As of Late

 I have so much catching up to do on here from previous months but thought I'd jot down some of the current happenings.  

Will is filling out his mission papers.  We are just waiting on the doctor's office to mail us back the physical form and then set up the appointment with the stake president.  We are hoping for an early August departure but we'll see where and when he goes soon.  It's an odd thing to think about being so close to this new season in Will's life.  

School is going well for him and he has just a month left.  

He and Isaac got their wisdom teeth out two weekends ago.  They had a Friday off so we headed down to the base early in the morning and they had them removed.  Their personalities were only magnified under the anesthesia.  Will was very quiet and calm.  You could barely even tell he had a procedure done and within an hour he was back to his normal self.  He ate mostly normal foods, even eating fries on the drive home.  He used his medicine to keep the pain down but didn't need them very much and didn't really complain about anything.  Isaac was goofy, cracking jokes out of nervousness before the procedure.  When waking up his jokes just continued.  He said such goofy things.  They had a hard time knocking him out to begin and during the surgery he woke up briefly so they cranked the medicine up high which resulted in a very loopy, nauseous Isaac.  He barfed quite a bit on the trip home.  The nurses had told the boys they could eat anything they wanted and Isaac was determined that he would eat a burger and fries and even after barfing wanted us to drive to Burger King.  As expected, he didn't eat any of it because he couldn't keep anything down.  

His recovery took longer and he required a bit more medicine and stayed home an extra day from school and then needed to take medicine throughout the day while at school.  The whole experience mimicked not only their personalities but their fortunes/luck in life.  They both have their own challenges and weaknesses but I have to admit, life seems to come easier for Will.  According to Mike, when Will turns over a rock he finds gold coins and when Isaac turns over a rock he finds creepy spiders.  

Another example of this that we are currently working through: Will took the SAT twice.  He got a great school the first time and an excellent score the second time.  He did so well that he got invitations to most of the ivy league schools to apply to their school.  He also got invitations from Khan academy to be a peer tutor for them and help other students get ready for the SAT.  His awesome score did not come without a lot of preparation.  He is a really good student who diligently studies and he is not someone who would just show up to a test without any kind of preparation.  We purchased an SAT book when Will was a freshman or Sophomore and he spent countless hours reading the book, taking practice tests, and carved out hours out of every day over the summer and weekends to study.  His score was well-deserved but saying that I can't deny that learning comes naturally to Will.  He understands new concepts easily and quickly and test-taking is a strength.  It's just always been a gift.  

Isaac, on the other hand, does not have the same natural gift.  Isaac has straight A's.  He's also a really good student who puts in a lot of time and effort to get the grades he has.  He probably is just slightly less dedicated to school than Will.  He also has to work harder than Will for the same types of grades.  In ninth grade he would wait for Mike to come home from work and the two of them would go down to the quiet basement and do Math together for an hour each night.  Now he's taking Pre-Calc and it's a breeze and he regularly comments on how he wishes he had taken advanced Calc instead.  I'm proud of him for not giving up and putting in the work to get to where he is.  Isaac is a really smart kid.  He's just in Will's shadow and it's hard for him.  

Isaac took the SAT last year and did well.  He got a slightly above average score.  He was pretty disappointed with it.  He spent all summer studying, doing all the things Will had done, and took the test again way back in March.  His score was supposed to come out while we were on our trip to Okinawa.  All of his friends started texting asking what his score was (they all got their scores) but he got an email saying that there was an internal review and he would not be getting his scores back for three weeks.  The test was the first test taken as a paperless test and he said that he somehow was given seven extra minutes of break that the rest of the test takers didn't get.  It's been five weeks and he hasn't received his score.  After countless emails with no answers other than that some scores were under review and some had even been canceled, we finally called them last night at 10 PM our time to inquire further.  They assured him that his test was not one that had been thrown out and that he would receive his score within six weeks.  

Oh brother.

The poor kid.  He's nervous that after all the waiting it will come back as a less-desirable score.  I'm praying and hoping that he will be satisfied with whatever happens.  

So, on to Eli.  He's 15!  Eli is just wonderful.  We love him.  He's never cared about his personal style other than to say what he doesn't like.  For instance, I haven't had much luck finding jeans or shorts that he'd wear other than joggers or athletic shorts.  The fabric of the jeans have always bothered him. Only recently has he decided that he wants to try other styles.  He's been wearing his hair differently and asking for a specific kind of shoes and clothes.  For his birthday he took his birthday money and went thrifting with his friends and then asked for a specific adidas shoe.  He's got great friends, and this is the first place we've lived that has had a big group of kids his age.  It's been so fun to watch him mature and grow.  The older he gets the softer he gets--more controlled in his emotions, and more tender towards me (giving me hugs and saying he loves me). 

Piper is still struggling in a lot of ways.  A lot of the world's messages are sinking in despite our best efforts to shield her from them.  Her body is growing beautifully, exactly as it should, but she feels unhappy with the added weight around her hips/belly and uncomfortable about the other new developments.  She is both anxious about the changes and excited.  This week she was grabbing her belly fat and making a yucky face to indicate her displeasure at it and I told her that any time she had that inclination to view her body that way she should immediately recite in her head something that she was grateful for that her body could do for her.  She was grumbling about my request and all the sudden she started choking.  She was choking on ice and Mike, who was standing next to her did the heimlich maneuver.  I think since it was just ice nothing tragic would have hopefully happened but that ice was lodged in her throat pretty well and it didn't come out immediately.  It left all of us a little shaken.  Later that night she said, "It just reminds me how precious life is."  We talked about how lucky she is to have this life to live with a body that allows her to do that.  She's been journaling a lot about her feelings and screaming into her pillow when her anger flows.  

Piper recently had a student-led conference at school.  Think Parent-teacher conference minus the teacher and minus a discussion of grades.  Mike and I both went because it was an hour away and Mike offered to drive for me.  Piper had prepared a presentation about her learning, strengths, weaknesses, and goals.  It was interactive and excellent.  I was so proud of the time she put into making her presentation so thoughtful.  Each student had 20-30 minutes to present with four students in the class presenting quietly to their parents at a time.  The teacher just stood back and smiled and welcomed us to the class while the students did all of the presenting.  After, she took us to the Art, P.E., Japanese, and music classes where she also had to do some brief presentations.  Mike and I were grumbling about having to drive an hour for a 20-minute presentation but honestly, I'm so glad I made us go.  It would have crushed Piper if we didn't attend and being able to give her that attention and time to share with us felt crucial.  We ended up having to take Felicity out of school for the day because the only times available for the presentation were during drop-off or pick-up but the school provided supervision on the playground so we left Felicity to play while we roamed the school with Piper and then ended the day by checking the boys out early and driving everyone home.

Felicity is doing well, though, she is pushing back with her emotions as well.  She used to be a "yes" person about pretty much everything, cheerfully doing whatever anyone wanted her to.  She didn't get too bugged by Piper's stronger emotions very often either but recently, I've seen an increase in "no" and a lot more fighting between the two.  Her responses are not always as pleasant as they used to be and she likes to ignore Piper which drives Piper bonkers.  Felicity says, "I don't want to talk about it" and then won't respond at all and Piper feels this deep need to talk everything out and have her voice heard so when Felicity won't respond, there are a lot of tears and hurt feelings.  It's exhausting.  

Felicity loves school.  She loves everything about it.  Her two teachers are amazing and I couldn't have asked for a better pair.  We've never had a boy teacher before and we were missing out because Teacher Michael is so special.  Felicity gets very discouraged when she makes a mistake.  It cuts her deeply and she tearfully says, "I'm sorry" for simple things like reading a word wrong.  Teacher Michael is so good about telling her that no "sorry" is necessary and helping her feel good about her progress and offering.  At home, we've been saying on repeat, "I'm allowed to make mistakes.  Mistakes help me learn.  It's okay not to know everything yet.  I'm doing my best."  She gets this terrible need to say, "I'm sorry" from me.  

I swear, parenting these girls allows me to heal little Adrianne.  I feel like as I repeat, "You are perfect just as you are right now and you are allowed to make mistakes and grow," or, "I know your feelings are confusing.  You are allowed to have emotions and we will work through them together" I'm really just reassuring little Adrianne that she is safe and loved and OK.  

Anyway, back to Felicity.  She is happy and has so many cute little friends with so many birthday party invites that I can't keep going to all of them.  We often stop at the park on the way home from school where all of her friends gather and one day she was playing with her friends, leading "the floor is lava" and this tall boy from Kenya was watching from a distance.  He went over to his "helper" (or nanny) and said, "That girl--she looks cool.  I want to play with her and I'm going to introduce myself to her."  He went up to her and asked to play and even though he was two years older, they got along perfectly.  I went to pick up Felicity from school the following day and saw this little boys waiting to the entrance of the school for her!  His break ended and he started up school again and their school days haven't lined up since then but it was cute that they struck up this friendship.  

Mike is doing well.  He's working hard on finding people to review his book and putting a lot of time into his social media accounts, which is painful for him.  He's working on other books in his free time and finding that he's more and more convinced that he wants to write when he retires.  Work is going well and he enjoys it but is ready to retire from the military as soon as we can responsibly afford to to be done.  He got a CPAP machine this week and isn't entirely convinced that it is making a difference.  I like that he doesn't snore anymore but I'd like him to be happy and comfortable.  I'm hoping it will get better over time.  

I am doing good.  My depression medication seems to be working.  I still have low days and plenty of anxiety but I feel like I bounce back quicker from those days and I'm able to process the emotions much easier.  I'm able to step back and say, "This response is one from past trauma and not actually needed for this moment." I can do my mindfulness and other brain work to get myself past the feelings much better than I was able to before.  I'm on the lowest dose possible and feel good that I have seen improvements on this small amount of medicine.  My biggest complaint is that my headaches have gotten worse.  I'm not convinced that it's from the medicine but the timing lines up with it so it probably is that.  I'm hoping the headaches will settle down in a few months or that I'll figure out betting management of them.  

Primary is still really hard for me.  I find so much joy in the personal moments I have with the children and glimpses of why the Lord wanted me in the calling.  I've grown in so many positive ways and learned that I'm actually a really good leader and Primary President.  But, the bishop continues to ignore me and even tried to shame me in a ward council meeting last week, shooting my opinion down abruptly and unkindly.  It's too long of a story to write on here but Mike shared with the bishop during one of their bishopric meetings that I was feeling frustrated and unsupported and rather than ask how we could figure out a way to sit down and talk through things and find a better way to work together, he just said, "Well, I think we should release her."  I feel really disappointed by that response.  I've had a lot of thoughts and feelings about it actually but ultimately, I've decided that I know what I've given and I feel satisfied with that.  If I get released I'll be both really sad as well as relieved.  It has caused a lot of frustration and hurtful feelings and not having that weigh on me anymore will be welcome. I feel a little abused but I've done my best.

Welp, that was a really long post, long enough that I don't think I'll add any photos.  Just words today.