Brothers Forever

I was just reminded of something that happened with Evan a couple of weeks ago that I realized I had to get written down so we could always remember it.

It was a Saturday and everyone was bustling around except Evan. He seemed kind of quiet. I passed him on my way to the laundry room and saw that he was taking our Dallin scrapbook down from the shelf. I gave him a little smile and went to do my thing. A few minutes later I came into the family room and saw him sitting on the couch with the book in his lap and tears in his eyes. Oh, to say it was heart-wrenching would be an understatement. I asked him what was wrong and he said he missed his brother and wishes he were still alive. We had a small cry together as I told him that I did, too. I told him that I often wonder how our lives would be different with a 10-year-old in the house and we talked about how Dallin might do things with Evan.

Even now it's really emotional to think about that time we spent together looking through those pictures. Are we so blessed to have three healthy, living children? Yes. Do we still feel a loss in our family, like someone is missing? Yes. And not just me and Michael. We all do.

A couple of minutes into our chat, Michael and Maren happened to be walking by and they stopped to talk with us about it. We all ended up hugging and comforting each other. It was a really special time. It has seemed to me on many occasions, but was confirmed to me that day, that Evan has a real and special connection with Dallin. We are all comforted to know that we will see him again and we'll never be separated again. For Evan (yes, and us) it seems like such a long time away. But, like I tell the kids all the time, it will be here quicker than you think. That's how it always happens. Before I know it I'll be old and gray(er) and ready to leave this life. It's comforting to know that some of my family will be there waiting for me.

Maren's Turn - Age 4

Oh, our beautiful Maren! This girl has changed SO much in just the last couple of months. Everything had been so the same for so long and now we're getting into new (sometimes exciting, sometimes crazy) things with her. It's a lot of fun! Very excitingly...she's grown finally! Half of the clothes she wears are even 4T. Until a few months ago she was wearing 3T and still some 2T. It's been exciting to see her grow out of clothes that she's worn for a year and a half. Ha!

One thing that hasn't changed about Maren is how loving she is. She is usually just a ray of sunshine...saying things to make us feel good, giving physical affection, drawing pictures for us (yes, still of our family...and now Rapunzel!), and helping anyone who needs help. She insists on holding the door open for people to walk out of church or, oh, yeah, anywhere. Even if there are no people walking out at that moment, she'll wait in hopes of someone needing to walk out in the next five minutes, before I yell to her to stop holding the door and get in the car. She is always self-sacrificingly generous with her brothers. Sometimes I'm glad about that. Sometimes I'm worried that she's being and is going to be taken advantage of. It's a hard and a happy thing to watch.

Her favorite movie at the moment is (surprise, surprise) Tangled! Can you blame her? The funny thing is that she is terrified of the non-mother motherly bad lady. (What's her name again?) My girl who once used to sleep nicely in her bed, wanting the lights off and sleeping with the door shut, is now scared in the nighttime because we watched it a week ago. I'm thinking that that wicked lady is one of the tamer Disney villains. So I've been thinking about it lately and I think it's because she's a mother figure to Rapunzel and she's so mean to her. She's sensitive, that Maren. I can't wait for that last movie viewing to wear off so we can get back to normal sleep again.

One thing that has changed with Maren is her listening. Well, now it's not listening so much. Now she's usually got her own agenda so when I'm asking her to do something, she's thinking about what she wants to do and I end up getting frustrated having to say the same thing seven times. Ugh. I'm sure this too shall pass. She REALLY wants to do everything herself right now. She's making her own sandwiches and she wants to unlock the doors and get the mail. She wants to be the DJ on my iPod. Pretty much everything. Do not do it for her!

Maren has been getting a lot of crushes lately. It's so cute...she'll just out of the blue say that she's got a crush on somebody. The other day it was my sister's whole family. "Aunt Danica, I have a crush on your whole family." I love it! That's some serious affection!

Maren is still a happy napper. And she needs it, too. If she doesn't get her afternoon nap, everyone feels it into the evening. I'm definitely on borrowed time but for now everyone is happier when Maren has a nap.

(Yeah, we do super fancy cakes around here - ha ha!) Maren continues to love preschool and dance class. She's super excited for her Disneyland-themed recital next month - and so am I! Songs from The Tiki Room, Pirates of the Caribbean, princess songs, etc. I'll probably cry for just wanting to pack her up right there and jet on over to Disneyland for some real live action. Anyway, there's sure to be ridiculously cute video next month on that!
Maren is getting really good at reading and writing. She even thrilled herself today by reading some signs at the grocery store. It sure is fascinating to watch a child learn to read. And her writing is just fun, fun, fun. She's got the basics down. She's written a few books and always has something to tape up on the wall. One of my favorite things that she's written lately was during Sacrament Meeting at church. She realized that she hadn't brought her scriptures and, not wanting to be loud (yeah, I'm sure that's it - wink), she grabbed her notebook and wrote, "I dot hav mi scriphars". Not bad, though I, for a newly 4-year-old. Oh! I just found the original. Here we go...

Oh, that's good for posterity. I think I'll have to scan some more for my records. I'm really bad at keeping this kind of stuff. Anyway, Maren is the sunshine of the family. Always happy, always helping. Every family should have one. And without her, we'd wither away to nothing - she is so loved!

Evan P.S.

Oh, boy, I forgot one thing that I wanted to mention about Evan that I just have to have recorded! It's about the...

A couple of months ago we were at my mom's house and Evan pulled out a science book to look through and, unbeknownst to us, he found anatomically-explicit pictures in there and some discussion about the birds and the bees. Did we plan to start talking to our 6-year-old about sex right now? Negative. But Evan is a curious kid and he had a lot of questions and would not let up on them. So, Evan had to take him upstairs and explain some things. And then we got home and the other kids were in bed, we had to explain more things. Heaven help me. I thought I had a couple of years to prepare for that...how to talk about it with my child without turning beet red in the face. But now he knows. And hopefully he'll always feel comfortable enough to come talk to us whenever he has questions. Sex talk part one, check!

Evan - Age 6

It's been a while but I'm back (couldn't blog all these months without some decent pictures!) and it's time to do some updates on the kids. We'll start with the oldest.

Evan has been busy since October! He's doing really well in school and has a fun time being there. He and I finished going through the reading lessons we were doing probably two months ago. It took us a little over a year to get through 100 lessons. Ha! We weren't very dedicated. He's a natural. In the last three months or so he has amazed me at how quickly he picks up on new rules to reading and new exceptions to the rules that I hadn't gotten a chance to let him know about yet. He now can pick up pretty much anything and figure it out really quickly and fluidly. It really is amazing to me how easily it seems to come to him. But he sure loves to read.


Not only does he love to read, he also loves to write...and illustrate. When asked what he wants to be when he grows up lately, it is most often an author and illustrator. He creates at least four books a week and we are absolutely busting at the seams with his creations. I recently bought two reams of printer paper that I'm hoping lasts a month. Yikes! But it's fun to see how much more detail and creativity is going into his books now than just a month or two ago. Things sure change quickly when kids are this age.In December he lost his very first tooth...with his siblings and cousins surrounding him at the bathroom sink. Ha! That thing was loose for weeks and weeks and it was a blissful event when it finally pretty much popped out. He has since lost his other bottom tooth and looks pretty dang cute, if I do say so myself.


Evan is participating in the chess club at school (started by two stellar dads from church - thank you!). Even though it starts at 7:00 in the morning, which is before he's usually even awake, he's really enjoying it. Just to prove it, here's a picture from the paper of him on the first day. Ha ha! This is typical Evan. Even if you're having fun, pretend you're not. I don't know why he's like that. Anyway...


Evan and I enjoyed applying for a couple of private schools in the area. Well, okay, Evan enjoyed going to the schools, visiting, having a mock school day and playing on their ridiculously huge and fun playgrounds and I loved the thought of sending him somewhere that doesn't have budget trouble and where he could start a second language and have a well-rounded education better tailored to his needs...but it was stressful with TONS of paperwork, questionnaires, etc. Anyway, the application process for these two schools (Catlin Gabel and Oregon Episcopal School, for my remembrance) took up the better part of my life for two months and Evan came along for the ride with me. Although we didn't get into either two (they had between ZERO and four available slots for 1st grade with a ridiculous number of applicants!), we enjoyed some one-on-one time together during the process. I'm not sure what we're going to do about next year because I'm ridiculously unhappy with our school district and all the things that are going to fall off next year due to budget cuts (less teachers, less special classes like music, PE, etc., less of the good stuff, more of the bad...). I have never been so conflicted about anything. We'll see what September brings.

Evan is a great brother to Parker all the time and a great brother to Maren when he's not focused on being the mean older brother. Ha! He's been praying lately for me to have another baby...a brother who is just like Parker. Yep, not surprised. He loves his parents like crazy and wants to cuddle in our bed every night. This is nothing new as we've always had a hard time keeping him out of our bed. The challenge is getting him to go to bed in his own bed and stay there. Sometimes we jokingly ask him if he's still going to be climbing into our bed when he's 17 and he says, "Yeah, probably." I actually wouldn't be surprised, buddy.

Although he won't admit to liking girls, on his class picture he put hearts around a certain girl's face which gave me quite the jolt back into the reality that I have kids who are going to grow up to be teenagers and want to kiss members of the opposite sex - who aren't their parents! TERRIFYING!

In less stressful news, Evan loves Star Wars although he's never seen it. I don't know how boys just learn about Star Wars by osmosis. He's always asking to see it and I'm always telling him he'll be at least 12 before he does but Michael likes to humor him with things like this to keep him excited.


Evan rarely likes what we're having for dinner, always wants to eat breakfast burritos, pizza or macaroni & cheese (NOT homemade!), and expects dessert every night even though we have dessert only about once a week. He's a good helper...uh...when he wants to be. And he still loves playing with Play-Doh.

I SO Love this Guy

Making Change Happen

I could make this a very long story but I'm going to try to keep it concise. This is something I want to always remember. About Evan's first year in school. It started at the ice cream social a couple weeks before school even started. I met Evan's teacher and happened to ask her how many kids were going to be in Evan's class, to which she told me 28. And though she didn't whine about it, she didn't look too happy about it either. That seems awfully high to me so I chatted with some of my education-educated friends (you get that?) who confirmed that that was a pretty crazy number and hoping that she had a full-time assistant. It wasn't more than two weeks into school when I got to meet with his teacher again and she let me know that there were now 30 kids in the class and she did not have a full-time assistant. I was really getting concerned about this situation.

I came to realize over the next couple of weeks that a) a kindergarten class with that many kids in it can be total chaos, b) the teacher was feeling like she was putting out fires more than she was teaching kids, and c) I was completely unsatisfied with the way Evan's schooling was going thusfar and I needed to do something about it. I know, I know, it was a few weeks into his kindergarten year and I was having issues. It's strange to me, too. I don't know what it is about education. I am just uber-passionate about it. I know that Evan has huge potential and I want him to have every opportunity in life to reach that potential. I don't care what he does with it. As long as he learns as much as he wants to learn and has every opportunity to learn, that's all I want.

So I wrote a letter to the principal and asked her to forward it to the district. I politely stated my concern about there being too many kids in the class without an assistant. I also praised the teacher who I feel is remarkable at what she does. And I asked for someone to get back with me to let me know that they at least read my note and had heard my concerns. A month later no one had responded. And I'd been in the classroom four times since that first letter and witnessed just the saddest scenes. The the teacher trying to get through a lesson with four to six kids totally running amok. I figured that 20% of the class was taking up about 75% of the time in having to be redirected, moved to a different spot, told to keep their hands to themselves, etc. I felt like the kids were at a disadvantage and the teacher was being abused. So I skipped the principal and sent a second letter to the superintendent. Within a day I had a voicemail and an e-mail from him telling me that another lady from the district would be calling me to discuss the issue. Well, she called last week and let me know that the average kids per class for elementary is 27.5 right now due to budge cuts. Ugh, budget cuts. So the idea of splitting the class was completely unrealistic (sounds like heaven to have 15 kids in a kindergarten class, but maybe that's just me). But she said that because of my letter there was going to be a meeting to discuss the possibility of adding an aid to the classroom. She told me she would call me back this week.

Since then I have felt like a complete lunatic. Why? Because I just can't stop thinking about this situation and being really, really disturbed by it. And then I was frustrated that I was disturbed by it. Why can't I just send my child to school and not worry about it like some of the other parents? Why all the inner turmoil? Seriously, one day I was bawling my eyes out over the whole thing. I was talking to all kinds of parents...parents of TAG kids, parents who decided to homeschool, parents who are happy with the school system. I was entertaining all kinds of options, including but not limited to homeschooling, private school (we make little enough to get a scholarship - not the other way around), moving to another state with better education, moving to another district in hopes of getting into the charter school I'd like him to go to, um, yeah, hold on for this one, telling them they can let the janitor go and I'll do his/her job in the evenings so they can afford another teacher. Yeah, like I said, I felt like a complete nutcase. Happily, I have calmed down the last few days and realized that until I am able to make any sane and rational decisions I will just continue on with what I've been doing...sending Evan to kindergarten and then doing stuff at home afterwards. We do reading and he's halfway through the 1st grade math curriculum and we'll do experiments and stuff. That way I know his brain is getting the challenge that it needs.

Anyway, I'm back down to earth now and got a call from the district lady tonight. She let me know that they have put a cap on the number of kids in Evan's class and if anyone moves in they will find another school close by for them to attend. They are also bringing in a full-time aide starting Monday. Hallelujah - I'll take it! Someone to help with crowd control so the teacher can actually get some teaching done. Someone to break the ratio down from 30 to 1 to 15 to 1...more individualized time for the kids. More time for the teacher to get to know them and their individual strengths and weaknesses. I'll just take it.

So I learned today that I can make change happen. And the crazy thing is that what I did, being so passionate about something that I fought this hard, goes completely contrary to my nature. I almost always have the feeling that everything will be fine. Everything will work out how it's supposed to. Not this time. And I'm glad I didn't. I'm glad I stepped way out of my comfort zone to help the students and the teacher who couldn't do anything to change the situation themselves. I'm grateful to have learned that I can do hard things. And that what happened today is a solid reminder to Evan of my love for him.

Family Photos 2010

Last weekend we were treated with a visit from Jen Korth who did our family photos again. She is from Utah and was here for less than 48 hours to do photos for 11 families! Wow. She is amazing and I can't wait to get these printed and framed and on the wall. Finally Parker will be represented!

The amazing thing to me is that I seriously didn't think there would be any good pictures. My kids were not cooperating. Evan either had an uber-cheesy smile or a fakey, dorky looking one. Maren wasn't showing any teeth and wasn't doing a real smile. And Parker just plain wouldn't smile at all. He was a fussy dude. And to get five people all looking semi-good at the same time? I've never had it happen in any of my pictures. Boy was I surprised and thrilled with what she got. This is a great family tradition to keep! Some of my favorites...

I don't even know when she got this one. I wasn't aware that Parker ever smiled for her. I love it.


Michael and I are in love with this picture. It shows her outward beauty but the thing about this girl is that she's even more beautiful on the inside.

Ha ha! Caught you, Evan. Again, don't remember her getting him to smile, but... She must be a worker of magic.


*Gasp* Poor Parker...did that Jen actually talk to you??


What a little cutie.


I call this his GQ picture. I do love how his shirt and the truck go together.


All right, I know that Parker is getting one more picture on here than the rest of them but can you blame me? He's totally edible! And please take notice of that chin. Delicious.


I can not look at this picture with dry eyes. These are the most wonderful kids in the world and I am so blessed to be their mother. Oooh...I just love them like crazy. I think I'll go wake them up and tell them all about it. Ha! On second thought...

Some Things I Forgot...

Well, I realized, after I did those last posts about the kids, that there were some important things I forgot about that I wanted to always remember. And here they are:

Evan: He loves to write books. We have a shelf that has probably 25 books that he's written on it. His last two have been particularly good and he prides himself on the fact that he's starting to make them funny. He asked me if I think all kindergartners like to write books and I told him they probably do. Then he asked if I thought all kindergartners wanted to be librarians when they grow up. I said I didn't know but asked him if he wanted to be a librarian and he told me yes. I thought that was so cute! Michael later clarified that he wants to be an author. Ha ha. Evan Bybee, you can do anything you want to do!

Maren: She loves to speak "Spanish". Yeah, no, Michael hasn't been teaching her (sore spot, sore spot!). She just busts out her own Spanish, Maren style. And she sings song in her very own Spanish, too. It's hysterical. What is not hysterical is when you ask her a question and she answers you in "Spanish". And you ask her again repeatedly and she repeatedly says, "blondo" or whatever the word may be (they always seem to end in "o" or "a", which I think is fitting). I have to beg her to answer me in English and it can get quite frustrating sometimes. Ha ha! We have been calling the things she wears under her dresses "underwear covers" forever because I wasn't sure if they were bloomers or not (was thinking that maybe bloomers came closer to your knee or something). So when I finally started calling them bloomers, Maren said, "Is bloomers how you say underwear covers in Spanish?" Okay, Mikey, time to start schooling this girl! My gringo-laden accent is not going to do much good in teaching her Spanish!

Maren loves to draw, but she pretty much only draws one thing. People. But not just any people. Our family. Every time. Our family. All six of us. We must have 30 pictures of our family taped on various doors around our house, all thanks to Maren. She LOVES this family. And she mentions how much she loves her family each time she draws us. Tender.

And speaking of the love, I know I've mentioned it before but it deserves mentioning again. She is SOOOOO complimentary and loving. She is always saying things like, "You're the most beautiful mom in the wierld" (purposeful misspelling there). Maren is just full of nice things to say about people. You always feel good when you're around her.

Parker: He throws things. Well, everything, kind of. If Maren's all girl, Parker is definitely all boy. I have to sweep the kitchen floor about three times a day because of the food he throws when he's eating. And I'd like to say that he keeps his other throwing to soft things like Nerf balls and stuffed animals but, no. He throws hard objects and sharp objects, too. He's definitely dangerous. That's his rotten side.

Then there's his sweet side. That includes that he says "thank you" when we give him something or help him with something. He says "diaper" when he's got poop. When I start to open it I count to three and as soon as I fling it open he shouts "poo poo", laughing hysterically about it all. He's also starting to run but it looks more like a horse trot at this point and I think it's adorable. He just tears around the corners of the house at an angle that makes him look like he's going to fall right into it but he hasn't yet. Rough and tumbly, that one.

Sleep Apnea

This is a post a long time in coming. For years I have been concerned about Michael not breathing while he's sleeping. Yes, he snores but that didn't concern me. It was when he stopped snoring that I got scared. I probably noticed it for the first time five years or more ago. Every once in a while I'd ask him to talk to the doctor about it but he didn't think it was that big of a deal (he hardly even believed me when I told him he snores!) or he'd forget when he'd go in for something else. Once I pretty well grabbed his arm and marched him into the doctor's office and told him everything. The doctor made an appointment with a sleep clinic for two weeks from then and I was at peace. A couple days later Michael was laid off from his job. No job, no insurance, no trip to the sleep clinic. That was several years ago. Apparently Michael was the butt of some jokes at the Father & Son Campout and when I heard about that, it really fired me up. Truthfully, I was angry because I knew something was really wrong, I was mad at myself for not making something happen earlier and I was upset that people were laughing about it. So I forced the issue again. And this time we got our sleep study.

I went with him to see him get all hooked up. We had been told that there were going to be a lot of wires and I had prepared myself. But I clearly had NO IDEA. There were probably 12 wires hooked up to his head and face, a pulse oximeter on his finger, two things up his nose, one over his mouth, two bands around his chest and two wires connected to each leg. And that's only the stuff I can remember. If you look at the tangling of wires on some of these pictures, it really astounding. Even though Michael was mentally prepared for that, sleep did not come easily.

And now the interesting part...the results. Michael was in bed for 6.6 hours. Of those six hours he was asleep for 4.8 hours. Of those 4.8 hours, he was only breathing for about half that time. That's right...half of the time he was asleep he wasn't even breathing. He had about 45 apnea events per hour, which, by definition, is not breathing for 20 seconds or more. He had no REM sleep and his lowest oxygen saturation was 82%. A healthy person's oxygen saturation is between 97% and 99%. He was pretty concerned about 82%. He was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea. Finally I felt relief. I had gotten my husband taken care of before something catastrophic happened because of his apnea.

Michael now uses a CPAP machine when he sleeps. It's so quiet that I don't even realize it's on and Michael feels like a completely new man. Gone (well, except for on Sundays) are the much-needed three-hour naps on a pretty regular basis. Good-bye to frequent headaches. Hello to more energy, happiness and time spent awake!

Michael may have a few contributing facts to his apnea, one being a long uvula (look it up). That may require surgery in the future but they're checking him regularly to see how big of a role that plays. Important to know about sleep apnea is that it is not only people who are overweight who suffer with it. I have a very, very petite aunt who has it. It can also affect young kids. I'm really grateful that I took matters into my own hands to get Michael the help he needed. Sleep apnea can literally take years off a person's life as well as creating all kinds of other havoc with the body. I've finally gotten done what I needed to do all these years and I am at peace. It just took me getting a little bit mad. :-D

Parker's Glory Moment

Hmm...time to get a new picture of Parker because this is the only recent and decent one I could find. Ha! Well, the other two kids got their 2 minutes of fame so I decided Parker needed his, too. What's new with this charmer?

Have I ever mentioned that he is just cute, cute, cute?? From the hair that sticks straight up to the dimpled chin to his cute smile with his few teeth, we can't get enough of him. He's a fantastic walker now and speeds it up every day. He has some seriously great dance moves, including shoulder shrugs, squats, bird flap arms and stomping. Oh, it's hysterical and this reminds me that I've just got to get it on video. Hopefully that will be coming shortly!

Parker is getting really great at communicating. His spoken words are just Dada, Mama and ball but he can probably do ten signs and can now pick them up after me just showing him once or twice. That's fun. So yesterday he didn't know the sign for shoes but today he did it for me. I've said it before and I'll say it again...kids have amazing brains!

What's not fun about Parker right now? Well, only one thing and that is that he gets into everything. And then he takes that everything and he scatters it about the whole house. I seriously can't keep up with him right now. A lot of times I just ignore it because he's keeping himself occupied and I need the time to get things done. Other times, though, I have to strap him onto my lap with a book to keep him out of mischief.

We love our Parkey boy! Our family certainly would not be complete without him.

The Preschooler

(This is Maren's trademark pose. Michael asked the other day what's up with the head cock. I don't know!! She's a girl?? So cute.)

And here's our lovely Maren. She started preschool a couple of weeks ago with our friend Christina, who was Evan's teacher last year. Yes, Maren is only three. No, she doesn't need to go to preschool. But all year when Evan went she asked when it would be her turn. She and Evan are such different kids. I knew she would just love it for the social aspect and I was right! She's already trying to make sleepover dates with her best friend from school. Ha! So, a few tidbits about Maren...

She is all girl. Seriously. She loves lip gloss. I went to put mine on the other day and had to ask her where it was. She knew right where it was. I finally got her her own. She also loves to do her hair and will spend 15 minutes in the bathroom spraying it, combing it and putting clips in it. Now, the finished product is usually pretty interesting but one time it did look good enough to take her out of the house. :-) She sprayed my hair today (water) and combed through it and loved every second of it. She kept telling me, "Good job sitting still, Mom" and gave me a mirror to look at the front and back of my hair.

Maren must learn things by osmosis because I feel like I'm not teaching her anything. She surprised me the other day by being able to dial a friend's phone number. I told her the numbers and she dialed. Probably not all that impressive but the fact that I've never pointed to a number six and told her it was a six and she seems to know all the numbers...I was happy. Same with letters. She's been writing her name for a long time now and writes Mom, Dad and Evan. But the other day she told me she was going to write Peyton's name, her friend from school. She said "Peyton, p-, p-, P!" I told her that was right, good job, and walked away to get something done as she wrote the P. I wondered what would become of that but I was pretty sure it wasn't going to go much of anywhere else. A couple of minutes later she came up and excitedly showed me her paper where she had written, "P A T N". Wow! I couldn't believe it. She'd sounded it out and did a great job! This kind of mothering is working for me. Ha ha!
Maren does not want anything to do with light when she's going to sleep. And she shares a room with Evan, who must have some light or he's too scared. Oh, boy. It's been a challenge lately. For about a week it was downright ugly. Maren would be screaming that it was too bright with the laundry light on (like we'd been doing for months, mind you!), Evan was upset because Maren wouldn't be quiet so he could sleep. Finally I'd let Evan go sleep on our bed so that I could turn off the laundry light so Maren would go to sleep. As soon as I turned off the light she let out this deep sigh, "aaahhhhh..." like now she was in heaven. So I had my mom make some sleeping masks. They came in the mail but were unfortunately too tight and were threatening to squeeze her eyeballs out her nose. Finally Michael came up with this...

Her bed is covered on three sides and the wall on the fourth. In the picture it looks like the stairs aren't covered but they are! She calls it her bear den and it is dark, dark, dark in there. I pretty much can't see anything in there and that's just the way she likes it. I'm not sure that she and Evan could be any different. I love variety!

Maren is absolutely full of spunk and personality. She loves everyone, is helpful and friendly. She's also incredibly loving, especially with me and Michael. She is always expressing gratitude for being a family. Oh! And the other day in Nursery they were talking about their bodies. Maren raised her hand and said, "When we are resurrected our bodies will be perfect." A ha! Too right, Maren. I love that little brain of hers. She's smart, funny and sweet. The complete package. We love you, Mareny!

Already?

Yes, already. I have a kindergartner. Me...not excited. Evan...ecstatic. He'd been bursting at the seams for the last couple of weeks before school started in anticipation of the big day. His first backpack, new shoes, learning lots of cool stuff in a real school...without his family. What is there not to be excited about?

Now that it's been a few weeks, he still loves school. His teacher is wonderful and he's making new friends. Luckily I've been able to pull out a little bit of information from him every day about what they did. I've enjoyed helping in the classroom twice so far and I'm glad to have the opportunity (with a friend watching Parker!) to do that once a week. So, what's Evan been up to??
I think he's a brainiac. At his kindergarten assessment he pretty much blew them out of the water, speeding through the letters and their sounds, sorting colored shapes like a robot, and they had to stop him at 103 when they asked him to count as high as he could go. They could've been there a while still. It was fun to watch. I think I've said it on here before but Evan is a deep thinker. He doesn't care to just know the top coat of information. And when he asks Michael about complex scientific things, Michael really explains all the nuts and bolts. Sometimes Michael will explain something for half an hour when we're supposed to be eating. But Evan eats it up and seems to really understand. I think I'll look like an idiot next to him when he gets older. :-)

Evan is tender. He still thanks Heavenly Father for Parker in every, single prayer he says. He was also very sad when our cockatiel flew away and in every prayer since then he has asked that Jango just be safe even if we never get him back. If he's watching a Disney movie and there's a scary part, he'll run around the wall into the "office" and just peek around until it's over or he'll start up some conversation with me. It's so cute. I'm glad Disney movies are still scary to him. I'd like to keep his innocence as long as we can.

This boy is a creator. For his aunt's birthday we didn't really have a gift but he wanted to take something. He decided to make a treat and he planned and put it together all by himself. It was bread with melted chocolate, peanut butter, jam and whipped cream inside. He made them, cut them up and put them on a plate to take. And you know what? They were a hit! He really loves to help in the kitchen and he loves coming up with his own creations.

We love, love, love our big boy! This kindergarten stuff sure has thrown the family for a loop but we're really enjoying walking him to school each morning and hearing his fun stories when he gets home. Since we're in the walking zone, this is the only year he will be able to ride the bus. I let him ride it home so he can have that experience. He loves that, too. And I love when he's getting off and all the other kids are yelling, "Bye, Evan!" He is a treasure to our family and we are all so loved by him. Love you, Evan!

Me and My Luck

What an absolutely ridiculous day. I'm going to tell you about it. Some details will seem strange until you read to the end. Things you should know...

This morning while cleaning the kid's room I saw a very strange-looking spider running around. I quickly grabbed a glass and put it in there so that Michael could see it when he got home...just because it really was that weird looking.

Later that day I took the kids to my sister's house for "Danicamp". They had all sorts of fun getting camp names, making treats and crafts while I was supposed to go to Winco. However, Winco is right next to Kohl's and I've had an itching to go to Kohl's for a few months now and check out their clothes. You see, I haven't had any new clothes for over three years and I'm feeling really, super frumpy and gross. And I certainly can't go to Kohl's with three kids. What fun would that be? So I decided that I'd run in there quickly, maybe half an hour, see if I could find anything uber-cheap and then be on my way to Winco. Well, a couple hours later I was headed to the check-out with a bunch of stuff. And something hit me. We don't have the money for this. So I should put this down and walk out of here right now. And I don't have the luxury of wasting two hours of my day and that's what I just did. I just about put down the bag and started bawling as I walked out of Kohl's. Then I bucked up and realized that I really needed to have some new clothes...I couldn't be this disgusted with myself anymore...and that I would figure it all out. Plus, I had 45 minutes until I needed to get back to my sister's so I could do a quick Winco trip.

Yeah, right, you're thinking, huh? Yeah, right, is what I thought as I got into the car, too. There was no way that was going to work so I headed back to pick up Parker for his nap. Winco would have to wait for another day (it had already waited about five days, mind you). When I got to my sister's house we sat and talked for a few minutes before i left. Parker found their phone (baby magnet!) and was playing with it. Yes, I'm cautious about him with the phone because I don't want him calling 911 but my sister is and absolute no-baby-with phones! kind of gal. She reminded me about the time that I said Maren would never call 911 and then promptly did at my mom's house. I took the phone away from him and we headed home.

That was my morning. Now to my evening...

We'll start with me trying to get stuff done. I was in the laundry room, filling up that dryer when Evan walked in with a strange look on his face, handed me the phone and said, "I think it's 911 or something." I get on the phone and, sure enough, it was a 911 lady who wondered if I had an emergency and since I didn't have an emergency she needed to know what had happened. I started to explain to her that my baby got the phone...and I was cut off. All of a sudden she wasn't there. I was still connected but she was gone. I figure either she thought I was an idiot for allowing my child to call 911 for no reason and hung up on me or she had a real emergency to attend to. Either way I decided it would be best for me not to call back and reiterate that I did not have an emergency since I had already told her that and I didn't want to start the whole cycle over again.

About five minutes after the phone call there was a knock at the door. I figured it was the police so I opened the door without checking to see who it was. Not the police. Pest control salesgirl. After talking for a minute I let her know that my husband would need to talk to her about it, that he'd be home in probably 30 minutes but that it was probably a no because we don't really have any pest problems. Just as she's turning around to leave, Michael pulls up. Welcome home, honey! I'm pawning the salesgirl off on you! So as he's talking to her on the front porch, Evan's yelling, "Dad, what kind of spider is this? Dad, come look at this spider we caught today!" And Michael isn't really listening to him...just saying, "Just a minute, Evan, I'm talking!". Ha! Well, Michael also lets the girl know that we really don't have any pest problems so she should look elsewhere for customers. And she leaves.

Evan finally gets Michael's attention and they start looking at this spider together. We're only at about two minutes after the pest girl left and there's another knock at the door. Uh, police this time. Yes, I'm the idiot who lets her baby touch the phone. No, I do not have an emergency. I guess I should be glad they check, just in case. (Found out later that the pest control salesgirl thought we had called the cops on her. Ha!) I close the door on the policewoman and Michael is commenting on the spider, "Whoa, this is the weirdest spider I've ever seen. Where did you find this? In the kid's room??? Look at those fangs." And then, what I feared, he ran to the front door with the spider in a glass saying, "I've got to find that girl!" Oh, boy. She hadn't gotten far and happily came back to the crazy family who called the cops on her, opened up her flip chart with spider pictures and declared our spider to be a brown recluse. *Gasp* There was lots of talking, sharing stories of the horrors of brown recluse bites, studying the nasty devil in our glass, and finally Michael decided that, for the good of our sweet children, we must pay through the nose to have the pest control services done. I couldn't say anything. It wouldn't have done any good. And it was a brown recluse, you know. I don't want my kid's skin to be eaten away by poisonous venom. Goodness!

So I just shuffled back in the house gloomily thinking about what that was going to cost us and decided that I guess I'd better take those clothes back to Kohl's after all.



*Post-script: Michael did some more research and found it to actually not be a brown recluse or even a poisonous spider at all. He called and canceled the service and I took the tags off my new swimming suit!

Angels on Burnside

I have a miraculous story to share! It goes like this... Yesterday Michael had to drive 30 miles to work in a different clinic. When he got there, he emailed to let me know that the car was having some trouble and finally gave up the ghost as he pulled into the parking lot. Great! We just got the darn thing fixed (um, twice) and spent hundreds of dollars doing so. And now something else is wrong. Later he let me know that his manager had AAA and they could tow it 30 miles, which would just make it to the mechanic. Great! Towards the end of the day he let me know that she had checked with AAA and the fact was that they would tow it three miles. No good. In the end this is the way it shook down. She jumped started his car (I guess the alternator was dead and wasn't charging the battery), he hoped it would make it home and she followed him as far as she could before she had to turn off.

For the Bybees it wouldn't happen any other way than this: one block after she turned off, the car was acting funny and died again. Michael quickly turned into a church and tried to get into the parking lot. There was an incline to get to the parking lot, though, and the car didn't make it up. He was stuck with half of the car on the sidewalk and half in the driveway portion. On Burnside. For those that aren't familiar with Portland, Burnside is about the last place you'd want to be stuck. All sorts of shady stuff goes on on Burnside. So, Michael told us that after sitting in the car for 15 minutes, looking around and thinking about his situation, he decided to try to push it up the incline and get it parked in the parking lot. Remember, folks, we have no cell phones. Ha! Try he did, but to no avail. And here's the blessed part. A truck with a husband, wife and two teenage girls drove by and must've seen him either trying to push the car or seen that the car was stuck halfway into the driveway. They turned around, drove back and pulled up next to him. The man helped Michael push the car up into the parking lot and Michael asked to use his phone. (I guess this is going to be a semi-long story but I really want to have every detail documented for us to remember later!) Michael called and was giving me the options, including riding the train home or me stopping by Auto Zone, buying an alternator and driving it out to him. Although that didn't sound like much fun, driving 25 miles away with the three kids and waiting for him to do all this car work on Burnside, we decided that was the best plan. As Michael was giving me details of where he was, his rescuers were telling him that there was an Auto Zone just down the street that they could take him to and asking if he had a method of paying for the alternator right then. Yes and yes! Michael informed me on the phone that he had made some new friends and they were going to take him to get the alternator. As the man took out Michael's old alternator (Michael said he really did almost all of teh work), the wife called Auto Zone to make sure they had the one in stock that he needed and since there was only one, she put it on hold.

So now they've got the alternator out and they're ready to go. Everybody piles into their big, tall truck. The truck is running, ready to go. Michael throws his work bag onto the front seat because he's going to have to hoist himself in and realizes he should just grab his wallet out really quickly so he's all ready when they get there. He goes rummaging in his bag, where his wallet always is, and it's not in there. What?? No wallet. No money. Michael says, "You're not going to believe this but..." The guy then replies with, "Well, what are you waiting for? Get in." Michael is dumbfounded and the guy tells him that he knows Michael is good for the money and that they will pay for it for him. Are you seriuos?? I asked Michael how much the alternator cost (I'm completely clueless about car stuff!). NINETY dollars! $90. Nine-zero. Almost 100. And these complete strangers (oh, yes, angels) paid for it. Then they drove him back to the car and put the new one in for him. When the phone rang and it was Michael calling to let me know that it was in and he was headed home (I had no idea about what all had gone on), I feared that maybe it was his new "friends" and they were holding him ransom or something. Ha! My little mind plays through ridiculously paranoid scenarios sometimes. Well, Michael made it safely home to report all of this to us. Unbelievable.

And Evan's response was the best: "That's the most amazing story I've ever heard." He really, really was astounded. And then that sweet, perceptive little boy figured out something wonderful and said, "It's a good thing you couldn't push the car up the hill, Dad, or those people wouldn't have stopped." He was right! There would've been no reason to stop, passing a church with a car parked in a spot. And then Michael told us something that he'd skipped over when he told us the story the first time. He said that before he got out to push the car up the incline, he said a prayer and asked Heavenly Father for the strength he needed to push the car into the parking lot. What a great teaching opportunity that was for us to teach our children that our Heavenly Father is all-knowing and he cares about us so much that sometimes he doesn't answer our prayers the way we want. We reminded them that even though we may think something is good for us, Heavenly Father always knows what is the right thing for us at the time. And at that time the right thing was NOT for Michael to have the strength to push the car. Heavenly Father knew he wouldn't have been rescued by these sweet angels. It's a miraculous story, if you ask me. And it even happened on Burnside.