Family Update

Recently, our Stake Seminary students gathered to present a re-enactment of the Kirtland Temple dedication. With the help of their seminary teachers and other Stake leaders they presented both a historical narration explaining the events that occurred at the original dedication on March 27, 1836, and they presented some of the original events that took place that day. Scott was asked to play the role of Joseph Smith Jr. Prior to his reading selected parts of the Dedicatory Prayer, he had to give, in his own words, what the Prophet Joseph might have said prior to his giving the Dedicatory Prayer. The words that Joseph actually gave are not recorded and so Scott had to consider and deliver what he thought Joseph might have said. Three other boys playing the roles of Hyrum, Oliver and Sidney also gave their ideas of what might have been said.

Here are Scott's words:
Brothers and Sisters, I welcome you to this most joyous occasion, the equal of which has not been seen since the days when our Beloved Saviour Himself walked the earth. For nearly two millennia, our Lord has had no building to call His Home, no place to come visit His people and comfort them with His Spirit. I thank you for the many sacrifices laid down at the altar to complete this immense undertaking, and assure you that you will be blessed for doing so. The saving ordinances necessary for salvation may now be performed in a sanctified House, one that will shortly be dedicated to the Lord's Kingdom here on earth, as well as in the Spirit World. These blessings will not be received by us alone, but also by the many souls who have already left this life to live in the next, and by the millions throughout the world who will learn of the Gospel of Christ and come to be saved. The building of temples will continue as this church grows, and I would remind you that our sacrifices are not done. We will have no rest given us by the adversary, but we may be comforted in the knowledge that the darker the night, the more glorious the day. And how glorious that day will be, when all of us gathered here can stand before the Lord and testify that these hands built His Sacred House, and this heart served him for all our days.

Doug recently participated in the United States Open Music Competition. This was something new for our family, so here is a short synopsis of what took place. The competition lasted for 5 days with several events and hundreds of participants each day. It took place in Oakland, California at the LDS Temple site. There is a multi-stake building there with multiple chapels, an auditorium and lots of space and parking. Seven Steinway pianos were brought in and set up in various rooms. The participants were primarily Chinese American. We saw only one other Caucasian boy and when looking through the list of competitors I could not identify many names other than Chinese. My guess is that is was 95% Chinese. His teacher indicated that while many students are American, there are some who come from the mainland of China for this event. Doug chose a difficult category and competed at the intermediate level. He played a Scarlatti Sonata and Liszt' Liebestraum. He was rewarded with a 4th place finish. Immediately afterwards he was disappointed. But I sat in and listened to the other participants and was amazed that their talent. His teacher was very please that he was recognized and so I think Doug is now happier with his accomplishment. Doug practiced several hours each day for the past few months and he plays so beautifully. My video of him playing wasn't in focus - but here is a picture of him sitting at the piano playing Coldplay and duets with his cousin Ty.

Thomas completed his competitive soccer league a couple of weeks ago. We have never had our boys play on a traveling team, but at the end of the regular soccer season, Tommy wanted to try out and we felt like he needed to have something that was special about him, something that he was good at. So he tried out, made the team and we have had practices all winter. The games are played up and down the Valley and into the Foothills. I really enjoyed traveling on Saturdays with Tom and watching his games. Matt and I applied the "divide and conquer" method of parenting and so each had some days with just Tom while the other parent took care of the rest of the gang. He played really well, if fact his team was so good they made it to the championship game. Unfortunately, it was on a Sunday. Although Thomas was sad to miss the game, he was great about missing it and going to church instead. This has happened to him twice now and I'm glad for him to be experiencing what it means to make a righteous choice. Kudos to the Primary counselor who showed up later that afternoon with a plate full of soccer sugar cookies just for Thomas and congratulated him on his good choice.

There were only a handful of entrants but Emily won the kindergarten speech festival. About a week later, she stood up in a school assembly and repeated her poem for all the students. She looked so nervous but she stood right at the microphone a said it perfect. I laughed out loud all day long.

I don't have any wonderful accomplishments to share about Matt and I and you can check out Karin and Ben on their blog. Here is a true story: the other day I was so tired after getting the kids to school that when I pulled into the garage I sat in the car and closed my eyes. I woke up 40 minutes later with a terrible kink in my neck and wished that I had at least stuumbled into my bed for a 8:30am nap.

Life Should Be a Musical, but a video too?

I love the movie Camelot. I love all the singing. I think we should all sing our way through life, that's why I love my ipod. I carry it with me everywhere I go and even if I'm not singing on the outside, I'm listening to music and singing on the inside. There's a chance that someday I may break out in song and dance down the aisle at the grocery store. But I'm not sure I'd want to see myself in such a course of action. Last week Matt and I enjoyed two days of skiing at Northstar. This year he added a new toy to the getaway - a helmet camera. In the fashionable style of Mr. Gadget, he bought a helmet and attached a small video camera to the top. Luckily, for the sake of my pride, there were others skiers also wearing these cameras and apparently anyone who tries to imitate the X Games is in love with these devices.

The problem is this, because Matt was wearing the camera, all the videos are of me. There are certain things in life I don't need to see about myself. You know how people who are in a life threatening situation claim that their entire life passes before them? Well, I never want to experience that. I prefer the Top Ten events where I look my best- something like what you'd see on Sport's Center.

I can happily say that I no longer ski in a "snow plow" position, making "pizza slice" turns. But I thought that I was skiing really fast with my ski's perfectly parallel all the time and these videos dare to suggest otherwise. It's so much easier to make yourself sound great when there is no proof of anything else. So while YouTube may be a place many people would like to find videos of themselves, I prefer to live in anonymity believing I'm much better than I am.

Giggles

Tonight when I slipped into Emily's room to give her one more goodnight hug, I found her doubled over with the giggles. What could possibly be so funny? She has been practicing a poem for the school speech festival, it goes like this...

In the Fog
by Lillian Moore

Stand Still.
The fog wraps you up
And no one can find you.

Walk.
The fog opens up
To let you through
And closes behind you.

She was lying in bed, reciting it with every word starting with the letter "B".

Bin Bu Bog
by Billian Boore

Band Bill
Bu Bog Baps Boo Bup
Band Bo Bun Ban Bind Boo

Balk
Bu Bog Bopens Bup
Boo Bet Boo Boo
Band Boses Behind Boo

It's pretty cute to watch a five year old so tickled with the funny sound of words.

Bad news - the speech festival has been delayed for 2 weeks. I don't know if she'll be able to say it properly, in two weeks she may present her poem in Pig Latin

Motherhood

After reading my short book review on Michael Wilcox's book, What the Scriptures Teach Us About Raising a Child, a relative sent me a link to an article by M. Catherine Thomas on motherhood. I appreciated that she understood my heart, my fears, my guilt and my desire to be a good mother.

I share just a couple of thoughts from the book and the article, because they might become meaningful to someone else.

Principles
Brother Wilcox says, "The purpose of life is to learn to become like our Father in Heaven. Godhood is parenthood of a grand magnitude, but before we can progress to that degree of glory, we are given the opportunity to learn here on earth the essential principles of parenthood."

Some principles come to my mind immediately but I think I need to spend some more time pondering on this.

Yearning Desire
Having studied the Old Testament this year his next thought is particularly meaningful to me. He points out that Genesis is a book dealing with families and throughout Genesis and the Old Testament is seen a yearning desire for offspring. That children are a blessing is the first great message the scriptures impart about children. For Adam and Eve, children were a blessing from the beginning, "And God blessed them and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth" (Genesis 1:28).

Camille Fronk in her book Women of the Old Testament says the estimate is that one in four women died in childbirth in the ancient Near East. "Certainly a yearning to bring a child into the world was a life-threatening wish", she concludes. To see the great desire these women had to bear children tells me these yearnings are planted deep in a woman's soul. It's interesting to think comparatively about the dangers women face in modern developed countries versus the ancient Near East. I know that some pregnancies are fraught with difficulty and I'm certainly sensitive to those pregnancies, but I imagine the percentage of death is far below twenty-five percent. With the access we have to medical care, good nutrition, and pain control it's ironic that we also have declining birth rates. I remember before Emily was born the great yearning I had for another child. I found that there is an increase in the tenderness of your heart when you know that a stage of life will come to an end. For His reasons, the Lord put his timing in place and we are limited in the number of years that we can bear children. I do think, however, that the desire for children is eternal and thus we rejoice in the promise of eternal increase. I also remember feeling guilty about wanting another child because at the time I had a girlfriend who had two adopted children and was in a very arduous journey of trying to adopt two more. I felt like I should just be grateful for the children I had, and I was, but having four children didn't diminish the desire for more.

Lifting a Soul
"There is no accomplishment which will require greater dedication, intellect, and the refined emotions of the soul than to raise a child to dignity, independence, and holiness in a decadent and fallen world. Can we, as does our Father in Heaven, exalt and lift another soul to a higher level?" (MW)

This has to be my favorite part of being a mother. To help a child learn to read, tie a shoe, sing a song, paint a picture, type a paper, gain a testimony, these are the best days of mothering.

Guilt
I imagine I'm not alone in saying that I want to be a good mother. I want to teach and love and give my children everything they need. I'm also probably not alone with the sinking feeling that I make mistakes and cause problems for my children. And even now, I feel a lack of energy to really do for my last children what I did for my first and I also realize that I may not have enjoyed my first as I do my last.

Sister Thomas shares in her article that she came from an alcoholic home. I did not have that type of childhood, nor do my children. However, I think her observations ring true at least to a certain degree for most of us. She says, "I observed that if we don't learn peaceful feelings in our childhood homes, we may struggle to possess them when we reach adulthood, when we become marriage partners and parents. We may look continually for compensations for our childhood losses. The significance of spiritual rebirth through the Lord Jesus Christ and his gospel is that we can mature spiritually in spite of family imperfections, we can receive healing under his guidance, and we can gain abundant compensations for our deprivations".

I love that thought of what a spiritual rebirth can do for us or for our children. Even though parents make mistakes, children, by their choice to be reborn can be healed and compensated.

She continues, "Although we bring personal weaknesses to our parenting that may provide real opposition for our children, we do not need to feel that all is lost. We remember that our Heavenly Father knows the end from the beginning. He knew beforehand the ignorance, the failings, the confusion, the spiritual infirmities of each of his children - including those who would become parents. Knowing all these things, the Lord prepared the gospel plan and allowed us the experiences of mortality, with certain compensations and blessings and talents available within the child or along life's path that would help the child as he or she struggled with opposition. God provides ample opportunity to learn and recover from the opposition.

I don't like to think of myself as being opposition or a stumbling block to my children. Yet, I certainly recognize many personal weaknesses. What a relief, to let go of guilt and to think that God compensates them with blessings, talents, or experiences that will help them recover from opposition. That assures me of the true love of our Heavenly Father.

This life consists of tutorials designed to give us experience, to develop our divine nature, and to draw us to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is clear that parenthood was designed as much for parents as for children.

Sister Thomas asks, "Why do we learn many valuable parenting lessons after it is too late to incorporate them as fully and effectively as we would like to? Perhaps because it is never too late, really, in the eternal scheme of things. It seems that when Mother gets better, it helps others in the family to get better - not matter how old they are."

"If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy", may be a cute saying but really it's a responsibility.

The Choice of the Child
"What a child chooses to do and be in life is a product of a unique reaction involving his personality, his agency, and his environment". (CT)

"What if the wayward child never returns? A parent can agonize over that question. She can storm the gates of heaven. She can cajole and teach until her children are sick of her and the gospel; she can reproach, plead with and threaten them. And then she learns: Her love must be governed by intelligence, patience, and faith, not by over anxiety that can block the Spirit's working in her". (CT)

Remember the prophet Jacob realized that he could only teach if he didn't stumble or was shaken from his firmness in the Spirit BECAUSE of being over anxious for his people. (Jacob 4:18) That is the best reason for replacing fear with faith, anxiety and worry for the Spirit.

There is so much more to share, but I'm just enjoying pondering these thoughts for now.

Put a Target on My Back

So, recently I've noticed that my children have been correcting me. Just the other day I was playing the piano and Doug asked me if I wanted the bass note to carry through the entire measure. If I did, then I needed to let the pedal up only half-way instead of all the way. Makes sense. Scott corrects my grammar, after all, life is not "funner", it is "more fun" with good grammar. Karin has been taking college courses that delve into human relationships. I know that she has had to analyze her own family .....I don't really want to know what she thinks because there are probably dozens of things I need to correct. During the summer, while playing catch with Thomas, he corrected my throwing arm.

It doesn't seem to matter that most of these skills my children now possess I actually taught to them. Somehow in the course of days and years they have surpassed my feeble abilities.

I remember I was mad the day Scott first beat me in a running race. After all, I was slower because I had had to push him in a jogger for several years before he could ride a bike and keep up with me. But I'm glad to say that I have matured since that day and I'm actually glad that my children are better than me.

My plan is to put a target on my back and then run like the dickens trying to do things I want my kids to do well. I know they see that target, run right by me and be winners in the end.

Top Events of 2010

I know that everyone else has already posted their "2010 best memories" and all of their "2011 resolutions", and so like usual I'm running late. However, just so you know, being on time is NOT one of my New Year's resolutions.

WEDDING
I guess it goes without saying that Ben and Karin's wedding was the highlight of my year. I know that Karin was secretly in love with Ben for a long time before they ever dated. I was visiting her once and she introduced me to him. I literally had to hold her down by her waistband to keep her from floating away like a helium-filled balloon. She kept asking me, "Isn't he so nice?", as if I could tell from the words "hello" and "nice to meet you". The next summer she was living at home but traveled to Utah for a few days and Ben asked her on a date; it was so fun to watch her get so excited and so nervous about a single date. I am so happy for her that a year later, everything turned out so perfectly. All the wedding preparations and the actual wedding were wonderful and so fun. Karin was so sweet about everything, truly a mother's dream come true. We fell in love with Ben's family, what a comfort to know that they love your daughter and are such good, good people. I was so glad that my parents, a brother and two sisters could come to the wedding. There is such support in family. Did I mention that we love Ben too? It makes me cry to see how kind he is to Karin and the example he is to my boys. Every mother should be so blessed.

I don't know if Ben realized that marriage includes not only the bride, but also her family. Little did he know (I love that line) that he would be helping Matt build a Foosball table until 3am, on Christmas Eve. That's an all time record at our house. We just hope he comes back for Christmas in the years to come. Here he is on Christmas morning. What a good sport!
MATT
Spending time with Matt is probably my most favorite thing to do. This year he took me skiing at Northstar for several days. I should have talked my parents into buying a condo at Purgatory (the ski resort in Durango) because the best way to ski is to be able to take a break in the afternoon, take off your ski boots, drink a little hot chocolate and maybe even snooze. That's what we did and had so much fun together. We've decided that this will be our Christmas present to each other every year.

What is with the goggles I was wearing - do they look extraordinarily huge to anyone else?

GIRLFRIENDS
I also enjoy spending time with girlfriends. I don't get to do a whole of that, so I really enjoy the time we have together. I love my book group, these are wonderful, loving, faithful women and their friendship has meant the world to me. I have been in the group for 10 years now, which means that together we have read and discussed 120 books. I think that you develop really good relationships when discussing that many books. I feel like we know each others likes and dislikes, struggles, victories and so much more. I find that we get together outside of book club just to talk or to share our common interests.

I love playing the piano with my niece - even though we didn't do much of that this year. She is so kind to me and that means a lot.

I love girls who do the "outdoor thing". I skied with my girlfriend Sue and although I took this picture two days ago as we enjoyed a day on the slopes, I did ski with her in 2010 as well.


OUTDOORS
Speaking of outdoors, one of my personal highlights was the glo-ball golf tournament I played in with Matt. Here's the setting: there are 6 of us playing golf at night, in the dark with a transparent golf ball that has a miniature glo-stic stuck in it. I am the only female. Matt is my partner and we are playing with 3 of his brothers and my Bishop. No pressure. They really are very nice, but you know the genes I was born with...just a little competitive. We weren't playing against each other, but I totally did not want to tank every shot. I was silently praying, "please, please just let me hit the ball". Now you know how good of a golfer I am. The thing is, I played great, I mean that. My favorite hole was a par 3 and the first time I hit, I totally scuffed the ball and it rolled about 2 feet. My Bishop said I could repent and have a do-over and so I did. But now, everybody was watching me, that is pressure. So when I hit it the second time, it flew into the air and landed perfectly on the green. Yes, I showed some excitement, but truly none of them knew how excited I really was. I tried to act like that's a normal hit for me in the daytime let alone at night. I am still so excited about that shot.

SCOTT & DOUG
I love that Scott and Doug were on the same baseball team this fall. I know I sound emotional, but I really do cry when I see that they are such good friends. I cry when I watch them play ball, I cry when I seem them hug each other, I cry when they cheer each other on, I cry when they walk across the field together. I never knew there could be so much crying in baseball. I will thank Scottie forever, for being so kind to Doug. He has taken him under his wing in high school and does everything he can to help him. Doug plays the piano well and it could be so easy to be jealous or to make fun of him, but Scott is his number one fan. He told me that he is almost moved to tears when Doug plays "Liebestraum". It is a surreal experience to hear your teenage boys regularly listening to classical and jazz music on their stereos. How did I get this?

FAMILY REUNION
My favorite family gathering this year was Thanksgiving in Durango with ALL of my siblings and ALL of the grandchildren. I love getting together with my family, they are fun, happy, positive people. After our visit, Scott said, "I love your family, they are so nice and there is no sarcasm at all." I think that's a great compliment. I love that they cheer each other on, on this weekend we cheered runners, cake decorators, pianists, dancers, bakers, babies, pinata busters, and Grandma and Grandpa.

I am so grateful for the example of my parents. It strengthens me to see them be obedient to the Lord and to see the blessings POUR out upon them. I think more than any great parenting technique or Family Home Evening lesson, their example makes me want to be faithful and true.

All of the adults.

All of the grandchildren.

The beautiful, green Monticello Temple windows. Ask me about them.

GIANTS
I couldn't talk about 2010 without talking about the Giants. It is so cool to have your team WIN the World Series. And it was so fun to watch the winning game together, we were shouting, jumping on the couch, laughing, crying. Wow! Everyone should be a Giants fan.

CONCLUSION
I know when I wake up in the morning, I'll think of 5 more things to include. And I really would like to elaborate on some of the things I really enjoyed in 2010. But it took me so long to get this much written that I'd better be happy about it and besides, it's time for me to get on with 2011. So there you have it.