Classic Thelin Stories, Part One

The Thelin household is buzzing with activity this fall. With school, plays, piano lessons, home redecorating, and life in full swing, it is hard to get a minute to write anything down, but there are a few shining moments that need to be highlighted for our family history:

#1---SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER LIVES ON

Our stake requires the youth to wear "Sunday Dress" (for boys, a button up shirt and tie) to every stake dance. This really taxes the creativity of the youth especially when the dances are themed such as "Disney characters," "Down on the Farm," or in this case, "The Tye-Dyed 70's." The kids are always told they can dress up to match the theme as long as they keep the Sunday dress code. Can you spell F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-I-O-N? I mean really, who is going to tye-dye a sunday shirt. Jeffrey, however, fun-loving to the core, pulled out his famous "fro" from his bag of movie-making greatness and some way cool shades he and Chris had found at the dollar store last summer. We had a sorry group of "un-hip" boys show up at the house for rides, but within moments, Jeffrey had passed out sunglasses to all and had them ready to disco.

#2--IT'S A LITTLE EARLY FOR PARTRIDGES IN PEAR TREES, BUT...

We may not be able to spontaneously grow giant zucchinis like the Farrell property, but the two Thelin pear trees are quite prolific. We do nothing to them--no spraying, no pruning, no fertilizing-- and, in return, they dump dozens of beautiful hard country pears on us each year. This year, my domestically gifted Mormon husband canned 55 quarts of this fruity bounty. I helped a little (meaning I counted the jars. OK--I peeled a few pears, and dumped some sugar into boiling water when he told me to--once.) This process took about 15 total hours of work.

Amy put in about 5 hours peeling. She LOVED the electric peeler. Holly got the bright idea of taking the 20 foot long peels that it made outside and stringing them in the trees for the birds and squirrels to eat. Before I knew what was happening, every bush, tree, and twig within her reach was adorned with pear peels. It was quite a sight, and I cringed thinking of the vast numbers of rodent wildlife that might be lured to our yard for such a feast. Luckily, Holly's little friends were speedy and all of the peel decor disappeared by morning the next day. The pears are delicious and we look forward to eating them through the millenium.

#3--IS THERE A WOSET IN YOUR CLOSET?

Before... After....

For many months, I have entertained the idea of repainting our bedroom. A formidable task, considering it is the dumping ground for the entire house. I never really planned on doing anything with the closet. I have always tried as much as possible to ignore that area. It depressed me to go in there, because it seemed like it should be a good closet for us, a great closet even, but it just wasn't working out for the past 8 years. Yet, as fate would have it, when I finally mustered the courage to begin the bedroom redo, I forced my way into the far reaches of the closet looking for painting attire only to behold that the closet rod had broken.

It is yet unknown whether the closet rod broke of its own volition (having borne the weight of our collective and predominantly unwearable wardrobe for nearly a decade without being anchored at any point into a wall stud) OR if the breakage occured in part due to the primate tendencies of the young Thelin children, who have used the closet over the years as a secret clubhouse for the ever elusive "WHODUNNIT" spy club, whose black knit gloves, ski hats, walkie talkies, and secret spy notes were uncovered in various interesting and surprisingly high places during the closet cleansweep.

At any rate, the closet is now a happy place...where there used to be clothes crammed on shelves, there are now neat baskets. The single rod was replaced with a cool dual rod HIS and HERS hanging system. There are racks for shoes and sweaters and extra blankets...and 3 little spy girls can still fit nicely on the shelves in the back!

Before... After...(well, we still have a few more clothes to put back)
HGTV eat your heart out!

#4--THE TACO BAKE OF LIFE

One bright Sunday afternoon Jeffrey comes to me and says, "Oh yeah, Mom, I need to make like an edible cell for Honors Biology tomorrow." After this information was repeated several more times to me and was still not making any sense to my feeble mind, I asked for further explanation. Finally I understood that the assignment was to create, with food, a replica of a cell. This was to be shared/eaten with the class. I thought to myself, here is an assignment that educators of gifted students no doubt learn about during one of those mandated "teacher development days" for which we have no school on a Wednesday in the middle of March. You know, one of those "stretch the mind" kind of seminars.

Well, I stretched my mind as far as it would go and brilliantly suggested Jell-o. "It is just like a cell", I said, using my intellectual voice, "and we could float fruit in it and stuff for the nucleus and cell thingys." Making a teenager face (the kind when you can see the physical pain being suffered in trying to communicate with an out-of-touch adult), Jeffrey explained that there was no possible way we could do Jello. EVERYONE had already thought of Jello, since most people had done the assignment during the previous week when it could be turned in early.

One kid had done the most awesome of all "jell cells." He had carved out a pumpkin and filled it with lemon jello. In it, he had floated various candies--a gobstopper for the nucleus, skittles for the mitochondria, fruit roll-ups for the whatevers...you get the idea. Anyway, the kid left it in his locker until 4th block. The candy had melted into the melting Jello, making it a totally disgusting blackish/purplish color. Apparently, the class loved it. Jeffrey's friend Alex had 8 helpings of it. This was the kind of competition we were up against.

I suggested we bake a "cellular" cake. It had been done.

I suggested a cell pizza--hey there was real possibility there. Nope. Been done.

I gave a lecture about how waiting until the last day an assignment is due is NOT a great idea.

Jeffrey finally let it be known that what he would really like to do was a taco bake. Huh? I could not make the connection. Luckily, Gordon caught the vision, and the two of them started cooking. As things progressed in the kitchen, the "Taco Bake of Life" was created.

Since cells are in layers, so were the layers of the taco bake (ground beef layered alternately with tortilla shells). On the top layer, a tomato slice represented the nucleus, mushrooms the mitochondria, and lettuce the golgi apparatus. Bits of onions were the centrioles, and melted cheese around the edges supplied the cell membrane holding it all together. It was beautiful.

On Monday, I dutifully reheated it and drove it to the high school at 1:52, where I met Jeffrey in the office to pass it off. He took it and said genuinely, "Thank you so much, Mom," while flashing me one of those cute smiles that make the girls get all silly. Good grief.

Jeffrey's humorous presentation of "the Taco Bake of Life" was reported to be EPIC (this is apparently THE word of the day, FYI). The principal had chosen to visit the class on this special day and enjoyed it very much. He, no doubt, left feeling smug about reaping the benefits of providing top-notch teacher work days for his employees.

#5--IN 14 HUNDRED AND 92, COLUMBUS SAILED THE OCEAN BLUE...

Do you ever get the feeling that no matter what you do as a parent, somehow you have failed in teaching your chidren what is really important? A few weeks ago, on a Monday night, I was talking to Chris on Facebook. The conversation went something like this:

I asked, "Did you go to family night?"

"Nope," Chris replied.

"Oh no. Are you sick from eating Cannon center food again?"

"Nope."

"Was it cancelled?"

"No, Mom. Think about what day it is."

"Monday?"

"Think harder."

"October 13?"

"DUH! IT IS COLUMBUS DAY, MOTHER! I WAS CELEBRATING!"

"Of course. How exactly does one do that?"

"Well, it was pretty great. Me and Kayla went to Shamra's apartment (Chris' cousins from Washington state). According to Smith family tradition, every Columbus Day you watch the Living Scriptures Christopher Columbus video together and make fun of the dialogue and special effects. Then you make boats with waffle bowls and vanilla ice cream. Kayla snagged some waffle bowls from DQ a few days ago. I brought the ice cream. Then you make masts out of straws and paper sails and draw Spanish crosses on them. They were awesome!"

Why is it that when as a mother you hear something like that, so unbelieveably wonderful and superbly random, that all of the years of themed birthday parties, crazy custom-made Halloween costumes, magical Christmases, Easter egg hunts, and fun family vacations all just sort of melt into blah-ness? I mean, my son was born and raised in our home for 19 years and never celebrated a single Columbus day! How tragic is that? I'm just kidding of course, but isn't that a fun idea?

I had to remind Chris that when he was about 2 or 3 we were talking about names one evening around the time of Columbus day. We had probably read a book about it or something ( at least I'm trying to make myself feel better by thinking that.) Chris was just becoming aware of the fact that people have more than one name--e.g. a first name, a middle name, and a last name. So, I asked him, "Do you know YOUR full name?

Chris pondered, then replied enthusiastically, "YES!! Christopher.....Columbus......Ship!"

So, thus concludes another chapter of Thelin stories to entertain the family and document the precious moments of our lives. There will be more to come. Next time:

The Grand Opening of Frank and Bob's Shop (located just to the east of my kitchen)

Joe the Refrigerator Repairman

The Room Makeover (waiting on that one to be finished)

A Weekend with Chris (who caused a security breach in the SLC airport)