What I Have Been Working On

 

  eye candy

"You have nothing in this world more precious than your children. When you grow old, when your hair turns white and your body grows weary, when you are prone to sit in a rocker and meditate on the things of your life, nothing will be so important as the question of how your children have turned out. It will not be the money you have made. It will not be the cars you have owned. It will not be the large house in which you live. The searing question that will cross your mind again and again will be, How well have my children done?

If the answer is that they have done very well, then your happiness will be complete. If they have done less than well, then no other satisfaction can compensate for your loss." President Gordon B. Hinckley

 Happy Birthday to my Husband today!!!!  He's the best! (quote from one of his favorite movies)

 It seems as though life is going faster and faster everyday.  I have made changes in my schedule to accommodate essentials to help make my life run more smoothly.  It always intrigues me to find such remarkable results with such seemingly small changes.  The key for me always starts with spiritual matters.  If I am not making time to study the scriptures, writing in my journal, and pondering through prayer, my life seems so much more overwhelming.  

I recently wrote about how I had been slacking in this department.  So with a few small course changes, wa-lah,  life runs more smoother, and I feel like I am overall better equipped with accomplishing what my purpose is here on this earth.


I am working on putting together a  "Learning Circle"group for my area, through the Power of Mom's.  Their button is up there to the right.  I am working on becoming a  Learning Circle leader.  I am working on becoming a trainer as well.  They asked me to send in a little video clip of me facilitating.  I pretty much had an internal anxiety attack thinking about doing this.  

Luckily I am married to the worlds greatest trainer.  I mean, he is the Director of Training for the company he works for, so he knows something about the matter.  He is going to help me hone my skills so that I can actually do what I love, effectively.  And that is to help give other Mothers specific tools to help them accomplish their goals to do and be a little better.  I am looking forward to what I will get to learn through the process.  Especially, gaining better skills to help me be a better mother, and wife.  Because at the end of my life I don't want to regret how I raised my children.

A cute little funny:  Yesterday Kady got to go on a field trip with her little pre-school class.  They went to a farm.  When they we learning about the different animals, her teachers were talking about the big momma pig who is pregnant and how she is going to have baby pigs.  Kady, not seeing a daddy pig around inquisitively asked "Where's the husband?" 

Re-Post aaaaannnnnnnd Other thoughts

I was just looking through past posts and came across this one about why mothers need sleep

It helps me feel better about how I have been behaving.  Annnd helps me to laugh at myself instead of getting frustrated that life is not perfect and recognize as mothers and wives our progress should not be measured in any single moment but by the small simple everyday acts of service we render to our families, and ourselves.

Like last week I spent most of my time in time out, because I simply did not feel like yelling at my kids most of their waking hours. 

I should celebrate that instead of saying" I can't believe I was in time out most of the time last week!" 

I should say "I am glad I recognized my inability to cope with constant reminders to particular children and their brain damage  that seemed to be very prevalent last week. 

I could not stand one more "I don't know!" when I asked a child why they were choosing to use their time so poorly.  

I yelped back "What do you mean you don't know?"  I found myself saying in my head "Come on get with the game here.  Put all your marbles back in the jar, tighten all the screws and get back to being you!  please!!"


I would look at the phrases I have all over my house and snap at them as if they were actual humans and tell them they had noooo idea what I was going through so to bug off.  I was on edge.  Lack of sleep was a key factor.  Why, WHY does it have to affects me so much.  It is like a handicap of sorts.  


I found hope from reading through a glorious book by Linda Eyre I had sitting on my book shelf called "I Didn't Plan to Be a Witch and Other Surprises of a Joyful Mother"  This book had my sister and I laughing so hard.  She writes in such a way that makes you realize we all as Mothers go through pretty much the same things and helps put those anxieties of if you are doing enough at bay.  Great read!!!


I am going to go and buy pizza tonight for dinner because I am so sick of cooking.  I know!  Is that possible?  Yes it is.  You have to know when to stop and give yourself a break.  So I am.  Happy weekend!
 

It's that time again

Eliza has been ready to use the potty exclusively for a few months now.  I just didn't prepare myself for it until a couple weeks ago.  What I mean by preparing myself, is that I have to mentally prepare myself for accidents, because they will and do happen.  So 2 1/2 weeks ago off came the diapers and on went the underpants.

For the most part it has been smooth sailing.  It took her about a week to figure out the timing of getting to the toilet in time to poop there.  You would have thought I won the sweepstakes by how excited I got when she got to the toilet all by herself and yelled from it "Momma I poo-poo potty!!!!"  I could have cried I was that happy and excited.

I am so grateful that Sarah over at Clover Lane shared her years of experience in this post    a little more than a year ago.  It was a life saver for me when I potty trained Kady and now Eliza.  Cause in the past with the first 3 children, it was not a pretty sight to watch me potty train the kids.  I nearly went crazy with the thoughts of accidents.  I love how we learn and change and grow.  Anyway, I am off to make lunch and get Lucy to school.

National Entitlement Awareness Day

What if I told you that there was a fool-proof method to becoming the parents you were meant to be.  Would you believe me?  Maybe?  Well it has been my experience in my short years of parenting with my husband that the methods and principles taught in any and all of Richard and Linda Eyre's books provide just that.  And I am sooooooo excited that their newest book "The Entitlement Trap: How To Rescue Your Child with a New Family system of Choosing, Earning and Ownership" is available for pre-ordering now!  HERE is the link to do just that.

AAANNNNDDD if that is not enough

They are doing a Giveaway with a whole lot of wonderfulness!!!!

I had the opportunity last week to hang out with my friend Becky.  (Click her name to go to her blog.  Trust me you won't regret.)  I knew that she had gotten an advanced copy of the Eyre's new book titled "The Entitlement Trap: How to Rescue Your Child with a New Family System of Choosing, Earning, and Ownership"  

So I asked her how her reading was going.  She shared it today on her blog.

I love what Becky wrote about her experience in her reading so far.  She shared what I imagine most of us feel when we realize what we need to be doing better at anything.  Which by the way, she and her husband are AMAZING parents!  Which goes to show that none of us are immune to making improvements in our lives and homes, even if they are fractional.

  

I am very passionate when it comes to families and helping families be the best they can be. So when the Eyre's asked to help spread the word I am more than happy to help.

I hope you take advantage of this opportunity.  Here is one of the reasons they say you need to get this book

"It attacks the biggest parenting problem of our time, and YOU NEED IT even if your kids don’t have an entitlement attitude (because their friends do!)"

 

Happy shopping!!!!!

 

Control Freak!

My Mother-in-law and I were sitting in a Sunday school class several years ago.  The teacher was describing how being a control freak is a form of unrighteous dominion.  My Mother-in-law leans over to me and whispers in a slight sarcastic tone"They make it sound like being a control freak is a bad thing."  We share something in common.  We like to be in control.  Although she seems to know how to do hers in a more dignified manner.  I am still working on that.

Yesterday I started getting our home back in order.  For almost 2 months I had not done any kind of major cleaning.  You know the kind where you get down on your hands and knees and really scrub the crap off of any surface below your waistline.  I love to deep clean.  I feel so empowered and in control.

I paid particular attention to the kitchen floors, baseboard, walls, and under the bar counter where the kids sit.  I had had enough of it looking dingy.  I had focused my energies on making sure I could be there for the kids while they had their summer vacation, that the home had somewhat been neglected.  My thoughts were mostly a "why should I bother" state.  Yes the home would get swept, vacuumed and dishes done nightly, but no real scrubbing was done.  Just the basics. 

I could not belive how unbelievablly distgusting those surfaces had gotten in a relatively short period of time.  I got my empty ice cream bucket, filled it close to 20 times with water and a cleaning solution(clorox's green works love it) and scrubbed my little heart out.  Our baseboards are full of many ridges and so I had to pay special attention to how I cleaned those, if I wanted them to truly look clean. 

I couldn't help but think of how this is so similar to what I do with my own life.  How often have I put off fixing or cleaning up those sins that gunk up the walls of my inner soul?  Although in this particular cicumstance I felt that my hiatus from deep cleaning was justified, how many times though, are there circumstances where I am just being lazy?  My mentality becomes more of putting it off till tomorrow, it will still be there.  Yeah with another layer of sin to clean up too. 

I have a lot to work on.  We all do.  It is part of life.  We will always have things on our to-do lists of life.  I am still figuring out how to make sure what is on my list is what really matters.  Am I prioritizing in the most efficient and effective way to make sure I am accomplishing what really matters most?  How do I not get overwhelmed with all that is required of me? For me it is a constant balancing act.  I think of those big metal scales.  You know those ones where it has two sides.  If you put the same amount of weight on either side the result is perfect balance.  But if you add anything more or less to either side it throws off the balance.

For me spiritually, I have been off balance for quite some time.  Since January.  That's when it seems I had started to neglect doing those simple tasks of studying the scriptures daily and writing in my journal.  I have felt it.  So why am I still not doing anything about it.  Excuses.  I know my life is so much smoother when I incorporate these practices into my life, and yet I am not doing them on a consistent meaningful basis.  So I just need to do it, and get it done.  Repent and do better!

Back to the cleaning.  Here is a not so fun thing about me.  Maybe someone can relate.  Or not. 

I have a problem, and I try so hard not to have it.  After I am done deep cleaning I get easily irritated with my family.  I was even mentally telling myself that it will get messy again, it is just apart of having children.  So don't bite their heads off when they have just spilled their Popsicle juice all over your (you could eat food off of) floor.  I not so nicely remind them to please eat over their plate, because I just spent hours scrubbing the floors so they could be clean.  It is the least they can do, as if they owe me something. I am such a control freak!

You know what is weird to me, is that if Jared is the one who has cleaned floors I don't get upset with our children when minutes after the floors are cleaned they spill something.  Not cool. 

The good news is that typically the day after I have deep cleaned, my control freak ideas subside somewhat, and I go back to be a normal control freak.  Boy do I have a long way to go!

And for your viewing pleasure

This video reminds me that we need to just relax and have fun, even if we look a little silly.  Or should I say especially if we look silly, because heaven knows me doing a jump kick, like Sera does in this video would certainly look down right silly. This was recorded at my sister Kaitlyn and  brother in law Nicks home.  We stopped there on our travels up to Utah.  She made this deliciously homemade ham and cheese stuffed pretzel for dinner.  Nick entertained the girls with their guitar hero games. 
I  love everything about this video. From Emma being so focused in playing the guitar to Sera singing and dancing to Kady dancing briefly with her head before she goes into a state of being in the zone playing her guitar to Eliza walking around with her melted cheese stick from her stuffed pretzle.