Camp Broadway Land o'Frost Contest - Our Family Singing! Day one: zero votes.

Vote for us!  https://beastar.landomoms.com/entries?page=4  PLEASE.  We are the family on row two of page four on the link.

We are not going to win on talent alone. There were some very practiced and impressive entries. But maybe we can still have a chance because of friends and family voting for us.  Maybe!  We do have the one and only baby in the contest. And we do have the one and only whole-family in the contest. I didn't see any other entries with a dad, mom, kids and a baby. So we have the unique factor.

Well, you can vote every day if you want to, from today through March 25th. I just went on there and we had zero votes. So now there's one. From me. Some entries already had over 80 votes in one day! Yikes. (Well, we are just on a tight budget and really would love to take the family on a plane and sleep in a hotel and go to see a Broadway musical... it would just be fun. That's all!) 

AJ is turning 9.



Can I just say how much I love this little 8-almost-9-year-old A.J. of ours!?!

There is beauty all around

Just something beautiful I saw this week while driving.

What's so important about a caucus and why does anyone care? Reality Check by Ben Swann

This guy, Ben Swann, explains why the caucuses matter.  He is a cut-the-spin-and-fluff-out kind of anchor who explains things simply and without the standard liberal media's progressive agenda.  Fresh air:


http://www.fox19.com/category/195974/video-landing-page?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=6723435

Joy, I tell you. Joy! (Being a bit poor can mean being really really rich)

Here is the baby, 17 months old, in the tub. There can be nothing on earth so beautiful and lovable as a baby in a tub. I feel joy whenever he is in the tub: simple minds, simple pleasures. Joy, I tell you.  Joy!

Sometimes the sacrifices that follow the choice to be a stay-at-home mother are difficult. Sometimes I feel sad that I can't throw a big birthday bash for my son who's turning 9 this week. I can't buy a ton of decorations and party favors and have a big $300 party for him.  Nor can I fly him out to visit his grandparents in Florida, as I'd like to do. I can't take him and his friends to Chuck E. Cheese.  I can't buy him all the stuff he wants. He'll probably end up with a basketball, a new pair of shoes (his shoes literally are hole-y) a lego set and a birdfeeder that he can paint and hang outside his window.  And I'll take him out for a shake with two of his buddies after school on his birthday. That is a humble celebration, I suppose, but he'll know he is loved.  He is sooo loved!!! 

Sometimes the sacrifices require me to not buy stuff that we actually need.

1.  We have not repaired our broken plumbing in the master bedroom for three years.  The water is only hot there, and we burn our hands every time we wash them or brush our teeth there.  We are used to it.

2.  We have not bought nice, new clothes for years. We might get a shirt or a pair of shoes once in a blue moon, but the kind of date-worthy clothing I used to wear is a thing of the past. I have worn clothes with holes in them. I wear clothes that don't fit right. I wear my husband's sweatshirts. I borrow shirts from my 14 year old daughter.

My wonderful neighbors give me hand me downs for the baby, so we've had to buy very little, almost nothing, for him. What a blessing. What a great neighborhood.

3.  We have not repaired the missing tile in the front entryway for over a year. Nor repainted the bedroom wall as I want to, nor hung up pretty curtains as I dream of doing, nor replaced our messed up and unmatching bedding as I so desperately want to!  Nope.  We just smile and enjoy it in all its frumpy glory.  :)

4. We have not planted any flowers or added any home improvement, not even bookshelves, which we need-- for years, even though I'd love to.  I dream of apple trees, plum trees, bookshelves in every room, dresser drawers for the kids rather than plastic bins, etc.

5. We have not flown on a plane for many years and have no plans to anytime soon.  This is weird for me since I grew up the daughter of a Pan Am Captain and almost lived in planes and foreign places until I was grown up.

6. We eat a lot of brown rice, beans, potatoes, whole wheat toast, pancakes, quesadillas, and other cheap dinners, but you know what? They are pretty darn healthy meals.  We almost never go out to eat, and if we do, it's date night. If our whole family goes to a restaurant together, it is a serious celebration. We did this last week because a sushi place in Provo had $4 and $5 sushi with get-one-free attached. It was a family home evening activity not soon to be forgotten. Even the baby loved that eel, raw salmon, and seaweed. ( Okay, yes, but A.J. (the 8 year old) did go home and ask for a refill of food. He didn't love that sushi. )

7. We dream of visiting Sweden or other places. But it's only a dream.

8. We have no retirement fund or plan whatsoever.

9. We have no college savings for our kids.

10. We have no buffer if DH were to lose his job.

11. We still owe most of our home to the bank.  BUT.  We have zero credit card debt, and our cars are all paid in full, and we pay our tithing and our fast offerings in full every month, so we have peace of mind.

We are doing the very best we can. 

12. I remember that I got accepted to the U. of U. for a Ph.D two years ago. But I was pregnant, so I thanked them and turned the opportunity down. I would rather have a baby than one more degree or a fatter bank account, any day!

And when I feel a little frumpy, I grab the curling iron or the lipstick and put on my old icky clothes one more time and let my smile do the work that my fashion cannot.  Joy, I tell you.  I am home with my baby.  He is almost 18 months old and still breastfeeding! We have time to do things; like today, we took a bath together.  And we read a pile of stories:  Tomtebobarnen, Are You My Mother, Babar Blir Kung, and The Leprechaun's Gold.  We played with his little cars on the kitchen floor together.  We ate oatmeal and watched animal sounds on YouTube for breakfast.  We ticked and giggled and danced and snorted.

I'll have dinner and love on the table tonight when the other kids and the dear husband comes home. See?  Life is good.  Being a little bit poor can mean being really, really rich.  It's all in how you look at it.   

Something Worth Doing: Translating "Life Everlasting" into Swedish

  

I'm translating a book called "Life Everlasting" into Swedish. This project is a lot more difficult than I had envisioned when I volunteered for the project.  To be specific, the book is well over 500 pages long, and it's taken me about forty days to translate forty pages.  I do an hour or more each day. But it's something worth doing.  Really worth doing.

The publishing company isn't paying me. They will pay royalties later, if and when anybody actually buys this book in its Swedish language form. But I am quite certain that the number of Swedish readers who have an interest in life after death from the LDS perspective is so small that it is highly unlikely I'll ever be paid even to break even, for my time.  But that's okay.  Money is not why I'm doing this.

The book is powerful. It blesses people's lives who read it at the right time. My husband read it because when his three year old daughter (who would have been 17 today) was killed in an inexplicable boulder-rolling-down-a-hill accident many years ago, he was so devastated and lost that he thought he'd lost all his faith.  It took him time to rebuild from the bottom up. This book was instrumental in that rebuild.

My friend read it this week. I gave her a copy of it because this year, her mother died, her father found out that he's dying of cancer, and she got divorced.  That is a lot to bear in one year. She told me that she stayed up until 3:00 a.m. the day she received the book. She couldn't stop reading it, and when she was too tired to go on, she got on her knees and prayed and cried, feeling so comforted and feeling the rock of anger that had settled in her heart since her mother's death, dissipate.  She understood many things she had not understood before.

I read it just a year or two ago. It enlightened me so much-- even though I'd been raised since age 9 in this faith, there were statements by our latter-day prophets that I'd never read, that thrilled me. They made the afterlife seem more real, more tangible, more wonderful, and more close than I'd ever imagined it.  It made me want to do more temple work for the dead. It made me want to live closer to God and to outwit the devil and his temptations better than I have before, to rely on God and to know that angels are real, are close, and are more powerful than the devils who try so hard to bring us down.

So, I think this translating process will take all of 2012.  But it will be worth it.

Jag är Guds lilla barn (sång) - I am a child of God (song)

http://youtu.be/JOrcqqpHCt8

My baby smiles a big smile every time we watch this song on YouTube. It is without doubt his favorite. I like it, too.

Babyn blir jätteglad varje gång han får lyssna på den här sången på YouTube. Den är absolut hans favorit sång.  Jag tycker ochså om den. :)

Why Do Sad Things Have To Happen?

I love these thoughts:

President Spencer W. Kimball:
It is not the function of religion to answer all questions about God's moral government of the universe,  but to give courage (through faith) to go on in the face of questions he never finds the answer to in his present status.

If the time comes when you feel you can no longer hold to your faith,  then hold to it anyway. You cannot go into tomorrow's uncertainty and dangers without faith.

President Spencer W. Kimball:
“If all the sick for whom we pray were healed, if all the righteous were protected and the wicked destroyed, the whole program of the Father would be annulled and the basic principle of the gospel, free agency, would be ended. No man would have to live by faith.

“If joy and peace and rewards were instantaneously given the doer of good, there could be no evil—all would do good, but not because of the rightness of doing good. There would be no test of strength, no development of character, no growth of powers, no free agency, only satanic controls."

Why It Matters That Obama Attacked the Catholics and Dissed the Constitution

I'm pasting most of this article from Stephen Combs because he says it better than I do.

"It’s not about the cost of birth control. It’s about power."  -Stephen Combs / The Federalist Review

            "...Three weeks ago Barack Obama declared open war on religion in America. Instantly, what first seemed like a torn sail became a gaping hole in the ship of state...
            We mustn’t consider Obama’s attack on the Catholic Church just a social issue that can be postponed. His brazen defiance of the First Amendment defines his presidency as well as anything we can think of. If it stands, this first in our Bill of Rights will be meaningless. Restoring the Defense of Marriage Act can wait until 2013. Overturning the destruction of religious freedom cannot.
            To review, Obama ordered Health and Human Services Director Kathleen Sibelius to issue a regulation requiring Catholic hospitals, universities and charities to provide their employees with health insurance coverage for free contraceptives, sterilization and “abortifacients” – drugs like the morning-after pill to terminate a pregnancy. The order thus requires the Church to violate its religious principles. It is not written in the Obamacare legislation. It comes by fiat.
            Catholic churches are exempt, but Obama assumes the power to dictate employee benefits policy in the church’s so-called secular institutions. Because Catholic Charities, for example, serves non-Catholics as well as Catholics, its ministry is secular in the eyes of President Obama. Only worship services will be protected.
           
If the edict stands, Obama will have usurped power of unimaginable enormity. His extra-constitutional behavior thus far gives no hint that he would suddenly stop consolidating power in a second term. His narcissistic mindset would assure him that his actions are just and right.
            A reasonable person must agree that the edict violates that part of the First Amendment prohibiting Congress from “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Catholic Church opposes abortion including abortifacients, and most forms of contraception. In its free exercise of religion, its hospitals choose not to perform abortions or provide contraceptives.
            Defiance will be costly (See Friday Letter #163 of Feb. 3, 2012). Since the Church promises not to back down, it faces an unpleasant choice: Close down its hospitals and universities or pay yearly fines of $2,000 per employee.

Obama’s order is no mere political gaffe, a mistake to be corrected on further consideration. His press flak said so. All one has to do is examine the writings and biography of Chai Feldblum.
            Feldblum is a Georgetown law professor on leave to serve as an Obama-appointed Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner. She has written narrowly on employment law almost exclusively on the rights of homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals.
            She was an ACLU lawyer from 1988-1991 and helped draft the Americans with Disabilities Act and its 2008 amendment. Her biography describes her as “a leading advocate and scholar in the areas of disability rights, health and welfare rights, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, and workplace issues.”
            “When religious liberty and sexual liberty conflict,” she told The Weekly Standard in 2006, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.”
            Questioned on her views of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, of which she was the lead drafter, and the rights of Christians hiring employees of their choice, she said, “Gays win; Christians lose.”1
           
What remains to be seen is the sincerity of the Catholic Bishops’ outrage. After all, they support everything else in the government health care law. While they bellowed and screamed from the pulpit two weeks ago, one must be excused for skepticism at the thought of this reliable Democrat constituency actually supporting a Republican.
            The Catholic League claimed outrage. Its leader, Bill Donahue, vowed to “take to the streets” if necessary. How many lay Catholics he’ll get to go along with this threat is anyone’s guess. Donahue says 70 million.
      “Catholic League Poised To Go To War With Obama Over Mandatory Birth Control Payments,” CBS-2 in New York screamed. We doubt that Obama is too worked up over this. Half of these folks won’t leave the reservation for any reason because they incorrectly think the order doesn’t apply to them. After all, most of them use birth control. What’s the big deal?
            They won’t realize until too late that this is not about the cost and availability of birth control. It’s about power."

NOTES
1.      Quoted in the American Principles Project, Oct. 26, 2009.

The Friday Letter for February 10, 2012. Year 4, Issue #164, Published by The Federalist Review. Ron Falkner, publisher. Please send subscription information and letters intended for publication to combs@fridayletter.com. Letters must include author’s full name and town. Subscriptions are free, and we do not share subscriber information with anyone. Website: Federalist Review

I feel sad that Whitney Houston passed away

I usually avoid Hollywood news. I usually don't care. And I rarely respect what goes on there. But it's different with Whitney Houston.  She actually deserved the title of star, or celebrity, or famous person. Her voice was a gift from God. Who else could sing so that people's hearts soared with the sounds she made?  Who else had as much power, as much sweetness, as much dignity and beauty as Whitney Houston?  Possibly Celine Dion, but no one else I can think of.

 

So I watched her soul-bursting rendition of the Star Spangled Banner yesterday on Youtube four times, and showed my family.

I hope God sends along more people with such phenomenal talent as Whitney Houston.

http://www.youtu.be/wupsPg5H6aE   (Click on this link for the video of her song)

It is beautiful!

More photos to share because I love them so much

A.R. is on his mission now.  He writes once a week and says that whenever he can't understand what people are saying to him in Spanish, he says, "I don't know but I do know that God loves His children." (in Spanish!)

Circus

More photos...

A.J. at his cubscout Klondike Day

C.E. did my hair like this and wanted me to pose with the seashell so she could put it on pinterest. :)

Update on me

Hello. I got laid off from my paid blogging job, sadly, because I needed the money.  I only worked for them for three months. But now I have another reason that I never write here anymore!  I am translating a 538 page book from English into Swedish, something I have never attempted to do. It's going to take me about a year, I think. I do about one page per day, and some days, two pages. But it's a beautiful book and even though I know that I can receive royalties for sales of the book someday, I know very few Swedes will actually buy this book, since it's mostly a Latter-day Saint public that would read it, and not many Swedes are LDS! But I've learned so much from this great book that I actually contacted the author and the publisher and asked them if I could do this. I got a contract and it's on its way. Slowly but surely!!!

Update on the family

Here's a thousand word photo... or two or three or four.

First time to the Natural Sciences museum

First time to the circus

Princess C.E. at the circus

AJ rode an elephant for the first time.

Intressant Citat

Alla män vet att de måste dö. Och det är viktigt att vi förstår... vår avresa dit... Det är bara rimligt att tro att Gud skulle uppenbara något i förhållande till saken, och det är ett ämne vi borde studera mer än någon annan.  Vi borde studera det dag och natt, för världen är ovetande i förhållande till deras verkliga tillstånd och relation.  Om vi har anspråk på vår himmelske Fader för någonting, är det för kunskap om denna viktiga fråga.      -Joseph Smith (Kyrkans historia, volym VI, sida 50.)

January 2012 Update

Hi!  I have not blogged here for many months, because--

1. I got a paid job blogging for a health insurance company.
2. I have been taking care of so many people, including the addition of my greatly loved but too rarely seen step-children, over the holidays
3. I have been trying to get on top of laundry, exercise, sweeping, etc. more and more (two steps forward, three steps back)
4. And so much happened. 

• A tragedy struck my stepson.  A.R.'s mother passed away very suddenly, leaving him motherless at age 18-almost-19.  It was terrible.  He was in the middle of his very first semester of college, at BYU.  The Bishop asked him what he would do.  A.R. still wanted to go on his mission.  His mother had gotten him ready, had helped him get his wisdom teeth taken out, had helped him submit his paperwork for the mission, had encouraged him every step of the way, and then she died before he even received his mission call.  It was very sad.  But it's been three months. He is now in the missionary training center, and we are so very proud of him and love him so much.  We write him lots of letters.
• C.E. is still taking A.P. Geography, a college level class, as a ninth grader, plus all these other hard classes, and swim team, and young women's group at church, and is almost never home.  I actually miss her, and rarely get to spend any time except at the dinner table, with her.
• A.J. is on the basketball team now, and even though I forced him to do it, he now says he thinks it's fun (a week later!)
• The baby is hilarious and 16 months old now.  Some of his funniest moments of the week include putting margarine to his ear like a telephone while grocery shopping (and I got my own to talk back); crying and hiding in the towel closet when his feelings got hurt over not being allowed to play with the toilet plunger; learning that he can take our hands, or our thumbs, and lead us to food, water, the bathtub, a book, or whatever he wants.  He is so adorable and cute that there are no words for it.  He's the clump of marzipan that we all want to gobble up.
• S.E. was here for two weeks, over Christmas.  She is a wonderful stepdaughter and we love her soo much.  When I think of how it was when DH and I first got married four years ago, and how the love between stepsiblings and stepparents was not really there at first, and compare it to now, it's amazing.  There is a lot of love and it grows and grows.  Real love.

Now I'm going to post some pictures, because they speak a prettier language than words.

bathtime in the kitchen sink - the baby's like a raccoon, dipping his graham cracker in his bath water

The two brothers watch their sister at her swim meet

swim meet

Hejda

SE and Baby H

angel sleeping

C.E. was Santa Lucia this year. Here she is kissing the baby with A.R. holding him.  Love this picture!

At A.R.'s missionary farewell party - DH with his brother and his mom

Christmas Eve Dinner - AJ and CE

A.R. on the day he went in to the missionary training center

S.E. and Baby H. at the museum

A.R. and his dad on the day he went to the MTC

A.R. with S.E. and me on the day he went in to the MTC

A.R. gave A.J. a bee bee gun for Christmas

S.E. and Baby H on Christmas morning

A.R. between his father and his stepfather on the day he went in to the MTC

Swedish Hymns - Lyrics site link

My favorite thing about Christmas is the music.  I have learned that our church does not have a Swedish version of the hymns online yet, but there is a site with the words to the hymns.  So if you can figure out which hymn goes to which tune (or have a Swedish LDS hymnbook, which are available) you can learn to sing the hymns or the Christmas songs in Swedish.

http://skrifterna.se/nya/images/Psalmer_text.pdf   (lyrics only here)

Just Sharing a Swedish Winter Song Link

http://youtu.be/20R9_w7uJGM?hd=1

Hej, Mitt Vinterland, sung by Carola, with great pictures of the Swedish winter wonderland.

Good Days

C.E. and her friends before their choir performance downtown

Mormor and C.E.

Mormor and C.E.

Baby H., C.E., and me

Good days have been happening.

C.E. has performed in her high school choir, and it's been absolutely beautiful.  She also has been improving her swim meet times.  She is thriving.  But she's tired, too.  Her schedule is so busy.  She has to fit in homework too.

We got to see the beautiful Christmas lights at Temple Square when she sang there, last week.  Here's A.J. in the Christmas spirit:

A.J. at Temple square in SLC

cousins

Baby H at the cousins' house

at the church art museum - a hands on exhibit for kids

A.J. had his first talent show.  I've been his piano teacher, and I can't play well, myself.  But he's learning and he's improving fast.

waiting for AJ's turn to play the piano at the 3rd grade talent show

She took 7 seconds off her time last night at the swim meet!  Wahoo!

Another swimmer in the family

The baby gets into everything, all day every day.  Except when he's got his seatbelt on, as in this photo.

He makes our lives one big neverending mess-cleaning.  And brings a lot of laugher and love-- more than I can describe.