A Musing Mother 6

I fancy myself to be many things I am not or things that I used to be. The most recent fancy is that I am physically fit. When I was in college I took up running. While my peers were donning legwarmers and tight body suits and working out to Jane Fonda or some other aerobic exercise casette tape, I was running around in the snow and ice of Logan. I was cold a lot but I liked the solitary hour I enjoyed thinking without Jane Fonda telling me what to do. In retrospect, people should have stopped listening to Jane Fonda about twenty years before but that's beside the point. Two months ago we got a flyer in the mail about a 5k run for Child Abuse Awareness. I've always wanted to do a 5k and I thought it would be a fun family activity. The deadline for early registration came and went and I started questioning my dedication to this worthy cause. In fact, I was quite disappointed when my husband, who is on the Child Abuse Council, told me it was for child abuse prevention

I made a shocking discovery today. Costco sells Oreo cookies. That's right, folks! Costco, the mega-super-mama-of all-mama stores sells Oreos. Somewhere in the vast recesses of the store that sells in increments of nothing less than a two ton truck, between the packages of 256 rolls of toilet paper and pallets of eggs, I found a large, and beautiful box of Oreo cookies. It was HUGE! It had ten rolls of oreos packaged beautifully within a very large box. I wondered if we could eat all of them. Before finishing that thought, I remembered that we had gone through all 24 eggs we had since Thursday morning. Oh, garbage bags are running low. Out of the container of 200 I'd bought two weeks ago, we had only 23. Come to think of it, laundry detergent had a coupon and the beautiful tub that advertises "7987 loads" was almost empty at home. As I mused at the way my family really is a family of consumers, I decided to take a risk and buy that box of Oreos even if we couldn'

It's lonely at the top. Best to bring a friend.

The beauty of having a teenager's birthday during Spring Break is that she will sleep in and won't demand breakfast early in the morning. So what does she do on this special occasion? She gets up before noon. Seriously. It's her birthday. I stayed up late watching abc.go.com. 9:00 a.m. she came and sat on my bed and stared at me. Just stared. When I pretended to be sleeping, she nudged me and sang happy birthday to herself, adding words about me cooking an omlette. It's hard to believe that the long, lanky, 5'6" 14 year old was nestled in a little ball within the confines of my womb 14 years ago. Difficult to picture that tiny person wrapped in a blanket and handed to me is the same beautiful daugher I enjoy today. She could do nothing by herself except melt my heart and change my life. She has patiently endured being our little guinnea pig as we tried to figure out what we were doing. What was Heavenly Father thinking to trust us with such precious cargo? As

Yesterday morning it snowed in St. George. After a few endless hours of Spongebob Squarepants, we packed up and left. We made good time for driving in a snow storm. We stopped at an awful greasy spoon for dinner and were within 20 miles of our house when we saw the first trooper with lights spinning. My natural reaction is to wonder if they found out what I did in 1985 and make a run for it. Not a good idea in a minivan with five innocent people in it. It whizzed past. The next patrol followed within minutes. My blood pressure was starting to normalize and an intelligent person would have figured out there was trouble ahead when the fire truck overtook us. But, no, we were making good time! We'd be home before anybody had a chance to say those five dreaded words. When I finally realized my "making good time" was coming to an end, it was too late. We were three miles from our exit when I-15 turned into a parking lot. More emergency vehicles screamed past us a

A well needed vacation was in the works and I have left my creative blogging mind at home. I have only pictures, good memories, a sunburn, and sore muscles to share today. Mr. Taylor went golfing with Papa yesterday morning so the kids and I found a fun hike in Leeds where we were graced with God's amazing workmanship of red cliffs, sandstone, and a stream. We returned from our hike wet, dirty, tired, and happy. All the makings of a great day.

Today's post is going to be a catharsis. It's been a rough couple of days. My sweet 9 year old boy had a problem with some other children teasing him at school earlier this week. He and I went back over to the school and talked to his teacher about it and it was a very positive experience. His teacher is a darling girl who clearly loves to teach and enjoys my son. Because of this, I think he felt safe and came to me the next night as I lay writhing in pain from stomach flu cramps and cuddled with me. During this time, he shared some experiences he had in the first grade (two years ago) with his teacher at the time. It was a heart-wrenching tale of emotional abuse and bullying. The teacher, Sally Pead (I have no problem putting that name out there), yelled at him daily, called him names, ridiculed him when he read aloud, wouldn't let him go to the bathroom when he needed to go hence, he regularly had little accidents, didn't let him call me when he was sick. It

My 9 year old son asked me to play Clue. He set up the game and we started to play. Our two figures made their way around the board while the Captain (my now 4 year old) took the other figures and played with them. As my older son and I guessed who committed the heinous crime (whatever the crime was), it came to my attention that other crimes were being committed by the other non-players of the game. In fact, my person disappeared into the criminal mess. Miss Scarlet ended up with a revolver in her hands. Mr. Green had the wrench. Miss Scarlet shot Mr. Green in the heart. In indignation, Mr. Green chopped off Miss Scarlet's head. This scene continued at the hands of my young and, apparently, violent little 4 year old. "Mommy!" Miss Scarlet exclaimed. "Come here, I'll take care of it for you," Mr. Green replied. "You chopped off my head," said Miss Scarlet. "No, I didn't," replied Mr. Green, "I'm your father. I

It was one of those mornings we all know about. Complete chaos and and multiple trips to different schools, finishing up homework, signing papers, and realizing I hadn't gotten myself ready to go to work. Everybody was late and I forgot my cell phone. I came home a little early feeling sick. One of my colleagues is a little sensitive about being around sick people. Something about low white blood cells and leukemia. I was greeted with the electronic voice on my answering machine, "You have two new messages." The secretary at the school had called an hour and half before to inform me that my 9 year old son was throwing up. After frantically searching for 10 minutes, I finally found that my mother had been contacted and he was safely at her house. I called my mom. She calmly informed me that she had picked him up and taken him to her house where she made chicken noodle soup served with saltines. He told me the sordid story on the telephone of standing in line for