Welcome

Spring is working its Utah magic.  Some days are beautiful, sunny, warm.  Some days are drizzly or outright stormy.  Some days are windy, chilly, but still cheerful.  Today is that kind of day.  Instead of driving over three streets, Noelle and Ava and I decide to walk Noelle to her sewing lesson.  I thought about putting Ava in the stroller, but she loves to walk and run and spin and jump and crawl and kick so I decided to try having her walk all the way by herself.  She loved it.

Ava would live outside if I'd let her.  The rest of us have to take 30 minute shifts being with her outside to keep her safe from falling off tall play structures and myriad other backyard preschool dangers.  We get cold and bored fairly easily, but those concepts seem foreign to her when she is in the great, wide world.

Today after our walk, I was ready to go inside and get warm.  Ava was NOT ready.  So I opened the front door, put a gate on the porch stairs, and let her stay outside while I could see her from the semi-warmth of my front room.  This pacified her for a time.  But, as with all of the best things in life, they are better when shared.  She tried to get me to join her.  She tried grabbing my hand and pulling me.  She tried screaming "Don't go away!" when I walked into the kitchen.  She tried playing peekaboo behind the door.  

Finally, with joy bubbling through her spirit and smile, and happiness bouncing up and down through her body, she made a grand sweeping motion to the outdoors and invited me, "Welcome to my home!"  

It is her home.  And mine.  And yours.  A great, wide and wonderful earthly home created for us by our loving heavenly parents.  I think of the time and money spent designing my home.  Wanting a room large enough to have my entire extended family over for dinner.  Wanting the children's rooms to be the colors and spaces they love.  Trying (but usually not succeeding) to keep a tidy house to invite moments of calm, creativity and togetherness.  I think of the time and thought involved in creating this earthly home for all of us. A project I cannot begin to wrap my mind around.  But I can see the beauty and intelligence and feel the love in the design.  A world which beckons to me with such variety of scale, texture and color.

Who can resist that kind of a welcome?  Let's go, baby.

A Cup of Cider

It's been six months since I posted.  Apparently, it's been six months since I've had another moment alone.  The busy-ness and busi-ness of life hurl the pages of the calendar off with such force that I can't manage to contain them.  This morning, I find myself with a very rare quiet moment alone.  Two kids living away from home in college, two off at high school at the moment, the baby still in bed, the homeschooled 4th grader in the shower, and my late shift-working husband getting as much sleep as he can before he confronts chemotherapy treatment #10 in an hour. 

I'm standing at my kitchen window, looking through the blinds at an overcast and drizzly morning, sipping on a mug of Alpine Cider.  After a long, brown winter there is finally some green in the landscape.  I haven't had this cider in years, and the combination of the taste, the aroma, and the scene which is before me transport me to another time and place.  

My first mug of Alpine Cider was sipped on such a morning.  Quiet, alone in a home in Puyallup, Washington, which really was a second home to me but which I called my place of employment.  One of my jobs was to run a pot of coffee for Dave and Jewel and have it hot and ready when they arrived at work.  Being LDS, I didn't drink coffee, but I learned to love the smell of it.  Always considerate, Jewel had brought me a box of Alpine Cider packets so I could have something to sip on in the mornings as well.  Unless it was tax season, each morning would begin slowly.  A pot of coffee, a mug of cider.  A moment at the window.  Jewel's bright and cheery welcome each morning as they arrived.  

How warm, how comforting I found all of this.  Not substitutes, exactly, but different and equally loved:  the cider for the coffee, the home on 128th Street for the one on 6630 South, and two wonderful people to be all at once my employers, my friends and my family away from home.  

How can it be twenty years ago?  A failed marriage.  College.  Divorce.  A happy, new and lasting marriage.  Four beloved children of my own.  Two step children, also loved.  Cancer.  

Christmases, birthdays, first and last days of school, Disneyland vacations, home remodel, home addition, gophers and turkeys, graduations, marriages, in-laws, nieces, nephews, friends, family, employment, health, testimony.   Gain.  Loss. 

I want all of the best moments back again.   I find bits of them in scrapbooks and baby clothes, and try to remember the details that seem to be slipping away.   I want to purge the worst from very existence.  I find them in old journals and feed them to the shredder.   And yet I recognize that my very soul is made of these moments, and I will own and learn from them all.

Can I offer you a cup?

Alone

I love my family.  I love my husband, my children, my parents, and my siblings; and their spouses, children, siblings and parents. I love my friends.  My close friends, my long-lost friends, my homeschooling friends, my church friends, my texting friends, my e-mail friends, my facebook friends.  I love to spend time with all of them and am amazed that I have all these wonderful people in my life.  I'm so happy to have heard from so many of them on my birthday today.

But I also love to be alone.  I crave it.  Even more so since I started homeschooling.  I've sluffed Sunday School to come home and have one hour completely alone.  So tonight, after a long, crazy and wonderful day with my children, I found myself able to leave the house alone for two hours.  I went shopping.

I went to the mall, and went into any store that appealed to me on a whim.  I stayed as long as I liked, because I didn't have a toddler in a stroller screaming at me to move along.  I ate a bit of heaven at Godiva in the form of a dark chocolate caramel.  I felt a bit of heaven at Brookstone as I sat in a $400 foot and calf massager for 15 minutes and relaxed.  I saw a bit of heaven as I browsed through Janie and Jack, daydreaming about the kind of life and home I might have if I was able to dress my children in those exquisite designs.  And I smelled a bit of heaven as I spent an hour in Sephora, sampling products to my heart's content.  I tried hair products, body creams, nail polishes and fine fragrance.  I bought an incredibly indulgent $10 one ounce L'Occitane hand cream.  I had an absolutely lovely time.  Unfortunately, I tried so many products that I left the store smelling like I had just been involved in an accident involving a tropical fruit stand, an Indian spice cart and a winery.  Then, on the way home I picked up an $8 slice of pumpkin pecan cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory.

Now, since my husband has recently started working the swing shift and I am alone in the evenings, I will put my children to bed, put on my ridiculously loud pink polka dot flannel sexy pajamas, cuddle up in my bed with my treats and a chick flick, and submit to a sugar coma.  Happy birthday to me.

Ahhhhh.

What I Need

Sorry I never blog anymore and when I do it's nothing much worth reading.  But it was good for a few minutes of laughter for me this morning, so here goes.

I know, you've seen this one make the rounds.  Me too.  I even did this a few years before, but I can't find it now.  Anyway, it's still funny.  Google "(your name) needs" and see what you get.  I'll only put my favorites:

Mel needs the loo.

Shelley needs Cocoa and Cookies.  And Prozac.

Erick needs to be feared.

Melissa needs to board the blob ship that is hovering overhead.

Spencer needs to calm down and take a rest.

Shannen needs your numbers.

Noelle needs to say what she needs to say.

Ava needs more overpowered sniper rifles.

Ma

In 2 days my baby will be 17 months old.  She says and signs a lot of things.  But today I saw and heard the best one yet.  I went downstairs to get her up this morning.  I said "Hi, Ava!" And for the first time she put her finger to her chin and said "Ma!"

Thank you, baby.

Why is this so funny to me?

I love published typos and grammatical errors.  I don't know why they make me laugh, but they do.

Here's a recipe from the program from this year's Greek Festival.  If it doesn't make you smile then you can just pretend I'm giving you a recipe I like.  Which I do, but I would have proof read it before giving it to you.

Kourabiethes
Butter cookie made with crushed roated almonds, dusted with powdered surger

Ingredients:
3/4 lb unsalted butter
1/4 lb regular butter
3 cups flour
1/2 cup powder sugar (confectioners sugar)
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon almond extract
Powder Sugar

In mixer, cream both types of butter until creamy and light in color.

Continue beating, add 1/2 cup powder sugar, egg yolks, vanilla and almond extract

Add 1 cupfull of flour at a time.

Mixing continually.  If dough is too soft, add a little more flour.

Preheat oven 375

Shape dough into round balls - size of a golf ball

Place on baking sheet 1 inch apart

Bake 12 - 15 minutes

Remove from oven - cool

When cool enough to handle, roll in powder sugar.

Place on paper towel - allow to cool 20 minutes then using a sifter, dust with additional powder sugar

Store in plastic containers

Some Thoughts from Sacrament Meeting

What I want for my children is to help them choose the right. I want them to work hard, to be obedient, to make good choices. Sometimes I want to help to the point of force.

What I want for my children is sometimes not what they need.

It's like teaching them to ride a bike. What I want is for them to learn without falling. What they need is for me to take off the training wheels and let them fall in order for them to learn.

This is the hardest thing we have to do as parents, and may be one of the hardest things Heavenly Father has to do--to let us come to Earth by removing our training wheels and allow us the opportunity to fall and get up again. And again.