Give Yourself the Gift of Productivity

Christmas is coming! You know what that means. No matter what phase of life you are in, there will be some extra length of time away from your normal schedule. Dare I suggest it, but this could be a time to create a new norm rather than let everything fall to pieces. Because, unless you are leaving your house in perfect order before going out of town, chances are you still have to function in your house over the holidays. There is also the possibility of extended house guests! In the best of holiday circumstances it can still be hard to retain your sanity, specifically as a homemaker (this is my realm and -probably- that of my audience).

I only recently stumbled upon Fun, Cheap, or Free by Jordan Page thanks to the video that popped in my YouTube feed this morning when I went looking for an aerobic workout. I was inspired and thought it was worth a share.

The video is of Jordan's "Block Schedule". I've already been trying to loosely base my day on hour-long segments. Jordan suggests breaking your day into 3 hour blocks. Watching the video, I realized that my day is already broken into very similar blocks to the ones she describes in her day. The "ah ha" for me was the consistency of putting corresponding activities in the same parts of the day throughout the week.

I took notes on her set up, which was good, because, although her site provides a printable, it is a fill-in-yourself page (located at the bottom of the page). So here is my reproduction of Jordan's schedule which I will follow with my slightly shifted version.

(Pardon the small font.)  Jordan has school-age kids, so their activities are a big part of her day. Mine are still under school-age, which lightens my load up... for now. I must say, nap time is my favorite time. It's Me time. I'm writing during nap time right now. 

Edits aside, I'm happy to keep those couple of cleaning sessions in my schedule. This has not been my strong suit. I'm a minimal house keeper. A couple of speed cleaning sessions, when planned on, will be a great way to up my cleaning game. It's amazing what you can get done in less than a half hour. I'm going to run an experiment. I'm pretty sure if I push myself, I think I could vacuum my whole house in under 30 minutes... Stay tuned for that. I have to wait for my boys to wake up on their own first.

....

Success! Three levels, seven rooms, and two poopy post-nap diapers changed, all in less than 25 minutes! Minus stairs and switching plugs, the actual vacuuming took only 15 minutes. This is the power of the focused use of timers and simple FOCUS. This is something we're trying to teach our boys: tasks take a lot less time if you just DO them without extra wandering and playing around.

Another thing I'm happy Mrs. Page emphasized is the importance of blocking in your sleep. Even she admits to being a "night owl", which is what I naturally lean towards as well. The fact is that being a night owl doesn't mean you actually need less sleep. For me, at least, it just means that the sleep is shifted so I get the same amount. If I get to bed late, I wake up late... especially when pregnant. Fortunately, during my last pregnancy my boys sweetly let me sleep. They played quietly until I got up to feed them. If screaming happened... well, that was an effective alarm clock. So, in the last year I've tried very hard to get to bed earlier on a consistent basis, weekends exempted (Charles does breakfast those days). I've even made (small) steps toward getting up earlier to get through my opening routines before the "hangry" screaming kicks in now.

These blocks are a great way to plan your day. It ticks all the boxes while allowing plenty of individuality. The idea of using focused chunks of time instead of micromanaged hours is very freeing. Adding in some alarms is very useful for keeping on-task without wasting time watching a clock. Jordan suggests setting additional alarms for 15 minutes before the end of a block. This is great for facilitating transitions. An additional thought I had with those last 15 minutes is that if you get everything done before that timer, then those in-between minutes could be "phone check" times. Jordan makes a point of being "unplugged" for the bulk of the day. I'm fine with that, but I think using those optional couple of minutes kind of as a reward for getting things done. Delayed gratification can be a wonderful thing.

Now for the Holiday Bonus Round. Jordan showed an alternate example schedule of a working mom in her video. I feel that the following tip should be very handy for holiday prep in general. For office work, Jordan suggested using the morning working hours for the more brain-engaged tasks and the afternoon for moving/physical tasks. I'll let you decide which holiday tasks are brain vs. body oriented. The point is to use the fresh morning energy for your alert brain and then be moving in the afternoon to get through any post-lunch slump you experience.

I'd encourage you to watch the full video to gain your own insights and then use that printable to your advantage. Happy Holiday Blocking!

7 Habits for a Highly Effective Summer

Hello Summer!

And also hello and no school! Which means kids are home and routines are going out the window. (As a T4 who loves routines and structure, this is breaking my brain.)  I have the added element of being married to a teacher, so he is home as well and is wanting to be in relaxing mode the whole time, which makes it harder for me to be doing my job as mommy and homemaker.

Fortunately I took the Home and Family Management class at BYU-I where Stephen Covey's 7 Habits for Highly Effective People was our textbook. It has been five years since then, so I have been feeling ready for a review anyway, and this ts the perfect time to share as we take on this season.

We'll start with the image that represents the 7 Habits and how they flow together, below.

I love how the goal of the Habits is to raise us to a higher level of living through personal and interpersonal growth. It's fun to then apply this format to different realms within our circles of influence. I've already worked on putting a Cub Scout spin on it (that may be September's post), but right now I'm needing to put this into practice in my home. That would be the point of learning this whole process in the Home and Family Management class to begin with.

With the Habits being split as Private and Public, I find it easy to replace those labels with Mommy and Family. This works because as a Mommy (or leader of any kind) you'll want to get yourself in order first so you can operate from a place of confidence and order, which is what the first three Habits focus on.

The First Habit is "Be Proactive". To paraphrase what is on the website, being proactive is taking responsibility for our own choices including our responses to life, to be "response-able" if you will. For me, this means pulling on my Big Girl Pants and actually being ready to be The Mom. 

The opposite of proactive is reactive. As a mom, I'd rather be ahead of the game and running things rather than have things running me. In daily life this looks like taking care of things before they become problems you have to react to, usually in an emotional way. An example of this can be as simple as making sure everyone is fed before anyone has the chance to get "hangry" which leads to everyone yelling at everybody else.

So, the first step here is getting into the mindset of "I can do this!" In other words, we are using faith in ourselves that things will work out if we put forth the initial effort to get on top of things. The next part is identifying our Circles of Influence, meaning the things we can actually take care of and affect. This saves us from using our energy to worry about things outside of our control. For me a great example of this is that I don't worry about politics at all. That is what Charles is for ;) 

My other notes under being proactive are: keep commitments, don't judge (those other people are outside of your Circle of Concern so don't be worrying about them), be a model, and be part of the solution.

The Second Habit is "Begin with the End in Mind". This is something that I'm pretty good at. For me, I can see the big picture, or at least solid glimpses of it, and some of the steps in how to get the results I am wanting. That is the beginning of this habit. You have to know where you are headed in order to plan out the steps of how to get there. Here we start the process of creating our lives. Mr. Covey suggests creating a personal Mission Statement at this point to help give yourself direction before moving ahead.

To create your own Mission Statement there are a few things to keep in mind: What are your principles that you base your life around? What are your roles? And what are your goals?

In exploring those topics, I just wrote my own mission statement out. So that will be my next post,

which saves me space here.

The Third Habit is "Put First Things First". Here is where action comes into play. After the first two

Habits we should be feeling empowered (#1) with a road map (#2) at least in a general sense. Now

we use that power to move forward in the direction of our mission. The quest has begun! (Sorry, I

married a nerd and it's had almost seven years to be rubbing off on me.)

The important thing about this forward movement is to make sure it is in a forward direction, hence

"first things first". It may seem redundant on paper, but think about how easily we distract ourselves

from actually being as productive as we know we can be? I know I have fallen into this trap. That is

the reason I'm revisiting this whole program is to get myself out of such a rut of diverted stagnation.

Habit 3's war cry is "PRIORITIZE!!!!!" And they provided a spectrum format to help us with that,

below.

The intention behind this is that we should spend the majority of our time in Quadrant 2 where things

are important but not urgent. This is where proactivity lives. Quadrant 1 is Reaction Zone. I tend to

avoid Quadrant 3 which is why my email inbox drives Charles crazy. None of the emails I get need

any sort of immediate action, so I only take enough time to mark them as read just to make the

notifications go away. Quadrant 4 has been my vice, but I am getting better at managing that. I'm

writing instead of playing Minecraft, enough said.

The application of this system of spending more of our time in Quadrant 2 is to use those planning

skills from Habit 2 to schedule things out. Remembering to connect to our Mission Statement, you

identify the "big rocks" you need to focus on to accomplish the important goals and plot them out

first. Everything else, all the "little things", then can be organized around what time is left. That is the

step I want to work more on for myself. (Structure=Good)

That wraps up the Private/Mommy/Leader half of the Habits. Onto the Public/Family/Organization

Habits.

Habit 4 is "Think Win/Win". This is where the rubber meets the road. It's great to be doing all the

private deep thinking of setting goals and making plans, but then you have to set all those wonderful

designs into motion... with other people involved.

I know at school, most of us probably preferred to do "Group Projects" alone. We can't do that in the

real world.

To explain this win-win mindset, I'm going to pull a quote from the Covey website:

"Win-win sees life as a cooperative arena, not a competitive one. Win-win is a frame of mind and

heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. Win-win means agreements

or solutions are mutually beneficial and satisfying. We both get to eat the pie, and it tastes pretty

darn good! "

To illustrate this with a relevant biographical example, I'll put this in the terms that I used for my Cub Scout group. The boys come to Scouts with their "win" of having fun and (hopefully) learning something. As a leader, I come with the "win" of being able to present the material I have prepared to teach and guide these prepubescent males.

To make this a cooperative win-win situation, I have to put forth effort to make my material "fun" (not my strong suit, but I can default to being dramatic at least) and the boys have to reign in their energy enough to respectfully listen to and participate appropriately to the instructions/discussion/activity. If that goes smoothly we can have a positive experience where they aren't bored and I'm not wasting time and getting frustrated with ... shepherding their exuberant interruptions (read: telling them to "shut up!" every ten seconds).

I can happily report that I have seen success with this arrangement with this group of boys, which is beneficial for my sanity seeing how I teach this same bunch of boys' Sunday School class.

How did I achieve this success? I imposed Habit 5 on them: "Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood". I made sure they understood my expectations of our interactions. (I recently introduced them to the metaphor of the carrot and the stick...)

If Habit 4 is about cooperation, then Habit 5 is about communication. The actual emphasis is on empathetic listening. This is a surprisingly useful skill, even when parenting toddlers (assuming they have sufficient language skills or you can interpret their intentions).

My biggest application of this, particularly when issues are arising and my children entering fussy territory. Instead of just listening to what they are complaining about on the surface with their actual words, I try to be in tune enough to intuit what the root problem they are dealing with. I try to understand what is going on inside of them, probably better than they do in the moment. Depending on the circumstances, I either "suggest" they leave the situation to get out of that energetic space and we can talk about it later (time out) or I bring them into a hug right then before addressing the surface concerns. Sometimes my little boy just needs to get some "sads" out, then we can rescript the situation so we don't have that current problem again.

Once cooperation and communication are established, then we can begin to "Synergize", which is Habit 6. The innovation that can come from the healthy background that all the other Habits have set up can be mind-blowing. This is truly a situation of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

I think the secret behind this is the humility and confidence that have grown out of the other steps of this process. We have confidence in our own abilities and ideas but are still humble enough to work together to combine ideas to make something new that can work for everyone (win-win).

In the parenting format I can imagine an example of this being involving our kids when planning out routines or schedules or codes of conduct. When the kids are engaged in these processes they are more likely to respect them. Don't be afraid of this step; they may have ideas that will surprise you. Of course, this is more applicable with older children, but even little ones can at least make the planning stage more... entertaining with their input. (At 10:00 we slay the dragons!)

Our last Habit is "Sharpen the Saw". This is my second favorite Habit because I am a big fan of self-care. I have a firm testimony that I am not the best Momma I can be if I don't have the pieces of my inner puzzle all in the right order. A consistent pattern of this is when I don't get "enough" sleep then I turn into a "Mombie" and I don't use caffeine to combat the effects, so watch out!

Those "puzzle pieces" that need tending to, and ways to maintain performance in those areas, are:

•  Physical: Beneficial eating, exercising, and resting
• Social/Emotional: Making social and meaningful connections with others
• Mental: Learning, reading, writing, and teaching
• Spiritual: Spending time in nature, expanding spiritual self through meditation, music, art, prayer, or service

I know I am still working on finding a good balance of all of these myself. The great part is that this

Habit is taken into consideration back in Habit 3. These activities are contained within Quadrant 2.

And that wraps up my rather long summary of the 7 Habits. I'd encourage you to follow the links to

the Covey website to learn more. I'll end with a little infographic that has a much more concise

review with added applications and affirmations. I'm feeling inspired. I hope you are too.

May we all have the best summer ever!

5 of My Most "Grat-ifying" Affirmations

Back in September, Carol Tuttle invited her community to join her in focusing on a theme of loving the life you have and using a script of daily affirmations to help you love your life more or to begin loving the life you have if you were struggling with that. I don't do anything with hashtags, but I joined the challenge and that was how I started my day during the whole month of September.

I've decided to take up that script again because I felt that the biggest benefit from going through this list of affirmations was that it inspired a spirit of gratitude. It being November now, this seems appropriate with Thanksgiving coming up and all. Granted, I definitely believe that we should always go about life with a spirit of gratitude, but this is a fine time to give it some extra focus.

Not all of the affirmations listed start with "I love..." which can easily be switched to "I'm grateful that..." but I think each could still be altered to reflect a greater level of gratitude. 

The full list has 23 affirmations. But 23 is not a pretty number in my world, so I've been able to distill that full list down to my favorite five which is much better. (Five is the square root of my favorite number, 25. Yeah, I'm weird like that in playing with number patterns wherever I can.)

So here goes my short list with my revisions to make them into personalized gratitude statements.

• It's as if the universe knows who I am and what I want and things flow to me in such a timely way. 
• I am grateful for a Heavenly Father who knows me individually and answers my prayers, spoken and unspoken, to bring me the things I need when I need them, even when I hadn't realized I was going to need it ahead of time.
• I am grateful for the spiritual support and the angelic help that is taking care of the details and is making sure that this day is going to unfold in a magical way.
• I am grateful for my angels (seen and unseen) that help protect me ad mine and their help in making my day go smoothly.
• The people who come to me are benefiting from their exposure to me. And I am thankful for all the wonderful people in my life.
• I am grateful for all the wonderful people in my life and I am grateful for the opportunities to grow in my own talents as I go about serving and interacting with them.
• I love connecting with the infinite power and knowledge of my life.
• I am grateful for my spiritual gifts and talents that help empower me in shaping the life I choose to live. 
• I love my life!
• I am grateful for the safe and dependable job of my husband that facilitates our needs and reasonable wants being met and that it allows for me to be at home to be the mother of our children. 

I hope this in some way inspires a greater spirit of gratitude in your own life and I would encourage you to check out the full list of Carol's affirmations and go through this same exercise of making them into your own "grat-ifying" statements.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Why Do We Love To See The Temple?

For those of us who are familiar with LDS Primary songs, we are familiar with the title "I Love to See the Temple". It is a very sweet song. For those who aren't as familiar with this song, here are the lyrics:

1.  I love to see the temple.
   I'm going there someday
   To feel the Holy Spirit,
   To listen and to pray.
   For the temple is a house of God,
   A place of love and beauty.
   I'll prepare myself while I am young;
   This is my sacred duty.
2.  I love to see the temple.
   I'll go inside someday.
   I'll covenant with my Father;
   I'll promise to obey.
   For the temple is a holy place
   Where we are sealed together.
   As a child of God, I've learned this truth:
   A family is forever.

It amazes me how much doctrine can be fit in such a small package as a song. And it's all true!

The goal is to be worthy to go to the temple to receive the ordinances and make special covenants therein for oneself first and then we get to go back again and again to do the same ordinances for the death by proxy. This is the sealing power at work. And it is a sacred duty to do our part to also do the family history work to find those of our ancestors that have not yet received this work. The youth of today are getting very good at that part of the work and they are blessed for it.

We also go to the House of the Lord to be closer to the Spirit at times when we feel an especial need for personal revelation to help us in our daily lives.

But I think the best parts are the sense of love that permeates this holy buildings. Not only is this because it is a place of service but the sealing of families is a paramount purpose of the service.

Our most recent experience of going to the temple was to support my brother in receiving his own endowments in preparation of going on his mission. It was an interesting experience for me because it was the first time I did Initiatory work for the dead. I received my own Initiatory prior to receiving my own endowments before my temple marriage but had not done that work for the dead in the five years since. It was a great reminder of more of the covenants and blessings we receive in the temple. I feel that when I do this work for the dead I also re-receive some of the blessing for myself, if only in the form of a remembrance.

But my favorite part was when my brother joined us in the Celestial Room at the end of the endowment ceremony and we were able to welcome him with open arms. That is what I imagine death will be like. All of our deceased loved ones are just on the side of that other veil waiting to be reunited with us.

And just a brief word on the temples chosen for my title image: We were married in the Rexburg Temple and are soon to be in the Star Valley Temple District after it is dedicated in October (and I'm in one of the dedicatory choirs). All the other temples are ones that we have been to together since getting married. If I included the ones we've been to separately I'd add the Columbia River Temple, the Nauvoo Temple, and the Boise Temple.

What temples have you been to and what do you love about your temple experiences? Leave a comment.

My Top 5 Favorite Parenting Resources

Motherhood is hard. We are all agreed on this. But there are ways to make it a little easier. Tips to have at hand so we feel like we know what we are doing...at least some of the time.

When it's just me and the boys I can get plenty self-conscious about my parenting abilities, like anyone else, but then I occasionally go out in public and realize that it could be a lot worse.

I have several sources I turn to that help me feel like I have it together...most of the time, actually.

So, what I offer today are my secrets, or at least the sources of my secrets in the hope that it will help and inspire all you other wonderful mothers who have not discovered these wonderful books. It is my wish that you may find something here to help you be a better parent today.

 

1. The Happiest Baby on the Block by Dr. Harvey Karp

This is a great starting point, whether you are expecting your first or your last or simply have need of skills to soothe crying babies in what ever setting you may be in.

I read this book as a "textbook" for an Infants and Toddlers class I took in my last semester of BYU-I before I had a baby and graduated. I felt like a pro-Momma with this under my belt before Jon was born. We still had our learning curve when it came to breastfeeding and dealing with cloth diapers, but I could swaddle like a champ.

Dr. Karp's premise with this book is that human babies need a "fourth trimester". Other animal babies come out and walk and "talk" right away. Our babies get pushed out before their heads get too big, ideally. That certainly doesn't mean that they are ready to take on the big, wide world all at once. So, Dr. Karp introduces his "5S's" to simulate conditions from within in the womb to help soothe the baby when outside of the womb to help with the transition.

These work people. So much so that I had people wonder if my baby ever cried because it sure seemed like he never did out in public.

To be brief, the 5 S's are Swaddling, Side-lying, Shushing, Swinging, and Sucking. When I was using these "in the trenches", as it were, like trying to get a newborn to sleep when they have other ideas, I'd have them swaddled, laying on their side on my knees so I could lean over them and make ocean sounds right into their ear while my knees did the swinging, and they sucked on my thumb. (My babies preferred the taste of me over plastic, so we didn't really use binkies at all.) To be fair, this was still a test in patience because it may have still taken a good 15 minutes for them to really fall asleep, but (eventually) fall asleep they did.

2. The Happiest Toddler on the Block by Dr. Harvey Karp

It of course makes sense that when I saw this sequel at a book swap, I was sure to grab it. I just finished reading it, to be honest, but I use this everyday and more so on Sundays as a Nursery leader. (It's probably why I haven't been released yet.)

In here, Dr. Karp lovingly calls toddlers "cavemen" and explains that parents have to act as diplomats of the current century. This involves connecting with respect and using "Toddler-ese" to help prevent tantrums or lovingly stop them in their tracks.

My favorite tip was the "Fast Food Rule" (or FFR) for communicating with little ones. He calls it this to bring to mind how the person taking your order at a fast food restaurant repeats your order back to you before they tell you your total price.

The FFR has two parts: First, whoever is most upset (usually the toddler, but this works in "grown-up" situations as well) talks first; the other person listens, repeats back what they are told, and only then do they take their turn to talk. The second part uses "Toddler-ese", tone of voice, and mimicked emotion to hit the toddlers "sweet spot" to get their attention and let them know that you understand how they feel. That part is key because when a toddler is upset they are feeling more that thinking so just trying to be rational with them first is not going to work.

I still have troubles with playing up the emotional part of the FFR (thank my T4 for that) but using short, repetitive sentences (the Toddler-ese in a nutshell) with some reflected feeling really works.

Dr. Karp also mentions knowing your child's temperament and realizing you may have a personality mismatch and that does right into my favorite tools.

 

3. The Child Whisperer by Carol Tuttle 

Now, I'll be honest: I haven't fully read this book yet, but I already have a thorough working knowledge of Carol's Energy Profiling System through Dressing Your Truth. So I still feel like a "child whisperer" with what I have to go on.

Knowing the Types of my children has been such a blessing. I know Jon is a T2 so I know that when he gets upset he will probably cry and need hugs to calm down. If I didn't know David was a T1 our breastfeeding experience would have been more frustrating for me with how easily distracted he can be. As is, I feed him where it is quiet and just enjoy his smiles when he unlatches for a moment here or there because he wants to tell me he loves me with his eyes .

I look forward to using my knowledge with future children and I feel confident that I can handle all the Types in my children as they come around.

 

4. The Child Whisperer Podcast by Carol Tuttle

Until I do finish reading the book, I can gain more insight from Carol's podcast of the same name.

(Note: The link shows the podcast through iTunes but I'm pretty sure I've been able to kind it through other podcast listening apps.)

I enjoy listening to podcasts while I do household chores, and I'm up-to-date on all my other podcasts, so while I wait for new episodes I listen to Carol Tuttle.

With access to the full archive of her material, even from before it was The Child Whisperer Show, I've been able to get more of the nuanced flavors of the Types from Carol's content as well as when she takes live callers and answers their questions.


My favorite episodes so far (go through the above link) are "How to Parent True to Your Nature", "Is your perception of your children hurting them?", and "How do you measure your success as a parent?".

 

5. Dressing Your Truth by Carol Tuttle 

I find where Energy Profiling is concerned, it's a bit like the oxygen masks on an airplane: you put yours on first before you help whoever is near you. Meaning, it's a bit hard to parent true to your Type if you don't know your Type.

Knowing my Type and dressing my truth does make me a better mom because I feel better in my own skin. It goes with the saying of "If mom's not happy then no one's happy." Conversely, when mom's happy everyone is happier. Dressing my truth makes me a happier person because I know myself, I know my tendencies and how to manage them, and I know how to make the most of my personal gifts.

With this knowledge I am bien dans ma peau. This is a knowledge I feel that everyone should have. I truly believe this would make us happier as a people and (possibly) lead to world peace. Who knows? We can dream big.

World peace aside, I'd settle for happier families to start with.

I hope you find these resources as useful as I have in becoming a better parent.

The Beauty We Saw: Our Road Trip

 

One of the perks of being married to a teacher is that we have summer vacations! For our first we took on the craziest of a month-long road trip. Our primary motivation was to see family, but Charles took the opportunity to call it a tax write-off because he happens to teach geography and we took lots of photos for him to use in his classes.

We started Memorial weekend and got back at the end of June. Somehow we survived in our little blue Buick with two babies and no A/C. Wow.

Memorial Day was spent with Charles' dad in Nampa, ID before we headed up to Ephrata, WA to see my family, including my return-missionary sister and soon-to-be missionary brother. (I wrote about them here.) 

The (visually) fun part started when we headed over to Lummi Island, WA to see Charles' uncle who basically paid for our honeymoon because he hadn't been able to come to our wedding.

There was no bridge to the island, but we were lucky in that we got to the ferry right on time. It seems that this was Charles' first time on an island. We could see Canada from the island as well. 

First we got to see Uncle Klay's property. He showed us this really old tree and mentioned how it likely was part of the Native American burial tradition of tying the deceased to the base of the tree so their spirit could soak into the wood. Needless to say, they stopped doing that when the White Men came around. 

Then he took us down to the beach that was basically just across the street. Most of it was a cobble beach rather than sandstone. I didn't get a picture of that because of the unstable footing. I was focused more on staying upright with a baby strapped to me at the time. But the part with tidal pools was a sandstone beach. As a geologist, Klay was able to explain how we were able to see the strata in the stone. It was cool, but I'm not a geologist to be able to explain it here. 

We didn't stay for very long because we had our hotel in Oregon already reserved and needed to get there at a decent bedtime. 

The nest day our big event was going to the Devils Punch Bowl beach. This was probably my favorite part of the trip.

The water was a bit cold, which would normally be a huge turn-off for me, but we were still able to get our feet wet and the cliffs were fascinating to me. Plus, I could watch waves all day and be happy. 

Our first day in California we were able to hit one of the big redwoods and drive through San Francisco before we got to our hotel in Anaheim. That was our last long day of driving.

I got the best souvenir that day: a baby redwood tree. Unfortunately, it didn't like coming home from Arizona and kinda died. Fortunately it came with a guarantee that we were able to call in and now I have a redwood sapling coming to me. 

We didn't stop in San Francisco at all, but we were fascinated by the detail in the architecture that we were able to see with just driving through. And it reminded us that we would like to see an opera at some point. 

You'd think that with staying in Anaheim, we should have gone to Disneyland, and I will say that we did think about it and made the appropriate reservation and had space for one day doing that planned. But then we decided that Jon is too little to remember and so we decided to wait on that. Honestly, we were happy just having a day off from driving instead. That was Thursday.

Friday we went to the aquarium in Monterey which was probably the boys' favorite day.

We were greeted with a tube of tiny, translucent jellyfish. I tried circling them in the picture. Hopefully that makes it easier to see. Jon loved seeing all the fish and animals as well as all the interactive areas. We spent a very happy three hours in there.

Next was Vegas! We only walked the part of the Strip that I care about: Paris and the Bellagio.

I love all things French and we would've actually stayed in Paris, but our plan got shifted enough so when we went to shift our reservation they didn't have an opening. Next time. C'est la vie.

I also love the fountain show at the Bellagio and our timing was such that we got to see two, bracketing our time inside. I had to see the glass flowers on the ceiling, the conservatory echoed our time at the aquarium, and we had to get some gelato.

Then we headed over to Arizona to spend a week with family there. While we were there we hit a few sights as well.

We went to the zoo in Phoenix. Jon loved seeing more animals and it was exciting to have the lion roar while were there and the alligators were being quite active too. Then we saw the San Xavier Mission down by Tucson. It was my first time at a Catholic mission, so it was interesting seeing all the carvings inside. Charles enjoyed learning about this oldest mission in the area. It is the oldest because it was built using more native techniques so it has withstood the elements better than the others have.

On our way home we stopped by the Montezuma Castle National Park. It was very interesting and I wish we could've stayed a bit longer to learn more about it, but it was hot. This was the Monday after the the fourth hottest day on record in Phoenix, so we didn't want to stay outside for very long.

From there it was just a straight shot up through Utah to get home.

We basically just flew up the state, but we were still able to appreciate the geology and all the texture there. I also didn't know that the Manti Temple was just there by the road so you couldn't miss it. The Manti Temple is also one of my favorite "castle" temples.

But our favorite site by far was when we came out of Logan Canyon and could see all of Bear Lake.

Montpelier is just out of frame there to the left. So we still had another hour of driving to get home because of all the little lake towns we had to drive through. But now we are home...for now.

Marriage: Complements and Coming to the Lord

 
"Mawwage is what brings us togewah today."

(I had to do that.)

This month is our five year anniversary, so it seems appropriate for this month's testimony post to be about this third "M" (Motherhood, Missionaries, and Marriage).

Our love story is pretty basic. We met at college, got married, finished college together, and now, here we are, learning how to "adult" together.

After we got married, we had the opportunity to take a college class together. As a Religion requirement in the BYUI curriculum, we took the "Family Foundations" class together. To this day I look back on that class as one of my favorite and I'm using my class material for my jumping off points today.

The main material of the class is based around The Family: A Proclamation to the World and our text book was a collection of readings from our latter-day prophets to expand upon the teachings of the Proclamation.

In rereading the articles pertaining to marriage specifically, I found two themes that I'd like to share my thoughts on. It's nice because each has a pertinent graphic to go along with them.

The first is the idea of how men and women complement each other within the marriage relationship. The image of the Yin and Yang helps in visualizing this.

You'll notice that each half is the same size and they embrace each other more than a simple circle cut in half with a straight line would.  They also have a piece of the other within themselves. To me, this encompasses the meaning of "complement". Together, both halves become part of a perfect circle which they cannot do alone.

That is what marriage is meant to be.

Thinking of the parts that we share and how Charles and I complement each other, I can't help but think of our Types. Charles is a 3/4 and I am a 4/2. Sometimes it's funny to see how his secondary 4 comes out stronger than my dominant 4. In some things he has a keener sense of needing things to be clean and the paragraph in Carol's book about Type 4s and driving is spot-on for Charles.

The Type 4 things that we share are our loyalty to family, the strength of our personal convictions, and being strong authority figures in our respective circles of influence.

We also complement each other very well. His Type 3 push to get things done helps inspire me and helps me move on when I get stuck in a rut. My secondary Type 2 reminds him to be more gentle at times and my Type 4 comes in handy when things need to be done with more thoroughness (like helping him edit his blog).

Together we are trying to be the best parents we can be while helping to "parent" each other in our own growing processes. Another way to say that is that we nurture each other as well as our children.

Before I move on to my second theme, I'd like to add a quote from President Spencer W. Kimball:

In his wisdom and mercy, our Father made men and women dependent on each other for the full flowering of their potential. Because their natures are somewhat different, they can complement each other; because they are in many ways alike, they can understand each other. Let neither envy the other for their differences; let both discern what is superficial and what is beautifully basic in those differences, and act accordingly.

My second theme is that of coming to the Lord through the marriage relationship. I've already talked about how motherhood helps me to be more Christlike, but marriage does this as well for both of us.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the focal point in a covenant marriage relationship. Please notice how the Savior is positioned at the apex of this triangle, with a woman at the base of one corner and a man at the base of the other corner. Now consider what happens in the relationship between the man and the woman as they individually and steadily “come unto Christ” and strive to be “perfected in Him” (Moro. 10:32). Because of and through the Redeemer, the man and the woman come closer together. (Elder Bednar)

Charles and I are part of such a covenant marriage relationship because we were married in the temple. And, in fact, we had the above image in mind when we picked our wedding date, which is July 21 or 7/21.

Apparently, in Hebrew, 7 is the number that represents perfection, hence July, and then we multiplied 7 by 3 because of the three entities involved in our marriage (him, me, and God), so 21.

We are still human and sometimes it seems that the metaphorical length of the legs of our triangle are longer than at other times, but that is part of our journey. Remember, we are only five years into this and we covenanted to be together for eternity. Bumps along the way were part of the package deal that we signed up for.

The times when the triangle seems smaller and we become closer are the times when we are able to use the Atonement (think "at-one-ment") to forgive each other and become better individuals. It just so happens that those times are usually after a big "bump" came up in our road. This just shows that trials are really to be used to make us stronger.

So, Happy Anniversary to us!

Why Do We Send Missionaries Out Into the World?

(First, let me apologize for this being late. We are on the road and I wasn't as on top of things as I was hoping to be. That said, Enjoy!)

Life is exciting right now. It's summer and that means vacation time! For us that is looking like a month-long road trip in four phases. Phase 1 is complete and now Phase 2 is underway.

Phase 1 was going to see my family. The stars aligned and my step-sister got back from her mission the same week my brother graduated from high school, so we got to go to both parties. And, bonus for me, I got a double interview opportunity.

I usually like Before and Afters. This was more of an After and Before. RaeAnn is the After as she just got back from her mission in New Zealand. Tyler is the Before because he has his call to the London South Mission and reports in August.

Now why do we send missionaries out into the world? Elder Dallin H. Oaks gave an excellent answer back in a message to mission presidents in 1992:

The purpose of our missionary work is to help the children of God fulfill a condition prescribed by our Savior and Redeemer. We preach and teach in order to baptize the children of God so that they can be saved in the celestial kingdom instead of being limited to a lesser kingdom. We do missionary work in order to baptize and confirm. That is the doctrinal basis of missionary work.

This is the broad purpose of missionary work. But it is the experience of so many individual missionaries that they do not end up baptizing great numbers or any converts at all. Is their time in the field still worth it?

The answer, of course, is yes.

[Baptisms] are not the only measure of a successful mission. Equally important are helping to fellowship new members of the Church, encouraging less-active members toward full activity in the Church, giving Christian service, planting for a future gospel harvest, helping companions, and deepening your own conversion. 

(emphasis added, Ensign link here)

Oftentimes the mission is more like a crucible for the missionary themselves, regardless of whatever else happens. This is where the refiner's fire is turned up a couple notches and the boy or girl that goes in is not the same person on the other side.

In point of fact, if I were to go back in time and meet my husband before his mission I would not know that boy because that was not the man I married. From what I can tell, the mission made Charles a kinder, stronger man and the leader he is today.

RaeAnn is fresh off her spiritual high of an experience. I tried to jog her memory of what she had previously expected her mission to be like. Mostly, she was jumping into the unknown. She knew it was going to be a lot of hard work, but she didn't really know what that was going to look like.

"At first it felt more like banging my head against the wall. We were doing things, but it didn't seem to be going anywhere. You can't immediately see any fruits from your labors. But I learned that it's more than immediate results. Of course something so eternally significant will be hard. I learned I could feel satisfied with my work as long as I was doing what God expected me to."

 So she was able to learn patience, greater trust in God, and gain a stronger testimony for herself. There are things that will stay with her and give her strength through the rest of her life more than the fact that she helped one person get baptized near the very end of her mission.

Tyler on the other hand is still the pre-mission boy and gave me facetiously short answers. I asked him about his expectations in general and how he thinks he'll change.

At first he just said that he expects to spend two years in England and to get taller. I wasn't about to let him get away with that. He was a bit more serious the second time around.

He anticipates he'll be two years away from home teaching the gospel. And he expects he'll come back with a firm testimony of the Spirit and "some killer calluses on [his] feet".

I'll have to get more from him in two years when he gets back.

While serving a mission was not the path I chose for myself, I still see the value in serving. I feel my duty is to be raising the next generation of missionaries and that is its own refining experience, as I talked about last month.