Day 4--Thank you Sunny!

I've often said that the only thing a woman can control is her hair. I guess that is not exactly true, since I know you can control your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions. But outside of that--hair is it. You can't control your kids, your husband, your friends, the government, or much else. But you can control your hair if you have the right hair dresser. I say that because I am sure you know that if you go to the WRONG hairdresser, you may not even be able to control your hair.

If you're like me, you've come out with hair hacked off, the wrong color, and way too curly.

Not with Sunny. I've never hated my hair once with her. OK, one time she highlighted my hair purple, but I happen to like purple, so I forgave her. :-) Sunny has brought a lot of vibrancy to our town and our church and I just wanted to thank her for lifting my spirits and helping make the world a more beautiful place. Trust me. My natural hair is not that beautiful!

And today, she made ME a little more vibrant. Thank you SUNNY!!!

Day 3--Thank you Birthday boy!

Don't tell any of my other boys. But I think my Joseph could step right onto the pages of GQ. He's tall, not so dark, and handsome. And he has a heart of gold. Here's the real Joseph.

And that is a mild version of the Beast. He is full on 99% of the time. Here's what I love about him.

Joseph sees what is fair and what is right and it TICKS him off when things aren't.
Joseph is willing to be friends with EVERYBODY. And he has TONS of friends.
Joseph has a soft heart and is easily touched and cares about people's feelings. To a fault.
Joseph is Hys-TER-ical!!!
Sometimes his mother wishes he would be more serious. :-)
Joseph is a quiet spiritual giant. I don't think he even knows that.
Almost every child who has ever met Joseph, LOVES him.
Joseph's siblings love him.
Joseph helps his dad to stretch. Haha.
Joseph is EXTREMELY talented musically.
He also has moves like nobody's business, but most of his new friends don't know this because of his second knee surgery.
Joseph is pretty respectful of girls. He could kiss a lot of them, but doesn't.
I love that Joseph shares his life with me. SOMETIMES. I mean he feels like he can tell me almost anything. I know he has some secrets though.
Joseph does a mean Michael Jackson impression.
Joseph was an AWESOME three time Mr Wildkat.
Joseph is working toward going on a mission.
Joseph makes his mother and father extremely proud.
Joseph should come home more. :-)
Thank you Joseph for being an amazingly wonderful son!

Count them, that's how old he is. Happy Birthday!!!

Day 2, Thanks to my man

I was going to do a thank you bishop post, but I decided I am not married to the bishop, thank you very much. Some of you may think I need a wake up call, but I simply feel bishopless. I am however married to a wonderful man who happens to be the Bish named Bret.

My dear Bret is not your average man, and unfortunately for any men reading, (or women for that matter) I am not going to focus on his weaknesses, but he has them. So, he will sound like a super human super man to most. So be it. He's my super human super man. If I ever thought that I did not want to marry my father (and I don't particularly remember thinking that), I sure did not. I'd say they are practically polar opposites. But there are a few similarities.

But back to him. You know how they say still waters run deep? That is a pretty good phrase for my darling husband. He is gentle, quiet, and still. So, if the saying is true, he is the ocean. Me on the other hand? Boisterous, busy, animated. So, I might take a little bit after my dad. Sigh. Bret has patience that he must have inherited from his mother. (His mother is a-whole-nother post. The RM and I recently decided that "Grandma" was our only hope for any of us getting past the pearly gates). We've never had one single fight in our lives. Maybe that is hard to believe. But it's hard to fight with someone who will not fight. I've tried. Oh, how I've tried. Don't get me wrong, we disagree at times and we've had a few snits. But no fighting in this household.

He's a great father. And sometimes I think he might be a better mother than I am! Not that I'm a louse of a mother, but sometimes I am short in the understanding department. For example. Sometimes kids will take advantage if you let them. Food for instance. They can be like dogs. I don't mean that harshly. But kids, sometimes like dogs, will eat everything in sight if you aren't paying attention. So, they've just had a snack and eaten dinner, but while you are trying to take a minute and have your own, they want a taste of that too. I just have no patience for it. The answer is usually no. Not Bret. We joke that he is the family watering trough. He always has water nearby and we all steal a drink. He may have not eaten for three days, and the little puppies may be all filled up, but they still ask him for his first, middle, or last bite. And he almost always obliges.

There are 100 other examples. Another quality he takes after his mother is selflessness. Even though I know there are times he'd like to hide/sleep/lay around, he puts himself last. Being bishop has only made that quality stronger. Early  morning or late night calls. Weddings, funerals, baptisms, home teaching, meetings, hospital visits, prison visits, visiting the sick and widowed, speaking, praying, fasting, and on and on. It's a good thing. I promise. No one need feel bad for needing the bishop. I have to be careful about expressing my needs sometimes because before I know it, a side comment of how I wish I had a _______ (fill in the blank) and he is pulling himself up and going for the thing I wanted. Beyond bishop, he also has the demanding roles of husband, father, and faithful son.

Mr. Fixit. On top of everything else, he can fix almost anything and has. Because of our situation, his talents have really been used. He's built furniture, changed oil and brakes and a thousand other car parts. He's put in water lines, done plumbing, electrical, and concrete work, and well...built half of our house. He can do almost anything I need him to do around the house. And he even cooks and does dishes regularly.

And spiritual. He is the spiritual leader in our home. We have prayer twice daily, read scriptures often, and almost never miss Family Home Evening. We go to the temple when we can. He is a great counselor to me, either when I am stepping out of line and need to reel me back in, or when I doubt my gifts and talents and want to throw in the towel and he encourages me to stick it out.

By now, he's probably calling or emailing me and telling me I should not have done this. So, I will leave it at that. I don't always appreciate all the gifts he has, but I do usually appreciate that I am more than a lucky woman. I am blessed beyond my capacity to receive in the husband department. I hope I can always be worthy of the man I am blessed to call my husband. I love you dear. I am ever your eternal cream puff.

365 days of thanks?

Sooo, I am going to thank someone or something every day for 365. Since I have a tendency to be a little on the perfectionist side, I'm going to allow myself to do the best I can. I may miss here or there. Since I also tend to be really enthusiastic about things, but have a hard time following through, we'll see how long it lasts. Feel free to remind me if I forget. :-) I still haven't finished telling about 2 of my 7 gifts at Christmas. So, I'll make them a part of this soon.

Today's thank you goes out the EAC combined choirs for the wonderful Spring Sing performance last night. The talent we have in this little Jr College is pretty inspiring. I am going to share a clip from the men's choir. It's actually two parts because my camera battery died, so I grabbed my phone, violating rules, and tried to finish. I have not yet replaced my video camera from our burst pipes in February, so I know the quality is less than amazing. And I need to find the conversion card for my cell phone memory card. But I'll post the first one and the others later.

This delightful song is called Johnny Schmoker. My son is the tall, very vibrant, one-of-a-kind left of middle on the second row. A very talented boy himself.

My favorite song of the night has such beautiful words. The Blessing. And every word of it goes out to my missionary son in Kentucky. He is a blessing and I pray this blessing for him. It was done as a choral piece and I did not record it, but here it is by Celtic Woman.





Thank you Dr Bishop and amazing students of EAC choirs!

A complaint free world?

Sometimes I see things in multiples and I take notice. I'll see a reference to the same book. Or a quote in several places. Or in this case, I have seen a few people taking on a challenge to NOT complain for 21 days. The challenge is to do it until you do it. So, on day 1 if you complain, you take a bracelet reminder and move it to the other arm. You just keep doing that until you've gone 21 days with no complaints. They say it takes 4-10 months. Can you imagine getting 18 days down the road, complaining, and starting over?

"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."  ~G.K. Chesterton

I try to live my life in gratitude. At the top of my mirror in my bathroom, I have written, what are you grateful for? And every day I think of some of the same things and some different things I am grateful for. Living in gratitude is great. I feel so much better, and it has helped me be much more positive. But I realized when I saw this challenge, that this was an opportunity to sharpen my positivity more.

I can hear the questions. You mean, NO complaints? Like, I can't even say that my husband's squeezing the toothpaste in the middle is driving me nuts? Nope. I can't call my best friend and tell her the awful thing that so and so did to me? Nope. I can't tell my co-workers about my rotten kids and how they never help? Nope. Pf! Well then how do I communicate?

That's a good question. Even if you don't make it through to the end, I think it can be very enlightening. You will find out just how much of a whiner, complainer, and blamer you are. Does the bracelet get moved 50 times a day? Can you get it to 25? Or does it get moved 20 times a day? Can you move it to 10? 2 hours into my day, I have not complained, but I've only talked to my family and one person. So, we'll see how the day goes.

If you feel the need to complain and you think a complaint, as long as you don't say it, it's not an actual complaint for this experiment. What do you do instead? You say what you would like or want instead of tossing all your garbage on someone else's lap. Got a middle squeezer in your life? Instead of, "honey I've told you 50,000 times I hate it when you squeeze the tube in the middle!" You could say, "honey I'm sure sorry for all the times I've gotten on you for squeezing the tube in the middle. I'm so grateful for all the wonderful things you do (list them) and I hope I can be better about seeing those." Will he magically stop? Maybe not. But maybe.

How about those rotten kids? When was the last time you spent good time with them? How about this? "Hey John or Katie or insert your child's name, I know I've been on you to clean up your room for a month and you've been really busy with school and your other activities, how about I come up and help you tackle that closet up there?" Or. "You know we just don't spend enough time together, how about you clean your room and we'll go out for lunch/ice cream/that new DVD you've been wanting?"

I recently read Jack Canfield's Success Principles, and the very first chapter is Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life. I thought about that for many months. Jack says, no whining, complaining, or blaming. And it has helped me really cut down the crappy thoughts and words in my life. But, like I said, this is going to help it even more. I'm excited. I have challenges in my life like everyone. I use the phone less and less and less, because I think it can be a tool for bad as well as good. It's been several years since I made a concerted effort to stop any kind of gossip. Do I fail sometimes? Of course. But I keep trying and improving and asking for forgiveness.

So if you see a purple bracelet on my arm for the next six months, you'll know why. Join me in a complaint free world.

Virtue Bandits

It seems the older I get, the more I want to experience lovely things. Whether it is a lovely conversation with a friend that I know won't gossip, swear, or speak of "boorish" things, as my grandmother would refer to them. Or listening to peaceful, uplifting, spiritual music. Or reading things that lift my spirit and fill my mind with good and interesting things. And then there's tv and movies. I basically don't watch tv anymore because I find it so offensive and who knows when an inappropriate ad will show itself. And I choose my PG-13s very carefully. I'd rather stay safely in G or PG land.

Of course, on occasion, I crank up a "party" tune. I watch a movie I wish I hadn't because it just had "a little bit of bad" stuff in it. Or I don't stop someone when they say something in my presence we both know they shouldn't have. Or vice versa. But on the whole, I am seeking to live a virtuous life.

vir·tu·ous

 adj \ˈvər-chə-wəs, ˈvərch-wəs\

Definition of VIRTUOUS

1: potent, efficacious

2:

a : having or exhibiting virtue — (see virtue) b : morally excellent : righteous virtuous decision;

3:

: chaste

Last week, I realized, that sometimes, in spite of all you do, things can sneak in under the radar and blow you totally out of the water. I had four or five texts come in on my phone all at once. They were pictures. The first one was Home Depot. Delete. The next one was Lowes. Delete. Why am I getting these? And each delete I thought would erase the whole thread. The next one I won't describe, but I gasped and put the phone to my body and tried to figure out what to do. It was extremely disturbing.


I called my friend who is an attorney. He said he did not think there was much I could do. I looked at the number (something I should have done first, but I don't always recognize my friends' numbers and they are not all in my address book). He suggested I call an officer friend we know. I called him. He said about the same thing. But I gave him the number. I called the number to see if I recognized it and I did not. A hispanic male whose name I did not recognize. I probably should not have, but I sent him a text saying to never ever text me again. He apologized, but what good did that do? He had misdialed. Great!


And it went downhill from there. It was Saturday morning and I felt numb and angry. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I tried to get that image out of my head, the more upset I became. I literally felt violated. I felt dirty and tearful. I tried to stay busy. But my head kept pulling the image up and it was making me sick and unhappy.


I just did the best I could. But as we prepared to go to a semi-annual area church meeting we call Stake Conference, I was hoping like everything that I would be able to focus on the beautiful music and messages and not let this experience ruin the evening. It was work! In fact, I did not completely succeed. By the end of the meeting, it was all I could do to keep the tears back. I wasn't doing a very good job as it was. Fortunately, I had been to the temple the day before. I did feel some of that peace carrying over to the day. But, I asked the Bish to please give me a blessing. I felt blessed that the Beast was home for Spring Break and was able to help.


The blessing was a great comfort. There was rebuking and inviting of angels, and my troubled emotions immediately began to settle. I am so grateful for Priesthood blessings! By the time I got home, I was feeling happy and the image was beginning to fade. I continue to pray that the Light of Christ will so fill my mind, that it will completely erase it from every neuron in my brain. After not even a week, I have to consciously try to pull it up and so I am hoping for that prayer to be answered. I also contacted a friend who helps people release their addictions to pornography, to see if he had any other suggestions. I thought it was interesting that he noted, that sometimes evil spirits are often attached to these kinds of images, especially when someone is addicted, but he encouraged me to use methods that would cast out any evil spirits. 


I was singing in the choir on Sunday at our meetings and again, I did not want to be influenced by the events of the day before. So, before the meetings started, I went off by myself and did many rounds of my wonderful EFT technique, took a deep breath, and hoped for the best. Success! Beautiful music, beautiful conference, and not one second's disturbance. I am so very grateful for blessings, prayer, and emotional tools. I am feeling much more at peace, but it is a testimony to me that we must be on guard at all times. And the answer to filth is virtue and purity. We cannot afford to be slothful in creating homes of safety. We must teach our children the tricks of the adversary. We must instill in them their beauty and worth, so they feel no need to fill their emptiness in other ways. We need to relate to each other and love one another, rather than creating walls between us.


May we all be vigilant in our quest to maintain strong families. I'm up for the task. I hope you are too.

MOTHERS FOR Morality: http://www.causes.com/causes/594146

Ranting! I do it on occasion

Well, I have become a naturally positive person. Sometimes I have to bite my tongue HARD. So, I'll start positive and try to end positive. I can't guarantee the middle. I'm human after all.

On a positive note, this was something that really made me happy last week. I actually felt tremendous joy as we all watched maybe hundreds of dolphins off the bow of this boat in San Diego. I was a chaperone with a group of kids who spent the year working for a trip to Sea Camp.



So, when we flew out from Phx airport, I went through normal security procedures that we have had in our country since shortly after 9/11. You all know them. Phx has not yet brought in the body scanners. I have tremendous objections to these machines for many reasons. Unfortunately, on our trip home, the San Diego airport did have the scanners. I did not even realize it until I was putting my bins and belongings down and saw a woman out of the corner of my eye assuming the scan position. Uh-oh. Is this just a pull one or two out of line thing or does everyone get it? Nope. Everyone gets it. Aw CRIKEY!

So, my brain does a quick, what the heck am I going to do and what about my teen daughter? Processing all of that in a split second, remembering that I decided when the time comes, I was going for the pat down. And seeing that fortunately (yes, there was a positive!) the youth in our group, were going through the old normal procedures and walking through the beeper things we all used to enjoy and not appreciate so much.

So, it's my turn, and I ask the very nice TSA lady, what if I don't want to be scanned? "You want a pat down?" "Yes, I do." She was nice enough not to fulfill my greatest fear at the moment and not shout at the top of her lungs, "We got a pat down here!" Another very nice TSA lady employee escorted me out of the way, asked me to sit, and explained what she would do. She asked me if I wanted to be screened privately and I declined. And then I celebrated my anniversary with my very first patdown. Woohoo!!!!!!!!!! Yeah baby!

Um, it wasn't all that bad. It was a little embarrassing, because people now know I am objecting to my other option. She is running her hands all down my body. But I was really scared she'd do the very extra personal pat down that we've read about in the papers. Nope. Didn't happen. My first thought was, "well, it wasn't that bad, I guess I can keep flying." And my second thought was sadness and some anger. Sad, that we have reached a point in this country that every American citizen who flies is seen as a potential criminal for the actions of a few. And angry that more Americans do not realize that we are laying down and letting them trample our rights. It is not the duty of the government to "keep us safe." It is the duty of the government to protect our rights. I agree with Ron Paul on this.



There is an inherent risk in getting out of bed in the morning. Heck people die in bed in their sleep for cryin' out loud! Nowhere is completely 100% safe. Remember the cry of Patrick Henry? "Give me liberty or give me death!" Well, we are giving up our liberty, we are submitting to an out of control monster that runs our lives, and our cry is becoming, "give me safety or give me death." It's something I fear we won't wake up from. No one can make us totally safe, without taking most of our freedom. Have we reached that point? How many successful terror attacks have their been on American soil since 9/11? We should rise up as the colonists did and REFUSE to accept this. It does not make us safer. It only makes us less free.

That's just the freedom issue. There's also the health issue. We have just undertaken a huge science experiment with the health of the American people as the experiment. It's x-ray technology! I once read about the history and development of  x-rays/ It's NOT a pretty story. When it was first discovered, those discovering had no idea what they were messing with. X-rays build up cumulatively in the body. That means the damage that is done with one, is added to each and every one you do on top of that first one. The fewer you have, the better. The more you have, the more your health risks for cancer increase.

Body Scanner Risks

I've had enough x-rays, that I don't want to add more, and I have a family history of cancer that I do not want to increase. So, there you have it. In my next rant, I'll talk about privacy, bathrooms, and open doors. But you might have to even remind me to rant. :-)

On a positive note, my life and particularly my family room are coming back together nicely. And I am so happy that my dear hubby and I have just passed the 23 year landmark. Airport scanners aside, it was lovely to get off the plane, and find my hubby waiting for me. I just love him.