Winter sleep

Mark has quite a collection of animals in hibernation with him these days.

He’s very accommodating to let them take over the bed. Such a lovey!

I wander to the window of our living room before bed each night. I sit and look across the valley at the lights. The white stillness is such a comfort.

We have experienced 3 seasons in Utah. The lackadaisical summer evenings made way for spectacular autumn leaves and sunsets; the winter is a welcome rest with its slower and deliberate pace. I think often of the tulip bulbs we planted outside, ready to come up in a few weeks to celebrate the arrival of spring.

While I make it a point not to let the weather rule my mood or plans, there are undeniable voices in each season, teaching me and pulling at my moods. Winter teaches me that it is okay to rest. The illnesses of winter remind me to be thankful for health. The snow brightens an otherwise darker world, reminding me to keep hope. Winter is a time for rest and study. Winter is the only time I can see the lights across the valley because the leaves on the trees normally block the view.

Perhaps today if you’re feeling winter blues, you can find a winter truth or a winter window view and love it.

Full life

IMG_0144 IMG_0129Here is the church building which we watched being built during our last year in Sahuarita. It was completed about a month after we moved away. Paige was able to attend a meeting there on Sunday. She said it was gorgeous inside. How nice to have Paige home with us again, although I am sure she came back with mixed emotions, leaving her friend and entering the inversion.

I’ve started rehearsals for a Broadway musical review. I’m playing the violin for “Tradition!” from Fiddler on the Roof and I’m singing “Trouble” from The Music Man. It’s all about the hats for me. I will be dressed as a boy for the Fiddler number. They almost let me be a mama, but they decided that it just doesn’t fit to have a mama perched up high on stage, fiddling.

Our lives are packed with good things to do.

Daniel is going on the Klondike Derby this weekend. This means he will be camping in the snow. It’s a rite of passage here. Pass the anxiety meds for the mother, please.

If the weather permits, Mark will go skiing for the first time this weekend.

Timothy and Daniel will also go skiing.

I will stay home and sip hot cocoa, which is all I ever want to do. I will also be revisiting the book, Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories near the fireplace. These are some of the compensating joys for living in the cold.

 

 

Time

card artLet’s just take a moment and look at Paige’s art. (Pause)

She loved her drawing class this semester, and next semester she’ll be taking a painting class. Art class is the highlight of her day, I think.

Mark and I are alone in the house today. Richard and the boys are skiing and Paige is with Celina in Sahuarita. I stayed in bed until 10:00. Mark came in and we snuggled and talked and read books all morning.

I finished the Little House books on Saturday. I’m glad that I’m no longer missing that essential literature in my makeup. I enjoyed and appreciated them more than I could as a child. Timothy just shook his head when he saw me reading them. He said, “Those books are pointless.” I thought the same thing at age 10.

Today Mark and I are trying to decide what to do together. Have we ever had a whole day alone? I don’t think so! We’re going to get bread sticks for lunch. Mark wants to watch some Scooby Doo. It sounds like a great day.

A Plane Ride for Paige

Oh, boy. It’s been a busy week. You name it, we’ve done it. I even babysat for my neighbors who have 3 month old quadruplets.

Paige begins a huge adventure this afternoon, but she has a fever. She could use your prayers. Thank you.

Happy Friday!

Post update: Paige felt much better after a lot of rest and your thoughtful prayers. She flew to Tucson for the weekend as a birthday surprise for her best friend.

Wintering

DSC_9157People like to ask us if we wish we were back in Arizona. Nope. It’s cold, but that’s part of the Utah package. And we really sacrificed to get here.

The boys are fascinated by our icicles. I do not like the spelling of the word icicles.

The little boys and I like to measure our amaryllis plant growing in the light of the window. We do it several times a day.

Today I’ll finish reading The Long Winter in my Little House marathon. It helps me to feel warm and blessed since it’s not 40 below and I have a furnace and flour.

Today I bought some pretty cards so I can spread some love via mail. Some people I know really need some love.

I also bought a $1 daily planner so I can keep a copy of my to do lists. I was really inspired by a blog post I read by a woman who found her mother’s 1968 planner. She listed everything her mother had written in that planner for a year. What a marvelous picture of a woman’s life, full of 1960’s flavor. I thought it would be interesting to save my lists for 2013 instead of throwing them away.  I am a list maker on most days. Maybe in 50 years somebody will be amused to read that I wrote something called blog posts, went to a store called Costco (often!), and at age 38, still hadn’t figured out how to do laundry in an organized way.

Today I didn’t make a list. I’ve been a little aimless in my pursuits, but sometimes that’s good, too. Sometimes I make a list of things I have DONE rather than a list of things I need to DO. This way, I can check off everything on my “list.”

It’s not too hard to be happy in the winter. I surround myself with office supplies and books. Good times!

Thank you, Caroline Ingalls and Marilla Cuthbert

Practicing different songs at the same time!

I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but I have never read the Little House books. I have read a few of them, but I missed the overall experience along the way. I’m trying to read them straight through.

These books inspire me to cook things with gravy and cornmeal. They also remind me to be a better housekeeper. Caroline Ingalls and Mrs. Wilder belong in the same category as Marilla Cuthbert for excellent housekeeping. This is what I needed for January reading, since the house has collected a little clutter over the past month. I’ve completed all kinds of extra little jobs, inspired by these stories.

The kids are also getting whipped into shape after Christmas time sloth. They’re coming home to job lists because the best kind of people know how to work. I never give my kids chores. I give them jobs. The choice of names conveys an important message.

They all approach their jobs differently, but an incentive is important for my boys. Our incentives always involve screen time: computer, t.v., or Wii. They must really want to watch something today, because I just found Daniel and Timothy practicing different songs on two different instruments in the same room. I’ll let them get away with it today because they are sharing so nicely.

I’ve missed this

Paige Blue IrisHave you missed Paige’s art on our blog?  I have.

Luckily, she has an art portfolio coming home from school in a couple of weeks.

Here’s a little illustration she made for a Christmas card for Timothy. I think she could illustrate a children’s book. I think she could create cute greeting cards.

Paige SnowmanAnd then there is this portrait that she showed me today. I think she made this a long time ago. It’s her best friend from Arizona.

At Christmas this year, my mom gave us a copy of my grandmother’s drawings when she was a little girl through her teen years. What a treasure. Paige is working on making a similar book with her own artwork. I can’t wait to see it.

 

Book Review: Founding Mothers by Cokie Roberts

I loved the concept of this book. It’s a collection of stories about the women of the Revolutionary War era. I liked reading about women from the southern colonies, not just Abigail Adams. However, the slim amount of material written by women in this era, along with some annoying habits of the author left me a little disappointed.

It’s not the author’s fault that there isn’t much primary source material from the period. Many women didn’t have the luxury of education or time to write. Also, many women burned their letters. It was the ladylike thing to do. I blame Martha Washington for the world’s lack of understanding of George Washington because she burned much of his correspondence.

Since there is no way to really know what the women thought or felt, Roberts compensates by inserting her own feelings into the situation. Roberts repeats the phrase,  “she must have…” again and again, inserting a modern feminist tension where there may not have been any.

Cokie’s shortsighted feminism is a major weakness in the book. Childbearing is depicted primarily as a burden. She celebrates these women for all that they did without their husbands, but she can’t seem to cheer for their husbands at the same time.

She finds every opportunity to list faults in Washington, Adams, and Franklin. She had a hangup about George Washington writing about beautiful ladies. She especially seems to dislike Franklin because he left his wife to run the business while he had fun in Europe. It seems pretty clear that Franklin’s wife wished to be home. History is rarely as simple as, “He was a jerk. She was a martyr. We should rewrite the history books.” Roberts doesn’t make a serious effort to explore other motives or possibilities.

Not far into the book I realized that author doesn’t trust the few primary sources that she quotes to speak for themselves. This author’s thoughts are really intrusive. Abigail, in 18th century prose, is suddenly interrupted by Cokie’s, “No kidding!” (How annoying.)

John Adams by David McCullough gives a more complete picture of several women of the day because he allows historical characters to speak for themselves. His research is amazing. I recommend that you read this instead of Founding Mothers.

Book Review: Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt

This is a “classic in Mormon literature,” and I decided that it was time to read the whole thing. Anyone who has attended institute or seminary has heard parts of Parley’s autobiography, especially his description of Joseph Smith.

It’s a good read, especially if you know Joseph Smith’s history because Parley weaves in and out of Joseph’s sphere and gives a remarkable view of what was going on in the Church elsewhere. For instance, I didn’t know (or had forgotten) that while Joseph, Hyrum, and others were in Liberty Jail, Parley P. Pratt, W.W. Phelps, and King Follett were imprisoned in a different town.

It was touching to read a vision he had of his deceased wife, sent to comfort him in prison. I turned down the page to remember that part. Parley’s account of his escape was a lot of fun to read. I think he enjoyed writing it.

He gives a broader view of where Church members lived. Not everyone followed the saints to Ohio, Nauvoo, and Salt Lake City. Members lived throughout the eastern states and missionaries were continually sent back to strengthen these branches.

Parley’s autobiography is a big travel log. From England to San Francisco, Canada to Chile, he really got around, without purse or scrip. He was often sick, nearly froze to death, nearly died of thirst, and endured many ocean voyages and treks across the west. One of his principal duties, wherever he lived, was to write for the Church.

I liked that he included some of his sermons from his mission to Canada, which resulted in the baptism of Lorenzo Snow & Joseph Fielding. These were my favorite doctrinal chapters.

His autobiography is nearly silent about his 12 wives. Now and then he mentions a different one by name. Nowhere does he share the names of all of them. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Perhaps, given the opposition to polygamy, he doesn’t mention their names in order to protect them. He died at the hands of the estranged husband of his twelfth wife.

His posterity is enormous, and you may be interested to know that Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are both descendants (great-great and great-great-great grandsons) of Parley P. Pratt.