Perfect

My blog friend over here a few weeks ago started a wonderful weekly post called "Christian Connections" Today's spotlight particularly was exactly what I needed and am very thankful for sharing. Please take a moment and go to her blog and then click on the links to her spotlighted woman today. Well worth your time. I am pretty confident you will feel very thankful you did!

I Hope.....

I hope that what I teach our daughters will be enough for them to have desires to continue to be good and do good.

I hope that when in life's difficult situations, they will know how to stand for what is right, no matter the consequence.

I hope they will come to understand the joys of having each other as sisters.

I hope that they will continue to want to serve those around them so that they will always know how joy feels.

I hope they will know the sweetness that comes from being thankful always, and will openly be genuine in expressing their thanks.

I hope that my example to them of what Motherhood is like and the joys and frustrations that come with the mantle of this great calling will be enough to create their own desires to be Mothers themselves.

I hope that they will all be able to find a wonderful spouse who will adore them and take care of them as wonderfully as their Father adores and takes care of me.

I hope they will know how important having a good education is and will always have an insatiable desire to learn.

I hope!

Family Pets

all images are from Google pics and are similar depictions of what our pets looked like





The first family pet I remember having was Hammie the Hamster. Hammie was loved, shall we say, a little too much. My twin sister had a habit of holding him a little to tightly and we blamed her for his death. It was late and my Mother had gotten us up to tell us the bad news. Hammie had died. We cried and we were upset of his departing this earthly life. We planned a proper burial the following day. We found a shoe box and laid him to rest, dug a hole in the ground and covered it. We said our final goodbyes.

We got our second pet a beautiful calico cat. Star was her name. She soon found Hammies grave and had a little snack. We were devastated. Star was a great cat. She was a perpetual hairball machine. The initial sounds of the cat needing to get rid of a hairball sent us into our own gagging as we knew what was coming. Nasty hairballs!

She even had the kindness of leaving a hairball for me on my birthday one year. It was in my direct line of walking path in my bedroom. Not something that I appreciated feeling first thing on my birthday. She lived for many years. She got along with all of us, and was a rather laid back cat. When it was soon for her to go the way of the earth she had wandered off one day. We hadn't seen her for several weeks. We thought we had heard her several time meowing but could never see her.

A very blustery day had come and the winds blew and so did Star out of the big pine tree out back. She landed on the ground very flat like a pancake. My Dad and brother wanted to give her a proper burial so they dug a hole in the ground to put her in. When my Dad went to put her in he discovered the hole was too small. Instead of making the hole bigger he made the hole work and got her to fit with the shovel.


Then we got the dog that probably had ADD. We named her Coalbin. Because she looked like she had jumped in a bin full of coals. This dog was challenged to say the least. We had a big sectional couch that she would run around for several minutes without stopping. She ate things like glass and bit my sisters ear and tore it. She took things out of the trash that were meant to stay in the trash. She had boundless amounts of energy. She just was too much for our family and so my Dad took her back to the pound without telling anyone. We got over it!

We had several goldfish. One had a sudden death in the sink disposal as we were trying to clean it's bowl. That was a bit traumatizing for me. Shiver! We had the occasional adoptive pet that we would take home from our elementary classes. Like the rabbit I took home for a spring break. We vowed after that to not have an indoor bunny, because all they did was leave little poopies all over. My eldest sister did have a pet bunny but failed to take into consideration the placing of the bunny outside and the poor bunny overheated in the direct sun location.


Gee I wonder why I don't want to get pets for our children? There are 2 kinds of people in this world, people who like having pets and people who don't like having pets. Right now in my life I am the person who does not like having pets. I am sure one day I will change my mind, but not in the near future. I am grateful for those who are pet people, because those cute little things needs good loving homes.

Love it!

Emma's teacher wrote a quick not to me yesterday to share what she said during an in class assignment.

"Emma cracks me up…I have to type this real quick before I forget. She was working on her Math Excel and said to me “Math is like cross-stitching…you make one mistake and it throws you all off!”


When Grandma and Grandpa Palmer were here, Grandma Palmer took the time to teach Emma how to cross stitch. I love how she drew a similitude of cross-stitching to her math.

Bad Days

I am thankful for bad days. You know what I am talking about right? I have had a few of them the past 3 weeks. I just felt like I was in a slump. Sick of people being sick and then I got sick with strep this week. I was just sick of it!( I got antibiotic yesterday and am looking forward to being able to swallow normally soon)

Luckily "this to shall come to pass" and all is well. After I wrote sorry notes to our children for my grouchy demeanor and vented last night to my husband how sick I was of everything and nothing, I feel much better. I probably owe my husband $50 for listening to me complain last night and being a silent therapist. But then again he helped create what we have so maybe he owes me $50.

It made me think this morning though. Is the phrase "If Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy" really true? It seems to be in our home. I pondered about how such a simple little choice to smile at my kids, instead of having a scowling look on my face really lightened the mood in our home this morning. Who would have thunk.



I also wonder if my Great-Great Grandma ever had days where she just got sick of everything and wanted to just go on vacation to a warm tropical island.

I wonder if she got sick of the fact that she had to go outside to an outhouse to go to the bathroom or if at the end of the day she ever looked at her full sink of dishes because she spent all day tending to others needs, and thought, "I am so sick of doing dishes can't anyone rescue me from doing this just for one time. I just want a break!"

Or the fact that when she had babies she got to rinse the poo and pee out of cloth diapers and clean them by hand just so they could get peed and pooped in all over again. That would most definitely drive me over the cliff.

I just wonder though how did she get through a bad day, and if she felt the same as I do after one of those bad days how it makes me appreciate the good days so much more. It can be so much easier for me to keep on going down in a hole of a dark abyss, but that is not in my nature.

Thankfully for my family and my own sake I am able to pull myself out of the hole quickly and stop complaining and do what needs to get done and feel good about the hard work I do day in and day out.

And those days where the monotony of it all gets to be too much I simply remind myself that the sun will indeed come out tomorrow and I let myself sulk for that moment in time and then tell myself "That is enough! Get back to work! This is but a small season and you really will miss it when the season has passed." I imagine that is what my Great- Great Grandma would have done.

Always My Babies

Someone once asked my husband and me how many kids we were going to have. We told that person that we will stop once we get an ugly one. Their reaction was a little stunned to say the least. I have had 5 miscarriages. 3 of those took place before Emma our oldest, until they did a bunch of tests and found out I had luteal phase defect. In essence I wasn't producing enough progesterone when I ovulated, so my uterus wasn't as cushy as it should have been for an ovum to implant properly. I could get pregnant but was unable to stay pregnant without progesterone. So with Emma I got to be on progesterone for the first 3 months of pregnancy until she kicked in and started producing progesterone at around the end of the first trimester.
I had a miscarriage between Sera and Lucy and another between Kady and Eliza.

I don't need to take progesterone anymore. Somehow my body has figured out how to distribute all those hormones properly.

I sure have been blessed with some amazing daughters. Even if they don't get that it is not in their best interest to wake me up at 6 in the morning and tattle tale on so and so because they don't think that so and so is doing what their suppose to be doing. And then every 5 minutes giving me an update on the situation that is taking place. It is a sure way to help me not start my day on a good note. Good thing they are cute.

When I am in a bad mood they don't call me Mom they call me Tallulah. Because they know their Mom would not be that mean. They think it is funny. I am glad.

Do I ever wish I haven't had those miscarriages. Nope. They have helped me realize that each child that comes to our family is meant to be here. Having children whether biologically or through adoption is a miracle. It helps shape many people through the experiences that happen to get them here. It is an honor to be a parent. One I do not take lightly. It is what most of my prayers revolve around. Life really is fragile. One minute you can have it and the next it can be gone. Those miscarriages have helped me remember that. Remember the joys in what you do have and you will have joy always.

Camping

When I was younger, my Mom would take my siblings and me on camping trips...usually by herself. Five young kids and her. I seriously do not know how she did this. I have asked her and she simply has said, "I just needed something to do in the summers!" Those were the days when putting up a tent was like taking a strand of dental floss in your mouth and trying to tie a bow with your tongue.

One summer, I remember we were gone for a long time. My Mom said she made a plan to camp all throughout Michigan.

At one camp site, we had the incident of the raccoon. I know my sisters who are reading this right now are probably laughing. We had gone to the bathroom area to wash up for the night and when we returned, there were some raccoons trying to get into the cooler. My Mom freaked out and was screaming like a crazy woman and we joined in. Someone jumped on a back of another. These crazy experience always left us laughing so hard at the end of the chaos. At this same campground, one of my sisters cut her head open on a slide, so my mom took her to get stitches. I would have put up the white flag of surrender and gone home. Not my Mom though; we pressed on to the next camp ground.

We made so many one-time friends. We would spend the day roaming the campgrounds exploring. (Although, times have changed since I was a kid. I don't know how I could do that with our daughters today and not feel worried-sick, not knowing where they were.)

We always made yummy food. I still love to this day having tin foil dinners. We had a lot of hot dogs and potato chips. Lots of s'mores, jiffy pop popcorn, and fruit pies. You know the healthy stuff! I loved the cinnamon sugar pies we could make for breakfasts. At least one day a week, my Mom made a hot breakfast, but for the most part, it was cereal.

My Mom told me that at one point on this trip, she took us to a hotel for one night just so she could bathe in hot water and get all of us kids cleaned. And to sleep on a real bed. I don't blame her.

Another summer, our family went on a 3-week camping trip across the United States when I was about 13. We stayed at KOA campgrounds the whole trip. One of the stops was in Arizona. This campground had a swimming pool, and I remember the water feeling heavy, like oil. There was a family who was staying there and everyone who was older, including the women, had long armpit hair. Interesting for my young, 13-year-old self to see.

This same campground became the grounds for an infamous bug story for our family. It was probably mid -day, and we were sitting around the fire pit, when we start hearing this buzzing noise. It grew louder and louder as it approached our site. We saw this big, black thing approaching us, and all chaos ensued:

My Dad, who is a jolly man, tried to leap out of his metal lawn chair, thus breaking it. My brother, who was about 10, and my Dad stayed outside as the rest of us went into the camper screaming and laughing so hard we were crying, because my Dad then tried using that broken chair to swing that big bug out of the park and score a home run, while my brother attempted to scream the bug away. That male instinct to protect kicked in, I guess. Afterward, we laughed so hard trying to figure out why this bug just came straight for us and then left. It sure makes for a fun memory though.

Our little family tried camping a couple summers ago, and all I could think was, "How can this be enjoyable for anyone with small children?!?" I am not a lost cause though. I have hope that one day, when all the kids have learned how to wipe their own rears and not pee in the bed, that camping will be a very fun and a cheap way of vacationing. So, in about 8 years, camping may be a feasible thing.

As for my Mom, she is a super hero in my mind. It makes the week I just had seem bearable, knowing she was able to take 5 little ones camping by herself for weeks-on-end and still be smiling at the end of the day. It makes getting to clean up throw-up multiple times in the middle of the night seem like a piece of cake. It is wonderful to have an example of enduring to the end when life around you can seem a little daunting.

Power of Moms

I fancy this wonderful source of goodness for Mothers. I was asked a while back if I would be interested in contributing my ideas for articles at their site. I felt very flattered. Here is my latest article http://www.powerofmoms.com/articles/two-sanity-saving-phrases.html



I really can relate to April Perry's article here http://www.powerofmoms.com/articles/sometimes-do-you-just-want-to-cry.html especially the last few days.



I don't think you need to be approached to write for them. They have several categories that you can submit articles to Check them out http://www.powerofmoms.com/ So if you have great ideas or stories see how you can contribute.



I have been wanting to get a "Learning Circle" together, but one of things I am not a good at is being a salesperson. If any who live in my area want to form a group I would be willing to be the Learning Circle leader. And if you live somewhere else and want to have your own learning circle group start one up where you live.

Creative kids

I am not talking about arts and craft. I am talking about how our children seem to have a knack for being able to come up with the 3rd option. At least in our home we have a nice group of deep thinkers who seem to spend all of their spare time creating plans of what their third options can be. This may be helpful for them in the future when they are asked in some important meeting to come up with several ideas in a brainstorming session. Not so much when I give 2 options for our children to choose from. For example, sometimes when it is dessert time this can often be heard in our home, especially by the younger children:

Parent:Your choice for dessert is mint chocolate chip ice cream or cookies and cream ice cream

child: How about strawberry ice cream?

Parent: What did you just hear me say?

Child: My choice is mint chocolate chip or cookies and cream

Parent: Okay so which do you choose?

Child: Strawberry

Parent: We don't have strawberry. mint chocolate chip or cookies and cream?

Child: How about a brownie?

Parent: Ooh I like mint chocolate chip ice cream too! Great choice.

Full

The past 2 weeks have been very full. All last week the two older girls had their spring break. My in-laws came in a couple Saturdays ago to spend time with us and to support Emma as she choose to be Baptized.

It was so wonderful to listen to the great messages from general conference over Easter weekend. On Easter Sunday we had a couple widows from our congregation over and I went and got my Grandmother from Port Huron. We had a delightful ham dinner. I enjoyed getting to spend extra time with my Grandma driving with her.

Last week on Monday started out with Lucy throwing up. She had a nice fever to go along with her sickness. By Tuesday morning she had developed a small little rash on parts of her arm and legs and chest. When I had taken Emma for her yearly checkup that morning I asked our pediatrician about Lucy and he asked me to bring her in. So I dropped Emma off and brought Lucy in where upon they did some tests and she tested for having strep. We got her on antibiotics that day. Her fever finally broke Wednesday afternoon.

It was a blessing to have my in-laws here to help with everything else that needed to keep the home functioning. Wednesday evening my Mom and her husband Chad flew in. I had gone to bed before they flew in because early Thursday morning Sera, Eliza and I flew down to St. Louis for her follow-up visit down at Shriner's for the Enobia study she is doing for her hypophosphatasia.

Eliza was such an amazing little traveler. Very cheerful despite her lack of sleep. Sera did great on her routine tests that they do. She is so amazing! By mid afternoon we were able to get into the hotel where were staying at, and we ordered dinner in and I bathed the girls. The closet was big enough to put Eliza's pack'n'play in. She was ready for bed at 4. I fed her and she got down to bed by 4:45 which is 5:45 our time. She normally goes to bed by 6 so she was right on schedule.

Sera and I ate our dinner which was good up until I found a fly in my salad. Not extra protein in my opinion. I chose not to eat the salad and asked for it to be removed from our bill. We got to wathc the movie "Tales of Desperado" while we ate. I couldn't believe how much food Sera packed in. Once we were done with our dinner and movie we played "fashion girls" and I painted Sera's finger and toenails.

Then we chatted for a few minutes about the importance of being respectful because she had been having a hard time remembering that throughout the day. If I myself had not been sleep deprived I would have realized sooner that she too was sleep deprived and probably didn't need my little lecture. Live and learn. So we got to bed by 6:15. I woke up lots but rested very well. The other two slept straight through til 6 the next morning.


I got myself ready while they watched TV. Sera had to fast for her morning blood draws. I grabbed a bowl of cereal at the cafeteria in the hospital and a danish for Sera when she was done fasting. They got her all prepped for the blood work. They put this numbing patch on her arm for about 30 minutes. Then they took about 8 vile's of blood. They have a special helper who is specifically there to help distract the kids. She got to blow bubbles and have bubbles blown at her this time.

Afterward she got to pick out a prize. She picked out a Tinkerbell hair care set. Eliza was tired by this point so I was able to get her to sleep. Ms. Amy, one of the workers in the study who help make the trips easy, took Sera on some walks so Eliza could sleep a little bit.

Once we were all done with what we came for, we still had a couple hours before we had to leave for the airport, so we had lunch and then we went outside to their play area for a good hour.
The Shriners (really nice old retired men) drove us to the airport. We got there a bit early and I was grateful because we were able to get on an hour earlier flight. Huge blessing!

Again the girls did great on the flight. We got home safely and it was nice to be home. Earlier in the day Jared had called and asked what they could do at the home to make Saturday run more smoothly. I asked if they could deep clean the home and so it was so refreshing to get home to a very clean home. Which I know can be a difficult task when you have little ones under foot.


Saturday was full of Birthday celebration. Emma turned 8! Emma wanted to go to Frankenmuth for the afternoon. Emma took her sisters and Grandpa Chad on a horse drawn carriage ride. We had the yummy famous chicken dinner and then we walked through a couple shops and then headed home for cake. What a nice fun full day. It was nice to not have to worry about cleaning the home and just focus on family fun. Sunday was Emma's Baptism.












Emma had been taking the discussions from our missionaries to make sure she understood the significance and importance of the covenants she was going to be making. I was always at awe listening to her pretty much teach the missionaries what they were there to teach her about. Needless to say she had willfully chosen to prepare herself for the covenants she made on Sunday when she entered into the waters of baptism. She was so incredibly excited to be baptized. She simply could not contain it in her little body. It was oozing from her. It was exciting for me to see! I am constantly grateful for her example of how to be excited to live the the principles of the gospel.

My very talented Mother in law sewed Emma a Baptism dress and a nice spring dress.

Monday was the sad day when our company left. We were so grateful to those who were able to come and share in the joy of Emma's baptism, and from the support we felt from those who were not able to be there physically. My Mother spoke on the gift of the Holy Ghost. Emma told me Monday that she told her friends about the story my Mother shared. Which the essence was that if my Grandma, her Mother, had not listened to the spirit then my Mother probably would not be here and therefore I would not be here and then consequently Emma would not be here.

I did 8 loads of laundry Monday on top of having the pleasure to take care of my dear friends 3 small children. Tuesday I made my bread and watched those 3 cute kids again. Luckily we were all able to get a nap in the afternoon.


Last night Emma got to attend her first "achievements days activity" for girls 8-11 in our church. They meet 2 times a month. She was so thrilled to tell me of the fun they had making fruit kabobs and talking with the other girls.

Afterward the Mother who brought her home took her and the other kids to 7-11 to get a Slurpee. I was so touched when one of my friends whose husbands was the Bishop before my husband, and happens to have 7 young children herself, called and expressed her willingness to help bring Emma home if we ever needed help, because she knows how hard it can be when you have other small children at home. I felt so cared for and really appreciated her kindness. I feel so blessed to have such wonderful friends.


So now are here Wednesday which started out with Lucy coming in to us at 6 this morning to let us know she threw up in her bed. We got showered and cleaned up and laid back down in our bed and within a minute she threw up again. Poor thing. She still is on antibiotics for another day for the strep she had last week. She threw up one more time and luckily has kept the medicine down. She does not have a fever so that is nice. I am thinking her tummy is a little rumbly from the medicine. This is the first time she has been on antibiotics in her 4 years of life. When our kids get sick I typically take them to our chiropractor and within a day they are better. So they rarely get infections that need antibiotics. For today we are going to do about 3 loads of wash due to thrown up on bedding and some sheets from Eliza. And we will do some resting and a walk this afternoon. I am looking forward to the warmth the next few days.

One of the great miracles that happened the past week is my prayer getting answered that no one else got strep. Eliza seemed to have an upset tummy and some runs over the weekend but I think that was due to her teething 3 teeth at once. I just wanted to say how blessed I feel and how full my cup feels. For me it is a true comfort to be able to feel that God loves me and is aware of and cares about me and what goes on in my little life. Yes my cup is full!

Fancy Cakes

Before you all compete to see who can get your next cake decorated by me, I have to first warn you I do not go for how good it looks. I can however guarantee the cake and icing itself will be some of the best you have ever had.

The first 2 pictures are from Lucy's birthday a few weeks ago. Can you tell what kind of cake she wanted?



Don't you just love the smarties for her reversed pupils. Lucy let me know where she wanted all of the roses. Yes those big blobs of blue are roses. And Lucy said they looked like roses. She loved her cake. I couldn't quite figure out how to construct a nice looking nose.



You see with little people all you have to do to make them happy is make the cake look somewhat like what they want and they are happy as can be.
Sera wanted a pink frosted cake with roses on it and ice cream in it for her 6th birthday. This cake tasted so incredibly good. I made a bundt cake and then carved out the middle a little bit more and stuffed it with ice cream. Jared was practically licking the platter when the cake was gone.
These are actually recognizable. I made them for a baby shower. The unfortunate thing was that I had made them earlier in the day and by the time the baby shower was later in the day the gel frosting I used for the eye pupils and smiley face went a little loopy. And that is exactly how the bears looked for the presentation at the baby shower. Loopy! At least I know they looked somewhat good at a point.
When Jared turned 30 the girls and I made him a rainbow frosted cake. The only reason we made it this way was because they insisted Daddy likes rainbows. Well these were the only colors I had and I did not feel like mixing colors so it turned out looking more like a reggae looking cake. It tasted great though. And in the end that is really all that matters!

Warning

Warning: This post is going to talk about a Mother's ever expanding and deflating bust line.

SO as I was cleaning out our drawers in preparation for the in-laws coming, I found that right now I have about 4 different sizes of braziers in my drawer. Why you ask, well it is the result 8(+) years of the expand/deflate syndrome that happens through pregnancy then postpartum of the cycle of a Mother.

It all starts with that first child. Your bosoms grow to a size you thought was only possible through unnatural methods. This should be your first clue that Mother nature has a sick sense of humor. Then after you have the baby, if you nurse, they grow even larger. An increased bust line is very deceiving because it will make your larger than average waist look smaller.

Then after about 7 or 8 months(depends on the woman) of nursing you tend to shrink in size. All of the sudden your waist seems larger and you feel like maybe you need to start working on those extra pounds you put on during pregnancy.

Your bra size at this point has become larger than what you can fill in, so you have to go out and try to find one that fits. Nothing like slapping a woman in the face to go from a very large size in her mind to a more average size. But you manage. Then once you are done nursing all together it is like some magic wand is waved and overnight your ladies have disappeared. Again Mother nature has a sick sense of humor.

The more kids you have though the number of different bra sizes increases, until at the end a training bra will be what is left. At least that is what I am shooting for. I hope I can even fit into that when we are done having kids. I feel very proud of myself, because I finally threw out two of my night nursing bras from when Emma and Sera were born. I guess the shredding material wasn't enough to convince me. It was only until the snaps that were used to lower so I could nurse, which were hanging by a thread, finally broke off. I am no better than those 50 year old men who still have their T-shirts from high school or college and think they still fit in them. They still try to fit in them despite the unsightliness of the matter.

I guess it all comes down to the fact that I ABSOLUTELY HATE TO SHOP FOR CLOTHES! So I hold onto clothes until they are literally falling apart. I hate going into a store and seeing all of these cute things thinking they may fit my body type, and then being disappointed because the seemingly majority of the woman population was not as blessed with the wonderful voluptuous curviness that I am. I love my body, but department store clothes apparently were not made for people with healthy curves.

I take that back. They do make my size, it is just not the size that is always left on the rack when I am finally able to go and shop. This is even true with the bra sizes. So this is why I have so many bras and so many different sizes, because it is just to hard to find them when I am in need of them. I am thankful for my collection of different bra sizes!