Giggly Goop!

Today was the second attempt at correcting my sweet little Stephanie’s tiny little mouth.  Since she was two we knew that we would have to do it.  Her upper jaw is too tiny to line up with her lower jaw.  Last week they struggled to get the device in that stretches her jaw only for it to fall out the next day like it had never been in there to begin with.  Just Steph’s luck.  Today they decided to make a whole new mold of her mouth because the appliance wasn’t fitting right and that’s why it fell out in the first place.  Four tries.  That’s right, it took four tries before they got a perfect impression of her mouth.  What did she do by the fourth try?  Laugh.  She giggled like it was the funniest thing in the world all the while teasing that it tasted like chalk!  Now that is my Stephanie for you.  Always cheerful and completely able to find the sunny side of everything.  The hygienist told Stephanie that she was her best patient, even better than some eighteen year olds that just gag and complain.

It’s been a joy watching Stephanie grow up.  She struggles at school, the hard pregnancy took a toll on her which also made her the cute little shrimp that she is.  Tiny and petite and always a fight to get anywhere in the world, whether it’s struggling to catch up in reading, trying to get her little itty bitty mouth to open up wide enough for the dentist, or just being tall enough to reach anything, but she just smiles her way through it all.  I can’t imagine what kind of a teenager she will be, hopefully just as wonderful and cheerful and every bit as determined to never give up no matter what.  Just think of the blessing that she will be to her own kids someday.

Now I know that Heavenly Father made families so that we could find joy in this earth and help each other through our struggles, but I think He made Stephanie for our family because she would bless us, not us her.  I honestly cannot think of a time when she hasn’t been sweet as sweet can be.  Even as a baby when she cried, which was very rare, it was as if she was apologizing for making such a commotion but had no other way to voice her needs.

How often do I giggle about my lips being stretched to kingdom come so that someone can shove goop that tastes like chalk into my mouth four different times all the while I am sitting in the dentist chair?  How often do I complain about stupid things that I should really just choose to giggle about?  Ah, as a mother I still have so much to learn.

 

"Toffee" Days

Ever stand over a pot of caramel, boiling ever so slowly, patiently waiting for it to be just right, only to turn your back literally for sixty seconds and have the whole batch of caramel overcooked?  Well I have and I just did.  Now I could choose to stew over the whole entire hour of watching the pot boil being wasted or I could make “Lemonade,” so to say, or in this case toffee.  In fact not only am I going to make toffee I am going to say that that was my original intent in the first place, because hey, this is my kitchen and I have that right.  My kids will come home from school and they will see the fresh Christmas toffee and they will be thrilled all the while never knowing that I had ever intended to make Caramels. 

                Isn’t that how most of life seems to be?  A long list of failures that if looked at correctly can be chalked up to successes if we see what we have learned and if we choose them to be.  So here is to more toffee days when things turn out differently than planned but every bit as nicely as hoped.

Twilight Tradition

The weather is cold outside and the sky is a little overcast and cloudy.  I can smell the sweet wisps of pine from a neighbor’s wood burning stove.  Almost time for Christmas music and the quiet whisperings of Christ’s love that comes with the Christmas season, and I can’t wait.

Last night I went with my daughters, my daughter’s friend and her awesome mom, my wonderful mother, and of course my twilight buddy Sally Jones to see the final installment of the Twilight Saga.  Silly thing to be grateful for, perhaps, but I was and I am.  That tradition that started several years ago is something I look forward to more than watching the movies themselves.  I’m kind of sad to see them come to an end, but Sally made me aware that The Host, also by Stephanie Meyers, comes out in March and we can start the tradition all over again.

I know that as far as eternity is concerned a silly little movie tradition really has no bearing, but those moments with my daughters and with my mother and friends creates those memories that can change the gloom that sometimes the world tries to tack onto us and in that reality a little movie tradition is possibly even necessary to my eternal progression.

One of my visiting teachers came this morning.  Her companion was sick and not able to join her.  I love my visiting teachers.  They never forget me and they always bring the sweetest spirit of sisterhood with them.  We took the time this morning to get to know one another a little deeper and in the process our testimonies were shared and a little more sweeter side of each of us was revealed.  It led to gratitude and both of our feelings of it and helped to set a very peaceful start to my day.

November is the month of gratitude and reading Facebook this month has allowed me to see so many different things my Facebook friends are grateful for.  I cannot help but be thinking all day of everything that the Lord has given me when everywhere I turn I am being reminded.  It’s hard not to feel loved when you are open to all of the blessing that our Father has given us, given me.  It’s equally as hard not to feel joy when you think of that love that you feel.

Yesterday in my travels handing out invitations to our Young Women in Excellence on Sunday I had a couple of opportunities to be invited into sisters’ homes to chat.  In both instances I learned a little more about some amazing young women in our ward and the hardships that they have had to endure.  Both cases very different from each other but insanely hard beyond what I can even imagine.  Both cases the mother figures in their homes talked about the blessings and goodness that has come and that they see in people all around them.  I wonder if my spirit can possible be as strong as theirs and if I can possibly be one of the many people that are blessing their lives.

Each of us in our small ways that we go about living and doing things in our lives have very real opportunities to share Christ’s love, his charity, in what may seem the tiniest of mercies that add up to be some of his greatest blessings.  Who have you lifted today?  Who have I?  What little smile did I send their way that might change the loneliness that they feel?  How many times have Christ’s human angels been the blessing that I needed to bring the peace to my day?  Thousands? Perhaps millions or billions?  I dare to venture possibly in the Trillions when I think of the kind words or shared experiences, the listening ear or consoling hug, even the quick smiles that I have received over the years that lightens my load in my journey home.

Gratitude is something that I am just learning to understand.  I think the importance of it is perhaps one of the greatest blessings that changes the very soul of who we are and leads us back to Christ.  I think perhaps in our gratitude we honor our Savior in a most sacred way, and our administration of it pulls us more towards him and opens our connection to the spirit perhaps greater than anything else possibly can.  When you read the scriptures the spirit speaks, but when you show true gratitude for those scriptures and the amazing servants of God that brought them to you the spirit can sing.  When we love our Savior he can soften our hearts, but when we show gratitude for our Savior and the uncountable blessings that he has given us, he can change our hearts.

What greater gift in this world is our Savior’s love?  The very heavens and earth were created by it and the very possibility of Salvation comes from it.

Christ lives, he loves us, he loves me, and he loves you!  My knowledge of this is first on my list of gratitude.

Patriotism

So here is where I have the opportunity to be very sad, maybe even very mad, but most definitely discouraged if I wanted to be.  I have a very good excuse to sit and mope today, but I won’t because life goes on and I am so blessed that it would be wrong of me not to feel gratitude and joy despite it all. 

            Every four years another presidential election comes on and every four years a good portion of Americans have the opportunity to be sad or mad or discouraged if they want to be, because one of the candidates has to loose and their followers therefore feel like they lost right along with them.  Now this is where I, who voted and hoped and wanted Mitt Romney to win so very badly, choose to say, “I am an American and I will support America and the President whomever he (or she) may be.”  I’ve said it in the past and I will say it again, as Americans it is our responsibility to vote, to voice our opinions and have a say in the people and the laws that govern our land, but when all is said and done I am patriotic and this is my country and I will stand by it no matter what.  Showing respect for the new President, (all be it not the one I voted for), is part of that patriotism.

           What a great land we live in that we even have the opportunity to even voice our say, that we even have the opportunity to be sad and mad and discouraged at all about the Presidential race.  What a great country that we live in that we even had the chance to have a LDS President let alone that we are able to practice the beliefs and live the religion that is ours as so many others in so many different religions get to also.  And not just now in our modern world, but since this country began.  It’s not some newfangled freedom that has come to us, but yes, it has always been since the country was founded, fought for and defended for by our ancestors with the deliverance of our God.  How can we not be patriotic and grateful?  http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/statement-on-election-result

Now, on to lighter things.  Stephanie would be embarrassed, but since this is my journal and the only way therefore that I have to remember those cute things that she says, that they all do, I’m going to write it anyway.  Besides she doesn’t read my blog so she will never know.  Last night as we were all in the suburban on the way to several things, (voting, Young Women’s, the store), either Luke or Jason, can’t remember which, somehow got on the subject of teasing Stephanie about kissing boys and that he had heard she had been.  Now, Stephanie is only nine and the sweetest little peanut that you have ever seen, so I am quite certain that we are still several years from any concern on this point but she was giggly, yet defensive, all at the same time.

            She said back, “There is this candyhapped boy at school that sometimes grabs my hand and tries to kiss it, but I don’t let him.”

            It took me moment to comprehend what she was trying to say.  Candyhapped, handicapped!  J  If that didn’t require a smile and a little laughing I don’t know what else did.  I am however very pleased with my little girl and really all of the children at my kids’ elementary school because they have quite a few handicapped children that go to their school and they show so much respect and kindness toward them.  My children are constantly talking about the cute little down syndrome girl on the bus and how much they love her and she them or the little autistic boy in Steph’s grade that all of her classmates watch out for and help.  And it is not just my children but most all of the children at that school who treat those special kids with respect and kindness.  I admire their parents for teaching them so and for our teachers who obviously know how to teach our children to love and show compassion toward one another.

            Oh how I love childhood and oh how sad am I that my children seem to rather quickly be growing up and soon out of it, but boy am I proud of the big kids and even soon grownups that they are becoming.

Whoa! What happened to the Kitchen?

My day started relatively busy as it always does.  Five kids to get off to school, one kid off to work, and a husband on his way pushing at the grind stone.  Nan walked upstairs when it was time for scripture study and said, “Whoa!  What happened to the kitchen?  It wasn’t this dirty when I went to bed.”  “You tell me,” was all that I replied followed by Jenny only moments later running up the stairs then stopping dead still.  Laughing she said, “What happened here?  Wasn’t this bad when I went to sleep.”  All of which were looking at me accusingly.  “Don’t look at me.  It was clean when I went to bed.”

Not that I am pointing fingers at my redheaded, all grown up, master of destruction son, but since his father went to bed with me I believe he is the only one who can claim the demo, that is unless some other little boy of mine got up in the middle of the night, though I highly doubt that.  J

 

Yesterday for family home evening we decorated pumpkins as we do every Monday before Halloween.  This year they donned on Mister Potato Head faces.  All the way from my youngest to my oldest happily got involved.  Quite possibly this could be our last year with everyone here to do so.  Where did the time go?



 

Nan's looks like a snork with that dart on top.

 

 

Suzy's looks like a country bumpkin "Rollie Pollie Ollie!"

 

Yesterday morning I was able to go to the temple with my Father and Step Mom.  They leave today for the long flight to the Philippines.  It was amazing to be in that beautiful place with my father’s arms wrapped around me.  I will miss them, my kids will miss them, but I couldn’t be prouder or more grateful for their example.

A million things to do today, but I took the time for a spiritual fill up as I said my prayers and wrote in my blog.  My life is pretty typical, and my days filled endlessly with pretty random stuff, but every day I wake up grateful to face my day.  Some days, like today, my heart is so overwhelmed with the feeling of joy that I just want to shout at the top of my lungs, “Be happy World, God loves you.”  Silly, cliché?  Don’t care, that’s how I feel.  Everything speaks of him, and everything calls to his love.  Mt. Timpanogos was so beautiful with the first sprinklings of snow on her yesterday.  The new curtains in the front room freshly hemmed by me so that they just brush the top of our carpet fold down so perfectly to a freshly vacuumed floor.  Six oversized pumpkins spread out safe from a cold night frost on the wood floor in our front room look up at me quizzically.  The dishes are stacked and clean drying in my large stainless steel sink.  On the bed is the purple mess of mesh waiting to become a princess costume for my little redheaded pixie.  And all of it makes me happy.

I love being who I am, imperfections, many that they are, and all.  I know that I am God’s daughter and therefore my value ten trillion times that of gold.  I know that Christ not only died for me but lived for me and continues to live for me still.  I know that I matter even if no one else does, (which very luckily for me I have amazing family that tell me that every day).  Why sometimes is it so hard for us to see that?  You are loved.  No matter what, you are loved.  And no matter what, that is what matters.  Smile, for someone up there knows you better than even you know you.  And He loves you, and His Son loves you!  Smile!

Now time for costume making, dentist little girl taking, picture frame spray painting, downstairs cleaning, laundry washing, back door frame painting, bread making, dinner designing, Stake Young Men and Young Women dance setting up and playing and then followed by husband snuggling as I fall fast asleep completely happy with my busy day.



"Boo!"

 
I’ve put off writing this week, I don’t know why.  Usually I have so much to share that I can’t wait to sit down.  My hands and my heart feel more at home at the computer than anywhere else.  In reality this is the time that I should have been overwhelmed with the need to express.  Luke is home.  Need I say more?  When he walked off that plane in his army fatigues, his hair high and tight, his Uncle Kevin waving to us to hold the banners up, my heart was racing.

                                                                       Uncle Kevin

                                              Sam in the army greens that Luke bought him.

 And now, already, he is off to work and to his full time job.  School started without him and he cannot enter the program partway through, but he is working for a dear friend Clint at CR Doors and Mouldings and he is tasting a bit of the real world.  Though I think that maybe he feels like he is in limbo until he can do something more.  Working toward a Mission next fall after some more Army training that he signed up for is done is perhaps not as easy as he would have assumed.  How do you open up to your child the testimony that is in your heart when you know that he has to gain one of his own?  I am proud of his work in the army and the son he is and I am proud of his decision to serve a Mission.  I only hope he can feel it more than just a duty but an honor and a blessing.

My father and my stepmother left yesterday to fulfill an eighteen month mission in the Phillipines.  I had the opportunity to go with my brother Bryan to take them to the MTC.  It didn’t feel real.  The missionaries came to our house when I was a little girl.  A year younger than my Sam.  My parents had been searching for something more and my father found a Mormon Ad in the Reader’s Digest.  He called the missionaries.  At first us children were not invited in.  My parents wanted to make sure it wasn’t some weird cult before letting us in on the lessons.  I remember that first night almost like a dream.  It was a warm night in the summer as I recall.  The pine trees next to our farm house were covered in fireflies and I remember catching them all night, not really concerned about what was going on inside, but my brothers and my sister were speculating about the two strange boys dressed in suits and carrying briefcases that went in to talk to my parents. 

I remember later sitting at their knees and watching filmstrips on the wall of our family room.   I remember the feeling of familiarity and asking my mother if this wasn’t what we already believed and my mom telling me that it wasn’t.  My little heart recognized the truth instantly.  Perhaps I was not too many years past from stepping through the veil.  I spent the next 31 years with truth around me.  I don’t have to wonder who I am, I know.  If there is a question that I need answered I have the scriptures to turn to and my knees to fall on.

And now, that father of mine that blessed all of our lives with the gospel is on a mission himself.  Most married missionaries, retired and with added time to serve, have already been on a mission once when in their youth.  Not so for my father.  Two young men brought that gospel to us, to him, and now finally he will feel the excitement, the fear, and the desire that they once felt teaching us.

 

Crazy hair day at the elementary school today for red ribbon week.  I put Stephanie’s red hair up in a gazillion little buns and when the neighbor girl who is just a year older than her showed up to walk to the bus with my kids her hair was done exactly the same.  Of course both were more than willing to pose for a picture.  Don’t you love childhood?

Sam Guillory came home from the hospital today after two months.  My sweet young women decorated her yard along with some of Sam’s friends from school and her sister and brother in law.  I had to take a picture, as camera happy as I am, because my young women didn’t get to see it all done.  They were in school when she came home, but Darlene, and Whitney, and I got to run over when we got the text that she was on her way and scatter their sweet notes all over the yard.  I cried reading them.  I wish all of you could experience my Young Women.  There is a light that shines from every one of them.  And guess what…I get to experience that glow all of the time.  That is a little taste of Heaven if anything is.

Well the neighbor girl just rang the doorbell with a plate full of pumpkin cookies in her hands, two of which without chocolate just for me. She has informed me that I have been “BOOed.” If she only knew just how much I have “boobed” this whole week for the gifts of this beautiful life that I have been given. She is just one more topping on that already super sweet sunday that I am eating. Time to get ready for young women’s, add another bit of caramel to that ice cream for me!

See How Much I Love You

See how much I love you.  That thought seems to keep going through my head.  General Conference.  Bryce Canyon.  Both experiences these past few days that have opened my eyes to God’s love.  Surrounded by nature’s beauty I have never been more awed.  We live here in one of God’s most beautiful places and I have never been to Bryce Canyon.  Jason has tried to get our family to go for years and finally this weekend we went.  It was so beautiful it almost seemed unreal.  At one point we saw a rock on the very top of a very tall formation and the way the sun hit it lit it almost to glowing.  Through the camera’s lens it seemed to have an unearthly glow.  The kids started calling it the “Holy Rock.”  We got to talking about all the people that came from all over the world to see Bryce Canyon.  At one point my little girl teasingly talked about all the religions that had come to the “Holy Rock.”  She mentioned Baptist and Catholics and Mormons and Christians.  At first I giggled and then I explained that Mormons are Christians, that anyone who believed and worshipped Christ was a Christian.

Isn’t it amazing how little moments bring big teaching moments?  Isn’t it amazing that nature seems to bring the spirit and with it those moments?  I feel peace so strongly when I am in nature almost saying to me, “See how much I love you.”

Luke comes home this Friday.  I know it has only been four months but that has felt as though it has been a lifetime.  When did I get so old?  My heart still feels young but I have a grown man now for a son.  But I can honestly say that I love the age that I am at and I so look forward to the years as they golden more.  I’m excited for the prospect of grandbabies and someday I pray that Jason and I will be healthy enough as we age to go on a mission.  When Luke comes home on Friday he will be at where I was nineteen years ago when I married my most amazing husband.  The choices that I made then determined the life that I have now and the eternity that I will live later.  Luke is so young, but then again I guess so was I.  Thank Heaven Heavenly Father had such a wonderful plan for me and thank Heaven that I was close enough to the spirit in my very young and naive youth to follow it.  I only pray that Luke can do so also.

                My mother went with us to Bryce.  It was so much fun to watch the kids with her. 

The first day we hiked down a steep canyon and at the bottom we could look straight up encircled by those tall red rock formations.  It was cool and slightly damp and shadowed from the sun.  Hundreds of people went ahead of us and hundreds behind, so many speaking languages that we didn’t recognize. 

Nan helped Stephanie down the narrow path turning her toward the inside around each curve, careful that she didn’t fall and launch herself down the steep ravine.  I held onto Sam, crazy Sam who so often in his hurry to get somewhere manages to trip and fall.

Jenny and Suzy in fashion to their free natured personalities rushed on ahead and my mother as the protective angel that she has always been followed us all to make sure that we were all safe.

 Which left Jason, several ledges above us, so that he could photograph every perfect memory. 

I worried that Jenny and Suzy would wander too far ahead and we would lose them as sometimes I do in life.  I rejoiced as I watched Nan protect her little sister as she seems to always do and I held on for dear life to my little Sam’s hands as he was so certain that he was big enough to do it on his own.

 

  And behind me was my mom encouraging me the whole way and above us all Jason making sure that every moment was happening and being remembered.

“See how much I love you.”

When the spirit talks whether it’s in those quiet moments that we take away from our crazy lives or the sweet whisperings through General Conference talks how can we not know that these are the times that God is trying to say “I love you!”  Just watching President’s Monson’s face light up as he speaks to us is a reflection of God’s love or watching President Uchtdorf’s beautiful accent roll of his tongue as he testifies of the truths that our Prophet speaks and prophets of old, calls my heart to know that God loves me.

President Uchtdorf said something that I hurried to write down that seemed to bring meaning to all that I have been feeling.  “Resolve to find happiness regardless of our circumstances,” he said in his Saturday morning talk and then he spoke of all the good all around us to find joy in.  We are meant to be happy because like a good parent God wants us to be happy as we want our own children to be.  Even in sorrow we can find joy if we look and I promise if we are observant it isn’t hard at all to find something, even a little something, to find joy in.

“See how much I love you.”  I don’t hear those words as a question anymore as I had so many years ago in the past but as a command.  I think now I am beginning to understand just what those words whispered in my head means.  God, my Heavenly Father, and Christ his son, my brother, are asking me to see just how much they love me.  And I am going to strive every day to do just that, see how much they love me.

 

“See how much I love you.”  Not a question but a statement in the beauty of every moment of our amazingly ordinary lives.