Hopeful Homemaker

May 20, 2012
by jennifer
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Joy, week 20

It’s almost completely dark outside and the children have turned off all the lights except for two lamps. Six of them are gathered around their Dad on the couch watching videos of tornadoes after asking some questions about them. My little one is curled up next to me, laying her head on her shoulder and whispering things to herself while I type. Dogs bark outside and the cool air wafts through open windows. It’s a happy, cozy night.

We watched the solar eclipse tonight. Clouds masked it from view for a while but we got some good looks at it, which was exciting. It was fun to be outside with so many neighbors, all set with their various tools for watching. My 11 year old’s scout leader gave him some glasses for viewing the eclipse which turned out to be by far the most effective tool. He was generous and shared them with all of us as well as letting 2 or 3 other families take turns. I’m grateful someone keeps track of these things (I don’t!) so we can see such things.

We had a good week, but not enough was accomplished. We finished up two soccer seasons and now have tryouts to deal with. I’m more than a little worried about what needs to be done this week. So much on the calendar, so many things to wrap up at school, recitals, and so forth. We’re so close to being done, but the excitement won’t hit until we’re through these woods. Some things I’m already counting: only 39 more lunches to pack and then I’ll be down to just packing a lunch for my husband. THAT will be nice! Only 8 days left of school. I have so much to do in that time!

Tonight I feel very humble. The migraine has continued and I find myself worn down by the pain, a bit on the emotional side, and very tender hearted. I’m so grateful for the days when I feel good and am anxious for one of those days to hit. I am grateful for good friends and for the patience of my family during these past few days. I am so blessed.

The many goals I have are on the back burner while we survive this month. I’m excited to slow down, re-evaluate, and get back on course.

The whispering of my two year old has given way to the steady breathing of sleep. Across the room on the couch, bodies have curled up and sunk into more relaxed positions and the four year old is sound asleep in the middle of the pile. Night is upon us and we’re going to get some extra sleep before facing life tomorrow.

Good luck to all of us!

Jennifer

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May 18, 2012
by jennifer
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Life as it was today…

I was SO tired this morning when I woke up. I went from bed to bed to wake the children for school… and I’m not kidding — NONE of them even stirred. I lay back down and waited ten minutes, then did the rounds again. More success this time. Everyone made it to school, and early too.

When my husband got in the shower he said he was going to work from home today and that made me happy. Plus, I had the early signs of a migraine coming on and it just felt good to think I wouldn’t be facing the day all alone. When he came downstairs he announced something he needed to take care of at the office and within 45 seconds he was driving away. It’s his job, after all, but I felt a little sad.

The little girls were adorable this morning, making toast for each other. This week they’ve had lots of fun with dolls, rocking them, pushing them in strollers, cuddling them and so forth. I love to see little girls practice being mommies.

The headache got worse and we picked up my 6 year old from kindergarten. It was pouring rain by this time and I felt so thankful that my husband worked well after dark last night getting almost all of the dirt moved from the street to the backyard. The rain made the day feel a little dreary so when my little guy begged for a movie I got the tv out and let him watch one of the original Star Wars movies. I decided a rainy day called for some chocolate chip cookies and mixed up the dough. We paused the movie to pick up three more of the children from school.

I never lay down during the day, but today I had to. I rested for 20 good minutes and then my little one joined me and I had to get up. My oldest was supposed to go on a retreat tonight, but the deal was that all make-up work for school be completed first. It wasn’t. I had to say no. I hated it, he hated it, but I had to do it. It’s not fun being the bad guy, but he knew the requirements and I’m not doing him any favors by lifting them at the last minute. Still, it stinks.

I worried it would ruin the rest of the night but he rallied well, thanks in part to a cool t-shirt his dad picked up for him today. I went through an almost laughable stack of loose papers to make sense of his homework. We baked the rest of the cookies and soon he had a smile on his face.

I did no housekeeping today. Just functioning took all my energy. I’m not complaining. I’m writing because I need to remember this day.

I started dinner late because of the homework issue. So while I had ribs cooking in the oven, the hungry kids peeled carrots to chomp on and raided the storage room for Top Ramen, which they eat raw! Gross! I sat on a chair in the family room and turned my head in time to see my four year old jumping up and down on her Top Ramen to crunch it before opening it. My two year old climbed up next to me with equal parts runny nose and dirt on her face to throw her body across me and give me countless kisses. When she wants to talk to me she gets right in my face so our noses are touching. It took a little more courage to have that conversation tonight given the state of her face, but she’s adorable and I love it. I had just seen pictures of someone’s newborn baby and had that sad feeling in my heart (and my eyes) that my baby is so huge.

My carpet is littered with game cards from six or seven different games. For some reason my kids don’t play games, but they get all the pieces out and play other things with the games. It makes for interesting messes. My seven year old and I took 2 hours and went through every piece recently, but it’s right back to the previous state of disarray. I’m thinking we don’t need games. I walked through the empty kitchen and found a cup of water in the middle of the floor with 5 rocks in it. Hmmm. There’s a baby doll on the kitchen counter face down in some peanut butter. My floors have a nice layer of dirt on them but I’m not going to mop until our dirt has all been moved to its permanent location.

The children are having a wonderful time running outside in the gathering darkness and I’m happy to hear their screams and yells through the open windows. My oldest and his Dad are watching snowboard competitions online as they do work and homework in the office. I’m feeling a little vulnerable tonight but it’s opened my heart to the realities of how terribly blessed I am. I look around at the mess and for once, I have the sense to be happy about it. There’s a lot of life being lived here and I get to be a part of it. I get to be the one they talk to about soccer practice and who said what. I get to be the one that holds them when they scrape their knee or just need a shirt to wipe their nose on. I get to be their mother. And I get to be a wife to such a good man. And we get to live at the end of the street with a big yard for them to run in and right now we get to sleep with our windows open. I get to smell my lilacs in a vase each time I walk through the kitchen. But mostly it’s just about people. We get to love each other, and there’s so much we get to learn together.

Today life was messy, life was loud, life was rainy, life was real. Life is good, and what a precious gift God has given me to be here for it!

Gratefully,
Jennifer

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May 17, 2012
by jennifer
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Undaunted

It’s going to be another crazy day in another crazy week, but I’m pausing to write for a minute from the heart.

I can’t count the number of moms I’ve spoken to recently who have mentioned that life is “really getting to them” lately. For those of us with children in school, it’s the month of last minute projects, concerts, recitals, tryouts, registration, programs, testing, finals, games, practices, etc. So much of the entire year is decided in May. Most of your summer plans must be finalized by now, and most of what your children will be involved in come September must also be taken care of. It’s a crazy month.

Personally, I feel like I’ve been swinging back and forth between desperate and joyful, experiencing everything in between. I’ve been reminded of the saying “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.” I think a lot of us are doing that right now. All the ups and downs combined with the exhaustion of this month has made me look more carefully at myself, made me realize that I need to toughen up. It’s going to work out, so I need to be steadier.

I’ve had occasion to re-read the stories of some of my ancestors in the past two weeks. Sarah Adelaide gave up her family for her religion. Mary walked across the plains pregnant, with a two year old. Elizabeth crossed the plains as a girl, wearing out her shoes along the way but she didn’t stop walking. They wrapped her bloody feet in rags and they finished the journey. They buried children, buried husbands, and kept going. Many of them were poor, and yet in their own extremities they found ways to lift the burdens of others. I read their stories, feel the greatness of their spirits, and wonder what they would tell me about feeling overwhelmed by things as trivial as soccer games, dirty bathrooms or homework assignments!

This morning I read a quote by Jerry Falwell, Sr. It says, “You do not measure a man’s greatness by his talent or wealth, as the world does, but rather by what it takes to discourage him.”

Isn’t that a great thought? I want to be someone who closes the door firmly on discouragement and keeps going. It’s one thing to be strong when you’re rested and quite another to be strong when you’re weary. What does it take to discourage me? An honest assessment tells me I have distance to travel to get there, but that is a kind of greatness we can all achieve. Few of us will be renowned for our talents or our wealth, but we CAN be undaunted. We CAN press forward courageously and optimistically, no matter what.

As I’ve been studying my large stack of books which deal largely with human behavior, a thought has been parading through my mind for weeks. It is this: “We don’t feel our way to better behavior. We behave our way to better feelings.” In today’s world where so many of us quit doing or never start because of our feelings, it is important to understand that we’ll get much farther in life if we act the way we need to act and in so doing improve the way we feel instead of giving up because it doesn’t feel right that day.

I want to be courageous, undaunted. I will refuse to be discouraged by small things. I can do this.

Care to join me?
Jennifer

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May 16, 2012
by jennifer
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What I requested for Mother’s Day

Dirt. In lieu of flowers or a gift or whatever, I asked for a load of dirt.

We have garden beds to supplement and I have lots of weed patches that need to become something else. So we got some dirt.

We really don’t have time for it right now, but the season marches on without us. Sometimes that’s the only way to do things, to add them when you don’t think you can and just work harder. The neighborhood children, including my own, are sure happy with it!

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May 15, 2012
by jennifer
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Delighted

A few weeks ago I was walking through an outdoor shopping mall with my husband when a dwarf lilac bush caught my eye. Covered in miniature purple blooms, I wondered if they also had that intoxicating scent of lilacs. Pausing to bend and sniff, I discovered that indeed, they smelled heavenly.

We walked on and I thought to myself, “Too bad my little lilac bush in the back yard has not a single bloom on it. What a disappointment that it has no flowers!”

You see, I planted a small lilac bush last spring. By the end of summer it looked like it wouldn’t make it through the winter and I mentally prepared to tear it out and try to find the receipt. To my surprise it came back this spring, looking incredibly healthy. I watched while my other lilac bush bloomed and produced beautiful flowers while this little bush did nothing but produce green leaves. I thought I had ended up with a non-flowering bush by mistake.

I was weeding the other day and to my complete surprise I looked at the bush and saw this:

It’s covered with miniature blooms! They came out of nowhere, weeks behind all the other lilacs in my area, but here they are. They smell heavenly and I stood there and had to resist shouting for joy (because we don’t need the neighbors to think I’m truly nuts).

I know in years to come I’ll get better at this gardening business, but I hope I never lose the delight of seeing a plant fulfill its potential. I hope it always makes me sort of giddy.

Another happy surprise is the return of my Ranunculus. They’re not supposed to make it through the winter here, but I left them in the ground because they’re far too small to dig up, and to my delight they’re back and beginning to bloom.

My columbines have also bloomed. They are a flower dear to my heart for many reasons.

The honeysuckle I planted last year is thriving and I had to get a larger trellis for it to climb. I also have honeysuckle in two other places which also need new supports and I’m on the lookout for them. We’re looking forward to their blooms.

What happy surprises have you found outdoors?

Jennifer

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May 14, 2012
by jennifer
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Fabric, Paper and Strings

I wasn’t supposed to buy any new fabric this year. Well, I did really well for a while and then I guess I quit doing really well because I just bought this pretty little stack of fabric. It’s called Vintage Summer by Little Yellow Bicycle for Blend Fabrics. It’s kind of my style and yet it’s not, but I like it. I’ve learned that I like a lot of large scale prints but then I struggle to cut into them and actually use them because I feel like I need to do the perfect thing with that large print. I don’t know if I’m just getting smarter or if more fabric designs are getting smaller, but I’m trying to avoid the larger prints (because I still have plenty of them) and watch for the smaller ones that look great when they’re cut into small pieces.

I also shouldn’t start another quilt top until I’ve dealt with all my projects that need finishing, but for some reason I started reading about string quilts the other day and I got the idea in my head that I NEED to try it. If I’m ever going to make that selvage quilt I’ve been saving strips for then I’ll have to learn paper piecing anyway. Then I poked around and found this one over at Film In the Fridge and I was sold. Just enough order in that quilt for me to jump in.

So in the only quiet 30 minutes of my Mother’s Day, I went to my sewing machine and made my first ever paper pieced string quilt block. My kids were shocked that I was sewing fabric to a piece of paper, but I was excited. Learning something new beats a nap any day!

So the Vintage Summer prints were immediately cut into (big deal for me!) instead of waiting around for the “perfect project” and here’s my first block:

The fabric is the perfect scale for a quilt like this and I’m happy with my decision. Paper piecing has always sounded tedious but I quite enjoyed this experiment. I love the white with the prints, and I’m following Ashley’s pdf chart for it.

I really love those little strips of white in there. They look so cool and they’re something I’ve always been intimidated by.

Honestly, I might not touch my sewing machine again until June, but it sure was fun to experiment for a little while!

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May 13, 2012
by jennifer
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Joy, week 19 — Mother’s Day Edition

Happy Mother’s Day!

I just finished reading a letter one of my daughters wrote me for Mother’s day, and I laughed so hard I had to wipe tears from my face as I finished. I laughed for joy because what she wrote was so sweet, and also because some of it was so funny. There’s nothing like reading a letter from one of your children that is unedited and which is just oozing with personality. It’s been a great day, full of all kinds of life. My youngest two were highly emotional today, the kids were nice as often as they argued with each other. My sweet husband worked hard all day to make things go smoothly. We ended up having guests for dinner tonight, and it was fun to watch my oldest daughter step up as Dad’s main assistant in the kitchen and help get all the food prepared. It was fun to have the LDS missionaries here to eat with us, fun to watch the children work together, fun to be a family.

I feel like I experienced much of the spectrum of motherhood this week. I made mistakes, raised my voice, felt discouraged and frustrated. I also laughed, praised and felt full of love. I forgot a couple of things, but I was there for my youngest boy’s Kindergarten program, there to see the smile on his face and to watch him perform. The week wasn’t pretty but it certainly worked out and I learned great things from it.

Yesterday we worked hard to clean the house and do more laundry. It feels good tonight to be going to bed in a house that looks more like the one I love. I haven’t had enough sleep and there is still much to do, but I feel more calm and happy today, more like I can handle what’s ahead. Now, I might not feel that way tomorrow, but for tonight I feel up to the task.

There are so many women I love and admire whose faces have been in my mind throughout the week, women who have blessed my life tremendously. I wish I’d been able to send them all a little token of my love. I wanted to, planned to, and then life happened. Early in the week I stood in line at a store, and the lady next to me in line picked up a nearby book full of gourmet homemade popsicle recipes. It looked cute and tasty so I asked her what she thought. She was honest, saying that it looked great, but wondered when she would ever find the time to actually make gourmet popsicles. I agreed, saying, “There’s so much life going on at my house that I probably wouldn’t get to it until there’s no one around to eat them.” We laughed and she said, “And isn’t that a wonderful thing, to have a home so full of life?” True, true.

So today I’m grateful that my life and home is so full of life that almost everything else seems neglected. I am so grateful to be a mother. I am so grateful for the example of my own mother who has always chosen to put people first. I am grateful for the life that is mine. It’s a wonderful one.

Have a great week!

Jennifer

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May 12, 2012
by jennifer
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When I Grow Up…

I walked around the corner last week to find my youngest on the floor, trying to “tape” herself and put her sister’s soccer socks on. She kept at it until she’d pulled them up her legs and had her feet in big sister’s cleats. Then she found an old jersey and donned it as a soccer “dress” of sorts. Her big sisters got a kick out of the display and tied the shirt so she wouldn’t trip, then put her hair in a pony tail.

Then she was outside for the game, talking nonstop about what she was doing and pausing occasionally to ask questions like “Is that cool?” We laughed and shook our heads as she carried on. Really, it still surprises me sometimes that she is my 8th and yet is so totally different from all the others, a brand all her own. In some ways I feel like my experience really helps with her and in others I’m at a total loss. She is so unique.

She wants so badly to be big, to be doing all the things the big kids do. {She’s pretty good at painting her own fingernails already, as she can find nail polish hidden anywhere. Scary!} She wants to be like them, and she thought that putting on all the stuff would make her big and fast and strong like they are.

I sat there, laughing and loving her and then it hit me that in some ways I’m just like her. I’m trying so hard to do things, but still have much to learn and much growing to do before I’ll be the girl I mean to be. Sometimes I feel like I’m all outfitted like a mom, but still fumble and trip as I try to actually do it.

She wants to grow up and play soccer, go to school, make cupcakes, be a Mom.

I want to grow up too, and be the Mom I intended to be, the Mom my kids deserve, the Mom that God gave me the potential to be. Like her, I have yet to grow into the shoes I want to fill, but with faith and prayer and time it just might happen.

Aren’t I lucky I have them to help me do it?

Happy Mother’s Day tomorrow to all of you who love and care for children in any way. May we all spend the day feeling grateful for noble and inspiring women who push us to be better, and may we place emphasis on those things in our lives which are of lasting value and importance.

Jennifer

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May 11, 2012
by jennifer
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Potential

I haven’t had time to weed my flowerbeds much lately, or even to walk around the yard and see how things are looking until yesterday. I saw a few things that made me very happy.

First, things appear to be coming back well. Some of the lavender is a little slow, but I think it’s all going to make it. I’m pleased with how full my front flowerbed is looking. It will get better when the peonies are mature in a few years. I planted some dahlias in there again and am hoping they take.

The allium is new this year and I’m liking them a lot. They’ve attracted lots of bees and are so pretty standing on their long, straight stems.

The tulips are about finished. I really ought to go cut them all down, but in a few spots the show is still impressive so I’m leaving them a bit longer. I am SO pleased with the variety of tulips I added to my yard last fall. Without a doubt we have enjoyed some stunning flowers. I’m sorry to see them go but happy I’ll greet them again next year.

Coming soon: peonies. It’s true that anticipation adds to happiness, for the anticipation I feel when I see these perfectly round buds which will soon burst forth into something remarkable is a great feeling. I have six peonies that will bloom wonderfully this year, and more roots that I planted this spring. It will take time for them to bloom but I’ll wait. It will be worth it!

It was the trees that made me particularly happy as I did the rounds. My pear trees appear to be doing well, with what I think are signs of fruit yet to develop. (I hope – I’ve never grown pears before.)

Looks like we’ll get some cherries as well. Hooray!

And for the first time, I see a few itty bitty fuzzy things on one of the peach trees. Could it be….?

It’s funny how I can see this potential and feel so satisfied. I have a part in it, but really the plants are doing the work. I feel, for lack of a better word, proud of them. I don’t feel critical that there isn’t more. I feel so pleased with the growth I see.

I also see areas that need weeding, gardens that need planting, vines that need training, etc. but then I look at this group enjoying otter pops on the back porch and remember that THEY are my most important garden. THEIR growth is the most important growth going on around here. I remind myself to be more joyful about even tiny signs of growth, especially when I was hoping for much more. I remind myself to be more matter-of-fact about the “weeding” that needs to be done behaviorally instead of going about it with fear or frustration. They are my greatest investment and have the greatest potential of all. They bring the greatest joy and beauty to my life. I’m so grateful for them, and grateful for the reminder I received from my plants and trees. Life is about people, and it’s wonderful!

Jennifer

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May 10, 2012
by jennifer
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Swoon Quilt Finished!

Five minutes here and ten minutes there and the binding is finally on. My Swoon quilt is done!

I love the way it turned out. I have a vintage sheet I’ve saved for years, purchased long ago still in the original package, which I used for the backing. It wasn’t quite wide enough so a pink strip of an old Anna Griffin fabric which used to be bed skirts in this room was added to finish it off.

I took this quilt in and had the owner of a nearby shop quilt it for me. I couldn’t be happier. I love the pattern she quilted it with!

For the binding I used the only yardage I had (and my favorite print) of the Ava Rose line, the deep aqua with dark pink roses on it. I think it looks great with both the quilt top and the back.

So here it is, the whole thing:

From the other side:

Yay! I love it. This one is going to my bedroom for those nights when it’s a bit cooler. Just looking at it makes me happy.

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