Conference Center and more

I peeked in Sarah's room a few weeks ago and found this going on.  She already had her shirt on and was concentrating on getting her pants on.  My baby is almost invisible and this little girl is taking her place!  She spent 3 days potty training a couple of weeks ago.  We passed on her diapers and her size 2 clothes (minus the pants, since we are a short family).  We were so proud of her for hitting that milestone!  NO MORE DIAPERS!  :) 

Yes, she is royalty around here.  It may be too late to convince her otherwise!

We made a spontaneous day trip to Salt Lake City on Friday, 13 April.  Our focus was on the downtown area, with the Conference Center top priority.

We parked under the new City Creek Center shopping monster.  They have really fancied it up in there.  The ceiling retracts, the ends are open, and there is a creek with fish running through it.  The kids loved the fish.

There was a fountain below that some kids were playing in.  We had fun watching them and were grateful that it wasn't us that were getting wet on that chilly April afternoon!

The mall was neat, but it was crowded and the last thing I wanted to do was step inside a store.  Maybe it was because I had six kids with me.  Maybe it was because the stores looked expensive.  Either way, NOT wanting to shop is a bad vibe for a mall!

On our way through Temple Square, we stopped for a group shot in front of the flowers.  Too bad I have so many kids that we can't even see the flowers!  ;)

We happened on a day that they had the organ pipes and background lit up.  This might be one of my favorite pictures!

It was a beautiful day to be up on the roof and see Spring in the valley.

Three days after our visit, the Conference Center had a small fire in a maintenance area and thousands of gallons of water were dumped on some of seats and equipment in the auditorium...right where we had been standing.  I was sorry to hear that...and glad we'd gone before - not after!

After the Conference Center we walked to the Church Office Building.  We admired a gigantic painting of Christ with his apostles, then took a 22-second elevator ride to the 26th floor.  We gazed out over the valley from two observation decks.  The kids remarked more than once that it seemed like they were looking at a map!

The kids got several compliments on their good behavior.  That is usually helpful in keeping their "good" behavior up for a little longer. 

We admired more Spring flowers.

We wrenched our necks looking to the top of the building we'd just come down from!

We were getting hungry by now, but the only thing close at the time was the Lion House Pantry.  We are just humble country folks from Idaho, not fancy, rich Utah people.  The cheapest thing they had on the menu was soup in a bread bowl for $10.  We walked out.  We bolstered the kids, promising them food soon and then stepped inside the Beehive House for one last tour of the day.

I see this type of decorating and think opulence.  I wonder what they thought of it?

It sure was and is a handsome building.


By the time the tour ended (which no longer ends with them giving out a piece of nasty horehound candy), the kids were starved.  We herded our pack of children through the masses to the food court in the new mall and fed them hamburgers and chicken nuggets.  We got a lot of looks from surrounding patrons.  Haven't they seen a large family before?  This IS Utah, after all!

We headed for home, with a Redbox movie in the player.  It was a nice trip and much needed family time.

Holidays Gone By

I have a bit of catching up to do...wouldn't you say? I'll dedicate this post to holidays, specifically the most recent three that have passed. I wasn't feeling very festive about St. Patrick's Day this year.  The fact that it landed on a Saturday had much to do with my diminished zeal. 

I started to find t-shirts to decorate for the kids, but if they weren't going to wear them to school, what was the point? The kids reminded me of a tradition I didn't know we had...that of making shamrocks from bread stick dough.  I picked up some cans of dough from the grocery store and found a very old container of green sugar.  See?  Everyone was happy enough!


Bread stick Shamrocks

The kids were pretty disappointed that the leprechauns never pulled their expected pranks this year.  I guess those little green trouble makers were too busy being mischievous in other homes to bother with ours.  Or they were just too tired to care and went to bed.  You can decide what you think really happened.

April Fool's Day came next to our home.  It was a little more of the same holiday apathy that nearly killed this celebration as well.  Plus, it's hard to get really naughty on Sunday...it just didn't feel right.

We did switch the kids' blankets after they'd fallen asleep.  Daniel nearly ruined the whole thing when he woke up before we went to bed to mention that his blanket was missing and he didn't like the one he had.  Party Pooper!  The kids were pretty confused when they woke up.  They had forgotten about April Fool's Day.

We also tried to "get" them by putting some lemon extract on their toothbrushes.  In fear of over-doing it, I didn't put enough on.  They didn't even notice, but knew something was up because Chad asked them if they'd noticed anything when they brushed their teeth.

I snuck up before bedtime and made sure they'd notice the second time.  They were all probably wondering why we were suddenly so bossy about them brushing their teeth!  (See?  We're not perfect parents; we willingly avoid the toothbrush fight sometimes.)

The most recent holiday to celebrate was Easter!  I bought 5 dz eggs to color.

We ended up with quite a colorful assortment of eggs.  Chad and I got a little silly near the end of the decorating.  Can you find a watermelon, football and strawberry?

A not-so-funny story happened while I boiling eggs.  If you don't already know the details, I won't bore you with them now.  But I have to show you the eggs we colored for the kind persons who delivered additional eggs to give us more to color again.  I let them know that these eggs were from our chickens and were NOT boiled.  Can you imagine what an unpleasant surprise that would be?  I thought the brown eggs looked kind of neat in a "natural" sort of way.

The egg coloring was in the morning and the egg hunt was that afternoon.  We had a little Easter Bunny hide the eggs.  This was not the bunny, but I think she looks qualified for the job!

The Easter baskets were handed out, the contents examined, and the hunt began.

The nice thing about a big yard, is that there are endless hiding places.

Some of them were camouflaged...

...some of them were a little easier to find.

Everyone had a chance to fill their baskets with eggs because we had 102 eggs hidden.  At the end of the hunt we were short 6 eggs.  We kept going back out.  The last two were a little tricky, but we felt silly when we finally found them.  :)

Stripes could smell some of the eggs better than others because of the large cracks a few of them had. She would have had a snack if we'd let her!

Because of an idea I'd seen on Pinterest, we filled some plastic eggs with glow sticks and got the kids out of bed for one last hunt.  They were a little confused at first, but it was fun to see a bright color shining out of a dark corner.  Some of the glow sticks didn't light up very well and some of the eggs had to be taped shut, but it was still a lot of fun.  I took this picture with a night feature on the camera.

A little while back we started celebrating the fun part of Easter on Saturday and left Sunday for church and lessons centered on the Easter Story.  I made matching skirts for the girls and we snapped a few pictures before church.  It was a little bit of a challenge to avoid the ugliest parts of the yard since nothing was really blooming yet!

We enjoyed some nearly perfect Easter weather this year, including walking home for the last stretch of road.  Ahh...country living!

Joseph's Cover of Many Colors

Joseph advanced to a twin mattress on Monday.  In our family that earns you a mom-made blanket to fit the bed.  This has got Joseph all a flutter!

We went through my bins of fabric and chose the brightest colors we could find.  I cut out 48 12.5" squares of fabric.  He'll need sunglasses just to fall asleep at night!

Wow.  I don't even know how I am going to make sense of it all.  Anyone want to help me tie it next week?  :)

I Don't Care...so much

I finally went to see a therapist tonight.  I didn't want to go.  I couldn't imagine what he would tell me that would really help.

He told me I am "hyper-sensitive."  I am supposed to expect less, not think about things so much and not care so much.  That is really all I got out of it.  I don't expect I will go back for more...I am smart enough to get that message.

So forgive me if I don't seem to care.  It's the "doctor's recommendation."  I don't expect my family to change and don't care if they keep right on being who they are.  See?   I feel happier already.

Courtesy in diapers

It is a beautiful day in Eastern Idaho! It's a little breezy, but that is something we expect and notice when we don't feel it more than when we do. I had an errand to run this morning and decided to take advantage of having everyone dressed and out the door on such a great day.

We hit a couple of places, grabbed some burgers at Burger King and drove to a park. The temperature was near perfect! As we drove into the parking lot, Joseph expressed some concern over the amount of cars and people there. I think we have passed on our dislike of crowds to our children...at least to Joseph. (When I took him to the dealership last week to get the snow tires off the van, he voiced a strong opinion about the crowd that seemed to be there. I had to let him know that most of the cars in the parking lot were for sale and it didn't mean that there was a lot of people inside.)

One of my biggest kinds of crowds I try to avoid is the kind geared to kids. We have not attended the community Easter Egg hunts for 2 or 3 years because it means there will be a lot kids. Specifically, there will be a lot of kids misbehaving while their parents are happy to ignore it all. I also don't go anywhere that is offering free food. Why are people so rude when free food is the focus? I don't mean to say that I don't like to celebrate, I just don't like watching my kids get taken advantage of while they mind their manners.

So today, when we pulled into the parking lot and Joseph said something about the number of people there, I assured him that it wasn't too many people. We found a nice spot for our blanket and enjoyed our lunch. As we were cleaning up, we enjoyed the show a 3-year-old boy gave us as he dropped his drawers and relieved himself right then and there. Joseph was quite shocked and we laughed about it. I don't think that little boy's mommy ever knew a thing. I was thankful that Joseph was shocked...I hope that means he won't try it himself sometime!

Inevitably, if we are at a park, we are going to run into rude kids. I'm sure that my own kids have been rude, too. But they don't get off easy if I hear about it or witness it myself.

Today, I was standing with Sarah as we waited for Joseph to climb a "contraption" in front of us. Just as Sarah was starting to climb up after him, a couple of little girls crowded her out and she retreated. The girls were young...probably around Sarah's age or a bit older. They were taller, but didn't speak as well, so it was hard to tell. I wasn't so irritated at their behavior as much as I was with the woman that was there with them. (I think it was a grandma.) She said sorry "if they got in the way" to me, but didn't stop anything.

I was thinking, "Lady, you ARE going to be sorry if you don't start teaching these kids from the moment they act." NONE of my kids would have ever done that in that situation. Sometimes I want to tell my kids to go ahead and push back just so they won't keep getting the short end of things. But I know it's a better lesson for them to know how it feels to be trampled a bit, if it will give them perspective on how others feel to be mistreated.

There were a couple of other times I spoke up when a few different kids needed correction but had no one around that seemed to belong to them. It's almost comical to see the look on kids' faces when someone intervenes in their fun. But really, it's bad form to take time to take off your socks and shoes in preparation to go UP the slide when there is a line waiting to come DOWN. And it's never good to hurry up the line by pushing the kids before you...especially at the top of a slide.

I guess that was a long disclosure about one of my pet peeves. An unrelated pet peeve is news/weathercasters repeatedly using a favorite word or phrase. (I was just listening to a news broadcast.) You really shouldn't use the word "now" to start your sentence unless you are referring to an actual moment in time. It really starts to seem redundant after the 3rd time in one show.

Boiling eggs to make popcorn

Many of you already know my rather stellar moment I had in the kitchen on Friday. I must save the memory for the generations.

It's become necessary to buy a large quantity of eggs each Spring for coloring. With six kids and two adults that still think they are kids, a couple dozen eggs just doesn't seem to satisfy our creative spirits. So I buy the big package of 5 dozen.

I don't know about any of you, but I don't have the resources to boil that many eggs at once, so I was doing it in two shifts. The first half of the eggs boiled while I made and served lunch to Joseph and Sarah. I could see and hear them and never strayed too far from the kitchen.

The second half of the eggs was not so well guarded as I had put the kids down for naps and went to the computer to start something while I waited for the water to boil.

Then the phone rang. I talked for a while. When the phone call was done, I went back to focusing on my computer task. Eventually, I heard occasional banging noises coming from the kitchen (you know where this is going). I wondered if Joseph was now up from his nap and getting into something...or it could be the cat. I wasn't curious enough to check right away...I waited until a good stopping point on the computer.

As I walked toward the kitchen, I heard another bang. And then I smelled. And then I remembered! I grabbed the smaller pan off the burner just as another egg exploded in the bigger pan, sending white and yellow bits of egg into the room. I reached to turn off burners and move pans and then stood in chagrin. I can't believe I forgot about the eggs! Two pans of 27 eggs boiled completely dry and kept right on cooking while I prepared pictures for the Relief Society blog.

Here is what they looked like as I combined the carnage.


Here are the pans.


I soaked them in some undiluted Melaleuca cleaner and then scrubbed with a copper scrubbie. One pan looks no worse for wear. One pan was still a bit stained, but still much improved.


I thought I was the biggest idiot on the planet, but I have since learned this has happened to several other people. So I am either normal or just in good company. Either way, I am sure I will never forget about my eggs again!

We had a very kind neighbor who dropped off two dozen eggs for us on Saturday morning, along with a dye kit, treats, a scripture/Easter Egg activity, and a story. I love nice people who like to do kind things for my children.

By the way, my kids took the news of the lost eggs well and didn't complain when they only got 4 eggs each to color. But they were really happy to get to do three more.

Signs of Spring

New babies, flowers buds, laundry on the line, kids on the hammock: all signs of Spring.

I think this is the earliest I've ever been able to hang laundry to dry.  It snowed yesterday and it will probably be snowing next month.  But today it is Spring!

Reflections on Conference

I just spent two days and 8 hours listening to General Conference talks. As encouraging and uplifting as it all can be, that is still a long time to sit. Even just listening while busy with something else can be a little much.

This year, I gave the 3 oldest kids a small notebook to keep notes in. I felt it was important to set the example, so I took notes in a book of my own.

Growing up, my experiences of General Conference were not fond ones. Sometimes your memory fades and you only remember the good parts. My memory seems broken and I can only remember the bad. When we were really young, General Conference (and Stake Conference) were just Sundays that we didn't have to go to church. I think it was about Jr. High school that my mom started requiring General Conference.

Every radio would be playing loudly and the TV would be on. It was two days of voices droning on with musical breaks throughout. (I think I fell asleep a lot.) If a talk came on that was good lecture material, the lecture came...right during the talk. I don't remember anyone ever mentioning how much they looked forward to the conference or how much they loved the talks. Nothing was mentioned about any of it again for 6 more months...before it started all over.

As I got older I made the choice to watch Conference, mostly out of doing what was expected of me. Eventually, it became something I could enjoy, be inspired by and think about afterward. A little while longer and I even started to look forward to it! *gasp* But to be honest, there is still a little part of me, deep inside, that murmurs at the thought of General Conference.

We are now parents and trying to raise a family that looks forward to words from the prophets and treasures their teachings. We have tried to make the weekend important, but not formidable. We have offered bingo sheets, check lists, eaten snacks, laughed at the stories and let the children leave the room when they've had enough. They always come back before too long. We've used the talks for FHE lessons and talked about what Chad learns at the Priesthood Session while we eat scones as a family. There are still many missed opportunities to use General Conference to strengthen our family, but we will take it a little at a time.

My favorite part of conference are the stories that bring the messages to life and help me see the same type of experiences in my own life. I love talks that encourage me in the things that seem so hard to perfect. Anything that gives me parenting advice is good, too.

Then there are the talks that sting a little too much. I have some pretty big issues I seem determined to suffer with. This morning, the first talk right off was a hard pill to swallow. President Uchtdorf spoke of repairing broken relationships and being merciful, allowing the Love of God to govern us. He said, that the contentions and dark feelings in families can be solved in a two word sermon: "Stop it." I squirmed emotionally from the beginning to the end. Obviously, I have a HUGE problem with this right now. Sadly, the worse my family relationships feel to me, the more I project the hurt onto others around me, judging and expressing my disapproval over their lives. (But I do it through gossip to close friends. I do have some tact even if it doesn't sound like it.)

So now I am back to struggling with my situation. Do I just forgive, forget and start all over? Even with all that has been said today, I still feel like there is real reason to be wary. The fact that my family interacts with each other and not with me hurts a lot. When I try to share feelings with a mother who can't see past her own issues, I feel insignificant. When my sisters take a trip together but don't have time to see me, I can't pretend that it doesn't matter. When my siblings plan a big birthday party for my mom and never even let me know, it makes me feel like an outsider. (And even the neighbors got invited to that one!) Most difficult is that if I try to explain my feelings, my family shuts me off and tells me that I am the one with the chip on my shoulder and am creating a problem where there isn't one. ARGH! Even if my feelings aren't soundly based, don't they want to help me talk them out and resolve anything?

Do I prejudge them and assume their reactions to me? Yes, definitely. That is something I can admit is my responsibility to correct. What I struggle with is this - is being a doormat the same as being forgiving? Am I supposed to let my sister treat me in a way identical to the very reason she shunned me? If the answer to that is yes, how the heck do I handle feeling like garbage as I pretend to have a healthy relationship with someone that I would never associate with if birth hadn't thrown us into the same family?

President Uchtdorf said that refusing to forgive is a grievous sin. I feel like I have tried sufficiently to ask forgiveness from my sister, but was refused it and I eventually gave up. The grudge I am holding against her is that I feel like she owes me an apology (for her earlier treatment of me and my family and for not forgiving me). Do the two grudges negate each other? It seems like they do.

Now, let me be clear on something. If the current relationship I have with my family could be repaired, I would be able to let go of all the bad memories that keep feeding my hurt. I really do believe that. I have a whole list of offenses that I could rattle off, but I'm keeping quiet on them, hoping to make it easier to shed them. I want to be able to call and chat with my mom and sisters about life's struggles and triumphs. My struggle is that there are problems that keep recurring. It is the fresh wounds that will not heal, not the old ones. (And, of course, that no one appears to care that I am hurting. That is a pretty crappy family, if I am allowed to be so honest.)

In a short list, I feel hurt, lonely, unimportant and cast off. So does President Uchtdorf hold me responsible in this situation? I don't know if I am up for the challenge. If I work to be obedient to his message and fail, I really will feel like a failure, once and for all.