Who is Jesus?

Shouldn’t that really be the question that is in our hearts right now?  I say this as I just got done making almost 20 dozen cupcakes for my neighbor gifts.  It’s easy to get caught up in the gift giving and the memory making of Christmas and forget the whole “Reason for the Season” as they say.  I’m just as guilty as anyone else.

“Are you all ready for Christmas?” I’ve been asked a hundred times already this month and I in return have probably asked a hundred people that same question.  Well, yes I am I can gladly say.  Every gift is bought and child’s friend gift will be officially made today including our neighbor gifts.  Is this something that I should be proud of?  I’m asking that of you because I really want to know, and I am honestly proud of myself for doing so.  Over all the joy of this Christmas has been sweet.  I’ve had more time to make things happen so to say, and every day I have done something “Christmasy” with the exception of two days when I was absolutely desperately ill with a stomach bug.  But in all that “Christmasy” how much of it really was about Christ?

Today I listened to Conference talks as I sat baking a gazillion cupcakes and I felt happy, not at all overwhelmed as I should have felt.  Quite literally that is an insane amount of cupcakes to make in one day and be on my feet for the whole of it, but all I felt was joy and peace and gladness about the task I was at.  “Why,” I asked myself.  Shouldn’t I be wishing the day was done?  Shouldn’t I be exhausted?  In reality it has been a wonderful exhilarating day.  Why?

Because in the background of all my “Christmasy” preparation were the sweet words that spoke of Christ.  How could I not feel the real “Reason for the Season” when his words and his servants were speaking them right to my ear.

So today after school as my children came in from the bus, or their carpool ride, whichever depending on the child, I gave them each a blank paper and asked them to tell me who they thought Jesus was.  “Why,” they asked.  And I said, “Because it’s Christmas and we should be thinking about him.”  I won’t quote what they said, that’s personal and something only our family will share together tomorrow as the last week of school ends and the break for both Jason and the kids begin, but I will say this that all of their thoughts  had a common thread…He was sent here to help us and that He loves us.  That He is Heavenly Father’s son.

So who is Jesus you might ask.  Can I answer with the innocence and the absolute truth of a child?...He’s Heavenly Father’s son and He loves you and He was sent here to help you!  Need I say anything more?

Jason and me on our trip Monday to Temple Square.  Can I just say that it was sooo cold...and due to missing a train we had to wait for over an hour to meet our connecting train in Salt Lake to get back to Provo to grab our suburban.  Thank heaven's for the bus station that was so warm for all of the other cold people who missed their train too.  If only tracks had been on the schedule it was supposed to be on none of us would have froze, but as Angie said, (Jason's sister Angie, not me) "Just think of the story we'll have to tell.  Just think of the memories that we are making."

 

 

 

 

Five of our kids and Brooke and Megan our sweet neighbor girls.  The rest of their family was elsewhere on Temple Square and Jason's sister and brother and their families wondering somewhere else looking at lights too, but there were a bunch of us that had a brilliant time, even if we did freeze absolutely to death...and I assure you I am not exaggerating.  The only reason any of us are alive is because the bus station revived us oh and City Creek Mall before that...

Heaven on Earth

Why does it feel so hard at times to put words to paper?  Most days as I am going about doing all that a mother of six crazy kids does I think of what I might next write here.  When I hear Suzy in the other room singing at the top of her lungs trying so desperately to sound as beautiful as her sisters, and she does by the way, or Stephanie at the computer typing out her spelling words each in a different font and color trying to please her teacher and learn a little at the same time, or Sam, silly serious Sam coming up with one crazy idea after another I have a million thoughts on what I might write the next day.  But then the next day comes and I watch a million other things go by and write out the things in my head that I might say and yet again I don’t put it to paper.

So, on that note, today while I was folding towels and listening to conference talks as the thoughts came to me I decided to do better and write them down.  After all this isn’t just my journal of my crazy mundane life, it’s a journal of my testimony and I would be pretty ungrateful if I didn’t share it.

When school started back in this fall for my children and for Jason too, no he isn’t going back to school but rather he works at a University, I decided I needed to change a few things around the house to take some of the stress off.  Two girls in high school, one a freshman and just getting used to the high school scene, and the other a junior and trying to juggle work and school and family all at once, my brand new middleschooler and all that means, man I hated middle school… kids are so nasty, and two little ones sad to give up the carefree days of summer.  Jason was coming home from work stressed.  Start of school for him means new college students who have no clue what is going on and chaos on the technology front, hence my feeling of need to bring some peace to the home.

My solution, keep the house ridiculously clean.  Now I’m not saying you can look into my closets, because let’s face it, keeping a closet spotless is pretty close to impossible unless you’re a little psycho, which I am just not about closet maintenance.  So the first week was crazy and I was tired but once you get the house into perfection, maintaining it isn’t so hard. 

Whala!!  It worked.  Suddenly the kids were fighting less and Jason was coming home and able to relax and even I, crazy mommy that was keeping up that perfection, was feeling all together peaceful and delighted with life.

Zoom forward a couple of months.  Is the peace still in our home, you ask?  Definitely.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t still hear my children fighting like Suzy and Steph did this morning, but it is less often and less severe.  I’ve been attributing it to the cleanliness that is in our home, and don’t get me wrong I believe that is very much part of it, but as I have been listening to conference talks while I work, on the encouragement of the Relief Society Presidency, my mind has thought on a few things that have changed in our home, the spotless nature of it being only one of them, and I have come up with the following conclusion.

While I am busy working I listen to conference or to the scriptures thus bringing the spirit into my home.  I have struggled like many of us to find the time and a quiet place to study and most of the time I have done a pretty decent job, but the time to really delve into the scriptures hasn’t been there.  My sister in law’s mother told me at the start of the summer that she listens to the scriptures as she cleans and I decided that was just what I needed to do.  She happens to also be the stake Young Women’s President and I try to brown nose whenever I get the chance so of course I thought this was a great opportunity.  And presto chango, that is what crept into the home while I was keeping a spotless house, the spirit, the word of God.

I remember as a little girl my mother reading to me and encouraging my talent and imagination.  I remember feeling like she loved me more than anything, a very important way for a child to feel, but more importantly I remember as I got older and school was hard, and the pressure of feeling like I fit in was overwhelming and the need to come home and leave the world completely behind was so important that I walked into a house that radiated peace.  My father was off at work and only my mother had been there all day, but I knew that she was there.  I could smell something like fresh baked bread in the air and feel the warmth of a clean warm house, but what I felt most was the presence of my Savior’s love radiating in that quiet house.

Jason and I have talked off and on as the kids were little whether or not I should go to work when they were all in school and Jason has always said, “They needed a mother home.”  I agreed, after all who would drive them to piano or pack their lunches for them when school lunch just seems too gross?  Who would bring them their homework when they forgot it at home or pick them up from school half way through the day when their tummy hurts or Nan or Suzy gets one of their dreaded migraines.  It all made perfect sense to me that the home was where I was needed, but that crazy world crept in about the time Sam went to first grade and question after question of, “What are you going to do now that all your kids are in school?  Are you gonna get a job or go back to school?” seemed to follow me everywhere I went.

I began to wonder if I was being lazy and sitting around doing…well nothing very important.  What was wrong with me?  Why wasn’t I being productive and adding to the family income?  I would talk to Jason about this and he would always say it was my choice, do whatever I thought best, but he strongly felt that I needed to be home, that our kids needed me more now than they ever have.  After all aren’t the teenage years the hardest and most heartbreaking?  Don’t they need me more now than ever?

This year I finally got it.  I finally understood just exactly what he was saying and just exactly what Satan was trying to do, take me out of the home where my greatest work should be.  I think it is no great secret that my oldest son, as awesome as he is, has always struggled and been the one that has most been in our prayers, sometimes at great exasperation on my part.  He is still searching for his testimony and need to live life in a more holy attitude and I have great faith that he will find that, but as I have talked with him, now that he is a grown man, he mentioned just how important it was that I was home, and how important it was that he was raised with the gospel in that home.  He has told me that he would have had no hope without those things growing up.

So now as I look around me at this very clean house, only a few dishes that need to be washed and one loud of laundry to be cleaned, I hear the thoughts of the scriptures and the prophets and the Christian music in the background strumming across my little kitchen speakers and I know the real importance of this clean home.  It’s that I am here and I am living in this house while the kids and Jason are gone, bringing in the spirit and light of Christ, so that when those kids come home from a busy day at school (and work too for my Jenny) and the world and Satan trying to crush them down and Jason comes in from insane busyness with a million college kids and over an hour of driving home on a crazy busy highway, they walk through that door and feel the peace that a mother spent all day building just for them.  Because you see, that’s my job, helping the home become a heaven on earth.

Hope

Hope…what does hope mean.  The dictionary says, “the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.” I think that hope is so much more.  Hope is knowing that Christ lives and loves and knows me and even in my darkest hour I am not alone.  Hope is knowing that even at times when we have given up that He will never give up.  Hope is knowing that when I cannot help my child, when I know that I have nothing left that I can offer him that will soften his heart, that God does.  Hope is knowing that when I don’t know what my child needs He knows exactly what he needs.  And hope is knowing that even when my son is away, doing whatever he does, with his heart angry and unforgiving, that God will send him what he needs even if it is hardship.

Hope is having joy and being able to smile even when you need to cry and not feeling guilt for being happy even when you are sad too.  Hope is peace and love and quiet whisperings of the spirit.  Hope is prayer and knowing God hears and loves me.  Hope is perhaps one of the greatest gifts in this life and ever so much more than the dictionary answer of the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best, because even when I may know that what I want can’t be had or I fear that events won’t turn out for the best, I still shine with hope and I still smile with joy.

I wish there was a way you could give every feeling and emotion that burns within your heart to your child.  I know that if I could, if they all could feel what I feel for them and for their father their hearts would be softened, and if they could feel my love for my Savior they would believe no matter what.  But that is not how it works and they have to gain their testimony for themselves just like I did.

Today I started reading about Alma the older in the scriptures, someone who began as a priest for King Noah, doing wickedly and perverting the ways of the Lord.  I think perhaps there were many, if not all, who thought that he would never grasp hold to the truth of the gospel, that his heart would never be softened.  Abinadi taught even until death and something in what he spoke softened Alma’s heart.  Alma’s own son growing up under a prophet went on to destroy God’s church but the angel softened his heart in answer to so many’s prayers.  That is hope.  When others gave up and others had tried so hard without success, something or someone came along to soften them, to open their hearts to their Savior.

My Father and Step Mother are on their mission in the Philippines, and unless you have served there you cannot know the hardships that the Philippine people go through or how hard of a mission that it is.  I know that I don’t even know even with a brother who served, a father who is serving, and most of all a husband who served there, but I have learned some and wondered how people can live such a sad life in such severe poverty and still find joy.  Now their land has been devastated and so many thousands dead I wonder will they ever be able to find hope again?  How do you lose your whole family and still find the strength to go on?

Hope.  Hope in Christ.  I know of no other way. 

I guess in our struggles in life we think we really have it hard, and maybe even we do, but I cannot in anyway imagine the pain that they are suffering now.  I want to cry for my own sorrows and fears, but how can I when I so many are suffering over there? 

I guess that is the greatest aspect of hope.  Hope tells me that when Christ is worrying and working for so many others who need him so much more he still has the ability to worry and work for me and for my son as he struggles to find himself.  Hope is the knowledge of this love, that Christ can love and care for all of his children all of the time.

Now how do you teach that to someone else, how to you give the great gift of this knowledge to them?  You can’t.  You can lead and teach and love and set the best example that you can and then you can only leave it on Him, the great Redeemer of the world.  Moses 1:39-For behold, this is my work and my glory-to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. 

The Savior’s very purpose in this life is my Hope, because I know that even to the very last minutes, even seconds of my life he will be working for me and never giving up on me.

That is my hope.

Austenland

So my Hungarian twin Agi (that's cute Agi and her awesome husband Aaron in the pic to the side) and I went and saw the movie Austenland yesterday.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Let me just say Jennifer Coolidge.  Need I say more?  Laughed my pants off.  And part of what was so funny was watching Agi laugh.  Both of us to tears.  Sorry to the ladies behind us but we just couldn’t keep it in.  The movie started out a little slow and in reality the whole thing was pretty cheezy but the moment Jennifer Coolidge stepped onto the screen I couldn’t hold it in.  I had the best time and I am so thrilled my friend is here for several months from Hungary.  Now if she could just get her car to work.  She’s had the worst of luck but it gives me an excuse to chauffer her back and forth to the mechanics. 

Love having my friend back for a little while.

Oh and can I just say that my hubby is just like Mr. Darcy.  All you girls who ooh and aww over Mr. Darcy, Jason is the dark brooding protective and total teddy bear of a man when no one else is looking type, totally wrapped up in me and I am the luckiest of women. 

                                                                                  

                                                                    That is all!

“Thank You For Loving Me…”

“Thank You For Loving Me…” playing from my bedroom speakers as I walked into my room after church today.  I’ve had a full day of gratitude. 

This morning started out with the opportunity to take part in Sacrament Meeting at the care center across the street from our ward building.  It was fifth Sunday and the High Priests and Elders asked the Young Men and Young Women to take over.  Only a half hour out of my day but one that brought me such a spirit of gratitude especially as I watched my daughter Jenny stand and give a little talk.  When I asked her earlier in the week if she would be willing instantly she said yes and never complained.  I am so grateful to her and to the relationship that we are developing.

Just before our church services started I had a temple recommend interview with Brother Wickel.  I couldn’t help but feel gratitude that I was there and I was worthy and whenever I want there are temples all around for me to attend.  Not everyone can so as much.  When I was a little girl we had to travel from little old Genoa Illinois all the way to big Washington D.C. to be sealed as a family.  Grateful for that memory and opportunity and grateful for temples that continue to be built for us to worship in.

Then in our Sacrament Meeting it was the Primary Program.  Sam very seriously said his part every line perfectly memorized as typical to him.  Jenny leaned over and mentioned as he stood there waiting for the rest of his class to do their lines that he was so serious and never even blinked once.  Sweet little Stephanie read her lines perfectly and then she instantly turned to me to see my response which was a big thumbs up on my part rewarded by a huge smile for me on her part.  Grateful  Momma.  Jenny and Nan sang a little part with the primary kids along with Brother and Sister Izatt and their voices sounded so sweet and made me feel as though I was sitting in Heaven itself.

Young Women’s brought about a new sister, awesome sister, to fill the place of an amazing councilor that I will forever miss.  And seeing Sister Blackham’s smiling face and listening to the girls welcome her brought those amazing warm tingles from head to toe.  Can you even begin to understand just how blessed I am to be surrounded by such wonderful Young Women?  Gratitude doesn’t begin to cover it.

Then last but not even least I went to the stake offices to receive the last signature on my temple recommend.  There I met with President Ludlow who used to be our Bishop Ludlow and had the most uplifting interview that I have perhaps ever had.  He is someone who is blessed with the ability perhaps stronger than anyone that I have ever known to portray to you the Savior’s love for you.  I came home high on that love and on gratitude for my Savior only to find the very last thing, though the day isn’t over yet and I am thoroughly expecting it to be a continued day of gratitude. 

Plopping my bag down on the bed and running to my bathroom to relieve the potty dance that I was doing, I heard very quietly and sweetly playing on my stereo “Thank You For Loving Me,” by Bon Jovi.  You see, Jason went to Sacrament Meeting with us but then had to leave after the Primary Program to fly to Nevada for work until Thursday Night and that was his little gift for me.  I wish you could feel the amount of love that I feel from him.  He’s not perfect, and once in a while I even think that I might strangle him, (in his defense there are certainly moments when he must feel the same toward me), but he really is the most wonderful man who loves me with a love that I think must be incomprehensible to the rest of the world.  I certainly hope it isn’t, I hope you all have the great blessing of being with someone so full of love as I am.

Yes, there has been a lot for me to be grateful for today.  And it isn’t even 5:00 p.m. yet.  On to a family party for my sweet niece Maizy who just turned one a few days ago.  See more things already to be grateful for.  Look up, look around you, open your eyes.  Blessings sometimes come in the most simple but the most wonderful ways.

 

Did You Miss Me?

Where have I been all of this time, you are probably wondering.  Well let’s see…months of town celebrations with our business and family reunions on both sides of the family, youth conference and girl’s camp and two nephews’ weddings and a brother in law’s to boot.  A little boy’s baptism, can you believe my Sam is so old, oh and sending a boy off to college, can you believe I am so old.  Soccer games and two weeks of canning all along with back to school gigs at BYU for those same two weeks.

I have felt the guilt that I should be doing a lot of things.  I should have kept up the garden and the flower beds better this summer, for that matter I should have mowed the lawn, good grief it looks like a jungle out there.  I should have kept up with the house and did more projects with my girls and played ball with my little boy and oh, yeah, I should have blogged more.  Oh, the guilt has been there and as I finished washing dishes and mopping floors this afternoon it has been tugging at me that I should get back to writing.  So here I am.  I don’t know if you have missed me, but I sure have missed you.  From all over the world you read, I know, cause I check my audience page to see.  Almost every country now except for China and North Korea, oh and Syria, Iran and Iraq.  That’s a lot of places and it sure has been a lot of fun to see where all of you come from.  I wonder…do all of you live the same kind of blissful normal ordinary life that I live that keeps you wonderfully happily insanely busy and exhausted in the most wonderful way all of the time like I do?

This week things have slowed for a bit.  The kids had a half day of school today so the happy sounds of children came a little earlier today.  Sam asked me this morning, “you were sad when we went back to school, weren’t you.  I could hear it in your voice when we left.”  Of course I was, but boy was I ready for the normal routine to start again.

Motherhood continues to be the one thing that brings me the most joy but seems to be the one thing I just haven’t gotten to be a pro at yet.  Every child is so different and just when you think you’ve got them down they change and grow a little bigger and have a little more grown up of problems, and gosh darn it I’m still trying to figure out my own problems yet.

I do however feel like I am becoming close to pro in some other things.  I am really good at washing floors and scrubbing down those sticky granite counters, I’ve almost got the fly problem under control, and oh, yes, my food storage is almost back to full capacity only two years after living off of it solely for 18 months.  Yes, almost no one is a better food deal shopper than me.  Two years to fill up completely demolished food storage for 8 people all the while still feeding those 8 people on around $400.00 a month.  And I am here to tell you, we eat really well too!  I’m a pretty great cook.  Not bad I must say.

So I guess I could either gloat over how great I am on those few things or I could focus on how lousy I am on the others, but in reality I think I am like everyone else.  Stumbling and failing and learning and soaring all at the same time, and oh yeah, that fly problem, maybe I’ve not got that quite as under control as I thought.  The same stupid fly has been buzzing my head now for the last few minutes.

I’ve said this in days past and I told my awesome Laurel’s this yesterday at church, God loves us and he didn’t put us on this earth to fail.  He wants us back.  So, knowing this I think I will gloat a little over the things that I can do and the other failures well maybe I will pick one to feel guilty enough about to improve and grow and the others can wait on the back burner until I become pro at the first one.  Until then I won’t feel guilty or like I am hopeless, like that stupid fly that keeps buzzing my head, I will get to them, and I will perfect them in a normal time with normal setbacks along the way, because God wants me home and he’s gonna help me improve and get back to him.  And oh, yeah, that fly… I just clapped the darn thing between my fingers and he is lying quite peacefully dead on my bedroom floor.  Check that one off of my list of failures.  See I’m improving as we speak!

 

So help me if you touch that TV I will smack you!

So how long has it been since I have written.  Do we really even want to go into that?  What can I say life has been crazy, a whirl wind of a million awesome things!  First of all, my amazing nephew Bryan got married.  The first one of the cousins on either side of the family.  We went to his wife’s bridal shower, my sister in laws and my mom and me.  It was fun having the girls together, just wish that my sisters could have been there too.  Afterward on the way home, Annalee and I took my mother who is in her mid-sixties to get her ears pierced.  All these years and she has never gotten it done.  Can I just say that it was awesome!!  I use that word a lot, awesome, but it was.  And of course I have the pictures to prove it.  The lady doing her ears must have thought us insane at first because the three of us together get a little hyper, always have, but by the time we were done she was giggling right along with us and thrilled to death to be part of the fun and the pictures too.

“So help me if you touch that TV. I will smack you,” just came through the front door right now as my little boy who had been sent outside to pick up his bag of weeds that he left on the back lawn from weeding this morning came in.  Oh, a mother’s life.

Byan’s wedding was sweet and it was at the Salt Lake Temple.  Crazy but Jason and I have never been past the front doors.  We never could make it there together and we had promised each other that we wouldn’t go unless we went together.  Work was crazy and one of the ladies that works under Jason had been gone all week taking care of a divorce that she was sadly going through and it didn’t look like she would be back on Friday for Jason to go.  I didn’t want to break our promise not to go without the other but I couldn’t miss my nephew’s wedding.

God knew this.  Silly little thing but he knew by my prayers how important that was to me.  Long and behold I got really sick the day before and could barely hold myself upright.  Not that you would think that God would work by bringing me illness, but he did and what a wonderful time to be sick.  I was taking my nephew’s wedding pics at the temple the next day.  But that next morning I was completely well, and could go to the wedding but I was like a limp noodle from being so ill the day before.  Jason called the lady at work and told her the dilemma and she being the sweet person that she is said she would be to work so Jason could help me take the pictures.  See, God knew what he was doing when he made me sick and even neater, when we were waiting for Bryan and Karen to come out of the temple afterward, Dallin H. Oaks was there waiting too for his grandson and new granddaughter in law to come out.  Kinda cool, huh?

The Fourth of July came and went.  What fun that always is.  Our little tiny town gets together, the whole of it and half of the world that moved away too, and throw a little carnival for the kids.  The proceeds go to the Scouting program and the Young Women.  It was so much fun seeing people that I only see at the Fourth of July.  It was a nice year having the kids finally old enough to run and play on their own.  Jason does sound for them every year and this year I was busy with our photo booth that they had there.  My ward’s young women were in charge of the rock climbing wall and even though I was busy with photo booth so I couldn’t help my leaders, like the amazing women that they are, just took over and with the cute young women took charge.  Everyone working together makes wonderful things happen.

 

Then this last Saturday, my cute, very serious, little boy Sam got baptized.  It was a very special thing for me to be able to sit in on his interview and watch as Sam answered all the questions to Brother Wright.  I was amazed at how perfectly clear everything seemed to be to him.  He knows who he is, why he is here, and the way to get back home.  Sam has some of the strongest faith that I have ever witnessed in a child.  We tease that if we need our prayers answered to have Sam do the praying because he has a very special connection to God and he always believes, never doubting.  When he walked into those waters, dressed in white, he knew exactly what he was doing and why.

Not that he is a perfect child, obviously not or he would not have been coming into the house yelling that he was going to smack someone if they had unpaused his TV. show while he went outside for a second.  What can I say, he’s still a kid, but I was sure proud of him.

Tomorrow is our family reunion on Jason’s side of the family and I am really looking forward to it and the craziness of it all.  Isn’t that how it always is when big families get together?  I can’t wait to sit around with my sister in laws and talk around the campfire while all the cousins giggle and play.  Life couldn’t be sweeter.  Next week is girl’s camp and chaos to get ready, but I know it will be one of those times when I will be overflowing with gratitude and basking in the light that seems to shine blinding off of my young women.

Summer will fly by before I know it, but hey my memories will be here for me to look back on and school will soon be here with that many more memories to share.

I know this picture doesn't really have anything to do with this post but doesn't it make Jenny's arm look ridiculously huge?  Who knew that my daughter was a body builder!