Snow Day

If you look really, really closely at the pictures below, you might see the dusting of snow which caused school to be canceled today. Most of the U.S. has been hit by one major storm after another this winter.  We have been spared the violent weather and have even had more sunshine than normal.  I have appreciated the good winter weather, but we have longed for just one day to break out our winter gear and play in the snow.

For days the news meteorologists talked incessantly about the BIG storm coming our way - a whopping 1 to 3 inches of snow on the ground (seriously).  The storm was supposed to hit during the night so we all woke up at 6 a.m. to check the news report - school was canceled for most of the metro area.  First thing in the morning there was a LITTLE bit of snow on the roads where we live.  I mean, enough to sort of cover a few blades of grass and decorate the pavement with streaks of white, but not enough to sled on or really play in. By the time I took this picture at about 10:30, almost all of the snow had melted. And that was it, our big storm of the 2010/2011 winter season.  Ahhh, Washington weather is so funny! 

 

 

 

When Joseph realized there was no kindergarten to attend, he suggested we make our own school at home. So, we did.  We had calendar time, weather time, reading time, workbook time, recess, and snack time. It was fun!  Aubrey and a friend spent the day building a K'nex rollercoaster in our bonus room, making cupcakes, and watching a movie.  Bailey also spent the day hanging out with a friend.

So, big weather event it was not, but we enjoyed our unexpected day off!

The power of google

It was bound to happen . . .one of the big questions.  Joseph and I were talking at bedtime.  He wanted to know about how Jesus helped make the earth. Then he wanted to know who created Jesus.  Once I answered him he thought for a second and then asked who created Heavenly Father.  I told me him that we don't know, but that is one of the questions I am going to ask when I get to be with Him again someday.  I thought my answer was pretty good, but Joseph wasn't convinced.   He said, "so you don't know the answer.  Have you tried googling it?"

Failure feelings

Every mother has them, I'm sure. Moments when you feel like a failure as a mother.  Moments when you feel like others might be judging your parenting ability and finding you lacking.  Feeling like you shouldn't feel like your child's behavior reflects on you personally, but feeling like it does. Wondering "what am I doing wrong, and what have I neglected to do right?"

Our youngest child, who thankfully cannot read this blog yet, has tried our patience lately.  Yelling, testing limits, mean words, slamming doors, angry faces. We have been pulling out every tool in our discipline arsenal, without much improvement. Most of the time he chooses to act sweet and loving, but there are some challenging moments. As I write, he is in cool down/time out, yelling that I am the rudest and meanest mom on EARTH.  Or maybe in the UNIVERSE!

Last night was a low. We had invited a new family in the ward over for family home evening. This family has two children, both younger than our youngest.  We prepared a really short, interactive lesson, and the two visiting boys sat relatively still and participated. Our son's behavior was not good. Embarrassing, even. Dan and I talked later that night about what we can do differently to encourage him to make better choices and feel more in control of himself. We came up with some ideas, and we'll keep on trying, and I'm sure he will grow up just fine.

But, this is what is on my mind and in my heart today. Each of my kids his or her own concerns, worries, or struggles.  Sometimes the struggles are really loud and obvious, like a 5-year-old temper tantrum, and sometimes they are very quiet and need a gentle voice to uncover. In other words, our kids are normal. Life is full of struggles. I try to be a mom who is close enough to my kids to know when things are hard for them. Sometimes I miss the clues, but I start and end each day with a plea to my Father in Heaven for help. I ask for discernment and patience and wisdom.

I guess I always incorrectly assumed that by the time I was a seasoned mom of four I would have at least a few answers figured out. The problem is, each child is such an individual, and it seems like the "rules" for each child change from day to day.  And sometimes I've completely used up my patience by 9 a.m. I am humbled daily by my inadequacy.

This is what I do really know, and I need to remind myself today.

**Mothering is not about ensuring a "perfect outcome", because who am I to say what is perfect, anyway.

**I do not and should not have control over my children's agency.  The only part I can control is what I put into mothering.

**When I am completely out of answers, I can never go wrong by giving a hug and saying "I love you."

**Sometimes the best cure for mothering frustration is for me to walk away, sit in my darkened closet, and eat a Girl's Scout thin mint cookie.  Or maybe two or three.  So I think I will try that . . . . right now.

Just Dance!

I have the winter blahs as far as working out goes.  I don't find my way to the gym often, and it's hard to motivate myself to walk outside when it is cold or wet. 

So, my favorite way to get a cardio workout is "Just Dance" on the Wii. When I play, I am so focused on following the dance moves that I don't even notice that I am working up a sweat. We have a great time as a family doing both of the "Just Dance" games together.

I have, however, learned to dance BEHIND Bailey and Aubrey, as they like to make fun of me (and  Dan) while we are dancing.  I guess it just startles them to see that their parents are such incredibly fantastic dancers (hee hee).  Actually, I have no illusions that I look great while dancing, but I sure have fun, and it's a great workout. 

During the afternoon Joseph and I will often put on one of the games and boogie.  You should see us do Jai Ho, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go ( I really shine at this one - the moves are classic 1980s, and Funkytown.  So fun!

Porter playlist

Music is a big part of our household.  We like music of almost every kind, and I love finding music that I can enjoy with the kids.  When Brandon lived at home, he always kept me current on the latest good music. I have great memories of riding for many hours in the car with Brandon and Bailey last June (on our way to and from Oregon Coast), listening to music from Brandon's ipod.

A few weeks ago Dan was in charge of the music at a Stake Priest/Laurel "Yule Ball."  He was also the emcee and head entertainment guy. He did a really great job, and the entire evening was magical for the kids involved.  To prepare for the evening, he did SERIOUS research into the latest fun (and clean) dance songs.  He found some great ones, and all of us like listening to the "Yule Ball playlist" on our ipods.

In case you are wondering, our new favorite feel-good song is "Love Like Woe" by the Ready Set.  This replaces last year's favorite feel-good song, "Soul Sister."  In particular, Joseph loves the "Woe" song.  He wants to hear it every day, all day, as we drive around in the car.  He will sometimes alternate with "Do You Remember" by Jay Sean. With such frequent repetition, I might be really sick of these songs soon. Other songs from the playlist which I think are fun . . ."Marry Me" by Train and "Jar of Hearts" by Christina Perri.

Playing Bball

 A few weeks ago it was Young Women basketball season. Bailey wasn't sure about playing on the team, although she did go to all the practices and to the games to root for the team and take pictures.  To support her and to help improve/introduce basketball skills to Aubrey and Joseph, we spent several evenings at the church working on bball fundamentals.  The girls found (somewhat to their surprise) that they like basketball! They both have a mean layup, and Joseph is mastering dribbling.  We had a good reward after this home evening - brownies and ice cream. 

 

 

Weather Woes

Most of the U.S. has received a brutal round of storms over the past few weeks, resulting in lots of ice and snow. This is a picture of our snowfall this year.
This might be all we get this year.  If you ask Bailey or Aubrey, this is a travesty.  While I think snow is fun for a day or two, I have not minded at all that this winter we have had plenty of sunny days and no "snowed-in" days.  I especially don't like it when we have makeup school snow days tacked onto the end of school.

The one day in January when we got a skiff of snow, the girls ran around outside, reveling in the novelty of it.

 

 

 

 

Catching up - New Years

 Because this is our family journal, I realized I need to talk about New Years (even though that seems sooo long ago now that we are into February!)

We invited some families to come over on New Years Eve, and it was a really fun night.  The kids ran around and made a mess, we ate lots of food, and the adults played games.  Dan, the master music man, played songs for us to guess (I did really well on anything from 1980 to about 1989.  I couldn't guess anything in the 1990s. I guess that might show my age.) We also played "2 truths and a lie" and learned some very interesting facts about friends!  At midnight we made lots of noise outside and watched our neighbors do a big firework show. We are grateful for good friends and chances to hang out together.
 

The moral of this story is. . .

I'm trying to think of a good moral for this.

Here's the story.  I really like painting walls.  It makes me happy and relaxes me - really!  But, sometimes I might be a little anxious to just slap the paint up on the wall.  I want the instant gratification that a newly painted wall brings.

When we moved into the house four years ago, all the walls were painted a drab, dreary shade of grayish-white.  SO not okay in my book, and definitely not okay in an area where is is gray outside for much of the year.  So, I started to paint the house, one room at a time.  When I got to our master bedroom, I could tell that it had been painted many times, and not well.  There were globs of dried paint here and there, and it was clear that it had recently been painted with many coats of bright red and then covered over with  a quick coat of drab grayish-white. I had a nagging feeling that putting more paint over the messed-up walls may not be a super-great idea, but who has time to fix someone else's mistakes?  I needed painted walls NOW.

So, I painted.  Actually, I added two more colors to the walls, as the first color I tried wasn't just right with the light in the room.

Fast forward about two years.  Dan and I don't have a headboard for our bed (never have - we think about it every year and then conclude that it isn't worth the expense).  We started to notice that the areas on the wall where we leaned our head while sitting up in bed were actually flaking off paint.  Yikes - that can't be good!  It took me a few months to decide to investigate further.  One day I was in the middle of repainting the entryway when I happened to walk upstairs.  As I passed the increasingly flaking wall in our room, I impulsively grabbed sandpaper and decided to sand down the flaky area and repaint it.  Since I was already in the middle of a painting mess, why not add more? Never mind the fact that the house downstairs was torn apart and everyone would be home from school in a few hours.

As I started to sand the area, to my surprise the paint started to peel off in long sheets, separating all the way down to the sheetrock!  It seriously looked like wallpaper. It was not good.  It became clear that the many coats of paint were not adhered to the wallboard, and they were all going to need to come off.  The layers of paint were so thick, that there was no way to effectively blend in a patched area.

So, I got a big putty knife, started a show on the DVR, and began making a gigantic mess of our master bedroom. A few hours and a very good workout later, this is what the wall looked like.

It took two more days and many hours to chisel off the rest of the paint on that wall down to the sheetrock.  Then I had to try to touch up the texture (I did a really bad job of this), add a super good primer, and repaint the wall. 


In the end, we have a good adhesion between wallboard and paint on one wall.  Very likely, we should do the same thing to the other three walls in the room, but I would rather have a cavity filled without anesthetic. We are just going to live with the imperfections on the other walls.  If paint starts flaking off, I don't want to know about it.

There just has to be a moral in all of this, but I'm not sure I have found it.   
Maybe . . . .  "You don't really want to know what is underneath - don't dig too hard."  No. 
"Do it right the first time, fix the mistakes before you "paint" over them.   Maybe.
"Finish one problem completely before you make another huge mess."  Definitely.

FHE

 

Can you guess the topic of our Family Home Evening last week?  This wasn't actually the original plan for the night - I don't remember what it was, but it was probably a little more fun.  We had to make a last minute change to the lesson plans for the evening after a truly tumultuous dinner and early evening with lots of angry, demanding, disrespectful things going on.  Dan pulled out the white board and created another lesson on the spot.  He handled it well, and I daresay that behavior in the house this last week was better!

Bailey asked to give this week's lesson (held on Sunday night because Dan has to work late tonight). She did an awesome job, sharing thoughts from Elder Uchtdorf's talk about "Happily Ever After" from last year's YW Broadcast. This had been the topic of her Beehive lesson, and she was so excited about it that she wanted to share it with us at home.  She had some great visual aids set up to illustrate her points. We learned that "it is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself, that determines how your life's story will develop."  Great lesson, Bailey! She had even looked up hymns on adversity for the opening and closing songs.  Afterward, we played a rousing game of Curses. In the picture above, Aubrey is swatting mosquitoes while performing a challenge. During the game, Bailey had to scratch like a gorilla while barking like a dog and talking like Scooby Doo. And Dan had to make bunny ears with his hands while grabbing at Bailey's cards.  It was wild, I tell you!