Fire and Drought

It seems to me that adversity often comes in two varieties--Fire and Drought.

When a fire hits you, the heat burns and it hurts so bad you almost can't stand it. The smoke makes you disoriented and you just can't see clearly. The ash settles around you, making everything a dull gray. You ask, "How did this happen? Why did this happen? And who started it?" You feel your way around, hoping to find a door that leads you away from the heat. And you keep hoping that someone will hear your cries for help.

In a drought, there is something that you need, that you yearn for, that just isn't happening. The rain does not fall, the job doesn't come, the cradle is still empty, the person doesn't change, the pain won't end. And there is nothing to do but wait. And waiting is the hardest part. Every day leaves you a little more drained. Every day it gets a little harder to keep your faith. You wonder if this drought will ever end and you wonder how you can possibly go on another season.

One of my favorite scriptures in Jeremiah says:

"Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not fear when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit."

Whether you are being seared by a fire or parched by a drought, my wish for you this coming year is that you will have the only thing that puts out a fire or ends a drought--water. May the living water of Christ soothe your burns and quench your thirst. Then you will have the courage to face the heat and the hope to weather the drought. And that is when, like the tree, you will force your roots deep and spread out your branches and yield fruit to all around you.

Some Random Things

Just thought I'd comment on a few random happenings, quotes, etc. from my life lately.

*On Monday, I had to make a special trip to the store to buy a square Kleenex box that my daughter needed for a science project that she told us about the day before and was due the next day.

*True quote by me: "Do not play with the plunger. The plunger is not a toy."

*While going through pockets during laundry, I found coins, candy wrappers, 4 pencil top erasers and 2 glow in the dark plastic stars.

*Zach quote: "She said she loved me, but not in a kissing way."

*I cannot find our digital camera. Sigh.

*While waiting for a pie to cool, Emma suggested we hurry up the process by putting it in the microwave. Apparently, I need to have them help more in the kitchen.

*I bought 6 cans of Red Feather canned butter from New Zealand for my food storage.

*Lucy pointed to her stuffed bear in a play car seat and said, "This is my baby Jesus."

*I cannot find my Harry Connick Jr. Christmas CD. Double Sigh.

*While sick in bed yesterday, my husband made me breakfast in bed, brought me home flowers, and made eggs and french fries for the kids for dinner. He's a keeper!

*My friend Tyra gave me this Fabulous Blog Award.



I am to pass this award on to 5 other blogs, so check out the following:


Emilie--hilarious & honest stories of her boys crack me up
Dedra--true blog lover, great pictures, fun observations
Moments by Tyra--Tyra did our family pictures and they were great!
RG in ID--love her insights on children and motherhood
Balancing Everything--great posts on childbirth, motherhood, and home education, not to mention sewing tutorials

Belonging

The other day, my little Lucy wanted to play with our globe. I pointed out fun places, like where Daddy went on his mission (Spain) and where we live. But then she looked up at me and said, "Where am I at?" I said, well you live where we do. And she looked at me again and said, "But where am I at?" So I pointed on the globe and said, "This is where Lucy is." She put her stubby little finger on the spot and grinned and for the rest of the day, she kept dragging the globe up to me and asking, "Where is Lucy?" I would show her and she would say, "Yep, there's Lucy!" It was such a pointed reminder to me of how important it is for little children to feel like they belong--that they know their place in the world. That they matter.

This summer, we attended a large family reunion on my husband's side of the family. His mother is the youngest of 13 children and there were hundreds of people there. We all had name tags that said our name, plus which child of the 13 we were descended from. My 7 year old, Emma, walked into the building and saw all of the people and you could tell it was a little overwhelming for her. A few minutes later, she looked down at her name tag and smiled and said confidently, "I belong to Nadine." And she was fine. She knew who she belonged with and who belonged with her. Her source of belonging was her family.

As children get older, this sense of belonging can become more complicated, as they see both the positive and negative aspects of belonging to a group (or family :)). About a week ago, we finished listening to dramatized scriptures and my 9 year old son Ethan asked,"Why are the boys always the bad ones?" I explained that there were surely bad women during that time, too, we just don't know about them because they weren't written about in the scriptures. He reiterated, "But why are the boys always the bad ones?" And he went on to talk about how the boys were always the ones to get in trouble at school and how there were more men than women in prison. And what he wanted to know is "Why?" What he didn't ask, but I knew he was thinking was, Am I going to end up doing bad things because I am a boy? I told him that I really didn't believe that there were more "bad" boys than girls, but that boys are often more outspoken and violent in their responses and that gets them in more trouble (long answer condensed). It made it even more clear to me how important it is that boys have upstanding examples of their gender. Unlike many of those young men in prison, Ethan is blessed because he has his father to look up to--someone who mirrors every quality of a good man. And he will be able to see that we can all choose how we will behave and who we will be both because of the groups we belong to, and sometimes, in spite of them.

Lots of Little Things

There have been lots of little things in our house the last month. Little things that to little children mean a lot. Here are a few of them:

Lucy turned 3 years old! She got to wear her Cheetah costume all day and even into the grocery store. The very next day, she rushed up to her Daddy and said, "Daddy, Daddy, look at my legs! Look at them! I'm bigger now!!"



Emma lost her very first tooth. She was wiggling it furiously every day for at least a week. When I pulled it out, she cried and yelled that it hurt, but she was very proud. The tooth fairy has a hard time remembering to come to our house, but when Daddy helped her look in her room, he magically found a whole dollar for her very first tooth. Sometimes the tooth fairy has had to leave notes of apology and explanation for failing to appear. Apparently, the Tooth Fairy Company can sometimes get understaffed and overwhelmed and they are very sorry for any inconvenience.





Well, by the time we remembered to get pumpkins for carving, everyone was all out. But we still did our caramel apples and dipped them in chocolate, to boot. Here is a picture of some very happy chocolate faces!



And here is a picture of our sweet little Halloween gang:



One funny story--My husband asked my son, Ethan, if he remembered to change his alarm clock due to daylight savings time. Ethan said he didn't want to do that since he would just have to change it again the next day. "Why would you do that?" my husband asked. "Well, isn't it for just one day?" Ethan answered. So Brady explained that it was for another six months. "Oh," Ethan replied. Then he thought for a minute and asked,"Do people who aren't members of the church do it, too?" We think that he thought that because they are always announcing and reminding us about it at church and it always starts on a Sunday. So there you go--Daylight Savings Time is just for Mormons and just for a day!

As for me and my shenanigans, my friend Tracy and I transformed 6 bushels of apples into canned applesauce, apple pie filling and frozen apple pies. I just baked one of the pies today and it was quite yummy. You make the pie just like normal, but instead of baking it, you put it in a gallon bag and place it in the freezer. Then when you want a fresh baked pie, you just pop it into a hot oven straight from the freezer and you have pie heaven. We each have a dozen pies in our freezer! That was a lot of pie crusts, my friend!

Money Chores

I originally had this as part of my other post, but I think it deserves a space of its own.

We had a special family meeting last Sunday about money. Brady had gotten after the kids for not doing their chores right and one of the children (I won't say who, but you can guess) said, "Maybe we would do it better if we got paid." WRONG answer. We tried an allowance once, and we regretted it. It started a whole entitlement issue, with the kids starting to say that we "owed" them money. Parents do NOT owe their children money and I was not going to have them speaking to their father that way when he is working so hard at 2 jobs!

So we got all the kids together and told them that if they wanted, we would start paying them for their chores. But if they wanted to get paid for their work, they would also have to pay for the goods and services they receive. I took a white board and had them list all of the goods & services they would have to pay for. Some of the things included food, clothing, electricity, laundry, television, etc. They realized real quick that what they receive from Mom and Dad far outweighs their chore contributions. We talked about how chores are something that we do because we belong to a family and everyone needs to help out. I pointed out how ridiculous it would be if I told their Dad that I wanted money for the chores I do around the house and how it's just as ridiculous for them to do it.

But we understand that they want a little spending money and it's good for them to learn some financial skills. I asked them, "What did Dad do when we needed more money?" They answered that he got a 2nd job. I asked them,"What did I do when we needed more money?" They answered that I started selling hats. So we told them that if they wanted extra money, they could also get a 2nd job. We are now instituting 2nd chores which we call "money chores." I will pick extra chores every week that they can get paid for if their regular chores and homework are caught up. We have got to free our kids from the epidemic of entitlement and the quest of "something for nothing" that is so prevalent in our society. I really feel that parents who give without requiring are saddling their children with a future handicap in both their professional and social lives. For a great discussion on this, read an essay entitled "The Cornucopia Kids: Giving Children Too Much May be Giving Too Little." It's by Bruce Baldwin and it's a 16 page article published by the National Association of Secondary School Principals. If you can find it, it's awesome! I'll get down from my soapbox now.

Catching Up

Earlier this week, after a day of botched peach jam, kids with diarrhea and a husband out of town, I plopped down on my bed with a pan of Rice Krispie Treats and the remote control to see what was happening in the world of Bravo Reality TV. Then I started thinking that I'm not keeping up with this blog like I want to. I really like it, but it can end up feeling like homework at the end of a day when I am completely exhausted. And I am completely exhausted almost every night. So I am lowering my expectations of becoming a great and powerful blogger. I am hoping that the lowered expectations will make me more relaxed about it, which in turn will actually induce me to produce more posts. I'm practicing psychology without a license here, but it's worth a shot.

So, here's a little bit of what's been happening in my life. The canning adventures have continued, yielding both grape juice and some yummy pear butter. Have you ever used a steam juicer? Those things are SO COOL! I don't have one, of course, but a huge thank you to Tracy and Heidi for letting me use theirs. It is now on my wish list. I have also been crocheting my little hats until my fingers go numb, but I am really happy about their success.

Little Lucy has been running around in a cheetah costume for weeks now. I have put my foot down about wearing it in a store, but I admit that she did walk in a church with it on. She wears it and sleeps in it until it is dirty or peed in, and then digs through the hampers when I do laundry looking for it. When she wants to wear it, she comes to me and says, very emphatically, "I hate my clothes! I HATE THEM! I want them off!" She has a hard time taking the costume off to go to the bathroom, so we've had lots of accidents, which is making me HATE the costume. Sigh. She turns 3 tomorrow and is super excited. Here is a picture of her in the costume.

Got Me Some Skills!

Well, I decided to be brave and attempt to do some canning. I have zero canning skills. I've never done it by myself, I only helped my Mom when I was a kid. And I use the term "helped" very loosely. On Wednesday, my friend Liz gave me a box of apples and I decided to do applesauce. So I borrowed my friend Tracy's Saucer and my friend Tyra's water bath canner and after scrounging up some jars from my basement, I was ready for the fun to begin. And, again, I use the term "fun" loosely. It was very satisfying, but after about 5 hours, it was no longer fun. Brady took the kids and slept outside in the camper, so it was a one man job. I had to scrub the kitchen in the middle of the night because applesauce hardens into industrial strength glue. (After 6 kids, I've had applesauce on almost every surface imaginable.) But I got everything cleaned up and I was so happy to get some new skills! Here are some pictures of the process:

Then, yesterday, I got another box of apples and decided I would do apple pie filling. Which sounds reasonable, except that I started the project 5 hours before we were supposed to leave for family pictures, thinking "I can do it! It won't take that long." HA! Famous last words. (Insert Brady's "I told you so!") So of course, I'm still slicing apples while hollering instructions to children about what clothes to wear and timing my shower while the last batch is cooking and we were all running late. I did not have time to clean anything, so I left the kitchen looking like this:

But in the end, we got some yummy apple pie filling and had a great time doing our family pictures. We always dread getting our pictures taken. It is just plain awful. Someone is always pouting, someone is always crying, Mommy is always frazzled and Daddy is always mad. But this year, we had our neighbor and friend, Tyra, take them at the university gardens and it was great! The kids liked being outdoors and picking where they wanted their shots. We had to hurry because it was overcast and we were losing light, but we were still able to get a lot of fun shots in. I'm really excited to see how they turn out, especially the individual shots of the kids. We also took some pictures up by the Rexburg temple. In a quiet moment, I looked at all of these people around me, all happy and dressed in matching brown and cream, and realized that they were all mine. And I loved them all and they loved me. I thought my heart was going to swell out of my chest with contentment. It was a fleeting personal moment, but I hang on to those. That's the stuff that moms cling to when we wonder "Why am I doing this again?" So a big thank you to Tyra and also to all my friends who let me borrow and mooch for my canning education. I finally got me some canning skills!