Things I Don't Want to Forget About Deployment...

  •  How frequently Cameron came over and asked, "Anything I can help with?" when he saw me amidst the hustle and bustle of dinner or clean up. He's trying hard to help and to set a good example and I'm watching his maturity blossom.

  • Watching the Marvel movies together, especially Endgame. The boys thought it was just about the most epic thing ever imagined.

  • Watching Little Boy over Memorial Day weekend when Cameron and I both cried in the movie.

  • Benson perfecting his snapping. His newest move to show-off is three snaps in a row in which he builds volume with each passing of the fingers.

  • Having the boys rotate sleeping in bed with me. This is probably the best part. Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays they take turns sleeping in Mommy's bed. I tuck everyone else in and then we read together. Cameron and I are almost done with White Bird by R.J. Palacio, a graphic novel about a Jewish girl during WWII. Jackson and I recently finished the graphic novel version of the first Wings of Fire book. Benson and Spencer are each working through different Dragon Masters books with me. Not only has it made the two summer reading programs we're doing all the easier, but I just love the time with each of them individually. I owe it to Aunt Tee, who suggested it when she visited in May. 

  • Watching Jackson eagerly step in to help Aiden with something when I was already juggling a couple of tasks.

  • Making homemade ice cream and blowing the boys minds with it. They thought it was the best ice cream ever invented (or maybe a close second to Chocolate Trinity, as voiced by Ben) and wondered when we had ever acquired a machine that could actually make ice cream. The machine has been in the family since before any of them were born and we have done it pretty much every summer since Jayce and Sarah Porter became a thing, but alas, they thought it was the most novel thing on a random Sunday night.

  • My first Sunday after Jayce left, the boys were quite possibly the best behaved they had been in their entire mortal lives. They were happy, I was happy, there was arm squeezing and grinning at each other all around. I kept thinking throughout, "Wow, this is like jaw droppingly amazing. Definitely a first-Sunday-of-deployment tender mercy." After Sacrament meeting a visiting woman came up and said, "I just had to say that I've been watching you and your little boys and you can tell that you are just such a loving mother. That must have been really hard to do alone, but you and your boys seem so sweet." We have had plenty of Sundays since in which boys were arguing loudly or silently seething and kicking each other under the pew and Tehya Foley has sat in our pew several times when I needed to take an angry Aiden into the hallway. But on the first Sunday of months of Jayce-less Sundays, I was very appreciative to hear those kind words.



Typed this up a couple of years ago and finally posting it on the blog. Remembering these sweet moments from deployment were a good heart squeeze.

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