Triumph

When chocolate is the reward, there is no obstacle too big to overcome.

Lasts: Reflections on the Rapidly Passing Years of Childhood

Ever since I was a tiny girl, I wanted to be a mother. I played with dolls probably far longer than I should have. I mothered my younger siblings as much as they would let me. Other kids talked about wanting to be this or that when they grew up. I just wanted to get married and be a mommy.

Fast forward a few decades and here I am with the very life I wished for. With only one problem. It's going SO much faster than I ever thought it would. When my oldest son was born, I loved each new stage and recorded all of his "firsts" diligently in his baby book as I eagerly anticipated the next stage. With the rest of the kids, I celebrated all of those same milestones but was more content to enjoy the stage they were in because I had learned that time really does go by so quickly and I wasn't as eager to hurry through it. (Okay I admit, I did have occasional thoughts about how much more I was going to get done when all the kids were in school, with sleep being the number one priority).

But this last year or so as my oldest baby is approaching 14 and my youngest is all ready to be 2, I have been hit with thoughts of "lasts". This isn't a new idea. I've heard other mom's talk about it and even recently read a poem which I will share a portion of in just a second. But now that I seem to be fast leaving the young mommy stage and getting into some uncharted territory as the mother of a teenager, I've been struggling to figure out how I've missed all those lasts. When was the last time Taylor held my hand as we crossed the street? When did Kendall stop hugging me when I picked him up from school? And how did I not realize when the last time was that Lynnsey needed help writing her name? When did Spencer stop pronouncing it "Jesus wants me for a Hunbean?" And when was the last time that Kaya did "So Big" or some of those other adorable baby games? It's so interesting to me that we always notice the first time for everything but that the last time never gets noticed because we never know it's going to be the last time. It's a bit sad to me really. If I had known then that it was the very last time, maybe I would have video taped it or taken a picture or just savored that very last moment like I should have.

I came across a poem in a book by Karen Kingsbury that totally sums up the way I've been feeling lately. This poem has also been adapted into a sweet little children's book as well called "Let Me Hold You Longer". Anyway I won't quote the whole poem here but just enough that you get the idea:

"Long ago you came to me, a miracle of firsts
First smiles and teeth and baby steps, a sunbeam on the burst.
But one day you will move away and leave to me your past.
And I will be left thinking of a lifetime of your lasts.

The last time that I held a bottle to your baby lips...
Last time that I lifted you and held you on my hip...
Last time when you had a binky stuck inside your mouth...
The last time that you crawled across the floor of this old house.

Last time when you ran to me, still small enough to hold,
Last time when you said you'd marry me when you grew old.
Precious, simple moments and bright flashes from the past,
Would I have held you longer if I'd known they were the last?"

Anyway, it kind of goes through this little boy's life from birth to marriage and is just such a poignant little poem that has made me think of all the "lasts" while some of my kids are still little. I'm trying harder to appreciate each day even when it can be difficult.

What I hope most is that I'm not missing the lasts because I'm too busy worrying about the extra stuff like housecleaning and laundry and dishes and all that stuff that I don't want to do anyway.

Sister Marjorie Hinckley, said of motherhood: "The trick is to enjoy it. Don't wish away your days of caring for young children. This is your great day. Sometimes we get so caught up in the physical work and trivia that we forget the big picture. We forget whose children they really are. When the house is filled with children, noise and teasing and laughter, you get the feeling this is forever. Before you know it they will be gone...Our children grow so quickly out of our reach."

There are days where I really don't enjoy this job because it seems the demands are overwhelming. But now as I'm looking at my baby boy all ready to go to high school and only a few short years from leaving home, I am getting how precious these few short years really are. So my goal is to let the dishes sit in the sink for a few extra hours and to not be looking around at all the clutter while I should be focused on playing with a child and her Barbies or his puzzle. I hope I can do better about dropping the trivial things when my children need me. And I hope that I can enjoy those small moments with my children just in case it ends up being the last time.
Kendall gave a Mother's Day talk in Sacrament meeting today (the first speaker in our brand new very own building by the way!) and he told a cute story of a little boy who wanted to play soccer but his big brother didn't want to and his younger siblings were playing something else and his busy dad was still at work. So the little boy asked his mom to play even though he knew she had a very long to-do list. But she said yes and they went out and had a great time playing together and spending that time together. And then Kendall said: "That little boy was me." Of course, I knew it was and I remember that day well. Probably because so much of the time I do tell the kids "in just a minute" or "I can't right now." But that day, for whatever reason I did drop what I was doing. I just didn't know what an impact it had on Kendall and I was so touched that it had meant so much to him. I need to do better at creating more of those memories with all of my children.

I love being a mother. It is a huge privelege and I know that in spite of all the lasts that seem to be piling up, I still have years and years of firsts left to enjoy. I am looking forward to those years. But I'm sure part of me will still glance backward once in awhile and wonder how in the world the time has gone by so quickly.

Happy Mother's day to all the "mothers" in my life. To my own mom, to my mother-in-law, to my sisters and sisters-in-law, to my friends, to my teachers and leaders, to the mother's who haven't been blessed with their own children but are sometimes the greatest examples of mothering, to my grandmothers, and visiting teachers, to aunts and cousins, and to the moms I see at the playground or at school that I don't even know...you get the idea. My life has been influenced by so many women and I know I am a better person because of the examples of so many fabulous women. Thank you for your love and influence. I hope you all have a wonderful day.

Another HUGE Catch-up Post

I can't believe how fast this past month went! It seems like we had one thing after another pretty much all month. And this one promises to be even busier. The calendar for May was booked solid before the month even arrived! Anyway, I can't possibly remember everything I had wanted to post but I do have a few things, including pictures to share. These first ones are the failed attempt to get Lynnsey and Kaya in their Easer dresses:

This next one is a picture of Taylor with a cooking experiment that he was quite proud of. But that's not why I'm posting this picture. I'm posting this picture because for once I got a shot of him smiling and showing off his braces. I'm glad we got them for him because they do seem to have helped his self-confidence improve. But he wouldn't have gotten them now if we had known that our insurance plan had some very, very fine print and won't actually cover half of the cost like we had expected. Apparently the company approved that much but our actual plan will only cover $1000 of the $5500 price tag. Nice, huh? I really despise our insurance company(and all others that we've had). This isn't the first time that we've been burned by them either. Even stuff that they are supposed to cover, a lot of times we have to call and fight with them to get them to do it. I think they make a lot of their money off of people who just give in and pay for things that are actually covered by the insurance plan. And now I guess we know that we need to start a braces savings account for the rest of the kids! But, I digress...this is supposed to be a happy post.

With things so busy, the kids tended to get ignored a little more frequently than they are used to. You know that phrase that parents use to describe kids that are so bored and restless that they "are climbing the walls"? Ours have been. Literally.

Every year the elementary schools have what they call the Forks Reading Challenge where the kids pledge to read a certain number of books and if they meet or exceed the goal they get to do something fun to the principal. This year they shaved his head. Anyway, both Lynnsey and Kendall did a great job and worked really hard to read as many books as they could and pass the comprehension tests after each one. They both did great and at the awards ceremony they received a certificate and a free book. Kendall also had the distinction of reading the third highest number of books in the whole school.

And now let me tell you a bit about Kaya. She is exceptionally bright and we don't think that is just our opinion. She isn't even two yet but she has been speaking in sentences for the past couple of months and is mostly intelligible to people outside of the family. She also has been going potty for the past two weeks! This is unbelievable. Especially when you consider that every last one of our previous children wouldn't even look at the potty until they were past their third birthdays and some closer to their fourth. I think if we put her in panties and pushed her a bit we could probably get her potty trained in a relatively short time. But we have a big trip coming up this summer and the thought of making all those potty breaks is a bit daunting so we haven't been pushing it too much, just giving her opportunites when she wants to. She has started undressing herself periodically during the day though and going potty more frequently so we may end up just letting her train herself and see how she does on the trip. I have to say the idea of no more diapers is thrilling. And she is so cute when she goes. She does a little potty dance and claps her hands yelling: "Yay Kaya!" every time. She loves to dance and sing and her current favorite music is "Mercy River", a CD I picked up at Time Out for Women. She LOVES to watch the Baby Einstein DVD's and we even let her in spite of all the talk about the big lawsuit that some people brought against the company claiming that the products didn't make their kids smarter. Duh! If you put your child in front of the TV for 8 hours a day, they won't get smart no matter how educational the show is. But we love the shows and watch them with Kaya so that we can discuss all the images. Sometimes we watch them in Spanish or French too and she's even picked up a few of those vocabulary words. She would love to watch them for eight hours a day, but of course we limit her viewing to no more than six. (I'm just kidding!) But when she can't watch the shows we sometime find her pouring over the little paper inserts that come with the movies. Kendall snapped this adorable shot of her "reading" one. She looked at this thing on the kitchen floor for a good 15 minutes that day.

Kaya is also our most active child ever. EVER! We used to call our other daughter Hurricane Lynnsey because she was so destructive. What's worse than a hurricane? Because that's what Kaya is. It takes only seconds for her to undo an hour of housecleaning. Case in point:

This took 30 seconds. No joke. THIRTY SECONDS. I left the room long enough to get a drink of water and came back to this. It's just a good thing she's such a cutie. Here's a few more shots of our little charmer:

She loves to be outside more than just about anything. We have to watch her closely too or else she'll just take off walking all by herself. I've had more than a few near heart attacks lately.

Not too busy to stop and smell the flowers though.

The other day I was in the dollar store and I had a brainstorm when I saw a package of paintbrushes. I bought them and we filled the kids' pails with water and let them go to town "painting" whatever they wanted. I used to do this with my preschool kids but had forgotten all about it until now. Spencer, Kaya, and the little boy I babysit spent over two hours painting the garage, their bikes, the porch, the driveway...everything. Best of all, it was just water so there was no clean-up to worry about.

The kids also took a free dance class offered by some of the college's dance students. We tried this a couple of years ago and our little shy-guys wouldn't cooperate. But Lynnsey decided she really wanted to try again and begged Kendall and Spencer to join her. It was free so I figured if it didn't work out, we just wouldn't go back. But they all had so much fun! Kendall was a little embarassed because he was the very oldest in the class and aside from Spencer there weren't any other boys. But once he just relaxed, he ended up having a great time too. And Lynnsey, who would never do more than stand and watch while she sucked her thumb and twirled her hair, got really into it. She wants me to consider signing her up for a "real" dance class (meaning the kind that costs my entire babysitting salary per month). We'll see. Anyway, these pictures were taken on the last day of the class which was during spring break, so there were only a couple of other kids besides ours there.

If you look closely, you can see that they had a little addition to the class. I tried so hard to keep Kaya over with me but everytime they'd start the music she just seemed to be pulled out to the floor like a little magnet. Since it was so laid-back that day, the instructors let her join them. She was so stinking cute out there and really tried to mimic what they were doing--even if she always was a couple of steps behind everyone else. She especially loved the parts involving jumping.

She also loved the stash of exercise balls that she discovered stacked in the corner. They didn't stay stacked for long.

Anyway, that's about all the pictures I have for now. I'm sure I'll think of other things I wanted to write about but without photo prompts, I am drawing a blank right now. However, I will leave you with one thing I overheard the other day. We were outside playing and I was sitting on a stump over by the fire pit sort of out of range of the kids. I was babysitting my afterschool kids and I overheard the nine-year old boy I watch confess to Lynnsey that he "kind of likes" her. Like as in LIKES her. After my heart started pumping normally again, because, lets face it, I am not even remotely ready for boys to "like" my beatiful little seven year old thank you, I listened for Lynnsey's response. She stared at him for a few seconds like she was trying to decide if she had heard him right and then she growled, quite forcefully: "You're goin' down!" I was laughing so hard I almost fell off my seat. I just hope she keeps that up for another decade or so!

Putting Myself in Time-Out

I consider myself to come off as a pretty happy person in general. But maybe I've only been fooling myself. Things lately have been SO stressful around here due in large part because of the happenings at the college. Not only in our own home but this whole town seems to have a dark cloud of doom hanging over it while people work and wait for the decision of the Board of Trustees regarding their future employment. I thought I was keeping things together pretty well and not letting my own stress drag us down even further, but Kalen commented to me that I "just haven't seemed very happy lately." I think I really am happy. I have a great husband and kids and a roof over our heads, a fantastic branch and two callings that I am genuinely coming to love, the Gospel of Jesus Christ that blesses me in so many ways, it's springtime and so beautiful I can't help but cheer up just looking out the window or walking around the neighborhood. But sometimes I think I am letting my burdens get to me more than I should. And so I was VERY ready for a trip to Time Out for Women in Indianapolis a couple of weekends ago. More than anything I just wanted to get out of town for a night. Who cared who the speakers were!

I traveled down in a van with 6 other ladies including my mom. Spending time with all of them was wonderful and the program was absolutely fantastic. If you ever get a chance to go, it is totally worth your time and money.

On Friday night with a crowd of about 1600 other women we got to hear messages from Michael McLean, Chieko Okazaki, and Mark Mabry. The theme of the program was "Infinite Hope" and the talks and music were really remarkable. (Just a side note: If you aren't familiar with Mark Mabry's photography, you should check it out. I am in love with his work! He has a DVD documentary out called "Another Testament" that is so amazing and will leave you with a deeper testimony of the 3rd Nephi chapters of the Book of Mormon).

On Saturday we had another full day of speakers including Emily Watts, Richard Holzapfel, Mariama Kallon, Merrilee Boyack, Kris Belcher, and the musical group Mercy River. I can't even describe how inspiring their messages were and how insignificant my problems were compared to Mariama who told about her African village being attacked by rebels who murdered her parents and raped and tortured her and her sister. Or Merrilee Boyack, who got breast cancer right in the middle of several other major trials, or Kris Belcher who lost her eyesight (and her eye) and still maintains such a positive attitude in spite of the fact that she can't see the faces of her sweet little boys or her husband. Yeah, the stuff I'm going through seems far more manageable after that. It was the perfect "girl" program with lots of tears one minute, and fall-off-your-seat humor the next and all with a great big dose of the Spirit mixed in.

We all spent money in the Time-Out bookstore there too buying books and music, etc. We stayed up late on Friday talking and laughing and took our time coming home on Saturday evening. It was so wonderful and so far the effects have been staying with me and giving me a sunnier outlook even though things with the college seem to be spiraling more out of control since my return. This too shall pass, I guess. Just hopefully soon.

It was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful experience. Here is the great group of ladies I came down with.

And here is another great group that we ran into who are from our stake as well.

It was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful experience. Did I say that already? You get the idea.

Look for a new MAJOR catch-up post in the next couple of days. I have been really terrible about blogging lately and I have a ton of pictures and stories to share. Hopefully I'll be able to remember even a fraction of them.

Spring Break

Even though we had to stick closer to home for the kid's spring break, we still managed to have fun. We had a surprise visit from some friends of ours who now live in Maryland. I used to babysit their two little girls who were some of Lynnsey and Spencer's best friends. I don't think Lydia and Spencer really remembered each other too much but of course Lynnsey and Ellie did and have sent letters to each other once in awhile so they were really happy to be reunited. They came by for a couple of hours on Monday.

Kaya of course, had no memory of them whatsoever since she was a newborn when they left, but being the friendly little soul that she is, she quickly warmed up to them and played as if she had known them forever.

Lynnsey had a friend over for a sleepover one night We played lots of board games and enjoyed the warmer weather at the beginning of the week before it got chilly again. Lynnsey was given unlimited power of choice on her clothing so we really saw some interesting fashion concoctions. I didn't get any pictures but let me paint you one instead. Picture an old day camp t-shirt with pine trees on it with a frilly all-girl skirt and soccer socks and and brown leather boots. Yeah. She might be the only person to pull that off. On Thursday I took the kids to a Pizza and a Movie event at our library where they watched the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie and had pizza and pop.

Friday I had the day off from babysitting and so I decided that we should actually get out and do something fun. The weather was too cold for the playground and picnic that I wanted to do so I left it up to the kids and their options were pretty wide open. They chose a visit to Barnes and Noble. Go figure. But it ended up being a really fun morning and everyone had a great time. (Except Taylor who said that the science and nature section of the store was too pathetic to bother with.)

We also experienced a small miracle that day. It lasted exactly 2 hours and since I knew it would be short-lived I snapped a picture:

Kaya actually let me put her hair in two little ponytails! This has never happened before and may never happen again. She hates having anything done to her hair and usually when I comb it she'll reach both hands up and mess it right up again, making sure to pull it all down in front of her face. I'm thinking we may have to cut bangs for her if this keeps up.

Friday night we put on a movie for the younger kids and the rest of us stayed up till about 1 a.m. playing Tripoley. It had been forever since we played. I love that Taylor and Kendall can play more grown-up games now! It was SO much fun.

We got our peas planted on Saturday! We are really hoping they'll work this year. Last year we only got a couple of meager plants out of the hundreds that we planted. We're keeping our fingers crossed. The kids all helped with the planting and putting up the fences. Kaya "helped" too by grabbing handfuls of peas and tossing them in whatever direction she felt like.

One of the jobs that the kids did was to rake and hoe up all the rocks in the soil. You'd think after eight years of gardening that we'd have gotten all the rocks out but every year more turn up.

Anyway, it was a fun if slow-paced week. I think we all needed slow-paced for once. And now it is back to the old routine. We are all looking forward to summer. Taylor informed me that there are only 47 days of school left. Until then I'm sure we'll keep busy with homework, school projects, field trips, more gardening, and spring soccer which starts up next week.

Oh, and I tried taking pictures of Lynnsey and Kaya in their Easter dresses. It was a disaster. Kaya likes posing for pictures about as much as she likes frilly dresses and having her hair done. I may post them anyway, but I'll try to get some better ones again soon.

Easter Fun

The kid's are having their spring break now which started last Friday. Of course their spring break and Kalen's spring break never match up so that means that not only can we not go anywhere, but I am also babysitting one of the kids I watch so we're pretty much confined to home. However, we did have a wonderful Easter weekend and for the first time that I can remember since our time began in Albion, we had amazing weather for our egg hunt. Friday was perfect weather up near 80 degrees. We had a campfire and roasted hot dogs and marshmellows and ate outside for the first time this year. We had a fun game of baseball before dinner where I completely overdid it and really injured my feet running first in flip flops and then with bare feet, but it was so much fun and felt so good to be outdoors and active and playing with the kids and for once not thinking of all the stressful events that are happening at the college. Even Kaya played. When it was her turn she would hit her little plastic ball off of the T and then someone would help her run the bases and every time she would be giggling and exclaimng "dis fun!"

On Saturday, the temperature had dropped a bit but it was still warm and sunny in the morning. We decided since we had to work around General Conference, we would do our egg hunt in the morning. Good thing. Only a little later the clouds moved in and it rained pretty much the rest of the day.

Kalen hides Taylor's eggs in harder and harder places every year. In fact, Conference had already started and we were still out looking for Taylor's last two eggs. And of course, Kalen couldn't remember where he had hidden them.

Kaya absolutely LOVED finding eggs! This expression pretty much sums it all up.

Kendall had to look in some pretty tricky places this year too.

I love how Lynnsey poses for pictures these days like she's a little supermodel or something.

Almost got it!

Kaya finally realized that there was good stuff inside of the eggs so she quit hunting and started eating. This did nothing for her candy addiction. At least nothing good.

The other four gave up on Taylor ever finding his last eggs so they sat and ate while the rest of us hunted.

Once the eggs had finally been found we went back inside to find that the Easter Bunny had snuck into our house while we were out back and left some more goodies for the kids.

We were then able to enjoy the two Saturday sessions of conferences from home (I love DishNet!) and then Kalen and Taylor headed out later to the Priesthood session in Battle Creek.

Our Easter Sunday was great too. The only drawback of watching Conference at home was that Lynnsey and Kaya didn't get to wear their new Easter dresses. Lynnsey is eagerly waiting for this Sunday. Kaya would much rather never wear a dress at all. Too bad for her. Her's is a doozy this year--long and frilly and very girly. Sorry Kaya.

I loved General Conference this year. Especially Sister Beck, Elder Holland, and President Monson's talks and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing "He is Risen" was so powerful I still get chills thinking about it. I really love the years where Easter coincides with the messages from our prophet and other church leaders. It was a wonderful way to appreciate the Savior and all that he did for us as we heard such amazing messages centered on Him and His love for each of us.

That night we had a very nice Easter dinner with ham and Mom's famous rolls. And for our nightly Spiritual Time we all had a turn to share what we enjoyed most about the conference messages. A perfect ending to a really wonderful day.

The Last Supper

On his last night of freedom, Taylor (and the rest of us) enjoyed a supper of all the things he'll have to avoid for the next two years. Bright and early the next morning, the braces went on.