Earlier this week I declared it “Care Package Day” and I prepared several packages for people who weren’t expecting anything. I didn’t spend much; I found a paperback book, a little chocolate, and some novelties. For some people, I just wrote a letter. I like to imagine their reaction when they get these unexpected tokens of my affection in their mail box.
This little activity got me through the last murky days of January. Hooray! It’s good for everyone.
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.
Here 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.
Let’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.
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.
People 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!
I love commencements, commemorations, lists, and encapsulating things. I’m an organizer, and the close of the year makes me itchy to craft a denouement for the year’s events.
Richard thinks that 2012 was our biggest year. I feel tired just thinking about all that we have done. Maybe I’m too tired to write the perfect summation, but I will try to give words to some of my thoughts about our year.
2012 was the end of an era for us. We had spent 15 years living outside of Utah and now we had an opportunity to come home. Our hearts weren’t always drawn to Utah. We loved the adventures that we found on our own and the people in Texas and Arizona. But our perceptions and needs changed in the past few years, making the answer to an offer to move to Salt Lake an obvious “Yes!”
With our move, we found that we could now drop in on Grandma when we felt like it and be at family events, big and small. No longer would temples be hours away; we could now drive 10 or 15 minutes and find ourselves in a temple of our choice. Our Utah neighbors are also fellow ward members, and this added dimension of relationship makes me realize how much I missed being understood and known by my neighbors in other states.
2012 brought us back to community. When we made the decision to put the kids in public school, it broke my heart, but we were strongly and explicitly led by the Spirit in our decision. I gave up cherished career. All I ever wanted to do was teach and be with my kids, and for 11 years I felt blessed that I could do it. The compensation for my personal sense of loss is this concept of community. I find a lot of fulfillment helping with reading and homework in the school. I love the halls of our elementary school. I love the teachers. I love the kids. On my birthday, which also happened to be election day, I sat in the hallway of the school, listening to children read to me. A steady flow of people came through the doors, heading to the polls. I had only been in town for 2 months, but I knew so many of those people because I had met them at school and church. These people knew me as a neighbor and a ward member, and many had helped counsel me as we made the decision to change to public school. Their warm hellos that day were a perfect gift.
My heart, while yearning for my children, has been filled with a love for those who teach them. I have learned that being a community member isn’t just about giving, it’s about receiving, too. The generosity and power of this community centers in the church and schools. I had watched our Arizona community splinter over education, an effect of which was manifested in my group of young women who didn’t know one another because almost every girl attended a different form of school. Although I knew and respected the circumstances for all of these different school choices, I was sorry that the girls were missing an element of community in their lives. I also watched the already sparse home schooling community splinter over a religious divide. I didn’t realize how divided our previous community was until I jumped into our new one.
You readers know how much we tried to be valuable community members during our years our home schooling, and you will also know how much we loved our previous neighbors. Our new community and decisions about schools are based on current and personal needs. It does not erase the love we had for people wherever we lived or diminish the experiences we enjoyed in home school. We have learned to respect personal decisions about education.
2012 brought a change in Richard’s career path, a culmination of many years of effort in his field. Nobody outside work really knows what Richard does, but it involves signal processing and communications, and he is good at it. He’s doing things in his new job that he has wanted to do for years. Hooray for our quiet hero, our breadwinner and anchor in our home.
2012 brought extreme physical, emotional, and spiritual demands. I am still dealing with a bit of anxiety which began after I got heat stroke during youth conference. Richard and I found that living in different states for so many weeks during the move drew us closer emotionally. The kids had to stretch in enormous ways as they became acclimated to public school and found new friends. We have had more reasons to ask for priesthood blessings this year than ever, and these blessings have been a real source of strength and help.
2012 had few constants. Our definition and location of our beloved home changed. Our callings changed. In January, I was Young Women president. Richard was on the high council. Now I am a Mia Maid advisor. Richard has a calling to help facilitate the new youth curriculum, i.e. help the new teachers incorporate the videos and teaching methods. We have a new climate. Our wardrobes and bedding have taken completely new forms. We are not together as often. We have new music and dance teachers and a new instrument in our home. We have unannounced visitors all of the time. Even our day for Family Home Evening has had to change. Perhaps the only constants are the people we kiss good night and our faith, but how comforting that through all this change, we have had each other.
We have needed people this year, and family and friends have carried us. Generosity in so many forms has graced our lives. Being a recipient of service helped me to find an appropriate place to put some old anger. We are surrounded by extended family who enrich our lives.
When I told Richard that I would marry him, I remember saying that we’d have a wonderful life together. Who knew what things we would experience over the years, especially during the big year of 2012, but it has been wonderful. I find that although I resist change, learning to embrace each season is a beautiful way to live.
Thank you for reading, blog friends and family. Happy New Year!
We’re sick here. Very ill. Viral.
Childhood illness is just not fair, especially at Christmas. The new sleds have only had a token number of runs.
I find it remarkable that a childhood full of illness was what sparked so much creativity in Robert Lewis Stevenson. His nurse evidently didn’t let him watch endless episodes of America’s Funniest Home Videos on Netflix like I’ve allowed my boys to view this week.
It’s funny to hear them laugh at something with croaking laughs. It’s not funny to hear them coughing violently all day.
Viruses are bad, very bad. If you’re healthy and you haven’t had your flu shot, you should do it today.
I have learned that living in Utah where your neighbors are also your ward members and schoolmates, people tend to drop by more often.
I think proximity allows us to be more open and casual here. In Texas, I wouldn’t think of dropping by a ward member’s house without calling first because who wants to drive 45 minutes to find nobody home? In Arizona, it was just too hot to try.
I need to get used to this more open way of living. I tend to change into my pajamas as soon as possible when I get home from church. I felt real triumph when somebody comes by and I’m not caught with paint in my hair or cooking broccoli. I marked the day when someone dropped by just after I baked brownies and the house smelled so good.
Today I spent all morning baking. With the smell of cookies and bread wafting through the house, I hoped that someone would come by. But they haven’t, so guess what? I’m going to be the unannounced neighbor and deliver this bread!
It is, after all, 12-12-12. I’m going to do something out of the ordinary to celebrate.
I believe in the family dinner ritual. Unfortunately, most nights we are missing one or two people, but I don’t give up. Having everyone around me, being nourished and sharing is the highlight of my day.
Empty chairs make me sad.
Dinner is not always a special occasion. My cooking, our moods, and The Schedule get in the way, but I think that the “dinner time at the table ritual” is special because you can count on it, not because it’s always perfect or fun. My family knows that there will be a meal and that I will expect them to answer a few questions about their day.
Richard fixed two of our broken chairs so we have enough seating for everyone. I love that he did this. I love these old uncomfortable chairs.
I served some leftover baked ziti to the kids around the dinner table last night. My first surprise was that they engulfed it. The next surprise was the conversation that happened as we ate.
We were all feeling comfortable and happy. Mark said, “Mom, our family is different than any other family because our handwriting has monkey tails (I taught the kids to write D’Nealian style), we go to Spring Lake where we have a dinner bell, and we say, ‘Is everybody happy?’ ‘Well, I should say!'”
And so our conversation turned to things which define our family.
Tim added, “We don’t have DS or PS3 or XBox or anything like that and we get really excited about seeing our extended family.”
Daniel said, “We study really hard and we are good students.”
We were interrupted at this point, but I would have added, “We try really hard to make dinner time a good family time.”
I need to remember this little dinner scene to help me press on and keep trying to find ways to sit down together at this table.
I read someplace that the family dinner table is like an altar in the home. It’s a place to teach, train, gather for prayer, and grow in love. It can help families stay together. Amen.