Changes. Hard, but not always a bad thing.

A week ago, our LDS Stake made some major boundary changes, dividing our ward and creating two new wards in the process. One of the divisions runs between me and my BFFs, aka The Sisterwives. They all live on the same corner, so they`re together in the new ward, I`m out here by myself. I commented on my Facebook page, and later it occurred to me that my non-LDS friends probably have no idea what that means. 



An LDS Ward is the local unit - with geographical boundaries. How large an area it encompasses depends on the density of the LDS members. In Arizona, the ward I grew up in is only about a square mile. Here, our ward included the towns of Prunedale ( more a rural area than a town) Castroville, Moss Landing, Marina and part of the military community housing on Ft Ord. We had about 700 members on the books, with about 400 "active" members; people who come to meetings and activities regularly. Several wards together make up a Stake. Our Stake boundaries are essentially the Monterey County lines, we have 12 wards. When a member moves to a new area, they don`t "shop" for a ward, they attend the ward for that geographical area; lds.org has interactive maps to help figure out which ward they should attend. New members are welcomed into the "family" and instantly have a crowd of people who have their backs, even if they don`t know anyone`s name yet. 
A Bishop is called as the leader of a ward. His job is to oversee the physical and spiritual well-being of all of the members of his ward, whether they come to church or not. Of course, he has people called to help him, but with a large ward it is still a daunting task. As with all other "callings" in the LDS church, this is not a paid position. He still has a regular career and a family to take care of. He is usually called for a period of 5 years or so, then will be "released" and a new bishop called. 


I have lived in many wards in the church in Arizona, Utah and California. I have never lived in a "bad" ward, though people assure me they exist. Most of my wards were good wards: where people were freindly, helpful etc. Then, I`ve lived in a couple of great wards, where we were like a giant family, with a lot of love for each other. Our ward here was like that. We were very diverse: well-off and not, military and civilian, Korean, islander, middle-eastern, white and just about every other color. But, we all love each other and we had many great traditions, just as a family does. 

When we are baptised into the church, among other things we are charged to love one another, to "bear one another`s burdens that they may be light" and to "mourn with those that mourn and to comfort those that stand in need of comfort". Willingness to do this is what makes a ward great. Because you truly learn to love those whom you serve. It also means that this is not a Sunday-only church, throughout the week we are helping where we can to make sure that known needs are met. That doesn`t mean there are no problems, people are still human and imperfect, but overall there is a feeling of love and "we`re in this together". Like a family, we don`t pick our ward members, we learn to love them as they are.

As the LDS population in our area shifted around, partly due to old housing at Ord being razed and new areas built, we had wards in our stake that were tiny, and a couple that were the size of ours; very large. So to reduce the stress on the bishops and to allow them to lead and serve ward members more effectively, they redrew ward lines to balance the membership out better, and created two new wards. It`s really a good thing; we can serve and help one another more easily in smaller wards, fewer needs will slip through the cracks. 

Realistically, we all still live in the same houses, just as before. The Sisterwives and I still have kids in the same activities, and the only thing that will change for us that we will be worshipping on Sundays in different buildings. But, it feels like someone separated our family and that part takes a bit of mourning to get over. 

Teachers

When Meghan was about two years old, my parents came and spent a week with us.  Just before they came, I had bought Meg one of those wooden puzzles with the illustrated letters of the alphabet.  Meg loved it, and was pretty quick learning how to put it together.  When Mom came, she sat and played that several times with her, teaching her the names of all the letters.  I hadn't attempted that, I figured two was kind of young.  By the time Mom left, Meg knew all of her letters.  She was very excited about that knowledge and would point out all the letters in signs all over town and tell us what they were.

She knew,on some level, that letters had to do with reading. She would ask how to spell words from time to time and I could see the little wheels turning.  Sometimes, though, she would inform me that even though I spelled dog D-O-G, she spelled it her own way, which would be some random combination of letters.  She was very stubborn about it, "no, I do it my OWN way".  I told her that it was great that she had her own way, but if she wanted other people to know what she was writing, she had to spell her words in regular English.  For the same reason, I couldn't teach her to read.  She had to do it all her OWN way.  I wasn't in any great hurry, she was only four at the time.  But, it seemed so silly that a kid who knew her letters at two, couldn't grasp the reading thing.

She started kindergarten, with a wonderful teacher, Mrs McCabe.  She was impressed that Meghan knew all of her letters, and asked if I had tried to teach her to read yet.  I told her the story, and kind of just told her "good luck".  But, I had underestimated the power of "teacher worship".  Meg adored her teacher and anything she said was sacred and not to be disputed.  Fortunately for us, Mrs McCabe was awesome and there was nothing to dispute.  And Meg learned to read in less than a week.

We had similar experiences with piano lessons.  I tried for about a year and just didn't have the necessary patience for "I do my OWN way".  Then, I had my friend Lynette teach her for awhile. Lynette was someone who Meghan already loved, she was the mom of one of her best buddies. She did great with her and I was relieved to have someone else teaching her.  Then Lynette moved away.  Sad days.  About the same time, though, we met another sweet lady who taught piano, and she still takes from her now.  This patient, kind teacher has taught her much more than just piano, and I'm grateful to her.

Meg is now a teenager, and she attends seminary every morning.  She has a great teacher, whom she loves.  Many mornings she comes home, having learned some amazing thing that her dad and I have tried to teach her for years.  But, because Sister Sawyer said it, or more likely, found a way for them to discover it for themselves, Meg now "gets" it.  Seminary teachers deserve a special place in heaven.

So, you probably see a pattern here.  I certainly do.  And even though I home school Meghan now for a myriad of reasons, I still look for opportunities for her to be taught by someone else. She's much less stubborn with other people than with her parents, and I suppose that that's not all that uncommon.  But, it makes me grateful for people who are willing to be teachers, for the many school and church teachers that have helped us teach this stubborn soul.  She's a good kid, and being stubborn isn't always a bad thing, as long as she's being stubborn about the right things.

Tonight, she came home from her college class, telling me about how, when things go wrong, we shouldn't be a "victim" and try and blame it all on someone else.  We should take responsibility and get up and deal with it.  Pretty sure she's heard that from me her entire life.  Thank goodness a teacher finally said it, so now it's true.

Car Shows and Smores

So this week is a Car Week in Monterey.  There are several big car shows and auctions going on. We love to go see what there is for sale (not that we can buy any of them, this is a sale for very rich people), and just enjoy looking at all of the beautiful cars.  Everything from vintage cars to newer high end sports cars like Lamborghini, Bugatti, Maserati and Ferrari.  I wasn't sure how much the girls would enjoy it, so we only spent a couple of hours there.

Eliana LOVED the sports cars, she was all about the really fast looking ones.  I think I will worry when she is old enough to drive.

We saw this BMW 300 and told Sabrina that it was just her size!  Surprisingly, when I asked her which car was her favorite at the end, she said that this one was.

After the car show, we went and got dinner and then went to our friends, the Filceks to roast marshmallows and make S'mores.  They said that they hadn't made S'mores before, so this was a first for them.

The rest of the day, the girls were busy doing laundry, packing as much as they can, weighing suitcases and generally getting ready to go home.  They will go to San Francisco tomorrow to tour the city, but will be back tomorrow night to spend the night.  Then Monday morning, they will leave us to go back home to Venezuela.  

We are going to miss them a lot!  They have been very fun to have around.  

Brownies and Silly Games

A couple of nights before our students from Venezuela were scheduled to arrive, I got a call from an EF (That's the organization that does these Homestay visits) coordinator.  She had a Chinese student who was not happy where she was, it wasn't clear why, and would we take her.  As we were only expecting two Venezuelan students, we agreed and just before I picked up those girls, a leader brought Cherry over to our house.  Cherry is from Gwangzhou, China (near Hong Kong, sort of).  As she was on a different track than our other students, she was gone last weekend to Disneyland and missed out on the archery stuff.  So these are the first pics we have of her.  She has already gone home and we miss her.  She was very sweet, helpful and fun to have around.

Due to Sam's employment situation at this time, we don't have a lot of extra money to go out to do things that cost money.  The girls have been shopping at the mall a few times, and we took them to the movies once.  But, most of the time, we play games here at home.  Last week, we taught them to play a silly game called "spoons", made brownies and then Meghan taught them the "cup song" from the movie "Pitch Perfect".  (You can see a video of people who are good at this here)  If Sam can convert his video to a format I can post, I will post video later.  They also spend a lot of time dancing to the Wii's Just Dance game, which they love.  I don't have many photos of that, because they would just be back shots of them dancing....

But here are some photos that Sam took of brownies, spoons and cup games.

Eliana and Sabrina

Ellie

Sabrina

Cherry

Now we have Venezuelans!

So, the last post was about archery, and so is this one.  We have three new students;  Cherry, who is from Guangzhao, China , and Sabrina and Eliana from Caracas, Venezuela.  Cherry is on a different "track" than the Venezuelan girls, and was off to Disneyland this weekend, so we haven't been able to do very much with her yet.  But, this weekend, we took Sabrina and Elly shopping on Saturday. Then, on Sunday afternoon, our friend David came over again to teach them a little bit about archery.

Both of them did very well at it!  Sam took lots of pictures.

Busy weekend....

On Saturday, Sam took the girls shopping at a toy store because Annie said that she would like to find something for her little brother.  They were gone quite a long time, but they had fun.  Then, later that afternoon, our friends the Jorgensens came over for dinner.  Dru Jorgensen is a student here, studying Mandarin, so he was excited to get to try his Chinese out with some native speakers.  The girls told me that he speaks Chinese pretty well!

So, I decided that it would be appropriate to make something Chinese for dinner.  Not that I know how to make very many Chinese dishes, but I do make very good potstickers (Jiaozi).  I don't know how authentically Chinese they are, but they are a family favorite.  When Ryan was leaving to serve as a missionary, he asked me to make them before he left.  He ate about 50 of them!  Yesterday we made 140 potstickers for nine people, and we ate them ALL.  I don't have any pictures, but Selena was so amazed that I was making something Chinese, that she took a lot of pictures of the process.

Today is Sunday, and the day that we gather with our close friends and have dinner together.  After cleaning up the potsticker mess from last night, I didn't really want to cook and the girls love hot dogs, so we cooked hotdogs on the grill. It gets a little crazy around here when everyone is here, but they all just fit right in.

After dinner, our friend David and his son Duncan gave the kids all an archery lesson.  We have hay bales set up as targets behind out house.  Sam told me that all three of our Chinese students did very well once they got the hang of it.  They must have really enjoyed it, because they were out there for a couple of hours.

Adventures in Miniature Golf

It's been a busy week.  Mostly we've done a LOT of shopping.  These girls are marathon shoppers!  Meghan is loving it, because I'm not much of shopper and now she's had friends to go shopping with.  But, not much to take pictures of, although I guess I could have sat at the mall with my camera.

But, on Friday, we went to a Black Light Miniature Golf Course in Pacific Grove.  I have a lovely friend across the country in Connecticut that thought the girls were so cute, she wanted to do something nice for them.  So she sent us money to take them out one night.  After shopping (of course) we went and ate pizza at California Pizza Kitchen, then to the Oceans 18 Mini-golf course. The course is indoors and painted to look like the bottom of the ocean. We had a great time, all of them did pretty well for a first time. We didn't get great pictures, because Sam didn't want to carry his big camera, so these are all iPhone pics.  I think Selena's Samsung takes better pictures, I'm starting to have phone envy, lol.  Anyway, THANK YOU, JOANNE-UNNI for the fun night out!

Our latest adventures...

The student exchange group that brought our students here took them for a four day weekend in Los Angeles last weekend.  It was too quiet when they were gone, and I think we are going to miss them a lot when they leave.

Today the school took them on a boat in the Bay.  Apparently, Annie's stomach was not a fan of the boat ride.  The poor girl got really sick.  But, after she had some dinner and got her land legs back, she was fine.  After dinner we took them down the street to Phil's Fish Market.  We didn't want to eat there, because it's kind of expensive, but we love listening to the bluegrass music there.  We have some friends who play there on Tuesday evenings, so we took the girls to hear REAL American music.  I wasn't sure how much they would enjoy it, but they seemed to really love it.  We visited with the band afterwards for a bit, and took some photos.

We talked about what else the girls want to do before they have to go on Monday.  Unfortunately, there are too many things to do and probably not enough time to do them all.  But, we will give it our best shot.  They still want to do more shopping, we are planning to take them to a minigolf course, Sam told them he would take them to a big parking lot we know so that they can try their hand at driving, we are still planning a beach BBQ.  I'm afraid a couple of things might have to remain undone, but we will see.

Quiet week so far...

I haven't posted anything this week because there isn't much to tell.  The girls go to classes at 7 in the morning and don't come home until about 7 at night, which doesn't leave us much time to do much.  And we aren't with them, so no photos.  :0(

On Monday, the school took the students to the beach somewhere, from their description, I think it was Carmel River State Beach .  They had a good time, but a big wave soaked Annie and got her iPhone wet.  When she came home she was very distressed because it was not working.  I had heard that if you bury your wet phone in dry, uncooked rice, that it helps it to dry out.  My niece had tried it when her son dropped her phone into a tub of water, and it worked.  So I got a bowl, filled it with rice and told her to bury her phone in there.  She looked at me like she thought I was crazy, but I told her that if it didn't work I would take her to the Apple store.  So, they went up to go to bed, all pretty solemn and thinking that this was really a crazy plan.

Then next morning, they all ran downtairs, very excited because IT WORKED.  The phone was working perfectly.  Yay!  I wish I could remember who told me that trick, because I would thank them, they made my very anxious Chinese daughter so happy!

Last night, we had some friends stop by to meet the girls.  This family has traveled extensively in China, and their daughter just returned home after spending a year teaching English in a University there somewhere (I can't remember where).  All three girls seemed excited to speak to someone who spoke Chinese, even though she only speaks a little.  They were very polite and gracious to our friends, as they always are.

Today they are supposed to spend the day in Santa Cruz at the Boardwalk .  They were excited, and this time I gave them plastic bags to keep their phones in so they don't get wet.  I'm sure they will have a great time.  On Friday, they are leaving to go to Los Angeles for a few days.  They are excited about Disneyland and Hollywood.  Should be a fun (though long) trip for them.

Sunday at our house.

Our Sundays are very quiet.  Because of our religious beliefs we do not shop or do tourist things on Sunday.  We go to church in the mornings, and then we have a dinner with our best friends in the afternoon.  They have four children, ages 5 to 14, and we play games after dinner...sometimes all together, sometimes the adults will play our card game, and the kids play their own games.

The girls said they were interested in going to church with us, but when we woke them up this morning, they said they were too tired and wanted to sleep longer.  So we left breakfast for them, and left them here to sleep while we went to church.  I think that they have not fully recovered from the trip over, and sleeping is good.

 After dinner, they played several games.  They tried a word game, but that turned out to be difficult enough that it wasn't really fun for them.  So, they went back to Sardines and Tag, both children's games that are easy to understand.  They have to work hard during the weekdays, I wanted them to have fun on the weekend.  They had fun and there was a lot of laughing and giggling and shouting in two languages  (7 girls, altogether, can be very noisy).  Sam didn't take any photos this time, so no pics today.

Visiting the giant redwood trees...

Today, we had a couple of adventures.  In the morning, I took them to go shopping at Target. They loved it and we wandered around there for a couple of hours.  They were very amazed and amused, however, to find out that nearly everything said "made in China" on it.   Unfortunately, Sam the Photographer was not with us, so that adventure is undocumented.  :0)

This afternoon we drove about 45 minutes to Santa Cruz, to the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park .  It is much warmer up in Santa Cruz than it is here, and I think more humid.  We took the easy Redwood Loop trail, which is only .8 mile (1.3 km), but by the time we all took photos every few steps, it took us about an hour and a half, and we were all hot and tired.  We saw some really big trees, a few wild turkeys, some deer and a lot of tourists. Busy day at the Redwoods...

Here, they are actually posing inside of a trunk of a redwood tree.

Good friends, Annie and Mary!

Selina

The gang, at the base of a BIG tree.

Afterwards, we went into Santa Cruz to get pizza for dinner. We were going to go to the beach, also, but we decided we were too tired and we will do that on another day.

Friday night party time...

Today, the kids went to "school" for most of the day.  I guess they have three hours of instruction daily, then they have an activity.  Over the course of their time here they will take them to a shopping mall, to the Monterey Aquarium, Point Lobos State Park, Great America amusement park....etc .  We drop them off at the bus very early, 7:20am and then we pick them back up at 6:40 pm.  A long day for them.

Since their bus parks near our friends' houses, we went directly afterwards for dinner and some games.  Two of our friends live next door to each other, so the adults went to one house to play our card game, and the the kids stayed at the other house.  They tried a couple of Wii games, but the girls didn't seem very interested, so Meghan taught them to play sardines.  If you don't know, it is a hide and seek game where one person hides, and then when the next person finds them, they hide with them.  Eventually, everyone is squeezing into the same hiding place, and the last person to find them hides the next time.  They had a great time playing that, and then they taught our kids some fun games.  When the adults finished our game, we found them all laughing and have a great time!  We only got photos of the last game they played, one that the students taught our children.

Other than being a little surprised that there were so many children in only two families, I think they had a lot of fun.  

They are here!

We picked up our Chinese exchange students this evening!  They are very sweet, very cute and I think they will be fun guests.  They aren't very excited about the early hours they have to keep, though.  I'm supposed to have them at the bus at 7:20 am.  They brought us lovely gifts and they seem very polite and respectful.  We just picked up KFC on the way home for dinner tonight, as we weren't certain what time we would get here.

We had dinner, then they ran out to say hello to our emus, which they thought were pretty cool.  But,  they've had a long trip to get here and have to be up very early in the morning, so they headed up to bed early.

Their English names are (from left) Mary, Selina and Annie. 

They were excited to see Meghan's wall of photos of Korean singer Kim Hyun Joong, he's apparently popular in China, too.

I'm baaaaaack.....for a bit, anyway.

Pretty sorry that the first post in 2013 is in JULY, but whatever.  Last November, I was doing great with my daily "thankful" thing, but then I got sick and didn't really shake that until like March.     So I was dragging around, barely functioning for all that time.  Ick.

There is a reason for picking it back up now.  We are hosting three Chinese students for three weeks, who are coming to improve their English skills and learn about our culture and lifestyles.  They are girls, pretty young...12 and 13, and their introduction letters to us were adorable.  They seem like happy, fun kids and we are very excited to get to know them.  They are all friends, from the city of Hohhot in China  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohhot .  Anyway, in my email to their parents, I told them that I would try to update the blog with stories and pictures.  

As for what's going on in our family....Sam is still working contract jobs for an East Coast design house.  Nice, because they let him work mostly at home.  Not so nice in that we have no benefits, and when they don't have work for him, we don't get paid.  We're getting enough to get by, but not really enough to replenish our dwindling savings accounts.  It's been almost a year since we got laid off.  No health insurance, as the COBRA was just astronomically expensive.  I'll be SO happy (hear the sarcasm there) when I am forced to pay for something through Obamacare in January. 

Meg will be starting her junior year in High School, if you can believe that.  She's still taking some classes at the local college, swimming on the swim team (we hope....having a shoulder problem at the moment) and right now, getting excited about girls camp.

At church, I'm still the organist.  Not likely to change, since there is NO one else to do it in our ward.  Sam is teaching religion classes at Soledad Prison on Wednesday nights, which has been a bit of an adventure.  He was not excited initially, but I think he kind of likes it now.  He's glad that it's on Wednesday, because if he couldn't do his time in the nursery on Sundays, he'd go through withdrawals.  His little buddies would miss him, too, I think.  Some adult in the nursery said one Sunday,  "say thank you to Brother Bailey for helping out", to which the kids replied "that's, not Brother Bailey, that's Sammy!".  

Ryan and Susan are in Olympia, Washington where he is doing a law internship,then they will return to Utah to finish his last year of law school.  It was weird not having him here for the 4th of July, he and Sue have been here every year for the last ten years.  We are all praying that he can get a job quickly when he's done. 

So, I will post pictures and adventures with our new Chinese friends as I get time.  The sponsoring group has them all day, so we only get them in the evening and on weekends.  Also, in the middle of that three weeks, they take them to Los Angeles to go to Disneyland, etc, so we won't have them then. 

That's about it for now....