9 year old wisdom

Mom: What happens if you have a bad attitude when you start a project??

Dallin: You don't get anything done ;o(

So it is in life. Attitude is 90 percent of the project at hand no matter what the project is. When you have a 'can do attitude' you can accomplish a task much faster and easier than when the opposite is working.

As I tell my kids--

You are winning as long as you keep trying....
as soon as you quit trying... you lose.

Love

Oliver Wendell Holmes had this to say about love:

Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness

Today our daughter and her husband celebrate their 12th wedding anniversary. They are the parents of 5 beautiful children. They are happy--that makes us happy.

Congratulations Sean and Shawna

Motherhood

When I was a young girl I dreamed of the day when I would be married and together my sweetheart and I would raise a loving family of beautiful children. Now, not to disillusion my children, I must admit that I do have a loving family with beautiful children-- but living the life was not what I envisioned.

Meals three times a day took up 75 percent of my time, planning, shopping for, preparing, serving, cleaning up after-- just to start again a short while later, not to mention the ever present whine of "can we have a treat?" between meals.

Then there was the mountain of dirty clothes that need to be washed. The dirty faces and bottoms that needed to be cleaned. Add to all of that the kid droppings from room to room and you have a young mothers day. The joy of my day was to rock and sing my little one to sleep. It was a quiet interlude of joy.

Last night I walked in on my daughter at 10 pm rocking her baby in the dark while humming quietly hymns of peace. My daughters life is filled with limbo and chaos at the moment--a family displaced. To see her find calm with a hymn of peace while rocking her little one shows me that even in turmoil and total chaos, a beautiful loving family is made by stringing moments of pure joy together.

Motherhood is wonderful joy--getting there not how we planned, but wonderful joy none the less.

Family Home Evening

Last night we were invited to share Family Home Evening with my son and daughter in law. They live on the other side of the city and we do not get to explore that side of town very often.

We went and had the most delicious and inexpensive sno cones at a little place called Pelicans. The line was long but went quickly, I guess everyone in that part of town knows what a great deal it is. On this side of town we have a little drive through from the same company, but it is NOT crowded. I guess the word has not yet spread about the delicious great deal that is right here under our lips.

Before our sno cone treat we had a summer favorite--a hot dog cook out. Our lesson was based on the scripture of the candle and the basket--hiding ourselves or talents under a bushel. As the evening progressed we continued that discussion about choices and consequences and I started thinking about my nephew that I am so proud of.

My nephew made some poor choices in high school and continued on that path for a few years after. So bad were his choices that one day we saw his face and name on America's Most Wanted. He had chosen some friends that were not a good influence, and opportunities to change his friends and actions were ignored. It was a sad time for our whole family. He was raised well and had loving parents, he just made some youthful poor choices with powerful consequences.

After the last giant episode was worked through he finally realized that he needed to change friends and to make good choices every day. The whole misunderstanding was because of the friends he kept and it cost him greatly. He made a giant step backward toward his youth and upbringing. He made new friends, moved and changed his employment. Eventually he met a wonderful girl and last year they were married. He now has a good job and a wonderful outlook. His whole countenance has changed. I am VERY PROUD of him. He is a happy man and I am happy for him.

I am so thankful for the opportunity of each new day and the chance to make new choices. Sometimes hiding our talents under a bushel is the poor choices we make and taking the basket off of our head and starting to think clearly is the result of major consequences for poor choices and a blessing in disguise.

Life is one round after another of choices and consequences with the opportunity to learn. Each new day is another chance to try again to make choices that make us happy.

The sun is shining today, there are chores to be done, grand babies to kiss and choices to be made--I hope I choose wisely.

It was a great Family Home Evening--Thank You

Midnight Walks

I have been enjoying having the little ones here. This is the last week before they head back to Europe. With 5 of them it is quite often difficult to get them all asleep at the same time. My sweetheart and I just finished another midnight walk in the woods with a cutie in the stroller hoping to lull her to sleep.

I will miss the sweet kisses and the opportunity to walk off the extra calories from the chocolate cake treat at midnight while encouraging infants to go to sleep. We still have a few more nights where we can take a midnight walk with a babe in a stroller--might want to bake another cake......YUM......guilt free cake.

Leslie Barr

To finish out this last BIRTHDAY WEEK I want to recognize my maternal grandfather, Leslie Barr.

Papa (as we called him) was born on August 2, 1915 in Cornwall, New York. He was the fourth son of Matthew Barr and Jane Matthews. They had just imigrated to the states from Liverpool, England bringing the two oldest (Matthew and Robert), Daniel having died in a fire before papa's birth. Papa also had a younger sister, Margaret.

Leslie met Rozella Jensen in Southern California when they both worked at the movie theater. He was an usher (handsome in his uniform!!) and Nana sold the tickets. He lied and told her he was two years older than he was and she lied and told him she was two years younger. For many years they did not know how old they really were. They fell in love and eloped, being married on December 6, 1934.

They had four children born to their union, Elizabeth Jane (my mother), Leroy Stanley, Leslie Ann and Kent Matthew.

I was their oldest grandchild and have many fond memories of happy family get togethers.

Nana was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the third generation) but Papa was not. After they were married for 44 years Papa was finally ready and decided to get baptized as a Christmas gift for the family. Two years later he took Nana to the temple. In January of 2000 we were all in the temple together doing work for his parents. It was a wonderful day. He told me on that occasion that the only thing he regretted in life was waiting so long to be baptized. Papa died on April 30, 2000, just 3 months after our wonderful day together.

Papa would have been 95 this year. I am thankful for the great heritage I come from and hope I can pass on a wonderful legacy to my grandchildren as well.

Warm Fuzzies and Cold Pricklies

I am a pre school teacher. One of the first lessons we teach is about warm fuzzies and cold pricklies, meaning the nice things we say and do verses the cold way we feel when the opposite happens.

To teach the lesson I give each child a cotton ball and have them touch it, feel it and rub it across their cheek. I tell them that this is how people feel when we say and do nice things for them. Then I give them a prickly pinecone or a prickly ball from the sweet gum tree, I ask them to feel and touch it. I ask if they like how it feels. This prickly, stickly, hard thing is like the mean things we say and do to others and how we feel when it happens to us.

The rest of the year when something not quite kind happens, all I have to do is ask if the action is a warm fuzzy or cold prickly and the child I am talking to will hang their head in thought and usually acknowledge the warm or cold of their words and actions.

Sometimes we all need the reminder that cold prickly words and actions put a prickly stickly barrier up, while the opposite is true as well, warm kind words and actions knock down tall sturdy fences and build relationships. I have noticed that in tight situations there are two ways to go about it; choosing words carefully to be sure the situation ends in warm and fuzzy feelings or barreling along with everyone feeling cold and prickly in the end.

Sometimes all that is needed is a little thought and careful word choices to make the same situation turn out either warm and fuzzy or cold and prickly.

May we all be slow to speak and have a warm fuzzy day