After dropping Jacob off at the bus and the 2 littles off at babysitting co-op, I was driving south on the freeway this morning while talking to my sister on the phone. I mentioned that I was in the carpool lane, going over the speed limit, and there was this annoying, very large truck dangerously close to me.
“You’re in the carpool lane?” asked my sister.
“Yeah, and I’m going a bit over the speed limit and the guy is STILL on my tail.”
“But you’re in the carpool lane? Alone?”
“OH MY GOSH! I totally am!”
And then I illegally crossed the double white line to get out of the carpool lane pronto. I wonder which ticket would have cost me more.
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We’ve adopted the habit of family prayer in the morning and in the evening. Every day. We do scripture study together every night, as well. This is something I have wanted to do for such a long time, but has only become routine this year. And I love it. Our family functions better, our days run more smoothly, and the feeling in our house is totally different when we keep up these habits.
After all the sick, and people going to bed at different times and maybe not getting out of bed at all, we had gotten out of the habit of prayers and scriptures together for about a week and a half. And there was a huge difference in our house. My patience was shorter, the boys seemed to be unkind to each other more frequently, I didn’t feel as organized. It wasn’t a huge, horrible difference, but enough of a difference to make me feel scattered and out of whack.
We’re back to our prayer and scripture routines, again, and what a difference. My anxiety is a bit lessened, the kids seem kinder to each other (most of the time), we laugh more and smile easier, and things just feel like they work better.
In Relief Society today we were talking about families, and the discussion centered mostly on the husband-wife relationship. We talked about ways we can strengthen that bond. One lady said something about how we need to be more considerate of our husbands feelings.
The first thing I thought was not “what? husbands have feelings?” Nope. I didn’t think that, even though my husband is not at all sensitive or sentimental.
I thought, again, oh boy how I screwed up yesterday.
See, yesterday, my husband gave me the gift of time. I thought I would have a couple of hours alone, and it turned into EIGHT. Eight blissful and alone hours. I drove away from home and spent a lot of time at Hobby Lobby by myself (and what everyone says about Hobby Lobby being heaven on earth? I now believe it). And I ran an errand, and I came home and had HOURS to eat lunch without feeding someone else first, do a creative project without changing a diaper in the middle or having someone throw all my supplies around mid-project, watch the news! (a guilty pleasure since I don’t watch news with the kids around anymore – when they started asking about murders and such, it was clearly time to turn OFF the news). I got to read, talk on the phone without being interrupted (!), and just plain RELAX. It was heaven. I had been worried I’d miss the children, and all day, I wondered when I’d start to long for them.
It didn’t happen until 6 pm when I heard the garage door go up. I got all giddy like I did when Nathan used to pick me up when we had barely started dating. They were home! My husband and my children! Yeah!
I ran out to the garage to meet them, said hello, and then looked at Nathan, holding Ainsley in his arms.
“Orange and purple? You put her in an orange shirt and purple pants?”
He looked at me with “a look” that told me I had screwed up. Big.
And I probably hadn’t even needed the look. It was dumb. And it was not a way to be considerate of my husbands feelings. He had just given me 8 glorious hours alone! I honestly can not remember when the last time that happened, but I’m guessing it was at least 2 years ago. He had given me this fabulous gift and I shot him right down because he took our daughter out looking funny.
Was she wearing clothes?
Yep.
Did he remember a jacket in case it got cold?
Yep.
So all her basic needs were met: food, clothing, love?
Yep.
And I still cranked on him for taking Ainsley out in mismatched clothes?
Yep.
Blah. Dumb. Just because my husband isn’t sensitive doesn’t mean he doesn’t have feelings, and I’ve apologized, believe me. So use me as your non-example for the day and go be all considerate of your husband. 
Two Tuesday evenings in a row, I have had people come to my home. Two Tuesday afternoons in a row, a nameless 3 year old of mine has pooped in the family room. This tells me that, one, the $200 carpet cleaner with upholstry attachments we got 2 or so years ago from Costco might be the best investment our family has ever made (sad) and, two, my 3 year old overheard us saying how excited we were that he was “98%” potty trained.
It’s like he was all “can’t spoil their fun and let them forget how much fun it is cleaning up my messes! I’ll let them LIVE for that last 2%”.
Got it, 3 year old. Thanks so much.
So as I was folding 8 loads (seriously) of laundry today (that are still not all the way away), whining in my head because of the sleep I have not been getting at all lately, and trying to decide what treat things to make tonight, anonymous 3 year old was down stairs, not asking for help after using the bathroom. Not asking for help means he didn’t get wiped by himself or anyone else, and then GUESS WHAT happened to the sofa and rug when he went back to watch TV, noode.
Yeah! Just in time for PEOPLE to come over!
Anyway, I finally figured out what to make tonight (bite sized pumpkin pies, chocolate chip cookies, fruit dip with apples, and avocado salsa) and decided one ingredient would make the salsa so much better: MY BLOOD. So I used one of the lids of the cans of tomatoes and sliced a good hole in my finger. Yum. Can’t wait to try that.
You know how people come over to your house and once in awhile try something where they’re all “I totally need that recipe!” This salsa is one of those things. And you know how old grandma ladies a few decades ago would pass on recipes but “accidentally” forget to add the one thing that really made the recipe fabulous? I’m thinking that when people ask for the recipe tonight, I might not tell them about the blood. Not because the addition of blood is unsanitary or disgusting, but because I think it’s the blood that just makes this recipe sing. We’ll just say I’m pulling a “Grandma”.
And so begins one of my favorite months of the year. Even though the colors have turned to brown and the afternoons have become dark, I love Thanksgiving. I love soup and hot chocolate and thinking about being thankful. I like the extra time with my family to play games and read books before bed, and I like curling up with warm blankets and turning the fireplace on.
I’ve been scattered the past few weeks and a few days ago I realized that it’s because my priorities have been forgotten. I’m spending time and energy doing things that don’t really matter, and then feeling guilty when I try to cram the important things in at the last minute. I wish I could get out of this cycle, but what better time to work on straightening up my world and focusing on things that are really important?
I’ve been awake for several hours of every night lately, and as frustrating as it is, and as much as it has thrown the rest of my days out of whack, I actually enjoyed some of that awake time last night (when I wasn’t having mini anxiety attacks about what I’d be too tired to do in the morning) to think and ponder and pray and reflect.
We started our Thankful Tree again on Sunday. It’s one of my favorite traditions our family has added in our few years together. I found a cute way of recording each years tree that we started last year – I’ll show you in a few days.
I sent Jacob to school today with him crying – the first time that’s happened since his first days of preschool. I’m sad and worried about him. Instead of leaving his morning toy mess for him to tackle when he gets home, I’m going to clean up after my cowboys right now so we can have some extra time to cuddle and talk. After all, they did do the dishes for me the other day.
See how nice and clean they left them for me?
You might know I’m *so* not a fan of anything Christmas until after Thanksgiving. But I wanted to post this now in case you’re interested in making one, too. The wire hanger was from the last trip to the dry cleaners many moons* ago, the ornaments were from the dollar store, as was the sparkly gold ribbon. $6 or $7 bucks and voila – Merry Christmas. If you want to pick up the supplies, go quick because they lady at the dollar store said they’re going really fast.
I mostly followed these directions from Eddie Ross, except I used a whole lot more hot glue. After I made it on Saturday and took the top picture, Ainsley picked it up and dropped it and 5 or 6 balls fell off. Tonight I hot glued most of the balls together and then added an ugly ribbon that will have to be fixed. But later, because I’m sticking this puppy in a closet until 12:01 am Nov 27.
*Speaking of moons, check out the fun pic my phone took of the Halloween moon. UFOish. Appropriate for the evening.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the words to the hymn More Holiness Give Me this week.
1. More holiness give me,
More strivings within,
More patience in suff’ring,
More sorrow for sin,
More faith in my Savior,
More sense of his care,
More joy in his service,
More purpose in prayer.
2. More gratitude give me,
More trust in the Lord,
More pride in his glory,
More hope in his word,
More tears for his sorrows,
More pain at his grief,
More meekness in trial,
More praise for relief.
3. More purity give me,
More strength to o’ercome,
More freedom from earth-stains,
More longing for home.
More fit for the kingdom,
More used would I be,
More blessed and holy—
More, Savior, like thee.
Text and music: Philip Paul Bliss, 1838–1876
I forgot to take pictures and I’m disappointed. Our swap was so fun, and we missed everyone who canceled at the almost last minute (is The Sick as bad everywhere else as it is here?), but we’re doing it again in January. People brought yummy soups that I am so excited to pull out of the freezer, and we had a lot of fun visiting. I’m going to tell you what we did and what I’d do differently, if you want to plan your own swap. (and you totally should)
The directions were pretty simple: each participant needed to make 6 quarts (24 cups) of soup, and prepackage them in 4 containers that held 6 cups of soup each (people can bring more if they want, everyone will go home with the same amount they brought). Some people brought the Ziploc type tupperwares, and a lot of people used freezer zip loc bags. Either is great. Have them label the containers clearly before coming, and bring enough copies of the recipe for each person who will be there.
After everyone gets there and you’ve all had a chance to eat some snacks and visit, we each went around and told about the soup we brought, then drew numbers to see who got to pick their soups first. We repeated the rotation until everyone took home as much soup as they brought.
What I’d do differently: Some girls suggested a great idea – have everyone bring enough soup for the swap, then extra in a container for everyone to taste before swapping. Genius. Use the mini Dixie cups for tasting. We’ll so do this next time. Also, we had some friends who wanted to come but couldn’t because of sickness, recovery from surgery – whatever. I think next time it would be great to have people bring an extra container of soup, if they can, so we can deliver it to the friends who were sick or recovering or just had a baby or fill in the blank, and couldn’t make it. Call it “Soup Swap and Service” or something. Oh – we had 10 people this week, but last time I think we had 15 or 16. I think 10-20 people works great, but you can do it with only 5!
I’ll be putting up the recipes from this soup swap on my recipe blog. There was nothing that sounded just “fair” – everyone made recipes that I can’t wait to dig into, and there were some soups I didn’t get to take home that I was dying to try (I was #9 of 10 for picking!) that I’ll be making pronto.
My brother came over yesterday and asked Nathan to go fishing with him today, but Nathan said not this time (even though I said it was fine). Nathan said he’d be busy cleaning out the garage.
Cleaning out the garage? My 21 year old brother did not get it. Why would you do that?
Because that’s what we do this time of year. Clean it out from top to bottom. The past 2 weeks I think we (read: Nathan) have caught 10 mice out there. Time to rid the garage of the rest, if they’re not already gone, sweep it from top to bottom, put away the tools and move the car in for the winter. We tackled one garage last week, and today the job will be done.
Other things we need to do very soon to get ready for winter in this cold part of the world: water the trees deeply one more time, put the garden hoses away, turn off the sprinkles and drain the pipes outside, hang the light in the chicken coop, wash the windows and turn the flame on in the fireplace. We need to weed again, rip out the garden, since the plants are shrivled and brown and dead (I should have done that a month ago!), and cover the garden boxes with the black tarp that will keep the dirt in and the weeds out through the winter. We wash and put the cozy blankets in an easy to get to place, stock up on hot chocolate (Stephen’s, of course, in any flavor you can get it), wash the winter coats and snow gear that has been hanging in the basement closet all through the summer and fall, and see who needs new snow boots this year. Oh! Must hang the Christmas lights soon before it’s too cold and snowy up on the rooftop.
There is snow in the forecast for Tuesday – are you ready?
Me: Boys, you can either stay in time out, or you can help me clean up.
Joshua: I help you clean up!
Me: Really?
Joshua: Nope.
You know all those companies out there that come out and restore your home after a flood or other natural disaster? Someone took an icky job, made it into a business, and is making a ton of money. Way to go. On tv a few years ago I saw a show about a guy who started a home clean up company, but usually it’s the police that refer him to you. He comes in and cleans up after crimes or really messy deaths.
New proposal for a business, fresh for the taking, and I’ll even be your first customer:
Home restoration after illness.
Seriously. If you saw my house right now, the words I’d hear would probably be “good glory”. On the table sit last nights dinner dishes, and I think we have not one clean cup or dish in the house. While Nathan and I have laid moaning in bed or on the couch, the kids improved much quicker (thankfully!), which means they got right back to their tornado-creating ways, destroying the house that looked pretty close to “company perfect” on Friday evening. Toys are scattered everywhere. The dry cereal I passed out in bowls this morning got half eaten, and is half on the floor scattered around the house. Three loads of laundry are clean on the couch, one is in the wash, one in the dryer, and probably three more loads of nasty laundry are waiting on the floor by the washing machine.
I think of all the normal clean up, and I think “noooo!” But then add all the clean up I need to do to get this house good and disinfected, and I just want to crawl right back in bed. Boil or throw away toothbrushes, bleach everything within 20 feet of a bathroom. Disinfect all the door handles, light switches, the phone, remote controls. I feel like we won’t be out of quarantine until March.
So, if you want to start a company and come clean us up tomorrow, I’ll pay about anything right now.
