Conversations with Lucy during the Sacrament

"The Wise Men brought Jesus presents.  Would you like to give Jesus a gift?"

Yes

"What present would you like to give Jesus?"

A hotel to be born in.

"The present Jesus really wants from us is for us to be kind.  Would you like to give that present to Jesus?"

But he couldn't open it.

Before & After

Before:

 

After:

 

Stay tuned (for 3 years) to see the real AFTER pictures. 

Good Luck, Beautiful Kid!

First Day of School 2013

 

 

 

A Highlight of My Summer:

Merinda and I spoke at Girls Camp.

A Highlight of My Life:

Merinda and I met at Girls Camp.

 

Second Cousins

Standing in line at the water slide
One second cousin says to the other second cousin,
"In our family we play this game called Beaver."
"We play that game too!!"
"We Beaver red hair, horses, clothes on a line, and motorcycles."
"We used to Beaver those, but now we Beaver..."

Three days ago, they probably wouldn't have recognized each other on the street.
But, yet they are cousins.  Related through a Grandmother neither of them remembers.
And mysteriously linked by an old fashioned travel game that spanned 4 generations.

Thank heaven for traditions!
And family reunions.
And long drives from Iowa or Washington that unify us to our second cousins.

 

Brooksish

as in Spanish, Swedish, Finnish... 

After a while, you develop your own dialect.  At the Tower of Babel languages divided families from each other.  In our case, our dialect, in a strange way, unifies us. 

Famine--The tendency of all 13 boxes of tissues around the house to run empty at approximately the same time.

Binge--Mom's current fad of cooking cuisine. That is, all Mexican food for a month, sushi every week for six months, fondue twice a week for the summer. 

Concoction--Attempting to hide vegetables or fruit in a smoothie drink or muffin mix.  Concoctions' rate of success is 50%.

"Probably watered down"--The polite thing to say when something tastes awful.

"That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard"--"That's what I just said," or "That was my idea first."

"It's probably a tumeh (tumor)." -- "It's hypochondria."

The Abyss--The roaming location that swallows things like putty knives, nail clippers, thermometers, and other essentials. 

Mt. Everest--The ridiculously high, didn't-we-have-a-warranty? middle of our king size bed that is at least 8 inches higher in elevation than the sides of the bed.

I Went to the Dentist Today

It turns out that flossing is still all the rage.

Too bad.

Not when I water the daisies

or the hydrangeas
or the the day lillies.

Not when I water the zucchini
or the carrots
or the pumpkins.

But when I water the roses,
I miss my grandmother.
She said roses like water.

And a lot of other wise things that stick with me.

The Price of Being a Therapist

9 O'Clock PM. 

Front Yard.

Chaos inside.

It's good to go to therapy. And it's good to be a therapist. 

It's probably therapeutic for the neighbors too.

American Medical Association Recommendations

I went to the Doctor today for an annual (read--first time ever) physical.

Apparently the annual Pap Smears that I've been avoiding are now recommended only once every five years.  I've been right on schedule then.

Also, those monthly "breast self-exams" with the little laminated charts in the shower that seem like such a waste of time, are, in fact, actually a waste of time.

I told her I was ahead of my time.

Next week I have a dentist appointment.  I bet he's going to tell me that flossing is a thing of the past. 

Getting my kids to clean the house

leaves me feeling like not a very nice person.

Dysfunction

For the record,

I did a Zumba Class today.

And a Core-something-or-other Class that was awful and painful and humiliating.

Then I came home.

Then I remembered the Boston Cream donuts in the cupboard that I'd hidden from my kids and myself.

Then I debated whether to eat the donuts after I just worked out for an hour and probably didn't burn off the calories of one donut.

Then I paused in my debate to take a picture of the donuts so that I could blog about my dysfunction.

Then I ate them both and chugged water from my exercise water bottle.

Dysfunction at work. 

Also for the record,  they were delicious.

dys·func·tion noun  \(ˌ)dis-ˈfəŋ(k)-shən\


1: impaired functioning

2: unhealthy behavior

A piece of my heart

fell off and got digested by my stomach tonight.

I took Eliza to Middle School Orientation.  My sweet, shorter-than-everyone, younger-than-some-4th- graders, best-friends-with-a-first-grader, happy Eliza. 

She was excited and nervous.  She jumped out of the car, held my hand and skipped as we walked into the school.  She held my hand through the heavy metal doors that led us into the school that smells remarkably like my middle school of 23 years ago. She held my hand as we waited in the crunched line of nervous children and supportive parents. 

I saw at once that we were in a different world than the one she occupies at home that is full of Barbies and fairy houses with our 7-year-old neighbor, Avengers shows with Chas, and cuddling with Dad.  I saw teeny-boppers dressed in their favorite "cool" outfit.  I saw kids navigating the complex road of who to say "Hi" to and how.

And then I knew that I had to tell her.  I leaned down and whispered, "Eliza,  sweetheart, I love you, and I love to hold your hand, and I know you're nervous, but 6th Graders don't really hold their moms' hands.  I'll still hold it if you want to..."

And she let go.  And a piece of my heart fell off to have said it.  Good luck, Eliza the Brave. 

 

The Cost of Therapy

I hear that therapy costs between $90 and $180/hour. 

Last week my far-away friend re-capped her therapy learnings for me.  It cost me several puddles in our new patches of grass seed while I let Marko and Lucy take turns watering them.

Most Mondays my walking buddy is a portable therapist.  It always costs sore calves. She walks too fast, but her insights are great.

Today, my phone therapy with my adored cousin cost me 9 (count them, NINE) Fruit-by-the-Foots, four episodes of Mighty Machines and Dinosaur Train, and one small sink area flood.

To those people who say that therapy is worth every penny, I whole heartedly agree!

Apologies

In the last year I've found myself in three conversations apologizing for members of my church as a whole.  Two of these conversations were in the last week. 

It's an awkward place for me to be.  I worry that an apology for behavior seems like an apology for belief.  And I'm confused about why there can be screwballs of all colors and creeds, but not mine.  And at the same time, I'm so sad that our church has the image or is portraying the messages I heard.

They talked about exclusion.  Exclusion from sleepover parties, cheerleading teams, neighborhoods, and heaven.  They talked about persistent invitations that made them angry.  That seemed like the opposite problem to exclusion, but I didn't think to point that out.  And they talked about control.  Parents choosing careers and spouses and all sorts of weird stuff I don't see.  They accused me of being blinded and brainwashed and laid-back about my religion.  I'm not sure which accusation hurt worse.

I'm not sure why I feel the need to apologize for all of us.  I think I'm ashamed.  It's possible that they misinterpreted their experiences.  But it's also possible that in the time-consuming responsibilities of the church, people in the neighborhood were left out.  It's possible that in our efforts to share our happiness, we convey pressure.  And it's probable that my religion, like all other groups in the world, has nut cases too.  Please don't let them define us.

Even though, I've heard how nice, how friendly, how family-centered we are far more times than I've heard the reverse, it still hurts.  I think it shatters my expectations of us as a people.  I feel like, considering all we know about the loving, merciful, parental nature of God; considering the number of hours we spend in classes that teach us how to apply Christ's principles to our lives; considering our very sincere desires to follow Jesus's example, we ought to be the kindest, most helpful, most inclusive people anyone ever encounters.  I know that I'm not, but that doesn't prevent me from expecting that "we" would be.

When I was a teenager, an old man with a hunched back and a warm smile told me not to forget that, "The Church is true, in spite of a few."  Ain't that the truth? 

A Glass Half Full

Joy comes only drops at a time, I've decided.

I've spent a lot of time looking for the faucet, and haven't found it yet.

Now I'm on a quest for a glass to hold my drops in.  I wouldn't want to lose any of them.  I need every single one.

Mother's Day II

Two Highlights from Mother's Day:

1.  The fingerprint on my iPhone lens that made all the photos look timeless and dreamy. 

It's my life--the dreaminess and the fingerprints.

 

2.  Eliza's card:  "My mum...is as special as Dogs to me."
 

Mother's Day

This post hit it bang on, I thought:

http://www.kathylynnharris.com/dear-moms-of-adopted-children/


And it led me to this one, which was pretty close to the mark:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lea-grover/dear-less-than-perfect-mom_b_3184445.html


My walking friend tells me that her mother hated Mother's Day every year for the last 40-some years.  My friend, on the other hand, spends every Mother's Day reflecting on her progress as a mother throughout the year.  Both strategies intimidate me a bit.

My cousin tells me that in England they call it Mothering Day.  It has a nice ring to it, she says.  I agree.

Mothering the verb, not the noun:  I spent the day mothering the people who live here.  Or mothering the adjective:  I have chosen a mothering life.  Either one, just not the noun.  The noun opens itself up to descriptive words that are so daunting: Good Mother, Bad Mother, Helicopter Mother, Strict Mother, Yelled-at-us-all-day-long Mother. 

I'm mothering my way through mortality.  (Did anyone else notice that it almost sounds like "muddling my way through?"  Well, I'm doing that too.)

Happy Mothering Day to all of us!

The Sweet

We waved good-bye to the boys and all their camping gear at 5:30.

The rest of us left for our girls' night out at 5:34.

30 minutes of traffic jam didn't bother us.  We were talking about crushes and first dates and kisses.

Ears pierced in the right spot this time.

Time for Build-A-Bear browsing, Bubble Tea, and Bath & Body Works.

Got sucked into buying a nail stamping kit from one of those mall center kiosks.

Wandered around looking for the highly recommended Sushi place at 8:30 at night. 

Finally found it and got stuffed for $28 of awesome sushi.  It was 50% off night.  Who knew?  

And Lucy wasn't too miserable and noisy even though bedtime was hours ago.

The conversations on the way home were insightful and intimate.

Sometimes life offers a very small sweet piece of bliss.  This was one of them. 


"...if they never should have bitter they could not know the sweet--" 
(D&C 29:39)

I thought...

I thought that if I helped my kids as much as possible, they would become helpful kids.
It turns out, that it makes them helpless to tie their own shoes, put in their own pony-tails, or get their own drink of water.

I thought that if I discussed decisions with my children, that we would come to unifying consensuses. 
It's left me with arguments on every topic from every child every day.

I thought that if I ignored whining and tantrums that it would eliminate them.  That's what everybody tells you will happen.  They're wrong. 
It just makes the whining pervasive, the crying louder, and the tantrums more intense.

I thought that if we had very little screen time in our home that it would help our kids find useful, enlightening, creative, active things to do. 
It actually creates screen-starved children that will glue themselves to any baby show that Lucy might be watching or play solitaire on a one-inch screen with shoddy graphics late at night in their bedroom.

I thought that introducing children to a variety of foods would lead to a broad and accepting palette. 
It's actually led to so many determined preferences that making a meal is like navigating a mine field. 

I think I'm having second thoughts about it all.

Out of Balance

As a child, I loved to get the see-saw stuck perfectly balanced in the middle.  I loved how a heavier person could scoot up and a lighter person could scoot back to achieve balance.

In my adulthood, I still love it at the playground.  I would love it even more in my life. 

Balance in my life is more like a mathematical average than a teeter-totter stabilized in mid-air.  Chas's third grade math reminded me recently that there are four ways to look at average.  I'll refresh your memory:

MEAN--In a data set, the sum of all the data points, divided by the number of data points.

MODE--The number (or numbers) that occurs most frequently in a set of data.

MEDIAN--The middle number in a data set when the data are put in order.

RANGE--The difference between the largest and the smallest numbers in a data set.

I achieve balance in my life by overloading our lives with activities and then retreating to nearly zero in the hopes that when you add them together and divide by the number of years, we will have achieved the all elusive balance. 

If 10 is insanity and 0 is the number for hermits, I'm trying to hit a mean of 5.  Last Fall there were 6 soccer practices, 4 church activities, 3 music lessons, 1 gymnastics class, and 8 swimming lessons, plus school every week.  To average this out, I plan to do nothing until they leave home. 

The MEAN of our lives is 7.5.

The MODE of our lives is tidying the disaster created by the mean.

The MEDIAN is food.  No matter what order you put the data in, the median is always people hungry or people disliking the food in front of them or both. 

The RANGE is 18 hours, not including the outlying data points of 2 am bad sleepers in our bed. 

I sense that the balance is off a bit again.  I yearn for that see-saw suspended in the air.  I'm just not sure if I need to scoot forward or back. 

In the mean time, I guess I'll enjoy going up and down.  It can be pretty fun as long as the weight at the bottom doesn't bail and you're left with a sore tush. 

"Remember, too much of anything in life can throw us off-balance. At the same time, too little of the important things can do the same thing."  (Elder Russell M. Ballard)

why I don't share the gospel

it's not because I don't believe it's true.  I do.

it's not because I'm not sure.  I am.

it's not because I don't think it would bless every life.  it would.


it's because it teaches so many things that I fail at.
it's because I'd rather share the gospel when I've got those things sorted out. 
and that hasn't happened yet.

it's sort-of like not wanting to give you a present I haven't had time to wrap.
or not wanting you to arrive before I've finished cleaning the house.

I feel that when I hand you the gospel, all you'll see is the package I wrap it in with my life, and you'll miss the perfect gift that is inside.


why don't you let someone else give it to you instead?  mormon.org.

Sorrow and Wonder

When children are shot at school
And when bombs explode at a marathon
When tsunamis swallow up cities
Or a baby drowns in the tub

I wonder how people survive the sorrow

without understanding the eternal purpose and the relative brevity of life on earth.


I wonder how they find hope in a world so violent

without a certainty that God will reclaim the earth again and restore peace.


I wonder how they find comfort in their pain

without prayer and the Holy Ghost.


Because even with all of these things, I find it hard to keep going.

The Two Best Weekends of the Year

General Conference

A buoy to my heart.

An anchor to my life.

Growing Discrepancy

When he was four and ran with a patter-patter-skip it wasn't so different than all the other four-year-olds' goofy gaits.  When he was five and couldn't ride a bike, well neither could most of the kindergartners.  When he was six and didn't say any R's or L's or blended sounds of any kind, he had company.  And so on. 

But as time goes by, he's getting left behind with his bike standing dusty in the garage and so many sounds still alluding him.

As I watched him run down the basketball court yesterday, his differences were accentuated by the fact that he hasn't been feeling well and by comparison to the court full of other eight-year-old boys.

Sometimes I felt weepy watching him. The differences between his physical skills and his peers' are growing not narrowing.  Then I'd shake my head and think, this was the kid we worried would be strapped in a wheel chair and mute.  Here he is running, crookedly and awkwardly, but running nonetheless. And then I'd feel weepy all over again. 

Thank goodness we'll be back to watching soccer games in the rain soon.  Easier to cry without being noticed.

 

I've recently taken up exercising,

and I've decided that it's not the exercising itself that is so bad,

it's the extra time needed for the showers and naps to recuperate
that swallow my whole day that stink. 

I think I'll take up napping instead.  No exercise or shower required. 

Proven Again

That anything that works with 3-year-olds will work with Seminary Students.

This was the vehicle that took us from the thoroughly furnished barbie house out to do our good works. 

I love Seminary Students!

Too Close for Comfort

The day after he proposed to me, Dallin was thrown from the back window of his pick-up truck and pinned underneath in the snow.  They super-glued his arm together and he was disappointed he didn't get a bigger scar.

At a few months old, I found Naomi under the water in our bathtub.  She was fine, but I cried for 8 hours straight. 

With three kids in the van, we flipped it over on icy roads and were suspended upside down from our seat belts while I asked whether everyone was fine.  The milli-second until they all answered was an eternity.

At Christmastime, Mark walked up two flights of stairs to find me while he was choking (not breathing) on a frozen strawberry. 

This week, Naomi dropped an extinguished match into her garbage can full of tissues.  Next time she looked, it was in full flame next to her bookcase.  Ten minutes later my biggest disappointment were the small holes in the new carpet. 

And last week, with Dallin less than 3 feet away, Mark pushed out the screen on Chas's second story window and landed unconscious on the deck 20 feet below. Two ambulance rides, two hospitals, and two days later we were home with a glow-in-the-dark cast on his arm and a sore, healthy, whole kid.

Thank God! Again!

The Law of Sacrifice

Living the law

one midnight tri-fold-board project at a time.

Mission Accomplished

Tuesdays are the crazy day.  Today was crazier still with no Dallin, two timing changes, and an extra errand.  I announced the harried Tuesday schedule at Family Home Evening yesterday.  I reminded everyone in the morning of the plan.  I repeated the sequence of events to myself frequently through the day to ensure I had it.  I made everyone their own personalized list of things they must do with no mother there to remind them--things like put on your basketball shorts, eat dinner, practice the piano, and walk to swimming lessons.  On my first trip out the door with three kids in tow, I scratched out the drop-off/pick-up schedule because I felt sure I might confuse a drop-off or a pick-up somewhere along the line and Eliza would be left at the basketball court with her violin or Naomi would be abandoned at swimming lessons to walk home dripping in her swimming suit.

I got everyone everywhere.  On time.  Cheerfully.  And I miraculously remembered it was garbage day and took the garbage out. 

Hooray for me!  Good thing I wasn't fired yesterday, after all.

No Other Job in The World

I can't imagine any job in the world that I could work at for 24 hours a day, for 12 1/2 years, with almost no vacation time, or sick leave...

A job that I would desperately desire to be successful at and pour my soul and 100% of my energies into...

And yet, I would still feel like a failure.

Any other job, if I failed for 12 1/2 years,

would fire me. 

Joy in a Vase

Thank you, Wanda!

Happiness is having a dog...

for two and a half days.

Fix it up,

wear it out,

make it do,

or do without. 

(Thank you, Grandma Barbara.)

Eggs, Basket...

Meet Marko.

I Heard it Again Today

Chas's reading teacher said how much Lucy looks like Eliza.

I hear it all the time.  I love to hear it.  Eliza loves to hear it as well. 

The ones who know, say it with a question mark.  The ones who don't, say it with certainty.

The funny thing is that their temperament and likes are the same as well.  They are both calm and gentle and flexible.  They both are infatuated with dogs and stuffed animals.  They both love to look at books and do puzzles.

It makes me wonder if it simply means that all Caucasians share some physical characteristics that could be interpreted as similarities? 

Or are people cut from a cloth that includes both temperament and appearance and because they are alike in one category it makes them alike in the other? 

Someone suggested that people begin to look like their families, so Eliza has had ten years of developing into looking like us and Lucy genetically looks like us.  Our looks are contagious? It sounded weird. 

My most probable working theory is that our spirits contain who we are, both looks and temperament, and that we are grouped into families that have common spiritual heritage. (Whatever that might mean.)  So, we are like our own families no matter how we joined them.

Anyway, I heard it again today.
And it warmed my heart as it always does.

Honesty

Honesty, for me, sometimes gets all muddled.

I wonder if honesty should be sacrificed in my fight against cynicism.

And I wonder if "fake it 'till you make it" is a reasonable, albeit dishonest, strategy for optimism, good parenting, wisdom, charitable service, and many other of my pursuits. 

I hate fine lines, grey areas, and muddles.

Umm...I mean...fine lines, grey areas, and muddles are an opportunity for growth and I'm grateful when
they come my way.  See?  so peppy, it's just downright dishonest.

(PS--"Muddles" is what Marko calls "puddles."  Whenever we put on his monkey boots he says, "Now I can jump in Muddles.")

Humpty Dumpty

Thank you, Dallin.  (You Genius!)

American Proverb

Don't Put All Your Eggs in One Basket.

This Basket had:

all my photos for the last 7 months
my camera
the family calendar
our ward directory
the grocery lists
the codes for many online accounts
the notes for all the school meetings, cub scout meetings, etc.
my budget
multiplication flashcards
music note flash cards
our family phone
everyone's phone numbers
my new year's resolutions (good riddance)


All my eggs went into a sink full of water yesterday.  All the king's horses and all the king's men can't put these eggs back together again.