Conference Challenges

I am on day 8 without my social media, which has been fine because I often give my social media up for Lent, it is the best 40 day fast you have ever experienced. But, this time I fought it, in reality I fought a lot of the suggestions I was given this last weekend at General Conference.

For anyone who is reading this blog who is not familiar, General Conference is a twice a year gathering for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints where we listen to inspiring messages from our church leaders. It is lovely and I always look forward to it.

But this time, I wasn't feeling it. In fact I was throwing a giant freaking tantrum about what I was hearing.

You see I was having a week, one of those weeks when everything I had been working hard to do went straight down the proverbial toilet. I didn't cook any meals, my running was hit or miss, my house was a disaster, and I had homework in a class I am just not loving. Not to mention three beautiful children who all had a million and a half activities and places they needed to be.

October 1st also fell on a Monday and I felt like it was like the holy trifecta of goal setting days. A good time, I felt, to really kick a few routines I had into high gear and make the most of the end of the year. So when the week ended up a disaster it only made me feel worse about my situation.

Monday the 1st, I ended up at work on what should have been my day off dealing with audits, and then taking money at a big event that night I had no plan of being a part of. But, they had just assumed I would be there and I am way too nice to ever let someone down, especially when they look like they are on the verge of a breakdown. So I put my needs and sanity aside to help someone else, and I paid for it all week.

Fast forward to Saturday night and me sitting in the garage after the women's meeting crying and telling Rob how I can't do it, I can't take on one more thing.

So he did what any good husband would do: he took my hand, led me to our bedroom, gave me my medicine, and tucked me into bed. You Guys, I slept for almost 12 hours. I woke up Sunday morning feeling so good.

That was until I sat down to watch the Sunday sessions of conference. And once again I was not very happy, I ended up sleeping through a lot of it Sunday afternoon, and wondering what in the world was my problem.

I am smart enough to understand resistance, especially when it is something important. I was also aware enough to see that the comments I was making were so far away from how I really feel and who I work so hard to be. So I decided what I needed was a major attitude adjustment and to put my faith to work.

So I made a plan, I started by listening to conference again Monday morning while I was cleaning, determined to find the direction I needed to take. I then went to Deseret Book and bought myself a Book of Mormon journal, which has wide margins for notes, and set my goal to have it read by the end of the year. (7 pages a day)

Samantha and I also got up early Wednesday morning to attend the Temple. We used to do this pretty regularly and had gotten out of the habit, but we are determined to pick it back up again.

And I would love to tell you this week has been amazing, everything has been running smoothly, and my family has been happily singing kumbaya. But guess what, this week has been hard, it has been busy, and last night I was so exhausted I sat in my bed with tears streaming down my face trying to finish reading my 7 pages. I ended up making it through 2 before I turned off my light and tried to convince myself that the 6 hours of sleep ahead of me was just as good as 8 or even 12.

One thing I have learned in all the years I have sought self improvement is this: the minute you begin to cultivate a new habit, or set out to accomplish a goal, the gates of hell will open in your front yard and release a force doing all they can to stop you. And I am sad to think of all the times I have let that force stop me, all the big plans I had to achieve something, and all the times I didn't push through and keep going.

But, I am finally to a point where I can stop and recognize what is going on. I know what it is and I have come to expect it. But, I have also become wise enough to fight back and not let it stop me.

In the last few weeks I have put new habits into place, they have made significant changes in my life, and they are simple. But there was opposition, massive opposition, and I have pushed through. And I am so very grateful I did.

So here's to putting faith in action, pushing through opposition, and creating changes in my life and in our home that will greatly impact all of our futures.

My Garden

I have a dream, I have a dream....cue the tavern full of ruffians singing along...

I started watching a documentary on Netflix called "The Chef's Table". I love food and it has always been a goal of mine to learn how to grow, prepare, and preserve my own food. So when we watched the episode about Dan Barber I was inspired.

(just a warning that he loves the "F Word", not my favorite, so I hated that he was the most inspirational to me)

I love how he is conscientious about how he is growing his food, sustaining the viability of the soil, and growing food for flavor and not for shelf life and size. (the part about seed breeding was extremely fascinating) There is no doubt that food has better flavor when it comes straight from the garden compared to straight from the store. I also loved that he took whatever was in season and cooked recipes with those ingredients, and I was in awe that his restaurant menu changes almost daily  based on what they have an abundance of. This has to take a lot of creativity.

I want so badly to replicate what he does on a small scale for my family and it has started to consume so many of my thoughts and dreams. I want to learn how to grow my own food, live off what we are able to grow, and be creative to cook with what we have from the garden.

I am also looking into having Hunter raise a pig, but that is a different conversation for a different day.

Along with that I was listening to a conference talk, and I don't remember much of it, other than he mentioned his Dad kept bees that would pollinate his peach orchard. Suddenly another layer of fruit trees and bee keeping was added onto my already spiraling out of control dream.

Can you imagine harvesting your own honey?!?! The health benefits of local honey are well documented, and for my boy who's asthma attacks are caused by allergies, it would be really beneficial to help keep them under control.

Not to mention how yummy our honey butter on Sunday rolls would be.

I think Rob is getting worried I have lost my mind, but he is being supportive, he hasn't jumped on the "let's buy the acre behind us and plant an orchard" idea yet, but I am wearing him down.

Rob keeps reminding me to start small, and I reluctantly agree he is right, and thankfully I have my garden this year to get me going, and it is going crazy!! My tomatoes have outgrown their cages and my squash is quickly growing way bigger than we planned and spaced for. Not to mention the cutest little melons that are growing despite my doubts.

We have already pulled 4 cucumbers off the plant and some delicious zucchini and crook neck squash. I am loving every minute of it and we all love going out to see if there is anything new to pick.

Right now the garden is down in our pit, our plan was to finish it this summer, but that plan was put on hold when Rob had his stroke, so it became the perfect garden spot close to the water source.

The weather this last week has been beautiful, we are loving every minute of it, so Rob has been back out on the tractor getting my permanent spot all ready for next year. Our goal is to have it all prepped and fruit trees in this fall, seriously I am so excited!!

It doesn't look like much more than dirt and weeds but I can see the fruit trees now. There will also be rows of raspberries and blackberries, and beautiful strawberry boxes adding to what I am already growing this year.

I am beyond excited and can't wait to see what this beautiful spot looks like this fall and one year from now.

Summer Goals and Chore Charts

This was the first week of Summer freedom, at least that is what it felt like to me, technically the kids have been out of school for almost three weeks, but I have spent the majority of that time jumping through hoops trying to get our lot in place.

We don't have many plans for the summer, we are trying to save as much money as possible so we are keeping everything pretty simple. Trips to the library, different splash pads, trying out some new treat recipes, a few craft projects, and maybe a couple trips to the pool.

One thing I wanted to do was have the kids make summer goals we could work on when kids were "bored". We all picked out three goals, wrote them on posters, and then decorated the posters for Family Home Evening.

Samantha couldn't narrow it down to just three so she ended up with four, love my little over achiever.

I also knew we needed an update on our chore system so our house would not look like a war zone all Summer.

Dirty House = VERY Cranky Mom.

I found a template online awhile ago that I had downloaded and then filled in what I wanted each line to be. My Mom let me print them out on her nice printer and use her laminator while we were in St. George so they could be marked, erased, and then reused.*

I am pretty sure nice printer and laminator jumped to the top of my wish list that day.

I wrote in a few extra things to help them remember that on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday they need to vacuum their room and also take a shower. Dishes need to be rinsed and loaded after breakfast and lunch, and a reminder that teeth need to be brushed, and prayers said in the morning and at night.

Everyday the kids also have a "Pet Responsibility", "Room Responsibility", and "Dinner Responsibility".** Each day it changes so that is where the "A", "B" and "C" come in.

Let me just tell you now, A is everyone's least favorite day.

Everything has magnets on the back so it can be moved around and so far so good, unless you count Hannah trying to claim on her "A" day that she doesn't know what it says.

Now I just need to find a way to regulate screen time and we will be golden.



*I don't remember where I downloaded the chore chart I used from, but I pinned this one and it is similiar.
**I am a horrible speller, and without spell check things get spelled very wrong, and for the life of me I thought this was spelled correctly. Too late to fix it now.

Dear Internets,

Let's have a chat about January, shall we.

January has not been my favorite month of the year, it has been a challenge, and I feel like I have failed miserably. I started out the month with such hope for the new year, and then reality smacked me in the face HARD!!

The weather in January has been miserable, and the air has been NASTY!! I was walking with Hannah to the bus stop on Monday and the temperature was 34 degrees. She said "Mom, it is actually warm today", how sad is that. Below 10 degree temps and grey nasty skies are the worst, and I am done with them.

January was also the attack of the nasty virus that lasted FOREVER. I was so thankful to finally get that crap out of our house. Now if I could just start feeling better I would be grateful. I am walking around with a stuffed up head, and when it is not stuffed I am nauseous, lovely right. It is no fun to feel like junk, it is hard to have any motivation  and I am tired of it. Thankfully the kids were very pleasant while they endured the never ending fever and cough. There was no fighting, and they played together very well despite feeling like junk.

And then Rob went to Paris, and when you have dreamed of visiting Paris your entire life and you realize you may have missed your chance because of sick kids and not having a passport, it has the ability to make you cranky.

I also may have fallen flat on my face with my goals, some I did better than others, but it wasn't a great month. I promised myself I would go easy on myself because life happens, but I had huge hopes for this month and I feel frustrated.

So I am looking forward to putting this entire month behind me, it can only go up from here. And please tell me yes it can, because I don't think I can handle the answer being NO it is only going to get worse.

Passions

We have been spending a lot of time at the ball fields this summer between T-ball, Rob's Softball, and Samantha's softball games. This is the first year Samantha is playing normal softball and she has struggled with hitting, something she has always been good at in the past.

She is intimidated with the girls pitching to her this year instead of coaches in years past. We have gone to the batting clinics on Saturdays and she does great, we have also visited the batting cages and she hits just fine, but when she gets up to bat in a game she freezes up.

Tuesday night after the game I was talking to her and telling her she just needed to swing, it would be so much better to strike out swinging than just standing there and letting them go by. I was trying to motivate her and encourage her to try when she informed me:

"Mom it is just softball, it doesn't matter."

I was floored, and told her if it didn't matter than I wouldn't be paying for it next year, which made her very upset. She loves the game and I know she doesn't like that she isn't hitting, but it is frustrating that she won't push herself over her fears.

I asked Rob this morning on our usual drive to work how I could spark a passion in her, how could I teach her that working hard for something is a good thing, and how we could get her over this fear.

There was something about it that was bugging me and the more I thought about it I realized I was the exact same way.

In school things generally came easy for me, I could catch on pretty quickly and if I didn't then no big deal. I always got good grades but I know if I would have pushed myself I could have had straight A's.

I worked hard when it came to drill team, but even that I found came pretty easy, again if I would have pushed myself a little bit more I might have even danced in college.

The more I thought the more I realized I needed to be the example, I needed to push myself more, practice so I would improve, and continue to learn so she will have the example to follow.

I thought about the areas I wanted to improve in, my passions I wanted to develop.

1. Photography - I have gone back and forth on this thinking I would become a professional and then deciding against it. I don't want to be a professional now because I want to focus my energy on my family, but I want to develop this passion of mine into something great for me. I want to capture the wonderful memories of my children and all the fun we had. I have a few favorite Mommy Photographers who do just that and I want to be just like them.

2. Blogging - I have had a few different blogs and I get frustrated that it isn't perfect and I give it up, but then something draws me back in and I start a new one. I just need to do it, keep practicing and writing, and let it develop into something great. Just like me it is a work in progress.

3. Food - I love to cook, I have a small obsession with food, and I can cook almost anything. I struggle a bit with menu planning so we eat a lot of the same things, ane choosing sides to go with our meals is a challenge. I am determined to change this Also I love making sugar cookies but I am not so great at frosting them, I bet with a little practice I could get better.

4. Mom - Last but certainly not least I am a Mom and I want to be a great Mom. While I don't think I will be the crafty over the top Mom I do want to be the very best Mom I can be. My goal is to make sure my kids know I love them, they were important to me, I loved spending time with them, and I wouldn't give up being a stay at home Mom for anything.

I hope if I can be a positive example for my kids they will then push themselves to be the best they can be in their passions. And most of all to teach them that we can do hard things, and not to let the fear of failing motivate them more than their desire to succeed!!