The Nutcracker and Two Birthdays

My girls started ballet earlier this year, which was a fun thing that came about because of all the pandemic cancellations! We have been in a children's choir about forty minutes away for years and years—since Abe was only eight! And we've loved it, but this year the choir was only online, and we decided that wouldn't be worth it for us. So the girls got a chance to try out a cute little ballet studio quite near our house, now that we weren't having to drive to choir twice a week!

They are complete beginners, so they were surprised and excited when they found out they were going to get to be in the Nutcracker at Christmastime! I kept trying to prepare them for the disappointment of it being cancelled, since no one knew quite what would happen. But it didn't get cancelled! And they loved it so much! They had lots of extra rehearsals, so I was very glad that their studio was close to home. It was such a fun thing for them to prepare for and then perform in (twice—a matinee and an evening performance).

They were sooooo excited the day of the performance!

Lucky Daisy got to dance three parts—a party girl, a soldier, and a jester.

And Junie and Goldie were both "Gingersnaps"—the little dancers that come out from under Mother Ginger's enormous skirt! When I was little, it was the fondest dream of my heart that someday I would get to be one of those gingersnaps (but I never got to—I didn't take ballet for long enough!). It always looked SO FUN to me. I also dreamed of getting to go to school with my hair in curlers, like one of my friends who took ballet always did on her Nutcracker performance days. Oh how I wished I could be like her! :) My girls didn't get to go to school that way, but they DID get to have their hair in ringlets and wear makeup, which was wildly exciting!

They had such cute little costumes. I suppose some wonderful group of mothers made these costumes, years ago. I could tell from the stitching they were handmade. I'm glad I wasn't asked to volunteer for such a task, as I would not have been up to it, but all the dancers looked darling!

1

Increase our caring capacity

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Priesthood Session of the April 1991 Conference.

I've been thinking about how hard it is to get children and teenagers (and maybe all of us, really) to think and care about other people—really care about them. It's so easy to dismiss whole categories of people. Old people. Mean people. Disabled people. Poor people. Even if you aren't deliberately cruel to anyone, it's so easy to think "those people" are wholly different from you, or to assume they don't really feel and matter as you do yourself. I remember thinking some of those thoughts myself when I was young, much as I tried to be a compassionate person.

But as you age maybe you begin to catch glimpses of the real people behind those categories. Maybe you start to edge into those categories yourself. I remember sitting quietly some years ago, reading 1 Corinthians 10:13, "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man," and hearing that phrase "such as is common to man" run over and over again in my head. I'm just like people I used to look down on, I thought. Not better. Not more patient. Not smarter. Not more righteous. Common to man.

Is this realization a function only of life experience? I suppose missions can help teach it too. Maybe it comes through any service, and a deliberate practicing of empathy? But I agree with Elder J. Richard Clarke that it's something we must somehow find a way to teach:

Brethren, we are the sons of God….We must expand our awareness as quorums and as individuals, and increase our caring capacity. Let us live righteously and extend the healing power of the priesthood, through loving quorum service, to “succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees.”

0

Those who have been prepared to help us

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Afternoon Session of the April 1991 Conference.

Elder Earl C. Tingey quoted Boyd K. Packer saying:

When the servants of the Lord determine to do as He commands, we move ahead. As we proceed, we are joined at the crossroads by those who have been prepared to help us.

They come with skills and abilities precisely suited to our needs. And, we find provisions; information, inventions, help of various kinds, set along the way waiting for us to take them up.

It is as though someone knew we would be traveling that way. We see the invisible hand of the Almighty providing for us.”

Elder Packer was talking specifically about technologies that advanced family history work, and I noticed this same phenomenon when I was in a Young Women's presidency—when we needed help with something, the right person always seemed to just come along. 

But I love the idea in a more general context, too. It is comforting to think that "someone knows" the things we're going to have need of; the things we may not be able to manage on our own. I think about this frequently in relation to my children. I understand and am hyper-aware of the influence parents have on children; I understand that our responsibility for them can't passed to others. But I am also so grateful for other people that connect with my children and reach them in ways I can't. I feel desperate for those people, sometimes (especially right now, in a new ward and area, where the wonderful caring leaders my kids had before have been replaced with…strangers. Probably just as loving and wonderful! But simply unknown to the kids right now). I am constantly praying that someone will be put in our path, with the "skills and abilities precisely suited to our needs"—and I'm reassured that because of the Lord's loving guidance, such a blessing is indeed possible.

4

Santa Lucia

On Santa Lucia Day, all I could think about was how last year at this time, we were all anxiously waiting to meet Baby Gus—without even knowing he WAS baby Gus! I will never stop being amazed at the way you can go along being perfectly content, living normal life, not having any idea of the existence of an entire soul who exists and will someday mean everything to you. And then you catch a glimpse—perhaps a veil parts just a little—and suddenly nothing can ever be the same.

Anyway, he is here now! Living his best life, as you can see.

The morning started a little rough, when Teddy wanted to help us make the rolls and the girls insisting, "No! We are going to SERVE you!" There were tears…and compromises…

…and some of us were a little grumpy about it…

…and didn't appreciate being "helped" (not to say bossed) by older sisters…

…but time and baking smoothed things out, as they always do. And then we had a lovely time.

Daisy is getting to be a really good baker. Look at her whip that rolling pin around! I am becoming less and less necessary to this process…which is nice because then I can just stand around and take pictures.

(I suppose the girls also had a little help from their dolls)

1

Mingle our voices of gladness with His

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Morning Session of the April 1991 Conference.

When I was little, I loved to go around the house (and yard…and everywhere) singing. I would happily play for hours, making up all kinds of songs about what I was playing. I can clearly remember one time I was walking up and down the driveway, singing an earnest and pathos-filled song about how I was an orphan, and I'd just gotten "a letter, that would change my liiiiiiife!" At this critical point, my brother popped out from behind the car, laughing his head off. I was hoping he hadn't heard, but that hope disappeared as he sang the last few lines back to me between gasps of laughter. I was so embarrassed. I still remember that rush of embarrassment washing through me, and me feeling like I could never sing in that joyous, unfettered way again.

Now, to be fair, I now see this as a fortunate experience to have occurred at home with my brother, rather than out in the world with some crueler or more disdainful observer. People can't just go around in this world un-self-consciously singing about being orphans! It was a life lesson that had to be learned. But I think about it sometimes—how quickly I lost the ability to let those open, spontaneous songs float out of my heart, once I realized they could be laughed at.

I, in turn, have been blessed with a houseful of children who also love to sing their little hearts out—loudly, stridently, and even (I am sorry to say) annoyingly at times—and who have to be reined in and restrained periodically—and who have even necessitated the rule "No singing at the table!" because the peace of the household must be maintained somehow—even though I mostly love their singing! Because they, too, have older brothers, I know that their innocent exuberance will at some point be quashed, and I know that isn't completely a bad thing. BUT—there is just something so pure about singing for joy. And I still feel it inside sometimes (though I don't always give it expression—unless no one is around! ha). And this quote from Elder Marvin J. Ashton made me think about that:

In the world, where there are often voices of pessimism and negative feelings, the voice of gladness is welcome indeed. Some seem to live with doubt, fear of the future, and sorrow for the past. If it is our nature to criticize or demean, we can cause the voices of gladness to be silenced. We need those who bring gladness into our lives. We need those who give encouragement and reflect optimism.

I want to be one of those who brings gladness wherever I go—to make people feel that they SHOULD be happy and love life, and that I will be happy with them. I don't want to ever silence someone else's voice of gladness! I've had a goal for a long time to never say, "I'm so jealous!" but only "I'm so happy for you!" when something good happens to someone else. I'm still working on doing it perfectly—but there are people in my life who do that for me, and I am so buoyed up by it.

I love the reminder that this voice of gladness is how God speaks to us as well, and that we can echo Him:

From the Doctrine and Covenants, we are given this counsel: “Now, what do we hear in the gospel which we have received? A voice of gladness! A voice of mercy from heaven; and a voice of truth out of the earth; glad tidings for the dead; a voice of gladness for the living and the dead; glad tidings of great joy. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those that bring glad tidings of good things.”

The Lord would have us mingle our voices of gladness with His to give strength, encouragement, and joy to His children.

0

Family Pictures

We haven't had professional family pictures since Sebastian was a baby (so…15+ years) and that's okay. I take a lot of pictures of various groups of us. But right before we moved in September, I suddenly felt a compulsion to just have someone take a picture of all of us together on our porch. I didn't really feel like I could manage it myself, but I thought maybe squeezing it in with no planning, no outfit coordination, no time to think about it, was the only way it would actually happen. So I called a photographer friend in the ward with literally 24 hours notice and said, "Please! Can you just drop by and snap a picture tomorrow night before we move?" 

And she was amazing. She came over and quickly arranged our tired, sweaty, somewhat reluctant group (we had been loading boxes all day—you can see the moving van still in the driveway) on the porch, then spent the most energetic half hour with us—charmed the baby, giggled with girls, made the teenagers smile—and was gone before anyone had time to get cranky. She was incredible!

I'm so grateful to have these pictures of the whole family together! They are so much better than the quick snapshot-with-camera-timer I was thinking we'd probably have to resort to. I already feel happy every time I look at these—and what a gift for us to look back on someday!

4

Only by living His gospel can we find what is real

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Women's Session of the October 1990 Conference.

I've been thinking about how many things in this world we can't really know. There are so many voices claiming to have superior knowledge, superior information, superior reasoning or whatever. Just in the past week or so, I have encountered people who think they have a better idea of what the prophet should be saying to the church than the prophet does—people who think they know better than its current leaders what the government should do—even people who think they know what my own motivations are better than I do! Likely some of these people are even right in their assumptions (except those who think they know better than the prophet…pretty sure they are wrong)—but the point is that it's so confusing to know who is right and what is true! Suspicions and hints and accusations about conspiracies or sins or motivations are, by their very nature, impossible to check with any degree of accuracy—even if you had the time and energy to do the sort of checking they would require! Of course I believe bad things—secret combinations, even—can and do exist. And I don't believe in throwing up our hands and saying "No one can know anything." But I really liked the reminder in Sister Elaine L. Jack's talk:

The prophet Jacob said things as they “really are” and “really will be” are “manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls.”

Sisters, how are these things manifest unto us? Plainly, through the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, through the example of our Savior’s life. Only by living His gospel can we find what is real. We can never accurately take the measure of our lives based on social, economic, ethnic, age, marital, or physical conditions. Ask yourself, are the comparisons you may make of yourself and others based on the model of the Savior’s life, or do they come from trying to fit your life into the pattern of others’ lives?

…No greater heroine lives in today’s world than the woman who is quietly doing her part.

She is talking here, decades before our social media age, of the dangers of comparison and the tendency to  idolize others and put our own efforts down. And I love that wisdom: that we need not compare with our peers and feel inadequate; that quietly doing our part is always enough. 

But I also love the reminder that knowing reality and truth in all parts of life comes not from obsessively researching—not from digging up articles that prove your point—not even from intensified efforts to self-analyze and get to know yourself—but from living the gospel of Jesus Christ! Serving others. Forgetting self. Obeying the prophet. Swallowing pride and avoiding contention. This is how we learn what matters and what is real! Anything else may lead us astray, but the sincere actions of living the gospel never will. And the reality we find there is also the only truth that has power "for the salvation of our souls!" What other truth could be more necessary? Surely the cost of living the gospel is worth such a great reward!

Other posts in this series:

Building up our Spirituality—by Jan Tolman

2

Pies, prisms, tables, and too many blessings to count

November was a month of thankfulness. I was so glad for President Nelson's counsel to focus on gratitude for our many blessings! Of course I try to do that all the time. But having a specific invitation from the prophet helped me get serious about it! I could list a million things I'm grateful for and never run out. Here are some things I was thankful for just this month.

• I haven't taught any of the children to ride bikes for…well…years now. I can't remember the last one of them I taught! But it is much better that way. Siblings are such good teachers! I was so happy when I looked outside and saw Sebastian running along helping Teddy ride his bike.

I think Sebastian taught Daisy too, years ago. And Marigold. Anyway, he went out with Teddy several times this month and even set up some little cone courses for him to practice on. Teddy is getting pretty good!

• And what is this? A baby riding a trike? What a precocious child. I hope he's thankful for his big sisters. I sure am!

• One of our biggest blessings this month was getting our new kitchen table! I have loved the round table we've had since Malachi was a baby. It was perfect in our old house…but sadly ill-fitting in the new one. Before we even moved in, we hunted everywhere for one that would work better, but it was so hard to find anything—it is difficult to find tables to seat twelve at all, but the ones we did find were much too long for our little dining area! After much deliberation and frustration, we found someone that would make us a table exactly to fit. And in mid-November it was finally finished! So here is our last meal on the dear round table.

And here is everyone waiting and watching expectantly for the delivery…

Here are the boys watching the men screw the table legs on (Ziggy was playing that he was a "Table Man" before they even left)…

And here is our beautiful new table! We have loved it so much. We could eat anywhere, of course! We didn't truly NEED a new one. But there were several little miracles in the finding and getting of it, and we are so grateful. It has already felt like such a huge blessing for our family to have this gathering spot.

First meal at the new table!

And I sold our old table to someone who is going to refinish it and love it, so there are happy endings all around! She drove off with it tied to the top of her car. :)

• Look, I reached a 1000-day streak of learning French on Duolingo! I'm so thankful for this easy, free option for learning languages. At this stage in my life, I would never be able to do anything at a higher commitment level, but I can manage 5 minutes a day on my phone! I am by no means fluent, but I have remembered much of my high school French and I love practicing it.

• I'm so thankful for time we get to spend as a family. With older kids and busy schedules, I have lately been learning not to take it for granted! And our Family Home Evenings have been a little…sad…since we moved! It's because Sam has classes till later on Monday nights, so we moved our Family Nights to Tuesday, but we can't seem to remember that they're on Tuesday! We are always remembering right at bedtime and then doing something hurried and unplanned. Anyway, THIS night was an exception (though still hurried and not very planned) because Sam had each person draw a picture outlining why his or her favorite animal was the BEST animal. It was hilarious! Abe's sheet full of graphs about bears. Goldie's irrefutable list about elephants. ("Strongest anaml. Biggist land anaml. Eats the most food I know. Dusint run away. Dus not leve babyes. Its the gentlest anaml. Can paint. Ar not carnarvors.") Sam's sharks, of course, and ALL of the pictures! It was a great activity, and even though there is fighting too…always…it does something healing to my heart when we are all together, having fun.

• Sebastian and Malachi share a room, and Malachi got his half looking pretty good soon after we moved in, but Sebastian WOULD NOT. He was at school and cross-country for long hours every day, in his (undeserved) defense, and normally he likes to keep a neat room, but apparently unpacking everything and figuring out where it would go was TOO MUCH. I asked him to clean it up seven hundred times over a month and a half (because poor Malachi! And also, you can't just leave boxes piled in your room forever! It's indecent!) and he said "I KNOW!" about five hundred of those times (and ignored me the other two hundred), and then I TOLD him he HAD to, and then I tried to take away privileges, and give consequences, and use logic and reason, and everything else I could think of, but he didn't, and didn't, and didn't. So finally I gave up and let him experience the consequence of living in the squalor he deserved  cleaned it for him one day when he was at school. How is that for excellent parenting? :(

On the bright side, though, it looked SO much better and I was so grateful to have it done! I breathed a pleased and satisfied sigh of contentment every time I walked past. And I took a picture to memorialize it! 

• Another bright spot: the aforementioned 15-year-old is learning to drive now! What a blessing! And he's actually a joy to drive with. Friendly and talkative and eager to learn. I really like going on drives with him. One day we loaded his and Malachi's bike in the van and went to a bike park across the valley. They had fun showing me all their tricks, and it was such a pretty (if cold) fall day!

• We got Seb's bed from the classifieds and it came with a twin-sized trundle bed that went with it. We were delighted to discover that the trundle bed fit under the girls' bunk beds! Another miracle! At first I wasn't sure we'd even be able to use it, but now Goldie sleeps very snugly there. (And actually, Daisy and Junie don't ever end up sleeping in their separate bunks, so I suppose Goldie could have just had the other bunk! But we're so thankful for the trundle all the same.)

• Malachi had his last few Race Cats (that's his cross-country team) races. I'm so thankful to have gotten to see some new parks and enjoy being outside. We haven't had much free time for going out to parks lately, but this gave at least some of us the chance to! It was fun when Abe and Seb came along to help me cheer for Ky.

I particularly liked this park by the river in Spanish Fork. It was a warmish day with a cold front blowing in, and the sun and the dark sky were so pretty together! I had a long time to walk around and explore while I was waiting for him to run.

And then I saw a bunny!

He let me watch him for quite awhile, and then went hopping off into his hole with his little white tail flashing, so that was very happy for me. And just after the race ended and Malachi and I got in the car, it started raining and hailing, so we also got the cozy satisfaction of knowing we'd just avoided the bad weather. A good day full of things to be grateful for!

• Here is a maze Teddy drew. I love it so much.

• For school one day before Thanksgiving, we made a bunch of Thanksgiving crafts to use for table decorations. I am not a very "crafty" sort of person and I ONLY do crafts as part of school, when it feels like it's killing two birds with one stone somehow, but the children really love it. And it was actually quite fun. I liked us all just sitting at the table and working together, and was so thankful for the peace I felt knowing nothing else was on the agenda.

We made pumpkins…

6