Jimmy's baby blessing

For all of you who weren't able to make it... we really missed you! Here are a few photos for you. It was a great day. Dominic gave a beautiful blessing.

giving thanks

there are so many things i'm grateful for right now. to keep things fairly brief, i'll limit it a little. i am really grateful for spencer and for what a wonderful support he is to me. these last few months i've been so grateful that i know everything is going to work out for us because of all of spencer's hard work. i'm so grateful to have that comfort.

i'm also grateful for all the support that we have gotten from our families. it means so much to have those we love supporting us in the things we're pursuing.

i'm grateful that life is good.

This is pa at noon

Today was a pretty late day, I was up for a couple of hours early this morning, decided to pay a bill and check out cougarfan.com, and a little solitaire/free cell. So at 10:00, we started the turkey and the stuffing. The turkey was not a big deal, mom made the wide foil, and i made the stuffing. this year's simon and garfunkel memorial stuffing is: one large tube of Jimmy Dean sausage, fried pretty hard with a couple of large onions, seasoned with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. added to that nine slices of toast, cut and crumbled, and in a large mixing bowl add two cans of cranberry sauce, two cans of chicken broth with a few drops of your hot sauce of choice, add a fresh onion chopped up, and the secret ingredient this year wasfour fuji apples chopped up. Put it in the turkey and cook it for three hours, we're one hal hour into it at this point.

That's been my day thus far. Dominic and Iris, (it's her birthday today) went to get grandmother, the guys did their turkey bowl this morning, and by all accounts cleaned up the opposition.

Not much going on. It's predicted to stay under 50 degrees today, Mom and i may get out for a walk, i still have potatoes to cook and mash, yesterday i bought gravy at costco, so that will make part of today easier.

I'm struck with the idea that i may be more of a pessimist than I previously thought. not a good thing, particularly at thanksgiving time. there is a lot of good in life, and there are a lot of things that would be nice if they were a little different, but that's OK. i shouldn't let the bad keep me from enjoying the good, things will always work out, if i will learn what i'm supposed to learn, life is good.

have a great holiday everybody.

love, pa

Happy Thanksgiving (and Happy Birthday to Iris)!

I'm (slowly) learning more about how to "wait upon the Lord." New opportunities for me to examine and stretch my faith. For several years I've been realizing that I have such a strong desire for "food storage" that I too often lack appreciation for the "manna" that comes daily to sustain me. I an so easily ignore the day to day ustennce that gets me through, while focusing overmuch on the answers and resolutions that have not yet appeared on the horizon. In those times, it's too easy to become almost childish (as opposed to the desirable "chlld-like") along life's journey, asking impatiently and much too often, "Are we there, yet?"

But I'm learning...I think. Dad once read me a statement from C.S. Lewis, saying, "When we know we are on the right path, it is inappropriate to ask for mile markers." So I try to stop thinking so much about whether or not I'm "there," and more patiently and faithfully wait upon the Lord.

One last thought (for now), I think one of the challenges of waiting upon the Lord--and most other things in life--is finding the right balance. You've all heard me say that I don't think the Lord wants us sitting on our suitcases waiting for the bus. To move forward, to find a direction, to be anxiously engaged in good, seems to me essential. The tricky part, in my opinion, is being appropriately invested in those good works and directions while not minding if the Lord has something entirely different in mind for us and we have to give up on our own temporal goals and change our direction. I find it challenging to invest meaningfully in what I believe are good directions and yet, to be prepared and soft-hearted (as opposed to soft-headed) about giving up on any or all of those directions, if it becomes clear that this is not the direction the Lord wants me to go. It's too easy, sometimes, for me to feel, "Well, if the things I'm working on aren't happening, I'll just sit here and wait for the telegram." Tempting, but I don't hink that's the correct response.

Well, let me not fail to clearly express that I am grateful for the things I've learned and for the areas I'm still trying to figure out. I begin my prayers with expressions of gratitude for the gospel and for my husband and children and, not infrequently, the prayer doesn't get any further than that (although I do regulalry petition the Lord on your behalf--all of you). I have so much to be grateful for.

I love you.
Mom

Many Things

There really are many things I'm thankful for, but instead of listing them all here separately, I'll summarize.

Last General Conference President Eyring's talk really struck a chord with me. I was really touched by his writing in his journal daily about seeing the hand of the Lord blessing his life and the lives of his family members. Although I haven't done it daily, I have made an effort to record in my journal the ways I have seen the hand of the Lord bless my life, and I have been amazed at the miracles that have occured on a regular basis in my life that I might not have noticed otherwise. I've also learned to look at more and more events as miracles -- for example the timing on Amanda getting lice was a miracle. Had it come three weeks earlier I would have had a breakdown -- no kidding, I was really hurting when we were first told to start checking her hair. I felt a physical panic come over me at the thought of dealing with lice then. By the time we were infested (3 weeks later, and only 5 days before Grace was born) I was able to handle it, and handle it well -- a miracle.

In a nutshell, I am grateful for the Lord's hand in my life and am grateful that I'm learning to accept what happens in my life as coming from Him for a reason. I'm also grateful for the coping skills He sends with the trials.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm grateful for . . .

Today I got an e-mail from an ISI author that has become a good friend of mine. He was wishing me a Happy Thanksgiving. He said to remember and enjoy all the firsts in the beginning of my marriage. It's something that I had already been thinking about, mostly since Monday, when Rob and I had the rare opportunity to go to lunch together.

During lunch we were talking about different traditions that our families do through the holiday season. It made me think about all the fun things we've done through the years - caroling & wassail, acting out the Christmas Story, Advent Calendars (& the Christmas stories), and now the new ones - baklava, muddy buddies, and still caroling even if it's only to Dan. I'm really grateful for all of those traditions and happy memories.

As we were talking about this year, and our first Christmas, we were talked about Christmas day and how things will go with his family. I was thinking that we would spend Christmas Eve night at Rob's parents so that we wouldn't have to drive in the morning. At some point in all of this, Rob realized that this might mean that we won't have our own Christmas morning--just the two of us.

Now we're not sure what we're doing, but I'm very grateful that Rob's not only sensitive to the fact that it's going to be more different for me this season than him, but also that he's just as eager as I am to start our own traditions together.

I feel very blessed, and grateful in this season.

Happy Thanksgiving--with much love to you all.

Halloween Pics, etc.

This year, because of my condition, I had the kids all do repeats of last year's costumes. I know this is against Rob's convictions, but it was a way to simplify and save money and time.

Besides Chris, they all fit into their same costumes, but because Chris is just 2 and doesn't care how authentic his costume is, I knew we could just choose something from our dress-up trunk and he'd be happy.

Obviously our Halloween took an unexpected turn when my water broke at 1:30am. Actually, I had had an idea that something might happen, thank heavens, because I was able to call my friend, Jessica, to let her know that this may be the night I call her in the middle of the night to come over to watch the kids, I finally dug out a boy outfit and a girl outfit to wash for the hospital, I washed Tanner's Harry Potter robe, got Naomi's scarecrow outfit ready for that day, dug out all the costume accessories that were needed, packed my hospital bag, and wrote out detailed instructions for Jessica on what the kids needed done for school.

Even with the impression I needed to be ready, our Halloween wasn't what we had expected, and because of that, our Halloween pictures from that day are not all that great. For that reason, I am posting a picture from last Halloween (since most of the costumes are the same). Plus, Naomi ended up feeling quite sick on Halloween night (Nate had to pursuade her to go trick-or-treating -- no kidding, she actually had to be talked into going) and topped off the night by throwing up on the sidewalk after they were done trick-or-treating. Lucky me, I was in a hospital bed. We never did get a picture of Naomi in her costume this year since she was feeling too crummy for pictures.

The picture of Chris alone is of him in the costume of his choice for the year, which was a big hit in the hospital when Nate took the kids to visit Grace and me.

The third picture is of Grace, of course, who, by-the-way, had her 2-week check-up today where we found that she's put on a full pound. She's now 7'12", which is still almost 1 1/2 lbs lighter than Naomi was at birth. (FYI, a pound is good weight gain for a newborn in two weeks, but that is still only half of what Amanda managed to put on during her first 2 weeks.) Love those healthy kids!

I'm also tossing in a picture of Naomi and Chris just because it's one of my favorites.

halloween

i know our halloween wasn't nearly as eventful as many others in the family (adam, hope you get better quickly, and congratulations to the callisters!), but i thought i would put up some pictures of benny right before i took him out. we just went to see eden and a former secretary at the hco that had a baby about a month ago.

the first picture is benny doing what he thought he was supposed to with his treat bag. the night before a girl (about my age) in the ward came by with this cute bag that her mom had made. the mom made one for her grandson and then asked her daughter if there were any other kids in the ward that should get one. i thought it was really nice of her, and benny loves his new hat!