Thankful

Okay, I should be researching for my last paper of my current class, but I'm using my blog to procrastinate instead. I don't really know what topic I want to research, and it's killing me. So, while I've been thinking about everything else but parenting topics, I've come up with a list of things I'm thankful for. Maybe Thanksgiving was last week, but I can still be grateful now, too.

1. the gospel of Jesus Christ, the atonement, my testimony, Heavenly Father -- I'll put all of these things into one category because without these spiritual blessings I wouldn't have any joy in my life. Any happiness or pleasure I experienced would only be temporary, but the gospel provides a way for eternal joy.

2. family -- my husband, children, parents, siblings, in-laws, grandparents, the Littles, uncles/aunts/cousins -- I have been surrounded by wonderful people my entire life.

3. air conditioning/heating units -- I love being able to wake up in the morning and with a flick of my finger the heat can turn on. I remember the days of waiting my turn to get dressed beside the wood stove in the morning. How wonderful to not have to make a fire to get warm!

4. sensors in public restrooms -- Going to the bathroom in the airport was wonderful because I didn't have to touch anything anybody else had touched except for the lock on the stall door. Toilets flush, soap is dispensed, water comes on and off, and even the towels are dispensed automatically! I hope the companies producing those products are very successful!!!

5. literacy -- I can't imagine what life would be like if I did not know how to read.

6. music -- playing the piano is such a stress reliever for me. If I couldn't express my feelings on the piano, I think I would have eaten my way to about 300 lbs by now.

7. the internet -- what a wealth of knowledge that is right at my fingertips. And it has also provided a way for me to keep in touch with my family more. Of course there is the beauty of email, and I love Kellee's blog because she is so far away, but I still get to see a little of what her family is doing. I've only seen my friend Kristen a few times, but I feel like I know her because I get to read her blog.

But okay, so the internet can be a source of trouble, too, as I am proving by not using my time the way I should right now. I'm off to decide what parenting question I want to investigate!

Book Review

Last night I finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo. I can't decide if I like the movie or the book better, which is unusual because a book is almost always better than the movie. I like the storyline of the movie better, but I think the ending of the book is more the way it should be. I just always want a happy ending.

Quick synopsis: Edmond Dantes is about to become the captain of a ship, and the night before he is to be married to his love Mercedes he is arrested for no reason that he can understand. He has been betrayed by three selfish men who better their own interests by having Edmond thrown into prison. After 14 years he escapes, obtains a hidden treasure, and returns as the Count of Monte Cristo to the people he used to know to seek his revenge.

What I like about the movie is that he gets Mercedes back, whereas in the book it's not such a pretty picture. Mercedes had married his rival, and in his attempts to seek revenge on her husband, he causes a lot of suffering for Mercedes and her son. Also, in seeking revenge on the magistrate who imprisoned him, he causes pain to the family of the one true friend he really had, the shipowner who was going to make him captain. The shipowner's son is in love with the magistrate's daughter, and she almost dies because Monte Cristo hinted to her stepmother how to effectively poison those in her way of her son's inheritance.

Monte Cristo is a really cool character - self confident, bold, smart, handsome, and of course extremely rich. Everyone admires him, and he gets his fingers into everyone's lives without them knowing he is ruining them until right at their breaking point. I think the gist that I got out of the book was that even though he accomplished his great revenge, he caused himself and even those he loved a lot of pain in the process. In the end he realizes that one should not place himself as an equal to God by seeking to exact another's punishment. I think I would have liked it more if I hadn't seen the movie first. It was a really long book and I always expected him to get the girl and have her son really be his. I guess there wouldn't have been a moral to the story if he got his revenge and his life turned out right, too.

Thanksgiving in Utah

Last night we got home safe and sound from a great trip to Utah! Nikki is still asleep and I'm sure Hannah would rather still be in bed than at school. Last night both girls ended up in our bed, so I was on the couch. I thought that was crazy since they slept so well in all the different houses we stayed in over the holidays. I think we left our camera at Robin's house, so hopefully she'll be able to find it soon and mail it to us. We didn't get nearly enough pictures. We were able to see all of the family in Utah except for Nate's brother David who spent Thanksgiving in Idaho. The girls were meeting so many cousins that they didn't remember, and I thought they did a great job just jumping in and playing with everyone.

We had a great visit with Nate's parents. Hannah and Nikki wanted to spend every minute with Grandma and Grandpa and would follow them around the house. They especially loved the trains. Nate's dad has the neatest train set in the basement. It fills the whole family room and has several tracks and trains of all sizes. The scenery is really cool, too because he made his own mountains and desert scenes and villages. I think you could look at it all day and still find new things. It was so good to see them and be able to spend some time with them. We sure wish we could do that more often.

On the way to dinner at Laura's house (Nate' sister) one night we were telling the girls the names of their cousins they would get to play with at Laura's house, and when Nikki learned that there was a boy she said, "I don't like boys." She was so sure she didn't want to play with him, but when we got there Gabe was just so talkative and entertaining. On the way home, Nikki sounded so surprised when she said, "That boy was nice."

We got to spend a day at the Littles, and it was really fun getting to know Gary's kids. Hannah and Hyrum had fun playing together. He's such a cute kid. And Jayden got Nate into her make-believe pegasus game. He was so impressed that she could put on a pretty good British accent and said she had an imagination just like Emma. We got some updated pictures with Hannah and Jayden together. They don't know that they're supposed to be best friends but maybe they'll figure that out one day!

There were also fun visits to Shaun and Steve's houses and BYU campus and to see Robin and Kellee. I even got to go with Kellee on her paper route. We got to see the Christmas lights on Temple Square. Nate got to go to the BYU/Utah football game. It was just so wonderful and I could make this blog post tons longer, but I'll wait until I get my camera back. It was a great trip and it is also great to be home.

Is That a Compliment?

Let's think about this for a minute. Whenever someone has said to me, "Have you lost weight?" I honestly think they are trying to come up with a compliment. However, in my mind, that statement just does not work. First of all, if I had been doing the hard work of changing my lifestyle and getting in better shape, then the very act of questioning whether I had accomplished any weight loss is telling me that you're not really sure if there's a difference, which belittles the hard work I've done. However, I don't have 30 or 40 pounds to lose and after I leveled off after having my babies I never have had that much weight to lose. Sure, I would be very happy to be rid of a good 10 pounds or so. So when someone asks me if I've lost weight when I have still been eating ice cream and napping on the couch, I'm left to wonder what their mental picture of me is really like. How big do they normally think I am? Another "compliment" I've heard is, "You look great for having had two kids." What did they just say to me? I look like a flabby, tired mommy, but at least it's not as bad as it could be. If they are searching that hard for a compliment, it's probably best just to avoid the subject.

Whew! I feel better now. Sometimes you just need a little vent.

My Afternoon Surprise

When I woke up from my nap and walked into the kitchen this afternoon, I heard Nate and the girls gather up what they were doing and run into another room. Nikki whispered, "Hurry, Mom's going to see her surprise." I was going visiting teaching so I just left them to finish what they were doing and headed out. When I got home, Nikki met me in the garage because she was so excited to show me what they had been working on. They had each made little cards and written notes and drawn pictures on them for me, which were just sweet and adorable. Then they had set up a carnival throughout the whole house. Hannah and Nikki had come up with several different games. Hannah gave me a handful of plastic spoons and told me they were my tickets to play the games. We had paint the tail on the fish, a balloon pop, hang the monster on the light switch, a puzzle station, musical spoons, a sack race, storytime, a cartwheel competition (Nate and I came in last on that one), and we also played steamroller. It was so much fun. I just felt so grateful to be a part of our family. I love my husband and my children more than I can put into words. What a wonderful life we have.

Tonight we were on the way home from the cousins' house, and Nikki was exhausted. She was crying and whining about being hungry and thirsty (she had eaten plenty of food and had plenty to drink). Oh, first I should mention that when it was time for everyone to clean up before we left, Nikki conveniently made her way into the kitchen asking for a drink. I purposefully poured her just a tiny amount because I knew she was trying to get out of cleaning up, and she then tried to take the tiniest, slowest sips possible. Clever kid. So anyway, when we weren't responding to her crying in the car she came up with another tactic. All of a sudden she got really quiet and then started making these choking noises. We looked back to see if she was okay and she croaked out, "I'm so thirsty I can't breathe." Ha! If only we could channel this creativity into a positive outlet.

Mother-Daughter Date

The other night I took Hannah out for a mother-daughter date. It really is sad to me that she is gone so much of the time at school. She's not really a chatterbox, so I feel like I have to pry information out of her to know what's going on during her day. Nikki threw a huge fit because she didn't get to go with us, but I think that made Hannah feel all the more excited about our date. We had a really good time together. She is really conscious of eating healthy foods, so she didn't want to go out for ice cream. (Can she really be our child?) We decided to go out for smoothies and do some Christmas shopping. In the car she was really excited about finding Christmas presents. She said, "I just love giving to other people. I feel so much joy when I do that. It makes me feel so much better." She is such a sweetheart. We had a lot of fun picking out a present for Nikki. She decided she might need to make a present for Nate because he is a man, and she just doesn't know what a man would like. =) As we were about to order our smoothies, I thought it was kind of cold for that so I asked her if she wanted hot chocolate instead. She agreed to that, but she only took a couple of swallows and said she didn't want anymore. I felt bad because she had told me before that she wanted something good for us and not a treat. After that we took a trip to the library because earlier she had been looking out of the car window at the stars. She started asking questions about the sun since she knew that the sun was a star, and we decided to run by the library to pick up a couple of books about the sun. Then, on the way there she started asking about recycling. She wanted to know if they got all the germs off of the used paper and plastic before they made something else out of it. So, we decided to get a book about recycling too since I couldn't explain the process of exactly what they do when things are recycled. She absolutely LOVED it when we ran across a book about craft projects we could make with recyclable things. I hope she becomes a successful artist someday. (As an example of her art, a couple of Sundays ago during church she took her flower and smiley face stickers and tore them in pieces to make a mosaic picture of a girl beside her house with a sun and grass. Now the kid who usually sits behind us always has to check out what she's making. Anyway, I could write another complete post about her art.) We didn't do anything really big, but it was so fun just to spend the evening with her. I am so blessed to be her mother.

Halloween

We had a lot of fun this Halloween. Nikki was a fairy princess (thanks so much for letting us borrow that costume, Sherrie), and she absolutely loved her outfit. Hannah wanted to be a flower, and she was really happy with her costume as well. I was happy that we invested less than $10 in the holiday this year.We ate supper right before I took these pictures, and Hannah spilled some water on her shirt. That's what that spot is. Oh well.



Nikki got to go trick-or-treating with her preschool class in the morning to the shops downtown, and then they had a little party. Just with that, she was loaded down with candy, and then we went to our party at church at night. The girls came home with tons of candy, and then we had lots leftover from the game we had put together for the party. I guess Nate's office is going to be well stocked with candy for quite some time because it's certainly not staying here.