Football and Peter

Luke played in his championship flag football game a couple of Saturday's ago.  He changed leagues from last season and the age breakdown meant he went from being the oldest on the team to the youngest.  It was a different dynamic for him this year, but I think he learned a lot and had fun.  He had a few receptions, some great defensive plays, and a touchdown.  His team was pretty rag tag, but they managed to capture an undefeated season and got to play in the championship.

After playing their hearts out and then going into double overtime, and then going into 2 possession exchanges, each team trying their best to break the tie, they finally lost.

I'm not going to mention how disheartening it was to lose to that other team, with their dirty players and horrible coaches.  Ok, yes I am.  It was really disheartening to watch them lose to dirty players and unsportsman-like coaches (there was a tiny bit of justice to be found in the head coach of the other team getting ejected from the game before half time for taunting our team and fans.)  And in a league known for it's emphasis on learning, fun, and non-competitiveness, you would have thought this dad would have picked a different one.  Anyways, the whole game was kind of good vs. evil feeling and unfortunately, evil won.  The final touchdown was quite questionable but I think the refs were just so darn tired of the game dragging on that they just called it.

All but three of our boys were in tears by the end (not stone-face Luke, of course.) And the coaches did their best to give a good final pep talk, they handed out the Gatorade, and the medals, and we left.

Luke is a really great kid.  He is quiet and smart and a little more sensitive than he lets on.  He always wants to do the right thing.  He is really, really easy to love.

There is one thing about Luke though.  He is super responsible, fairly self sufficient, yet sometimes he can be a little spacey.  It's not unusual for him the misplace or forget things (not usually school related, however.)

Dan was out of town and Ava was home with the little boys for this game. So when he and I pulled into the driveway, Luke realized that with his hands full of snacks and the medal, he had left his football and water bottle at the field. Of course when we went back, the water bottle was in the lost and found but the football (already a replacement for one he'd lost previously) was gone.

On the way home for the second time, I kept thinking about this situation.  I knew Dan would say, "We'll just buy him another one!" because he's nice like that.  I, on the other hand, wanted to get to the root of the problem and find a solution to avoid a pattern of losing, replacing, losing, replacing.

I thought that maybe if we made Luke buy the replacement football himself, he might take better care of it because it would be more valuable, having spent his own money.

Enter in Peter. Yeah, the one from the Bible.  After a discussion with my mom earlier in the week about some other things I have been struggling with, she pointed me to Peter.  I hadn't read Peter just straight through, for a long time, but she promised there would be some things in there I'd like.  And just like they say, "Mother knows best."

In the very first chapter, the seventh verse,  I found the first thing I liked:

"That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:"


I had been ruminating on that since I read it, days before.  How are our trials more precious than gold?  Obviously, he is saying that our trials and struggles have value.  And not just any value, more value than any earthly wealth or money, all of which will perish. But when we think about trials or gold, which would we prefer?

So while I'm driving home thinking about how I can make Luke care more about his stuff, I saw this verse in a new, 3rd grade boy type of way, and I liked it even more.

Why did I think Luke would care more about a ball that he paid for himself?  Because it involved a sacrifice.  Things that come easy are also easy to take for granted.

But things that come through effort, blood, sweat, tears, sacrifice, those things do become more precious to us.  We become invested in them because once we've given something of ourselves up for them, it's almost like that piece of us lives on it that.


We got home again and life went on, but I have continued to think on this idea.

I have felt as I've gotten older and older, about my love for the gospel of Jesus Christ and my belief and even knowledge about Him and the reality of His power to heal and bless and save and love us.

And this faith did not come easy. This was not handed to me.  Or maybe it was, in the beginning.  As a life long Mormon, I was taught this doctrine from childhood.  But at some point that faith became my own cross to bear.  And I mean that in the way, that my knowledge, acceptance, and belief was a hard fought battle.  I came to a solid, irrefutable belief only through great struggle and sacrifice in my life. Trials are turning points.  And turning to God in all of my trials was a price I would pay time and time again to know what I know. And if not for those trials, that faith would never have been tested, tried, and solidified.

 Peter said that our trails would be more precious than gold, and I believe that is because our trials have the potential to lead us to the source of all life, to Jesus Christ.  And I guess I'm not surprised because the knowledge I have about Jesus Christ truly means more to me than any earthly thing, it is even more precious than gold that perisheth. It's not a thing I take for granted or am likely to misplace, because I have given pieces of myself up to have it and those pieces, no, my entire self actually, lives on and lives in Him forever. And I can look back now and see that it was my precious trials that got me here.

It may have been just a football, and I still haven't told Luke he'll be buying the next one, but he will. And I'm also gonna tell him how thankful I am for him being a space cadet and losing his ball so often, because it's been a lesson for us both.

Love

A parent's love for their child

Cannot fit neatly on a page.

Nor is it diminished 

By distance, time, or age.

Love is not a mortal trait

Our minds fully comprehend

And loving for a lifetime

Is not near enough to spend.

So our God in all His wisdom

And experience with Love,

Who sees the ends from our beginnings

From His home up above, 

He knows that Love has no limits.

No confines, it's not finite.

And given in Love, He sent His Son

As our freedom from death's plight. 

Jesus Christ removes the bounds,

He opens up the way

For Love to flow and life to grow

Forever and a day.

Praise be to Jesus!

The dead will rise once more! 

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Death cannot conquer what Love will restore.

~Elise Colton 

Well, I Don't Even Know

I had hopes, but I never would have guessed that just two days after my post about the house last week, Dan would call me from work...

"Elise, I've been thinking. Do you think you could arrange for me to see that house before I leave town?"

And then, that five days later we'd be trying to get our ducks in a row to make an offer?  Seriously.  I just really didn't see this coming.  Especially because I wrote way more about my feelings here than I ever discussed with Dan in person, because I really didn't feel there was much of a point.  And no, he did not see that post before he made that fated phone call.

The real bugger is, we're trying to do all of this without selling our current house first.  It's slightly complicated and a bit risky.  But Dan isn't the king of saving money for nothing.  Hopefully we'll still have some savings left when this is all said and done.

And did you notice the words "Dan" and "risky" were only about an inch apart in that previous paragraph?  That's probably the closest Dan's been to risk in like 20 years.  And I love him for it.  I can trust that man more than I've ever trusted anyone.  He is as solid as a stone wall.  All lovely, and all reasons I never even thought to beg for this house. I never thought we would actually be at this point.

The fat lady definitely hasn't sung yet either though.  I'm trying not to hype myself up too much in case they don't accept the offer or someone else beats us to it.  Time will tell.

*******

I started and didn't finish this post about two weeks ago.  The fat lady squeaked out a few notes but ran off the stage for a drink of water or something. Would you believe me if I said that in that span of time we had a contract on our house and made an offer of our own?  But not on the house I mentioned above?  And then in the space of about 12 hours, the entire thing fell apart and we can say with confidence that we will be living happily ever after for the foreseeable future in this lovely place we've called home for the last 2.5 years?

Suffice it to say, this has been a real roller coaster.  And as we rode the ups and the downs, I just kept thinking about how we were voluntarily doing this to ourselves.  It was stressful and so time consuming and actually quite emotionally consuming. And for the first time in my move history, this was happening not because our job was taking us somewhere, but because we looked at our home, full of too much stuff, and thought, "Man, wouldn't it be fun to pack up all this crap ourselves and move it a few miles!?"  We questioned our sanity on more than one occasion.

Here's how it went down:

We were poised to make an offer on the house I mentioned above.  We were almost ready to risk our savings on carrying both homes if our current one didn't sell.  But then we started to get cold feet and began to doubt our decision.

Enter some friends of ours whose house was on the market and were shopping for a new place.   We somehow got around to the arrangement that they would buy our home if we wanted to buy the other home.  They were expecting an offer any day and while we all waited for it, Dan and I did some major soul searching to confirm this was the right thing for us.

We prayed and prayed and even fasted to know if this was the right choice.  We could not come to a resolution, so when our friend's offer didn't come that weekend, by Sunday night we had pretty much decided we would stay put.  The dirt road, the added 20 minutes to Dan's already hour long commute, the downgrade in school district, and the somewhat extensive and necessary renovations helped us feel a little better about walking away. And there was no one to buy our house anyway.

I knew it was the right thing, but I was still pretty bummed.  I stopped by my friend Emily's house to return her canning supplies (I'm a grape juice goddess, remember?).  Two years ago they made the move from the suburbs to property and have worked so hard and turned their place into a chicken, sheep, and bee haven.  We commiserated together over our situation and I knew she felt my pain, because they looked for a long time before finding their home.

And sheesh! We weren't really even looking.  I'm still not sure how we got to that place.  But on my way home I started to think that if only I could find a house with land in our same school district, with no added commute time, in our same ward...that was the home we needed to find! And there is only one neighborhood that checks every single one of those boxes.  So I drove through it.  Just for fun.  And I saw a house for sale.  And I stopped and got the flier.  You know, just for fun.  And it looked like everything I'd been hoping to find, except a bit more more expensive but not requiring the renovations we'd planned for on the other house.

I told Dan about it that night and his mouth didn't say much, but his face told me to shut up.

And I knew he was right.  We would find a house in a 1.5-2.5 years that would be perfect for us and our savings would be such that we could carry both houses without much risk. We needed to get off the roller coaster and go eat a corn dog.

But the next morning bright and early, I got a text from our friend, "We got an offer!" At once I realized that I had neglected to tell her we decided not to buy the house.  But before I replied, I thought I should mention it to Dan, the plan could still work out. And that led us to actually looking at this second, "perfect" home before we told them we weren't going to move.  And when I got inside, it was perfect.  That night, Dan and I came back and looked at it together.  Still perfect.  And then we decided we wanted to buy it.  One last visit with the actual listing agent to ask some questions about the well and the septic system and we were poised again to make an offer.

I asked Emily to meet us there to ask the well/septic question we didn't know to ask.  But when she arrived and we were out in the yard with the agent, she walked up very strangely, told me her kids were freaking out in the car and left as quickly as she'd come.

As we walked through the house for the last time, I felt my phone buzz with a text in my pocket.  It was from Emily.  She said she was sorry she couldn't stay but when she saw that agent she had to leave because "they had a history".

Now, we were about to make an offer and we were about to do it without our own agent, because the home was more expensive than we'd wanted and we knew we could save the seller some money by not having an agent for them to pay, and hopefully get the house for a lower price.  But the thing about that agent was she rubbed me the wrong way from the very first time I talked to her.  And then when I met her in person, same thing, she gave both Dan and I the willies.  And when Dan and I were speaking in private, trying to decide what to do and I showed him the text, he refused to make the offer with that agent until we knew "the history".  I thought back to the nightmarish events Emily had shared with me of buying their home without an agent of their own two years ago and I started to have an inkling of what "the history" might be.

We told the agent we would be in touch and left.  And that night we talked to Emily and my inclinations were correct.  This was the same agent that had listed the home they bought 2 years ago, the agent of endless frustration, the author of nasty emails, and the source of tears, she was a near relative of the devil.  At that point we decided we'd rather pay more and have a nice agent represent us.  So we called up the woman who had been more than good to us, the listing agent on the original home we were looking at, who even after we had looked at that home multiple times and couldn't pull the trigger was never anything but cordial, kind, and professional.

She helped us line up the contracts with our friends and create an offer on the home we were now in love with.  And as you can probably imagine, Devil Agent was not pleased when we showed up with an offer written by someone else.  She had no qualms about expressing that to our agent over the phone and then again by email just in case their were any doubts.

We went ahead with our offer, despite Negative Nelly but while we awaited a response which she waited until the last 10 minutes before expiration to give, the buyer on our friend's home backed out.  Later that night we received the news that our offer would not be accepted or countered.  We were disappointed but not surprised though none of it really mattered because without a buyer for our friend's home, they could not buy ours, and we could not buy another.

It was kind of discouraging and our friend's decided to take their home off the market.  And I set about trying mentally move out of the home I had mentally moved into (depsite my efforts to not get my hopes up) and to distract myself from thoughts of TPing a certain real estate agent's home.

Two days later, what should appear in our email inbox other than an email from Negative Nelly with a counter offer after all!

But of course we couldn't take it, because we had no one to buy our house.

I've had some time to process now, and I am still disappointed, and will probably always think back to how great that house could have been, but no less than one day later, I came across this meme and I sent it to Dan as fast as I could, because it's 100% true.

Kenosha Pass: Take 2

Last year our trip to see the leaves at Kenosha Pass was about a week too late and when we got up there, we saw no leaves, no colors. The forest of naked trees had nothing to show us except disappointment.

We vowed to make it by the last week of September this year.  And we did it! And we did it with friends!

He may be standing like a flamingo, but at least Max didn't refuse the picture.  I hope these kids stay friends forever.

Jack only lasted about 5 minutes in the Ergo, which really just makes me sad.  Don't be surprised to find me still trying to force him in it when he's 14 so I can hand him snacks and call him my baby.

I just can't get over the beauty of this earth.  Really. The color palette of nature is perfection. 

Mother Nature is my homegirl.  I can't say we've met, but we are really, really good friends.

From Instagram: 

I just wanted to publicly commend Mother Nature on her excellent work and achievements, year after year, season after season. No one does it better. #eARTh #nofilter

Grapes of Happiness

From Instagram:

So there we were, playing in the backyard. Dan had the kids squealing on the trampoline while Luke and I were throwing the football. And in between tosses, a most delectable scent graced my nose and I followed it, only to discover a freaking vineyard! I can't say I didn't know we had a grapevine because I did. It's just that the past few summers only yielded a few bitter bunches. But this year I hadn't noticed it nearly tripling in size and these smelled so good, I couldn't resist a taste. Aside from the annoying little seeds inside, they were so yummy. So I enlisted my little helpers and we spent the next 20 minutes pulling back leaves to find bunch after bunch after bunch. I think we're going to make some juice. I've just gotta figure out the right way to do it because right now I'm resisting the very strong urge to put them in a bucket in the backyard and stomp them with my bare feet. #sweetsurprise

We really had a great time picking all the grapes, but then I was left to figure out what to do with them.  In my heart, I do things like make homemade grape juice and can it.  But in reality, I buy grape juice at the store and have never canned anything in my life.

After a little research, encouragement from my mom, and some canning supplies loaned by my friend, Emily, we embarked on our maiden grape juice voyage.

Luke and Max were at school, but Ava and Finn were more than willing to help.  We washed and squished the grapes with a potato masher.  Then we cooked it all on the stove.

We strained it through a paint filter from Sherwin Williams because I couldn't get a hold of any cheesecloth.  

At this point it tasted alright but the pea-soup green color was less than appetizing.

We let it rest and settle in the fridge for about 24 hours.

And after a day or so we poured off the top and discarded the pulpy stuff on the bottom, and the color became much more palatable.  I boiled it and then canned it, turning out some mighty tasty grape juice, like the domestic goddess I've always dreamed I was.