Chicken and Dumplings and Compliments too.

Mmmm….Chicken and Dumplings….Mmmmm.  I love to cook.  Something my mother instilled in me at a very young age.  Maybe crazy for me to feel this way, but I am so thankful that I love to cook.  Every woman needs to cook, and every man should be able to.  If it’s going to be something that I do every day for the rest of my life and right now literally for the masses(my six kids) well than I am so glad that I love to do it and what’s better yet, I’m very good at it.  Now that’s not me being cocky, that’s me being able to be honest about my talents.  How many of us are?

Do you shake your head or role your eyes or deny a talent when someone compliments you on it?  I know that I do.  It drives Jason nuts when he tells me that I’m beautiful and I tell him that I am so grateful that love has blinded him.  Why do we do that as woman?  Why can’t we take compliments?  Not that Jason is much better at it.  He always puffs out a bunch of air making that Phew sound that means…you’re crazy, whenever I compliment him.  What is wrong with us as a human race that we can’t be grateful and accepting when offered a compliment?

I’ve been troubled lately with all of the divorce and unrest in marriage that is going on around me.  What is that crazy statistic that everyone quotes?  Something like 50% of all marriages end in divorce?  I have to wonder that if maybe we offered compliments to each other more and mentioned our short comings a little less and in return if we gratefully accepted those compliments when given to us if more marriages wouldn’t stay intact.  If Jason says “You’re so beautiful,” (or hot as he really says) and I thank him and really mean it and really feel the words that he is saying to me I think that it would do a couple of things…

1.      If I really felt what he said how could my self-esteem not grow?  And when I feel good about myself I’m more inclined to feel good about other things too, like my marriage.

2.     When complimented I tend to be more likely to compliment back which helps my husband’s self-esteem grow and my kind thoughts towards him also.  When searching for a compliment to give you can’t help but see the good in others.

3.     And when we express our love to each other, well it only stands to reason that our love will grow too.

So what are we really doing then when we blow off a compliment whether from our significant other or the people around us who love us?  Making the moment awkward, taking the graciousness that they are offering away, maybe shutting off the opportunity we have to be grateful.  And how likely are they going to be to continue offering us compliments if we make it unbearable every time that they give them?  I rather enjoy good thoughts coming my way but maybe if I can’t accept them when given, well they might be less likely to think them.

Having said that now I will try to be better.  Not quite sure how.  I just can’t seem to get over the awkwardness that follows as if I’m the one complimenting myself.  God’s blessed me with an abundance of gifts and plenty of little talents here and there.  Is it showing lack of gratitude when I cannot accept them for what they are and realize the potential that is me?  I don’t know for sure, but I think that perhaps maybe it is.

 

Agi

Ever have a friend that is so like you it’s practically like looking in a mirror, except that she is shorter than you and her hair is darker than yours and well you really look nothing alike, but you could almost finish each other’s sentences because your minds are so similar?  I have a friend like that and her name is Agi.

She was born and raised in Hungary.  She’s brilliant…she mastered the Hungarian language at an incredibly young age J, speaks German and even speaks Americanized English perfectly with the sweetest little accent.  Okay, so maybe we aren’t entirely the same, but all her likes and dislikes, her amazing…brilliant…weird sense of humor, and her basic outlook on the world are right in line with mine.  And what’s even better, today is her birthday!!!!  We are literally one year apart in age because today is my birthday too!  I call her my Hungarian twin…who really cares about the year apart in age anyways or the fact that we look nothing like siblings.

So this is my tribute to an amazing woman who is brilliant and strong and funny and kind and makes me smile just to look at her.  May your day be as awesome as you are…and thank you for sharing it with me!  Hope she doesn't mind I stole pictures off of her facebook page.  I just couldn't resist...

No Pretty Titles...Just my Simple Blog

Is there anything better than listening to a little child breathe?  You know that deep relaxed breathing that only comes when they fall asleep?  I was sitting here watching something cute on YouTube with Sam.  And we were even discussing it when all of a sudden I noticed that he wasn’t talking back to me anymore and that the only sound that I could hear in my bedroom was the quiet deep strum of his breathing.  I listened for a bit, thinking that I should send him off to bed and turn the T.V. on, because…well…that’s what I do at night when Jason has a dance and it’s not one that I have to go with him to help him or play one on my own and the house is so quiet without him…I fall asleep to the T.V.  But after listening a moment more to Sam I decided that I would let his little mumbles and deep breathing in his sleep relax me and fill the quiet of an otherwise still house.

So what did I do after that, you ask?  I decided to read a new favorite blog that I have, “The Matt Walsh Blog.”  Now although we don’t completely agree on everything, after all we are individuals in ourselves, mostly his thoughts are pretty close to my own, and if nothing else he is a good, god fearing man who is trying to live honestly and righteously in a world that Satan seems to be slowly winning over to his own, or maybe quickly to his own.  What did reading Matt’s blog do?  Well it got me to thinking about just how much modern society laughs at the unchangeability of God’s laws and religious belief.  Then before long I was a little depressed and even angry that such a world is the one that I live in.  After all didn’t I deserve the general goodness of the world say 100 years ago? 

Of course that led to my agonizing over my little ones and the future world that they would be raising their kids in and how much worse that it will most likely become and before long my blood pressure was rising and my anxiety growing and I had to stop contemplating for a moment to calm down only to hear Sam in the background sigh in his sleep and mumble something completely untranslatable.

And that my dear is why there is no better thing to do than to listen to a little child breathe.  Somehow in all of their innocence everything will always be all right in the world even if in reality it is not.  Why?  I don’t know.  It’s hard to remember back to being that little, but the little glimpses of memory that I have of the me of my little girl years was filled with the absolute willingness to believe that there was some amount of good in the world and in the inhabitants of that same world.  And most of all the little bit of magic that I seemed to see in everything.  I believe God gives that to children because he knows that the adults around them need that more than anything and the adults that they will someday become need to have those ever flitting memories to draw them back to peace when the world gets too tough.

Now I can’t say that anxiety and stress run my life, maybe in years past, very many years past when I was a teenager and then for a short while as a very young wife, but to say that the world around me isn’t trying very hard to pull me down would be an outright lie.  Because it is.  That’s what the world does, because Satan lives here and his most precious desire that drives him more than anything else is to bring us down.  So why is it that over the years I have become the “Glass is half full” kind of gal?  I could relate a lot of things, but in reality it’s because I take the time to listen to my children breathe, and laugh, and sing, and tell stories, and play make believe, and share moments with me as they fall asleep in my bed.  It’s because I’ve learned how to go about with an attitude of gratitude and by choosing that first my eyes seem to find the beauty in the world all around me.  It’s because I look for Christ’s love in everything everywhere I go and the harder that I look the more that I find it.  It’s because I can find joy in the simple things and in the strength that I have to live here in this world and bring a little tranquility to it along the way. 

So now I sit here in the dark.  My mind quiet and my heart beating more slowly and I contemplate sending Sam to bed, because after all that is where he needs to end up sometime in the next few hours before Jason comes home to reclaim his side of the domain, and I thank God that he gives me these little moments so often in my life when I can find gratitude and peace in the quiet rhythms of my little child’s steady breathing.  I can only imagine what he is dreaming so sweetly…but whatever it is I know just a little bit of its magic will find its way into my dreams tonight.

Magical

All kinds of craziness are happening around here.  I’m sure all of you could have said that the last two weeks.  The holidays do that…bring craziness, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Lots of friends, lots of family, and lots of late nights and about the time Santa put the last treat in the last stocking all he (or she) wanted to do was fall into bed.  Fast forward far too quickly and far too few of hours later to the giggles at the top of the steps and the knocking on the door that leads to downstairs and yes, Santa and Mrs. Claus were up rise and shine long before they had any right to be.

This year was different once again as it was the last several years.  When you have older kids it’s hard to watch as you see them one by one realize that they have lost a little bit of the magic of Christmas.  First it was Luke and this year it was Jenny’s turn.  And I couldn’t help but remember back to when my first Christmas as an all too old child seemed to squelch a little bit of the magic.  It breaks a momma’s heart to see it happen, but I know a secret that Jenny doesn’t know yet, Christmas still has a lot of future magic to hold for her. 

The first Christmas when you are so poor because you’re just a youngin out of school and you share it with someone who you want to spend forever with.  Pretty magical.  The first Christmas when you have that sweet baby in your arms and even though all of the gifts under the tree are really things that that baby needs and not really that exciting because they are too small to understand anyways.  Magical.  And driving from one grandparent to the next as they ooh and awe over that little grandbaby.  Magical.  That first Christmas when finally that little guy can walk and toddle and he can’t wait to unwrap all of the gifts just for the sake of tearing through the paper.  Magical.  The first Christmas when in the middle of the night you have gone through all of the gifts for each of the kids and laid them out end to end to make sure that they look like they each got the same hall and you realize one just doesn’t add up and luckily for you your dear hubby found a Rite Aid store still open in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve and righted the horrible wrong that you almost caused and you fall asleep exhausted but completely satisfied cause all is right in the world.  Magical.  And the best one yet, that I am just dying to experience firsthand…when those sweet little chubby hands tear open the pretty wrapping you actually spent time to wrap cause finally your kids are older enough that you have a little time to do that sort of wrapping and they look up at you all giggles and eyes all wide with awe and say…”Thank you Grandma,” as they wrap their arms around your neck.  Absolutely magical.  See I know it’s all right and all of the magic will return and someday she will feel it too.

Christmas was beautiful and believe it or not full of the spirit of family and of giving and most of all of Christ and it was a wonderful day. 

Sam was in his all time pro during the holiday season and after all of the wrappings were cleaned up and toys tucked away our family took a little down time and Sam took to entertaining me.  Poor little boy thought that his mother was playing solitaire and certainly not recording him, but of course I was and I just had to share.  How can you not smile a little and brighten your day after you watch this video?  Jason cussed me later for not having my iphone turned right, but Sam would have known that I was no longer playing solitaire and I would have never caught the magic of all that is Sam.  From this moment on Sam will be known as "Gangster" as Nan calls him.  (For those of you on an Ipad you may not be able to view the video below.  Just got on mine and I couldn't.  Log in on your computer if you have time.  It's a sweet laugh.)

And then New Year’s Eve was spent as it always is on the Gibson front…playing a Holiday dance.  This year it was for both of the Stakes in our town and we got to enjoy it with our two older girls, Luke and his girlfriend Danielle and Bobby and Leigh.  We had sound set up and live camera shots of the crowd on a movie screen and I was running the photo booth!  It was awesome and the Stakes went all out feeding the kids both dinner and breakfast with a gazillion drawings…gift cards and even an ipad, a dirt bike, and a car…that’s right you read it right…a car. 

That's Jenny in the corner barely popping out from behind her photo bombing Uncle Cullen.

Nan in the top left with all of her friends.

Jason's awesome brother Bobby and his amazing wife Leigh along with Luke and his girlfriend Danielle.

And this next one is my favorite.  You can laugh.  It's totally allowed.  My crazy brother Cullen and his equally crazy wife Annalee.  If you're smart you'll blow it up and look a little closer.  Their expressions couldn't be funnier!!!

 

 And that night when it all ended our awesome friend Mitch watched our gear for us as we whipped away to the highschool football field with all of our family in tow to watch our son Luke propose to his girlfriend Danielle.  Magic!I couldn’t be happier.  She is the sweetest daughter in law any woman could ever ask for and we love her to death and she makes my son a better man.  Who knew I was that old?  Well in my defense I will only be turning 39 at the end of this month.  One more year until the big 40.

What do I have to look forward to this year?  Probably a lot more of ridiculous insanity.  My father and stepmom are coming home in April…crazy busy dance season starts in May…girl’s camp and youth conference and fourth of July and Stampede(Nephi’s rodeo) and 24^th of July(Utah’s celebration of becoming a state) in July…I could go on and on, oh and can I just add a wedding to boot.

Chaos and crazy and somehow all the same but every moment of it magical in its own way.

Once Upon A Time

Once Upon a Time…isn’t that how all fairy tales begin?  Well at least all of the good ones?  This story does too, but I have a secret, you see, this story isn’t a fairy tale.  Well not truly for all of it is based on fact and all fairy tales are based on fiction, that is except this one.  Maybe that is why it is the most wonderful fairy tale of all time.

It goes something like this…

Once Upon a Time in a land so distant called Jerusalem a tiny baby was born in circumstances so low and in a time so desperate that all of the world quietly watched for Him.  For you see, He was their king, the one prophesied to save them all.  This tiny baby was God’s son, and not how you and I and all mankind are God’s sons and daughters, but in the flesh and blood the Only Begotten.  And although there were a few, very select few that knew and watched and recognized the signs of His birth the heaven’s knew and the angels rejoiced.

 

They were some, perhaps most, who could not understand that someone so poor, born under circumstances so meek, could be their king sent to save them.  And even though His whole life was lived in service to them and in teaching to them, so many could not understand who He was.  How could their king come from something so low?

But what they didn’t understand, was although He didn’t ride in on a flaming chariot and although He wasn’t raised in golden courts and spectacular castles, He really was the King, the very son of God come to save them all, not with a flaming sword and wild armies, but with peace and kindness and redemption that only He could bring, and that only He can still bring.  Raised from the dead three days past, resurrected so that someday we might be, and bearing and feeling, understanding all of our sins, weaknesses, and heartaches.  Was it any wonder the heavens sang on the night that He was born?

I have had a whole lifetime really to contemplate just what that means to me and for me and it is impossible to put into words and impossible for me to understand how they could reject Him then and how our world can reject Him now.  How can the very being that brings peace, that is peace, not be the very thing that the whole world would strive to believe?  How can we reject Him still?

I’ve had time as of late to feel His love and to see His blessings in my life and my heart has been filled with love and with peace and I wish I could give this to all.  But how can you when you don’t quite understand it yourself? 

I’ve known of a few friends and neighbors who have felt the pain of loneliness or disappointment this Holiday Season and although I want to say that I understand, I know in reality that I don’t and I have no idea how to sooth their pain.  But I know of one who knows it all, who has felt it all.  He’s that king from that perfect fairy tale.  He came to this world just for that, to understand every emotion, joy or sadness, that we would ever feel.  He came to be the Great Healer, the Lonely Man’s King, the Bringer of Peace and the Savior of All.  He is God’s son and He knows when no one else might, and He listens when no one else can hear, and He will bring peace when the rest may pass you by, because He loves you like no one else can.  Because every fairy tale, fictional or true, ends with one great phrase no matter the pain or the circumstances that may have come along the way…And They Lived Happily Ever After.

                                                             Christ is our Happily Ever After.

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.