Letters from Pete

A few e-mails Pete wrote that I wanted to document here as well:

February 24, 2014: Viral Adventures in the frigid upper Midwest

Dear Fam,

We've had 4-5 foot piles of snow lining our driveway since the first of January. We've only broken above freezing a couple of days since then and another 10 days straight ahead predicted to not get above freezing.  At least there's snow and we can try to get out a play...

So... viral adventures,

Sunday morning, during sacrament meeting: Will starts gagging, Jess, thinking it's his fruit snack, holds him close. More gagging, loud enough to get everyone's attention just in time for him to explode with vomit.  Jess looks at me startled, covered in vomit, her sweater, her skirt, her hair.  She scoots out of the pew, smearing as she goes and multiple mothers arrive with paper towels and wipes.  We send Jess and Will home, I clean the church pew and bathroom.

At home, little buddy vomits a few more times.  Poor little guy, just half a day and it seems like his sweet chub is gone.

Today, Will is better

5:30: Jess text's "I just threw up, get ready for chaos when you get home"
6:00: patient is in crisis, can't get home yet, have to call and notify ED, document.
7:00: I walk in, (of course it is NOT complete chaos, Jess made dinner for us still) Jess says "I just threw up again."
7:05: send Jess up for the night
7:08  Dan: "I don't feel good"
        Joe: "My Tummy hurts"
        I get bowls out
7:10 John: "Aren't we going to have family home evening?"
7:15 FHE starts, John is conducting and welcomes everyone.
7:16 Dan vomits (in a bowl booh yeah...he had warned me)
7:17 Joe: (looking at Dan's bowl of vomit) "I'm not going to let mine come out"
       Me:  "You still have to hold a bowl though" (I get it from the floor where he threw it and put it in his lap)
       Joe: "No, I can't"
       Me: "But you still have to"
7:18  I'm trying to decide what to do...
        Dan: (holding a bowl of vomit) "I can still say the prayer"
        Me: (Ok, why not)
7:20  We've prayed
7:21  John: "Joe will choose the song"
        Joe: "I can't choose the song because I'm sick."
7:22  John: "How about I am a child of God?"
7:23  We sing
7:24  I begin a recap of the 10 lepers
7:25 Joe vomits... (almost all in a bowl...minor victory for fatherly persistence)
7:26 FHE is over

To shorten it up:
7:35 Dan vomits again
7:45 I make beds on the ground for the ailing, Joe immediately falls asleep
8:05 Dan vomits again
8:20 I hear Joe moaning.... he vomits again, only half in the bowl.. Daddy was too slow.
9:10 I'm just about to send the email... Joe vomits again, none in the bowl, no warning moans just a gurgling... :(

What can I say?  Life is roses.
I'm at least laughing at this point... but I am running out of blankets and towels.

Any votes on who's next?

A: John
B: Pete
C: John and Pete simultaneously
D: neither John nor Pete, they can go to school and work tomorrow.

Love you guys,

Pete


April 13, 2014: Michigan update

Hi fam,

We sure do miss everyone!  Especially with the summer around the corner we are sad we won't be seeing more of everyone. Hope everyone is doing well.

The ground has finally thawed! It hit 70 today and was glorious. We are maybe getting some snow early in the week but it will be short lived and I think we survived this winter.  Even John, the snow lover of all snow lovers (who had put up signs on the front window most of the winter saying "let it snow.") wrote a sign the other day that said, "No more snow!"

The snow was great but the cold was not.  Honestly, I won't be too sad if I never have to live through another winter like that again. The other week during one of the last snow storms Jess sarcastically asked who was excited about more snow, to which Joe replied, "I am not! Because of warmness!" Three days ago, the first (and only) daffodil opened up.  I drove in, lifted by that ever awaited beacon of Spring, changed my clothes and went out to admire it, only to see that Will had snapped it right off in the interim.  :)

The boys were out in the yard just about all day every day for this past week which was spring break.  Dan finally mastered a two wheeler (lots of bumps and bruises to prove it) and Joe is just trying it out. Will is in heaven!  That kid was cooped up for so much of the winter.  He's at the age where it all seems new once again.  The other day we took him to the swings and he giggled and giggled like it was the most amazing thing.  I'll be sad if he loses his chub with all this exercise though. :)  Dan independently observed the other day, "It's like he doesn't have a chin."

The kids needed the open space. They've watched plenty of movies with all those cold days (school cancelled eight times for snow days!).   To give you an idea of scraping the bottom of the barrel, Jess is now convincing them to watch (what I deem "princess") movies like Anastasia.  When they started that the other day the 20th century fox thing came up and Dan said, "Wait, this is the 21st century?!" I have no idea how he knew that but maybe it was a comment about not needing to watch any more movies from the 90s.  Another indicator of the long winter in close quarters is the kids getting a little edgy at times.  Dan informed Joe today in a little spat, "I know what your saying in your head."

This was the wrong winter to leave the tramp up... I just didn't get to it and was too lazy to go out in the ice.  It took a toll and this might be its last year.  The kids are loving it for (maybe) one last time.  Will is a daredevil.  He takes his licks including one fall from full height so far.  He is also daring with thievery. If you don't watch your back, he'll bust over to you, even across the table, snatch your dessert and pop it in his mouth. I barely caught him tonight.

Jess is carrying that baby like a champ and starting to wield her belly like a sword.  You don't want to get stuck passing her in our little kitchen or you might just get taken out.  She can officially fit through tight spaces more easily head on than sideways. :)  She is amazing mom as always and is playing violin more which we love.

I just finished my last overnight shift at the VA hospital, likely never to return again, not a lot of children on active duty in the military.  Even though its only been three years, its weird to think that we're actually leaving Michigan.  I'm singing in the church choir which is, shall we say... meager.  The boys are very patient to wait in the pews while we practice.

Jess will head to Boston in a couple of weeks to continue the housing hunt.  Does anybody know any rich Bostonian with a big house that would love to re-live the joys of new babies crying at night? :)  We plan to move around the end of June.  John is a great oldest brother and will likely be baptized the first or second weekend we are in Boston.  Wish we could have all of you there.  I still remember watching Maggie and Romney.

Lately it seems I've had many messages about not delaying enjoyment of life until struggles are over or "happiness" and ease are achieved.  A message I need reminders of sometimes.  David Brooks had a NY times column on April 7th entitled "What Suffering Does."  He wrote, "When people remember the past, they don't only talk about happiness.   It is often the ordeals that seem most significant. People shoot for happiness but feel formed through suffering."  Suffering might be too dramatic a word and could be replaced with struggling but I like the idea.

I was just reading a part in Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search For Meaning" about a similar idea.  "I find it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or as it is called in biology, "homeostasis," i.e., a tensionless state.  What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal...  If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch they INCREASE the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together.

Lastly, I appreciated Elder Bednar's conference talk.  "Sometimes we mistakenly may believe that happiness is the absence of a load. But bearing a load is a necessary and essential part of the plan of happiness. Because our individual load needs to generate spiritual traction, we should be careful to not haul around in our lives so many nice but unnecessary things that we are distracted and diverted from the things that truly matter most."



April 16, 2014: Brutal winter

We did it!  It was sad to see one more storm early this week but it put us over the top for the record!  :)

"Through April 15, a total of 94.9 inches of snow had been measured in the 2013-14 season at Detroit's Metro Airport, topping the previous record snowiest season, 93.6 inches set in 1880-81.

This is more than double their average seasonal snowfall of 44.1 inches.

While located in the Great Lakes region, Detroit does not pick up heavy lake-effect snow, as they are located too far east of Lake Michigan and to the west and north of Lake Erie.

According to the National Weather Service in Romulus, Mich., here are some other notables about the 2013-14 winter season in the Motor City:

Record streak of days with at least 1 inch of snow cover: (77 straight days ending on Mar. 17)
Snowiest single month on record: (39.1 inches in January 2014; almost 89 percent of their average snow for an entire season)
Coldest November-March period since 1911-12: (Fourth-coldest on record)
Most days with highs failing to rise above freezing since 1903-04: (79 days; third-most on record for any season)
Most days with lows below zero since 1983-84: (13 days; ties for seventh-most in any season)"

Of course we loved the snow (until the end). The most crazy stat to me is 79 days where we didn't get above freezing. Ugh. That was the brutal part, especially for little Will who doesn't have the skills to keep himself warm via a snowball fight or digging around. He was mostly just stuck inside.
Also 77 days of snow cover.  The piles just stayed huge because it was too cold to melt any of it at all.

Hope the kids will have good memories of it.  I still remember an amazing amount of snow one of the winters Jonny was on his mission.