melancholy monday

I feel I should add my voice to countless others in acknowledging the death of our prophet. I admit that when I heard it, the first feeling I felt was relief. To think that he spent almost his entire life in church service, not to mention raising a family in his private life. He worked so hard, probably harder than most people his age do or should. Talk about fighting the good fight and enduring to the end. I also feel relief in knowing that the priesthood power continues and that there is no question who his successor will be. Unlike current American politics where there is so much speculation as to who our next president will be- it's comforting to know that that same craziness doesn't exist in church leadership.

This incident adds to my melancholy feeling as of late. The many stresses of trying to find a new home have worn me out, not to mention the constant demands of three small children, a hard-working and busy grad student husband, and living the life of perpetual poverty.

Jon and I read this talk together last night. As usual, it was exactly what I needed to hear- the true meaning of "enduring to the end".

"Enduring to the end is a process filling every minute of our life, every hour, every day, from sunrise to sunrise. It is accomplished through personal discipline following the commandments of God.
The restored gospel of Jesus Christ is a way of life. It is not for Sunday only. It is not something we can do only as a habit or a tradition if we expect to harvest all of its promised blessings. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7).
Enduring to the end implies “patient continuance in well doing” (Romans 2:7), striving to keep the commandments (see 2 Nephi 31:10), and doing the works of righteousness (see D&C 59:23). It requires sacrifice and hard work. To endure to the end, we need to trust our Father in Heaven and make wise choices, including paying our tithes and offerings, honoring our temple covenants, and serving the Lord and one another willingly and faithfully in our Church callings and responsibilities. It means strength of character, selflessness, and humility; it means integrity and honesty to the Lord and our fellowmen. It means making our homes strong places of defense and a refuge against worldly evils; it means loving and honoring our spouses and children."

"Enduring to the end is not just a matter of passively tolerating life’s difficult circumstances or “hanging in there.” It's not? Dang it! I've got some more work to do...

"Bootie-licious" (or pics to go with my last post)

Seth and Maryn in their Christmas Sunday clothes. Seth looks pretty happy doesn't he? To see more pics of our holiday times, click here. We also had some fun times with Wendy, click here to see those pics. Our family with Darth Vader at the Star Wars exhibit, for more pics of this fun trip, click here.Now onto pictures of the projects I have completed this past month (in random order). (For a few more pics of these projects, click here.) First- a hat for Wendy. She bought the fancy-schmancy yarn and I crocheted it, we added cute little pom-poms to the end of the earflaps later.

A hat for Annie. Unfortunately, it was too small by the time it made it to her house (three weeks after I sent it, thank you postal service). See her wear it here. A hat for Ellena. This one fit because I had Jonas to try it on. See her wear it here.
Mary Jane slipper booties for Annie, made intentionally big so as not to run into the preivous problem. Jonas modeled these too. See them received here.

And finally, a collaborative effort. Wendy cable knitted the front two panels and I crocheted the border, made the flower, and put the whole thing together. I was surprised that she actually put it on for the picture, she won't wear it more than a few seconds.

Projects not shown- a red sparkly scarf and white hat with huge pom-pom for Carlie and camo-colored booties for Jonas. I'm currently working on some blue sneaker booties for Jonas also.

You may be asking yourself- when does she have to time do all of this and keep her house clean, her family fed and still get some sleep? The answer is- I don't. That's what hobbies are all about, right? :)

getting back on track

I have not posted anything for a while for a few reasons. The main reason being that as more and more days came and went, I realized that it would take more and more effort to catch up on my blog and that made me avoid it altogether. But now, Jon started his new semester today and so our daily routines have begun to normalize. I realize that I need to get back to my real life. So I will attempt to give a short summary of our last 2 weeks.

First of all, some people commented and wanted more details about our crazy Christmas Eve. Well here they are in all their glory: We drove up to Chicago on Sunday (Dec 23) night and picked up Wendy from the Chicago Midway Airport. (Which was so busy, they wouldn't let anyone stop and wait for the people they were picking up, so we had to drive in a stop-and-go circle with hundreds of other cars 5 or 6 times.) We stayed at a hotel that I had booked online that was in downtown Chicago. It was an older but pretty nice hotel. The kids had trouble going to sleep because they were so excited about everything- Chicago, Wendy, Christmas. We should have planned better and brought the pack and play for Jonas and a sleeping bag for the kids- but we didn't- so Jon shared a bed with Seth and Maryn and I shared a bed with Wendy and Jonas. It was pretty much uncomfortable for everyone. Then as we were leaving the next day, a piece of paper was slipped under our door- it was a bill for parking at the hotel- $30. I have never heard of anything so crazy- a hotel charging you extra to park at their hotel! Next, we headed off to the museum to see the exhibit. We decided to be smart and save the $12 it cost to park there and park on the street a few blocks away. It was free admission day- so it was crazy busy. It was a challenge trying to keep our small group together. We went to the exhibit first and stayed in there for about an hour. It was really really awesome! There were costumes from the movies, a hovercraft you could ride on, an R2D2 you could build then plug in and drive, and a viritual game you played with small tiles on a large circle while watching yourself on a screen (hard to explain, but really cool). The rest of the museum was really really awesome too, three floors full of really cool interactive rooms about a variety of topics. By the time we got out of the exhibit, we only had the energy and time to go to a few rooms- farming, circus, and space exploration. Jon walked the few blocks, got the van and brought it back to the museum so we could load up the crew. He returned with a Christmas present from the City of Chicago- $50 ticket for not having our IL liscense plate on the front of our van. This is the law in IL, but there are so many cars in our town that don't have it, we have just been dragging our feet about getting it done. So we saved $12 in order to pay $50. Merry Christmas.

We had a nice Christmas, low-key, here at home with Wendy as a guest. We spent the next week getting our needlework on- me: crochet and Wendy: knitting. We both attempted to teach the other our skill, but both ended up sticking to what we know. We collaborated on a really cute sweater poncho for Maryn (that she won't wear- the stinker) and completed a bunch of other projects. I will post pics later this week.

We spent new year's eve at a friends house playing board games and singing along to the guitar (2 of my favorite things). Wendy went back up to Chicago to do the NYE thing and came home 24 hours later with Hans. We spent the next week watching movies, eating good food, crocheting/knitting, playing nintendo, and avoiding the outdoors (wind chill was below 0).

Last week...mmm...what did we do? My brother came home from a mission on Jan 10. Our town's library opened up their new building and we went three times (it's really cool). The rest of the week blends together.

And now here I sit. Dirty dishes, dirty laundry, dirty house, dirty kids- and I'm blogging. I guess my life really is back to normal.

6 things I learned on Christmas Eve 2007

• 6 people sharing 2 double beds makes for a very poor night's sleep
• parking overnight in the parking lot of the hotel you're staying at is not always included in the room rate
• one person walking alone can travel from points A through B to C in the same time it takes two people with 3 kids to travel from point A straight to point C
• visiting a huge childrens' museum on free admission day that also happens to be a holiday is like going to Disneyland in the summer- crazyness
• traffic cops in Chicago have no soul (or Christmas spirit) and will not hesitate to give a ticket if you don't have your licence plate on the front of your car because there is no mount for one and you haven't bought one yet
• Christmas Eve is best spent at home, hanging out with family- where no outside influences can work together to ruin the day

cankle

Just to gross you all out, here's two pics of my ankle yesterday morning and evening, respectively. As I previously posted, it feels a lot better and really doesn't look all that bad. So I guess I'm on the mend.

Christmas music and holiday business

I absolutely love Christmas music! I get so excited to pull out my CDs and start singing along on Thanksgiving day. I also look forward to singing Christmas hymns in church for the month of December. If you asked me what my favorite Christmas songs are, I would probably say O Holy Night and Ave Maria. But my real favorite Christmas songs are All I Want for Christmas is You and I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas- these two make me laugh and want to sing along at the top of my lungs.

I don't want to use the word hate here- but there are a few Christmas songs that I do not like, not one bit. If these songs come on while I'm listening to the Christmas station on the radio or even on a CD that I love, I will skip them immediately. The offending songs are Little Drummer Boy and Do You Hear What I Hear. These songs drive me crazy! I'm pretty sure I hate them. Even when Josh Groban sang Little Drummer Boy on Oprah, I had to fast forward through it. I tried to like it, for Josh, but it couldn't be done.

My favorite Christmas CDs this year are Bing Crosby (this and every year) and James Taylor (just purchased). Close runner up is Squirrel Nut Zippers' Christmas album (you just can't beat Carolina Christmas- we're chillin' in our underwear). And then there's always Harry (Connick, Jr.) my Christmas music staple. Ahh- I guess I can't narrow it down to just one.

Some questions posed to readers- What is your favorite Christmas album? What is your favorite Christmas song? What is your real favorite Christmas song? Any Christmas songs you hate?

I was thinking today about how fast the Christmas season seems to go by every year. I always feel like I'm unable to do everything I want to during this season and therefore can't enjoy it to the fullest extent that I want to. I feel like I got a good start this year but now here a week before Christmas, I've sort of hit a slump. Maybe it's because I've been a bit incapacitated these past three days but I think it's mostly just that fact that I only really have one more week before Christmas is over. It just goes by too fast.

That's what I've been thinking about about today. Luckily, my ankle is feeling a lot better and I can even walk pretty well when it's wrapped up. So I'm going to try and get back to business tomorrow, the business of getting down with the Christmas season.

p.s. We Arizonans figured out how to make a real snowman...well Jon did, I took pictures.

a quick update

• One of the afore mentioned hats was recieved today, so check out the pics here or here.
• I injured myself yesterday. Missed the last step walking down off of the stand after saying the closing prayer. (Last time I volunteer to do that!) Rolled my ankle something fierce. I was holding Jonas at the time, but didn't drop him. I now have one ankle and one cankle.
• We got about 8 inches of snow last Saturday. Funny that my injury was not snow related, although Jon took a dive in the parking lot after church yesterday. Those dang slippery church shoes.
• Also of note, Jon had to dig us out with a snow shovel so we could actually get to church yesterday. First time for us Arizonans. He wasn't a fan- his feet and hands got cold- probably because he was wearing flip-flops and no gloves.
  
• Posted some pics of the snow and the kids here.