In all the fog and bizarreness of our lives right now, things are continuing to move along – things like school for Arthur, work for Kevin, service assignments for Derek, Lily being home, and so much more. Although I am not getting as many pictures of those things as I usually do, I don’t want to miss those little bits of life.

Arthur: Arthur has started off seventh grade strong – in fact, he may have taken on a few too many adventures, but he sure is excited about them. This school year he is on the choir council, serving as a librarian. (He is one of only two boys on the council.). He loves it, and he gets to do special things, like group trips to buy fall decorations for the choir room. Good times!

Arthur also auditioned for the school musical, “Little Mermaid Jr.” and made the cast. Originally he was in a few different ensembles, but they decided to make him the “Pilot” (Captain of the ship) which gave him a few lines and a solo. Pretty awesome! It also takes a ton of his time, so he may have to let go of another activity that he is involved in – Cross Country.

Arthur had been wanting to do Cross Country because of how his older brother did it in Middle School, but also because he doesn’t mind running and knew people on the team. He had a couple good practices, and then a couple rough practices (because he was missing too much because of musical rehearsals), and so he had a choice to make. Even though Arthur has friends on the cross country team and was actually really enjoying it, he was only going to be able to be at one practice a week, so after talking to his coach, we decided for him to stop for this year. He was sad, but also relieved. And it also meant that he had time to do Science UIL again this year, which was a bonus.

Derek: Elder Brown has continued being an amazing Service Missionary. In fact, in spite of the craziness with my health, he hasn’t missed a single assignment and is continuing to love his mission. He especially loves when he gets to serve with other missionaries and strengthen those bonds and friendships with them. It has been such an amazing blessing!

Lily: Wow, what would be doing without Lily here with us?? Not only has she been a major source of support for her brothers, but she has been in charge of getting Arthur to all the many places he needs to be, has been cooking dinner, and taking care of me – including getting me to and from some of my appointments. My favorite thing is having her for company, as my life is pretty darn boring and lonely right now. She will pick out an old musical or romantic comedy, and we will watch it together. Not only that, but she was key in rescuing my old blog and moving it to the new platform, and also helping me back up info I thought I would lose. She even took the boys to the ward service project.

Then the other day, she came in clutch to help my friend, Penny, and was able to babysit her son Rhodes when Penny’s sub fell through. (Rhodes is the best, and he always gives me giant hugs – he even went to visit my classroom on meet the teacher night, and had his dad take a picture and send it to me.). She and Rhodes met at the service project, and she was awesome and kept him company when the chaos and craziness. That meant that they were already friends when she babysat him. So fun!

She is amazing, and even though the reason she took this semester off was to get an internship (which sadly hasn’t happened), we are so grateful she is here.