outings

We had a miserably cold January and February.  Our outings have been indoors.

We go to the children's museum usually once or twice a month.  Often with Drayton.

Does the dentist count as an outing?  Either way Eve had her first dental examination.

We have gone swimming almost once a week.

These pictures capture Dane perfectly.

One day we were at the children's museum.  It was honestly 12 degrees outside.  Kayleen and Drayton were with us. The boys wanted to play outside and Eve wanted to go in so Kayleen took her in, about 20 minutes later I got a call from Kayleen saying the Eve had peed her pants!!  What?  She hadn't done that in months.  Point in case, I hadn't changed my emergency clothing to pants - I only had shorts from the summer.  

Sometimes they are adorable!  (but not lately - Eve has started to just irrationally scream and cry when Dane does anything she doesn't like.  We are going to need to nip it in the bud)

Another children's museum.  Dane pained a picture just like in the friend to friend.  He was SO PROUD!  He has been painting it and drawing it every chance he gets.

Bubbles!

One day it was like 35 degrees and the museum had an adorable winter outdoor exhibit.  It was awesome!

And a perfect sledding hill.

Can you see my purse?  Just a quick little story.  I was at the Children's Museum in November.  Well, lets back up.  First off: I am very trusting and I don't like to live in fear, I am often like "what are the chances".  I assume the best out of people.  Also I am lazy.  So there is that.  Anyways I often put my purse/diaper bag what ever room we are in and then we play, but I don't take my purse with me around the room.  I have done this for 15 years.  Well... someone stole my wallet.  The weird thing is, it was in arms reach and I saw her (sort of).  But before that you should know I started babysitting kids to earn some money for our house remodel.  I had accumulated 800 dollars in checks that I hadn't got around to cashing.  It took a couple months, but on Wednesday while the the babies were at preschool I decided to go cash them.  I knew I shouldn't carry that much cash around with me, and I didn't want to forget, so I asked for an extra envelope, put the cash in, then "hid it" in a different pocket in my wallet so I wouldn't get it mixed in with my regular cash.  The next morning I took the babies to the Children's Museum.  This money has not been in my wallet for 24 hours.  When it was time to go we stopped by the "train room" for just 5 minutes. It is the last room on the way out.  I put my purse up against the wall and started playing trains with Eve.  It was within arms reach.  I started talking to a younger mom who had 2 kids close together, but were 18 months and new born.  She noticed mine and started asking questions.  This is a common occurrence.  I spend about 80% of my outing time with Dane and Eve talking to younger moms and convincing them to have more than 1 or 2 kids.  This was never my intention, but the conversation ALWAYS leads to "I really want more kids, but I am scared becasue ____".  Where upon I can't help but testify to them and do my best to calm their fears.  I don't know if any of my evangelical work has ever led to another child, but I hope so.  So anyways, I felt like I was GUIDED inot the room to talk to that mom and calm her fears.  While we were talking a 12 month old who was just learning to walk fell down and knocked my purse over and it spilled out my water bottle.  I went to grab it and clean it up, but the mom of the 12 months old grabbed it and picked it up and said "sorry", I waved my hand away and said "no problem" and went back to talking with the mom.  About 2 minutes later (according to the security tape) we went to leave and i picked up my purse and immediately noticed it was lighter, I looked in the purse and noticed my wallet was gone!  She stole it!  This was the worst timing ever - on so many fronts.  Not only did I have 800 dollars in cash(a whole summers worth of babysitting, but many gift cards, chick e cheese cards with saved up points, plus it was passed lunch and nap time (we stayed in the train room longer than planned because I felt like I needed to help this young mom).  Long story short (or is it too late to say that?...).  The woman didn't leave.  She hid in the bathroom.  The security people sort of tried to help, but not really.  We sat by the exit for another hour.  We found out later from the security cameras she was watching the exit from the bathroom, about an hour after waiting by the exit (and an hour after lunch and nap time), eve ran up the stairs and I went to follow her, as soon as we stepped away from the exit she ran out the door and left.

A few things I learned:  I felt very violated and had a teeny tiny bit of anxiety and ptsd from it.  This surprised me as I don't normally react to things emotionally.  It gave me greater empathy for people what have actually gone through hard things - if I could feel this way over a wallet, imagine a child!

After a few hours I wasn't mad at her anymore.  I decided to give her the money.  She must has needed it. My whole perspective changed and I felt as though all my babysitting over the summer was for her.  It was a service I provided for her - the money was never mine.  It was always hers.  There is a talk by Elder Brook P Hales called "Answers to Prayer" that addresses this.  Heavenly father knew she needed the money, he knew I had the time and capacity to baby sit, he knew I really didn't NEED the money, he knew I would cash my checks and leave the money in the wallet.  NOW I KNOW she stole it - but that has nothing to do with me.  He will deal with that with her.  But as far as I am concerned the money was never mine to steal.  It was always His.

Anyways... the point of the picture.  I always keep my purse right by me now.  

The big kids had a day off of school and Maddie came to open gym with us.

 

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.