Daughter's of Eve

Click on the title of this post to see a great post about Eve.  You may also enjoy many of his other posts--particularly "Getting Ready to Pop Question Read This."

http://mormonmonk.blogspot.com/2009/09/getting-ready-to-pop-question-read-this.html

Enjoy

The best "family history" video ever.  Enjoy!

Dreams Do Come True

Last summer, I jumped in the car after watching a midnight showing of a movie and went to visit Northern California and Oregon.  The beauty of that green region overwhelmed me. For months I dreamed of moving.  This spring Oregon's weather moved to me.  I am sitting by my window, watching the rain water my flowerbeds. I have yet to turn on my sprinklers and I mowed yesterday quickly as a storm rolled in.  Today I am grateful for the gray skies and green grass.

I love to Garden

You cannot tell by driving by my front yard, but I love to garden. I often take long detours in order to drive by a yard with a particular flower in bloom. My children know to watch for cars and children during the spring because I may forget to watch the road. My distracted driving comes from flowers--not cell phones--I simply love gardens. All gardens.

But when you arrive at my house you will find a wild mess of flowers. You see, I love flowers so much I have trouble thinning them out--ever. I simply can’t kill them. This is problematic. A true gardener will religiously deadhead their flowers, even before the bloom is spent in order to create a better show next week.

Every year I vow, next season will be different. I will finally get rid of the wild flowers that have grown in my flower beds for seven years now. The first year I threw the seeds down because my checkbook had no money left for buying plants. We had bought topsoil and dug flowerbeds, put in sprinklers and had no money left for the actual plants. So a three dollar bottle of wild flowers became my “garden.” The new rich soil produced wild flowers taller then my neighbor’s six foot fence. The color was brilliant and my boys built a fort in the “wild flower jungle.” The blooms lasted until the weight of the snow killed them. It was too late to clean the beds until spring. The heap of wildness became the lattice to hold the Christmas lights that Christmas and when spring came I was busy in school and didn’t get the old flowers out quite soon enough. When I finally had a warm day, in March,I began to pull the long stalks of deadness from the earth, only to discover a tiny rainforest hiding underneath the death. I halted my cleanup efforts. How can I kill the baby alysum? Certainly the harsh winds would kill the tender starts that had grown in the hot house the old plants created. So my wildness sat a little longer. The plethora of daffodils and tulips pushed through the debris and I had the ugliest bed, and prettiest flowers on the block.

Somehow I seem to re-create this happy chaos each year.

It is a bit messy, but I love it. Somehow the wild, cheerful flowerbeds match my home. Mom of six, my house is always just shy of pandemonium. It is a controlled chaos, and somehow, my flowerbeds seem to tell the world of the glorious mess of a life that lives inside.

 Every spring I walk the beds seeing the great grandchildren of my first garden’s flowers and every year I postpone killing them. I envision my flower beds planted in a formal rose garden. Something to rival the White House’s rose garden, or perhaps Mt. Vernon’s yards--but spring comes and I can’t bring myself to kill the small life pushing through.

Every fall I promise myself I will clean out the beds and start fresh next year, but how can I pull flowers out in full bloom? Somehow, I want a different garden, but can I kill other plants to do it?

This self-recognition has made me realize I must be a tree hugger after all. I have never considered myself as such, but who else values her wild flowers so much, that they live at the expense of her vegetable garden. Cucumber’s are forced to climb cosmos branches to finally see the sun. Once I even found a tomato plant hiding inside the cosmos near the end of fall. There was more than a hundred tomotoes climbing throughout that wild bed and I didn’t even know they were there. How can you not even know they are there? I hung the plant up in my garage before the first frost and I ate tomotoes from the garage for the next two months.

Any seeing my yard would be unimpressed with the mess. The daffodils and dandelions are both in bloom, but nestled under he mess of wild growth re-emerging, the strawberry plants are beginning to bloom and the blackberries look promising. So, I will keep one more season, this living metaphor for my life.

Forgive Me

So I don't know who wrote this post and I know it appeals to everything that is wrong with me.  But for others who struggle with social anxiety or ever have--enjoy this blog.  Just click on the title "Forgive me" and enjoy "Social Entrapment."

Conference Week End

I am now beginning my long six month wait for the next LDS General Conference.  It is my favorite time of the year. My family travels from all parts of the United States to stay at "the grandma house". Originally, the house was owned by my grandparents.  My great-grandpa lived there too after his wife passed away.  Every summer I would go and spend time with them.  I learned to love gardening at the house while helping my grandma plant petunias and I learned to trust God sitting at her beautiful dining room table discussing the things that mattered most to her and her father.  The crystal chandelier caught not only light from the bulb, but the faith of my progenitors and the refractions hung in the air strengthening my resolve to live the life God intended for me.  My grandparents have been gone for ages now--only my oldest kids ever met them; but as the family all surrounds that same table we all are strengthened and enlightened. 

The LDS conference includes eight hours of general meetings where the entire membership of our faith can listen to our leaders. We get to sit and listen to a prophet of God.  It is wonderful; the tabernacle choir always adds such faith and beauty to the meetings.  Every year someone gives a talk that seems specifically for me.  I sit with my family all around me--my mother, my sister, my children, my spouse.  Often the cousins break into groups according to their age with the youngest always congregating in the basement where their noise will not bother the rest trying to listen.  We listen intently and then discuss and debate about what we heard and what we will change in our lives.  Every year someone in the family shares about how God is blessing them.  We also always end up talking about how amazing it is how much we all love each other.  We say no one can every understand how important cousins are; actually, I often slip and call my cousins "my niece" because that feels closer to the relationship I have with them.  I am in awe of those beautiful women that I have watched grow up.  They are so intelligent, beautiful, and capable.

We eat the best food--especially the rolls--we laugh, we cry, we hug, and we leave ready to stand firm in our faith.

Now everyone has headed home.  The humdrum of everyday life must begin again--but the joy and laughter continues to refract in the crystal chandelier hanging in my own dining room and the determination I first felt as a child at my grandma's table continues to grow. I hope my children will remember not only the crystal shimmering above our table, but the warmth of  faith we have shared while eating under its magical light.

Hamlet's Blackberry

If any of you are like me, this will resonate with you.  Thanking Roman philosophy to help us understand how to deal with our own technology.  Now, how to best incorporate this into the family.  Any ideas?

My new favorite site: 750 words (click this title if you want to go to the site)

Any who know me, know that I intend to write three pages long-hand every morning before the kids are up and the whirlwind of the day begins.  Any who know me really well, know that I actually only accomplish this when I have a writing deadline looming.

Thankfully, I started reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield the same week my sister found the delightful site entitled "750 Words." Pressfield believes we all resist doing anything that is good for our soul's evolution.  He even says this rule is so consistent that "we can use this resistance like a compass.  We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others" (12).

I determined to do no writing--finally--no matter what.

I was thinking about this concept when my sister told me of the site--meant to inspire writers and creative souls to write their three pages on the site and the site will reward you with badges and congratulations when you achieve your goal.  No one is actually reading what you write and yet, I find myself excited everyday to open the clean blue page (I hate white pages) and begin.  I feel I have accomplished something when the little bubbles congratulates me for writing my 750 words and it continues to keep track of how many words I have actually written. After years of trying to write everyday, I am finally actually doing it.  If any of you have ever tried to follow The Artist's Way and write everyday I hope you will check out the site.

Where You Can Find Me

It is lacrosse season again and so you will find me sitting on the sidelines screaming my guts out and watching J. Is there anything better than this?

Pinewood Derby!

Tom was happy to have won the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby Saturday.

Will was happy to win the complimentary Pinewood Derby.

Heck, Will was just happy to have a car to race. 

After the race he turned to me, made that expression and squealed, "Mom, I did seriously well."  

Happy Birthday

Well March 11 came and went and I never did see the new Jane Eyre. Friday morning I said good-bye to my Korean friend who spent a week with me for the first time in twenty-five years.  My heart was happy, but my head hurt from trying to dig into its depths to find those Korean words that use to fill my mind.  I climbed back into bed as the sun came up and at lunchtime, my children brought me breakfast in bed. 

I would have needed to travel to California or NY to see Jane Eyre, but it didn't matter. I was perfectly content to be surrounded by my children and husband.  The evening ended with me being certain that no one could be more content.  Maybe next year I can buy the DVD for my birthday and watch it with all my children snuggled with me on the giant couch.

Jane Eyre - Official Trailer

This opens on MY BIRTHDAY I will be going in celebration. Hope you can join me!

Why I Homeschool

Today T- said to me, "Mom, do you remember the boy I was in third grade?"

I hesitated to comment not knowing where he was going.


"Yes," I noncommitedly replied.

"I am so proud of the boy I am now. I have learned so much about so many things."

My seventh grader Paul (who has been homeschooling for a month now) agreed and added,
"Thanks mom."

My Kindergartener is Doomed

My dentist, not wanting to scare my youngest with all of his technology, took time to show W his "glasses."  You know those dentist microscopes they wear on their eyes. 
The dentist said, "Do you want to see my funny glasses?" 
W's response, "They are not funny, they are lovely!"
Later upon seeing the before mentioned eyewear on the dentist's face he changed his mind. . .
"Actually, they are quite silly." 

How will an undersized boy ever survive grade school saying words like "lovely," and "actually."  I have doomed him.  My new resolve is to never tell him his painting is "lovely" again and I have been practicing words like "AWESOME," in the mirror to try to make them sound believable. What other words should a kindergartener know?  I am looking for suggestions.

Why I love my Sisters

Who else can you talk to on the phone until 3 am because you love, love, love a class you are taking about the Bible from Steven Walker only to find at 7 am she sent you this:
http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/bree-tanner-day-twilight-news-site-interviews-byu-professor-steve-walker-and-spotlight-author-john-granger-about-why-twilight-works/

Thanks Sis!

Romantic Movies: Persuasion and North and South

Recently two different dear friends posted about the 2007 adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion and their posts got me thinking that perhaps you--dear friends-- may not have discovered North and South, a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. Some have claimed the Persuasion movie has the worst-ever kiss and perhaps it is true. But North and South may possibly the best cinema kiss and for the new year I thought I should share. Enjoy.