Living Full on Life

Happy Loventine’s Day

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16 years ago today my sweet husband proposed to me. We hiked to the top of Eagle’s Crag outside of Zion National Park as the sun came up and agreed to spend eternity together. What a good decision that was! I love Valentine’s Day because I get to reflect on that blessed decision and the amazing years since. I love celebrating love. I love that I got to teach our preschool group this week (I’m in a co-op where I share the responsibility to teach with five other mom’s and so I teach once every six weeks), and our topic was “Love and Family” and “Mail and Post Office”. We read the book “The Seven Little Post Men”, made cards for a loved one and took a little field trip to a blue mail box where the children, with great ceremony, dropped their cards in. I love preschoolers because everything is so full of interest for them. That great big blue box was twice their size and more than one child asked what would happen to their letter, and how would the postman get it out?

We started our discussion about Love and Family like this:
Me: Can anyone tell me what holiday we will celebrate this week?
Sweet boy in our group: LOVENTINE’S DAY!

So, to all of you out there whom I love and who have touched my life, Happy Loventine’s Day!

Some Parental Re-assessment

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Lately, I have noticed that my interactions with the children have been pretty negatively charged. I have felt that I am nagging over all the things that seem important to me and that I feel should be important to them. Those areas are (not in order of importance): Chores, music practicing, and schoolwork.  What is so difficult for me is that I feel that all of these things are so important for our children and for their success and happiness. I want to save them the pain of consequences. In other words, I feel like if I don’t nag them to do their homework, or if I allow them to procrastinate, or not prepare for their tests, then they will not go to a good university, and they will be unemployed for the rest of their lives! Or if I don’t nag them to prepare for their music lessons they will waste their talents, and feel that awful feeling of guilt you get when you show up at yet another lesson unprepared. (I remember that feeling well!) Or they will quit playing their instruments altogether.

I guess it is pretty natural for a parent to want to save their children from pain and failure. But am I doing them any favors? Especially if in trying to shield them from those things I am sacrificing good relationships with my children for relationships of contention and anger. So what did we do? I find that everything gets easier when I enlist Grant’s help. He and I started discussing my frustrations tonight and then Sam and Lizzie joined us and we had an amazing talk where we were all brainstorming about how we can make things better. We listened to the children and they listened to us. We decided that it was time to let them experience natural consequences. I was going to back away from nagging over school work. Thankfully, the children are all good students (some are even GREAT students), but just need a little experience in figuring out how to use their time better. If our children are not prepared then they will get the bad grade, but it will no longer be my responsibility to save them from that. I am firing myself from the job of school nag and homework enforcer! And if they don’t have good enough grades to get into BYU (their dream school and mine) then I will be there to commiserate and console, since I was once there myself! (I ended up having to go to a Jr. college for 1 1/2 years in order to get the grades I needed to be accepted by BYU. It was a very sobering reality check the day I got that rejection letter!)…

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Why We Feel SO Lucky to Have Four

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Four children, that is.  Awhile back I came across this blog that explains what our complication is with having children and why we feel so lucky to have our four sweet ones. As Anna turns FIVE today (I can’t believe it!), my mind turns back to pregnancy and the deliveries of each of our children and I am full of gratitude that they are a part of our family. Our doctors told us after #2 not to have any more because of our Anti-kell antibody issue. We took a risk and with only one miscarriage we were able to add William and Anna to our family. So as we celebrate Anna’s birth, five years later I am celebrating the miracle of each life that is a part of our family, and the peace of knowing that we are a complete.

Girl-Cheese Sandwiches

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A conversation we had tonight over dinner went like this:

William: So does “Mankind” mean just a lot of men?”
Me: No, it means all men and women. In fact, some women are bothered that it is called “Mankind” because it doesn’t sound like it includes women.
Anna: Do boys ever feel left out because we eat girl-cheese sandwiches?
Me: (Laughing) They are actually called grilled cheese sandwiches, not girl cheese sandwiches.

 

Some Holiday Rememberances

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The holidays have been so wonderful! I have wanted to write for many weeks about some of the extraordinary and memorable experiences we have been having but have been so busy with either holiday preparations or working on the functionality of my new blog. It is amazing how difficult this process has been! Everything I want to do on this blog I have had to look up some tutorial on how to do it! Or watch a YouTube video, or read long, boring articles on my question. It has been very tedious. I really want to just jump into the creative part of this instead of getting mired by the technical part. However, instead of waiting to get everything perfect I need to just record a few things. I will start with Thanksgiving. This year, we decided to have Thanksgiving with just our own little family. AND, we decided to eat out! For any of you out there, and as a reminder to myself, if you want to eat out for Thanksgiving dinner book your reservations early! Most ski resort restaurants provide amazing feasts as well as a few restaurants in Salt Lake (and there is always Chuck a Rama). We chose to go to Little America, downtown SLC. They do not take reservations and when I called they said it would be about an hour wait. We showed up at 11 am which was THE WRONG time to come. We waited for almost three hours! I stood in line, chatting with those around me while Grant took the children to Temple Square and then we swapped and I took the children to the Grand America to see the huge gingerbread house. When it was finally our turn to eat, the wait was certainly worth it! The food was amazing! So fresh, so varied, so delicious! Shortly after we started eating (it was after 2pm by this time) my friend Katie and her husband showed up. She said they come every year and arrive after 2 and only wait about 10 minutes. So now we know the secret! We had a great time, even with the wait.

littleamerica…

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Wants vs. Needs

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We decided to follow some good advice and give our children something they want, need and something to read for Christmas.  Anna was asking for many, many things and so I said, “Wait Anna, you already told me you wanted those Frozen dolls, now you are telling me you want something else.” She replied, “But Mom! Frozen stuff isn’t something I WANT! It’s something I NEED!”
Smart, smart girl.

Ode To Lizzie

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My little girl is 12! She has been eagerly awaiting this day for…12 years! No, I’m kidding, it just seems that way. This last year of waiting to be twelve has been torture.  Twelve means the following things for Lizzie (not in order of importance): She gets to wear makeup and dangly earrings, she gets to babysit other people’s children and go to the Young Women’s program at church for girls ages 12-18, and she is old enough to go to the temple. All such wonderful and exciting things!
So what is Lizzie like at 12? Today I got to introduce her to the other girls in the Young Women’s program at church. I got two minutes but could have taken an hour to describe this incredible daughter o’ mine. So here I go…
Lizzie. Sweet Lizzie. Twelve years ago you were born 7 weeks early. You weighed 5 lbs 10 oz. Your birth was induced because you were dangerously anemic. (A blood incompatibility.) Seconds after you were born you were placed on my chest, next to my heart and I was allowed to hold you for what I think was less than a minute. I was totally smitten by your tiny perfection. Then you were whisked away by the huge team of doctors and nurses that were waiting to take care of you. You were given a blood transfusion and then spent a month in the hospital to grow and to learn how to breath and eat. You were the sweetest little thing, though you looked like a giant in the NICU with all those other preemies. (Some who weighed less than two pounds!) That month of waiting for you to come home was probably much like the last month has been for you waiting to turn twelve! It seemed to last for an eternity. Every little thing was a celebration, when you ate by yourself, when you breathed by yourself, your first poopy diaper…

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A Random Sample

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Awhile ago William said, “Kung Fu Panda really has a lot of good lessons in it. Like how it teaches you how to build a rocket.”

Anna complained to me that it is getting annoying that everywhere she goes (preschool and primary) the boys all want to sit by her and she just wants to be by herself. I said, “Well, it’s just because you are so cute and nice!” She said, “Well, then I just want to be not cute like you, and then the boys won’t want to sit by me!”

This week I presented at book club. The topic of discussion was man/woman marriage and the same-sex marriage debate. I was a nervous wreck about leading a discussion about this since I don’t enjoy politics, current events or conflict in general. I also feel very weak when it comes to debating or discussing high emotion topics.  My heart rushes, my voice quivers and my knees go weak. Not to mention the discomfort of my brain going blank. I was also very nervous because I knew there would be some people present that felt very differently on the topic than I do. Well, the discussion went quite well due largely to the great turnout and many thoughtful people who wanted to discuss this topic in a civil and caring way. I felt good knowing that I had done the leg work necessary to make this topic personal. I could finally discuss it with my own words and not just quoting someone else. I could speak with passion and authority because I had read and prayed and pondered. I spent hours reading articles and books and although it was still not my favorite way to spend my time (I’d rather be reading food blogs), I am glad I did it. It also made me very grateful for the LDS church’s stand on man/woman marriage. It makes so much sense to me and in my heart of hearts it just feels right.
https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation

Now for a fall recap: (I’m hoping to do a summer re-cap, maybe in February when I am really longing for some warm weather.)

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Anna’s Dream Man and Mine

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In the car Anna was wondering who she will marry some day. I asked her what she was looking for in a husband (remember she is four). This is her list, in order:
1) Smart
2) He has to be the Bishop
3) Funny
4) He has to play in the backyard with the children
5) He has to take her out to eat
Our children learn so much about what they want by what they see. I would say that in this list she included things she sees in her Dad and things that she sees that are important to me. (eating out)
Dad and Sheri have been staying with us for the past three weeks as they prepare for their mission. It has been SO WONDERFUL! What a unique and memorable time to share with them. Today was their farewell address at church which was great, then a dinner for family and friends, then their setting apart. The stake president came over here and we had a little devotional where we all talked about what qualities Dad and Sheri have that will make them great missionaries. Then Dad and Sheri bore testimony of the importance of what they are doing. I felt the spirit of the Lord so strongly as we shared our feelings. Sheri talked about how she felt that there are angels all around us, helping us. Dad talked about how he knows there is a loving Heavenly Father who listens and cares. I felt overwhelmed with gratitude that my children could be surrounded, enveloped with the peace that the gospel of Jesus Christ brings. I am grateful for their example of service and sacrifice. I also felt so excited as Grant and I sat together holding hands that we will be able to walk through all the phases of our life together. I love being parents together, I look forward to being missionaries together, grandparents… I don’t feel like I mind what the future brings for us as long as we are together.
missionaries

Gramma and Grampa Z at their missionary farewell

Some Notable Things

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This is a post I wrote more than a week ago but kept forgetting to publish:Sam asked for a longboard for his birthday. He picked it out a month ago and I hid it in the most amazing hiding place of all time! I will never tell…William and Lizzie have been pretending that they know where it is and are not telling either. Sam, the tortured one is doing everything he can to either find it himself or bribe the others to tell him. The other day I heard him say, “William, I will give you my birthright if you tell me where my longboard is.”

Last week I had a whole day of errands to run for school needs and to get ready for our backpacking trip to the Wind Rivers. Anna had been an absolute dream to have along, very sweet and patient but apparently I pushed her a little far. We were at REI getting long underwear for Lizzie (among a few other things)  when Anna discovered some pants she wanted.
I informed her that she didn’t need any and so we left that area and started looking for the next thing on our list (a footprint for our backpacking tent). She was pretty annoyed that she didn’t get the pants and for some reason she REALLY wanted them. (They were long underwear for goodness sake!) A few minutes later she told me that she wet her pants and that we needed to buy her some new ones since hers were wet. I had this sinking feeling and then felt her pants to see how wet she was. I was imagining urine running down her pant leg and puddling on the floor but was relieved to find that she had just barely leaked a little out.  I told her with great encouragement (thinking she was embarrassed that she had wet herself, never imagining that she had done it on purpose!), that it wasn’t that bad, that it would dry in a few minutes and asked if she needed to go potty. She said she didn’t. I kept shopping…Less than five minutes later she opened the floodgates and totally wet herself (just like I imagined at first). She said, “NOW can I get those pants?!?”
She most certainly DID NOT get those pants.
School started last week. This summer has been amazing. Truly amazing. But also very exhausting. I erroneously thought that life would be less exhausting when school started. We get up at 5:30 am M,Th, F, 4:55 on Tuesday, and 6:45 on Wednesday (our blessed sleep-in day!)