boys aren't so bad after all!

when i was pregnant with jenni, i prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed for a little girl.  literally.  i told heavenly father i knew she might not come first, but asked for some little inner assurance that 'one day' i could have a daughter of my own.  my mom left when i was 5 - and though wonderful women filled my life and that slot in my life - i still wanted my very own mother/daughter relationship.  so the day jenni was born i wept and wept and wept for joy.  i had a little girl of my very own!  less than two years later i found myself in disbelief to learn that i would once again be blessed with a girl.  i thought i'd already received my blessing. 

by this time i was sold! girls were the best thing on earth. and when rochelle came it just reinforced all those feelings all over again!

well - it's confession time...

after having girls, i decided i NEVER wanted to have a boy! 

i was so perfectly content with girls, and pink, and playing house, and dress up, and cooking together, and singing, and decorating things, and snuggling, and loving babies, and soft sounds, and creativity, and pretty pretty princesses, and mommy and me time, and loving school, and taking pride in neat work, and giggles...

i had no interest in raising a child of the blue variety (ask jan skubal - she heard me say it countless times!) 

well, i have had to re-eat those words SO MANY times in the past 8 years, i'm starting to choke.

as i sat at a cub pack meeting last night (another thing i can't believe i'm doing now) and looked at this mini 'sandlot' group of boys, i just laughed inside.  

who would have thought i could feel so crazy about having THIS in my life?  

or this...

(these are boy shoes - 6 weeks after purchase - thanks to a recess-addiction to two-square last year)

i have said over and over that cole is the reason we smile every day. 

who couldn't with this guy in your life?!

 

i have learned that even with boys life is full of snuggles, singing, creativity, cooking lessons, mommy & me time, loving babies, and...laughter.

it is also full of dirt, mud, tools, balls, rock-filled pockets, anything with wheels, anything with motors, anything that makes noise, anything that flies...or can be made to fly, anything that can be built...and destroyed, and anything that can serve as an outlet for their mighty super-hero powers...complete with sound effects! 

one things i was not prepared for was how much it would fill my heart with joy to watch my son be his father's shadow.  and i had no idea it would make me love my husband even more - knowing that if the shadow could grow up to be anything like his dad, well, some mother's wishes for her daughter will one day come true.

thank you heavenly father, for blessing me with what i thought i did not want...or need. 

he has changed my life...for good!

feb 21 awards

lasting life lessons

a couple of years ago i had an article published in the new era - youth church magazine. last night jenni asked me about the article - so i decided to re-read it. i've decided i want to share it here because i learned something very important from a great bishop. a lasting life lesson to be sure.

"20 Things I Like About Who?"
Growing up, I often heard people in church say, “Families are forever,” and I’d think to myself, “Sure. If I lived in so-and-so’s home, that would be easy to say.” But I did not come from an ideal family background.

I was adopted and an only child. My mother was an alcoholic, which contributed to my parents’ divorce when I was five. My father raised me alone from then on.

I joined the Church on my own when I was in fifth grade, which introduced the challenge of being the only member in my family. My father supported my participation in the Church to the extent that it helped him in his efforts to raise a moral, drug-free daughter.

By the time I was in high school, he was gone on business trips the majority of the time. He left every Monday morning and came home every Friday night for all but five weeks one entire year. Several families in our stake had opened their homes to me at one time or another when my father traveled.

However, there was one major problem. The more time I spent in these good, Latter-day Saint homes, the more my own home life seemed to fall short. Great Mormon families doing what seemed to be all the ideal things a family should be doing surrounded me. Inside I was frustrated and even dissatisfied.

About this same time my father began to challenge me about the things I believed. When he started to attack my testimony, I felt I just couldn’t take it anymore, so one day I went to see my bishop. I must have wanted someone to side with me or give me sympathy because (as I saw it then), my dad wasn’t as great as other dads since he wasn’t a Latter-day Saint. My bishop said he’d be happy to meet with me the following week after church, but he wanted me to do one thing before our meeting: to go home and make a list of 20 things I admired or appreciated about my father.

I was sure he hadn’t understood why I’d asked for this meeting. Didn’t he realize that I was having a problem because there was so little to appreciate anymore?  But fearing he was half-serious, I made half an effort. After a half hour, I only had five things on my list. I figured that proved my case, and tucked it in my scriptures for my appointment with the bishop.

When I returned to the bishop’s office the following week, he invited me in and immediately asked if I’d completed my assignment. I told him I had started and showed him my short list. He responded by telling me that he’d be happy to discuss anything I wanted, at length, but first I had to complete my assignment. He asked if I would like him to reschedule an appointment for the following week. Anxious for some relief from the many pressures I was dealing with at home, I made another appointment and left.

Saturday night rolled around, and I realized I still hadn’t made the list. I decided I’d better do it if I was going to get anywhere with the bishop. Then I remembered a conversation I’d had with a friend that week. She asked me why I didn’t seem emotionally “messed up” because of my parents’ divorce. I thought back on how much effort my father had made to keep me out of the center of the ugly part of the divorce, and, while talking to my friend, I realized for the first time what a tremendous gift that was. It became the first sincere thing I’d written on my list.

Then I remembered how hard my father had fought to keep me in a time when fathers were rarely granted custody of their children. I thought how different my life would have been if I’d had to grow up with my alcoholic mother. Tears of gratitude streamed down my cheeks. This too was added to my list.

And the list grew on and on. At nearly 1:30 in the morning, I looked down at my list of 69 reasons why I felt so blessed for the wonderful father Heavenly Father had given me.

After church the next day my bishop invited me into his office and asked how my week had been. I told him it had been a good week, and that I wasn’t really sure there was a reason for us to meet any longer. When he inquired as to why—though I hated to admit it—I told him it was because of “the list.” I pulled out my list and shared with him what a wonderful man my father was.

My dear bishop taught me one of the most important lessons I have ever learned in life: we all live with imperfect circumstances, and it is up to us to make the most of the situation we are in. With my dad, I had to decide whether to focus on the majority that is good or the minority that could still use a little improvement.  My bishop helped me realize the power of focusing on the positive things in my life.  new era, june 2008

time for a change

i can't wait until brittany comes home for the summer. she is my painting enthusiast! for my birthday one year she painted my living room the great adobe red color it is now.  two summers ago i was gone for a five day temple hill choir tour, and when i came home she had totally painted her own room, leaving daisy yellow in the dust, and taking on a bold (and i mean bold!) hot cranberry'ish deep pink color.  i had no clue she was going to do it - and in the time i was gone she had taken her room apart, painted it (like 3 coats too, cuz it's dark & bright) and had it all put back together.  could be risky with some people, but brittany has an amazing eye for color, and all things aesthetic, so it totally worked...and i didn't have to deal with any of the chaos of a torn up house while it was happening.

can you say 'win-win'?  well, do i have some projects waiting for her!

challenge #1: poor cole lives in a room right now that any mom of a baby girl would adore!  the pastel patchwork wall paper with pink sponged molding and mini valence that took my breath away as a nursery for rochelle just isn't cutting it for my car-driving, bakugan-playing, rock-collecting, lego-constructing boy.  great part is...i've been put on notice to not start the bedroom make-over until britt gets home.  ha! think i'd cross that one?  think again. 

so while looking for truly BOY colors that would work with all the white book shelves that are already built in, and white dresser that's not getting replaced, i found this at pottery barn. (not the room, just the color) bamm! sold!



















challenge #2: while keeping my eye open for bedroom ideas, i found another pic that inspired me to take on re-doing the bathroom while she's home as well.  i have very light pinkish tinted cabinets in the hall bathroom.  hard to find a paint color that works in there. besides, who wants to redo the accents for something they don't much like in the first place? (me either)  but then last night i found this!

i LOVE it. never thought of painting my bathroom cabinets black.  and those blue walls - so soothing!  mark would roll his eyes, but britt will take this on in a heartbeat!  ooo! i'm so excited!  like i said...hurry home!  it's gonna be a GREAT summer!

the fam (minus mom & dad...as usual)

this was our family picture for 2009 - which we couldn't even take til 2010...the day before the girls left to go back to byu. it totally threw off the whole christmas card letter thing...but oh well. i love how this pic shows how grown up each child is getting to be - especially rochelle.

my girls

i love this sister picture taken in january - no comment needed...just love it!
ok...well, maybe i could note that this wasn't originally taken as a sister picture. cole is actually in this picture below britt, but he looked so goofy i almost didn't get the picture. then the girls pointed out what a cute sister pic it would be, if we just cropped him out. the lady in the shop just laughed...then obliged!

family wall of fame

i issue weekly awards to our children. it is a family tradition we started in 2002. these awards are a wonderful way of journaling the little (and not so little) things in life. each week an award sheet with each child's recognition is printed, shared at fhe, and then kept in a book for that year. our kids look forward to finding out what they have been recognized for each week, and love looking at past awards for a little trip down memory lane. it has also been a great tool to help me not let a week go by without acknowledging their unique goodness, their accomplishments, and memories made that we want to always remember.

unfortunately i got off track after jenni had been away at school for awhile as it got harder to come up with things for her each week since we weren't there to see her life unfold. big things i got - little things were harder. so i started to keep a log going with weekly entries, but was inconsistent in printing up awards basically because i didn't have every child's box filled in. dumb! dumb! dumb! weekly awards are now on my "do-agains" list (see january 18 blog) no reason why the children who are home shouldn't still enjoy this log of their life and fhe highlight.

i also thought it would be great to include our weekly wall of fame awards on our blog so we can share them with family who are far away, and to add to the family journal element of our blog. (and maybe to assure that there's always something to regularly add to our blog)

so here are the 2010 awards to date.  i'll post them weekly after this.

feb 14 awards

feb 7 awards

jan 31 awards

jan 24 awards

jan 17 awards

jan 10 awards

jan 3 awards

sounds like life

so i started this blog - then never shared the fact that it existed with anyone. i'm not really sure if anyone will be interested in my personal musings on life. well, if you're reading this, that means i pushed thru my hesitation and shared...if not - well, it can just be my little secret unloading space! (who knows what i'll do after hitting 'save' tonight)

what matters to me right now? well, for starters, i texted my husband today and thanked him for asking me to marry him <3 that really has made all the difference in the world in the life i feel grateful to be living.

at times life can feel like one challenge after another. right now our challenge seems to be 'broken' things. in fact i was so overwhelmed by all that is broken around here that i made a list of them last week. don't know why - maybe to get a grip on what needs to be tackled - and in what order. dumb idea. seriously. i don't recommend it. it actually just became a source of discouragement. just a few items on the list: broken water heater, broken dishwasher, broken kitchen drawer, broken honda clutch, broken jeep something or other, broken seal on bay window, broken fence boards, broken boat seats, broken bar stool, nearly broken leather on couch, broken leather seats in car, broken shower head...need i go on?

the other day i was working on pulling myself up out of my list-induced funk, when i remembered the chorus to a song that really says it all ~ the song is 'sounds like life to me' by darryl worley. even if you don't like country music, it's worth a listen. i like the song, because after a man unloads all his woes on his buddy, his friend responds..."sounds like life to me, it ain't no fantasy, it's just a common case of everyday reality. man i know it's tough but you gotta suck it up, to hear you talk you're caught up in some tragedy, but it sounds like life to me'.

well - if there's one thing i've learned in life - it's that NOone's life turns out the way they thought it would. so yesterday as i was praying, i asked heavenly father to help me put things back in perspective and get a grip on lifting my spirits back up. and you know...He did. as i thought of all that was broken, i realized that the really important things are not. i have neither broken children, nor a broken marriage, nor broken faith. and with those things in good shape - well, let everything else crumble if it will. sounds like life. i'm grateful to see again how blessed mine is! everytime i hand wash my dishes, or trade off the one working car with mark...i will feel blessed.