Spring Break

Spring break is a great time to take a vacation. No school to hold us here, the weather is warming up, flowers are popping up, grass is greening up, the torture of winter is fading and the joy of summer is right on the horizon. All of this creates a strong desire to break from the hum drum of everyday life, go outside, relax, soak up some sun and have a little fun. This could be known as spring fever. I always get it, bad.

So usually starting about about 4 days after the kids go back to school after Christmas break I start dreaming about spring and plotting my spring break vacation. I enjoy the fall and the holiday excitement, and even the first week or so of snow. But when Christmas break is over, the kids go back to school, and life settles into the long depressing dark days of winter dreams of spring is what keeps me partially sane. The first 4 or so days aren't too bad. I am too busy to look out the window and notice the snow and lack of sun. I have to put away all the Christmas stuff, do 3 weeks of laundry, find a spot for all the new toys, and discreetly throw out all the old ones. This takes at least 2 days usually 3. Then I clean the fridge, I get out all the leftover holiday food and treats. I inspect it all for mold. Anything mold free I taste to make sure it still tastes OK, when I have tasted about half of it I put the rest back in the fridge or freeze it for later use. If I find mold, or slime or some other clue that the food may be rotting, I have to then ascertain if is tasty enough to risk food poison by eating it. If so I eat it, if not I throw it. This takes the better part of a day.

So 4 days into the New Year reality hits. My bare fridge necessitates a trip to the grocery store, which necessitates that I get dressed in something other than sweats. When I am laying on the bed trying to button my jeans I realized that my quest for a clean fridge has postponed my New Years resolutions. I have to stop eating and start exercising. That is when the depression starts to kick in and I begin dreaming of spring. Over the next 3 months the tension builds until my hate of winter and excitement for spring are almost too much to handle and something has to give.

Luckily right about then we get some warm days and spring is on the horizon. I start some serious spring preparations. So that is where we are right now. Spring break. I spent all last week working in my yard, I got my garden all tilled up, I cleaned out my flower beds, power raked my grass, planted some bushes, mowed and fertilized. So I was already for my spring break vacation. We have a trip to Disneyland planned for the last week of April and my husband is in the middle of a big project at work so it couldn't be anything to elaborate, costly or involve my husband. So I choose to take the kids to Grandma and Grandpa's. A week, which is actually only 4 days thanks to soccer and the school district robbing us of our full week vacation, at Grandma's is the perfect way to relax and cure a bit of spring fever.

Only while the calendar says it is spring break, mother nature does not think so. Monday we had beautiful 70 degree weather. Tuesday a bit of a spring rain. And Wednesday, the first day of spring break, we woke up to a blizzard outside. Snow was flying, roads were slick, the sun was no where in sight and it's light couldn't get through the thick black clouds. We decided to go to Grandma's anyway and hope we didn't slide off the road. Due to my huge lack of will power and inability to say no I am a soccer coach. We had a game scheduled for Wednesday night so we had planned to leave right after that. The thick blanket of snow on the grass and the huge flakes falling relentlessly to the ground made it hard to imagine my 1st grade girls really wanting to play soccer that evening. So I kept checking the Internet to see if games would be cancelled. The message simply said all games were on, dress warmly. Whatever. So I called the sports office. The receptionist said she had just talked to Paul, the director over such things, and he had so far decided to play games as scheduled but she encouraged me to talk to him. So she transferred me. I spoke to him, (he had me on speaker phone which I HATE), I expressed to him my doubt at a very successful soccer game and he hesitantly replied,"Well I guess it isn't looking to good out there." Huge understatement. So he promised he would make a decision in the next half hour. I rushed off to get my oil changed so we could leave as soon as the decision was made.

We left at 2:30 instead of 6:30 so my Spring break was off to a good start. Miraculously we had the best drive ever. No one fought, no one cried, no one threw up or wet their pants. We didn't have to stop and my baby slept most of the way. It snowed for the first 1/2 hour or so but then it quit. Further north they apparently had a lot more rain because we ran into a lot of standing water on the roads, we hydroplaned once but didn't wreck. So all was well. We arrived in good spirits. We don't have anything major planned, just a week of relaxing downtime to celebrate the coming of spring. Of course if the snow would stop we would have something to celebrate.

Kids say the darndest things

I'm a big girl - not a baby. I'm not sucking my thumb- I am just keeping it nice and warm.

These aren't nighttime underwear, these are diapers.

I am not a baby, I am a big girl -except my thumb.

I do have a clothe on ( Clothes except not plural-she leaves off the s)

Amn't

Ryan and Rachel were rough housing. Ryan started crying pretty good. He came over for some sympathy I told him he would be fine. He said But Rachel hit me in the number 1 and it hurts real bad. The number 1 I ask, I was confused. Yeah, he said pointing at his crouch - the number 1.

Babies

I have 5 children. 5 is a good number. It fills up my van, and my fingers, if I am counting on one hand. I have one child for each weekday, and one family member for each day of the week. That may not seem important but when I am making weekly menu's and everyone gets to choose a night - it works out rather nicely. 5 is also the limit of movies you can check out at the library.

Therefore we really can't have anymore kids. They would have no where to ride in the van, and despite my threats, we really just can't strap someone to the top of the van, at least not legally. So we would need a bigger van, a bigger van would require a bigger garage which would require a new house. With one more baby I would have to use 2 hands to count kids, and I rarely have an extra hand for counting. So I would need another hand. Which simply isn't possible, even if it was I would look pretty ridiculous with three hands. We would also need to have dinner twice on one night in order to be fair and then I would be even fatter than I am now. And unless they changed library policy we could no longer check out movies without a major family fight. So bottom line is we simply can not have any more kids. The problem is while I have enough kids, I ran out of babies - and I kinda like them.

My baby is almost three. She tells me at least once a day that she is not a baby, she is a big girl. For proof of this she shows me her big girl panties and her big girl bed. She tries hard not to suck her thumb but the baby in her sneaks a suck now and then, although it is only to keep her thumb "nice and warm" she promises. She talks very well and very much without stopping -ever. She rarely cries like a baby, she has traded that in throwing tantrums like a 2 year old and pouting like a three year old. She likes to run and play with her friends and older siblings. She doesn't like to cuddle or take naps with me or lay on my shoulder. I miss that, a lot.

I'd kind of forgotten about babies, or at least put it out of my mind until last January. My Sister in law had a baby and I started remembering. Then in March my other sister in law had a baby. And it made me wish. Then last week my other sister in law had a baby. And she made me long for just one more chance to have one of my own. They are all so darling, so sweet, so small and so wonderful. There is absolutely nothing like the thrill of bringing a new baby into the world or the excitement of bringing a new baby home. And the special spirit the baby brings into your life is absolutely incomparable. Now it hasn't been long enough for me to forget all the other things a new baby brings, like pain, mind numbing exhaustion, poopy diapers and never ending crying. But those things pale in comparison. Rocking a tiny baby, watching her sleep, that sweet little baby smell, the little sucking motion her lips make while she's sleeping, the feel of her tiny finger wrapping around yours, the softness of her hair on your chin as she lays against your chest. I miss all of those things.

It amazes and humbles me to realize I had the privilege of having all of those things not just once but 5 times. I am just not sure if I am ready to give it all up. I know there are different seasons in life, and realistically I know my baby season is over. I had mine and now it is gone and maybe I am just mourning its passing. I have new seasons beginning, and I am thinking that they may even be just as wonderful, only in a different way. I would never trade what I have now for the past or even go back and do it again but I so miss it. And I guess that right there is proof of what a privilege and blessing it not only was but is.

Easter

It has been a pretty eventful week, not as eventful as this week 2000ish years ago - but a busy week. I love Easter and really want my kids to love it too. Easter means spring time, an end to the cold and darkness of winter and the promise of bright sunshine, warm days, beautiful flowers and long evenings. The bunnies and eggs part of Easter is fun, I love the pastel colors the flowers and definitely the chocolate but honestly I love the reminder of what Christ did for us. The atonement and its promise of eternal life is perhaps the greatest treasure in my life, one definitely worth remembering.

The sacred part of Easter seems to be overlooked a little more each year. What is not taught or celebrated is often forgotten, I am afraid that is what is happening to Easter. There just isn't that much focus on Christ, even at church. I was a bit bugged that my husband had to go to ward welfare on Easter Morning. It would seem to me that meetings could be cancelled or postponed on a morning such as this. They cancelled meetings the week of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Mothers Day. I guess the truth is Easter just isn't seen as that important of a holiday. But I keep remembering that little phrase, "without Easter there would be no Christmas". But how to bring Easter up to the same level as Christmas in the eyes of my children is beyond me.

I think the Jewish people have gotten the right idea with their passover celebration. Of course they were commanded in the book of Exodus to do it, to teach their children what happened on the night of exodus. But faithful Jews have done it now for centuries. They believe the more they talk about the exodus the more praiseworthy they are. So talk about it they do. With elaborate rituals and traditions, questions, songs, stories and I imagine a great deal of fun. My guess is the children of faithful Jewish families who really celebrate the Passover not only know what happened that night but also appreciate the blessings it has brought them. I hate to compare that to my attempt at teaching my children about Easter because I am afraid I am failing. My children know the Easter bunny comes, they know they get to dye eggs eat candy and wear a new dress to church, I think they may even know that Christ died and was resurrected. But I don't think they know how important that is. I need to find a way to get that across.

I am embarrassed to admit that I am not doing much in the way of creating good teaching moment traditions. Instead of elaborate dinners filled with meaning I checked out the some movies from the library to teach my kids about the exodus. I checked out Charlton Heston's "10 commandments", the "Prince of Egypt" and a bible story called "Moses". I told the kids that one of their chores for the day was to learn about how the Israelites were freed. I let them choose one movie and watch it for their afternoon chores. They looked at each movie, choose the shortest one, watched it and got on with their day. That's definitely not going to win me any "mother of the year" awards. I guess I'll have to try a bit harder.

I decided it was time to step up my parental obligations a bit and really try to communicate to them the significance of Easter, to instill in them a reverence for what they were really given. On Monday for Family Home Evening we had a lesson on the last week of Christs life. We went through each day and talked about what happened and read scriptures of some of the events. For the most part my children were interested and paying attention. This may have had something to do with bribery. We began the lesson by taking a quiz. It was a pretest so they didn't know many of the answers but I told them every question would be answered during the lesson. I promised a candy bar to anyone who got all the answers right. They wanted the chocolate so they listened and filled out their tests. It was a good experience.

So Thursday rolled around and my oldest son very offhandedly remarked at breakfast, "so this is the day Jesus ate the passover dinner and went to that garden" I decided to jump on that little spark of interest. I told him we would celebrate to night by having a little bit of a Passover dinner. Now we are not Jewish and I have never been to a Seder so I really had no idea what it is all about. So I googled it and read about it for hours. I still really have no idea what really happens but I put together a little dinner for my kids. We had bitter herbs to remind us of the bitterness of slavery. We dipped vegetables in salt water to remind us of the many tears shed. We looked at a roasted egg, (no one could bring themselves to eat it). We ate charoset, which was pretty good. We drank 4 glasses of sparkling grape juice-while reclined, and dipped our finger in it for each of the 10 plagues. The children asked the questions and we told the story of the passover. We hid the dessert and held our plate of food over our head. It was quite interesting.

The whole passover thing is quite intriguing to me. The Seder is steeped in tradition and ritual all meant to teach the children the miracle of the exodus. (A much more effective lesson plan than my movie approach.) I wonder how anyone growing up with something like that couldn't help but feel pride and admiration and cherish their heritage. I guess that is how I want my children to feel about the traditions we have in our home. I don't want to be merely frivolous, fun or tasty, I want the to hold meaning. I want them to be powerful reminders of their heritage and the beliefs we hold sacred. I want them to evoke feelings of pride, unity and love. I want the traditions we practice to remind them of who they are and who they want to become.

I'm not thinking that the Easter Bunny is doing all of that for us. I don't really have anything against the rabbit. He's cute, fun and brings some pretty tasty treats. What's not to love about that. The same could be said for Santa. I do think there is a place for such traditions. Having fun memories fosters unity and love. Having fun as a family is really important to me. I whole heartily agree with Stephen Covey's thoughts on the matter.

"We want our children to get more fun and satisfaction from the family than from the
school or from their peers or from any other outside influence. Basically, we don’t want
them to have anything to rebel against; we want the family culture to be fun and
affirming and to have many opportunities associated with it."

I do want my kids to have so much fun at home with their family they don't need to go look elsewhere for it. So we try do fun things. I bought 5 dozen eggs and hard boiled them. It is a bit hard for me to do this since we all think hard boiled eggs are disgusting. They go straight in the trash after they have been hidden and found a sufficient amount of times. We stripped everyone down and let them dye the eggs, the table and their bodies. They laughed and joked and had a wonderful time. The Easter bunny came and hid the eggs all over the basement. This year he also hid the Easter baskets. That was a first. The kids were very concerned when they got up Saturday morning and didn't see their baskets in the usually spot. They were convinced that they hadn't gone to bed early enough so the Easter Bunny skipped us. They were quite sad. But then Rachel went to look out the window and saw her basket behind the curtains. Then the hunt was on. The kids ransacked the house finally discovering a basket in the shower, closet, oven and cupboards. They feasted on marshmallow bunnies and chocolate eggs until it was time for the ward Primary party where they color, cut and ate. The whole day was basically a sugar fest. The Easter Bunny did give us a fun day.

But there is more to life than fun. I want the fun to have some meaning behind it. And I don't think I am doing to well at that. I wanted Easter Sunday to be special. I wanted the kids to feel like it was special day. But I was kind of at a loss for how to make that happen. So I started out by making an extra special breakfast. Now it was extra special because it is not something we usually have, not because everyone loves it. In fact none of the kids even tried it. I knew they wouldn't. I debated having something they enjoy like fruit loops or spider man cereal or some other sugar covered corn product sold in a colorful package. My kids would have loved that, but I wouldn't have felt like a terrible slacker of a mother. So I decided to make cinnamon rolls and breakfast casserole. Because in my mind that is what a good mother makes. It took several hours. It was just after 1:00 am when I crawled into bed after frosting the rolls and putting them on my set table. I had drug out the tablecloth, china, and goblets and did my best to set the table a bit nicer than the stack of bowls and spoons I usually throw down.

Just as I predicted when I got my family up Sunday morning several requested cheerios. My wonderful husband realized how much work I had gone to and even put the cereal bowl back he had gotten out and choked down some breakfast casserole. He later admitted that after the first couple bites he started to like it. The cinnamon rolls were a go - they have enough sugar to qualify as acceptable by my kids. So I was marginally happy with breakfast. It went just as I expected but not as well as I hoped.

We then all dressed in our best Sunday clothes. I pulled out our "Kevin and Tess" wedding clothes and ironed and mended them so we could all coordinate. The last time my girls wore their dresses they had pulled some of the tulle layer off. So I mended it. Which for me is quite an accomplishment. Anyway we were all dressed and ready to go, I looked at Rachel and she looked a little green. I asked her if she was ok - she stared at me. I asked her if her tummy hurt. She kept staring. I asked her if she needed to throw up. She nodded. I got her a bowl and she stared into it for a few minutes but nothing came up. She finally looked up and said she was all better. I was hoping it was just too much chocolate but fearing it was the stomach flu our neighbor had. We all went to church anyway. We got there walked in and sat down just as the Bishop started in on the announcements. Not even a whole minute had passed and Rachel started heaving, I immediately turned her against me as she started throwing up. I caught all the throw up on my chest and lap. I stood up as inconspicuously as I could and carried her out. We went home and I put her to bed and started some laundry. So much for the spiritual reminder of the sacredness of the day that I was longing for. My loving husband came home so I could teach my primary class. I hadn't expected him too since I knew he really wanted to go to church. I had told my oldest son he could skip sharing time and watch my baby. He was ecstatic. He hates to sing. So needless to say he was pretty disappointed when he had to stay at church.

All 9 of my primary kids had obviously been visited by the Easter Bunny who undoubtedly was very kind to them. All the little girls had new dresses on that they couldn't seem to keep down where they belong. It may have been the sugar pumping through their veins that was forcing their legs and arms to fidget out of control. I saw more pairs of panties then I cared to, I was constantly reminding them to sit like a lady and keep their skirts down. I got a sentence in here and there in the midst of their chatter and commotion. We finally got through the lesson. Chaotic would be an understatement.

And that is how our Easter experience has been thus far. Kevin and Tess will be coming to dinner later this evening. I am planning on a bit of scripture reading. We shall see if we can manage to salvage a scrap of spirituality out of all the chaos. The kids have done nothing but cry and fight and beg to play the wii since we have been home from church. Something has got to give and I am afraid it is going to be my sanity. So consider this a plea for help. I need a way to teach my kids about Easter in a way that will be fun and meaningful. I need to find some new traditions that highlight Christ and the Atonement instead of the chocolate and eggs. If you have got any ideas please pass them along.

Detoxing

I guess I could be considered a crowd follower. I tend to do what everyone else is doing even if I don't necessarily want to. I sure hope all my friends don't jump off a cliff. When I see a new trend starting I balk at it a bit then before I know it I am as into it as the next guy. It is not all that great of a character trait to have. But oh well.

Well last winter one of my friends started selling this stuff you drink that makes you poop out all the impurities and toxins in your body. She raved about it and about how skinny she had gotten and how great she felt and blah blah blah. Well I first I thought she was psycho then I thought she was weird, then I thought she was brave then I thought she was smart. This detox diet thing slowly started creeping around my neighborhood. More and more of my friends were doing it. They were all talking about how wonderful it was. Well I thought there is no way I am doing something like that. First of all I am no stranger to diets. I am pretty much perpetually on one. But my goal is to get rid of all the big hunks of fat hanging all over my body, not all the toxins and impurities lurching in my colon and liver. As long as it doesn't make me look fat it can stay. To be perfectly honest I don't think I have anything against toxins. They all taste pretty good, I rather enjoy eating them.

In fact I know this girl who eats really healthy, or so she believes. She only eat raw foods. She doesn't eat any meat or anything grown with chemicals. She exercises all the time. She teaches at the gym she talks about how healthy she is. She is our ward's resident health nut. Anyway we both entered the same race. A half marathon. There she was with her tight running clothes showing off her thin toned body. There I was with my baggy sweats and tee shirt trying to hid my jiggling belly and wobbling saddle bags. Well long story short, I hauled my fat, sugar ladden, meat eating, chemical filled body across the finish line well before her. It might not be very sportsman like but it was the sweetest victory ever. So the moral of that story is, I am not so sold on this vegan, toxin free, organic lifestyle.

But after a while of watching the crowd detox, I gave in. As I am sure you all guessed, I am on a detox diet. Along with being a crowd follower I am also a tight wad. So I did not buy this detox diet thing my neighbor sells. Another friend found one on the Internet for free and so I decided to follow her and do that one. It is the cabbage soup detox diet. You have to eat this cabbage soup for 7 days. You can eat as much as you want of it all day long. Plus you get to eat fruit and vegetables and a couple other things on certain days. Well so this was my last day of the diet. I did really great the first 5 days. Then I went out to eat at Olive Garden and ate whatever the heck I felt like. I ordered the "all you can eat", and thanks to the tight wad side of me I ate all I could eat. I rather enjoyed it. Anyway the next three days I kept eating the soup but snuck a little ice cream here and there and my boys piano teachers brought over these really delicious cookies- I tried hard to resist but I succumbed and ate two.

Any way all in all it was a pretty good experience. I lost 7 lbs. I do feel better now that my pants are loose enough I can fully exhale and I don't get that bright red mark around my waist with the imprint of the button anymore. I am not sure if I got rid of all my toxins or not. I was expecting to be in the bathroom a lot, but it didn't happen. So maybe I am still toxic.

So now that that is over I am doing the weight watchers point diet. I always do really great at breakfast and lunch and even through dinner but then we all my kids leave the table and I notice how they didn't eat any of their dinner I get to feeling guilty about it going to waste. As hard as I try not to I end up eating it. So instead of eating just 1 dinner I eat about 5. So that pretty much kills the points thing. Tonight I even tried putting the plates in the sink and running water on the leftovers before I could eat them. I didn't work, I just ate some soggy bread.

A couple months ago my wonderful husband was watching me starve myself and run myself into the pavement and finally just ask, "why don't you just give up and let yourself be fat." In some ways that made me feel very loved, in some ways it made me feel very unsupported, in some ways it gave me a reason to eat. Now when searching for a reason to rationalize having another bowl of ice cream I can always tell myself I am just doing my wifely duty of honoring and obeying my husband. But realistically I am not ready to give up yet. I may never win but I gotta keep trying, after all I have nothing to lose but a bunch of fat.

Wisdom gained from Rocky

I was watching You tube videos with my little kids this morning which is one of our favorite pastimes. We have our favorites that we watch. Sometimes we (mostly my kids) are in the mood for a little "humor" such as Weird Al's Star wars or White and Nerdy, or Gummy Bears or Charlie the Unicorn (which is the stupidest thing I have ever seen). Sometimes we are in the mood to close the blinds and put on some "dancing songs" like Hot and Cold or Ain't it Funny and twirl each other around laughing our heads off while making fools of ourselves. But I think our all time favorite, most watched, You Tube video is the Rocky training montages. That is what we were watching this morning. It may be kind of surprising that my 2 year old daughter loves Rocky but what can I say she is a chip off the ole block. Rocky is my all time favorite movie. It doesn't get any better than Rocky. Anyway I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes, so I googled it. You can find absolutely anything on google, it is amazing. So here is the quote


"The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done."

I like to win. I want to win, I want my kids to win. So how to do it and how to teach my kids to do it is a little secret I am always chasing. I think it mostly comes down to work. You don't get anything worth having without working for it, not only working but working hard. I really believe the winner is the one who works the hardest.

I guess I am not much for pansies or wimps, I definitely don't want to raise any. So I try to drill into their heads the importance of hard work. I also need them to understand that taking responsibility for yourself and not blaming others for consequences you chose, through actions or choices, is absolutely mandatory if you want to come out on top.

I want my kids to feel the thrill of success, to have a little taste of "I did it". I want them to raise their hands above their heads in victory. I want them to look back and know they did what they didn't think they could. I want them to feel strong. I want them to have the confidence to believe they can conquer anything that come up. I want them to know they're the best, because they are. Mediocre isn't' good enough and I don't want them to ever be satisfied with that.

Self confidence and self esteem is something I can't sell short- it is to important. I've been around long enough to know how important it really is. I believe self confidence is built through accomplishments and successes. There really is nothing as sweet as victory. I want my kids to get taste of it now, so that they will crave it all their lives.

Now I really am not some physco mom. I don't need or even want my kids to be all star athletes, or world class musicians or Hollywood stars or anything like that. What I really want is for them to be to be happy. I honestly believe happy people are those who are striving for something, who set goals and work for them, who have a purpose, who constantly move forward. Who are not stagnant. Who don't settle. I believe God put us here to Become. You can't become anything by doing nothing.

Well I got a little deep there maybe but I really do like Rocky. So do my kids, as weird as that may be- I am ok with it. Today while watching Rocky training clips my 4 year old said. Rocky works hard huh mom. (I really drill this working hard thing into their heads). We discussed this awhile and marveled at how hard he was working. He concluded that when you work hard you not only win you get bigger. He is really into getting bigger right now. He is really excited for his birthday so he can get "bigger". Well he thought for a minute and ask did that guy (Drago) work hard or did he just wait for his birthday. I laughed -all I could say was probably a little of both.

What a day!

Today has been quite the day. First I found out I was pregnant, I told my wonderful husband, he was very quiet. Then he said I guess I won't get my clothes dry cleaned we'll need the money for diapers. Then as I was running past the school this morning I noticed that there was smoke billowing out of the school windows and fireman were spraying water at the flames. I ran home and told my kids. They were ecstatic and ran out to see if they could see the fire. The sky was dark and "smokey" so they knew I was telling the truth. They started asking about what kind of fun stuff we could do since there was no more school. I told them we would either have to do home school or they would need to repeat their current grade. They were still excited.

Things got more and more interesting. There were bugs in the toothpaste, spiders on our pillows and worms in our shoes. The kitchen sink sprayed us and the dentist found cavities in every one of our teeth. Our oreos had toothpaste in them, my son got a black eye and "our" dog Molly had puppies. I guess you could just say I am a fool for a good holiday, at least on April 1st.