Good times.

I love working teenagers. They are a blessing.

Kassidy treated Justine and I to a movie tonight.

I committed the hugest sin in teenage girls eyes. I SCREAMED in the movie during an intense part. Then we cracked up about it for ten  minutes. It was great. They loved it and they were MORTIFIED at their mom. I hate being the old mortifying, embarrassing mom.

When I was young my mom was great. But no matter what I think your mom is embarrassing somehow. I'll never forget one of the first days of high school. I went to a huge high school. Columbine actually.

So my mom was picking me up after school and the parking lot was so full she stood on the edge of the van and waved her arms and screamed my name like crazy to let me know where she was. I walked to the van and said in a very serious tone..."Don't ever do that again!"

But my mom made up for it by driving me to early morning church seminary. I think I had to be there by 6. And she would walk the church and then drive me to school. Every. school. day. That's a good mom right there!

My heart goes out to orphans.

I know. Every ones does. But it really is something I have cared about since a youth. I don't really know how to change the world. I just don't. It is too big and there are too many problems and too many orphans.

And I am barely muddling through maintaining my own life.

The beautiful thing about blogging is awareness. I have become so aware of other people who ARE doing something. Some of those people are in life situations where they are able to do something about this problem. And some of those people have just decided to do something because it is the right thing to do. Hard or not hard.

And these people are just normal people. But the things they are doing are amazing. I am EXTREMELY humbled by the things I have been reading on blogs about the people who are changing lives. I'll do another post about that later so don't get sick of me yet....

I want to do the best I can from my part of the world. Which for now is a very small and meager "best". It includes... posting a blog to raise awareness about orphans, helping a friend raise money, having a school cupcake bake sale where money is donated to an orphanage, reading a great book about a young girl* of 21 who has already adopted and is mothering 14 orphans, (She has my daughters name, that makes me dang proud), donating 10 bucks, reading another book that is entitled "It's not okay with me." ( I love that title), attempting to plan a highschool trip to visit an orphanage.

I want to help. Because it's not okay with me either. But I can only do what I can do. But I want to do a little more than I can do. It should hurt a little, right? Because isn't that the beauty of the sacrifice? Shouldn't it pinch a little (or a lot) to be a true sacrifice?

This is my beautiful friend Michelle.

She is a mother for sure! She has a mother's heart. The mother's heart where even if she didn't have children she would still be a mother. She is kind and loving and good. She is generous of spirit. She isn't perfect. But she is good. And her husband?..... He might be perfect. Just sayin'.

They have these cute little boys. Precious, sensitive, sweet boys.

And this one big boy,

who has stolen my heart. He has such great soul and charisma. He was my girls first date. He is uber cool. But don't you have to be to own the name Gunnar?

And one cool dog named "Indie"! Don't you love the picture?

Michelle has been weary of the plight of orphans for a long time too. We are sisters in this area.

She and her husband are going for it. They have committed to adopt to girls from the Congo. Two little sisters. Two little orphans. They have their pictures, they have their names.

The scary thing is that one turning four. Her time is growing short before she is old enough to get lost,  separated from her sibling, aging out of the orphanage and being turned out on the street, or abducted to be.... sold. SOLD. Can you even comprehend?

Guess what? We can help in our own little part of the world! We can spread her blog through our cyber world. We can spread it like wild fire. Isn't that power amazing?

Also guess what? Maybe you can't donate 100 dollars. I can't. But I can donate ten. And you probably can donate 10. And if a lot of people donate 10, then they will be able to get these girls home. And if you can donate more and the Spirit tells you it is the right thing to do, donate more.

Do what you want with this post. We all have to do what we feel is right. But these are good people. And little orphans. And the only stupid thing that stops their worlds from coming together... is money. I hate that.

I have always thought that if it weren't for the money, I could bring 100 orphans to our church today and they would be gone by night. Don't you think?

Please spread their blog. Like wildfire. Let's get it out of control.Can you imagine donations coming in out of control? These little sisters could be home in 6 months.

I could cry over it.

But if we all do nothing....waiting for someone else to do it....they won't be. Simple as that.

I could cry over it.

Here is Michelle's blog.... Enjoying the Journey.... to Africa. Please check it out. It has a great spot that gives the breakdown of where all the money goes. And if you have any questions feel free to ask her. She is the research queen.


*Katie...the 21 year old who adopted 14 girls and runs a ministry in Uganda. Please look at her blog also.http://kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/ And watch the video of her story. I love the part about how we are suppose to love our neighbors as our selves. And she says "My self doesn't want to be starving. So I don't want other people in the world to be starving." I also love how she said that people sometimes think she is so lucky to have fallen into what she wanted to do for her life. And she feels like she didn't "fall" into it. It was right there in the Bible. Love this girl.*

I have been going through a few personal struggles lately. And I have had some things confirmed for me that I believed before....but now... I know.

In times of greatest need and trials, Heavenly Father will swoop His love down, like an owl's gigantic feathery wing, and cover you. And you will be protected.

At least that's how it was for me. And I don't doubt that is how it would be, or is, for you. Maybe we don't know it is happening every time. Maybe we are just so blind sometimes. But I am sure it is happening every time we are in need.

I have heard before that the spirit can teach you the most in times of the most heartache. I have heard people say that the trials they suffered were well worth it because of the things they learned from the spirit during that time. And those things learned,  they wouldn't trade  for anything. Not even their suffering.

 I have learned more about God's love and been given more peace and comfort during my time of recent chaos and upset than any other time in my life. I have seen the Spirit bless my life and sooth my soul and shelter me from the storm, and it has mostly been through other people.

I have been taught where to find the Spirit. At times, weird as it may sound, I have felt like a lizard basking in it. I have felt it baking me. Oh, that was nice. Lizards can't stay warm on their own you know. They need some outer source to warm them. And that is how I was. I needed it around me and burning  me. Man, it felt good. I have learned new meaning in the word "peace". I am eternally thankful for the suggestion from a wise person about where to go to receive that "baking" of the Spirit. And where to find that peace.

I have witnessed the Priesthood in an ordinary and flawed man offer me assurance and comfort and strength. And I cannot say the word enough... peace.

And I have learned that the Spirit is most present when hearts are changing and when suffering is taking place. And I have learned that the Spirit can speak to me through the mouths of ordinary people. And it sometimes doesn't even matter what they are saying. It is what my heart heard.

And I have learned that people are put in my pathway to bless my life. And Heavenly Father had it all worked out before I even knew I was going to need it all worked out. He was all over it. What trust I have gained in Him. He is not going to leave His daughter hanging.

I have learned that when you are all alone...you aren't.

Let the break begin!

First day of spring break! Went pretty well. Started the day with helping clean out two kids rooms. I do that every break so that they can maintain the whole rest of the week.

We had a church activity in the afternoon where we stuffed (and I do not joke) thousands of Easter eggs with the primary kids....super fun.

And in the evening Rhett had his last appointment with his reading therapist. We have LOVED her. She always had popcorn and pop for him. He enjoyed going. We have gone two times a week forever. She was so wonderful. A huge advocate for Rhett. We didn't know this would be our last visit. It was a sudden change for her and therefor for us. We will have to find someone knew.

I have a love hate relationship when the kids have breaks from school. I love to have more time with them. Hate their fighting. I love having them help with the house. Hate their fighting. I love having more time to get stuff done. Hate their fighting. I LOVE help with the little kids. Hate their fighting. I love them lounging around and relaxing. Hate their fighting. I love them working. Hate their fighting. I love them playing and teasing with each other. I hate their fighting.

The other day we were in the kitchen chatting. Bo was asking what the word weird meant. By the way...I am the WORST person to try to give a definition of a word. I am just not that good at it. So I can't remember what I told Bo but it wasn't negative.

So I told Bo..."I'm weird". Because I am. I always have been.

Kate was all upset and concerned. And she put her little hand on me and said "No you're not! You're cute!"

Aww. Little sweetie. But why does she already think weird is negative?

Bye for now!!!!

I saw the funniest quote. Totally how I feel.

"I love the computer....that's where my friends live."

Feeling deeply grateful and blessed and quite a bit disheartened tonight. My boy is fighting a battle of a lifetime and for a lifetime, I am afraid.

I had parent teacher conferences today. Chatted with Rhett's teacher. He is still struggling with his dyslexia which is no new news. Struggling big time. Reading is slowly coming along. Writing...not at all. Math....not by much. Piano....we quit.

Something is honestly and truly locked in his brain.And we don't have the key.

The thing is....he is smart. He is competent. He is beautiful. He is funny. He is fiery. He is loving.
He is dyslexic. Severely. But we are not ashamed.

We are scared though. Really scared. But somehow I just know he can make it.

I was told recently by a dyslexic and a very educated man that dyslexia is actually a blessing. Because it opens up different parts of your brain. I think it's true. He recommended a book to me called "The Dyslexic Brain". A used copy on Amazon is 70 dollars! Wow. That has got to be some book!

So we are awaiting the blessings of dyslexia. So far it is a battle.

However, my deeply grateful part comes when I hear the teacher tell me that Rhett's little buddy Abram helps him with his math. I immediately could see the two of them working together in class. My heart swelled. He is the little guy who helped Rhett write that cheesy Valentine to me about "You are so beautiful that you look like an angel from heaven." Lol.

Then the teacher told me another buddy, Brady, bought Rhett a book from the book fair and put it on his desk to surprise him. He bought it because it had 3-D glasses on it. The kids see Rhett read with transparent paper. Brady must have thought these 3-D glasses would help him read like that blue transparent paper. Couldn't you just cry? Sweetest thing ever. Rhett was showing me the book tonight and it was darn cool.

So I am so incredibly blessed that my boy is in a safe place. With kids who have been trained to be good to each other. Where it is okay to need help.

He finally got to sign up for jujitsu. He has been super ecstatic. And I am super ecstatic. Because the men he now gets to rub shoulders with (or "roll" with I should say) are outstanding men. And I am trying to raise an outstanding man. And with his hardships I am thankful for all the great influences we can get.

Tonight I was thankful I got to go to my other son's orchestra concert. Nathan is the big brother in our family. When we drop Nathan off to orchestra class Kate will tell me "Nathan's a good boy."

 I love the violin. Love it. Love the cello. Love the bass. Love it all. I have wanted this to "stick" with Nathan and I think it finally is. A few weeks ago he had to miss orchestra. He was not happy. "We are playing a really good song!" he told me. And tonight he told me after the concert "The sad part about this (end of concert) is once you finish you wont get to play that song again." Score. Mission accomplished.

Grateful I got to go to the concert and listened to those songs. They soothe my soul. I even found myself closing my eyes to the music. It has a magic about it. Grateful for life's blessings.

Isn't he so handsome? He is growing like crazy.

Probably only Grandmas and Tiffany (violin teacher) will care to watch this lousy quality video but just in case...here it is.... Much to Nathan's disgust he had to sit in the front row. I was thrilled! I have more to say about violining and my boy but maybe another day.

I love books and I love book shelves. Corey built these for me when we first moved into our home. They have been a disaster for while and I finally took the time to organize them. I also did the unthinkable and packed a bunch of books away. Because sometimes less is more. Lots of times less is more. So I just kept out my very favirots. It is my happy place to look at right now. I get a thrill out of anything clean and organized and so I have been looking at them a ton. I don't know why anyone would really care about this post. I just have ocd somethimes and wanted to blog about my bookshelves. So there.

Top books that are on my shelves that you should read...

Book of Mormon

Twilight.

 (bahaaahaa. I crack myself up. You know becasue I listed that stupidness next. I am totally kidding. Don't read those. They are okay but not really worth the time. Don't ask why I own hard bounds of all four. Nuts. But I do find Rob very adorable.)

Dr. Laura Proper; Care and Feeding of Husbands

Beautiful Boy

The Hiding Place

We Were Not Alone

Masquerading as Angels

Standing for Something

Book Theif

I am sure there are more but those are some of my "stay out on shelves" worthy ones.

hi, that's all I got.

Awww! Hi little blog! I have missed you so much.

I am going to start off simple and sweet tonight.

My kid has a..... QUOTE, UNQUOTE.... (do that little think with your fingers, please) boyfriend. I don't like it. Not at all. He is a sweet kid but I really just want Kassidy to pay attention to church and school. Is that asking for too much?

Anyways....Aside from my anti boyfriend stance....I think they might fit each other....See for yourself....
Here are Tyson's Senior class pictures....

And...here is Kassidy asleep with her new Picachu back pack that he bought her....

Yep...Our future is safe with these two. Lol.

The high light of our crazy day was.... we bought a snail for the fish tank. Stupid I know but all the kids have been checking all day to see if the snail is out. I HEART that. I have never seen a snail like him before. He is a zebra snail and has stripes on him. He's totally cute. And I got him for ten percent off which was a 30 cent discount. Lol.

Bye friends. Glad to be back!

Party time in the church house!

So lucky to have a friend like Amy who keeps losing  hours of her life to make crazy cake balls with me. I keep turning all of Corey's friends into my friends. He had some great friends I tell ya. Glad to have them all to myself. 

I swore I was never going to do cake balls again but I can't resist when my kids ask me. Justine wanted them for her 16th birthday. 

Only she wanted OREO balls. uh....can you say STRAIGHT FROM HEAVEN???? They were so so so good. They are basically 1 package of ores with 1 package of cream cheese (one can never go wrong with cream cheese, have you ever tried it on banana bread? It is the ONLY way to eat banana bread. Learned that from my mom!) and that's it.

 You just separate the Oreos, mix the frosting and the cream cheese together, crush the Oreos, then mix all that together and roll in little balls and freeze. You probably should google for better directions. But they were so good. Justine loves the colors zebra, teal and lime green. So those are the colors we decorated with.

Amy refused to look at the camera because she knew she'd end up on my blog.

Decorations...

I am super into banners....I think they are so cute.

My friend made this zebra for her daughter's baby shower. It is just on a card board frame. It is out of fondant. Justine loved it. They let us have it and we stored in in the freezer no less than 6 months just to display it at her party.

She felt weird later but all she wanted was chips and gummy bears and Oreo balls.

I forced her to have Nacho cheese sauce because...does that really need any explaining?

Playing cards. There was a snow storm so she was missing a few kids but they all had a great time.

This was probably the hit of the night. It is a photo booth. It was minus the "booth" because of the pain it is to set it up but they had a GREAT time getting pictures of themselves. I LOVE the photo booth. I had a great time with it myself. I will save those pictures for another post. I will say though...I managed to get a series of four perfect pictures of myself. That is NO SMALL FEAT I tell you!

Playing "amazing race" challenges

Trying to catch a cheese ball on their whip creamed nose

Can you recognize the letters?

Thanks to Carly for organizing the games. Fun!

Opening some presents...

I borrowed a "Connect". We still don't own anything like that. I must admit I am a bit proud of that fact. I am trying to keep my sons AWAY from video games. But the "Connect" is tempting. It is so much fun.

So it figures I borrow a "Connect" and the girls could have CARED less about playing it. (We couldn't find the dance game). But Rhett loved it. He came and helped me get out tables and set up. He also walked in a SNOW STORM to bring me things I kept forgetting. Kassidy had taken my van. He is a DARLING boy. So sweet.

Then we moved the girls into the foyer with the couches and chairs and they watch the sweetest love story ever..."A Walk to Remember".

Great night. I love my kid. I love friends who love to make cake balls. I love friends who let me borrow their fun stuff and I REALLY love friends who stay with me during the party and clean up with me!

The end.

Oh yeah.... Cheese balls, by the way, are instant DELICIOUS death.

Do we believe Christ? That He will do what He says He is going to do?

We have the cutest kid in our church. On fast Sunday (the first of every month LDS people fast for two meals and then the church meeting consists of bearing testimony. The money you would spend on food for those two meals is given, if you so desire, to the church to distribute to the poor.) he often bears his testimony. His name is Kristjan. Today he was telling a story about locking his keys in his car and how he had to be somewhere really important when he instantly ran into some friends who could help him. I love it when he said...."You can call it coincidence if you want to but I'm not going to." I loved that! Good going kid! Way to stand on your own feet and believe what you believe. I thought it was outstanding.

I have things like that happen to me also. Things that are almost too amazing to call a coincident but you still doubt a tiny bit whether it was God's hand in your life or not. I try to always just assume it was God's hand in my life. This week I did have something happen to me that I KNEW there could not be any other answer than God's hand in my life. Nice.

I started reading this book today by a professor at BYU. Believing Christ by Stephen E. Robinson.

He said he has students come in who understand about paying tithing, or fasting, or other doctrines of the gospel but that they do not understand some scriptural doctrines like salvation by grace, justification through faith in Christ, sanctification, atonement..... Wow, do I? I'll just say it. I don't. Or I don't know that I do yet.

 I decided to study those topics and make sure me and my most precious kids (which are all of them ;) ) understand those topics.

The first chapter in his book spoke of how we cannot make it to Heaven on our own because we are sinners. No one can. Not without Christ. And we can work our butts off trying to do it alone by being perfect or we can do our best, giving ourselves a break, and let Christ get us the rest of the way there.

I love when he says, "Do you really think that exaltation is a matter of reaching down into your guts and pulling out the energy and determination you need to live a perfect life? If so, you don't want a savior, you want to do it all by yourself."

"The great secret is this: Jesus Christ will share his perfection, his sinlessness, his righteousness, his merits with us. In his mercy he offers us the use of his perfection, in the absence of our own, to satisfy the demands of justice."

One of my favorite things he says so far is,"We must not only believe in Christ, we must also believe Christ."

Do we believe Christ? That He will do what He says He is going to do?

I do. And I am so grateful. Because I am not perfect. And I don't want to try to be.

That will cause you mental illness. And I am not joking.

I have been seeing a therapist for a little fine tuning in some private matters. Is that crazy to admit online? I don't know. But I have been gleaning some wonderful things from him. He told me once that one of the biggest issues we have in our community is perfectionism. People trying to be perfect and expecting their kids to be perfect. And the kids expecting themselves to be perfect. It is a problem. And when I look about I can see how right he is.

I could quote the whole book and I am only on part of chapter two. So good. Thanks mom for giving it to me. I have marked it all up already. I can't wait to teach my kids some of the "Good News" I am reading about. Which, I have learned, always sounds better in theory, the teaching part. Because actually teaching them means  I have to sit down with them and deal with fighting, texting, talking while I'm talking, getting drinks while I am taking, rolling eyes,....etc. Lol. But I will try!

Florence, Glenny, Ron and Barrack

I really think my caring nature came from listening to this book on tape a MILLION times. Or maybe my caring nature is why I was drawn to this book. Idk.

It is the sweetest book about Florence Nightingale. It is a beautiful story. I can hear it in my mind. Especially the sad way the lady reads when Florence's owl dies. And how much the soldiers loved her when she was caring for them. Love it.

I love these books. My parents had a whole set of them. I have inherited them. I have been making Rhett listen to them for his daily reading. He is supposed to follow along with every word. "Supposed to" being the key words in that sentence.

Today he chose one and was listening in my room. He calls me in all excited and says, "Mom, it's about Glenn Beck!"

I knew that couldn't be true because the books are so old. I looked at the one he is reading and it was about Ronald Reagan. Interesting, I thought.


This is what happens when you try to take pictures with a 10 year old boy around! Little stinker!

On another political note...My mom called to tell me some important news...

Her... "YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE WHO WE ARE RELATED TOO!!!!!"

My mom does a lot of genealogy. She once found out we were related to William Wallace and another time an accused witch.

So I was intrigued and hopeful...

Me... "GLENN BECK!!!!!!????????" *clasps hands in prayer* please please, please...

Her...."No! Barrack Obama!" 


.................................................................................................................................................................................

*Crickets*.

That was unexpected.