Bethanyology

Two trips to AT&T Park in a week!  That is seriously unusual for us.  But the week after our free giants game was free opera day at the ballpark. This is one of the amazing perks of living here–free world class arts events.   And we got to see Verdi’s Aida.

We almost took the kids, but I think it’s good that we waited till they’re a little older.  Not because of the content of the show, which was fine, but because of the lateness of the hour.  We didn’t get home until after midnight and they simply wouldn’t have been able to stay awake and be happy that late.  Aunt Kim volunteered, unasked, to babysit at her apartment that evening and made it memorable for them with macaroni and cheese, strawberries, chocolate, and a golden sunset viewed from the roof of her building.  Then they all sacked out on her floor until we came to pick them up.  Aren’t we lucky?

Speaking of lucky, isn’t it amazing that I got to marry a man who likes opera?  Colin loves just about all styles of music, but I’ve been particularly impressed at how much he appreciates opera.  Even more than I, most of the time.  As we sat in the stadium, Colin wearing his new Giants t-shirt from the week before, the man in front of us laughingly commented that I must have tricked him into coming by making him think he was going to a baseball game.  It took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about, the concepts of tricking him and him not liking opera were so foreign to me.   When I finally caught on, his benign comment made me love Colin even better.

We attended with Colin’s parents and a friend from church, which made it all the more fun.  Sonja brought Subway sandwiches and cookies and we brought water and cookies, so there were plenty of cookies for everyone!  The official attendance headcount was over 32,000 people in the park and it was really neat to look around at everyone in their casual clothes eating baseball food watching a transcendent opera.

I’d never seen Aida–never even heard the story till I read the synopsis online a few days before.  The story is fine, the music was great, but the visual parts of it were my favorite.  The costumes and sets and lighting were really, really cool.  Bright, intense blues and golds and elaborate, memorable wigs were the order of the day.  The sets featured an ever-growing Egyptian hieroglyph that looked like an eye.  All on a humongous screen with a background of the bay and a gorgeous full moon.

Tags: aida, at&t park, babysitting, baseball park, costumes, date, free, Giants, Kids, opera, san francisco, san francisco opera, simulcast

Last night we had a stake Relief Society meeting that combined a service project, dinner, and watching the broadcast of the General Relief Society meeting.  Three of my favorite things in one evening!  Thanks to all the people who helped make it happen.

Our service project was very simple, but (as one of the ladies pointed out) something we could do to actually touch peoples’ lives.  We made hygiene kits that “provide disaster victims with basic items necessary for health and cleanliness.”  We loaded our gallon ziplocks with the items assembly-line style, rotating through the line more than once.  I’ve done this several times before, and from experience I now know that toothpaste is the item that invariably runs out first, as it did last night.  And my mother-in-law says that the best place to buy a gross of unbreakable combs for these projects is Overstock.com.  For future reference, I think it would have been best to have several “loading stations” or assembly lines for the kits, rather than one assembly table where the sisters rotated through.  But it all went fast enough and I think everyone enjoyed visiting together while we waited in line as it was.

Then we had a delicious meal of taco salad with bowls made of tortillas fried by our amazing Spanish Branch sisters.  Yum!  And we had a layered jello salad dessert that got somewhat mixed reactions, from “oh, we are so Mormon eating Jello” to “wow, doesn’t this look beautiful?!”

Then we moved to the chapel for the broadcast, where the General RS Presidency and President Monson spoke to us.  Sister Beck spoke about understanding who we are and our roles and how to set priorities from our past, saying that next year we’ll be studying the history of Relief Society.  I’m really looking forward to seeing the curriculum materials for that.  Sister Allred spoke touchingly about the atonement and our roles as women.  Sister Thompson spoke about loving each other and loving Visiting Teaching.  And our prophet moved me with his words about not judging or criticizing each other and having charity.   I loved his very visual story about the woman who moved into a home and noticed her neighbor across the street hanging out her laundry and complaining to her husband every day that her neighbor didn’t know how to get her clothes clean.  One day she looked out the window and excitedly showed her husband that her neighbor had finally gotten her wash clean and wondered aloud how she’d done it.  Her husband said that he’d gotten up early that morning and washed the windows.  It was a modernized and pointedly applicable version of the Savior’s “mote in your brother’s eye” story.  And President Monson delivered his message with compassion and humor and the Spirit so that it touched deeply without offending.

This broadcast always makes the preparation for General Conference smoother for me the next week.  The interesting thing about these General RS broadcasts is that I almost invariably have an unusually challenging day the day of that makes it really easy to make an excuse not to go.  I never want to go when I get in the car to go to these meetings, but I want to want to go so I do it.  Is that mixed up enough?  Surprisingly, or not, in retrospect I’m always more than glad I went.  I’m almost always happy I came as soon as I arrive.  It’s just getting there that’s hard.  Note to self: it’s worth overcoming my “I don’t want to leave the house” attitude to go to Relief Society.

Tags: broadcast, disaster relief, general conference, humanitarian aid, meeting, prophet, Relief Society, service

Today is our first picture day at school.  I want to be all relaxed about it and just let him go in regular clothes and uncombed hair as usual.  But Sonja reminded me that “this is for posterity” and it occured to me that this photo may show up in any number of places, including his year book someday that will most certainly be dragged out by the news when he runs for President of the United States!  Now I’m tempted to be all angsty about it and dress him in his sport coat and tie.

I think I’ll resist temptation and settle for approving his self-chosen outfit (no stains, please) and sending him out with his dad for a haircut before school.  After all, this is for posterity and we want a school photo that looks something like him at school, right?

We got to go to the Giants game on Friday!

I entered all the kids’ names in a drawing at our public library a few weeks ago, and Heidi’s entry won!  I’d already forgotten about even entering when Colin called me as I drove back from dropping Degen off at school and said that the librarian had called informing us of our good fortune.  So, we picked up our four free tickets and started planning.

Here’s the irony: Heidi won the tickets, but she didn’t go.  And we all could have gone together because kids 2 and under can go free if they sit on their parents’ laps and we had four tickets.  And at first I intended to take her with us to enjoy the spectacle.  But I had a couple of days to think about it, and realized that the game didn’t even start until after her bed time and that she’s 1 1/2 years old and WIGGLY!  She’d be miserable sitting at the top of the bleachers being forced to sit on my lap the whole time.   And once Grandma and Grandpa offered to babysit I was sold on the idea that she’d be so much happier being spoiled at home than being cramped at a stadium.  And in retrospect, I think we did the right thing.  So, thanks for the fun Heidi and I’m glad that you got to have ice cream with Grandpa!

I made a picnic for us to eat at the park, and Maggie helped me make caramel popcorn for the trip (Cracker Jacks replacement, you know).  We brought water and juice boxes and some cookies and we were good to go.

We left really early, straight from picking Degen up from school.  I think it took and hour and a half to get there and park, and then we had to find a bathroom for Maggie (ahh!), which took another 20 minutes.  I’m sure the man in front of us in line who was in the one-stall bathroom for what seemed like 10 minutes must have had a good reason for not letting her go first and for taking so long.  But may I appeal to anyone who happens to have a small (say, 3 year old) girl behind them in line doing the potty dance and who thinks they can wait a few minutes more to let her cut in line?  Please?

Once the potty emergency was successfully managed, we moved on to the walking and waiting part of the game.  We didn’t know it beforehand, but apparently the Giants were giving out free T-shirts to the first 20,000 people in the stadium, and so there were HUGE lines to get in.  We got in line just before 5 when they opened the gates, and got to our seats around 6.  The kids amused themselves and the others in line by jumping and spinning and dancing and singing to themselves.  And all four of us got bright orange Posey T-shirts!   The people next to us in line were veteran Giants game-goers and told us we HAD to take the kids to “the Coke bottle” and told the kids they could play baseball, too.  We’d explained to the kids before we left that we were going to watch a game, not PLAY baseball, and Maggie loudly informed the kind lady of that fact.  Undeterred, the lady explained that there’s a kids’ field next to the big Coke bottle where they let you swing a big bat and hit a plastic ball.  The kids were sold and Colin and I weren’t sure we were glad and half hoping the kids would forget about it since it would almost certainly involve waiting in more long, long lines.

Our seats were WAY up high in the highest section, but we had a great view from behind home plate.  We had our picnic while we waited for the game to start, and I was so happy to not pay the $6 price for a $1 hot dog.  Can you believe that a cup of hot cocoa cost $5.50 and a churro cost $4.50?!  Shocking.  If we’d bought our hot dogs there instead of bringing our own, it would have cost at least $24 for the four of us (and we had two apiece, so it would have been $48).  And then drinks would have been another $16 and a treat another $16.  And if we’d paid for our seats… For the other families we saw there, this is a multi-hundreds of dollars event.  Wow.

The SF Opera chorus sang the National Anthem, which we all loved.  And a little kid Heidi’s age said “Play Ball!”  Degen and Maggie loved watching the mascot, a giant seal, dancing around and at one point riding around the park in a 10th Anniversary Prius.

I was surprised at how well both kids followed the game once we explained some basic vocabulary like pitcher, batter, base, plate, strike, foul, ball, and umpire.  Degen was enthusiastic in his cheering for the Giants, his team.  Maggie watched the pitcher carefully to see if the batter would hit the ball this time.  They were both shocked at the man a few rows behind us who heckled and booed the other team in such an unsportsmanlike manner.

About the seventh inning we decided that the kids would never forgive us if we didn’t visit the very-visible Coke bottle and packed up our stuff to brave the lines.  Upon finding that we were first-timers to the Giants, and the kids first-time baseball fans, the elevator attendant sent us to the service desk to retrieve orange “First Time” certificates with our names on them to commemorate the experience.  While we were there Colin and I noticed all the advertising for the “Designated Drivers” program where you get a free soft drink if you promise not to drink alcohol while at the ballpark.  It was too late in the game to sign up, but we thought it would be funny another time to sign up since we don’t drink alcohol anyway.

The Coke bottle fans area was as great as promised, with surprisingly short lines.  I don’t know if it was the late hour of the game keeping kids home or that we went there so late in the game, but it wasn’t crowded at all.  Typically, Maggie was daredevilish about wanting to go on the biggest slide as quickly as possible and my cautious Degen wanted to watch see several kids get down safely before he would try the smallest slide.  In the end, both were so pleased that they went down again with great gusto and took their Dad with them (see Maggie’s orange T-shirt/dress under her sweater?).

Just before the end of the game, we went to the kids’ ballpark and let them play, which turned out to be a highlight of the whole baseball experience.  Degen loves this picture where his white ball looks like a streak and the woman behind him looks amazed by his impressive hit. Maggie used the tee and ran the wrong way around the bases and loved it, and Degen was pitched to and hit the ball and ran “super fast!” and loved it.

Thanks to the library for a great evening out with our family at the ballpark!  And thanks to Heidi for the tickets and to Grandma and Grandpa for keeping Heidi happy while we were gone!

Tags: activity, baseball, Family, Giants, outing, picnic, slide, sports

Last Monday for Family Home Evening we had a lesson about prophets and General Conference.  Keep in mind that our kids are 1, 3, and 5 years old, so our lessons are always quick and interactive.  Here’s what we did:

Opening Song: Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam (Heidi can enthusiastically say “BEAM!” now, so we sing it a lot–”We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet” would be equally appropriate)

Opening Prayer

Lesson:

I had one of the kids hold up a picture of the First Presidency (Pres. Monson, Pres. Eyring, and Pres. Uchtdorf) and asked them to identify the Prophet and President of the Church.  They pointed him out and I asked one of them to tell us his name (“President Monson!”). One of the other kids was wiggling, so I gave her an old Conference issue of  the Ensign to hold and show everyone–President Monson was on the cover, smiling, and we talked about how he loves children and wants us to be happy.

I explained that the Prophet is the one who Jesus Christ has called to lead the Church, and that when he wants the whole Church to know or do something, he tells the prophet.  I asked Colin if he knew any scriptures about prophets, and he opened to Amos 3:7 and helped one of the kids read “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.”  Colin explained the verse to everyone.

Then we read a scripture about prophets from  D&C 21:5 that says “For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith.”  Colin and I chatted a bit with each other about what “patience” means in that verse and the kids got bored.

I planned to have our family look at a talk from President Monson from the most recent General Conference and decide together what we could work on this month to do better at following the prophet, but the attention span had been exhausted and it was time to move on.  Maybe we’ll do that part this week instead.

Activity: Follow the leader around the house

Closing Song: Follow the Prophet (Children’s Songbook)

Closing Prayer

Treat: Oatmeal cookies Grandma baked earlier in the day

I’ll try to come back later and add links and pictures, but the Church web page is apparently having technical difficulties at the moment.  I can’t get to anything but the scriptures right now!  I guess if you can only get one thing, the scriptures are the thing to get.

Tags: church, Family Home Evening, FHE, general conference, Kids, prophet, scriptures

Heidi is learning to talk quickly now, picking up several new words a day. It’s a relief us and to her to be able to ask her a question and get answers we understand…most of the time. But one of her new “tricks” is to talk with her mouth closed. With her lips tightly sealed and cheeks puffed out, we hear something like “mmm-mm-mmmm hmm.” It’s funny to watch, until you realize that she’s getting really frustrated because she expects us to understand what she’s saying!

I just heard Colin upstairs announcing to the kids “Glue is not food!” Degen did use a glue stick for his homework yesterday–one of the girls is probably tasting it. Good thing it’s non-toxic!

Maggie is very independent, and lately has been challenging my requests with “I don’t want to.” Today during family scripture study she said she didn’t want to read when it was her turn. After some negotiation, she settled triumphantly for reading two verses instead of her previously assigned one.

Tags: comedy, funny, homework, Kids, learning to talk, scriptures

It’s nine in the morning and I’ve already missed an appointment!  The plan was to go to the PTA meeting, but I hadn’t arranged with Colin to watch the kids and didn’t really think about it until 8:39 and by then the 8:30 meeting had already started and it’s a 15 minute drive away.  Hopefully I’ll keep up better the rest of the day. Hey, I’ve fed and dressed everyone and I’ve gotten a load of laundry going.  Mostly a good start.

Speaking of schedules, I think my earlier post should have been called “ideal” rather than “typical.”  I rarely get dinner on the table that early, and I think that night I got it together closer to bedtime, which is also fairly late quite often.  But it’s good to have a schedule to shoot for even if you don’t hit it exactly very often.

Last night Sonja helped me cut out the pieces for the pajamas I’m making for Heidi for Christmas.  My mom always used to give all us kids pjs for Christmas every year, often making them herself, and I’ve continued the tradition in our family.  Sonja and I went down to the fabric store on Monday when the patterns were on sale for $2 and picked out a pattern that would work for all the kids, plus possibly Maggie’s Halloween costume (she wants to be a doctor this year).  And flannel happened to be on sale, so I bought the fabric for all the pjs while we were there.  Last night I figured it’d be a good idea to get going on the project while I was still excited about it and Sonja helped me lay everything out and cut it out, which is almost invariably the toughest part for me.  It was fun because, like my mom, she’s very skilled in getting things straight and accurate and saving fabric.  I think she saved about 1/2 yard over what the pattern required!  Pretty amazing. I LOVE the fabric we found–Heidi’s is a brown polka dot, Degen’s a robot print, and Maggie’s has frogs and butterflies.  The colors all coordinate, and they’ll be in the same pattern, and it’s going to be so cute!  I just hope I can get it all done.  Four months seems like a long time till you have to work only during nap time and after bed…  I have no idea how my mother did it.

Tags: christmas, halloween, holiday, pajamas, routine, schedule, sewing

Degen asked if he could put a joke on my blog, and I said yes. Here it is:

Why did the chicken cross the banana?
Because he wanted a somethin’, somethin’, somethin’ machine so that he could make everyone say “somethin’” so he could say “nothin’!” Just “brawk brawk brawk” and then he would now say “brawk brawk brawk.”

I love 5-year-old jokes.

Tags: Kids

I thought it would be fun to archive a “typical” school day for an afternoon Kindergarten mom.  Of course, this is only week three of Kindergarten, so I may not know what a normal day is like yet.  Here’s what I got so far:

6am Exercise (I’m trying to make this typical, anyway)

7am Get kids dressed and fed

8am Help Kindergartener check his backpack for his snack and homework and put it by the door

Start laundry

Shower and get dressed

Plan the day

Practice piano

11am Pile kids in the car and drive to school (we don’t have buses)

11:30am Say goodbye at Kindergarten gate

Either go home s or run errands (grocery store, bank, etc.) then go home

12:30 Lunch

1:30 Put girls down for naps

Start dinner

Tasks around the house or run errands if someone else is home to watch kids

45 minutes of downtime if I can get it

2:30 Leave for kindergarten pickup

3:00 Pick up Kindergartener and discuss his day as we drive home

3:30 Set him up doing his homework and supervise while  helping girls transition back to wakefulness

Read

4:00  Play with kids, chores around the house, work on dinner if needed

5:30 Dinner

6:30 Kids bedtime routine

7:00 Bedtime

7:30 Playtime!

I’ve really enjoyed the structure of having Kindergarten every day.  It gets me out of the house daily, for one.  And I really like having the one-on-one time with the kids.  Sometimes Heidi is taking her nap when I do Degen’s drop off, so it’s just me and Maggie in the car on the way home and I get to visit with her.  And often the other two are still asleep when I pick him up, so I get to have him to myself on the way back.  It’s precious time when I get to hear about them and their likes, dislikes, and generally get to find out more about their personalities.  Lucky me!

Isn’t giving everyone the day off of work a funny way to celebrate the amazing work ethic of the average American?  And I swear that when I was a kid I was confused by the name of the holiday and wasn’t totally sure we weren’t celebrating a second Mother’s Day.  Degen asked me yesterday when we were talking about how he doesn’t go to school on Labor Day, what it is exactly that we do on that holiday.  My only answer was “pretty much we just don’t go to work or school that day.”  I really didn’t know where Labor Day started or even how to celebrate it, and when Colin snidely remarked about how it started as a political maneuver by President Grover Cleveland to pacify some labor union over someone dying in a strike once upon a time I decided I had to find out a little more about why we get today off in the USA.

Where did I go to investigate?  Wikipedia, of course.  The Wikipedia said the following:

It became a federal holiday in 1894, when, following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland put reconciliation with the labor movement as a top political priority. Fearing further conflict, legislation making Labor Day a national holiday was rushed through Congress unanimously and signed into law a mere six days after the end of the strike.

What?  How could I be ignorant of such a dramatic story that started a holiday I “observe” every year?  Wikipedia’s sources included links to a PBS Newshour segment that says this:

The movement for a national Labor Day had been growing for some time. In September 1892, union workers in New York City took an unpaid day off and marched around Union Square in support of the holiday. But now, protests against President Cleveland’s harsh methods made the appeasement of the nation’s workers a top political priority. In the immediate wake of the strike, legislation was rushed unanimously through both houses of Congress, and the bill arrived on President Cleveland’s desk just six days after his troops had broken the Pullman strike.

1894 was an election year. President Cleveland seized the chance at conciliation, and Labor Day was born. He was not reelected.

In 1898, Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, called it “the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed…that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it.”

The Wikipedia article also linked to the US Dept of Labor which had this to say on the holiday’s history:

Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.

Hmmm…the Department of Labor sure glosses over the history of Labor Day’s passage through Congress, no?

Anyway, while I believe the people must have the right to organize themselves in a free country, I’m generally not a fan of labor unions.  And I’m really not a fan of politically strong-arming or compromises made in election years in order to get a union to vote for you (or not tell people to not vote for you).  I am a fan of hard workers, of recognizing accomplishments, and the American Dream.  And I am a fan of a day off near the end of summer.

So today, since we’ve got the day together as a family regardless of the origins of the time off, we did some playing.  Sonja and I took advantage of a Labor Day Sale and did a little frugal shopping for Christmas (yes, I’m already thinking about Christmas).  Then we all went to a local burger joint for lunch and headed to the cheese factory 20 minutes away and enjoyed the sunshine and the pond with some lovely strangers who shared a fishing pole with Degen.  Just before we left, Sonja discovered one of her favorite earrings had dropped somewhere during our adventures and we headed back to the burger joint where the management had found and saved her earring in case she returned for it.  Thus, a celebration was in order and ice cream cones were ordered for everyone.  Heidi had her first all-to-herself cone (strawberry flavored), Degen had rocky road, Maggie orange sherbet, Colin mint chocolate chip (arguably his all-time fav), and I had chocolate chip cookie dough.  Now that we’re home, Degen is playing Xbox, Maggie is using a small bud vase as an instrument, Colin and Heidi are napping.  Very pleasantly un-labor-y if you ask me.

It won’t last much longer.  I have about four (maybe five?) loads of clean laundry to fold and put away, a bathroom to clean, and a dinner that I think I’m not actually going to make.  This week I need to sort through kids clothes (again!) to pull out the ones that don’t fit.  I really want to get going on some sewing projects this week; my advent calendar, quiet book, and Christmas pjs are the ones that keep poking at my brain.  And I HAVE to do something with those berries we picked in the next 24 hours.  Plus, I just took on the Emergency Preparedness team lead for Degen’s school and already have a meeting with his Principal coming up (I spent three hours this morning doing online training for that role).  And I want to work on filing, finances, and Foomusic.com.  Good problems to have, no?

Tags: Family, fun things to do, Holidays, politics