Kylie is 4!!

Sassy Cheetah!

That's what Kylie told me she was for Halloween.  If it helps tell you anything about her personality, this photo wasn't posed, this is just how I snapped her "talking" to me. I found this little dress and ears combo at Goodwill (the dress had a tail) and she fell in love with it.  I thought it was a leopard.  She told me it was a cheetah, and then on Halloween, when we first got her dressed, she told me, "I'm a sassy cheetah, so I have to do sassy dance moves!"

She's a big personality, quite a character.  There's nothing small about her, really:  big, beautiful, blue eyes; big mouth that lets out a big laugh and a big (often bossy) voice;  she turned 4 today and has been wearing big girl size 5 clothes for months now; she's got a good-sized booty that she loves to shake.  She loves to dance, and is pretty obsessed with ballet.  She has a little pink tutu leotard that she puts on with a little pair of silver ballet flats that were handed down by a cousin ("these are my pointe shoes" she tells me) and asks me to turn on "ballet girl commercials" (YouTube videos of professional ballet) so she can dance along, and then does her best to mimic the movements she sees on screen.  She is supremely expressive and has the perfect facial expressions to accompany whatever dance she's doing at the moment.  When she's not a ballerina, she's usually a rock star, with lots of scarves and a microphone (no, I do not let her watch Aerosmith videos), jutting her hips from side to side and singing quite loudly.  When she's finally tired of dancing, she just turns into a frills-and-lace four year old.  She loves dresses and skirts, anything with sequins, feathers, or beads, and loves having her hair fixed fancy.  Unfortunately for my wallet, she's always sneaking into my makeup.

She's very verbose and quite confident, but for all her verbal dexterity and blustery confidence, she is quite sensitive, and has difficulty with teasing (especially sarcasm).  She is easily embarrassed, and has one of the most effective glares I've ever seen.  But she is affectionate and sweet, loves attention and hugs and fun conversation.

With her big ginger mane and girly of girly girl temperaments, I see a lot of boys in our (hopefully still distant) future.  She's a huge flirt and quite charming.  She is bright and picks up new ideas and tasks quickly.  She still loves to build--has since she was a very small toddler.  She started stacking cups and rolls of toilet paper and other such household items around her first birthday, and still loves blocks more than any of my other kids.  She is pretty good at making complex castles, forts and towers with her blocks. 

Maybe she'll be daddy's little architect.  Or maybe she'll be an actress.  Either or both would suit her quite well, and one of the best things about being four is that you can be whatever you want. Precocious and bossy, but still somehow gentle and sensitive, the world is wide open before her, and she absolutely loves discovering it.

For Myself

I actually posted this on Facebook on November 7, but wanted to record is here for myself.  To remind me how fortunate I am on those days when I feel like whining about my secondhand furniture or lack of nice wardrobe, instead of focusing on being grateful for the abundant ways in which I'm blessed.


I am tremendously grateful that my husband has gainful employment in his chosen profession. We arrived from California one year ago today. After spending 15 months trying to cobble together a living from savings, odd jobs, part time work, etc, and applying for nearly every job opening in Doug's profession in the Rocky Mountain and west coast states and a few midwest states--anywhere we even thou

ght we might be willing to move our family--and applying for a lot of jobs that were in some way sort of related to Doug's profession in those areas, and applying for $10-12/hr management jobs, and putting in applications at places like Lowe's, Sports Authority, etc, and not even hearing back from ANY of those places, and selling a lot of our possessions and uprooting our family to accept the help of others, we were struggling to stay optimistic about our future. Last spring Doug suddenly landed two interviews in a week, and the first one he went to led to a job offer, which led quickly to a promotion. I'm glad that we found this job, and that we found it here, in western Montana. For much of the time that we had little to no income, that was actually not even our primary trial--it was a tough couple of years and I will forever remain in debt to the many generous souls who saw us through some of the most difficult times in our adult lives. Thank you to the very best friends and families in the world. The thousands of acts of kindness that we have received have never gone unnoticed. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It still overwhelms me to even think about it. Our thoughts and prayers are with our many friends and family members who are still unemployed or underemployed. We think of you often.

Worth Remembering

I used this talk for my Relief Society lesson last week, and I was very grateful that I came across it.  Its speaks of so many of the things I often think about at Christmas, but expresses them more eloquently than I could ever hope to myself.

I don't think I ever really thought about Mary in a serious, meaningful way until I had my first baby.  It was several weeks shy of my 20th birthday, I was thousands of miles from most of the places and people that were familiar to me, and I was in an old, run down and poor country hospital that many mainland women turned their noses up at when it came time to have their babies.  But compared to Mary's experience, I was in the lap of luxury:  not only were my husband and mother at my side, but so was a highly trained, wonderful OB-Gyn who had delivered hundreds of babies, and plenty of capable nurses.  For all its quirks and deficiencies, Kahuku Hospital did have most modern technologies expected of American hospitals, and clean, sterile sheets and a comfy birthing bed (yes, I jest--there is no such thing as a comfortable birthing bed--but it was a bed, nonetheless).  It started to finally click for me what it must've been like to be 14 or 15, having your first baby away from home and family, with no assistance, in a dirty and drafty barn on a chilly spring night, after having ridden or walked about a 100 miles in the preceding days.  How terribly uncomfortable and frightening.

And as I have not just had babies, but raised children, it has dawned on me how daunting the task assigned to Mary and Joseph was. That difficult, uncomfortable night in Bethlehem was but a shadow of the sacrifices that they would ultimately make. Every parent has moments when she doubts herself--every parent sometimes thinks, I should've done this better, I should've done more of that.  I can only imagine how inadequate Mary and Joseph must've felt at times, knowing what and who they had to prepare their son to be.  It is astonishing how readily and humbly they accepted one of the most daunting assignments in history.

We remind ourselves often (as we should) that our Father gave his first born son.  As parents, I think we come to understand and appreciate that sacrifice a bit more as we better appreciate how much our children mean to us and how we loathe seeing them suffer.  I also think, however, that sometimes it still feels a bit removed--he is, after all, God, and so far beyond us in so many ways.  I think we would do well to remind ourselves that Mary, an inarguably exceptional but still very mortal woman, probably understood better than any other soul the words of Isaiah's prophecy as she held her newborn baby: "Unto a us a child is born, unto us a son is given. . ."  He was very much hers, and yet she knew that he was ours, and she and Joseph together reared the living Son of God, fed and clothed and taught him, to help him become what they knew he must be.  The Father gave his first born son, for which we ought to express gratitude and reverently rejoice, but it is worth remembering that, nearly as willingly, Mary gave her firstborn son, as well.  At the beginning of Jesus' life, there was Mary, in pain, exposed, tired in every joint, bone and right into her soul.  At the end of his life, the Savior hung on the cross, in excruciating pain, exposed, more thoroughly exhausted than any other soul before or since, and there, always as close as she could be, at the foot of his cross, was his beloved mother, undoubtedly in anguish at the sight of her son's agony, having to part with the child that she had sacrificed so much for.  Again, she probably knew better than any other living soul that his death and resurrection would bring us all new life.

So as you celebrate the Savior, take a moment to remember those two nearly anonymous souls who were two of the chiefest figures in helping to give us the most precious gift in all eternity.  Think of what was asked of them, of all that they did to serve the one who ultimately served us all best, and consider if there isn't perhaps a bit more you could do to serve others in your life.  Even if that only means being a bit more patient, kind and compassionate.  Its as true now as it have ever been that the best gifts that we give are the ones we cannot wrap.

What I Hope They Remember

One of my friends was here the other day and mentioned another mommy friend and said, "I just feel so inadequate around her.  I swear she never yells at her kids or loses her patience".  I agreed that said mom was indeed patient, but then added, "A lot of it is practice and experience". The mom making the comment has two children, the oldest being four.  The mom she spoke of has five kids, the oldest being 12.  In some ways, the more kids and more practice you have, the easier it gets to be patient.

I am a much better mother now than I was when Keilana was 3 and Dylan was 1 1/2.  First of all, a precocious, independent 8-year-old is much easier to be patient with and encouraging to than a precocious and independent 3-year-old (in most ways, anyway).  But I'm a much better mother to the 3-year-old and 1 1/2-year-old I have now than to the ones I had five years ago.  I've learned a lot, I've grown up a lot, and I've learned some lessons.  I always knew it was important to pick your battles, but I now have a better grasp on which ones are worth picking.  I've learned better organization and time and home management, making us all a lot happier and more patient.

That said, I still fall short a lot of days (or, more accurately, in a few ways every day).   So I hope that I do well enough that my kids remember the good things more than the bad. I know that she won't remember the nights from baby through toddlerdom where I stood  by her bed, holding her and singing hymns and Primary songs softly to soothe her to sleep when it seemed sleep would not come, standing and rocking until my back ached, but hopefully they will remember, somewhere in their unremembered memories, that tenderness and affection when they think of me. And I hope they remember that I kept singing those soft songs to them each night at bedtime, well into the big kid years. I hope they remember walks to the park and trips to the library.  I hope they remember me gleefully stomping and growling along with them as we read "Where the Wild Things Are".  I hope they remember those evenings sitting together in the livingroom with our scriptures open and that we try to to have family prayer every day.  I hope they remember sitting there shrieking in frustration while I calmly and quietly waited for the storm to pass so we could get back to learning to tie shoes. I hope they remember the random, impromptu side roads and day trips that add adventure to their lives and how much we all loved doing those things together.

And as I thought about all that, I was struck that this is the reason I have such affection for so many of the people who were in my life the last few years: they saw it all, the good, the bad and the ugly, but chose always to remember only the good and the beautiful in me, and reminded me of those things often.  I became better because they saw the best in me.  That's what I hope to give my kids, and hopefully I'll be good enough at it that they will be willing to reciprocate for me in their grown-up memories.

And, hopefully, I can get better at that with the adults in my life, too.  . . . .

The Reason

I try every year to do this, but I thought I'd share this year in case others with young children are interested but don't want to put in the time (or don't have the time) to figure it out.  For every day in December leading up to Christmas, I have a scripture and a small activity to go with it, to help focus the whole family on why we're celebrating.  While the scriptures apply at any age, most of the activities are geared toward littler kids.  But if you have older kids, maybe the activities I've listed will help give you ideas for ones you could do.  The vast majority of these take very little time or money--enough activity to focus us, not enough to stress us out.  Obviously, you could rearrange things to suit your family's schedule.  Non-LDS families shouldn't have any trouble finding Biblical substitutions for scriptures I've drawn from other books in the LDS canon.

Dec 1st  -  2 Nephi 11:8, 25 (tree of life) Get/put up tree

Dec 2nd - John 10:11, 14-16 (Good Shepherd) Put candy canes on tree, watch Christmas devotional

Dec 3rd  - D&C 110:3-5 (description of God's appearance)  FHE (family lesson) on Christmas symbols

Dec 4th  - Isaiah 1:18 (sins will be made white as snow)  Paper snowflakes

Dec 5th  - Ps 98:4-6 (make a joyful noise), D&C25:12 (song of the heart is a prayer)  Caroling

Dec 6th - Ps 27:1 (lord is my light) - ding dong ditch candle+treat

Dec 7th - 2 Nephi 2:25 (men are that they might have joy) - Ward Christmas party

Dec 8th  -  Micah 5:2 (out of Bethlehem)  - watch The Nativity Story as family

Dec 9th  -  Exodus 20:12 (honor father and mother) - Make ornaments for Gpa's

Dec 10th - Matt 2:11 (wise men bring gifts) -  FHE on using our gifts to serve God

Dec 11th - Luke 2:12-14 (angels announce holy birth) - Handprint/footprint angels

Dec 12th - 1 John 4:8,16 (God is love) - talk about ways to show love at home and at school

Dec 13th - 2 John 1:6 (walk after my commandments) Footprint reindeer

Dec 14th - John 8:12 (I am the light of the world) - Go for light drive

Dec 15th - Isaiah 49:15-16 (I have graven thee upon my palms) - porcelain hand ornaments

Dec 16th - Alma 32:42 (fruit of tree of life is sweetest of all) - make/deliver goodie plates

Dec 17th - Isaiah 53:3-5 (despised and rejected of men), Matt 25:40 (unto the least of these) - FHE on kindness and always remembering the Lord

Dec 18th - Moses 1:39 (my work and my glory, bring to pass eternal life of men) - handprint wreaths

Dec 19th - Isaiah 9:6 (he shall be called Wonderful) Jesus name/title "Subway art)

Dec 20th - Gen 1:26-27 (male and female created he them) - make gingerbread men

Dec 21st - John 16:27-28, 33 (Father and I love you, be of good cheer)--what are our reasons to be of good cheer?

Dec 22nd - Josh 24:15 (me and my house will serve the Lord) - Gingerbread houses

Dec 23rd - Job 19:25 (I know that my Redeemer liveth) - family testimony meeting

Dec 24th - Nativity play/story with cousins


I realize that many of these are not typical "Christmas scriptures", but that's precisely why I picked them: Christmas isn't just about celebrating a baby's birth, its about understanding better who that baby became, what he did, and why it matters to us, and striving to find ways to honor him.  Merry Christmas to your family. A parting thought, one of my very, very favorites:

""There would be no Christmas if there had been no Easter. The babe Jesus of Bethlehem would be but another baby without the redeeming Christ of Gethsemane and Calvary and the triumphant fact of the Resurrection." ~Gordon B. Hinckley

A good thought...

"We come to this earth charged with a mission: 

to learn to love and serve one another. 

To best help us accomplish this, 

God has placed us in families,

 for he knows that is where we can best learn 

to overcome selfishness and pride

 and to sacrifice for others

 and to make happiness and helpfulness and humility

 and love 

the very essence of our character."

John H. Groberg

Parent Teacher conferences

Last Thursday, before we got snowed in, we headed to the kids' schools for parent teacher conferences.  Dylan's teacher, Mr. Tesson, was up first.  Not long after we got into the classroom, Dylan was showing his sisters around while we started visiting with the teacher, and at some point little man heard his name and looked toward the three of us and grinned a mile wide.  Mr. Tesson, with obvious affection, said, "That smile, oh that smile, it could get you out of anything."  He told us repeatedly that Dylan was a great kid and that they were having a lot fun.

And he told us about his challenges with Dylan, smiling genuinely the whole time.  Apparently, a few times Dylan has simply refused to do something (eat the daily snack--usually some kind of fruit or vegetable--even though all he has to do is taste it, or get up and stretch during the afternoon with the rest of the class, or answer his teacher during oral exercises) just because he wasn't interested in doing it at the moment.  And its good to know that Mr. Tesson employs the same method we do at home: patiently wait him out, restricting all other privileges or activities until the required ones were completed.  As we commiserated about the challenges of teaching an iron-willed and very independent child, Dylan flashed us another smile, and it had the same affect on all three of us: What a delight he is!  He is rarely defiant out of rebelliousness--I won't do this because you want me to--when he is defiant it is simply because he doesn't understand why he should ever have to do something he doesn't want to do.  Most of the time, he is so pleasant and sincerely friendly.  Its relatively easy to wait him out on those things he gets stubborn about, because he's not a tantrum thrower and doesn't have much temper, he's just so enjoyable the rest of the time that its easy to not be mad.

I told his teacher that Dylan had whined to me that he couldn't read chapter books because they were too hard, but I got a couple of Magic Treehouse books from the library and he flew through them--it took him one afternoon a piece to read them from beginning to end.  Mr. Tesson told us he was in the top reading group they have for the first grade and is still outscoring most of the class.  So, as I suspected, he's a bit lazy.  We'll work on that.

Keilana has Ms. Flynn this year, whom she just adores.  She's also doing well in all her subjects, and Ms. Flynn couldn't stop saying how sweet she is--helpful and affectionate and always, always, always smiling.  We laughed about what a little perfectionist she is (one time this year, her homework didn't make it to school, and it was, admittedly, my fault, and she reminds me at least once a week that the only work on her homework chart is because of me).  She has made a lot of friends this year, and has been working hard on every assignment she's been given.  She's a very attentive and careful student--she has her mother's need to please the adults in her life (hey, it served me well at that age, hopefully it will serve her well, too).

So, the main thing I took away from these meetings, now that I've made you sit through all this rambling about my kids, is that it is absolutely wonderful to have real conversations with my kids' teachers and see that those teachers know my kids and genuinely love my kids.  From what I can tell without sitting in the classroom, they seem to be very good teachers, too.  Even though our kids go to school all day, we ultimately take responsibility for their education and do a lot of things at home to try to enrich their learning (first and foremost with requiring reading time every day, and trying to gently guide their reading choices a bit), but its nice to feel like that 7 hours a day is well worth everybody's time, and that they're spending it with people who are paying attention to them and know what helps them and what doesn't.  Being raised by two good teachers, I have some idea what it takes to do that job well, and I'm grateful that my kids have teachers like that.