Part of the Family

There's a part of me that wants to write epic, creative masterpieces on my blog, so I wait until I come up with a good idea... then I just give up and decide to just talk about life instead. Hope y'all don't mind. :)

Today was unintentionally full of spur-of-the-moment decisions. Qait's older sister is moving to Texas, so she's in town for a few days, saying goodbye to a lot of Utah friends. Turns out she wanted to see me, too. So she and her husband picked me up and took me down to Payson to a family-reunion of sorts. Qait's parents were there, too, and they were so happy to see me. It's funny that, even eight years later, I still constantly underestimate how much they care about me.

You'd think I'd learn. Last year, they gave Tevan the "You take care of her, young man" speech, complete with the demonstration of dangerous weapons (Papa Boatright showed off his wickedly sharp, authentic samurai swords right before looking him dead in the eye and telling him to treat me right). It unnerved him far more than meeting my dad did. Qait told me later it's because they love me so darn much, and they want nothing but the best for me, so they were just checking to make sure the man on my arm deserved me. I was touched by their protectiveness.

Rae introduced me to her other family members as her family friend and adoptive sister. One of them remarked, "You know, she actually looks like the Boatright sisters." Rae responded that, for all intents and purposes, I was. First of all, I love it when people say that, because I feel like one of the Boatright sisters a lot of the time. Secondly, since Qait, Rae, and all of their sisters are GORGEOUS, I'm super flattered to be compared to them.

I've never felt so at home with someone else's family. Not even when I was meeting some of my then-boyfriend's siblings last year. I always try to describe how I feel about Qait's family, and I fail every time. Have you ever met someone and knew that they were your soul-mate? In the most non-romantic sense of soul-mate-ness, that's what it's like. I feel like I fit into that family as if I grew up with them.

My poor future-husband. I have double the family for him to meet and love. Not that it's hard to love either family. :)

After the Boatright family party, I came home, and Savannah offered to take me to see Qait and her new baby, Scarlett, since I was sick last week and couldn't visit. So, on that whim, we sauntered off to Orem to see my new niece. She is the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes on. With her curly dark hair and HUGE dark eyes, she looks like an exotic princess and I'm completely in love. I almost couldn't bear to give her back to Qait, but Ender needed some Aunt Lynnae love (and tummy-raspberries) so I had to.

I'm so grateful to be part of such a beautiful family. Being with them is as wholesome and refreshing as being with my own biological family.

Duct Tape is Silver

I've gotten less carefully-filtered over the last several months, and while I appreciate openness and honesty, I've also discovered that sometimes... it's just better not to say anything. Especially if it isn't a big deal.

Oh, and I sometimes feel like Calvin, too. Because, objectively speaking, I'm happy right now. But I'd really like to be incandescently joyful more often than I am. :)

Did I Just Make That Sound?

I've been posting a lot of pop-culture-related posts recently. Maybe because, since I've gotten back from Lake Powell, a bunch of good movies have come out and I'm catching up, thus consuming a large part of my life. I'm writing this post at an obscenely late (or early) hour because I just got back from the midnight screening of Captain America.

It. Was. Amazing!

And they had a legitimate Avengers trailer at the end of the credits. Flash of Loki, Thor, Tony Stark, and others. The whole theater roared with applause. Somewhere in the midst of this roar, a small squeak reached my ears just as it hiccuped into a croak because the vocal cords making it couldn't take the stress. I was... unaware that I was emitting that sound. I don't know if I've ever involuntarily made a fangirl squeal like that. I'll be honest, most of the odd noises I make about The Hobbit are semi-voluntary. I'm at least aware that I'm making them. But Marvel just yanked it right out of my mouth, without my brain's knowledge. Hm. Well done, moviemakers. Well done. 

Though my true nerdiness prefers Tolkien (and is obviously very excited about The Hobbit), I must commend Marvel for doing such a good job of building slowly up to the Avengers movie so that even relatively uneducated fans (like me--because, let's face it, I've still never read any of the comic books) are hopping with excitement for the grand finale to come out.

And yes, I may have a crush on Captain America. Just a little one.

Oh, and since some of you may not actually care what I think about pop culture and would prefer to stalk me instead of my movie tastes, here's a brief update:

I'm graduating in just three weeks!

Which means I'm visiting home in Texas (and leaving my current job) in five weeks!

And I really should be packing and moving my stuff to Bountiful this week. Sadly, that probably won't happen. I'll be kicking my butt in gear next week (I hope). If you happen to know of people with spare cardboard boxes to give me, I just might profess undying love for you.

Other than thoughts of moving, I'm pretty much spending my days working, reading books, and (for this week at least) going to see new blockbuster movies. A brief shout-out to my dad who gave me two free movie passes for my birthday, thus enabling this trend of seeing movies in the expensive theater. (Harry Potter 7.2, you and I have a date on Saturday, just so you know.)

And now, sleep. Body needs sleep. And dreams of Captain America (I hope).

And thanks to this blog post, my parents will actually know where I am at three in the morning. :)

Irony

What's ironic, you ask? Here's what's ironic: Getting lost in Middle Earth last night, just in time to come into work and find this video posted all over the place:



I love how crazy some Lord of the Rings fans are.

And you want to know something? I secretly wish that were me.

Perks of Googling Myself

Yes, yes. I'll admit, I did google myself. Boredom and curiosity, what can I say? But thanks to the endeavor, I discovered a poem that I'd written years ago and lost, because I didn't have a copy of it on my computer. Luckily, I'd posted it on a poetry website as part of a school assignment and my google search brought it up. Yay!

We were asked to write our own epitaphs. Instead of going for gory, I went for a more humorous death. Sadly, it's not super elegant writing-wise, but a secret part of me would still love to go out this way... 

Statistics

Never Trust Statisticians... 
They say that lightning never hits the same spot twice
Ha! I’d laugh at that if I could.
I lived my life, an exception to the rule
Never falling into stereotypes.
Yet I lived happy with my exceptionality.
Now I cry “Alas that I had to be so different!”
As I made my way home through a crashing thunderstorm,
Lightning hit the ground in front of me
And threw me off my feet.
“Whew!” I thought in vast relief, and rolled back on my knees.
Happy-go-lucky then, I began a whistling tune.
Feeling safe and secure in statistics,
I went on my merry way.
Alas, alack! I took one step and ZAP!
The lightning bolt hit twice.

Granted, I'd like to live a full life before dying this way. Perhaps when I'm old, maybe I'll just take lots of walks in thunderstorms. :)

Happiness Is...

Getting lost in Middle Earth on accident, just because you picked up Children of Hurin to "look at it" before going to sleep. Several hours later...

I'm still lost in Middle Earth.

Oh Tolkien, how I love you. It's been 14 years since I first got lost in Middle Earth, and I've been ritually getting lost there ever since.

I love how detailed his vision of Middle Earth is. He has a more complete history of his fictional world and its characters than most of us do of our actual history and historical figures.

But the biggest reason I love it? Probably because, thanks to the gigantic nostalgia factor, reading Tolkien feels like coming home. I'm instantly taken back to that day when Dad sat down with his eight-year-old bookworm and read her the first chapter of The Hobbit. When he finished, he put it down. "What happens next?" I asked him.

"If you want to know, you'll have to read it and find out," my ever-wise father told me.

Never one to back down from a challenge to my reading ability and curiosity, I decided that I'd do just what he suggested. It took me a year, but I finally finished Return of the King and was hooked for life.

And apparently, I'm incapable of "just looking" at his writing, because he always sucks me back in again, whether I technically have time for it or not.

I'm Grateful for Plumbing

Happyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappy!

Yep. That's me. Happy.

Hurting, but happy. I just got back from an epic week at Lake Powell with my extended family. It is most likely the best thing I have ever allowed myself to be talked into.

I won't bore you with all of the details of the trip. Most of the time, stories of trips are most interesting when you're actually in them, although you can slide by with in-person retellings sometimes because tone, expression, and gestures help a lot. But here? Not so much.

Since it was so hot, we all slept on the deck

So here's the skinny on what you should know about my trip:

I did in fact get a little skinnier. I was too busy playing to eat a ton of food. Plus, you try getting food when 6 teenage boys crowd you out at every meal and inhale all the food before you get to it. :)

My cousin Josh Anderson is a Tube Wars BEAST. He did things that, according to the laws of physics, probably shouldn't be possible. I'll have to show you pictures sometime, once I find a way to glean them from my aunt's camera.

We survived a pretty vicious windstorm and almost lost Josh Wille between two boats, but he miraculously did not get squished in half. We're grateful for that. The boats were all saved, if unanchored to the shore, and nobody got hurt. So we chalked it up to a really intense experience.

This is me with "The Joshes." Josh-on-the-right is my cousin. Josh-on-the-left is my cousin's cousin. They're both pretty awesome.

I kneeboarded for the first time. I really like it.

Unfortunately, my grip sucks. I get these shooting pains through my hands and wrists when I try to do it more than once in the space of several hours. Two-ish years of scooping ice cream and a hereditary tendency toward carpal tunnel syndrome (I think) seems to be the main problem. I'm sad, because otherwise I could definitely keep going. The rest of me is strong enough.

Why yes, I did take this picture. :)

I tanned gently and wonderfully all week, then of course forgot to apply sunscreen this morning, so my knees are roasted after sitting on a boat for a bunch of hours. My roommates are making fun of me because I'm "waddling like a duck," to use their description. It's just... they hurt so bad! On the bright side, it happened at the end of the trip, so I'm back in air conditioning with buckets of aloe, advil, and ice packs to comfort me. :)

But it was SO worth it! I loved being cut off from technology and surrounded by the rocking waves and soaring cliffs. We woke up with the sun, went to bed with the sun, and nobody cared what time it was (we checked sometimes, just out of curiosity, but time was so irrelevant down there). It was heaven on earth.

Okay, minus the plumbing. I really did miss that. :)

Loved

I've found a boy who loves me back! It's so wonderful. He tells me he loves me. He gives me kisses. He brings me presents. He loves my shoes. He loves me when I'm not wearing any makeup. He always wants me to do things with him. He's sad when I have to leave.

Okay, so he's three years old. ("But he's a nice man, a good catch, true? True!"--Sorry, couldn't resist the Fiddler on the Roof reference)

Oh Ender. You're leading man of my blog. I hope that when you're older, you still remember how much your Aunt Lynnae loves you, because she's crazy about you.

Life is hard sometimes. I'm uprooting my entire life, moving away from everyone I know, and going to live with strangers. I'm graduating from BYU, still single, and there are times I wonder why I even bother trying to meet guys when they're always taken, uninterested, or even just plain mean sometimes. Despite how many people know my name, know my face, and tell me that they care about me, sometimes I just feel utterly invisible--as if the world is moving on without me and I'm left floundering by myself.

But it's the times like that when the Lord likes to remind me that I'm still loved. That there are people who have eyes only for me. Ender is one of those people. That sweet little boy lights up like a firecracker whenever I walk in the door, and his little arms wrap around my neck, reminding me that, yes, I am loved. And when he curls up on my lap and begins to snore softly as I talk to his mom, well, I'm convinced that there are few things in this life that are sweeter than that.

I could fill a whole book with the charming and heartwarming things that Ender does every time I see him. Knowing him makes me look forward to parenthood, even though, thanks to Qait's baby shower this last Friday, I've heard more than my fair share of birthing horror stories (and yes, they totally freaked me out).

Ender always lifts my heart and makes me forget about everything else that worries me, and I couldn't be more grateful for that.

Once Upon A Time

So once upon a time, there were these two frogs. A girl frog and a boy frog. They were happy. Suddenly, an evil witch appeared and turned the boy frog into a prince. And he was stuck as a prince. The girl frog was so sad that the witch had taken her froggy lover that she raised an army of fellow frogs and went after the witch. They succeeded in turning the witch into a snake. But that meant the frog-who-was-now-a-prince was stuck even more permanently as a prince. Eventually, he found a lovely princess and they got married. And the girl frog? Well, she fell in love with one of the boy frogs who had helped her take down the witch, so she got a happy, though unconventional, ending too. And somebody stepped on the snake. So it didn't hurt anyone.

Many thanks to Aubry, who was bored enough in the checkout line at Walmart to turn around and tell me this story off the top of her head. I told her to write it on her blog, but she never did, so I guess I'll do it. I was really impressed that she barely paused as she told the story, even though she made it all up in the moment, just to pass the time.

And people wonder why I like going shopping with Aubry. :)

One Year Ago

Today marks the one-year anniversary of my aunt's death, so naturally I've been thinking about her. The grieving process has long since run its course (much faster for me than for her husband and children, I'm sure), but she's never all that far from my thoughts. I still wear one of those rubbery "live strong" type bands on my wrist in honor of her memory. Largely because I miss it when I don't wear it, and because it reminds me from time to time to be the kind of woman my aunt was.

My uncle's new wife wrote a beautiful piece about Amy and how they can still feel her spirit in their home. Her children each also acknowledged her lingering influence in their lives today, too. Even I can feel it. She did more to knit our whole extended family together than anything anyone else has ever been able to do. Before last year, I was just the college kid who occasionally saw my extended family. If family things happened, I didn't always know about them. If I did, I didn't always go. The cousins were strewn all over Utah and it was hard to get us all together. I didn't really feel strong connections to my aunts and uncles and, too often, just didn't care.

Amy's diagnosis and subsequent struggle did so much to pull our family together. Because most of us were down visiting her every week, we saw more of each other, and because, despite their best efforts, friends and acquaintances can never substitute for the emotional strength you can draw from your family, we all had opportunities to share in each others' faith. I got to know my entire extended family in a way that I'd never thought possible. Such intense trials are proving grounds for everyone involved. Not only did Amy show incredible faith and devotion, but almost all of my family did.

The results are still visible today. It's a lot easier to get us all together, and there's an undefinable change in the feeling every family gathering has. We're all just closer. I have better relationships with all of my cousins and aunts and uncles. I'll be honest, I used to prefer my mom's side of the family so much that I never wanted to hang out with the Jacksons. It sounds terrible, but it was true. In the past year, I have come to identify so strongly with my Jackson relatives that, for the first time in my life, I can honestly say I'll be a little bit sad to give up my name when I get married. My identity is tied to my heritage in a way that goes back further than just my parents and our name. I truly love my family--all of it--in that celestial, forever kind of way. And, for me at least, it started with Amy. Her struggles bound me to my extended family with so much love and attachment that I can't ever imagine life without them.

Ender-love

I want to be a mom. There, I said it. That is the number one goal of my entire existence: to have a family. I cloak it in my career aspirations and my lengthy lists of things to do, but if you sit down and look at my list of life goals (assuming I ever let you sit down and read it...) the vast majority have to do with being a wife and a mother.

Now, I'm not saying that I'm one of those crazy women who is on the hunt for a husband, just so she can start "multiplying and replenishing the earth" single-handedly, because that's kind of weird (and creepy).

I blame this face 100% for my ridiculous attachment
to my little nephew. He owns my heart completely.

But, I just came home from spending the evening (and wee morning hours) with Qait and her family. As you all know, her son, Ender, has me completely wrapped around his finger, and last night was no exception. I love being a part of his life. He'd grab my hand and swing around my legs, wrap his arms around my thigh, and climb around on my lap while Q and I sat on the couch talking. Even getting accidentally kicked, or having my sunburn scraped over by a lego-plane on a rescue mission was far more enjoyable than it was painful. Most of the time, I just thought how nice it would be to have a son like him.

But what really got me was when we put him to bed. For most of it, I just sat there at the end of his bed as Q read him a book, sang him a song, and helped him say his prayers. It is one of the most heartwarming things in the world to hear that tiny little voice pray to his Heavenly Father. As she sang to him, I got caught up in this mental time warp between reality and all those years ago when my mom used to pile me, Brian, and Jess on her lap and rock us to sleep singing "I Wonder When He Comes Again." Then Ender looked at me and said, "Lynnae needs a hug!" So I got up and bent over him to give him a hug and a kiss, while his little lips murmured "Love you" in my ear.

Just before we walked out of the room, Ender suddenly cried out in panic, "Mommy, I don't want to go to the dentist!!!" We'd been talking about it earlier, meaning that he'd be going to the dentist in a couple of weeks to get his teeth checked, but he thought we'd be going when he woke up in the morning. The terror in his voice about ripped my heartstrings to shreds. But all it took was his mother whispering soothingly to him to reassure him enough that he could lay quietly and go to sleep.

So many reasons I want to be a mom. Sure, there are the temper tantrums and potty training messes (and I've helped Qait with some of those) and little-boy-fascinations with dirt and mud, but, even in my limited experience, those quiet love yous and bedtime prayers and stories more than make up for the messes and tantrums.

I haven't always been good with kids. I babysat very rarely (and usually only older kids: ages 8-12) as a teenager. Sometimes I've been afraid that my maternal instincts might be underdeveloped or nonexistent, but when I look at Ender, something stirs, and I know that what I feel about my nephew will be a hundred times stronger for my own children.

I just can't wait to meet them. :)