Dallin Quote and Mommy Stuff

Overheard:
To Eden:  "You, Tanner, Carter, and Lily, we are all friends that live together!"

We are still plugging away around here.  Life is highly structured, highly enforced, highly rewarded and highly consequenced.  I even have my own schedule that I am to follow.  I have to in order to make it all happen for everyone else and keep the house going.  We are seeing a lot of good things happening, but I am still waiting for things to get easier.  I would love to see things running like a well oiled machine, but I have no idea how long it all takes, if ever.  Dallin and Eden have both earned dates with us and had a great time.  We have also officially survived our first grounding. 

I am not a naturally structured person, I am just not.  Many of my 101 goals address those issues. I know I have my strengtts but structure is not one of them.When I pictured being a mom, I thought then it would come for sure out of necessity.  I have tried.  I am really good at making charts and schedules.   But the busier we get and the larger we get, fumbling through the best we can isn't working any more.  Necessity is here with big huge waving flags now.  Parenting is serious stuff and for sure not something I want to mess up.  So we are working more on teaching habits, work, obedience, and respect around here.  This is not the fun stuff I prefer, but I want these little people to turn out to be wonderful adults with all these qualities.  So, as I work with them, I am working on myself as well.  When your job is a mom, there is no one to report to really, no place to show up and work from 9-5.  It is not clear cut and it can be whatever you make it. It all has to come from internal motivation.

So heres hoping that I will start to feel these changes internally as well as externally soon.

The Post Holiday Blues

I know this is another post without pictures.  I haven't really taken many pictures lately, because my hard drive is completely full, I don't have access to PS and it has all become a big hassle.  But, hopefully, I will get things in order soon because I really miss that outlet in my life a lot! I am looking forward to that. 

Also, we have been so busy, I haven't had much time to think about it.  After the holidays, it has been almost like starting a new school year with getting the gets back in their routines.  Thank goodness for the Accountable Kids program. We had gotten out of the habit completely for a while, but it has helped so much for getting on track with the school aged kids. The kids are now expected to follow their morning, afternoon, and evening schedules. Dallin and Eden will both be earning their special dates today if all goes well.  I think I worked so hard to make the holidays fun and special this year that for 3 months I lost a bit of focus.

I think a good way to describe our house lately is, hyper color.  Peter and I both realized how slack we were getting with the kids and not following through nearly enough.  We were so busy with celebrating the holidays that things had slowly spiraled downward.  It is not easy to juggle so many kids and at times like these, I really see that. As parents, we have to stay focused and give 100%. We are going through a phase of a lot of disrespect and ignoring and talking back with most of the kids all at once and it just isn't working. On top of that there are some behavioral issues that we have had to address at school.  So, now that we are back into the swing of things, the kids have resisted more structure and we are still in the "it gets worse before it gets better" place.  I have to work with the kids every step of the way through their schedules which takes up a lot of my day right now.  It is good though, I just look forward to them flying on their own eventually. 

Because of all the focus on the littles, I haven't gotten as far as I was thinking with getting organized.  It will happen, just more slowly, which is fine because I feel good when I stay focused on what is most important.  I enjoy them more and feel like I am doing my job.  Man, parenting is hard work.  I never thought it would be so hard.  You can't just teach your children something and think they will perfectly follow that principle. It is amazingly hard to teach children obedience. You have to teach it every day, over and over, and hope that eventually they will get it. And it doesn't take long to lose those values, like only a matter of days if you don't have the right structure in place.  Being a mom is the hardest thing I have EVER done.  I hope in another week we will have things running more smoothly around here.  Please tell me I am not the only one that has these struggles.

I don't mean this post to be whiny, it is just what life is like right now.  I don't feel sorry for myself, I am so blessed and love life and all it's challenges.  I wouldn't change what I have for anything.  It is pretty much a whole lot of joy mixed with a whole lot of work and frustration right now, but I am up for the challenge. Sorry for all the jumbled thoughts, they just kinda came out that way.

A Project for Luke

Every time I read a letter from Luke(Peter's brother) who is on a mission in the Philippians, he talks about eating rice all the time.  Last week I woke up at 4:30am with a sick baby and started thinking about that.  Even after things settled down and I was back in bed, I couldn't stop thinking about how to help Luke eat a little better.  An hour later, I finally got up and went to Winco to work on a care package.  I found lots of sauce mixes and seasoning packets and spices that he wouldn't be able easily to get there. I want put together some very simple recipes with common ingredients to send him with it.  I also got a small measuring cup and spoons and a bread pan for his toaster oven to bake with.  This isn't just a care package with easy convenience foods that will only last one meal, I want to help him learn how to cook so he can have more variety. 

So over the next week or so, I will be collecting very basic recipes to send him.  Here are a few ideas so far:

spaghetti, biscuits, taco soup, banana bread, rice casserole, gravy, white sauce, chocolate sauce, hot chocolate, stir fry, spanish rice, fried rice, meat loaf. 

I could really use some help with this, so please, please send me some recipes, however simple.  It should be scaled to about a 2 person serving though.

cillaeatscheese@yahoo.com

101 Goals Update

I updated my progress on my goals!  I'm not as far as I was hoping to be, but hey, we took the holidays to a whole new level this year so we have been BUSY.  There are several in progress:

3. have whole house organized for at least one day.
6. be 10 minutes early to church for 3 months.
11. Complete "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" (with Eden)
26. Frame and hang kids pictures (they are ready, I just need to hang them.
28. No fast food for 3 months
34. 30 minute scripture study for a month
39. Sing 3 solos (one down 2 to go)
80. Follow Body for Life exercise for 3 months
83. Study D&C with manual

And a few less completed:
25. Get and mp3 player.  I got an Ipod Touch on black friday for my Christmas.  I love it so much, how did I ever live without it?
64. Decorate for Christmas. I wrote about this already.
66. Finish Christmas advent calendar and plan activities.  We had so much fun with this and I even helped 12 ladies at church make their own calendar.

I hope to start getting through these a lot faster now that we are back to the grind around here.

A New Year

For the first time we had not just one but three kids stay up until midnight!  We enjoyed our night hanging out playing games with Peter's family and then we snuck over to my Uncle's house a couple of minutes away to say hi to my parents and relatives.  We left the younger ones asleep and the older kids watching a movie.

We got back a couple of minutes after midnight and everyone was out in the yard making noise.  When we walked up they re-did their countdown and Dallin jumped off the trampoline into my arms and gave me the biggest hug.  It was so stinkin cute.

With a new year ahead I have been reflecting on the last year and getting excited about whats ahead.  The last year has been quite a roller coaster, but overall full of joy. Even if I haven't reached all my goals in life yet, I did make some considerable improvements in my life, which is the most important thing.

This next year I hope to continue my early morning exercising for sure.  I plan to keep working on my 100 goals that I have made for myself.  I have been working on several of them.  Some have been successful and some I have to start over.  We have been without fast food for 2 months now (well, maybe a couple of minor slip ups, but that's life).  It has required more planning ahead so that we don't have a hungry family when we are out, but the benefits are great.  I especially like how it has plugged a leaky hole in the money bucket for sure.  We didn't eat it all the time, but enough that I wanted to quit the habit.  I missed it a bit at first, but now the thought of it kinda grosses me out.  My only exception is Taco Bell.  I really like that gross stuff. Overall, it is no big deal though.

It was weird not to sit down and create a new years resolution.  It is already all there, just need to chip away at it.  I want to just do them all at once, but it doesn't work that way.  So I am going to attack a big one in the month of January. Goal #3: Have every space in the house, attic and garage organized for at least a day.  I am pretty much going to be noncommittal about everything until it is all done. Saturday we took down all of our Christmas decorations so I started off by organizing all of that stuff.  Then I was on a roll so I did the TV room downstairs and attacked the kids art/school room with a label maker.  It felt so nice to get that done, I can't wait to get more done. 

I am dreading the office and ESPECIALLY the garage.  Yikes.  I have many tubs of outgrown kids clothing to sort and label.  A few months ago, I had just had it with toys all over the house and took literally 90% of them out to the garage in unsorted laundry baskets.  5 different ages and different genders makes for an overabundance.  Most of the toys were not being played with anyway and I just cracked one day. The kids have begged me to bring them back, but I resisted and then it seemed like Christmas would bring a lot of replacements anyway so I held out other than a few here things here and there.   So out in the garage, other than the laundry area, you can't even walk through it.  I am most excited about my kitchen though.  Every cupboard needs an overhaul. I really do like organizing, it is cleaning that I could do without (hey, I can dream).  With all the daily maintenance around here I just don't seem to get deep enough to organize very often. So this goal makes it top priority, yay! I have got my label maker and I not afraid to use it!

Today we switched from 9am church to 1pm.  That is drastic.  I usually don't like late church, but that was before we were getting 7 of us out the door.  Usually by the time we have all the kids dressed and fed and diaper bags packed, I end up throwing on an outfit and some lip stick and running out the door.  That is kinda sad because it is usually the one day of the week that I really want to look nice.  So now I can have time to get ready too! I even had time to comb all the boys hair today AND we were plenty early. 

I spent a lot of time taking kids out as usual.  Today was one of those days that I didn't mind though.  I have to remind myself that it is not about my right now, it is about them.  Being patient comes easy when I do that.  I just take them out and help them learn how to sit still or walk with them. If I get upset because they are not meeting my expectations it is much worse.  I love these guys and I am pretty sure that everyone learns how to sit through a meeting eventually.  Just one week at a time ought to do it...some day.