Love has always been the most important business of life.
--- Anonymous

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Changing the Definition of Travel


Thoughts on World Travel

Do you worry, as I do, about the poor souls who nurse insufferable passions that don't match reality?  You've seen them, for example, on American Idol.  They feel such a need to sing, despite the fact that most folks would pay good money to avoid having to hear them sing. You cannot keep these types from singing; they'll go raving mad.  Talent's got nothing to do with it; it's passion.

For other people, that passion is dancing, or boxing, or doing quadratic equations.  Others have to outsmart bad guys; others must tend green things, or paint, or ride horses. Talent, capability, budget constraints or other reality checks don't seem to figure in to this need.  Do you know what I'm talking about?  What's your insufferable passion?

Well.  I have a few.  But one of mine is travel.

I've been very lucky.  Because my father was a pilot and we could fly for free, I've been practically everywhere!  I've watched the sheep grazing on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland.  I've gazed into the Mona Lisa's eyes in Paris.  I've hiked up and stood inside the Statue of Liberty.  I've seen the pandas at the Tokyo zoo and I've ridden on a giant tortoise on the Seychelles Islands.  I've touched the Berlin Wall. I've fed birds at the Eiffel Tower.  I've pulled a rolling suitcase across cobblestone streets in Stockholm, Edinburgh, and Berlin. I've swum with manatees in Florida.  I've been scuba diving with barracudas.  I once stayed in an African hotel where ostriches and zebras paced outside the window.

I've eaten snails at Ile aux Moines, France; an island so small that cars are outlawed and everyone has to bike or walk. I have witnessed the New Year's Eve beach festivities in Rio De Janeiro, (roses buried in the sand as an offering for a goddess of the sea.) I've eaten a barbeque with Goucho cowboys on a Buenos Aires ranch.  I've been to Denmark's Legoland, Florida's Gatorland, and Utah's Dinosaur Museum. I've seen the movie stars, the hobos and the gangsters of California. I've seen ghettos in St. Louis, Chicago, and New York.  I could go on and on and on, but I'll stop here.

Today I live in a little hick town in Utah, and I have neither money, free flight privileges, or a job that requires me to fly anywhere. The furthest I've gone in the past five years has been the adjoining state, Colorado.  But I do travel --yes, indeed.  There are truly innumerable ways to make it happen.

--How do you pull it off, you ask? 

We can change our attitudes about what defines travel. We can change our definitions of what defines vacation. Traveling and tourism are simply a slice of life. We are all visitors to this planet.  Travel is what we all do, every time we walk to the mailbox, every time we notice a leaf, every time we look into the eyes of another human being.  It's not really about where you go, but it is about how you see.  How do you see the place where you stand today?  It's opening your eyes. It's seizing the day. It's a state of mind.

My kids don't know that they're not spoiled, not flying to foreign lands, because we are always traveling; it's our state of mind.

We treat local historical sites with as much reverence as we would a trip to the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Cliffs of Dover, or Waterloo.  We pick up our own local travel brochures, and peruse them as if we were from another country, looking in.  We observe people; we talk about what we see, what we eat, what we would think of this place if we weren't living a mile or a hundred miles from here.

In the past year or two we've road-tripped to the rodeo at the "Strawberry Days" of Pleasant Grove, Utah; to the Alpenhorn blowing at "Swiss Days" of Midway, Utah; to the Swedish meatball eating at "Scandinavian Days" of Ephraim, Utah; to the wooden gun whittling of the "Cowboy Poetry Days" of Heber, Utah; and we've tasted the fresh pressed cider at "Apple Fest" of Cedaredge, Colorado.  We've even found a little cemetery only thirty miles away with an incredibly fascinating history that I'll have to blog about another day...
Life is fascinating.  Everything around us.  It really is.

Monday, October 24, 2011

October 2011

The kids had 2 days off school




13 months old

walking with arms out and up-- so cute and so ambitious




CE and her best friend

they wrote all over the sidewalks and the road




these are best friend brothers

oj oj oj vad gulliga dom ar



Thursday, October 20, 2011

Small moments make eternity like droplets make the sea

A few photos:



We went with AJ on his third grade walking field trip to the grocery store, the funeral home, the post office, etc.



Bath time is always hilarious.  The baby now likes to drink soapy bath water like a puppy.  

My boys

So cute

Here's AJ, NOT brushing his teeth

Baby 13 months old

The beautiful princess eating cookies



This helmet is the baby's Halloween costume-- if he keeps it on.  I also want to make him a little vest and a spear

I am trying to find fun toys without spending money.  This was a bucket of pinto beans and a ladle.
 It is not too hard to clean up.


More cookies, please.


Call Your Representatives

Contact your elected officials and let your voice be heard.  We have
got to stay engaged in the government of our country.

Keep their phone numbers in your cell phone.
White House (Pres and VP)  1-202-456-1111    1 202-456-1414
Rep. Bishop  1-202-225-0453
Rep. Boehner 1-202-225-0600
Rep. Chaffetz 1-202-225-7751
Sen. McConnell 1-202-224-2541
Sen. Lee 1-202-224-5444
Sen. Hatch 1-202-224-5251
Sen. Reid 1-202-224-3542

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Baby at 13 months



Magic of baby


He loves to "drive" shoes and park them in a new place.

I took this pic impulsively, while nursing in a clothing-changing room at a store.  It's just funny reality.



Becoming More Calm


Last night I went a little nuts.  Okay, more than a little. Today I am feeling sorry, embarrassed, and I'm wishing I were naturally a more capable,
more  calm person.

  I looked up this wonderful stuff (below) that I'd once used when I had a great counselor, years ago, and the list is so good that I thought I'd share it here.  I doubt anyone is free from these distortions 100% of the time, but I know sometimes I get caught in a spiral where I can't even feel correctly.  I can't even see reality right.  Last night was like that.  I want to be better.  I have the most wonderful family in the world, and they deserve me to be sane even if it's PMS time, even if we have had a hard week, and even if I'm low on sleep or attention or money or energy to keep my house clean.  I vow to improve, with God's blessing.
The Ten Forms of Self-Defeating Thoughts
 (Cognitive Distortions:  from David D. Burns, MD 1989 "The Feeling Good Handbook")

1. All or nothing - thinking




You see things in black and white categories If a situation falls short of perfect,
you see it as a total failure.

2. Overgeneralization
You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using words such as 'always' or "never" 

3. Mental filter

You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your

vision of all of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a

beaker of water. Example: You receive many positive comments about your

presentation to a group of associates at work, but one of them says something

mildly critical. You obsess about his reaction for days and ignore all the positive

feedback.




4. Discounting the positive




You reject positive experiences by insisting they 'don't count.' If you do a good

job, you may tell yourself that it wasn't good enough or that anyone could have

done as well. Discounting the positive takes the joy out of life and makes you feel

inadequate and unrewarded.




5. Jumping to conclusions




You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your

conclusion.

Mind reading: Without checking it out, you arbitrarily conclude that someone is

reacting negatively to you.

Fortune telling: You predict that things will turn out badly. Before a test you may

tell yourself, 'I'm really going to blow it. ' If you're depressed you

may tell yourself, 'I'll never get better.'







6. Magnification




You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you

minimize the importance of your desirable qualities.




7. Emotional reasoning




You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really

are: 'I feel terrified about going on airplanes. It must be very dangerous to fly.' Or

'I feel guilty. I must be a rotten person.' Or 'I feel angry. This proves I'm being

treated unfairly.' Or I feel so inferior. This means I'm a second-rate person.' Or 'I

feel hopeless. I must really be hopeless.'




8. "Should statements"




You tell yourself that things should be the way you hoped or expected them to

be.  'Musts,' 'oughts' and 'have tos' are similar

'Should statements' that are directed against yourself lead to frustration.

Should statements that are directed against other people or the world in general

lead to anger: 'He shouldn't be so stubborn'

 This usually doesn't work because all these shoulds and musts make you feel rebellious and you get the urge to do the opposite.




9. Labeling




Labeling is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of saying 'I made a

mistake.' you attach a negative label to yourself: 'I'm a loser.' Labeling is quite irrational because you are not the same as what you do. Human beings exist, but 'fools,' 'losers,'

and 'jerks' do not. These labels are useless abstractions that lead to anger,

anxiety, low self- esteem.

You may also label others. When someone does something that rubs you the

wrong way, you may tell yourself: 'He's an S.O.B Then you feel that the problem

is with that person's 'character' or 'essence' instead of with their thinking or

behavior. This makes you feel hostile and hopeless

about improving things and leaves little room for constructive communication.




10. Personalization and blame






Personalization occurs when you hold yourself personally responsible for an

event that isn't entirely under your control. When a woman received a note that

her child was having difficulties at school, she told herself, 'this shows what a bad

mother I am,' instead of trying to pinpoint the cause of the problem so that she

could be helpful to her child. When another woman's husband beat her, she told

herself, lf only I were better, he wouldn't beat me.'

Some people do the opposite. They blame other people or their circumstances for their problems, and they overlook ways that they might be contributing: 'The reason my marriage is lousy is because my spouse is totally unreasonable.' Blame usually doesn't
work very well because other people will resent being a scapegoat and they will
toss the blame right back in your lap. It's like the game of hot potato - no one
wants to get stuck with it.

-   -   -   -   - 

So, after this, I found another great gem of wisdom:  a five-step plan to use to work through the craziness rather than pulling your hair, slamming a door, shouting at your loved one, or resorting to self-hate.  It's from a book called "When Panic Attacks":

1. On paper, describe the upsetting event briefly.
2. State and rate your emotions from 0 to 100% for each emotion-word you choose to use
3.  Write a sentence for each negative thought and rate from 0-100% how much you believe your own thought.
4. Identify any distortions (use the "Ten Cognitive Distortions" checklist above)
5. Challenge each negative thought with a positive sentence and label 0-100% how much you believe that sentence.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

So, I put a packet of peppermint tea, some paper, a pen, and some 3x5 cards with the above information on it, in my living room bookshelf.  My homework is that next time I get PMS or any other craziness and want to behave in regrettable ways, I have to work through this system and see if I can do better, even with out my wonderful therapist, Rex.  He died a few years ago, but his encouraging, stern methods and his helpfulness stays with me.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

How I Save Money Cooking Healthy, Cheap Dinners

1. Use a crock pot.  Make some kind of chicken or beef one day, and re-serve it a day or two later in disguise. Like, chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy one day.  Then, chicken chopped up and served with cilantro, tomatoes, cheese in tortillas another day.  This is cheap and also easy because you can put a frozen hunk of meat in a crock pot.  Today I'm doing a pot roast in the crock pot.  I'll serve it with baked potatoes and carrots tonight.  Then I will serve it as barbeque beef sandwiches tomorrow night.

2.  Make breakfasts for dinners.  We love omelettes, french toast, eggs, breakfast casseroles, pancakes, waffles, eggs and bacon and toast, cereal, etc.  Eggs and bread are cheap so it makes a good dinner.

3.  Buy in bulk but only when it's on a killer sale.  I get tons of bread for example, and freeze it, when they have the good kind on sale.  Same with cereal, oatmeal, soups, toothpaste, etc.

4.  Rice is cheap.  Make your main thing rice and have the meat and veggies almost like a condiment with good sauce (soy, teriyaki, salsa, etc.)

5.  Have "Smorgasbord night" once in a while.  You put out the leftovers from the week, cut up fruit and veggies, put out bread and jam and cheese, and let everyone just make whatever they feel like.  Then you throw away the leftovers and feel less guilty.

6.  Don't make recipes that use more than five ingredients.  They just cost more.  (The five is not including salt, sugar, oil, etc.)

7.  Beans are cheap and one of the healthiest foods on earth.  Make taco soup without the meat.  Make beans and kielbasa.  Make bean and cheese enchiladas, meatless.  You can even substitute refried beans for oil in brownie mixes, and it comes out less oily, more cakey, less fattening, and super delicious. But do not tell anyone!  It will gross them out.  I made that mistake.  The people who didn't know, loved it.

8.  If you like oatmeal, eat it almost every morning.  We do.  We add a little salt, some brown sugar, honey, jam or cinnamon, or bananas.  It is very cheap and we just put it with water in the micro for 1 or 1 and 1/2 minutes.  So fast and so good.  It is way cheaper than buying cereal. 

- Show quoted text -

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Primary Reading Schedule for October

For my sugardoodle friends:

October 2011 Primary Book of Mormon Reading Schedule

10/2-10/8

1 Sticker Option:  4 Nephi  1:1-5 (No poor among them), 4 Nephi  1:7-13 (They rebuilt the cities that had been destroyed, no contentions), 4 Nephi  1: 15-18 (They were one).

2 Sticker:  4 Nephi 1:1-24



10/9-10/15

1 Sticker:  4 Nephi 1:24-34 (After 200 years they begin to be lifted up in pride & people begin to lose faith in Christ.), 4 Nephi 1: 48-49 (Ammaron hides the sacred record)

2 Sticker:  4 Nephi 1:25-49



10/16-10/22

1 Sticker:  Mormon 1:1-5 (At 10 years old Mormon is taught about the sacred records by Ammaron), Mormon 2:1-9 (At 16 Mormon begins to lead an army-he later leads a battle to defeat a Lamanite Army of 44,000!)

2 Sticker: Mormon Chapter 1 & Mormon 2:1-9



10/23-10/29

1 Sticker:  Mormon 6:1-6 (Mormon gathers his people to the Land of Cumorah and hides the plates), Mormon 8:1-7 (The end of the Nephites.  Moroni finished the plates for his father, Mormon)

2 Sticker:  Mormon Chapter 6 & Mormon 8:1-16

The Last Warm Day Before Winter Begins

The weatherman said that it would be the last warm day so I took advantage of the fact
 and took the baby for a stroll when everyone else left the house.
--These beautiful colors were happening on a single tree.

I love this view of the stroller, the fruits of fall, and the baby's cute little head and apple-holding hand

Apples growing on a tree-- a great marvel when you start to think about it

The baby feet.  Oh, the sweet baby toes to kiss and tickle!

Baby H.  Thirteen months old

Soon this green will be covered with snow.

With only four teeth, he does funny things to his apple.

I put these pretty red berries in a vase of water when I got home. 
The apples came from neighbors' trees, and are small but yummy.

Colorado Road Trip -- Part II

CE and the hike

Sleeping like a baby

Are we there yet?!
Mini golfing with a very tired baby

The baby was DH's "handicap" but he still beat the rest of us.  Even with the baby on the green half the time.


Even though the kids have weird expressions in this picture, I still love it.  It somehow captures the mixture of happiness and fiesty annoyance that is the experience of road tripping with kids. 

AJ on our hike up Powderhorn


I love these baby legs and baby feet and baby feathery hairdos in the sunlight

Hope DH paints this some day.  He can do it if he finds the time.


This is AJ and CE at Il Ristorante Italiano in Downtown Grand Junction


Something we noticed about Grand Junction was that there were SO many churches!
I have never seen a city with more churches than I saw in Grand Junction, Colorado.  As we drove, searching for the Dinosaur Museum and the Downtown Art and our hotel -- WOW.  Denomination after denomination:  Catholic churches, an Episcopal church, some Baptist churches, and legions of different Christian churches.  But we never saw a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints church --not one!   I am hoping there must have been a few somewhere.


 That was so different from at home in Utah, where we see our churches on every corner, with a very few other denominations on a few rare corners.  It made me not want to take the church for granted and to absolutely cherish the knowledge of life and the afterlife that honestly, no other church comes close to explaining fully.


"there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are ablinded by the subtle bcraftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to cdeceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they dknow not where to find it— "   (Doc. & Cov. 123:12)  People don't know where to look to find the well of truth.


I put myself in the shoes of someone outside the church; how would I ever filter through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different denominations, most of whom claim to teach about Jesus Christ?  How would I ever find the only true church, that held His authority, from Him directly?  With truth pouring out in a never-ending stream from real, live  holy  prophets and apostles, with working temples and pure truth from the Savior Himself?


How would I ever find it or believe it, if my parents hadn't found it when I was a child?


Even asking the question, I believe that if I really sincerely asked God to help me figure it out, He would help me get there.


Even as a 9 year old child, as I was in a Baptist school when my parents began to listen to LDS missionaries, I was aware of this avalanche of additional truth.  I got it, that there was more to the gospel than the Baptists had taught me.


I am grateful to the Baptists at that Calvary Christian School in East Hebron, New Hampshire for what they gave me-- Bible stories, hymns, a wonderful love for Jesus.  But I am more grateful to the LDS missionaries for what they gave me and my family-- living prophets and apostles, a true priesthood, a real baptism, not made up by humans; eternal marriage (not till death do you part) and family sealing in the holy temples, and the huge joy of the knowledge that my un-baptized dead ancestors were being taught the truth in the spirit world, also, by missionaries as we were.


These things were the tip of the most wonderful of all icebergs.  It really is true church.


I realized, driving through that "Bible Belt" in Grand Junction, that lots and lots and lots  of people simply do not know.  Maybe they don't want to know.  But what if they do.

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