How do you want to be remembered?

I've had death on my mind lately. A girl in my ward died this past week after a long battle with cancer. She was 24, married, and had an 18 month old. I barely knew her. It was more like I knew of her. She had battled cancer to the point that she had one of her legs amputated in an attempt to win the battle. I hardly knew her family. They were more like church acquaintances than friends. But I have been an observer of this family for quite some time. For some reason my eyes honed in on the mother and the daughter. They were quiet and I'm not sure why I've watched them for so long. Maybe I'm the only one that enjoys people watching from afar, but it seems that no matter where we live there are always a few people that I watch but never get to know. This girl was one of those for me. Maybe it was because there was a story there that intrigued me. Her life seemed so hard and sad. I couldn't imagine being in her shoes, or her mother's. How hard would it be to know that you would not be the one to raise your baby, and that you would leave your husband to got it alone. How hard would it be to have to watch your daughter die a slow death. It all just seemed so difficult. It seemed like these two women were facing something that I would never be able to handle. And the the thing that surprised me the most was the quiet strength that they both seemed to have. They were very quiet and private people, and yet they seemed so strong and I admired them for it. I wished that I had that quality. I often times feel weak.

At church yesterday the woman that was teaching the Relief Society lesson mentioned thinking about how she would want to be remembered. When she was no longer here, what would she want her grandchildren to say of her? Would they think of her as a great cook, or great with a sewing machine? And did she want to be remembered solely for her abilities and talents? She then shared that she wanted to be remembered as a woman of faith and had made a conscience effort to be sure that she emulated this to those around her. I thought about this as she was speaking. I thought about how precious life is and how we never know how long we will have to leave an impression on those around us. This young mother only had 24 years, and yet she made an impression on me.

I worry that my focus in life is often not where it should be. I spend way too much time worrying about what other people think. I watched an interview with Michael J Fox recently and when he spoke of dealing with his disease he said that vanity was the first thing to go. What a waste of time to put so much energy into the way we are seen by others, our looks, etc. I mentioned before that I waste a lot of time worrying about my weight. Do I want people to remember me as being obsessed with my weight, a healthy eater, and avid exerciser (I'm not saying that it's not important to take care of yourself)? I really don't want to be remembered for my obsessions and my vanities. I want to be remembered for my works.

Last night I thought about what I want to be remembered for. I decided that my top two were for service and fun. I'm good at finding needs and trying to fill them. I know that if I worked harder and prayed for help I would be able to develop this skill and be great at it. I would also like to be better at serving those in my family. I'm good at finding needs outside my home, but sometimes I miss the needs right under my nose. I also want to be remembered as being fun. I feel like I have lost this ability. I remember being the type of person that always laughed and did outrageous things. I wasn't afraid to try or do anything. Now I'm more cautious. I think that marriage and motherhood has toned me down, which is okay. But, I feel like this side of me has become nearly nonexistent, and it's my goal to get it back.

So those are my thoughts and my goals. What do you want to be remembered for?

My morning and a realization..

This morning I woke up to an awful stench.

I was up for 2 hours tossing and turning from about 3:00-5:00 last night. So when Owen got up this morning John got him some juice and turned on the TV so I could get some sleep.

Fast forward an hour and Ainsley is in my room asking for breakfast, and Owen is telling me it stinks. I walked into the kitchen smelling something burning. I immediately checked the stove and the toaster. Then I looked in the microwave to discover the breakfast Owen had tried to make himself. He got out a packet of instant oatmeal, added a drop or two of water and put it in the microwave. By the time I found it the top was charred, the kitchen and living room were full of smoke, and the the house seriously reeked (how do you spell that word???).

Sorry the picture is so blurry. It was taken in haste. It gives you the idea though.
While I was trying to clean up melted plastic and a yellowed microwave Owen started crying because it smelled so bad. He cried for a good 30 minutes while plugging his nose.
We opened all the doors and windows. Ainsley then started crying because of the smell. Surprisingly enough, I was the only one that kept it all together. Shocker! Our house still smells, but I think Owen will leave the microwave away now. (We've been trying to break him of this habit for a while now.)

And now onto my realization...

I realized after my rant yesterday that part of the problem is me. So many people commented and said they wished they lived closer so they could help me. But the truth of it is, you probably wouldn't help me because I wouldn't let you. I have so many great friends who call to check up on me regularly to see if there is anything I need. I've let someone do something for me once. I was called out of the blue by 3 different people yesterday after my trauma. Just to see how I was doing, if they could take my kids, if I wanted to get out of the house, if they could run to the store for me. I realized yesterday (most likely because my sobs were hard to hide on the phone) that it's okay to ask for help. Ains went to a friends house, and while I wouldn't let another friend go to the store for me, I did go relax at the park with her. The break was nice.

I don't know why it's so hard to let people do things for us. I don't think I'm alone in this. I still hesitate to let anyone do anything major for me. But I am sincerely going to try to ask for more help and take it when it is offered. At least for the next few weeks...then we'll see.

May I Vent

Today I reached my breaking point, unfortunately it happened in public.

To preface my story let me begin by saying...

I still feel awful. I try to put on a happy face most of the time, but the bottom line is, I just want to feel normal again. I have little patience for being forced to slow down and feeling like I have to puke all the time. My house is a disaster most of the time, I never cook dinner, I usually have a sink full of smelly dishes. My to do list seems to be getting infinitely larger and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm sick of throwing up and then having to sleep on the couch because I can't lay down. I'm sick of having nothing to wear. I'm just starting to get worn down. I seriously don't know how women handle feeling this awful during their entire pregnancy. I don't think I could do it. That must mean I'm weak. John does his best to help, but there's only so much that he can cram into the few hours that he's home every night.

As for reaching my breaking point...

I had a rough night last night and a rough morning. I just wasn't feeling well. And I'm in charge of a gardening class for our ward tonight. I'm a little stressed out about feeling well enough to get through it and having everything ready to go.

I never go to the grocery store anymore (the thought of it makes me gag), but we are out of food and I had a few coupons I wanted to use this week and needed to get a few things for Easter. I decided to make a quick trip to the store with both kids after I picked up Ains from preschool. Owen started our trip a little feisty because I wouldn't let him stand on the side of the cart because it was tipping over. I made him get in the back of the cart so that he wouldn't run away. We reached our first item. Strawberries. I started digging trying to pick out a good package when out of the corner of my eye I see Owen reaching over the side of the cart to grab a container and the cart sliding the opposite direction. I grabbed for him and dropped the 4 pound package (it couldn't have been the small package) of strawberries in my hand. Strawberries went everywhere and Owen freaked out. I then tried to force Owen to sit so that he wouldn't fall again. During the course of our struggle and my lecture on not standing in the cart, Owen bumps his head on a cup holder. He's down right mad at me at this point. People are staring at me. I apologize for bumping his head but continue my lecture on the importance of sitting in the cart. Owen is not appreciating my reasoning and I get frustrated, cram him in the front of the cart, and buckle him in....he hates being strapped in. But I thought this might give me some leverage, you know, "I'll unbuckle you if you will stay seated." No such luck.

I press forward because we only need a few things. I thought I could tolerate the tantrum. I got more frustrated though when I was picking up strawberries and a worker passed us without even offering to help. You wouldn't believe the looks I was getting. We head further into the store, I'm trying to get our groceries and calm Owen and still getting scornful looks...mostly from older women I might add. After about 10 minutes of this I stop the cart and try again to reason with Owen. He agrees to sit if I'll unbuckle him! He lied....he had no intention of sitting. I give him the option of sitting in the back of the cart and holding the Easter eggs. No, he insists on sitting on the side of the cart. Not dangerous at all.

At this point I just can't take it anymore. I abandon my cart, grab screaming Owen and try to get out of the store. Tears are welling up in my eyes at this point. I run into a woman I know that works there, apologize for the entire store having to listen to my child scream, and tell her I left my cart and asked her to put the items away for me. I think I would have done better had I not run into someone I knew. For some reason that made it worse. I was trying to not full on cry as we were leaving. Owen was still screaming, Ainsley was asking how we were going to get Easter eggs now, and I just wanted to hide.

I was angry at the whole situation. It's hard enough for me to go to the store as it is. I was mad that Owen made it that much worse for me. I was mad that instead of anyone trying to help me people just stared. (Let that be a lesson to me...always help.) I shoved him in his car seat as he continued to struggle and then I locked him in his room when we got home. I went to my room to cry. I'm sure I'm a little more emotional than usual, but I really want this to be over. I try to remember that in the grand scheme of things my time feeling this way is not long at all and in the end it's totally worth it. But right now I'm spent. I just want to feel normal again.

Timber!

Check out John's first experience with a chain saw...he totally wants one now! (Father's day perhaps?)

We've had dead tree decorating our front yard for a while now. The tree was partially dead when we moved in, and each year it has died a little more because we didn't know much about trees or how to go about saving one. In an attempt to have some fun between sessions of conference (and because today was the first day that the weather has cooperated with yard work this spring) we decided today was the day to chop it down. So now it is gone. We will patch the hole with some sod. And then dig out a flower bed along the house (I'm sure you will all be losing sleep at night waiting for the pictures of the finished product). What a fun spring project! We just love digging out sod!

Kindergarten is Coming!!!

Today I took Ains to her school to register for kindergarten. She's been excited to go all week. So today she got to go do all her screening tests and meet a few members of the faculty. I think she loved being there. I learned a few things about her while I was there (some of them I already knew but they became more prominent as I watched her in comparison to other kids)....

She is very bright!

She is NOT shy.

She is going to love homework. She has been obsessed with doing her "homework packet" to get ready for kindergarten.

She is not the most coordinated child on the earth (okay, she's kind of uncoordinated)...but she tries very hard.

She has my eyes (color and problems). When they did her eye screening she wasn't seeing out of her left eye. One perfect eye, one fuzzy eye. Sometimes it's not good to be like mom. I see an optometrist visit in our future!

She will be a GREAT kindergartner!

Is it weird that I was annoyed in her assessment that they didn't mark that she identified a rectangle correctly. When I realized the mistake I was kind of annoyed about it and I thought about how weird I would sound if I called the school to make the correction. I'm not gonna lie...the thought did cross my mind.

A Great April Fool's

I want a spaghetti tree!

In 1957 the jokesters at BBC, ran a segment on the coming of spring after a mild winter and what that meant for Swiss farmers. The answer? An unusually large spaghetti crop. According to the Museum of Hoaxes, "Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, 'place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.'"

Spring Break

Although I am a completely slacker mother as of late, I tried to plan a few fun activities to keep us sane during spring break. Not that spring break week is much different for us than any other week...it just means no dance and no 2 days of preschool. None the less, we did a few fun things this week.

On Monday I got a group of people together to go bowling at the college bowling alley. You just can't beat free shoe rental and $1.50 games. We ended up with 7 moms and around 25 kids. I hadn't really thought about numbers when I started inviting people. It first donned on me that I should have thought this through beforehand when all of us were walking into the bowling alley and I looked at our huge group and saw the look on the worker's faces.

It ended up going well though. We put about 5-6 kids on each lane, divided them up by age, and then sat back and enjoyed the show. Owen had the most amazing day and somehow managed to bowl a 149! He used a little ramp thing to push the ball down, but still, 149! He got a turkey, and won a free game for getting a strike when there was a colored pin in front. I was very proud!
All of the kids had fun and then we split up into more manageable groups to take the kids out to lunch. We ended up at Carl's Jr. so the kids got to play some more. It was a fun day, and we were all exhausted afterwards. (Unfortunately I forgot my camera, but I did have a friend take a picture of the score board for proof of Owen's amazing talent...I just haven't been given the picture yet!)

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we relaxed, hung out at home or with friends, did some cleaning, and by then I was grateful that we had plans for Friday before we went stir crazy. We went with some friends to check out a new play place in town that prides itself on being clean. They didn't disappoint.

There were a ton of activities for the kids. We showed up at 10:00 in the morning and didn't leave until 4:00. Who ever heard of staying at a play place for 6 hours? The best part was all of the comfy couches scattered about for the mom's to relax on. It was great. The place is usually quite spendy ($9 a kid) but we were able to find some BOGO coupons that made the trip totally worth it.

There was a bin full of animals and powdery stuff (no idea what it was but it felt cool!)

There was an art station with markers, play-doh, stickers, and lots of paper. There was a large play structure that was actually CLEAN!

There were lots of cool dress-ups that weren't disgusting. There was a whole play kitchen area, a big train table, books and chairs, a baby section, and a little restaurant that kept us well fed while we were there. It was so nice to be able to sit and relax while the kids played to their hearts content without having a mess to clean up afterward. I'm totally going again as soon as I find another buy one get one free coupon!

To finish off the day John joined the kids for a sleepover. I think the kids were a little worn out because there were a few tears shed by little Ainsley. However, we now know that playing with stuffed animals is a key part of sleep overs (and going to sleep in general) and so we will be able to avoid a melt down in the future.

John tried to sneak out after the kids had fallen asleep. I believe he got caught around midnight as Ainsley entered our room sobbing, at that point he just stuck out the rest of the night on the floor.