Man vs Bear

I'm Thankful For...

A house full of wild animals.

A major case of Bed Head
A messy kitchen
full of little bakers.

As They Really Are

I've been thinking a lot the last few weeks about what motivates us to act in certain ways. Perhaps it's that I have been reading The Hunger Games. I kept going back to a book that I read this summer while on vacation. It's called The Anatomy of Peace from the Arbinger Institute. It's the follow up of Leadership and Self-Deception, which I hear is also excellent though I haven't read it. The Anatomy of Peace talks about personal conflict and what causes us to clash again and again with people. They call it having a heart at war. When our hearts are at war, we are seeing others, not as people like us (which they call having a heart at peace), but as objects. Objects such as obstacles, vehicles or irrelevancies. This is simply a new way of restating the golden rule or revisiting the first and great commandment, but the visualization has made all the difference for me. As I am going about my day, when I get irritated by someone doing something, I think to myself "Am I seeing them as a person or am I seeing them as an obstacle, vehicle, or irrelevancy?" Sometimes that's a very painful question to get the answer to. It has changed my behavior in a lot of instances...though not all. I'm a work in progress.

This thought ran through my head again last night as I was listening to the Relief Society General Session. The answers are old, but so are the questions. How can I have peace? How can I be happy? How can I bear ...? Rarely does the answer lie inward. You need to fix all that inside stuff or it will eat you up, but it will also eat you up if that's all you do. When you are loving others, and being moved by compassion to serve them, you have all those things you lack. I used to think that service just helped because you could see that others have it worse than you or that you could prove to yourself that you were a good person. But, I have begun to realize more fully that it's about light. We are surrounded by light and darkness, it just depends on where you're looking.

As we focus on the light, we are naturally moved to help others and see them as they really are. And, inversely, the more we help others and strive to see them as they really are, the more light comes into our lives. We need to feel that light and that love, but we have a choice in the matter.

To my family, there's a new post on the family blog.

Oh What a Beautiful Morning!!!!

Last year, my dad brought a piano out to me. Playing the piano is one of my favorite things in the world. No. That sounds trite. Playing the piano feeds my soul.

The piano needed to be tuned, but I wanted to let it settle - and the situation with our house and the Urban Loop settle. Both did, but six or seven keys wouldn't play at all. I feared the worst, but played around the keys (as best I could without three E's two Eflats and low C). This morning, the key lid fell back into the piano, so I opened up the whole thing and pushed it back out. While in there, I noticed something odd. The piston things that connect the keys to the hammers had slipped off of (oddly enough) three E's two E flats and low C. I easily slipped them back on and....Hazzah!!!! Every key on my piano works! I can now play Prelude in C# minor or Moonlight Sonata or Midnight Train. Now my effusion is over and I'm off to play! (Why oh why didn't I check on that a year ago?)

When Matt got home from work today, he asked Emily how her day was. After explaining that nothing quite worked out right (her friend couldn't come over, she had to clean up downstairs, etc) she said, "Today was kind of crumpled."

Lovely Little Lady

My girl is another year older! She is sunshine in human form and I am so grateful to have had her around for five years already. We got her a giant bear and it was the highlight of the party. It sure is nice to get the perfect gift once in a while. The look on her face when she first saw it was worth every penny. She named him "Humongous Bear of the Universe" or "Mungus" for short.

Emily is in love with princesses and stuffed animals. Her favorite color is pink. She loves riding her bike, throws a mean right hook (in fun of course!), loves dressing up and twirling, and finds no end of amusement in burps and things like that. She's a unique girl that always keeps me laughing.

Happy Birthday, Baby!

Help me!

I know that Cathy will post something about our wonderful Emily to commemorate her 5th birthday, but I wanted to throw in something that epitomizes how quirky and fun she is.

For her birthday we bought her a huge 53" tall stuffed bear ($30 at Costco, sweet deal!)

She has been playing with the bear constantly since she got it yesterday. Today Cathy and I were talking in the living room when we heard Emily yelling help me from across the room. Knowing she was just playing with her bear we finished up what we were saying. Emily continued to call for help, finally pleading: "Help me! with good reason!"

She was laying underneath her bear (which covers her completely).

Just a side note on this video. I was watching after I downloaded it to my computer, and it came to the part where Emily was getting a little rough with Will's hands. I actually said out loud "Uh - oh. Careful!" Am I on autopilot?

My Constitutional Expert

The other day while we were driving in the car, Joe finished the Magic Tree House book about the Revolutionary War. I asked Joe what his favorite scene was, and he said it was when General Washington was reading a book to his men. He opened it up and found the page. It was a quote from Thomas Payne that starts "These are the times that try men's souls..." I was so impressed that that was his favorite part.

Yesterday, he learned about the constitution at school since it was Constitution Day. When he came home, he wanted to write part of the Constitution on a piece of paper and hang it underneath a coloring page of the colonial flag so that we can always remember the Constitution. He wrote out the whole Preamble. I just love how excited about it he has been this week.

What Exactly Happened!

Today after school, Joe asked if I had heard about the oil spill in the gulf. I told him I had heard about it. He said, "There's oil everywhere because a whale exploded!" Holy cow! That is distressing!

In 10 Minutes You Could...

This morning, all the kids were ready to go ten minutes before we had to take Joe to school. Joe asked if he could play and I said he could, thinking to myself that there wasn't much he could really do in that ten minutes.

Well. In that ten minutes, I got dinner in the crock pot (roast, potatoes, carrots, and onions look so beautiful in the crock pot!), and the kids defeated two bad guys, put out the house fire (thus saving me and the crock pot), and vanquished the giant python who had invaded. Not bad for ten minutes!

The Elegant Antlered Beast

This morning we were talking to Emily about her birthday party next Saturday. Matt and Joe were teasing her about having a pirate party. She said, "Pirates are mean! I like princesses, and ponies, an unicorns, and mooses."

Moose? Not sure where that came from.

Spirit Lifter

It's on days like today that I love little reminders like these pictures: reminders of a happy day and reminders that I am so very very blessed. I love these pictures from our vacation, and I don't think I posted them. If I did, oh well. Here they are again. I love the first one with Will's shoes off the best.

Sigh...

Kids reading peacefully together. I don't know if it gets much better than that.

Moving On

Joe is doing really well at his new school. He comes home every day full of excitement for what they did and the new friends he is making. Two days ago, he said that he would be so mad if he ever left his school and we better not ever have him go to another. Then he amended with, "Well, after fifth grade it will be okay. I can go to another school, because I'll be moving on with my life then."