House O' Sullivans

As part of our long term family goal to summit Mount Kilimanjaro together, we are hiking more and progressively harder peaks each year. This summer's list was: Mount Flagstaff, Mount Aire, and Mount Olympus. The first two were ceremoniously completed earlier in the season and only Mount Olympus remained [read: loomed ] for us to tackle. Casey and I both knew that this mountain would push our kids to their limits and approaching limits can be amazing, horrifying, liberating, invigorating, and excruciating all at the same time.  Last week we realized that we had an open Saturday and slated that as our Mount Olympus bid, but as the weekend got closer, we realized that Saturday would likely bring unsettled weather (thunderstorms) and that was one element we weren't willing to add to the already uncertain equation. Mount Olympus is burly. The hike is long (8 miles) and steep (more than 4,000 feet of elevation gain) and rocky and relentless. Once you reach the saddle, there is s...

The week before last, the mountains called and we answered.  Newel, Karen, H.B., the "other" Karen, Jenny, Vilma, Mary, Kristen's kids, and all of the little people were game.  Although the big snow had melted out of the valley and the foothills looked snow bare, we drove to the gated section of Millcreek Canyon and found plenty of snow for an afternoon of intense sledding.  The Floridians braved the snow with tennis shoes and leisure footwear.  I don't think that Jenny even had any gloves.  Those Floridians are tough though.  After abandoning our first sledding site in search of safer run up canyon, we found a perfect hill that we worked and graded to cover the largest death traps (boulders).   The run was fast and only got faster the more we packed it, each rider terminating closer to the river's edge.  Eventually the sleds projected straight into the river and Newel and H.B. had to stand guard at the water's edge to stop the wild sledders from...

After eating breakfast--pancakes to be precise--I started cleaning up the kitchen and noticing the bit o' batter left, decided to cook that up.  After I poured three little griddle cakes into the pan, I put something in the small kitchen recycling bin.  The recycling bin was looking rather full, and I made the decision to take it out to the big recycling dumpster rather than procrastinate for later.  While dumping the recycling bin, I noticed that my garden beds looked rather dry, having suffered through the Sabbath sans water.  I rolled out the hose and proceeded to water all of my square foot gardens and the fruit trees AND filled the chickens water.  In the distance, I could hear a weird beeping noise, then another.  I wondered what that could possibly be, then proceeded to push Zeke on the swing for awhile.  Soph and Hal wanted to head up the street to play with friends, so I told Hal to go get a brush and bring it outside for a little backyar...

For the past three years I've had a calling in the stake young women's presidency.  I have loved getting to know the amazing youth and leaders in all of the wards around us and it's been fun to plan the stake youth activites and speak on the circuit.  Casey's been our ward's young men's president FOREVER--nearly 7 years, to be precise.  Somehow, in the past few weeks we've swapped places.  Casey got called onto the high council and my bishop just called me to be the ward YW president.  My first question to the bishop was, "Do you really think I have time for that?"  I've concluded that I'll just need to haul my kids with me to activities and rely on the Lord's grace.  I've made a practice of accepting whatever callings come and even though I've internally struggled with some of them, eventually I've grown to love serving in each one.  The Lord has interesting ways and means to stretch our capacities if we are willing to ma...

After a couple of rotations around the driveway on a wooden "Skuut" trainer bike, our 5-year-old Sophie took her freshly de-training-wheeled bike and rode it like a champ.  Hallee (barely 4), motivated by her sister's quick success, attempted the same feat with less success, although she did ride for a short stretch unassisted.