Category Archives: Happenings

May Day Mayday

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May Day, definition: May 1 celebrated as a springtime festival

I am feeling kind of down these days. Everyone is writing on their blogs about the beautiful flowers they are enjoying, about the lovely weather they are hoping for, about SPRING. My days are getting progressively colder and the leaves are mostly finished changing colors and dropping. I was having a hard time getting out the house before it got cold: now I can see I’m just going to spend the next few months indoors. It takes twice as long to get Paul ready to go out because I have to bundle him up. I think we’ll stay indoors.

This morning, I realized it was May Day. I have always had a special place in my heart for May Day. One year, when I was a depressed, lonely, loner teenager, a friend of mine left me a bouquet of roses on May Day. “Happy May Day!” the note said. She left them anonymously, but I knew who it was. I haven’t talked to her for years, but I’ll always remember the service she did for me back on that spring day when I felt so awkward and alone. It was a reminder that in the “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer” (Camus); I just needed to stop thinking about myself and serve, as she did.

It’s just so sad that this year’s May Day is rainy, overcast, cold, and only getting colder. I must remember that summer will eventually come again.

I miss spring! (I guess it serves me right for bragging about good produce in November!)

Mayday, definition: an international radio-telephone signal word used as a distress call

I’m trying to find my ancestors. I researched James and Margaret and found their supposed marriage date in an index of marriages. The UK likes to horde the originals and won’t let anyone (even LDS volunteers) digitize or scan them for microfilm. So, for £13 I ordered the marriage certificate. (Yes, Mom, I know you claim Grandma already had one, but when I visited, we searched her apartment and couldn’t find it.)

For some reason, I thought that the marriage certificate would tell me everything. I guess I imagined a large packet or box delivered to my door with birth information and parental details, complete with an explanation of the mystery of where, when, and why Margaret disappeared fifteen years later.

Here’s what I got: a barely legible official copy of the certificate on file in a slim, small, half-sheet-of-paper-sized envelope.

The certificate tells me their names and professions, their ages, etc. Most of the information we already knew.

But here are my questions:

  • If I didn’t know which James Simon/Simons/Simmons was my ancestor, how could I be sure this was their marriage certificate?
  • How can I figure out where they were born? Tradition holds James Simmons as Irish, but we don’t know where he came from or when he came to England.
  • How do I find where, when, and to whom James Delany/Simons was born? Because he was aged four at the 1871 census, he couldn’t possibly have been born to James and Margaret unless he was born out of wedlock.
  • Could James Delany/Simmons have been born out of wedlock in the 1860s? Wouldn’t that have been pretty scandalous for this Catholic family? Can I assume he was born to people who were married?

I am completely lost as to where to begin. I’ll head to the Family History Library next Wednesday when it’s open, but my experience is the librarians there are as clueless as I am.

PLEASE HELP if you have any experience with family history!

Note: Any Benac family members who’d like to save £13 can view and download a high-res jpg of this image here for your own family history files.

Apostasy?

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We traveled to see the Twelve Apostles this weekend because we had a holiday. (We might not get Thanksgiving, but we do get ANZAC day in April!) Apparently, some of the Twelve Apostles have fallen away. I think that’s apostasy, isn’t it?

Here’s a picture of Mommy and Paul. You can see one of the “fallen Apostles” in the surf below. (Pardon my wind-blown hair. It was windy and I didn’t have a hair tie.)

I’ll try to get my pictures up by the end of the week, but we’ll see.

Road Warrior

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Paul was a great sport on our super-short road trip this weekend. We drove for about six hours along the Great Ocean Road on Friday. Unfortunately, Paul couldn’t see the beautiful scenery as we drove. I think he was wondering why we didn’t let him out of his carseat! We only took two breaks as we drove. Friday night and Saturday morning we spent some time seeing the beautiful rock cliffs off the coast of Southern Victoria. Paul didn’t seem too impressed out in the wind and autumn breeze. But Mommy kept him warm!

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Saturday we drove (the non-scenic) four hours home. It was a very nice short jaunt to see our country. Paul won’t remember any of it, but he sure was a great sport.

Why I Like Photoshop

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In August, I went to visit the Mornington Peninsula. I took pictures, and I didn’t feel very satisfied with any of them. The sun was too bright, and nothing did justice to the beauty of the scene.

Since then, my husband helped me install Photoshop CS2 on my computer, and we got more memory (the computer often froze if I tried to use Photoshop). This week, I revisited the Mornington Peninsula photos.

Before Photoshop

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After Photoshop

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Before Photoshop

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After Photoshop

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What did I do? I cropped out distractions, I straightened the horizon, I adjusted the exposure, and I removed the the smudges. I also ran a macro that found the edges and made them a little sharper.

It’s amazing to me what a little bit of tweaking can do to a photograph. They are the same shots, and I took them, but it looks so much nicer in the after-shot.

Because I like to review the photos I’ve taken, I’ve created a photography journal. I have the photos in the order that I’ve taken them — if you click on Archive, you can browse through them by year and month or by category. Currently, I have my Australia photographs posted. I’m going to add some of church history sites and France and Italy once I process them in Photoshop. I don’t have most of my others–Bolivia, Jerusalem, etc.–but when I eventually get back to the USA, I’ll scan them, revisit them in Photoshop, and post those as well.

I’m not sure the point of creating a site like this, other than I want to share my photographs with the world. Amateur that I am, I like them.

! Developments !

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Paul has two teeth!

His two bottom teeth have just pushed through the gums in the last few days. He wasn’t too miserable—a bit fussy but not too bad. I’ll try to get a picture—not sure how we’re going to do that—when they are a bit more visible.

Paul scoots!

I can’t leave him on the blanket in the middle of the room to go move the laundry or use the bathroom: he’s learned how to scoot toward anything he wants. It’s not crawling—it’s just a combination of rolling and scooting. He hasn’t really learned how to do it properly, but if he sees a cord for something, or papers or books or toys, he’ll make a bee-line for it. I’m not too worried—he’s still rather slow—but it means my days of leaving him and knowing he’ll be OK for 30 seconds are over.

Paul rolls!

When I went to check on him during his nap the other day, I was startled to find him on his side. (I know previous generations always put babies down on bellies and sides, but the SIDS concerns have been drilled into me so much that I was nervous to see it.) He keeps doing it. I guess this means he’ll sleep however he wants to sleep from now on. Maybe he’ll even get hair on the back of his head!

Paul talks!

I mentioned yesterday that Paul’s working on his letter-sounds. He is getting better every day. I say “Ma-ma-ma” and he responds “Da-da-da.” Bummer. We’re working on that one right now.

Look Who’s Talking

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No, Paul isn’t really talking yet, at least not in the sense of words. However, he’s getting pretty good at his sounds.

It’s been interesting to hear his development. For the last two weeks, he’s been working on buh-buh-buh sounds and puh-puh-puh sounds. I imagine he’s working on “B” because I call him Baby and I imagine he’s working on “P” because I call him Paul and because we had been reading Winnie the Pooh, which had Pooh and Piglet. Lots of Ps. Yesterday he began trying out duh-duh-duh.

I wonder what letter he’ll try next? Ma-ma, anyone?

Lesson 12: Repentance is a Blessing (A Study of Twelve-year-old Behavior)

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I realize the 12-year-olds in my class are not committing murder or smoking or doing anything really bad. They are good kids. I may not have prepared my lesson as best as I could, but they really took me off guard yesterday. Here’s a rundown of my class yesterday (it’s kind of long):

(I’ll call the class Mary, Sarah, Elizabeth, and John, just for privacy’s sake.)

We started by reading Alma 38:8. Mary had forgotten her scriptures. Our meeting house library only has spare scriptures in Chinese.

  • Me: Alma had to recognize he’s sinned: he felt the pain of guilt. The first part of repentance is recognizing you did something wrong. Why do you think we need to recognize that?
  • Sarah: So you can repent. Duh! Ew! Stop–that is so gross.
  • [Mary has taken a pushpin from the bulletin board and is popping the blister on her toe with it. I decide to ignore her. Why? I don’t know.]
  • Me: Ok, let’s read Doctrine and Covenants 58:38. John, can you read that?
  • Sarah: Ew! Now I need to wash my foot! [She storms out of the room.]
  • Elizabeth: What happened? [That’s what I’m thinking too.]
  • Mary: I bumped her foot with mine! [I don’t blame Sarah at this point: Mary has been popping blisters on her toe. I would want to wash my foot too.]
  • Me: OK, so what those verses said: What do we need to do to repent?
  • Elizabeth: Confess and Forsake.
  • Me: Good!Can you write that on the board? [Elizabeth volunteered before class to be scribe.]
  • Mary: You dummy! Confess has two S‘s.
  • Me: Let’s not call names. It doesn’t matter how it’s spelled. What does forsake mean?
  • Mary: It means, well, like “For your sake.”
  • Me: Not quite. It means “to give up.” Why do you think we need to give up our sins?
  • John: So we don’t do it again. To show we’re sorry and won’t do it again.
  • Me, glad someone is focused: Right. To show we won’t do it again: we really mean it! Another thing we have to do is keep the commandments. (Can you write that on the board, too?)
  • [Elizabeth has by now drawn an elaborate design beside the list of steps of repentance. She’s also written CTR! CHOOSE TO REPENT!]
  • Elizabeth: Oh, what am I suppose to write?
  • [Great, has she heard any of this?]
  • John: Keep the commandments!
  • Sarah, storming back into the room: That was the grossest thing in the world!
  • Me: Anyway, as I was saying. We need to not do it again. So if we’re sorry we hit our sister and we’re repenting for doing that, we need to not do it again.
  • Sarah: Well, except, some things we will do again. Like, I know I’ll hit my brother again.
  • Me: Well, if we are sincere in wanting to repent, we need to stop doing it.
  • Elizabeth: But I have to hit my sisters!
  • Me: Remember how we talked about the premortal life where Satan wanted to let us return to Heavenly Father but he wouldn’t give us a choice? Instead, we came to earth under Heavenly Father’s plan with Christ as our Savior, so what did Heavenly Father give us?
  • Elizabeth: Our agency!
  • Me: Exactly! So you can choose not to hit your brother.
  • Elizabeth: No, I can’t.
  • Sarah: I have to hit my brothers.
  • Mary: There is no choice in the matter.
  • John: I don’t hit my brother.
  • Mary: You only have one brother.
  • Sarah: Yeah, I have six siblings. I have to defend myself.
  • [Sarah has five siblings. I correct her and she says, no, her dad counts as a sibling. Great.]
  • Elizabeth: I have to fight.
  • Sarah: Ew! Stop it! That’s gross. [Mary has renewed the pushpin technique. Now she’s pricking her fingers.]
  • Me: Mary, will you stop poking yourself with a pushpin?!
  • [Mary puts the pushpin back into the board and sits and sulks.]
  • Me, to Elizabeth: Well, if your brother is mean to you, what choices do you have?
  • Elizabeth: To defend myself.
  • Me: And what other choice?
  • Elizabeth: To defend myself.
  • Me: And…
  • Elizabeth: To fight.
  • Me: You can choose not to fight.
  • Elizabeth: No, they’ll all say “What’s wrong with you?”
  • Sarah: Right. I have to defend myself.
  • Me: Ok, so anyway, Heavenly Father’s plan is that we repent and that we actually feel sorry when we repent.

We also talked about making restitution (apologizing, making up for what was wrong) after we do something and we read some more scriptures, but I couldn’t get them to stop claiming they must fight with their siblings. They don’t believe me when I say they have a choice. I couldn’t get Mary to participate after I called her off of her disgusting pop-the-blister kick.

Now, I know I fought with my sister. But I know I chose to fight with her. I know when I still argue with people that I’m choosing to argue. It’s my fault just as much as anyone else’s. It takes two to fight. I also think family discipline has something to do with it. I know Sarah’s family — they are a bit violent to each other in church; I can’t imagine how they would be at home. Case in point: John, who claims he doesn’t fight with his older brother, is a perfect, focused class-participant (most Sundays).

I really don’t remember what was like being twelve. I asked my husband what I can do. His answer? Don’t teach twelve-year-olds.
Here are my questions for you:

  1. Are all twelve-year-olds determined to fight with their siblings?
  2. How do I emphasize repentance when they think they have no choice in the matter (other than using a better example)?
  3. Also, when a class member is being distracting and popping blisters or being gross, how do I ask her to stop without making her annoyed and sullen the rest of the class?

Lesson 12 of 45

My Chair

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Mommy got me a chair.

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When I sit in it, I can see a lot of things. I am up! I can see Mommy. She puts things in her mouth. I can see the table. I can see all sorts of things to grab. Most of the time I can’t reach anything.

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Mommy gives me things to hold. One thing she gives me is this long straight thing. It doesn’t rattle. It doesn’t make noise. I just hold it and try to eat it.

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I think that is the purpose of it: to put it in my mouth. Sometimes Mommy doesn’t want me to put things in my mouth. But then I sit here in my chair and she tries to put things in my mouth.

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Maybe I’ll get used to this new chair. I haven’t decided yet. It’s kind of different.