Thoughts

 These are going to be random, and disjointed, and without back ground.  But there are just some things I want to record.

• Reading my blog books helps re center me and reminds me of the mom I used to be and the kind of mom I want to be.  That doesn't mean that I feel like I need to be the same mom I was 10 years ago, I don't feel that pressure - but it does help me see more of my parenting journey than what is right in front of my face.
• I have been struggling to find my footing for a while.  Probably a year.  I remember vividly last March knowing I wasn't ok, but not knowing what was wrong.  I have tried LOTS of things to try and figure out what is wrong.  While there have been a few steps forward most have felt lateral.  Certain areas have improved, but nothing has moved the ball forward.  Through a few priesthood blessings and an inspired RS super Saturday workshop class I think I have found the heart of my problem.  I am not present in my life. I am not intentionally choosing to enjoy the moments.  I am multi tasking too much, always thinking of what I need to be doing, and trying to rush through what i am doing right now so i can do the next thing.  I have stated learning to meditate and I hope all the things I am learning will help.  My brain is hurting and my spirit is hurting. I spend to much time working on the back stage that I am not in the act.  
• An ideal day: Wake up at 5:30 and spend time with my early morning seminary-ers and get in a work out, pray and read with them before they go, personal devotional (pray, read scriptures, conference talk, and a bit of family history), get ready, spend some time with Megan (read and pray with her) while making a breakfast, all before babies wake up at 7:30.  Read and pray with Maddie.  Make a yummy breakfast for me and babies. Then during show time I blog, blog book, or checklist, and be ready to give my all to the babies at 9:30.  I would love to do more educational/intentional activities with the babies, especially Dane.  An outing.  Make dinner during naps. Eve up by 3:30.  Be able to help Jason more with house clean-up and time with the teens in the evening.  Parent to the end.  
• I had no idea I was as bad at decorating and making decisions as I am.  I thought is was a conscious choice, I can now clearly see that I am truly truly bad at it and do not enjoy it at all.  I recognize beauty, I feel better in beauty, but I struggle to create beauty.  I need help.  I need someone to just do it for me.  
• 2022 was a hard hard year with the babies.  But I think we are on the mend - things are getting easier and better.
• I need to have more joy with my children.  All 6 of them.  I really want to have fun with them and be silly with them - but  I am always to distracted.  Always trying to think about what to say or how to teach or how to make it a gospel lesson. That goes along with the earlier bullet about just being present and in the moments and enjoy it for what it is.
• Our teens are amazing.  They were amazing toddlers and kids also.  If life just keeps going this way, it will be unbelievable how easy they were.  I have not met a family (in really life or on my mothers FB page) where the older kids happily help out as much as ours do.  They really do so so so much with out really any complaining or protest. They deep clean the house every week (that they can), every night they clean up the whole house while Jason and I put the babies to bed (messes they did not make), they clean up dinner, they baby sit, play with the babies, they hang out with Jason and I every evening reading or playing games.  

Skiing

We got tickets to go skiing at Loveland again this year.  Megan opted to stay home.  She still got to skip school and stay home to help Jason with the babies.  She said she was glad she went but doesn't ever want to go again.  

I picked the warmest day for us to go, but I guess the weather reports were wrong because when we got there it was snowing and like negative 10 degrees.  It stayed cold all day - only warming up to about 17 degrees.  Basically it was COLD.  However nobody complained and still had a great time. 

With everyone becoming much better skiers we spent most of the day over on the bigger side of the mountain and everyone pretty much skied o their own.  It made me a little sad because one of my favorite things about skiing is the time we spend together, but I had a chance to ski with each one of them.  Mads and I stayed together most of the time.  We both liked going through the trees along the side and found some really great runs.  We didn't have any major crisis and everything went great.

Do we look cold?

We all really enjoyed the beauty (but not he cold) of skiing above the tree line, hopefully next year it is a bit warmer and we can spend some time exploring up there.

 

Valentines

Somehow the babies got really excited for Valentines day.  So I brought up all my preschool valentines books and activities, made a valentines making station, and then, of course, we made valentines cookies.

Making sugar cookies is a long process and they did each step and waited patiently until it was time for the next step.  Make dough, chill (wait), cut out and bake (wait), cool (wait), make frosting, frost. 

They were only interested in frosting for about 2 cookies (I figured)

They mostly wanted to sprinkle all the sprinkles and eat the cookies.

Later that night I put most of the frosting in piping bags and the teens decorated cookies while Jason read MistBorn to us.

Megan's gluten free ones are on the pan.
 

The story of the Book of Mormons

 How many Book of Mormons should a family have?  This is going to be a long, and pretty useless story, so buckle up.  

First off my children like church, they like the gospel, they like going to church, reading the scriptures, watching general conference, going to the temple and early morning seminary, and participating any any religious activity we tell them to do. They participate in gospel discussions both in and out of the home and bear their testimony in church.  However, none of them have developed or even really made an effort to have individual scripture study or prayers.  Almost none of their religious observations are self motivated or driven, they will happily eat what is fed to them and truly enjoy it - but they have yet to ask for or produce their own spiritual experiences.  (Megan a few months ago has started reading her scriptures in the morning, Madison has read a scripture/quote from a daily devotional journal every morning, Brock has tried to listen to a conference talk every day and has done it maybe 5 times, and Noah has had some good morning prayer streaks)  But with all my "lack of religiosity" until I was 16, I was always making a real effort to read my scriptures as early as 5th or 6th grade.  So I just wonder.  I invite, I inspire, I challenge, I testify, I try everything I can think of to help them understand how important these daily holy habits are.

Around Christmas I was listening to a devotional from Elder Bednar and he was advising the audience to get a blank copy of the Book of Mormon every time they have a questions and read through it with that question or phrase in mind and mark it, and then write in the back what you have learned about that topic when they are done.  Then he said "and by the time you are my age you should have four or five hundred Book of Mormons marked and on your shelf.  ha!  It sank deep into my heart.

Then a few weeks later I went to a stake women's conference workshop and they had a table full of probably 200 or more Book of Mormons and told us to take as many as we wanted.  Remembering Elder Bednar's advice I thought it was a good time to stock up.  So I grabbed 4 or 5 with intentions to grow my spiritual knowledge.  When I got home that night I put them on my dresser, the kids came in for scripture study and inquired about them.  They were intrigued, they asked several questions, I told them about Elder Bednar.  Then I said, "if you think having a blank copy of the Book of Mormon will help you read and mark your scriptures you can have one." (BTW - they all have their own scriptures AND a blank BoM already - but sometimes new is novel).  They perked up, all grabbed a book, a pen and started reading and marking (they really hate marking scriptures).  I was filled with gratitude.  Over the next few days I "spied" my kids reading and marking their BoM and they brought them to family study and marked them up.  But in the moment when they took them they all felt bad for taking my BoMs and I assured them I didn't care and I would rather they have them.  

Afterwards I sent a text to the stake RS president and asked if I could have a few more BoMs, she said yes and that she would drop some off.  The next day we went to church, I guess they didn't get rid of all the BoMs so in the cultural hall their was a table full of BoMs.  I guess every member of my family separately saw this table and thought of me.  By the time we all got home after church (many of us had meetings and came home at different times) we discovered that every person took 5 or 6 BoMs to make up for the ones they took from me, then the RS president dropped of 5 or 6 more.  And that is how we got all those Book of Mormons!  Isn't that sweet?

At conference Elder Rasband begged us to flood our neighborhood with the Book of Mormon.  I told myself that is what we were going to do with all of those. I haven't yet.  I intend to.  I will.  I promise.  Its just hard.  But I will.  I promise.