A Busy Day

Last weekend we had our wonderful Labor Day cabin visit. We got home around dinnertime so we could unpack and get to bed early since it was a school night and Daniel and I had planned a day to the temple on Tues.(Sept. 5th). Even though we had just spent the weekend fishing, Daniel decided he needed to take the boys fishing after dinner for just a little while. Well, I knew Tues morning was going to be hectic since we had to get up and get the kids ready for school and ourselves ready for the temple all by 8:30 am. Well, wouldn't you know Daniel got up extra early so he could do some morning fishing. My sister Brinn rescheduled her work for the week so she could take the day off and babysit for us so we could get to the temple together one more time before Dan left and the baby came. Brinn arrived around 8:25 so I was scrambling trying to greet her, get the kids packed up and out the door - oh and it was raining. So I told the kids to go get in the car because we would drive to bus stop today. I didn't feel like trying to walk 3 of us under an umbrella in a church dress to the bus stop. MacGregor was trying to get his shoes on at this point and I said, "Carry them to the car and put them on while we wait for the bus." My thinking was that he could always run to the bus with untied shoes but he could miss the bus trying to get them tied in the house. The kids ran to Dan's car because his garage door was already up. Chase jumped in the front and MacGregor behind the passenger seat. Whoooo, we made it to the bus stop on time. Mac got his shoes on and I turned to tie them for him but I couldn't reach real well with this belly and all. He had to put his shoes up between the front seats so I could reach. Well with the morning fishing run the poles were also poking up almost between the front seats fully equiped with lures/hooks on the tips. The bottom of Mac's sneaker got hooked. I told him to hold still and I'd get it, but he said, "No, I can do it" and proceeded to pull his sneaker back down to the floor behind the passenger seat bending the entire pole toward the floor. He did get that hook undone from the bottom of his left sneaker but as he did it - he hooked his shoelace from his right shoe. So now I am trying to pull this hook out of his shoelace but because of the barbs they put on fishhooks it won't pull out. Meanwhile, Chase sees the bus and splits. I figure for sure he will tell the busdriver to wait and I pull and pull and scream and pull and sigh a mean sigh and I can't wiggle it free. I look up to tell the driver to go on but the bus was already gone. I guess there's no waiting for a kid with fish hooks in his shoes! So now I drive back to the house very frustrated that MacGregor had missed the bus, that he wasn't ready to go in the first place, (if he had had his shoes on, this would never had happened) and very frustrated that fishing is all my family wants to do anymore - morning, evening and midnight (if he hadn't gone fishing, the poles wouldn't have been in the car.) I know why they say moderation in all things! I am thinking - Do I have to cut his shoelace off, do I have to cut the hook off the lure? Mac has to stay in the car because he has a fishing rod stuck to his shoe and Dan is naked in the shower. What can I do? I just wait. Daniel finally emerges and gets the hook out of the shoelace but now Mac is now almost late for school. We are also running late on our intended leave time for the temple. I finally tell Daniel to run Mac to school and come back to pick me up. Daniel says, "Why aren't you ready?" I wanted to scream - NO I am not ready because I thought the boys would have caught the bus a half hour ago and instead I was trying to pick fish hooks out of shoelaces for the last 25 minutes. Instead, I just said - I need to get my make up done and a few snacks packed.

Daniel got Mac to school with 1 minute to spare. We got off the temple and I started to feel a little more settled. It took us longer than we anticipated to get there because of the rain and we got a later start so I told Daniel I think we needed to eat lunch before our session. When we walked thru the lobby we asked a sister temple worker about the cafeteria, as we turned to walk away I glanced at her name tag (which I rarely do) and said to Dan - "Look Honey she has the same name as us" There it was - HENS spelled just like ours. She pointed us in the direction of her husband to which he and Daniel talked at length about their geneology. Turns out that his g.grandfather Erik Christian who settled in Provo was brothers to our g.grandfather Soren Peter. Daniel knew his family was the "Pottery Hens" He said he would be interested in perhaps having a reunion of the decendents of the three brothers who arrived together in Utah from Denmark. They will get off their mission (DC Temple) in Nov 07. Another interesting thing is that he lived the last 35 years in Tempe, AZ and Lara believes she has met him. Incidently his name is Gary Michael Hen but he goes by Rusty.

We had a very nice although very small (8 people) session. Again it took longer to get home with traffic and rain. We arrived around 5:30 in time to grab some quick dinner which my wonderful sister had made and already fed the kids. We then rushed out of the house to the cub scout pack meeting where Chase recieved his Wolf Badge. We really had to cram 6 achievements into the last 2 months. He made a nice set of wooden book ends and organized his whole baseball card collection by team in an album (seen in photo 2). We were even finishing things the night before but he got it and that's what matters. Congratuations Chase! We swear we are going to do better with the Bear Badge. Now we've been in longer I understand the program a little better and we will try to be working throughout the year instead of cramming everything into the last month before his birthday.