Mission Monday

So the boy got to call home for Mother's Day.  I think he thought it was Friend and Family Day, because he was more excited to see others than me.  That's ok <sigh>.  I remember being at that stage, and he hasn't been away from home but for a few weeks anyway.  I wasn't sure what to expect before he called (except that we would likely have technical difficulties - that seems to always be a given).  With my exact expectations, it turned out precisely that way.  Still not sure what to think about it, but it was really nice to see his face and know that he is happy and doing well.

It is nice to know that they keep their dishes done, too.  He told me his companion was big about that.

And they have already had a few baptisms.  That surprised me, since he hasn't been there very long yet.  He is enjoying getting to know the people, and loves them already.  I'm content.

Favorite Recipes

In spite of the enormous quantities of food consumed in this household, my new favorite recipes are not meant to be consumed.  Please do not eat them.  Please.

The Recipe for a Clean Mattress After an Accident

8 ounces hydrogen peroxide
2 tablespoons baking soda
a drop of dish soap

Mix it a spray bottle, spray it on the stain (works on all kinds of stains, they say), and in 5-10 minutes it should be lifting right off.  For impatient users (me), rub a bunch of borax in after about 5 minutes.  Put on your bedroom fan and leave for the day.  About the time you are dead exhausted and can't wait to get into bed, re-enter the bedroom and sigh that your bed is not made.  But the mattress looks great!  Vacuum off (yes, Trent hauled the regular vacuum onto the bed and it worked great) all the now-dry powder and ta-da!  White spot!


The Recipe For Dead Weeds

1 quart vinegar
1 teaspoon liquid dish soap
1/4 cup salt

Mix and pour into a sprayer.  Spray on weeds.  Watch them die.


And the best thing about both of the recipes is that they work.  Honest.

Mission Monday

I taught Relief Society recently about missionary work.  It was a hard lesson to give because... because I am an introvert.

I have a hard time preaching or teaching things I don't practice, so in the weeks before my lesson, I work extra hard to apply and get better at the principles I'm planning to cover in my lesson.  It makes the lesson more authentic, and helps me to grow and be a better person.  I definitely get more out of my lessons than anyone else in the process!

This particular lesson was to cover what Elder M. Russell Ballard said in his General Conference address last fall, titled "Put Your Trust in the Lord."  You can watch the whole thing here.  Or maybe I can even get it to appear here and it will work.  Maybe.

It's a good talk.  But the challenge is that *I* don't talk to people about my church.  I mention it, I live it, sure.  But I don't go doing the missionary thing.  I hardly talk to other people about anything.  Ever.  I'm just an introvert like that.  And after decades of feeling like something was wrong with me because I'm not more outspoken, I'm finally at peace with myself.  I'm just not a social talker person. 

And why would I feel like I want to share my beliefs?  Religion is a highly personal subject, I know.  And it's supposed to be taboo at social gatherings and Thanksgiving dinner.  But I have so many blessings that I believe have come to me and my loved ones as a direct result of living the principles that are taught at church on Sunday.  I love my Lord.  My faith in him in more comforting than anything else I have.  

If I am having a really rotten, nobody-likes-me-I-think-I'll-go-eat-worms day and tell my kids about it, before I know it they are all having bad days too.  If I unload on my poor, patient husband, he dutifully listens as much as he can before falling asleep.  I can go to the cemetery and cry out at the graves of my mother and Jay (they are neighbors there - how convenient!), but I just get more depressed.  I can meditate and mentally search for peace, but through experience I know that this is the best way to make myself mad.  But if I kneel in prayer, my broken heart is always comforted.  Always.  This is the best balm I know of - the best set of rules for living a happy and fulfilled life.  I do believe in God and in Christ.  I believe that they love me.  I believe that living the principles taught by these wise men and women will help me to live the best life I can.  I believe that some Gospel messages every day will help me keep going.  I believe that this is the best set of guidelines for raising children.  I believe.  And it makes me happy.  How would I not want to share the good stuff?

I tried Elder Ballard's challenge to ask the Lord for a missionary moment, trusting that He will give me something I can handle.  And He did.  I had a beautiful opportunity to comfort a friend with an aching heart - a moment that would not have happened if I had not been actively looking for it.  I'm so glad I was.  Spreading the Gospel cheer is so much more than teaching a set of lessons.  It's about loving people, and helping them be more happy.  That's what Christ did.  

By the way, my Sunday lesson went amazingly well, which I was not expecting when I first started looking at it.

And that is why I want to share my faith.  And that is why I send my boys off on missions.  It's not to brainwash anyone.  It's just to share what makes us most happy, in the hopes that it will help someone else be more happy, too.  It's to share a bit of Christ's love.  You can learn more about it here.

And that is why I'll be having Mission Mondays - to chronicle some of what this mission stuff is all about.

Glamping

We went camping recently.  No, it wasn't really camping.  Camping, to me, involves tents and sleeping bags and dirt.  And less-than-what-I-have-in-my-house restroom facilities.  So this wasn't really camping.  We, with the encouragement of my vivacious sister-in-law, rented a cute little cabin for the weekend.  No, of course it wasn't big enough for all of us, so the oldest boys pitched a tent and did the camping thing.  They did.  I didn't.  I slept in a bed, under sheets.  This is glamping.

The man and I had a queen bed, and then there was a bunkbed with a full on bottom and a twin on top.  We fit six of us in there, plus one more on the floor.  It was nice and cozy.  And we had a bathroom!  With a shower!

My brother's hamburgers are never better than when eaten outdoors on a wooden picnic table.  We ate lunch at an historic park.  We went on (itty bitty) hikes and saw amazing vistas.  We got s'mores in our hair.  We saw the Milky Way.  It was great.

Dad trying to corral Freddie, Mom gracefully falling off the step, David trying to stop Ben from pouring water on us, Angel and her funny faces, David's monkey ears, and "Oh Heavens do I really belong to these people??"  Georgie was sleeping in the van.  I think.

Living all that close and bunched up together gives you a new perspective on things.  Like how our ancestors could have lived with a family in the double digits in a log cabin of this size.  Amazing.  Like how well we really can get along without any outside things going on.  Like how much my teens would die, just die without electricity to recharge their PDDs (personal distraction devices).  Like how many people in this family snore!  And I'm the light sleeper of the bunch!   I'm lucky I made it out of there with my sanity intact.

 And I realized, like I do every day or so, how much I love this family.

Mission Monday

For today, I wanted to share of list of things we need to get and do before Ben goes on his mission.  It's substantial.  Too bad that Ben and I haven't gotten on the same page and listed it all out yet!  The things I'm working on right now include getting an appointment for wisdom teeth extraction, filling out passport paperwork, and accepting college scholarships and getting them deferred for two years.  So while I'm writing up the long, long list of things that need to get done, I'll just sit and smile at this picture of my mission-bound boys.  Watch out, world! 

School and Flaming Hoops

One of my sons is struggling with school.  He isn't having a hard time understanding his classwork - the boy is actually brilliant.  Maybe even a bit too smart for his own britches.  He knows the minimum he can do to get by, and only does that much.  The minimum to get by, however, has been shrinking as his acceptance of lower grades and less effort continues to grow.

As a mother, I worry and scold.  We talk about potential and the need for work.  I search in vain for adequate consequences or work plans.  So far, nothing is working.  And he is not working.

As a used-to-be student, I understand.  I remember being fed up with my classes and feeling misunderstood and ignored by my teachers.  I didn't pull in my grades for my teachers, for sure.  I didn't do it for myself - I didn't really care.  I knew, however, that my mother would tan my hide if my grades were bad.  She worked at the school district office, and was friendly with all my teachers.  She never missed a parent-teacher conference.  She was constantly asking about how my classes were going.  She programmed the computers that calculated our grades, and she would bring home a copy of my report card before they were passed out at school.  I'm not sure how she distilled that school-is-important into me and my brothers, but she sure did.  I wish I knew, because I haven't been able to give that same school-is-important vibe to my children.

I asked my brothers, fellow scholars in our growing-up home, how they managed to get by in school.  Without exception, they all said the same thing.  "I figured out which hoops were essential to jump through and played the game their way."  One brother called them "flaming hoops."

And that is the rub, because my boy doesn't want to jump through the hoops.  He thinks that playing the game is childish and beneath him.  He loves to learn things, but not only does he not feel that his schooling  helps him to learn, but that it actually hinders real learning.

I think there is a lot more to learn in school than just the subject matter in the textbook.  How to jump through hoops.  How to respect authority.  How to accomplish things even when you don't want to.  How to be a finisher.  How to do hard things.  How to accept responsibility.  How to get along with difficult people.

I was so glad to find this article today, written by a teacher who honestly cares about his students.  It hits the nail right on the head about why school is important, and why we can't quit.

Some favorite segments:

You see, the main event of school is not academic learning. It never has been. It never will be...  The main event is learning how to deal with the harshness of life when it gets difficult — how to overcome problems as simple as a forgotten locker combination, to obnoxious peers, to gossip, to people doubting you, to asking for help in the face of self-doubt, to pushing yourself to concentrate when a million other thoughts and temptations are fingertips away. 

It is your resilience in conquering the main event — adversity — that truly prepares you for life after school. Because, mark my words, school is not the most challenging time you will have in life. You will face far greater challenges than these. Sure, you will have times more amazing than you can imagine, but you will also confront incomparable tragedy, frustration, and fear in the years to come.... 

But, you shouldn’t be worried about the fact that you will face great adversities. You should be worried because you’re setting yourself up to fail at overcoming them. Here’s the real reason I lose hours of sleep worrying about you: You are failing the main event of school. You are quitting.  You may not think you are quitting, but you are because quitting wears many masks. .

He goes on to detail a few ways that students - and all of us - quit doing our jobs.  It's a bad habit to get into, and it can destroy us.  Really.  It's that big of a deal.

I wonder how I can present it to my smarty-pants boy without him giving up because "none of my teachers care about me like that/"  But I'll Mom up and keep trying.  That's what we do.

Read the whole article - it's really worth it.  And then go take care of your job.  We can do this.

Close To Me

I was at the flower shop the other day, ordering a large arrangement for a funeral.  I had tried to get to the shop earlier in the day, when Trent could watch the little people, but things don't always work out like I want them to.  That's pretty much a general rule for  me.  Anyway,  I had to take Angel and the twins on errands eith me.  They are getting older and and listen better than they used to.  We usually have a pretty good time together on our outings.

Before we went in the flower shop, we had a pep talk.  It was the standard "put your hands in your pockets and look but don't touch" lecture.  Oh, there were so many fun things to look at!  They loved the smell.  They loved the roses behind the glass doors.  They loved the vases full of bright blooms.  They loved the cheerful tulips and daffodils.   The store seemed to be full of excited but muted "Oh!  C'mere and look at this!"  And not touching.  I was so proud of them.

I finished up my order and folded the receipt into my wallet.  My little sweeties were quietly admiring a bookshelf display of Willow Tree statues.  Just as I got to them, Angel flung her hand out to point out to me the statue she loved most.   Her hand hit the front of the flimsy shelf, flipping it up and sending the backmost statue flying into the air.  I watched in slow motion, wanting to close my eyes and hide, as the statue of two embracing figures slowly crashed to the ground.  It split into large chunks, sending one figure under the shelves and half of the other skittering across the floor.  Broke up that little romance pretty thoroughly, didn't we?  It took all of us and the store manager several minutes to find the head that had popped off.

I sheepishly paid for the statue, stuffed it into the box and gathered up my now-quiet twins and the daughter from her time-out on the door mat.  They -especially she - got a learning moment (doesn't that sound nicer than a dressing down and a lecture?) and I pulled out the glue. 

Hopefully it would stick back together decently, without too many missing pieces and ugly cracks.  I actually do like these statues, even though I was certainly not planning on buying one today!  It wasn't until I got all the pieces firmly glued back together that I realized what the statue was. 

The figurine depicted a tender embrace between a mother and her daughter.  In all that excitement, it was the mother who had lost her head.

Just like me.  I nearly lost my head over an accident, although expensive and careless, which was not worth permanently damaging a loving relationship. 

The piece is mended and sturdy now, but I can still see the hairline cracks.  I like them.  They remind me of how fragile a relationship can be if I don't treat it carefully.   And they remind me that mistakes can be fixed.  There is one piece I never did find - a little chip in the middle, between the mother and the daughter.  

Interestingly enough, it forms the shape of a heart that never would have been there if they had been perfect.

On the box it says, "Apart or together, always close to me."   Perfectly imperfect, just like how I will always love my daughter.