Thanksgiving Point

On the 14th, we drove through the lights at Thanksgiving Point. We learned that next year we will avoid Monday night at all costs because we waited in line for 45 minutes before we even got into the little show! It seems that everyone in Utah County had the same idea about how to spend FHE that night.

It was actually a little chilly! After we got through the lights, Scott suggested that we take a look at the live reindeer they had penned up by the gift shops. Those of use who were not so well-equipped in winter gear were really happy to take a quick look at the reindeer ("Oh, yes, there they are.") then get inside and take pictures. :)

The perfect pumpkin

When it comes to picking out our Halloween pumpkins, we have a little bit of a tradition going. For most of the past five years, we have driven out to the Red Barn in Santaquin, gone on a hayride out to their pumpkin patch, helped the little kids pick out pumpkins, then waited and waited and waited and waited some more :) for the older kids to find just the right one. This year it even started to get dark on us while we were waiting for them to find the perfect pumpkins! I'm just glad we made it out of there - the apple cider doughnuts at the gift shop were calling my name. :)

Garrett enjoys his food

Something I have never quite understood is why little people think playing in their food is so much fun. :) You can talk all you want about learning about the world they live in by experimenting with different textures, etc, but I still think it is gross. As long as we can keep Garrett at the table or counter, I don't mind too much, and I guess when he plays with his food it makes for funny pictures. We had some chips and salsa a few Saturdays ago, and Garrett sure enjoyed learning about the world of salsa!

Recent Scouting awards

Ethan earned his Wolf and Justin earned his Arrow of Light at our last Pack Meeting! They both just smiled the whole night. It makes the teeth-pulling I have to do to help them pass off requirements pretty much worth it. :)

Our Cubmaster is so great. She has worked hard to make fun traditions for the boys so that they really look forward to earning their big ranks. The Bobcats dig through bobcat brains (cooked spaghetti) to find a bobcat eyeball (marble), the Wolves rub painted noses with their parents, and she has come up with a more serious, special evening for when boys earn their Arrow of Light award. Her enthusiasm makes me want to do my calling better!

Deep thoughts by Emilie :)

I have been thinking a lot lately about relationships. I am probably a little naïve and don’t get out socially a lot, but I have been so impressed with this neighborhood since we have lived here. Out of all the places we have lived, this is the place where I have heard the least amount of gossip and backbiting. I hope that part of it might be me. I think I have learned a few things over the past few years. I have learned that it feels really, really good to think the best of others. I remember a conversation I had a few years ago where I was worried about what some people might possibly be thinking or saying about me. The person I was talking to gave me some great advice: just go into that situation imagining the best. Assume that they are saying and thinking nice things.

There is power in thinking the best of others. None of us always function at 100%, so I would hope that as I forgive and accept others’ actions, others would also give me the benefit of the doubt. I have heard a friend say a few times that a person was doing their best. That phrase is liberating. If we assume that others are giving the best effort that they can give, then we don’t harbor negative feelings and we learn to love people the way that God loves us. Wow! With all my weaknesses, I am so grateful for Heavenly Father and Christ’s unconditional love for me. I owe it to them to love others in that very same way. That is why I am here. Yes, I needed a physical body, but really, I am here to learn to love others.

There were a couple of times over the summer where I listened to some neighborhood gossip. I didn’t bring it on, but I was so frustrated that I hadn’t defended the person being talked about. I came home and decided that I needed to come up with something to say when that situation arises again. I am so grateful to realize that I want to feel at peace about others. We have such a merciful Father who helps us recognize things we need to work on. There are times when I need to vent about a frustration I have with someone, but it seems like there is a way you can do that without it being gossip. Maybe I only vent to one trusted person, and maybe I recognize that even though I am frustrated, the only person I can change is myself? Anyway, something to think about.

School musings (some sub-standard titles today - sorry!)

School started a little over three weeks ago. It finally feels like we are getting into a routine, and it is nice to have some one-on-one time with Adam and Garrett. I have had some mixed feelings about sending the kids back to school though. I enjoy having them around during the day. I like knowing who they are associating with, and I like knowing what they are doing and saying. You send them off to school and all of a sudden you have no idea what they are doing 6 ½ hours of the day! They are pretty cute though to answer my questions about who they play with at recess, what they like about their teachers, which specialist they visited during the day (computers, art, music, library, etc.).

A big huge positive about the school year is the kids’ teachers. When we went to register the kids in July, I was so excited to see that all of them had received the teachers I requested! In our six years here at Canyon, this is the first time that has happened. A friend of mine suggested that when I write down the reason for the request, I really take some time and come up with some good reasons, so I did, and then we also have a new principal this year and he seems to want parents to be happy. So, the happy thing is that I can enjoy the kids while they are home, and I know that they all have kind, nurturing teachers to hang out with during the day! Hooray!

It isn’t my first instinct to request teachers. Part of me asks myself what makes our kids so much more important than everyone else’s kids. But guess what! When I haven’t requested teachers for the kids, I feel like I have been burned because everyone else requests the experienced, kind teachers. One of the kids has had a first year teacher who had absolutely no control over the classroom, and the next year he had an intern who was so grumpy with them. Anyway, I will never again leave their elementary school teachers to chance.

I have heard my neighbor say a couple of times that it is nice if the kids learn something during the year, but she just wants a teacher who will be kind to her children. I agree. I would much rather have my kids in an environment where they felt accepted and loved than have them in an environment where they were learning their times tables but felt unappreciated and picked on.

Salt Lake outing

Here are some pictures of a Saturday in July that we spent up in Salt Lake. We visited Temple Square, went through the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house, and got to meet our new niece, Morgyn! Morgyn is Scott's youngest sister's newest baby, and she was very cute!

I have enjoyed so much the opportunity to go to the Draper and Oquirrh Mountain temple open houses. It makes me so happy to give the kids the chance to be within those holy walls, and it is exciting to help them feel the importance of going to the temple. I love having little children around, but it is so satisfying to have Justin and Ethan growing up into such good boys. They seem genuinely excited when we talk about how soon they would be able to go to the temple to do baptisms. What a blessing the temples are to parents! It gives us something to help our kids aim for. I am just so grateful for the gospel and the added perspective it gives me in my own life. Being in the temple, in particular, always helps me remember what is eternally important. Little worldly concerns just kind of float away . . . :)

Carac - ouch!

Talk about red! I am smiling because I finished the Carac treatment the dermatologist told me to do. Because of the basal cell carcinoma I had removed from the side of my nose back in April, he prescribed this Carac cream for me to put on my face for 28 days in order to get rid of pre-cancerous cells - which he saw when he did the biopsy of the tissue samples he removed back in April. Wow – it has been unnerving. Scott did this same treatment back in March and was so stoic about it, that I had no idea how uncomfortable it was. I stopped doing the medicine three days ago, and my face is still beet red, the skin under my eyes, over my lip, and next to my eyelids is dry and tawt, and I still have skin sloughing off. Very disturbing. I thought I was done with random bleeding spots, but just this morning awakened to a bloody scab under my eye again. Scott’s face was back to normal and even looked better just three or four days after he had finished doing the cream. I am guessing that my skin was more damaged, or just more sensitive, and that my face will always be red. Just kidding. I know I will heal someday. I wish the process would just hurry up a little bit so that people will stop asking me what is wrong with my face!

Let me introduce you to my Timex:

It is not just any watch. It is a Timex Ironman watch. It probably swims, bikes, and runs all by itself :). Although I do not know all of its capabilities, I do know that it has a great little timer. When the kids go to a friend's house to play, I set the timer, put the watch on their wrist, tell them to take good care of my favorite possession, and to come home when the timer beeps. I use it when I bake because our oven timer beeps for five seconds then stops, allowing me to forget about the thing inside the oven. (That should be a requirement for all oven timers to beep until someone actually opens the oven door, don't you think?)

My Ironman also helps me to clean. I set my timer for five minutes, concentrate on one room, and just straighten, dust, or clean as fast as I can. :) I find this method is especially effective when the house is a MESS on Monday morning. Just this very Monday, the task of cleaning the house seemed overwhelming, but when I set my timer and started in on our master bathroom, cleaning the house became a game! Wow. An hour after I started, the upstairs looked grand. I have to admit though that the kitchen takes longer than five minutes. Unloading the dishwasher, loading the dishwasher, straightening and cleaning the table, and straightening and cleaning the countertops get their own five-minutes.

I thought it was such an original and creative idea, but when I mentioned it to a friend the other day, she asked me if I had gotten the idea from the fly lady (I have never looked at her website, but friends have told me that she has ideas for cleaning efficiently), and then when I told Angela and Alison about my cleaning game the other day, Alison smiled and said that she does the same thing. Hmmm. I wonder if I got the idea from her?

Anyway, I love my watch. The timing possibilities are endless . . .

2006 - Done!

I had a goal to finish up the 2006 scrapbooks this week, so as soon as Scott and I got the kids in bed last night, I headed to my scrapbooking table and finished up October for everyone. It was around midnight, and I actually felt pretty tired, but I couldn't stop! November and December were small enough that I just finished it all up and got in bed at 2:30 this morning. :) I used my last Hermafix tabs on my last page, ran out of sheet protectors and had to scrounge 6 from various places around the house, and my paper collection is feeling pretty sorry, but I am done with the blessed year! What a great feeling! On to 2007!

An answered prayer

I am the type of person who likes to have one, maybe two, responsibilities during the day, then I like to plan my agenda and get my own projects done. Last week was not one of those weeks! We were finishing up the spring soccer season, Lindsey and Ethan are starting into their T-ball/baseball seasons, Ethan is starting track, and then we had all the normal piano lessons, pack meeting, Young Women's, and Scott's bishopric-helping.

Well, Thursday morning came along. I had a list of errands that I wanted to get done in the morning before Lindsey got home from Kindergarten. By the time I had Adam, Garrett and myself ready, we ran out the door - I could already tell the time was going be really close! We hurried to the post office, jetted over to the credit union, and then raced through Macey's to get some groceries. I wasn't sure if we would have time, but I realized that Justin had left for the Hershey Track Meet that morning without a drink, so we bought him a cold Gatorade at Macey's and just tried to hurry, hurry through the store so that we could take it to him. (I thought I might feel bad if he keeled over from heat exhaustion at the high school track. :) )

The three of us left Macey's with just twenty minutes before Lindsey would be home. As we neared the high school, I saw cars and people everywhere! I think every fourth grader in the Spanish Fork area was there, along with a lot of their parents. In my head I was giving up much hope of being able to find him in the five minutes we had to look for him, but I pulled into the church parking lot north of the school's large property anyway, grabbed the stroller out of the trunk, and plopped Garrett inside and Adam up on top! It was already 11:00 and knowing that I could not find Justin on my own, I said a prayer asking Heavenly Father to help us find him before 11:04. I wanted Justin to be hydrated and know that I loved him, and I also wanted to be home before Lindsey. (I have found from experience that children are a little grumpy when their parents are late. :) )

As we walked briskly over to the track, I kept my eyes open for kids from Justin's elementary. We passed a hundred or so kids doing the long jump, but I recognized some moms and knew they were from a different elementary. We reached the track where there were even more fourth graders milling around, but I saw a father in our ward helping with a race. Just as I thought I might ask him if he had seen Justin, I looked over the racers he was supervising on the track only to see my cute little Justin mosying along with a friend towards me. Victory! I was so happy to see him, and I don't think I will ever forget the happy, surprised look he gave me! I gave him his Gatorade, patted his cheeks which had never been cuter, wished him good luck, then headed back to the van. I looked down at my watch just to see how we were doing on time, and almost started to cry when I saw that it was 11:04.

It was just such a little thing, but I am so grateful for the help that Heavenly Father gave Justin, Lindsey, and me. Justin got his drink and knew that I was thinking about him, and Lindsey got to come home to a house that was unlocked. :) Maybe even more important than those things though, is that when Lindsey, Justin and Ethan got home from school that day I got to tell them that story. I got to tell them that Heavenly Father loves us and answers our prayers.

A facial update. :)

I am feeling better about my face now. Thanks for the advice and concern, everyone. :) Also, after the nurse took out my stitches today, she loaded us up with all sorts of SPF 70 sunscreen. I didn't know they even made it that powerful! We have been working really hard at keeping wide-brimmed hats on the kids outside, and are being more conscientious about sunscreen with them too. As we were in the office today I noticed a poster with a cute, cute girl who was wearing a darling sailor's hat. She was so sporty and cute it made me think that I need one too. :)

A really long journey through the last couple of days - sorry! :)

About a year ago, Alison saw something on my face that she thought looked like skin cancer. She suggested at the time that I see a dermatologist, so a few months later, I asked our pediatrician neighbor for a recommendation, then it took two or three months to actually get into this doctor. When Dr. Bezzant saw the spot on my face, he immediately said, “BCC” which stands for basal cell carcinoma (a type of skin cancer that is treatable if they catch it early because they can just remove the cancerous cells), and then shaved it off so they could do a biopsy. It didn’t surprise me too much when his office called and told me that the biopsy results did indeed show that it was a BCC. We scheduled a time two months later for him to remove the growth.

It took him about ten seconds to take the biopsy, so I wasn’t prepared for what the surgery entailed. When Scott, AND Adam, AND Garrett, and I got to the office Monday morning, I asked how long they thought it would take, and was surprised to hear “we have one hour scheduled”. What? We would not have brought so many children without attention spans along if we had known that it would take so long! My nervousness level jumped! I was a little nervous already because the spot was in a visible place on the side of my nose. I was worried about scarring from the procedure, but knew that it was more important to just get the thing off of me. Even knowing that, I was more taken aback when the doctor started drawing on my face with a marker to show me exactly where he was going to cut. Eeek! He was really going to cut into me, and in a bigger way than I had imagined!

Hoping to calm myself a little, I said a prayer, and then just tried to suck it up. :) That helped me feel better – I visited with Dr. Bezzant during the surgery and then while he was filling out a prescription for an antibiotic and Oxycodone (What? I am going to need Oxycodone?), I asked him to take a look at a funny growth that I have on my knee. He gave me a shot in the knee, took a sample for biopsy, then I asked him what he thought it could be. Once again, I was caught a little off guard when he said he thought it could be either a wart, psoriasis, or squamous cell carcinoma. What?!

As he finished his paperwork, I was just sitting silently on the operating chair – thinking about a lifetime of worrying about all of the crazy things that could go wrong with my body, wondering if he really knew that he had gotten all of the cancer out, and hoping that my scar wouldn’t overwhelm my face. He asked me a couple of times if I was okay – did I look like I was in pain or in shock? I told him that I was fine - just feeling sober.

Anyway, this has been an interesting ride. I felt emotional Monday and yesterday because the scar is just over inch long, and it goes from under my eyeball on a slant down to the middle of my nose. I feel an affinity to Frankenstein. The stitches are in until next Monday, so it looks kind of scary with the black thread going through the scar, and I have a puffy, colorful eye. Luckily, I am supposed to keep a topical antiobiotic on it, along with a band-aid, so most of the yucky stuff is hidden. My vanity is still suffering some though. Sigh. I hope it isn’t too visible when all is said and done, but things could definitely be worse. I don’t have stomach cancer or congenital heart disease. How is that for putting things into perspective in a quick way?

I feel better today. As it turns out, there are still some pre-cancerous cells there, so after the scar heals, Dr. Bezzant wants me to apply some cream to the area for a period of time, and the thing on my knee is just a plantar wart. Praise be! It sounds a little silly – I will admit, even to me – but I feel like this has been a brush with mortality. I know that I am fine, but we are just not indomitable, are we? Sigh.

(By the way, I didn’t need the Oxycodone. It hurt, but not anything like a c-section!) :)

Self-frosting Zucchini Cake

Here is one of the new recipes I have tried lately. I got it from our former ward's cookbook, from a nice lady named Kim. :) It is basically a chocolate cake, but the zucchini in it makes it moist, and I thought the topping was tasty too. You sprinkle chocolate chips, brown sugar, and nuts (if you want) on top instead of frosting. We liked it -

Ingredients:
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups finely grated zucchini
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
4 1/2 Tbs. cocoa
1 tsp. salt
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder

3/4 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup nuts
3/4 cup brown sugar

Directions:
Combine first 6 ingredients. In a separate bowl combine dry ingredients. Add dry ingredients to cremed mixture. Place in 9 X 13 baking dish. Combine chocolate chips, brown sugar, and nuts, sprinkle on top of the cake. Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes.


Yummy!

Happy Birthday, Adam!

We have had some fun celebrating Adam's birthday the past couple of days. For our family activity last night, we let him choose what he wanted to do, and he decided that going to Chuck 'E' Cheese sounded like fun. Justin and Ethan each flew solo most of the time we were there - concentrating on the big ticket givers. They sure gobbled up a lot of tokens! Adam and Lindsey hung out together the whole time - getting their pictures taken, and riding the rides together too. Scott, Garrett, and I talked budget at a table where we could watch the rest of the kids. In all honesty, Garrett wasn't much of a contributor to the conversation :), but did enjoy eating the Skittles that Justin gave Adam for his birthday. It was pretty fun.

Adam has been counting down the days until his birthday for weeks now, and was so excited that today was finally the day! I thought I was going to get out of giving him a friend party because he hadn't brought it up, but no such luck. He just doesn't know how the system works yet. He wondered today when his friends were going to come over for his party. Oops.

I thought this picture was cute. When Scott got home from work, we pulled Adam's presents onto the table, and I asked him to get close to them so that I could get a good picture. This GQ pose was what he came up with. :) He sure is a funny boy. I love his smile and his cute, round cheeks. My favorite thing to do with him is snuggle up and read books on the couch. Happy Birthday, Adam!

Fun in the kitchen

I have had some fun in the kitchen lately. Next time someone asks me what my hobbies are, I am going to include "looking through recipe magazines and recipe books". I salivate over the pictures and think about how good the recipes will taste. :)

Every so often I get really bored with the typical fare the kids will eat - the cheese pizza, the spaghetti, the pancakes, etc., and break out my recipe binder. I have a few sheet protectors just stuffed full of pages out of food magazines that looked fun. After actually trying them, I have found some of my favorite recipes!

For Adam's birthday today, he let me make a "self-frosting zucchini cake" that I have wanted to make for a while. Wow! It was great, and almost better than making something tasty was that I used one of the fifteen frozen two-cup portion baggies of zucchini that I have had sitting in our basement freezer since August. Nice. I feel so domestic and provident having used our own garden produce. :)

Interesting time of life

It just dawned on me today as I took the boys to Orem, then to lunch afterwards at Sizzler, that I wasn't at all worried about getting back to my baby. I am done nursing the little guy. Out of 139 months of marriage, I have been pregnant or nursing 108 of those months. Amazing. This is kind of interesting to be neither one of those things. I feel good, and I don't have to plan my activities around feeding a baby every 3 hours. I wouldn't change a thing - I am so grateful for each of our children, and I enjoyed nursing them too, but this is kind of interesting for me. Maybe I need to go shopping all day by myself to commemorate - except with the knowledge we have gleaned from our Dave Ramsey class, we would have to make sure it fit in the budget. :)

A little bit about teaching the kids piano lessons

I took Justin and Ethan out to Orem today to participate in "Festival". They play two memorized songs for some other local teachers, then are given a score based on how well they did. Over a few years' time, their combined points allow them to earn trophies. Anyway, they did a great job. They seemed really proud of how they performed, and I was happy with how they did too! I am also excited about what comes next. Ethan and Lindsey are pretty easy to please, but I looked through my books today in order to find some songs that Justin would like. He picks up on songs really quickly, but I have a hard time finding songs that he gets excited about. I found some great songs today and showed them to him, but he didn't give me any encouragement like, "Oh, Mom, I love that song! Let me have it right now!" or "Wow! I am so glad that you are teaching me! You are really thinking about me and what I will like. Thanks!" No, I didn't get any of that. Maybe someday . . .

Lindsey has been so cute the past few weeks. She has been doing two or three official practice sessions a day, and has spent a good 15-20 minutes aside from that just tinkering. A few weeks ago, she announced that she had written a song. She plays it all the time and sings her original lyrics, "I can be like God if I try." It is pretty cute - makes me tear up when I hear her little voice in the piano room singing.

Ethan picked up on the fact that Lindsey is passing off a lot of songs, realized that he wasn't far from finishing his current level of books, and has kicked into a higher gear this past week. What a cute boy. :) I love seeing our kids play the piano! I unashamedly bribe them to practice with piano treats, they earn money for passing off songs, we give them a little money if they are nice during their lesson time, and they earn even more money if they come to me and ask for a lesson.

I really want this to work. When Justin has complained about piano lessons, I have told him that he can either take lessons from me, or he can take them from another teacher. The truth is though, I don't know if I could send them to anyone else! I really enjoy the one-on-one time with them. I need to remind myself of that during our next lesson time when he is giving me a hard time. :)

Thoughts about Girls' Camp

In preparation for Girls’ Camp, I went to a meeting last week with five other YW leaders in the ward. Our ward got reservations to go up to the church’s Heber Valley Campground, and as a requirement for going, your ward needed to attend this two-hour training where they tell you all that you need to know about the dress code, the activities they already have planned, the facilities, etc.. It was really interesting. I think all of us left feeling excited to take the girls up there. I like the idea of having a cabin to sleep in, it sounds like we will have some privacy even though there will be other stakes and wards there, and I have such nice memories of girls’ camp from when I was younger.

All of the camps kind of mesh together in my mind, but I thought I would share some of my memories:

My first year, Sister Milligan and Sister Utley were our leaders. I was grateful that they steered the older girls to do nice things for us instead of mean things – all I remember is that they gave us orange straws with a Frankenstein-ish character on them that we drank out of at every meal. I also cut a little piece of my thumb off while I peeled potatoes for our dinner one night. Ouch!

I remember Mom coming up the couple of years that she was in Young Women’s. She taught a class on journal-keeping that was really well done. I have this memory of sitting in the class wondering why I had never heard her say any of these things? Looking back though, I can see that she did teach me about journal-keeping at home. She would set all of our journals out on the dining room table on Sundays so that we would write in them. That training led to the very detailed records I kept in my teenage journals of every boy who ever said ‘hi’ to me in Junior High and High School. Hmmm. :)

I remember having a lot of fun being with the ward and stake girls. I honestly don’t remember anyone being catty or unkind.

My favorite memories of girls’ camp are of the testimony meetings. Those were some of the first times I felt and recognized the spirit. I remember sitting next to the warm campfire, listening to my leaders and friends bear testimony of God, then looking up into the star-filled sky and feeling so strongly that God loved me. I feel so grateful for the camp program and for those leaders who helped it to be such a good experience for me - hope I said thank you! :)

Here you go, Wendy!

Here are some pictures from Garrett's birthday. I can't believe how quickly his first year has gone by! He is crawling/slithering, standing up next to things, and getting his fifth tooth! He didn't care too much about the gifts, but he did want to get at the cake - :)

Enjoying the kids -

We had Stake Conference this past Sunday. I always love Stake Conference and General Conference because I try to come away with a goal or two. It doesn't necessarily coincide with what the speakers talked about, but I have really tried over the past few years to try to be more open to the things I can do better.

This conference's theme was really straightforward - pray, read the scriptures, have family home evening, and attend the temple. There are ways that I can improve in all of those areas, but as I sat in the Saturday night meeting, I felt that what I need to do better is show the kids that I love them. I am so grateful for that prompting! I realized that I want to smile at the kids more, I want to tell them positive things more often, I want to speak more gently with them, I want them to know that they are capable, good people, and I want them to enjoy being at home. I can still do better, but I can honestly say that this week has been so fun. :) I really enjoy our kids, and it has been so satisfying to show them a little better this week just how much I love them.

Ethan's baptism

It was so great to see Ethan baptized a few weeks ago. Every time I saw him during the day - waiting for Scott to help him with his tie in the morning, sitting in the Relief Society room waiting to be baptized, playing with cousins at our house after the baptism - he had a big smile on his face. I think he really liked that people would gather just for him, and I hope he also felt the importance of what he did. He is a good boy. It was another one of those days where I felt such gratitude to have him in our family. I also felt some awe that Heavenly Father would trust Scott and me with Ethan's little soul. It makes me want to do better at showing him and the other kids that I love them. I remember a talk from Women's Conference a few years ago where the speaker said that we needed to show our love for our children because that is how they learn about Heavenly Father's love for them too.

As I was sitting in the audience during the baptismal service, I felt a little emotional because Dad and Wendy could not be there. The thought came to me though that although they could not be there, Mom could be there. I hope that she is still able to be a part of our lives from time to time. I am grateful not only for people on earth who love us, but also for people who are in the spirit world who continue to love and care for us too.

My lesson today

I have been with the Beehives now for a little over two months, but have just noticed in the past couple of weeks that the girls sit by the same people every week, and visit with the same 1 or 2 girls every activity night too. It is interesting to me because there are so many of them! We have 16 girls in the class. Oh, they are so cute, but I like the idea of helping them to have comfort zones that are bigger than just 2 or 3 people! Wouldn't that be a great skill for them to learn now - to be able to stretch their comfort zones to include all of the girls in the group? Maybe it is expecting a lot of them, but I have high hopes that they could learn how to look beyond themselves and think more of helping others feel loved and needed.

I feel strongly about this too because the problem never seems to go away - I don't know how many times we talked in Relief Society about helping women in the ward to feel accepted and loved, and I have to admit that I have had times where my insecurites take hold, and I feel like the odd man out. Another reason this has been on my mind, is because it is something that I have had to work on consciously - I told Scott today that I would label myself a "recovering introvert". :) He didn't think that I should label myself, but it describes some of the tugging that I have felt from Heavenly Father over the years. Because I know the gospel is true, because I know that Heavenly Father loves me, and because I know that Heavenly Father can use me to help others that He also loves, I need to look outside of myself to try and lift others. I really try to smile, to call people by name, to ask them questions about things I know about them - most of the time it feels natural, and I really do care about people in general, but sometimes I have to push myself to Enrichment Night or to a neighborhood function because the socializing seems like an effort to me.

Anyway, with all this in mind, I gave the lesson today. The theme for the lesson was following the example of Christ, and it seemed to go well. I think the girls took away some ideas about things they could do in their homes and with the other neighborhood girls that would be more Christlike, and it was such a good reminder for me too! We wrote some of Christ's qualities up on the board, and as we listed "forgiving", "perfect example", "healer", "served and loved others", I thought to myself, and I said to the girls too, "Who wouldn't want to have all of these qualities!? I know that I want them!" You can't go wrong teaching a lesson about Christ -

Almost as great as the lesson topic though, was what we did beforehand. :) I had the girls sit in alphabetical order so their little comfort zones were all destroyed! (heh, heh, heh!) Then, they visited with the girl next to them for a minute and found out one good thing that had happened to them that week, then shared what their partner told them with the group. I loved seeing them mixed up all crazy! (That sounded a little bit like something Junie B. Jones would say!) They are all such good, kind girls, and were cute as they told about the good thing that had happened in their friend's life that week. My biggest hope in this calling is that they would know enough about God's love for them, so that they could forget about themselves and go forward in helping others.

My other happy feeling about the lesson comes because all of the girls commented. Usually we have three of the sixteen girls who answer all of the questions, so today, I asked a question, gave them a minute to think about how they would answer, then I called on specific girls so that we heard from all sixteen! Hooray! For next time, I need to come up with a better closer. I got to the end and really didn't have a clear idea of what I was going to say. Hmmm. It is good to have something to work on. :)

January birthdays

Today is Ethan's birthday, and Justin's birthday was last Thursday. Their birthdays have been really tender for me this year. I have felt so much gratitude that they could be in our family - that they are both so nice to the littler kids, that they enjoy goofing off together - even if the decibel level is not always to my liking :), and mostly that I get to be their mother. They are good boys. It is humbling to me that Heavenly Father trusted their souls to my care. Their birthdays are a reminder of the joy they brought into Scott's and my life when they were born, and a reminder of the joy that they continue to bring to our family. Happy Birthday, guys!

Adam's up and coming music career

I keep a little journal for all of our kids like Mom did for us. I have started doing Justin and Ethan's from my perspective, but still do the younger kids' journals in first person. Here is what I wrote from Adam's perspective in December:

"When Mommy or Daddy say goodnight to Lindsey and me, they sing us a couple of songs. My favorite is “Follow the Prophet” because there is a verse about me! I love to sing “Adam was a prophet, first one that we know. In a place called Eden, he helped things to grow.” I always smile really big when I hear my name in the song. I have four or five songs that I like to hear – Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Up on the Housetop, Follow the Prophet, and I am a Child of God. I usually ask for the same song three or four days in a row, then move onto another song for a few days.

One night while Mommy was singing goodnight songs to Lindsey and me in our bedroom, Garrett was slithering around out in the hall. I was more interested in getting his attention, so went into the hall with him while Mommy sang a song to Lindsey. While she sang, I started singing too. I was trying to get Garrett to come into our bedroom, so held the blanket out in front of him and sang to the melody of “Follow the Prophet”: “Follow the blankie, follow the blankie . . .” I am quite a lyricist. The family still sings my song to the tune of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” – “I’m stirring a fish. I’m stirring a fish. I’m stirring a fish. It very not nice. Santa Claus is coming to town.” (And yes, the words are “it very not nice”.)"

Yes!

Three days and 116 pages later, I have finished scrapbooking 2005!!!!!!!!! Yes, I just typed in eight exclamation points, and they still don't quite capture my mood. I am going to enjoy this GLORIOUS feeling before I think too much about the prep work I need to do to get 2006 ready. :)