. We got down on into the tunnels and waited a bit. When we were let onto the field to line up on the sidelines, I discovered that the stadium had some of the best turf I had ever stood on. It was easily the nicest field that I have ever been on! We got all lined up, got the green light and played our pre-game show. Unfortunately, we were amplified throughout the stadium, so the reverb was really hard to play through, but the marching experience was absolutely amazing! 

After pre-game, we went back to our seats to watch the first half. I very quickly discovered that earplugs were mandatory if I wanted to hear anything after the game. The announcer and the sound effects were really loud. We watched the first quarter and most of the second quarter in our seats before heading back down through the stadium to the field to prepare for halftime. When halftime hit, we were treated with the OSU band halftime. The Aggie Marching Band cheered them on quite profusely, and we were probably their biggest fans for a minute. As soon as they were done, we ran onto the field to play our halftime show, which was a reprise of one we had done earlier in the season. We played music from Shrek consisting of Funkytown and I’m a Believer. Once again, the reverb was a problem, but we were successful in working through it and playing a really great show! And once again, I was struck with how nice the turf was.

We finished our show and went back to our seats, where we played our short tunes and other stand tunes when we could. Once again, the volume of the stadium was crazy loud. We watched the third and fourth quarters and we all went bananas when we somehow managed to win the game! The technology in the stadium was really cool, as whenever either team did anything, the stadium’s many screens would change the accent colors of the stadium to that team’s colors and seeing the stadium blue and white with the proclamation that we had won was an exhilarating experience! After the win and the awards ceremony, we headed out to the parking lot where we were able to briefly meet the OSU band. We were fed dinner and we changed out of our uniforms. We ended up driving through the night to get back into Logan around 1:00 pm. It was another 12-hour stint on the bus, but I was glad to be off the bus and in December weather again. I rested that day and then drove home for Christmas that Monday. All in all, I think that the LA Bowl was a ton of fun! It’s experiences and performances like that that drew me back to marching band in college. It was a blast!

Never Too Old for a Snowman

The first snow of the season hit Logan yesterday. Last night Daniel and his dormmates gathered every bit of snow they could from the lawn in front of the dorm to create a gigantic snowman they dubbed Frank. It snowed again over night. The snow was so wet and heavy that it broke many trees which blocked roads and caused damage and difficulties in travel. As a result, the university cancelled all classes until noon today. Daniel and his cronies took advantage of the unexpected hiatus as well as the newly fallen snow and Frank was reincarnated as Big Blue, the USU mascot. 

Last year was like a trial run of college for Daniel. This year is what college should really be like and he is living it to the fullest.

Home and Away

With both Daniel and Nathan attending USU and Kevin and Matthew attending most home BYU football games, when BYU played USU in Logan last Saturday night, it seemed like a good time for Kev and Matthew to take a little road trip. With my dad along for the ride and the game, they drove up in time for dinner with Nathan. The marching band played at halftime so not only did they get to see the game, they had the opportunity to see Daniel march. With friends and roommates joining him in the student section, even Nathan has been enjoying football season

  

As for Malia and I, we were the only two who had a decent night's sleep. All my boys are pretty tired today, but they had a good time so in their opinions, it was worth it.

 

Escape…from COVID

Although this is Daniel’s second year of college, this is actually his first real year of college. Last year he sat in his dorm and did classes via Zoom every day. There were no social gatherings and concerts were only small groups performing and streamed to a virtual audience. This year he gets to go to class in person, meet people, and actually socialize. He gets to play in large ensembles and have an actual audience at their performances. He is finding joy in experiencing college as it is really supposed to be. Case in point, he and some friends went to an escape room today. And getting out of the imaginary locked room was proof that the virtually locked room of COVID is becoming a thing of the past.

 

Fully Engaged

As Kevin and I counseled with Nathan regularly as he prepared to start college, we encouraged him to be fully engaged. Many of his high school experiences have left him feeling wary of difficult people and the difficult social situations they can create. He is completely justified in being emotionally guarded, but we have encouraged him to give college, and the people he meets, a fair chance. He has taken our counsel to heart and has jumped in with both feet. He is meeting people right and left, allowing himself to enjoy their company, and is letting them see who he really is without the carefully created persona he felt forced to wear throughout high school. It is so good to see him finding joy in the friends he is making and being willing to get involved in every social situation he can. I think one of the reasons he needed to do a semester of college before his mission was so he could regain his faith in the human race. And I’m being honest here. His high school experiences left him feeling jaded and completely disillusioned. I won’t share all the sordid details, but he had a rough time in high school. The fact that he likes his roommates and has already trusted them in ways he could never trust his cronies in high school feels like an enormous blessing.

 

This is What Joy Looks Like

Daniel’s first year of college was not really a good representation of what college should really be. With everything cancelled or online due to COVID, it was really just two semesters spent in his dorm doing classes via Zoom and YouTube. He was in several bands, but even those were smaller than normal and had limited opportunities to play. But this year things are looking a lot more normal, which means that he finally gets to march again. He loved marching band while he was in high school and received a stipend to participate in marching band at USU, but the marching band was disbanded last year due to the pandemic. Today was the first home football game at USU which means that after a three-year hiatus, Daniel finally got to march. And he’s having the time of his life.

 

For the Love of Learning

Although I’ve taken first day of school pictures of my kids during their preschool and elementary school years, I never felt a great need to do so after that. In addition to that, the boys were all way too cool for first day of school pics once they hit middle school. And they left so much earlier than they had in the past that I was usually still asleep. So for a variety of reasons, first day of school pics were not a thing as my kids headed into their teen years. But I love my enthusiastic newest college freshman because he sent me a “first day of college” picture to add to the collection. He is obviously extremely excited. I pulled out his first day of kindergarten picture and discovered that they are actually pretty similar: he’s sporting a windbreaker, a backpack and a giant grin in both. Of course, he’s twice as tall now, but other than that, he’s the same excited kid off to his first day of school. 😉

Nathan moved into his dorm just over a week ago and although he was definitely nervous, he settled in much faster than any of us anticipated. Within a day or two, he already felt like the dorm was home. He likes his roommates and they are all getting along really well so far. They are hanging out together, shopping together, attending social events together, basically taking advantage of the many opportunities that college life is presenting them. Nathan is happy and he feels like he lucked out in the roommate area. All his roommates are active church members. Four are recently returned missionaries and the other is the same age as Nathan and is planning for a mission at the end of his freshman year. They are already becoming the core of their student ward and Nathan jokes about them running the ward which is actually not a far stretch as most of them already have callings. In fact, Nathan has two. He is a Sunday school teacher and a ward organist. Nathan has taken advantage of the piano in the common room of the dorm and has met a variety of people who are drawn by the music and poke their heads in to see who is playing. He has learned that setting up a new living space can be expensive and has made going to the store with his roomies to get things like basic food stuffs and cleaning supplies a social activity. In fact, I think he’s been to the store nearly every day over the past week. He didn’t always need to buy stuff but accompanied the others just for fun. Kev and I counseled Nathan to jump into college life with both feet and thus far, he has done just that.

It is a bit bittersweet to see him adjusting to life away from home so quickly. From here on out, his time spent at home will be as a visitor rather than a long-term resident. But I feel like we have been incredibly blessed that his transition to college has been so smooth and that he is surrounded by people that he is learning to trust. Going to classes almost feels like an afterthought to his successful endeavor to move out and live on his own. But as is clear from his first day of college pic, he is overwhelmingly excited about that as well.

 

The Hard Part of Good Parenting

Parenting is not an easy gig. In fact, it is pretty hard. The sleep deprivation that results from midnight feedings and colic is hard. Chasing a mischievous toddler from sunrise to sunset is hard. Convincing a school aged child that homework is necessary is hard. Getting a recalcitrant preteen to talk is hard. Seeing past the surliness of a teen to figure out what is really at the heart of the attitude is hard. No matter what age your children, parenting has its challenges.

For me, today’s hard is a different kind of hard. It is the hard where you manage to survive all the other hard bits of parenting and realize that you did a pretty decent job. Your children turned out to be good, dependable, basically positive human beings with some good life skills, a work ethic and a level head on top of that. And now that you have helped shape those little bits of godliness into beings whom you really enjoy, they move out and embark on their own life journey. And it’s hard.

Both Daniel and Nathan moved up to USU this morning. Daniel has been coming and going for two years so having him pop in and out of our home has become normal but having Nathan leave was a bit of a blow. Of all my kids, he is probably the one who communicates with me the most. He texts and calls all the time, and he has a tendency to “verbal vomit” about everything once he gets home. And FYI, I really like it. I like that my teenager talks to me. I like that he trusts his parents enough to share his innermost thoughts. I like that he trusts and values our opinions. And I like that we have all been able to work together to help him prepare for the next steps in his life.

We have all felt like having a semester of college before a mission would be a good thing for Nathan. It will allow him to have a small separation from home and family when he can come home and call whenever he needs to before the more rigid separation that comes with a mission. But what I didn’t realize until today is that I think I need the baby step in separation as well. Quitting Nathan cold turkey would be much harder. So today is definitely a hard parenting day. But hard in a good way, if that makes sense. It’s a hard that comes because I have a child who is doing exactly what he should be doing, exactly what we have raised him to do. And he is so excited about it.

I have a feeling the house is going to feel strangely quiet for a while.

 

Some Day Soon

As a senior in high school and a kid who gets along better with people older than he is, Nathan has his eye firmly focused on college. While he still has credits to complete before he can graduate, he is filling out applications and making plans for the next step in his education. He is looking at a major in some kind of physics/applied mathematics field. His first-choice college is USU, which is convenient because he has a brother who is currently a student in the USU engineering department. Nathan is also very interested in continuing his music training and he happens to have a cousin who is a student in the USU vocal music department. With a couple of built-in tour guides, a day trip to check out the campus seemed in order.

Today he drove up and met up with Daniel. He saw the music hall and the engineering lab, asked a bunch of questions, met up with Josh (his cousin) for lunch and shakes and the creamery, and asked a bunch more questions. He came home more excited than ever. He feels at home on campus, which is always a good sign. He’s mentally ready to be there now, but he still has some time before he can start his college experience. He has already been in touch with the physics department about what classes he will need to take, how the major is set up, options to specialize as he completes the lower-level classes, etc. so he has an idea of where to start. Now he just has to complete the application process and actually be admitted. He’s a bit anxious about that part. I don’t think he’ll have any problem getting in due to his stellar academic record, but he still has to the jump the hoops.

An Aggie Already

Daniel is not wasting any time. He’s already exploring campus and settling into his life as an Aggie. 😊

Move In Day

Daniel moved into his campus housing today. School doesn’t start for another week and a half, but next week was supposed to be band camp for marching band. Unfortunately, marching band became a Covid casualty this year. His move in day was already set and he figured having an extra week to settle in, learn to get around campus, and look for a job would be good, so he was not bothered. The move in schedule was staggered a lot more this year anyway to prevent a huge crowd of people from arriving on campus at the same time so there were students trickling in over the course of two weeks. Covid restrictions only allowed each student to have two people arrive with them, so Kevin and I drove up to Logan and helped Daniel move in.

When we got home this evening, Kevin asked me how I’m doing. My honest answer is that I’m fine. Sending Daniel on a mission was much harder because I knew (at least I thought I did) that he would be gone for two years and that we would be very restricted in terms of when and how we could talk. With him going to college within driving distance, I know he’ll be able to come home when he wants and we can communicate whenever we want in a myriad of ways. And I’m grateful that he is finally able to get his life moving again. Coming home in April was hard for him. He had to rewrite his life plan and since then, he has basically been waiting for the next part of his life to start. He was anxious to get going and more excited than nervous to be taking the next step. He has a handful of high school friends attending USU and a cousin who is also starting this fall, so he has a social web in place already. In fact, as Kevin and I were driving away, Daniel was already headed out to meet up with his cousin for dinner.

He has already texted us to say that he and the one other roommate who has moved in have a lot in common. He thinks they are going to get along well. I hope he has an amazing college experience.