Sure there may only be a few, more likely zero, people out there who would come to my blog on Thursday expecting to see a Thankful Thursday post. If there are any of you out there, sorry I miss it every so often. If not, at least be thankful that I am disappointed when I realize I totally missed it.
To make up for it, I'm going to try to remember to post something bigger, more important, more personal, it's-bigger-than-what-I-normally-post next Thursday. You might need to remind me...but even if I miss next Thursday, I'll post it eventually. It's something I've wanted to share for a long time.
And for now, I'll just leave with with the knowledge that I am grateful for naps today. Yep, it's been one of those days:) Naps are God's gift of sanity to moms, I think. And now, back to my screamers and to think of how to write next week's post.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
It's true- I'm strange
I love cemeteries. Truly. If I had a day of beautiful weather that I could entirely call my own, I would love to spend a good chunk of it exploring a cemetery. People react to this love of mine with indifference, amusement, whole-hearted agreement, or they're morbidly creeped out. But it can't be helped; I just love cemeteries.
I love the quiet in cemeteries. I love reading names and imagining the life that person had. I love imagining who has visited the same spot I'm standing on over the years. I get teary over people I've never known or heard of. Cemeteries are chock full of history. I love the spirit of reverence in cemeteries.
Lucky for me, I discovered today that I live very close to a fantastic, large, old, beautiful cemetery. Since my husband is out of town with two of our three children, I felt like I could handle taking just one and spending some time in the cemetery this morning. Being Memorial Day added an extra reason to go even though A has been screaming his head off 80% of the weekend. We didn't stay long, A wouldn't have it. But it was still a special experience.
As I drove around trying to find an exit, I put the windows down to let in the beautiful weather and the special cemetery feel. I drove past a family made up of a little girl, a mom, and a dad who was pushing a stroller. As I drove by I heard the dad say to the little girl, "And do you know where heaven is?" Immediately my throat constricted painfully and my eyes burned. I'm not sure why that one little question got to me so much, but it made me think of so many things I am grateful for. I'm grateful that the death of loved ones has not been prevalent in my life (*knock on wood*). I'm grateful to have my family. I'm grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ that has brought me a knowledge of Heavenly Father's plan. I'm grateful for temples that bring all our families together forever. I'm grateful that my parents, husband, and family have talked about loved ones who have passed away allowing me to feel a love for people I never met or didn't know well enough. I'm grateful for my Heavenly Father and His Son and the love they have for me and show me. It's been a hard day, dealing with far too much shrieking from A and missing the rest of my family. And yet it's been a beautiful day of sunshine and peace, too.
Happy Memorial Day everyone!
I love the quiet in cemeteries. I love reading names and imagining the life that person had. I love imagining who has visited the same spot I'm standing on over the years. I get teary over people I've never known or heard of. Cemeteries are chock full of history. I love the spirit of reverence in cemeteries.
Lucky for me, I discovered today that I live very close to a fantastic, large, old, beautiful cemetery. Since my husband is out of town with two of our three children, I felt like I could handle taking just one and spending some time in the cemetery this morning. Being Memorial Day added an extra reason to go even though A has been screaming his head off 80% of the weekend. We didn't stay long, A wouldn't have it. But it was still a special experience.
As I drove around trying to find an exit, I put the windows down to let in the beautiful weather and the special cemetery feel. I drove past a family made up of a little girl, a mom, and a dad who was pushing a stroller. As I drove by I heard the dad say to the little girl, "And do you know where heaven is?" Immediately my throat constricted painfully and my eyes burned. I'm not sure why that one little question got to me so much, but it made me think of so many things I am grateful for. I'm grateful that the death of loved ones has not been prevalent in my life (*knock on wood*). I'm grateful to have my family. I'm grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ that has brought me a knowledge of Heavenly Father's plan. I'm grateful for temples that bring all our families together forever. I'm grateful that my parents, husband, and family have talked about loved ones who have passed away allowing me to feel a love for people I never met or didn't know well enough. I'm grateful for my Heavenly Father and His Son and the love they have for me and show me. It's been a hard day, dealing with far too much shrieking from A and missing the rest of my family. And yet it's been a beautiful day of sunshine and peace, too.
Happy Memorial Day everyone!
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Getting creative...with just a hint of plagiarism
President Uchtdorf, second counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gave a talk back in October that I loved. Here are a couple quotes from it that I especially loved.
"The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before."
"...remember that you are spirit daughters of the most creative Being in the universe."
With that in mind, and the need to freshen up our home to sell, I took the opportunity to do a few things I'd always wanted to do but was a little too nervous to commit the time or money to for fear of failure. I planted flower gardens and I arranged flowers (fake ones) for display in the house.
I suppose what I've done may have a bit of plagiarism to it. First of all the flowers were God's design, not mine. He create the real ones and somebody else copied Him in creating the fake ones. But since I took the last step in the creation process and I'm doing my best to keep maintain the flowers outside, I'd like to say I'm slightly involved in the creative process:)
Here are the geraniums, which are bigger now but still haven't bloomed...Don't give up hope yet!
This is the flower bed just behind the house. There are many more blooms now and the Shasta daisies are just about ready to pop (and I'm slightly embarrassed that I'm extremely excited for when they do).
Here's the back flower bed. It also has more blooms now and I'm beginning to ease up on the worry that I'm going to kill off all these beautiful plants.
This is the front flower bed, which is surprising me by not blooming much despite being the bed that gets the best sun everyday...but at least they're still alive:)
Bret painting and attached these window boxes to the house. They're overflowing with white petunias now that are gorgeous and the purple petunias are fighting valiantly for some space, too.
This beautiful red petunia was my very first bloomer. I was so excited that something I planted actually bloomed that I took a picture:)
And here are a couple examples of the fake flowers inside. Sure the ones on the table are for Easter, but I think I can get away with them at least through the rest of spring and maybe even into the summer months...what do you think? Am I breaking rules of indoor flower etiquette?
It's been lots of fun using some inate creative talents to do some new things and improve our house at the same time.
"The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before."
"...remember that you are spirit daughters of the most creative Being in the universe."
With that in mind, and the need to freshen up our home to sell, I took the opportunity to do a few things I'd always wanted to do but was a little too nervous to commit the time or money to for fear of failure. I planted flower gardens and I arranged flowers (fake ones) for display in the house.
I suppose what I've done may have a bit of plagiarism to it. First of all the flowers were God's design, not mine. He create the real ones and somebody else copied Him in creating the fake ones. But since I took the last step in the creation process and I'm doing my best to keep maintain the flowers outside, I'd like to say I'm slightly involved in the creative process:)
Here are the geraniums, which are bigger now but still haven't bloomed...Don't give up hope yet!
This is the flower bed just behind the house. There are many more blooms now and the Shasta daisies are just about ready to pop (and I'm slightly embarrassed that I'm extremely excited for when they do).
Here's the back flower bed. It also has more blooms now and I'm beginning to ease up on the worry that I'm going to kill off all these beautiful plants.
This is the front flower bed, which is surprising me by not blooming much despite being the bed that gets the best sun everyday...but at least they're still alive:)
Bret painting and attached these window boxes to the house. They're overflowing with white petunias now that are gorgeous and the purple petunias are fighting valiantly for some space, too.
This beautiful red petunia was my very first bloomer. I was so excited that something I planted actually bloomed that I took a picture:)
And here are a couple examples of the fake flowers inside. Sure the ones on the table are for Easter, but I think I can get away with them at least through the rest of spring and maybe even into the summer months...what do you think? Am I breaking rules of indoor flower etiquette?
It's been lots of fun using some inate creative talents to do some new things and improve our house at the same time.President Uchtdorf was right. "As spirit daughters of our Heavenly Father, happiness is [our] heritage."
Happy Memorial Day tomorrow!
Thursday, May 21, 2009
I'm not good at this game!
At least I got my Thankful Thursday post in an hour before Thursday was over this time, right?
Today I am grateful for Sister Beck, the general Relief Society President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My stake was invited to a Home, Family, and Personal Enrichment meeting of another stake that was hosting a Q&A with Sister Beck. It was awesome! And such a lift after having such a crazy day.
Sister Beck is straight forward, honest, unashamed, kind, funny, and totally great! The answers she gave to the questions she was asked were simple and strong. Here are a few of my favorites from tonight.
There is one rule for studying scriptures- Read them. Sit down to read every single day. Some days you'll have time to feast and some days it will be more like a quick bite, but it's that cumulative reading that gets the results you're looking for.
One sister said that as a SAHM of four young kids her husband was using scriptures to basically make her feel bad about not spending enough time with him. She asked Sister Beck if she had any advice (I can't remember how she worded it, but the impression that I got was that she wanted Sister Beck to tell her how to tell her husband that motherhood was the most important thing at this stage in their lives and he needed to be content with the backseat). Sister Beck said something to the effect of, "What you want me to do is give you bullets to put in your gun to shoot him with. (Most of us were chuckling by this point) I'm not going to do that. I'm going to read from the proclamation." I would have shouted "hallelujah" had we not been in a chapel! She then read the sentence from the proclamation that says "husbands and wives have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other." Yes, yes, YES! Yes it's hard to give so much of yourself to your children every single day, but it's so important that wives find time to give to their husbands as well. And the same goes for husbands. Take some childcare responsibilities off your wife's shoulders and she'll have more time to spend with you.
A wonderfully inspirational night that I hope I can remember when I start to lose perspective.
Happy Thankful Thursday! And Happy 86th birthday to my wonderful Grandpa who I am uber-dee-doober grateful for!!!...I think I'd like to post more on him, but I suppose that's best left for a more suitable hour for pondering and probably better for the family blog.
Today I am grateful for Sister Beck, the general Relief Society President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My stake was invited to a Home, Family, and Personal Enrichment meeting of another stake that was hosting a Q&A with Sister Beck. It was awesome! And such a lift after having such a crazy day.
Sister Beck is straight forward, honest, unashamed, kind, funny, and totally great! The answers she gave to the questions she was asked were simple and strong. Here are a few of my favorites from tonight.
There is one rule for studying scriptures- Read them. Sit down to read every single day. Some days you'll have time to feast and some days it will be more like a quick bite, but it's that cumulative reading that gets the results you're looking for.
One sister said that as a SAHM of four young kids her husband was using scriptures to basically make her feel bad about not spending enough time with him. She asked Sister Beck if she had any advice (I can't remember how she worded it, but the impression that I got was that she wanted Sister Beck to tell her how to tell her husband that motherhood was the most important thing at this stage in their lives and he needed to be content with the backseat). Sister Beck said something to the effect of, "What you want me to do is give you bullets to put in your gun to shoot him with. (Most of us were chuckling by this point) I'm not going to do that. I'm going to read from the proclamation." I would have shouted "hallelujah" had we not been in a chapel! She then read the sentence from the proclamation that says "husbands and wives have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other." Yes, yes, YES! Yes it's hard to give so much of yourself to your children every single day, but it's so important that wives find time to give to their husbands as well. And the same goes for husbands. Take some childcare responsibilities off your wife's shoulders and she'll have more time to spend with you.
A wonderfully inspirational night that I hope I can remember when I start to lose perspective.
Happy Thankful Thursday! And Happy 86th birthday to my wonderful Grandpa who I am uber-dee-doober grateful for!!!...I think I'd like to post more on him, but I suppose that's best left for a more suitable hour for pondering and probably better for the family blog.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
How in the world are the weeks flying by so fast?!?
Happy Thankful Thursday to YOU!
Today I am thankful for leftovers. Boy is it nice to know that every so often, when the day gets too crazy (like today!), that there's something to eat for dinner already in the fridge. Except now those leftovers are all over my kitchen floor becomes some people decided they'd look better down there since they weren't good enough to eat like those delectable graham crackers. So, to be more specific, I'm thankful for leftovers for the rest of the family and that graham crackers seemingly have enough in them to keep my 18 month olds thriving.
Today I am thankful for leftovers. Boy is it nice to know that every so often, when the day gets too crazy (like today!), that there's something to eat for dinner already in the fridge. Except now those leftovers are all over my kitchen floor becomes some people decided they'd look better down there since they weren't good enough to eat like those delectable graham crackers. So, to be more specific, I'm thankful for leftovers for the rest of the family and that graham crackers seemingly have enough in them to keep my 18 month olds thriving.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Thankful this Thursday
This fateful Thursday I am thankful that we're almost done prepping the house to sell. It's been fun. It's been exciting. It's been busy. And I'm ready to be done. I'm ready to be done constantly thinking, "what should I be doing? What should I be doing? What should I be doing?" like a broken record. Time to be done with fix-it projects, organize-it projects, clear-it-out projects, and the like. It's going to be another busy week, and a frantically busy day, but we're almost done! Hooray!!!!
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