Week 4

We’re here in a mini-paradise in Monroe with all of Gina’s seven siblings and their families and with Gina’s parents. It’s beautiful and we’ve been having a wonderful time. These times when everyone gathers together are the favorites of my life. Sometimes I wish they could always be here.

 

• Lily managed to fill more diapers per day than any days in memory,
• Elsie found out that the funniest thing in the world is to try to kick Daddy while swinging,
• Timmy had the time of his life having a water fight with his uncles, siblings, and cousins,
• Abby lost her left front tooth,
• Kate read the first half of her first piano song and memorized it,
• Gina took many medals, plaques, ribbons and awards off of her mothers wall, as did each of her siblings,
• I learned to push kids higher on the swing than ever before.

week three

Lily decided not to like her baby swing while she was conscious,

Elsie said “hang on” in response to her mother’s command and calmly finished what she was doing before obeying,

Timmy beat his dad soundly at a game of Pigmania and got better at checkers,

Abby made her first “white faced mouse” in her quest to learn origami,

Kate began writing her first computer program,

Gina started making use of podcasts and byu.tv to keep her mind entertained while she does laundry.

I found myself sobbing while watching Saturday’s Warrior with two kids on my lap.

Sold!

The deal is done and the money is wired.  We no longer own real estate in Albuquerque.  We’re glad to have simplified our life by that much.  But we did have some mixed feelings about the whole thing.

We spent more time in that home than in any other home we have lived in together.  Our family grew from two new parents with three young children to two more seasoned parents with 5 young children.  We made wonderful friends in Albuquerque and had a great time in the Sage ward.

We cleaned up our home for the sale (we includes huge and critical help from Mom and Dad Tate and some help from some good friends as well–thank you so much, you guys).  Wow, did it look good!  Now that good looking home is no longer ours and we are wanderers on this green earth.  (Okay, we actually have too much stuff to be wanderers.  We hope not to move again for about 2 years.)

Still, I think that moving was the right decision.  Timmy alone has spontaneously stopped what he was doing and taken time to thank me for moving us up here to Los Alamos.  The girls in Albuquerque were worried about leaving friends.  I think that they will miss them.  But I know that they are glad to be here.  I think that I’m glad too.  That makes now 5 different homes that we’ve lived in during these 8 years of marriage.  And we’ve left plenty of good memories in each of them.  Your heart stays behind a bit.  I hope, though, that it also comes along undiminished.

By the way . . . does anybody know of a very secure investment with a yield better than 10%?

Quotes

“As you know, one can only grow by overcoming.” President Spencer W. Kimball paraphrasing God

“We sometimes think we would like to know what lies ahead, but sober thought brings us back to accepting life a day at a time and magnifying and glorifying that day. . . .” Spencer W. Kimball

“Nothing happens until someone sells something. “-Gianforte
“A lot of companies think sales is like a necessary evil,” he says. “Sales is really the most noble part of the business because it’s the part that brings the solution together with the customer’s need.”-Gianforte

“We must use our talents in behalf of our fellowmen, rather than burying them in the tomb of a self-centered life.” Spencer W. Kimball

“Everyone has got the will to win, its only those with the will to prepare that do win”-Mark Cuban quoting Bobby Knight

“One must not judge a man’s worth from his poorer work; one must always judge him by the best he has done.” P.A.M. Dirac

“The secret to success is constancy of purpose.” Benjamin Disraeli

“Professionals are always screwing up, Doug. You should know that.” Karen Tate

In summary, I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have greatness within their grasp don’t succeed are: they don’t work on important problems, they don’t become emotionally involved, they don’t try and change what is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don’t.–Richard Hamming

“The art of solving physics problems is the art of approximations”–Ivan Deutsch

“The law of the harvest has not been repealed.”–Spencer W Kimball

“Finding the fun is the key to mastering a skill”–Paul Bucheit

Smart goals:

• Specific (no generalities)
• Measurable (quantitative is best)
• Attainable (”realistic”)
• Relevant (in line with larger goals)
• Timely (deadline)

This week at the Bradshaws, 2

• Lily started rolling over
• Elsie learned to pile checkers on top of each other and sorted a whole basket of laundry.
• Timmy ran all the way around a full-sized track–twice.
• Abby’s friend Ashley asked her mom to go out of town more often so that she and Abby can play.
• Kate started piano lessons
• Gina made great sorbet and hummus
• I got all 7 of us out to the track to exercise together on two separate mornings before 6:00.

Lily just rolled onto her stomach

She’s 3.5 months.

Pauline, the butterfly fairy

The kids changed from butterflies to butterfly fairies as we jumped on the tramp tonight.  Afterward as I sat rocking Lily, Kate was still a butterfly fairy.  I found out that her name was Pauline.

Pauline kindly asked if she could get us anything and when I requested a bouquet of lilies and she obliged. She said to call her if we got lonely or if we needed anything else and then went outside.  I called her and told her I was lonely and asked if she would tell me a story.  “What story would you like?” she asked.  I wanted the story that told how butterfly fairies came to this world.  Here is what I can remember of what Pauline taught me:

While I held her Kate pretended to be the Pauline, the butterfly fairy. She told the story of how they came to be on the earth.

It turns out that a boy went to a star right by the sun but didn’t get burned. From there he was able to go into the sun and through the material on the sun until he found a treasure box. He took the treasure box back in his rocket to the earth. When he opened it up, there were some of the butterfly fairies, including Pauline’s adoptive mother and the egg that held Pauline.

Butterfly fairies have indeterminant ages. They go through age spurts where they can go from 4 to 1000 in just a few minutes. They all choose their ages except for Pauline.

Butterfly fairies are children of the sun. Now the sun creates them in things that grow under it. They pop out of cherry pits and out of flowers. Pauline adopted one from a cherry pit when she opened the cherry and was surprised to see him pop out complete with silver streamers and a grown vocabulary. Butterfly fairies grow up to some extent in their eggs.

Pauline has the distinction of simultaneously being the oldest butterfly fairy and the youngest. She is the oldest because her egg was actually laid by the grandma fairy, the mother of the sun. She is the youngest because others hatched first, and even the little boy fairy that Pauline found in the cherry pit and adopted soon became older than her after going through an age spurt. Some of the fairies are thousands of years old. Pauline is only 5 years old and will stay that young at the request of her adoptive mother, the butterfly fairy queen.

She saw the day when the grandma died because it was recorded by her adoptive father, the evil moon fairy. This was before the current sun, in the days of the old sun. It is just when the days of the dinosaurs were ending. The grandma was a great friend with the dinosaurs. The moon fairy shot at the dinosaurs with thousands of arrows and the grandma flew up into space. How she died isn’t clear but the moon fairy has published footage of her first having fainted and then fading away. Pauline wonders if the grandma fairy might not actually be alive. She was, after all, the most magic of all the fairies. She might have disappeared to do other things.

Some fun pictures of our Los Alamos life

Here are the Fantastic Four. They were supposed to jump simultaneously. Interestingly enough, they chose to jump in order of age.

Lily has taken to smiling in such a happy way that you don’t ever want to look away.

Eden. The back patio is the most used portion of the back yard.

The tramp may take a close second. The structure to the left is a grape arbor in embryo. We’ll see.

Here is the front, complete with a tree swing. In the morning the front is shady and nice to be in. In the evening we use the back more.

Gina made two sorbets for my birthday, lemon-lime and mixed berry. I thought that both of them were better than the sorbets we had had at Ambrosia, the best restaurant we know of in Albuquerque. I found, though, that I liked them best when I ate them together. Anyway, for Father’s Day Gina made this batch pictured here. It combines the two recipes and uses home bottled apricots instead of store bought apricot nectar. The result was the most amazing sorbet I had ever tasted. I’ve been hit so emotionally that I am a changed man. I hope to repent of my former non-sorbet eating lifestyle and fully embrace this new and so much tastier life style.

This week at the Bradshaws, #1

I’m not committing to do this every week, but my mom asked for weekly updates and that sounds like a good idea as long as I try to stay terse enough.

This week

1. Doug went kayaking down the Chama and climbed up a slot canyon. He also learned to soder better. (Thanks, Gina!)
2. Gina found out that one of the more competent women in the ward looks up to her. She was distracted and pleased for the next few hours.
3. Kate learned her first bit of origami: she made a mouse and a duck.
4. Abby finished reading through her first series of books and has started on a second.
5. Timmy got his worst sunburn yet while during field day and came home and fell asleep on the threshold stairs.
6. Elsie decided to start pretending that Gina was the baby and Elsie the mommy. She takes great care of Gina.
7. Lily has become mobile and can scoot several inches and is campaigning to move up to size 2 diapers. (I won’t cover the messy details.)