7 Quick Takes about Yak Facts, Household Rules I Wish We Didn't Have to Have, and College Move-In Day

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

You know those people who would rather be freezing that even a little bit warm? I gave birth to a few of them, and I honestly don't understand it. It's like they wilt in the sun. I've never seen anything like it.

I mentioned to my 16-year-old as we were studying Nepal for The Educational Summer Vacation this week that yaks go into heat exhaustion when it's above 60 degrees.

At first she laughed and said, "That's pathetic." But then she paused and said, "Actually, I do the same thing." 

—2—

I overheard my kids doing a Mad Lib, and my daughter was the one soliciting nouns, verbs, and adjectives from her siblings. 

When she asked the 6-year-old and for a noun, his answer (predictably) was "butt." She wrote it down and moved on.

When it came around to him the second time, he said "Toilet."

Shaking her head, she told him, "You already picked a potty word. Pick another one."

Looks like we need to institute a formal per-round one-toilet-humor-word policy in our family, which is actually one more than I'd ideally like to see.

—3—

I was telling my daughter about a study on dementia I'd read about on the Internet. Apparently older adults who use their leisure time for mentally active things like using a computer or reading are less at-risk for developing dementia than people who do passive things like watching TV.

"What's interesting is that people's overall activity level didn't matter," I told her. "It only mattered what they chose to do with their brains during their non-active hours."

"So what you're saying is... I don't have to exercise."

"Actually, you do, because heart disease is the #1 killer of women."

"I thought it was Ted Bundy."

Well, that took an unexpected turn.

—4—

The big event this week was moving my 18-year-old into her dorm room at college. It was stressful doing all the shopping, and we still forgot some things I'm going to have to drop off this weekend, but all in all it went fine.

While we were unpacking her stuff, she was telling me about one of her high school friends who went to a school with some very wealthy classmates, some of whom hired interior designers to do their dorm rooms.

If I was an interior designer, I'd feel ethically obligated to say no to any college kid who wanted to hire me for this purpose. College students aren't supposed to have professional decorators. They're supposed to have bookshelves made from cinderblocks and a 2X4. It's good for the constitution.

—5—

My kids and I had the opportunity to visit the Lego Store, and I thought it was pretty much the coolest place ever.

There were some awesome murals, cityscapes, and life-sized famous figures made out of Legos, and I also really liked this "Build the World" display of flags. 

Because of The Educational Summer Vacation, we were able to identify at least half of the flags, and it's always fun to feel like you know stuff.

—6—

The Internet sometimes infuriates me and I wish I could throw it all out the window, but when I'm not exasperated by it I'm amazed by the level of ingenuity that comes from it.

I just learned about this site called Swimply, and it does for pools what Airbnb does for lodging and Turo does for car rentals. 

Being an efficient cheapskate, I really support the idea of renting out your pool, which even under the best of circumstances is sitting there unused for most of the day.

We may or may not have tried Swimply this week and it may or may not have ended after 10 minutes when there was a freak thunderstorm that rolled in out of absolutely nowhere, but that might or might not be relevant.

—7—

I asked Phillip to buy some Pull-ups while he was out, and he came home with these:

You are looking at a pair of Incredible Hulk themed training pants.

Can we all please take a moment to appreciate the delicious irony of what is essentially a diaper plastered with radioactive symbols??

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7 Quick Takes about Bargain Basement Gardening, Scampering Over Rocks Like Billy Goats, and Turning In the Exam

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

I sometimes buy a hanging basket of flowers but this year I decided I was going to be budget-minded. With the best of intentions I bought a seed packet marked "Marigolds" at the dollar store in the spring.

True to form, I didn't get around to actually planting it until almost July, and I've been watching whatever it is that I grew with curiosity ever since.

I have no idea what it is, but I'm pretty sure it's not marigolds.

"Marigolds."

So the lesson here is maybe I shouldn't buy seeds at the dollar store next time?

—2—

This summer was so packed we were going to skip our annual family camping trip. But a few things rearranged themselves and we ended up deciding last-minute to go for just one night, and I'm so glad we did!

Our usual philosophy is that there are too many cool places in the world to visit one more than once, but this campground is so beautiful we can't stop going back. This time we tried one of their "remote sites," which was perfect for a bunch of hermits like us. It felt like we were the only ones there and this was at the edge of our site:

We were situated right next to a rocky slope the kids could climb down and spend hours jumping from rock to rock exploring and catching frogs in the shallow brook below. 

Something like this would have given me a heart attack with toddlers in tow but when your youngest is 6 it's pretty awesome.

The kids called this part "the sink," as in, it looked like a bathroom sink faucet.

If you walk on the rocks down the brook a little way, you come to this magical pool with a wooden bridge where you can sit and listen to the water burbling over the rocks and watch the kids playing and basically experience Nirvana.

Of course, the kids called this swirling pool at the bottom "the toilet." Kids are kids, I guess.

I'm so glad we didn't skip it this year. Next year we'll not only go to the same campground, we'll probably also stay at the exact same site. I can't believe this place.

—3—

The brook running by our campsite was fed by this lake, which was pretty but not great for swimming. We popped over there a few times a day just to look and my kids found wild blackberries growing around the edges.

And even though this is our third year coming to this campground, we keep finding new things. No one wanted to go on this hike and it turned out being an amazing discovery (I guess my family just really likes jumping around on rocks through shallow bodies of water, I don't know why.)

It was a perfect trip, except for the fact that we forgot the burger patties and the propane tank for our camping stove at home, which made for an interesting dinner.

—4—

My whole life, I've gotten cold sores on my lip whenever I get tired, stressed, or just for fun.

The other day I was realizing it's been a long time since I last had one and said to Phillip, "Hey, I never get cold sores anymore!"

Then I switched my lupus medication and immediately my lip blew up with two fresh cold sores. Duh, because the old one was an immunosuppresant. It all makes sense now.

—5—

Our family is going to visit a friend in Las Vegas soon.

"Did you know that a lot of yards in Las Vegas don't have grass?" I asked the kids, who've never been there before.

"They don't?"

"No, it's a desert so lots of people have decorative rocks and cactuses in their yards instead."

"It's so weird to think of a yard with no grass in it!" my 10-year-old exclaimed.

Eyeing the pathetic state of our weed-ridden yard, Phillip gestured outside and asked, "What about our yard?"

She bit her lip and said hesitantly, "Well... our yard has a little bit of grass."

—6—

It's the last week before my oldest goes out of state for college. It's not sad, but it is weird. Raising a child is sort of like frantically trying to do your best on a test that is really hard and really long, and when that kid leaves home it's the ultimate "pencils down" moment.

Every parent has things they're always working on, and when one of the kids is no longer going to be part of your day-to-day efforts at improvement it comes as kind of a shock. Like, "Okay, that's it, I guess. Time to turn in whatever I've got." 

Which is okay and how life is supposed to be. You do the best you can at the time and I'm a firm believer that God can make up the difference between potential and reality. Somehow, they turn into pretty cool adults, anyway.

—7—

I try not to idolize public figures, whether it's influential people in history or YouTube personalities I like, because I always end up finding out something unsavory about them or their personal life that feels like a personal betrayal if I've put them up on a pedestal.

But I really enjoy videos from Dude Dad. I know I shared one last week, but another one popped up on my YouTube feed that I liked so much I had to share:

Like I said, I'll try to remember that Dude Dad is just a regular guy who's not perfect, but let's just say I'm going to be very disappointed if I learn he has a secret underground torture chamber for puppies or something.

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The 7 Quick Takes That Wasn't

No 7 Quick Takes today, sorry! Please enjoy this video of my favorite home tour ever instead.

Have a great weekend!

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The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying Iran

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My kids and I are halfway through The Educational Summer Vacation, which is what I call learning about different countries in the world while they're on a break from school. The kids each pick countries they're interested in and we do our best to learn all about them for a week each, with recipes, crafts, videos, books, and activities.

This week we learned about Iran. My husband happened to be on a work trip with a coworker from Iran for part of this week, so he'd text me every day to ask what we were doing and then fact-check it with his coworker. No pressure or anything.

Monday

The first thing about Iran you need to know is that it's not pronounced eye-RAN, but ee-RAHN. It's a Muslim country, but unlike most Muslims in the world which are Sunni, the majority of Iranian Muslims are Shia. They have a president, but he is subject to a religious leader called the Supreme Leader.

We watched Iran from the Globe Trekker DVD series and then found Iran on a map of the world. (We have a giant wall map, the bigger the better.) 

In this picture, the kids are filling out their passports. I printed out a bunch of these and made little booklets with a page for each country we visit. 

Download the Passport Pages

The kids drew the flag of Iran (this is the simplified version; the fancier one has a little more detail and some Arabic writing on it.) 

The kids thought the crest in the middle looked like the symbol of the Jedi order in Star Wars. You be the judge.

Jedi symbol photo from Wikimedia Commons

And then, since the kids are always down for treats, we tried making these Persian walnut cookies from a recipe we found in Your Passport to Iran.

I tasked my 10-year-old with making them as I was going to a dentist appointment, and as I was on the road I got a phone call from her. "Mooooommmmm," she began uncertainly, "I'm concerned about this recipe. There's no flour!" 

Yes, they're different from what we normally think of as cookies.

Why I do not have a baking blog: Exhibit A.

The pictures that come up when I Google the recipe are much prettier, but everyone ate theirs and Phillip appreciated that it was a naturally gluten-free dessert. Actually, I appreciated that too because modifying foods to make them gluten-free is sometimes a disaster.

We also whipped up some doogh, which is a simple yogurt drink often had in Iran. At first I didn't like it, and then I liked it. It gave you minty fresh breath after drinking it.

Everyone just got a little glass because, as we'd predicted, it was different enough that none of the kids took more than a few sips.

Tuesday

My 10-year-old read Count Your Way through Iran out loud to us all and then we learned a little bit about the language in Iran.

In Iran they speak Persian, but it's also known as Farsi. As Phillip's coworker explained to us, the language was originally called "Parsi" after a place called Pars. When the Muslim Conquest of Persia happened in the 7th century, there is no "p" sound in Arabic so the conquerors called it "Farsi." 

We watched a video on counting to 10 in Persian, and I mentioned to my teenagers who are learning French in school that there are a lot of French loan words in Persian. To say "thank you" in Persian, you actually say "mersi"!

Written Persian uses the Arabic alphabet, and is written from right to left. There is a beautiful art form in Iran called Persian calligraphy. I showed the kids some examples here and here, and then asked them to create their own. 

The younger kids looked at the Arabic alphabet and used letters to make a picture:

The 8-year-old incorporated several letters into a design.

The 6-year-old drew a picture using two characters: a sort of curvy letter to make the clouds, and a straight line to make the lightning bolts, rain, and grass.

The older kids chose a word they wanted to illustrate, used Google Translate to get it in Persian, and made calligraphy out of that. (I know, Google Translate isn't the greatest translation resource out there but it's what we had and it worked for our purposes.)

The 14-year-old's word was "yeet." I seriously doubt there's a way to translate this, but this is what Google Translate said so he went with it. 

My sweet little 10-year-old did this. Pretty, right? She told me afterward that the center word is "poop" and all around it is "turd turd turd turd." Charming.

My 18-year-old loves the Mandalorian, so it's only natural that this would be her Persian calligraphy. The central part in dark black says "Mandalorian" (again, this is according to Google Translate so forgive us if it's total nonsense) and the other words covering the helmet say "this is the way."

Wednesday

You can't talk about Iran without talking about Persian rugs. We watched a video explaining how they're made and then did some weaving of our own.

If your kids are in preschool, you could do a simple woven paper placemat, but since mine are older we went with these woven bookmarks that are so cool.

And I don't think my kids could ever have the patience to make a Persian rug because it's been a week and their bookmarks still look like this: 

They'll make good road trip activities for later this summer, so I'm not pushing it right now.

As a bedtime story, I read My Grandma and Me by Mina Javaherbin with the kids. It's a really sweet picture book of the author's memories of living with her grandma in Iran when she was little, with a little shout-out to how people of different religions can be really good friends regardless.

For dinner tonight, we had kabab kubideh, an Iranian grilled meat kabob. We used a recipe we found in a library book called We Visit Iran, but you can find several with Google you'd like to try it.

Looks like we're feeding an army platoon, but it's just our family of 8.

It was a little salty for me and slightly tedious forming the kabobs, but the kids said they liked them.

Thursday

Iran is such an ancient part of the world. There have been human civilizations here since forever. 

We watched a video about Rudkhan Castle, which was built into a hillside in the 3rd century as a military defense and rebuilt again in the 11th century. 

Iran is also home to Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire in the 5th century. We watched a short travelogue on Persepolis and part of a longer video showing the intricate carvings on the stone walls.

My kids liked this video showing what Persepolis might have looked like when it was first built. 

Then we looked at pictures of the nearby Naqsh-e Rostam tomb, the resting place of Darius the Great and other kings that was carved into the side of a cliff. Super impressive looking.

One of the inscriptions carved into the rocks is called the DNa inscription, which lists Darius's great conquests and keeps giving credit to Ahuramazda, the god of Iran's ancient state religion.

Zoroastrianism was one of the first monotheistic religions, focusing on leading a life filled with (1) good works, (2) good thoughts, and (3) good deeds. Freddie Mercury was a Zoroastrian, by the way, which isn't really important here but I thought it was interesting.

I printed out an ancient Zoroastrian symbol called the Faravahar (which you can see carved in a wall at Persepolis) and read to the kids about its symbolism as they colored it in.

The 6-year-old also wanted to cut his out:

I had to help with some of the detailed cutting and convince him not to try cutting out the inside of the ring in the old man's hand because it would not have ended well.

You may want to skip this part if your kids are younger and/or easily scared, but there's a site in Iran called the Towers of Silence that my teens and I thought was interesting. Zoroastrians used to lay dead bodies out in the open here because they believed buying them would contaminate the earth. We learned about it in this video.

Friday

Persian New Year, also called Nowruz, is a big deal in Iran. Even though the real Nowruz is in March, we decided to celebrate it today.

Over a dinner of fesenjoon, a walnut and pomegranate stew, we talked about some Norwuz traditions including the Haft Seen table. 'Haft' is Persian for seven and 'seen' is the Persian letter S, so this is literally the '7S table' with 7 symbolic items starting with S laid out in a very Instagrammable way.

Unfortunately I didn't have pomegranate arils to put on top to make it look nice, but there was pomegranate molasses in it.

We were planning to have a family bonfire that night in our backyard firepit, because another Nowruz tradition is building bonfires and jumping over them. When telling the kids I was going to leave out the part about jumping over the fires, but Phillip beat me to it.

Phillip was the only one who did (or wanted to do) this, but we supported him. The rest of us had S'mores instead of jumping over the fire.

Other books I gave the kids to read on their own time over the week included:

• Forty Fortunes by Aaron Shepard, an Iranian folk tale
• Pea Boy and Other Stories from Iran
• The Amazing Travels of Ibn Battuta, a picture book adaptation of a 14th century Iranian traveler's manuscripts
• Navid's Story by Andy Glynne, a kids' story about empathy for refugees

This week in Iran, the kids tried a lot of new things, we had some good food, and appreciated another culture that we never would have otherwise this summer. I think we even passed the test of Phillip's coworker, and that's saying something.

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7 Quick Takes about Cute Puppies, Googly Monsters, and Hearing Yourself Come Out of Your Kids' Mouths

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

Recently I got a notification that my Google account storage was almost used up, and I thought that was weird because I keep a pretty clean inbox. 

Then I saw that it included Google Drive and immediately knew that was the problem. Because I have never once cleaned it out.

So I spent some time going through all the random sign ups and teacher information sheets I've accumulated over the years, deciding what to keep and what delete. It was weird when I got to the end of the 2019-2020, when school was shut down and went 100% virtual.

Of course there were normal things like worksheets, but there were also complete lesson plans and videos of the gym teacher demonstrating the games at home with her own kids. And let's not forget the "passing of the torch" video that kicked off virtual Field Day, with shots of all the teachers in separate videos handing a handmade torch and spliced together.

At the time it felt like the only thing we could do so we just kind of took it in stride, but looking back it seemed really strange.

—2—

My teenage daughters are pet sitting for a friend. They've got two dogs and two puppies. They stay over there most of the time since the puppies require a lot of attention, but they come over for a few hours at dinner so we don't forget what they look like. 

If they both have work at the same time and the puppies need someone to check on them, I go over there with my little kids (they beg to do this all day long so I don't think they mind.)

The 10-year-old is never without a book in her hand, even when playing with a cute puppy.

The 6-year-old is more interested in their toys, but the puppies are interested in him.

The 8-year-old playing with the dogs.

It's really funny watching how the mother dog watches the puppies. Whenever they're out of their pen, she follows them around and nips them on the neck to discipline them if they do something they're not supposed to do. The family told us she does this but I didn't really believe it until I saw it myself.

One time one of the puppies found a little scrap of paper on the floor and before I could even do anything, her mom came over and grabbed it out of her mouth, then went to the opposite side of the room and dropped it in the corner. It was exactly like a human mom following her toddler around saying, "That's not a toy."

—3—

I have been getting the bizarre feeling lately that our family is shrinking. 

We no longer take up a whole pew at church: the 18-year-old goes to a student ward (a congregation with other young adults in the area), my 16-year-old sits up front doing the Zoom broadcast, and my 14-year-old is usually passing the bread and water to the rest of the congregation. 

Same thing at dinner. The kids have so many activities and camps and work now that at least a few times a week, dinner is just me, Phillip, and two kids at this giant dining room table. (I wish I could say it was quieter but it's usually not.)

It's going to be a real adjustment. Every stage of motherhood is so all-consuming that you just can't believe it would ever change, even though logically you know it will.

—4—

So my 10-year-old scratched my cornea with an Amazon envelope. She was holding it in her hands and gestured with it just as I turned around, and let's just say it wasn't pleasant.

At first, I wasn't planning to go to the optometrist. About 5 years ago, one of my nursing babies reached up and poked me in the eye, and I rushed to the office worried I was going to be blinded for the rest of my life. They said it would heal on its own, which it did.

So I wasn't going to go in, but it got so intense on Day Two that I started to worry. You know how you feel when a piece of sand gets in your eye and every instinct in your body is screaming, This is an emergency! Do something!  It felt like that, but constantly for every second of the day and there was nothing I could do about it. 

Most of that day I alternated between successfully ignoring it and breaking down weeping when I couldn't ignore it anymore. (I mean, weeping even more than normal because my right eye was already watering so much there were literal tears rolling down that side of my face.)

Long story short, I started to worry I'd done permanent damage and went to the doctor. He looked at my chart and saw the last time I'd come in with a corneal scratch and joked, "Looks like your kids are out to get you!"

I was like DUDE, I KNOW.

Anyway, long story short he said he it looked like the scratch was healing up and should feel better in the next few days. Which it did. 

Ordinarily I would've been upset that I'd gone in again for nothing, but he put in some anesthetic eye drops for the exam that gave me an hour of sweet relief and in my opinion, that made the whole thing worth it.

—5—

A neighboring city has a weekly craft-and-a-show event for kids in the summer. I don't think we've been since the start of COVID, but we went this week and it was just like old times.

The craft was designing monsters out of pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and a styrofoam ball. 

The show was a juggling act, with humor incorporated throughout. At one point the juggler needed two people to play catch with a ball with each other. First, he ran out into the audience and grabbed a guy, and then it was a like a slow-motion scene horror movie as I watched him run right toward me.

I do not throw balls. And I do not catch balls. And now I had to do both, on stage and in front of everyone. It was basically the worst. 

I concentrated on that ball harder than I've ever concentrated on an object before, willing my uncoordinated hands to catch it as it sailed through the air. And also to not throw it 10 feet over the guy's head because that's how good my aim is.

Luckily, I only dropped it once and did one awkward throw that the guy still managed to catch. And I don't think I mortified my kids too much. I was glad to sit down, though.

—6—

My 6-year-old lost his first tooth! It's my last first lost tooth as a parent. And it just so happened that I remembered to be the Tooth Fairy this time... barely.  

Phillip was out of town so I'd texted him about the lost tooth earlier that day, and he just happened to text me back about it right as I was going to bed which reminded me.

Let's at least let this kid experience the magic a few times before he realizes how things actually work around here.

—7—

In the car, I heard my 10-year-old and her 8-year-old brother arguing in the backseat. I didn't catch the beginning of the argument so who knows what it was about, but he was at that point muttering something snarky at her under his breath.

Crossing her arms over her chest she told him, "If you're embarrassed to say it out loud, then you probably shouldn't be saying it at all." 

He defended his snide comment, to which she responded with another one of my all-purpose lines: "Then say it inside your head, because no one else wants to hear it." Using my exact inflection, everything. 

Seeing yourself reflected so accurately by your own child is both glorious and terrifying to behold.

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